On 16-3-2012 15:57, Stephen wrote:
> On 16/03/2012 2:38 PM, Invisible wrote:
>> And then of course, in everyday culture "hacking" refers only to
>> technical activities which are in some way /illegal/. :-P
>
> I will go with that definition ;-)
>
Yes, it is a form of hijacking. Hacking was a used to mean doing 
something skilled. As long as that was among the small in-crowd that was 
not a problem. The outside world started noticing this term when there 
was interaction with the non-computer world. I.e. when they started 
hacking other devices like telephone equipment. When computers became 
more important people also started to notice it in the context of 
breaking in into computers. Mostly still as a way to show it could be 
done, not to cause harm. It is around this time that companies and 
institutions that preferred to attack the hackers in stead of fixing the 
issues hijacked the term and made it into something that people 
associate with illegal.

Nowadays there is still a group of amateur hackers, but the largest 
scale hacking is done by governments. If that is still illegal can be 
disputed. The chinese are constantly trying to break into every western 
company and institution. From e.g. a US POV that is illegal, but they 
are doing it from china and there this activity is legal. The same for 
US intelligence services trying to hack chinese government sites.

-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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