Andrew Thomas where ya been AT?

Tim, your complaint about using the wrong word to describe these cyber vandals seems silly to me. The term "hacker" has had various meanings in the last twenty years. Saying that there is some significant difference between "hacker" and "cracker" suggests a lack of knowledge about the history of these terms.

When I got into the business in 1985 the term "hacker" referred to someone who wrote sloppy, buggy code for software applications. By 1990 the term meant someone who spent all of their leisure time writing software as a hobby. Sometime in the early 1990s the term meant someone who broke into a computer system just to see if they could do it. By the late 1990s a hacker was considered to be a cyber vandal.

Also, some years ago a "cracker" was someone who found a way to activate software applications by sharing a valid software license. Later "crackers" found backdoor hacks to crack software activation procedures for applications.

As we all know, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It doesn't make sense to complain about the proper usage of words whose meaning morphs every few years into something new. So, Tim, take a chill pill and relax. You'll feel better.

Come on - the Inquirer should be IT literate enough to know the difference between hackers and crackers, and stop perpetuating the stupid mis-usage that folk in the big blue room use.

Flippin'eck.

AT adds: They're all scum who should be removed from the gene pool with extreme prejudice, as I have said many times before.