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Words mean what the majority of people take them to mean. The fight for Hacker vs Cracker was lost well before the turn of the millennia.
by nikanj 8y ago
Words mean what the majority of people take them to mean. The fight for Hacker vs Cracker was lost well before the turn of the millennia.
- realbarack 8y agoWhat? No, words mean different things in different contexts. For example, to most people a "graph" means a thing with an x and y axis, but to computer scientists it means a thing with nodes and edges. So yeah, in certain contexts hacker means someone who breaks into computers. In the context of this site (and MIT culture where the term came from) it means someone who draws on their creativity to make something cool.
- PakG1 8y agoA niche population vs the general population. When paths cross, who wins? For matters of communication, usually the general population.
- rhizome 8y agoDo you mean to imply that prescriptivists are completely illegitimate?
- cellularmitosis 8y agoThe fight happened on multiple fronts. Yes, it was lost on cnn.com, but it wasn’t lost in the comment section of HN.