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But then if real hackers came along and read that article, and then poised to point out that the "hackers" described in the article were not actually hacking bu

But then if real hackers came along and read that article, and then poised to point out that the "hackers" described in the article were not actually hacking but were rather engaging in an nonsensical tangent activity that could loosely be grouped within the technical field but not necessarily termed "hacking", we would then have to defend hacking by "redefining" it on the spot.. Not that I entirely disagree with you. I have no problem with observing a group performing such acts and pretending to define themselves within the collective for a group in which their activities really do not apply. I can certainly agree with saying "Fine, let them be." Until those activities begin to reflect badly upon the real collective, and then you must come out and explicitly distinguish between the real and the imaginative.

dalke 15y ago
In your scenario (using someone's still-active account), I'll say it's ignorance from the author. But that's not the case here. My scenario (details about phishing attacks, mention that there are other uses for the word hacker) is much more comparable to the NYT article. The author of the NYT article appears cognizant of the differences in different yoga forms, and of its history in the US and in India. This article uses proper usage of one of the many accepted meanings for "yoga", in a way that's understood by the readers and by domain experts. Were real hackers to complain in my scenario, then to them I say "you've lost." They don't get to decide language, and real black-hat hackers embrace the term for themselves while many proficient white-hack hackers do not. People in the 1990s tried to introduce the term "cracker" as a substitute but that didn't take. The war is lost. Embrace (or accept) the white hat/black hat spectrum and get over it. To yoga people who care about the precise term, just start saying the specific kind of yoga you mean. And don't call it "true" or "real" yoga.

dalke 15y ago

In your scenario (using someone's still-active account), I'll say it's ignorance from the author. But that's not the case here. My scenario (details about phishing attacks, mention that there are other uses for the word hacker) is much more comparable to the NYT article. The author of the NYT article appears cognizant of the differences in different yoga forms, and of its history in the US and in India. This article uses proper usage of one of the many accepted meanings for "yoga", in a way that's understood by the readers and by domain experts. Were real hackers to complain in my scenario, then to them I say "you've lost." They don't get to decide language, and real black-hat hackers embrace the term for themselves while many proficient white-hack hackers do not. People in the 1990s tried to introduce the term "cracker" as a substitute but that didn't take. The war is lost. Embrace (or accept) the white hat/black hat spectrum and get over it. To yoga people who care about the precise term, just start saying the specific kind of yoga you mean. And don't call it "true" or "real" yoga.