Obviously the author of this article has a bone to pick with the technology industry as a result of SOPA being shut down for now, but if we divorce ourselves fr

Obviously the author of this article has a bone to pick with the technology industry as a result of SOPA being shut down for now, but if we divorce ourselves from our knowledge of tech lingo, this doesn't read as a "thinly veiled attempt to launch an ad hominem attack against Silicon Valley." The author clearly is unfamiliar with the way we use the term "hacker" or even that it has another definition and, therefore, when Zuckerberg says that the term "has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," he doesn't realize Zuckerberg is trying to say that the term has an entirely different meaning from breaking into computers. He clearly thinks Zuckerberg is saying that hackers (which he reads as "people who break into computers") are unfairly portrayed as people who break into computers to do bad, when in reality they sometimes break into computers for constructive reasons. He doesn't realize Zuckerberg is literally saying that the media mistakenly interprets "hackers" as "people who break into computers, period." Zuckerberg's use of "connotation" instead of "denotation" makes it sound like he's defending cracking philosophically as opposed to saying that hacking has a totally different meaning to people in the tech industry. I've reprinted his quote of Zuckerberg with parenthetical glosses showing how the author and anyone not innoculated by knowledge of hacker culture would probably interpret it. "In reality, hacking (breaking into computers) just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it (breaking into computers) can be used for good (to fight what you perceive as unjustice) or bad (personal gain or schadenfreude), but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people (hippies who hate corporations) who want to have a positive impact on the world (by getting rid of capitalism)." With that reading, I think most of us too would be disappointed or even furious with Zuckerberg. I'm glad that wealth and fame haven't compromized Zuckerberg's view of himself as a hacker in our sense of the word, but I think he did a really bad job explaining to the media that the word is used completely differently by techies. That is unfortunate since he is one of the few people with enough influence to get the public to understand and adopt our usage of the word.