Man this has been going on for years. There are so many slants on this its tiring to review it.

Most of the confusion comes from misleading media representatiosn as always.

I like to to use Hacker to encompass the lot then just make the diffference in individuals or groups with from an ethical standpoint


I dont think the term hacker means a bad thing or the term cracker. You can be hacker who has ethics or not, you can be a cracker who has ethics or not, you can be criminal or not simple as that.
There are rules to obey and thats that, you can be a hacker, cracker, grey hat, black hat, white hat at the end of the day your either a criminal or not.

all the terms are good, all the people are good people apart from of course the bad ;-)