This topic cuaght my eye, I've thought about this at length before, and there are a lot of reasons regarding it.

When we designate a group of people or something else with a name, it is effectively what the society calls it, not what the people involved with it call it. For example, if we call a computer a computer, and the rest of the world around us calls it a tomato, it will go down in Websters as a tomato.
Now, as Remote Access pointed out, "its the media." Well, no ****, really. If the only exposure to the word "hacker" for "ordinary people" is when we hear about the latest Outlook exploit (though, imho, if you're running Outlook, you deserve trouble), then of course, mainstream society will recognize a hacker as a virus writer or some jerk who attacks servers to impress his friends along with plenty of other misrepresentation, like the slogan of this little security site I know of, "Hackers Know The Weaknesses In Your System. Shouldn't You?"

As for the distinction itself, NPR has occasionally run a story or commentary about how the word has become mangled, but I think I might be one of 34 or so people who listen to NPR

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One other thing I want to add; some of my less computer literate friends see me in their eyes as quite the l337 hacker. Well, I find the workings of my computers fascinating, I can make them do some fun things you might not expect (or like), I've found a few AIM tricks, and I've attempted to design some simple computers with buckets of transistors, still, I don't consider myself mcuh of a hacker, which only serves illustrate my point, which is that you understand a word based on what you experianced in relation to it, not purely by any true or intended definition.



Maybe that was a little philisophical, lol.