One of my personal pet peeves is when the media presents information about "hacker" attacks. They of course either choose to ignore, or most likely are ignorant, of the use of the word in the computer world, where it *matters*.
At the risk of oversimplifying, they refuse to realize that there is a difference between *hackers* and *crackers* wherein the two have similar skills and knowledge bases but the crackers work with malicious intent while hackers do it "because they can"/for the knowledge. The people that carry out the premedidated, viscious attacks, be it DOS attacks, virii, whatever, are of the cracker variety. Yet the media ignorantly calles them hackers!
Now let me say I am *not* a hacker, nor a cracker—but only because I have not yet bothered to learn the things I should. If I found the time and motivation, and I am sure someday I will, just to *know* how, I could probably be a pretty decent hacker in two days, three tops. And anytime I try to *say* this "I could be a hacker in three days if I tried" it freaks pepople *out* they're like "a hacker? oh my GOD! that's BAD" and all I can do is sigh... because they dont have the proper context themselves to know the meaning of hacker as it is *meant*, they only have what the media feeds them. And the media, incorrectly, preaches 'computer attack = = hacker = = bad!!!' That drives me crazy. If they're going to report, why can't they at least get the terminology right?