Seeing as the word “hacker” has come to mean (in the public lexicon) what the word “cracker” actually means, thanks mostly to a lazy news media and a certain film. It therefore seems to me that we need a new word to mean what “hack” previously meant.
For those of you who aren’t pedantically anal about such things, a cracker is someone who does illegal stuff with computers, like breaking into peoples accounts and stealing data; whereas a hacker is merely someone who uses computers a lot in a highly technical capacity. The verb ‘to crack’ in this context usually means to break the protection on a computer or piece of software – for example, to crack a password, or crack a game (remove the copy protection); conversely, the verb ‘to hack’ means to do something technical using a computer, usually in a quick-and-nasty sort of way – for example, “I couldn’t find a tool to do what I wanted, so I hacked one up myself” or “it’s a bit of a nasty hack, but it works.”
Current suggestions include:
- Badger – “I had to badger it a bit, but it works”
- Wang – “It’s only a little wang, but it’s not exactly pretty”
- Flange – “The whole thing is one big, nasty flange”
I’m sure you can come up with something better.
Gabbed? Munged? Floobed? Let’s be honest, you can have pretty much anything. It’s much like ‘drunk’ euphemisms – stick ‘ed’ on the end of a noun and you’re away…
Badger! Woo!