normally im neutral bout things such as this...but shartley...you NEED to relax. any one of us can debate this till we're blue in the face but the bottom line is this. regardless of "how it really is" and believe me i agree with some of your points about classification(its irritating i know)...the lingo changes. you know what a hacker was??? i think very few are old or geeky enough to recall but it just meant someone who was so well versed in whatever languages or operating systems that they could simply sit down at a foreign terminal and 'hack out' some code. thats it. theres gotta be more than a few coders running around complaining just as bitterly as yourself about frequent misuse of...well everything. does it help? no. does hacker mean what it once did? no. does anyone REALLY care? i hope the hell not. let the people doing the deeds worry about defining themselves. is it a real shocker that the media misinforms? heh..man, tell me when this wasnt so and ill buy you a beer. until then those of us that give a flying @#$% can stew in silence...well...most of the time :P