Hackers in the news:

Check out http://www.antionline.com for the latest and best in computer crime news. However, please don't think hacker = computer criminal!

Just what is a hacker, anyway?

Reading this news from the hacker war front, you might think that hackers are mostly computer criminals. No way! Most computer criminals just run programs to detect computers that are vulnerable and then use other programs to break into them. Real hackers experiment, have fun, rarely bother to break into computers because there are more worthwhile things to do with their talents, and normally don't hurt anything.

Real hackers are the people who created the Internet, who wrote the code for Unix operating systems, who ... what the heck, read for yourself what real hackers really are at http://www.ccil.org/jargon. This is the online version of "The New Hackers Dictionary," now in its 3rd edition, (MIT Press 1996, ISBN 0-262-68092-0). You can order it from http://www.amazon.com/. 

Or, you can find out what Carolyn P. Meinel, the author of the Happy Hacker book, had to say about the hacker scene in her humorous interview with XPress at http://www.rabble.com/xpress/1997.03.01/hacker.html.