That's all fine and good but the 'popular' use of the word hacker is uniformly negative.<p>That is the whole problem here there are two disjoint sets of people that use the word in an almost opposite way. The popular use does not have room for a creative angle or a 'for fun' element, it associates hacking with criminal acts.<p>That you and I would not use the word in that way is lost on the large majority of the English speaking world.<p>On HN if someone would call a defacer a hacker I would likely point out that that is improper use of the word, but if it were a mainstream publication I would not because the word has changed its meaning too far to turn it back (or at least, I think it has).