Hello everybody!
I've got cultural, let's say, issue... Maybe it's trivial, but, neverthless, interesting from a sociological point of view.
I've noticed that folks from around US/Canada use word "hacker" pretty often and loosely. It confuses me, because in Europe nobody uses it... at all, in fact.
There is a strict hierarchy established in "computerists language" in my country. Of course, individual may belong to several groups at once. It goes something like this:
1) Scripter: knows handful of hi-level languages, and he/she will do the scripting job in a few hours. It'll work, yeah, but don't expect any firecrackers...
Usually does websites/donkey work for a programmer.
2) Programmer: Now that guy/chick will think for a moment before opening vim. Better skilled, probably with academic background, does the job for a computer scientist.
3) Computer Scientist - thinks all day about algorithms. About improvements. About mathematical proves of his/her new shiny recipe for cloud computing. You'll find his/her in an optimization cathedral at your nearest university. Don't need to be even a programmer (but usually is)
4) Hacker: Now that's a legend.
Nobody knows any hacker.
And "Anonymous" guys are NOT hackers. Not at all.
Hacker checks out operating system of a target, reads this system from source [if available] or from hex editor [if not], sees an opportunity for a sploit, drinks his sugar-aspartame flavoured soda, writes the sploit, jumps through TOR and thousands of proxies, exploits a bug, deletes logs, eats his/her potato chips, scans another target...
Well...
How does it look like in the other hemisphere?
P.S.
DDoS-persons are usually called vandals, or internet hooligans. And I cant stop laughing when watching fox/cbs/nbc/whatever news with "Anonymous Hackers Group" on a lead