A lot of hacking is done simply because public and private databases and systems just aren't good enough to serve those that they were made to serve. This made me a "hacker," in that I created programs, crawlers and spiders to find and put together the information I needed for my everyday work as a teacher (all legal, of course, though highly unconventional). I once told my boss about one such idea I had, that I thou…
In this article the word "hacker" is actually used in the original meaning - nothing to do with breaking into systems.
I didn't break into any system. I merely streamlined the gathering of restricted data that I was entitled to anyway through my work. Then I made graphical representations of those data for my own use, in order to do a better job. I figured, if this works for me, it would work for my collegues as well, but I wouldn't want to divulge how I did that for free, and certainly not by letting someone else take all the credit for it. And thus I became a "hacker"...