I thought I had a good grip of what hacking was, when someone uses programs to access illegal things is software. This idea covered everything, from hacking games to programs. But then, i went on this site called Hackaday.com (Or something) and none of its hacks involved my idea. So what exactly is hacking? I did a little research, and that brought it black and white hats, obviously having nothing to do with this type of stuff. So my question is, what exactly is hacking?

Well, what I know is that black hats are malicious hackers and white hats are nice hackers. Other then that, I just group all that into one category.

Hacking is pretty broad. Google definition:
Which can be simply logging into someone else's computer with a valid password.

Hacking, like internet 'real' definition, is getting around security without the use of programs that do the hard work for you (scripts -> script kiddies).

Hacking can also be like... getting around the normal, hmm ,logical method of things. Like if I applied code to the forums that says if (topic = this one) { // give no minerals }. I would call that a hack because it's like, screwing with the normal progression of the topic code.

Ah, I see. So it can be almost anything that defys the way something normally works?

Hacking is being more intelligent than the computer.
It's saddens me that so few are able to do so.

I think that doesn't have much to do with the "computer" definition of hacking.

In that sense, all you're doing is hacking together something quickly that serves you a quick purpose. Totally different definition in my opinion.

I Reluctantly Agree.

Hacking is just going beyond what and application or a system allows you to. And yes, I totally agree with Rantent.

I herd a long time ago that you could type in some sort of script that the computer would read and use. For example:

Lets say I want to turn off my computer. ( Everything is incorrect because I don't know actually what it is )

{turn off=admin computer} or something like that.

They also stated that everything you type into a field the computer reads and if you put some type of malicious code into your computer ( no idea why ) that it would read it as if it were a command from let say notepad/ms word.

I have no idea if this is true or not.

Try the following:
Open notepad and type:

Then save the file as whatever.bat and double click it

Or, or you could just tell me what it does. ( shuts off my computer? )

So true.

You're all wrong (mostly). What most people think hacking is is actually called "cracking," whereas true "hacking" is stuff like hackaday (non-malicious).

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_hacking_and_cracking

YES!!! Someone knows!

Right what I was going to say... Hackers make programs and things. Crackers break them.

I like cloakr_'s definition the best. Thats what i thought, i didnt necisarrily have to do with computer softerware, just electronics. Am I rite?

Hacking is writing quick dirty code that does the job you want it to do.

It saddens me that despite naively thinking that they have locked us out of DOS by disabling cmd.exe but not command.com, my school still managed to deny shutdown.exe network permissions

My school did that too.

They also disabled the Run prompt but not the creation of shortcuts