Can't upvote this enough. It is highly irritating to see language destroyed (and we wonder why kids bastardize the language..).

there's no reasonable way to communicate effectively with the less technically minded without acquiescing to the nontechnical misuse of the term "hacker"

The more easily relabeled of the two uses of the term "hacker" is the malicious security cracker: it is not only the more recent phenomenon to acquire that label, but also the one whose meaning is most easily evoked by an alternative term. This is why, when you read an article of mine that talks about malicious security crackers, I use the term "malicious security cracker"

the asteroid mining and the cultures that sprout up