Thank you for that link. That is interesting. In the comment section, another person left a link to another page:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

I'm not quite satisfied with those explanations. When we create a word with "er" to mean a person who does something, the verb usually comes first. For instance, "bake", I'm sure came before "baker", because the act of baking had to be invented before the word "baker" can be born. The same is true for "hitter", "driver", "swimmer", runner", "programmer", "painter", and so on... The verb has to come first.

So, the verb "hack" must have been used in the field of computers or technology before the word "hacker" was coined. And, "er" was added later to mean someone who hacks. If we want to trace the history of the word "hacker", we should trace the origin of the verb "hack" as it was first used in the field of computing or technology.

Interesting. My guess was that "unauthorized access" came before "tinkering". If you are right, I would imagine that "hack" to mean "tinker" or "cope" came before computers.

I would say intent is irrelevant for the definition of "lie". Think of so-called "white lie". Suppose your boss gives you a present for your birthday, and he asks, "Do you like it?" If you are polite, you would say "Yes" even if you didn't like it. The "intent" in this case is to be polite or to express your appreciation for the gift.

Many restaurants claim things like "World's best pizza". It's a lie because they have done nothing to prove that they do indeed serve the best pizza in the whole world. Is there an intent to deceive? No, because we all know that claiming something to be "world's best" is a common expression; it is not interpreted literally.

Say, you come home really tired and you are not in a mood to talk to your spouse, so when your spouse asks, "What did you do today?", you reply, "I went to the moon." It's a lie but you have no intent to deceive because it is obvious that you didn't actually go to the moon. The intent is to say, "I don't feel like talking right now," or "Don't ask me boring questions."

It is certainly not a grammatical issue; it's a stylistic issue, SO, it's not wrong. It just does not sound good when you repeat any word over and over.

I have the same exact problem! If I write without paying conscious attention to using "so", I end up with a whole bunch of them. So, I have to always read through my text specifically to revise my usage of "so". I think I naturally think this way. That is, my mind always structures thoughts into "if - then - so", or that I only have that type of thoughts. Even when I replace "so" with "therefore", "thus", etc., they get quite repetitive also. I think this is just how some people's brains are.

@Jesse the blob of Bromine

I feel your response is beyond exaggerating with all the capital letters and exclamation marks, as well as your desire to harm someone physically. The word "exaggerating" isn't enough to express how I feel about your response, but I cannot think of a better word at the moment. I need something stronger than "exaggerating". I'm not sure if there is such a word in English. Any suggestion?

See below for the new development on this topic:

http://painintheenglish.com/case/4547

Yeah, I agree with you. I don't see anything that would justify the use of past perfect tense. It appears that keeping it simply in past tense would make more sense.

I'm not sure if it's possible to evaluate this sentence alone. I think it would depend on the tense of the sentences that came before it.

Well, my dictionary says both are fine. And, a lot of grammarians on the Web seem to agree. But what I'm curious about is how "cannot" became acceptable and then a preferred form. I would guess that at first "can not" was the only acceptable form. We don't use "maynot", "couldnot" or "shouldnot", so why "cannot"?