Geek Reads: Part Three of The Hacker Crackdown

20.03.2011

Nate: I'm going to have to disagree.

Alex: Yeah, at some point open-source free speech freaks started coding and sharing all these simple ways to steal information. It's like the EFF and the Legion of Doom started working together. Is that the kind of tagteam we're going to see in the final chapter?

Nate: There's a big difference between jailbreaking your iPhone, and reading a post on Gizmodo (or here on GeekTech!), and following the steps.

David: Why is that different Nate? I mean, sure you're not joining the elite world of peerless hackers following a tutorial on Lifehacker, but there were tons of proto-hackers doing relatively easy stuff in the early 90's too. Either way, the barriers to entry are WAY lower and the definition of serious hacker has changed.

Nate: And that's my problem. I've attached a romantic notion to the code warrior/code monkey. Does someone who bought a shiny gadget and then read a few tutorials deserve the same "badge" as the person writing the tutorial? Hell, real geeks should be rocking Palm Treos, not iPhones/Droids.Sure, It reeks of elitism. But seriously, you should be a geek/nerd because of a vested interest in material. Build a PC. Solder something. Crank out a "Hello World!" web page in Notepad.