Hackers

Hackers play a very important role in the co-evolution of technology. Besides, as long as the questions "Why" and "what if" are asked, hackers will always exist. A would without hackers would be a world without curiosity and innovation.
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From the book:

Hacking - The Art Of Exploitation
By Jon Erickson
An excellent introduction to C programming, Assembly and reverse engineering. Well worth the $50 paid for it at borders.
Remember kids. Pay in cash.

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As a side note, how many people realise that store loyalty cards and coupon codes sent to you by email and everything that provides you with 'endless rewards' is actually being used to monitor, track and analyse your every move?
This is all done in the spirit of providing you with the 'optimal shopping experience' and to provide you with targeted advertising.
They are watching your every move and profiling things about you you probably don't even know about yourself. Chances are a faceless company somewhere holds all your data (this isn't even talking about facebook (don't get me started on facebook)) and knows everything there is to know about you. And they probably paid less than a few bucks for it.

I'll rant about this more later. I'm sleepy.