I Was a Teenage Hacker [Hacking]
Twenty-four years ago today, I had a very bad day. On August 8, 1988, I was a senior in high school. I was working my after school and weekend job at Safeway as a cashier, when the store manager suddenly walked over and said I better stop ringing up customers and talk to my mother on the store phone right now. Mom told me to come home immediately because, well, there were police at the front door asking for me with some legal papers in hand. Life as a hacker before hacking—or the Internet itself, for that matter—was mainstream might seem thrilling, even glamorous. And to hear writer, developer, and Stack Overflow kingpin Jeff Atwood tell it, in a lot of ways it kinda was. Like I said, definitely not a good day. The only sliver of good news was that I was still 17 at the time, so I enjoyed the many protections that the law provides to a minor. Which I shall now throw away by informing the world that I am a dirty, filthy, reprehensible adult criminal. Thanks, law! One of the problems y...