::scr hacking in life

[Simon Wistow]

This is somewaht tangential but in other ways, not. So I'm going to post
anyway.

Have a look at the Jargon File entry for 'hacker':
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/hacker.html

particularly 

"7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming
or circumventing limitations."


For ages I've wanted to rob a bank. Really. A huge, intricate, Thomas
Crown / Real McCoy /  $heist_movie style bank job. I want to
figure out ways round the security systems and see how I react if/when
it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

On a similar tip I'd like to see if I could obtain a fake passport. I
think I could, even with the whole "find a dead baby and head to Kew
public records" thing being a bust now (read 'Day of the Jackal' if you 
don't know what I'm talking about). 

I was talking to someone recently about card counting and winning at
fruit machines. There's no trick really, get to know the machines and
their pay out patterns then find a nice juicy machine that doesn't get
emptied much and has lots of people only putting in 1 or 2 pounds at a
go. Takeaways are good for this. Then feed in 30 quid or so and you'll
probably make your money back.

This struck me as being very much like breaking into cars (various cars
have little tricks - early nineties Vauxhalls used to pop the locks and
disable the alarm system when you kicked their back number plate - they
thought they'd been in a rear end shunt) and hence *very* like hacking. 

Anyway, veering wildly back onto topic ...

Is there anything else people would like to do that's illegal? [0]
Attempting an assasination or attempting to do an illegal border
crossing is fine, saying you'd like to brutally rape and murder someone
or smuggling three ks of coke and then sitting scarface like with a
veritable mountain of bolivian marching powder isn't exactly what I'm
after here. Something that requires a bit of ingenuity and that,
theoretically, you could do and then return things to the status quo. 

Maybe there's a market for this ...


In the style of Bruce Sterling / Viridian :

Film/TV references :
Sneakers 
MacGuyver
The Game
Leon
Assasins
La Femme Nikita
Mission Impossible

Books :
Day of the Jackal
[other stuff which i can't think of]


Simon

[0]  Yes, that last sentence was a lame attempt at turning this into
some sort of thread starter.