The Hacker's Ten Commandments

"BEEP!"

    For the fourteenth time in as many minutes, my computer was either threatening to crash, refusing to cooperate, or being just plain ornery. Now, I'm normally the patient sort, but it was a quarter to midnight, and this time the message read:

"FATAL ERROR: CONTACT SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR TO RESET."

     I'm not sure if it was the expletive I uttered or the pounding of my fists against the keyboard, but the monitor blipped off, flashed to pallid gray, then began running a cryptic dump of indecipherable characters-while emitting a series of rapid, high-pitched beeps that sounded uncomfortably like a call for building security. There was a blinding flash; then the screen went black. Finally, the death knell, a long, piercing tone which translates from the binary, "DON'T EVEN BREATHE, SCUMSUCKER!"

     My nemesis was deathly still. No lights. No sound. No nothing. I'd killed it. I heard a siren in the distance. They were coming for me, los federales—crew cuts sporting reflector sunglasses and black, bulletproof jumpsuits.

     Just then, from the computer came an almost imperceptible "pop." The screen began to glow hypnotically. In its one, ghost eye, this message appeared: