I love hacking. I don’t think I’m ever going to give it up. But let us not generalize hackers into a term that describes dispicable people who do illegal acts. I am all about exploring and working around systems and if what I do is illegal, it is merely temporary and for educational purposes usually. But I have to say, last night was indeed an exception.

After nearly bricking my iPhone 3G installing OS 3.0 the other day, I decided to downgrade to pre-release iTunes 8.2 (8.1.1) on my Macbook while leaving everything on my iMac G5 intact. I downloaded a special ATT_US.ipcc file that had values edited to allow both MMS and Internet Tethering. The MMS hasn’t worked due to the hack being more complicated and requiring a second phone. I also don’t feel like social engineering AT&T at this point.

So sure enough, as you can see below, there is Internet Tethering.

To confirm it worked, I turned off my Airport card on my iMac G5 and the fucker worked brilliantly. So what does this mean? It means I can now, wherever I go, have access to all the information on the world on a portable laptop. The fact that I can travel across the country with nothing more than some food, a laptop and a phone is something that invigorates me. It eats at my soul and makes me smile. Perhaps it is because I tend to reminisce quite often. Especially of my old hacks like red boxing, hacking my township’s servers and messing with my high school’s web page or ripping apart electronics and adding new features.

Hackers are an integral part of society, like it or not. Do not be fast to judge. I highly recommend reading 2600 Magazine and listening to their live hacker radio show “Off The Hook”, which can be streamed, downloaded as a podcast or of course, listened to live on Wednesday evenings at 7pm on WBAI (99.5 FM in NYC).

Keep your eyes open, your interests at heart and always discover new things whenever humanly possible.