Review: Oh to be brilliant and rich...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 27, 2014
This book goes from 0 to 100 mph and just stays there the entire time. It is a book that mixes politics with vengeance, murder, freedoms, entitlement and some very amazing hacking.Are all technology people born cleverly devious? In this book they are sidelining financial institutions, broadcasting frequencies, credit cards, my personal favorite was the paintball gun setup.This comes down to the question of this: If you had the intelligence and the money to do the right thing, and by doing so save something invaluable to your country, would you do it ? Even if you or your friends could potentially land in prison or worse.This is what the book is about. A group of people is faced with an untenable situation involving the Internet, some Senators, vengeance and a lot of creativity. They all answer the question the same way, and proceed to put innovative plans in place to make problems go away.The book pointed out the corruption in government, the deregulation of industries which has resulted in lower quality products and reinforcement of the Good Old Boys Network. There is a rousing peech on White Monday which I found very true and heartfelt. It is where Black Collar is defined.This is not a novel where you will get confused about who is good and who is evil, it is obvious, maybe not from the very beginning, but shortly after. The characters on the side of good aren't all fabulously attractive, well one of them isn't, the rest of them are. They all have millions of dollars, though some of that was self-made. The good people are young, interesting, brilliant, artistic and relatively moral. The Evil ones can be fabulously attractive too, but aren't necessarily. The main one is. All the evil ones are filthy rich.The story pits one side against the other, and actually practically the entire country against one of them. ( can't tell, you'll have to read it ). The depth and breadth of the plots that the youngsters get up to is the high entertainment in the book, as well as the results they cause.Overall: Read It! It is a message of optimism in a time of greed, political corruption and collusion. It is a great adventure. If I could do these things, I would be hacker enemy #1