Hackerteen: Volume 1: Internet Blackout (Hackerteen)
Hackerteen: Volume 1: Internet Blackout (Hackerteen) Yago wanted to use his computer skills to earn extra cash and support his family. But something went horribly wrong: his teacher, the greatest hacker in the country, is accused of a crime he didn’t commit-and an innocent girl is blackmailed. Thus begin the adventures in Hackerteen.
You know that the Internet is amazing because it opens up new worlds, but not all of them are safe. While you’re communicating with your friends, you could be leaving yourself open to viruses, identity theft, and all the creeps on the Web. You need to know what you’re doing and-more importantly-what other people are up to!
As you follow Yago and his hacker buddies in their fight against crackers, the bad guys of the internet world, you’ll learn
- How Internet technologies work
- How some people try to hurt others online
- Key ways to protect yourself
- How people can work together on the Internet to make the world a better place
You have a choice: be a victim of the skeezers or be part of the solution. Fight back with Hackerteen!
Customer Review: Fun read for teens and comic book fans
When I picked this book up, my first thought was “This is a very non-traditional O’Reilly book”. I dare say, this is O’Reilly’s first technology book published in comic book form. But it absolutely makes sense as to why they did it. Take your typical teenager. How many of them would willingly pick up a “traditional” computer book to read up on open-source, linux, and internet crimes? Unless they’re ber-geeky, I’d say pretty much none of them would do that. This is what is so absolutely perfect about this book: it’s exactly what I would have picked up as a teen–both for fun and as a way to learn more about technology.The story is about Yago, a young assistant teacher at “Hackerteen”, an elite school for gifted computer students. While trying to get some money to help his family out of a tough situation, he writes a program he shouldn’t have. Shortly after, he must race to undo the damage his actions have done.
This is a graphic novel, which is a lot of fun to read. It shows teens examples of risky internet behavior and what some of the serious consequences of that behavior can be. I’d highly recommend this book for teens who want to learn more about internet technologies and ways to protect themselves online. It’s a fun read and I loved the drawings. I can’t wait for volume 2!
Customer Review: A little “corney” for older kids
I used to read comic books as a kid (I’m 30 now), so I was looking forward to this comic book about “Hackerteen”. I work in IT, so the subject was especially interesting to me.The quality of the binding, artwork and colors is very good. However the dialog and story fell short of my expectations. The story starts out with a one page intro in the current time. Then we flash back to 6 years earlier, and start to learn about Yago (weird name, I keep wanting to call him Yugo, like the automobile), the main character.
My main issues with the story were that it felt a little silly, and the technology terms felt like they were kind of just thrown in. By silly, I mean the dialog sometimes sounds like its aimed at an 8 year old. I don’t know what age bracket O’Reilly was targeting with this book, but I didn’t even start reading comics until I was around 12 or 13.
The way the technology was talked about in the book made it seem like it was being written by someone with a very cursory knowledge of the terms they were throwing around. Like – ok we need to mention “OpenOffice”, how do we work that into the story? So at one point there is a frame of Yago getting a text message on his cell phone that says “Yago, your contribution solved the OpenOffice.org problem”. There had been no mention of any problem, OpenOffice or otherwise before this nor was it brought up again afterwards. I get they are trying to “tease” you and leave it up to the reader to track it down and figure it out, but it just didn’t seem to flow very well. Another example is when they talked about DNS. It feels forced, like they wrote the story around the buzzwords.
Most of the terms have an asterisk by them, and if you look at the bottom of the page there is a URL you can go to for more information. But they don’t all work. Taking off the “.php” may get you better results. The book has been out for at least a month now, I don’t know why they haven’t fixed this yet.
I plan to give this to a 14 year old I know and then get his thoughts about it, I’ll try to update my review when that happens.
Tags: Computers book, Internet book, Cheap Internet book, Computers and Internet book, Cheap Computers book
