At one of the Defcon 101 talks given by 1o57, a complaint was made. 1o57's talk was called Hacking the Hacker, and was a rundown of skills that anyone who considers themselves to be a hacker should have, or be striving towards. 1o57 was concerned at the state of the hacker scene, in that many people he talked to couldn't even do a 4-bin binary count-up.
The talk was great, but left me concerned. I picked up a copy of The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Binary by Greg Perry, as a refresher, and found it to be quite an enjoyable read. Greg explains Binary, Bits, Bytes, and Hex in enough detail as to not leave anything out, yet at a level of readability that I would recommend it even to complete novices of base-2 math, and computers in general as a great text to fully explain the topic to them.
Mr. Perry also gives several topics throughout the book that he leaves to the reader as areas for farther research, which is something that I, personally, find to be very attractive. It lets the reader branch out and expand their horizons in an organic way. This is a fantastic learning style for hackers. Thus, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in computers, electronics, or digital communications, but needs a bit of work at the bits and bytes level.
Mr. Perry also gives several topics throughout the book that he leaves to the reader as areas for farther research, which is something that I, personally, find to be very attractive. It lets the reader branch out and expand their horizons in an organic way. This is a fantastic learning style for hackers. Thus, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in computers, electronics, or digital communications, but needs a bit of work at the bits and bytes level.
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