What the hack?!

There's a video on the Web demonstrating how to get at least two drinks for the price of one, from a particular type of drinks-dispensing machine.

It really works, but don't ask me how I know. It was apparently discovered by two college students--depending on how you choose to look at it, they are either geniuses or socially inept characters who desperately need to impress their imaginary girlfriends.

These days, you can do a search on the Net and easily learn how to hack into systems that control elevators, phone cards and even parking gadgets designed specifically for persons with physical disabilities.

While these incidents might be dismissed as childish pranks, it is a subtle indication of the mindsets of criminals who lurk in cyberspace, plotting to profit from someone's carelessness or gullibility.

Granted, not everyone who dabbles in some form of hacking is bad, but all hackers had to have started from somewhere.

It might result in losses of just a couple of hundreds of dollars' for a product manufacturer that can more than afford the amount, but who can guarantee the next victim won't be a single parent struggling to make ends meet?