> If you define hacking as controlling your computer hardware at the lowest level, then hacking is dead because no-one wants to write device drivers.

This is absurd. Dude, let me be clear - Just because you write Java all day long does not mean that there are hundreds if not thousands of embedded system developers who engineer (quite passionately!) the thing that powers your SSD or your wireless card or the thing that heats your home.

We often take these substrates (in this context - the firmware and device drivers etc.) for granted in the modern hardware and often fail to even acknowledge them. I am not one of them and I vehemently defend these silent heroes of our generation.