Did you use technology to get into mischief as a child?
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Define technology (Score:5, Informative)
When I was a kid and we made our own bow and arrows, that was a sort of technology.
Re: (Score:3)
Word.
Black-and-White TVs were the latest fad back then. Amazingly, I am 35.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering your age you probably forgot to add the part "for use as target practice" there.
Re: (Score:2)
What?
I have no idea what you just said.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the idea is that B&W TVs were a "fad" in the fifties, not the late seventies. If you were 65, your original comment would make sense. At 35.....maybe not.
Re: (Score:2)
Where I live, they were.
In '89 we were still under a regime akin to today's North Korea, and whoever had a color TV was either highly politically connected or an illegalist. There were two hours of TV each day (four during weekends) and most of the airtime consisted of praising the dictator.
And yes, there ARE other countries in the world. Who would've thought so?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but slashdot is primarily a USA audience, so it would be reasonable to state the fact your experience was not 1980s USA.
Re: (Score:2)
Target practice? No way, read a book on how the indians built bow and arrows and we ran around the woods looking for deer.
Mostly only found squirrels, which were too fast for us to hit (although we did try to hit them)
Re: (Score:3)
Slingshots (ie: wrist rockets) are better for squirrel, faster projectile. You need perfectly round projectiles, like marbles, so they don't wobble in flight. And yes, I've eaten squirrel, usually "Squirrel and dumplings". Not bad if the squirrels aren't too gamey, it just takes a lot of squirrels to make a pot. We ate normal food most of the time, but my parents made sure all 7 of us tasted squirrel, turtle, rabbit and lots of deer, dove, quail, duck, lake fish, wild turkey and other game. Most parent
Re:Define technology (Score:4, Interesting)
In the fifties we didn't have digital options so we relied on other technology. Natural gas is flammable AND buoyant which makes for great UFO reports. Nitrogentriiodide is always good for a laugh. Manganeseheptoxide is always fun. There were always cherry bombs and M-80s which have some surprising uses, especially when combined with simple string bombs. You would be amazed at the alternative uses of glo-fuel. You can even get into trouble with birthday candles and dry-cleaner bags if you are hard up. (more UFO reports) In the fifties and sixties there were numerous UFO reports in southern Michigan, not all of which were my work.
Re: (Score:2)
I loved launching homemade hot-air balloons made from dry-cleaning bags, straws, toothpicks and birthday candles, as well as alternative heating experiments with Sterno and aluminum foil. Protip: camping fuels like Sterno are poor choices. They do burn at a very high temperature and don't weigh much, but the downside is twofold:
1) They burn so hot that the hot air near the flame is so much hotter than the air at the top of the bag that they tend to turn over easily.
2) Combine #1 with the fact that, unlike b
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I have to resist telling my kids about the natural gas balloons we made for the 4th while unsupervised. As a parent, they're too dangerous.
Fill up a white kitchen trash bag from the stove, tie the end with kite string, unreel the string until the balloon is at least 30-40 feet in the air, then light the end of the string.
Big whump and fireball in the air later, fun was had by all.
Re: (Score:2)
We discovered a remarkable thing at the hobby shop. They used to make Jetex brand jet motors that used a solid fuel pellet inside a steel housing. They were ignited with a short length of Jetex fuse, which usually came with the pellets, but we bought the fuse separately in six foot lengths. A six foot fuse took three or four minutes to burn. This allowed our dry-cleaner bags to get to several hundred feet before igniting. We often would include a cherry-bomb in the payload just to make sure people woul
Re: (Score:3)
When I was a kid my parents got me a chemistry set, that included an alcohol burner, and I helped my father reload his bullets after shooting at the range.
Who needs tech when one has explosives, and open fields a half mile from any home.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of my troublemaking involved the oldest technology: Fire. Matches and flammable liquids were frequently my preferred tools, although as I got older I learned to steal my mom's Bic lighters.
Remember steel soda cans? Those could be stacked to make tennis ball cannons, fueled by lighter fluid. You could also soak the tennis balls in lighter fluid, ignite them, and play fireball hockey.
Firecrackers, Roman Candles and Bottle Rockets used to be legal when I was a kid. In the summers, our dads would buy
Re: (Score:2)
Remember steel soda cans? Those could be stacked to make tennis ball cannons, fueled by lighter fluid. You could also soak the tennis balls in lighter fluid, ignite them, and play fireball hockey.
We smarter kids used tennis ball cans as they were the perfect diameter AND had fewer seams. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
That was really cool, until the flaming ball rolls under the neighbors car.
"Do we get it, do we run?"
If we go get it, and it blows up, we're dead.
If we run and it blows up, they'll know it was us, and our dads will actually kill us.
oh, the things that go through the 11 year old mind.
Similarly, ship to shore b
Re: (Score:2)
I made touch powder in chemistry and put it up around the school on filter paper attached to noticeboards labeled "Scratch and Sniff"
Re: (Score:2)
My friends and I made a lot of black powder and various other explosives and propellants for rockets, fireworks and kinetic projectile delivery not to mention the the odd petrol bomb just for fun. The authorities were never involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Never dawned on a bunch of idiot kids how dangerous this was at the time....but oh well, no harm done.
Fortunately back in the day...that would not get your branded as a 'terrorist', just a bunch of stupid pre-teens.
Also, back in the day where if the cop pulled you over somewhat tipsy, and you were close to home, they'd let you go home with the warning of "If I s
Not At All. (Score:2)
Fairly often, but nothing serious: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fairly often, but nothing serious: (Score:5, Interesting)
I caused an issue for AOL by accident back around that time.
I was operating on dialup and I was too young to have a credit card to be able to rent a server for an FTP site. So my friend and I came up with the idea of using an online email system (can't remember which one now) that allowed you to auto-reply to an email with a 1.5mb file. We then created an email address for every disk of the game (Krush Kill & Destroy in ARJ format). We then told people that was how you got the program, send an email to each address in turn and it will reply with the disk.
Seemed like a really really simple idea. Then a guy in the States sent an email to every address in one go. He was on AOL and had a 10mb email limit. So he got the first couple of disks before his system started replying mailbox full. That triggered another copy of the file to be sent etc etc etc etc. Apparently he was questioned by the authorities about being involved in a serious DDOS that took a chunk of AOL offline. I never heard whether anything else came of it. I assume not.
Re: (Score:2)
lol people like you are what killed the Amiga. no-one wanted to make Amiga software because everyone pirated it. without software a platform dies.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, seriously, rampant piracy on the Amiga drove developers away and killed the platform. The IBM PC had businesses paying for site licesnses, which more than made up for widespread piracy by home users. Apple had their cult following who were paying for the big-name Adobe, Aldus and Macromedia packages, andfor some reason actually paying money for shareware as well. But there was just no money in developing for Amiga because no-one ever paid for software.
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing that was remotely like the real world in the movie Hackers was the music they listened to ...
And I still can't respect Angelina Jolie for being in it.
I blame the authorities (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know I could get into trouble just for playing a little game of "Global Thermonuclear War".
What technology? (Score:2)
Re: What technology? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
School district I attended finally did get around to setting the BIOS to boot from primary master only, and set a password. They also installed some halfway decent security software on the box too, which cramped our style for a couple of days. Then there was a sub, we found out about earlier in the day. I was wearing a polo shir
Where's the "yes but never got caught" option (Score:5, Interesting)
Also need the "yes, but nobody cared back then" option.
I carried a 6 inch pocket knife and a lighter to school every day in high school. I used to loan my knife to the teachers. Today this would get you thrown in jail.
I created a program to harvest passwords and then granted myself administrator access. I never did anything bad with it. It did come in useful once
when I was falsely accused of a crime (because I was known as the geek who might be able to) but I was able to find out who really did it.
I did the whole free payphone calls with a resistor trick and a few other experiments.
In college, I found a security hole and downloaded a copy of everyone's SSN, place of birth, and 4 digit pin. Again, I never did anything with it but today
that would land you in prison. I just quietly told the university programmer about the security hole and he quietly fixed it.
Probably a few dozen other things I could mention not counting downloading thousands of warez that I never even used.
I feel sorry for 14 year olds today that are "exploring" because alot of my "exploring" although mostly innocent are considered serious crimes today.
And I'm only 35 but alot has changed in the last 20 years. The kids still know more than the adults in alot of cases but "innocent hacking" seems
to be taken alot more seriously today and things like pocket knives are considered deadly weapons.
Re: (Score:3)
I was the quiet one in elementary and high school. I was known to be a brainiac, but was never caught doing anything wrong. I won't admit to anything specific here because most of it remains unsolved and I'm unsure of statute of limitation. Some of the biggest things I did involved chemistry. I created various small explosive devices trying to find the best formula for fire ball size, combustion speed, and noise level (one of my babies was heard five miles away). I was well versed in safety so no one ever g
Re: (Score:3)
I was the one in th eclass who had the smarts to change grades, but I got high marks without resorting to that.
This reminds me of my teacher who said she stored her important stuff like grades on the network drive where it was safe.
I really wanted to tell her that it was much harder for me to access on her local PC than it was on her network drive which as an admin I had full access to.
I was pulled out of class to fix school computers on more than one occasion and had access to the computers that stored the permanent records but
I never felt the desire to change my transcript. I made good enough grades as it was and
Re: (Score:2)
I figured that even if someone did manage to trace my sudonym back to myself that noone cares at this point and even if they did there is zero evidence left and I could always just claim that I made it all up.
Unless you are running for congress, senate, or president then your opponents will use this against you. If you are not a millionaire then this career choice is not an option.
Hey, what if years from now someone running for election at state or federal level gets some dirt uncovered from when they did mischievous things when they were a child. i.e. recovered Facebook, Twitter, Instagram shenanigans.
Re: (Score:3)
Unless you are running for congress, senate, or president then your opponents will use this against you. If you are not a millionaire then this career choice is not an option.
Hey, what if years from now someone running for election at state or federal level gets some dirt uncovered from when they did mischievous things when they were a child. i.e. recovered Facebook, Twitter, Instagram shenanigans.
That's one of the (many) problems with politics these days. We expect politicians to be perfect so we end up with robots
like Obama, Romney, and Clinton who still manage to have skeletons in their closets. I would much rather have someone real
who speaks off record once in a while, is allowed to admit mistakes, and is even allowed to change their opinion once in a while.
My opinion on things have changed many times sometimes back and forth not because I'm pursuing some political objective
but because I'm huma
Re: (Score:3)
We can't even have a politician who changes their mind when presented with new facts that won't start a shit storm.
Re: (Score:2)
It was safer IRT being backed up, and on a system that was (hopefully) more reliable than a desktop PC. As an admin, you're expected to be honest. Abusing those privileges isn't hacking, it's being an asshole.
I wasn't an official admin, I was just a student who managed to grant himself admin.
It also wasn't that she was saying it was more reliable, she was saying that her grades were more secure there.
In her defense, this was back in the "one computer per classroom" days and students routinely used her classroom
computer so in some ways it was more secure to store them on the central server. I still remember finding it
kindof funny though.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I work as a network admin for a school district. It is rare that I see anything remotely interesting as far as tech use. It is mainly just kids talking about 'hacking the firewall'... meaning that they found a web proxy that hadn't been added to the filter yet. I have had a few point out issues that were a bit more interesting. I welcome things like that. I try to let them know that if they point something out, and aren't doing anything malicious, I will not get them into trouble.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem is that what the older people took for granted would land people now in prison. Even just sitting in a park playing hooky is grounds for arrest for anyone under 18... and where I live, a juvi has to "earn" their way out... that or sit incarcerated until age 23... and the private prison gets to judge if someone has "earned" enough points for release...
It is no wonder why the top tier hackers who used to be in the US are now Chinese and Russian. They encourage that. Here in the US, anything out of
Re: (Score:2)
Many of us carried pocket knives for protection 30 years ago in the school I went to. Not from fellow students but because of the neighborhood it was in. Some of the teachers carried guns.
It was never for protection. I did ocassionally use it for useful stuff but it was mostly for show.
For years a pocket knife has always been kindof a right of passage. It's I'm now old enough
and responsible enough to safely carry a knife. It's surprising how often a knife comes in
useful. I later switched to a leatherman which comes in useful even more often.
When I was 15... (Score:2)
When I was 15... (Score:2)
How did it go ?
Re: (Score:3)
I once knew a guy who claimed to have built a computer operated grow room with a fail safe on the PC. He took a floppy disk a coated it in a friction sensitive flammable material. It was setup so if the computer rebooted than it would burn itself and the room down. Probably total bullshit but a good story.
I'm old (Score:3)
When I was a kid, there was no technology. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, kinda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Squeal (Score:3)
I made a device in my electronics class in high school that would periodically emit a very high pitch squeal for about five seconds. High frequencies are very difficult to locate so you could hide it almost anywhere in a room and it would drive people nuts.
Re: (Score:2)
I made a device in my electronics class in high school that would periodically emit a very high pitch squeal for about five seconds. High frequencies are very difficult to locate so you could hide it almost anywhere in a room and it would drive people nuts.
Sounds like the annoy-a-thon from ThinkGeek.
Locks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Locks (Score:5, Insightful)
You're adorable. It's like you think schools work on the same sort of legal rigorousness that the federal court system works on. Having taught for a long time at the high school level, I can tell you that that's absolutely not the case.
Kid1 getting in trouble for failing grades, (formerly straight As) absences, etc. Parents ask wtf is going on. Band teacher finds a bag of weed and a pipe in the kid's instrument case in the band room. Result? Nothing happens. Why? The kid's parents are lawyers, and plausible deniability.
Kid2 refuses to put a lock on his locker, because he just puts books in there. Gets caught with weed in his locker. Result? Suspended for 2 weeks, has to go to drug treatment courses. Why? Single family home, not enough money for a lawyer.
Huh....I guess in retrospect that this is exactly the same level of rigor as the federal courts require for people to be convicted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Back in the 1980s, my high school had one hallway that was the Senior Hallway. The lockers were full height, wide enough to hang bulky clothes/jackets/sports equipment, and had a built in combination lock. The other lockers in the school were all half-height (two rows, one above the other), held a backpack with a couple books in it, and had no lock so provide your own.
The funny thing was the locking mechanisms on the senior lockers were so worn out, you could open them with a simple upward jerk of the handl
Re: (Score:2)
the locksmith said shaving a piece of metal to make a key isn't possible?
Seems doubtful.
Re: (Score:2)
Not all locks have the pins to have a master key. It requires additional separations in the pins.
If the locksmith thought this lock didn't have those separations then they thought this lock couldn't have a master key.
Having said that: it is more likely that the locksmith didn't expect the kids to be able to manufacture a master key. That that was impossible.
Re: (Score:2)
Nitrogen Triiodide (Score:2)
I made nitrogen triiodide in my chemistry class. Tried it at home but it didn't work. Turned out it just hadn't dried properly, but it was fully dry by 3:00 AM and made one hell of a loud bang. Thankfully I had put it outside.
I blame Phrack Magazine (Score:3)
I got Internet access back in '91 as a sophomore in high school and discovered Phrack Magazine. I never did anything explicitly malicious, but I did accidentally crash the campus SunOS server a couple of times.
No legal problems, but I did have a few meetings with school administration due to me not being able to keep my mouth shut. The login trojan cost me a job working in the school's computer center. Crashing the campus server got me called into the Dean's office.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
haha, you horrible cunt! :D
N/A (Score:2)
We didn't have technology yet when I were a wee lad. I didn't even put my hands on a computer (terminal) until my junior year in high school. There was POTS, but I've never liked telephones. Electric typewriters, but no real fun to be had with those. Xerography, but at 10 cents each, who had that kind of money?
Talk about a narrow point of view (Score:2)
When i was a kid, I broke a few car windows playing baseball in the street - is that "mischief"? What about stealing a map from a gas station, or short-sheeting beds at camp? None of those involved technology.
I'm older than a lot of guys here; but I imagine it's still true that some people occasionally leave the computer behind to interact with the real world first-hand.
Depends (Score:2)
That poor network (Score:2)
Between me and a few others my high school's internal network never ran faster than dialup and at least half of the computers mysteriously were converted to every version of linux that would run on that horrible hp/dell/compaq hardware.
no... (Score:2)
I was too busy reading, easily a book a day.
mark
VM/CMS DASD mounts (Score:2)
When I was first in school -- and by school I mean graduate school -- the school had a IBM running VM/CMS for general computing. Everyone had an account. In those days you could set up virtual disks to be shared and there was a mount command in exec 2 that let you mount a shared volume given the password. A lot of people would put the mount command and password in an executable script that would run at login. When a professor or admin gave you credentials to a volume, it might have a script in it with c
Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
More often, I used mischief to get myself into technology...
Bragging (Score:2, Interesting)
Before all the bragging about how bad-ass everyone was, I was one of those quiet good kids that read and studied. That's how I got into a top college without being rich. Getting into trouble? Too busy, or maybe too smart, to get into trouble. There's my bragging.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a Scandinavian saying, "A childhood without a broken arm is a wasted childhood."
A childhood without a "talking to" from police/authorities is a wasted childhood. If you don't explore, you don't learn.
Maybe your method lets you become a lawyer, but I doubt you you could be an engineer. You might be a GP, but never a researcher.
Old fogeys (Score:2)
When I was a kid, the only technology mischief you could get into was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The question is ill-conditioned... (Score:2)
... when I was a child technology hadn't been invented.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you're mkaing a vague MP reference,. because, yes, there was technology when you were a child.
Anarchist Cookbook (Score:2)
My early years on a computer were spent cracking the DRM (I think we just called it copy protection back then) on Commodore video games and sharing them with friends. It was fun and a good learning experience.
What would have likely landed me in juvey today or possibly jail though was when we discovered the Anarchist Cookbook. We had an AP chemistry teacher who was really cool and we used to try to work out some of the formulas for some of the explosives found in there... so we could "improve" them. I
Re: (Score:2)
My early years on a computer were spent cracking the DRM (I think we just called it copy protection back then) on Commodore video games and sharing them with friends. It was fun and a good learning experience.
I may or may not have used my BBS to amass a staggeringly huge collection of pirated games, some of which you probably cracked. On behalf of teenage me - thank you for your efforts. :)
I was the very embodiment of Dennis the Menace (Score:3)
Frogs, mud, slingshots, wrong words and awkward times, etc.
All part of being a kid.
Now I'm older I realize more fully the grief I gave my parents.
Old dudes (Score:2)
What about us old dudes who grew up when technology in general was too expensive or inaccessible to mere mortals? I guess if we start including power tools as technology than, sure, I had opportunity but was a pretty good kid.
But if I read the poll as I think I should I think accessing computers/systems that I wasn't supposed to access. The closest thing I had to a computer until I was 20 something was an Atari 2600 and it didn't come with a modem!
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't have roads? bikes?
Technology is more the electronics.
But focusing on electronics
Are you older then TV? the telephone? electricity?
Re: (Score:2)
Gunpowder? Stone arrowheads? Fire? The wheel?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, as mentioned in my post the poll is vague but this being /. and inferring from the answers it seemed to me to be related to computer technology. I did mention power tools after all.
But hey, you seem to revel in being somewhat of a sarcastic asshole so glad I could provide you with this opportunity.
name one way (Score:2)
to get into mischief that doesn't really on some sort of technology?
Re: (Score:2)
fucking doesn't count because most slashdot readers have never encountered a member of the opposite sex naked apart from a parent, and sex with your own mother, no matter how ILF she is, is not just wrong it's downright illegal.
Missing option: They never caught me (Score:2)
The option for "No, but not for lack of troublemaking... just never got caught"
all this was 30+ years ago, so I figure I'm ok saying it - beige boxes and exploring the wiring cabinets in the apt building where my gramma lived and also climbing the pole in a friends backyard that had a small connection point for the neighboring street.
Never really did anything other than learn how to tap in without alerting people and maybe making a prank call of the "is your refrigerator running" type, but it was fun.
A neig
Small things explode (Score:2)
When I was in 7th grade, a teacher asked me to prepare a paper on the class's computer. I found that the CRT could handle a higher resolution without problem, so I switched to that. A couple hours later, I was in trouble for "breaking" the computer. That was my introduction to how laws like the CFAA happen.
Hmmm. (Score:3)
I deny all knowledge about the epson fx spontaneously catching fire.
The short circuit that blew up two power transformers and an embedded computer had nothing to do with me. And you didn't see me. And I was in disguise anyway.
Nobody saw me insert the radio direction finder valves into the R1155, switch it on and jam all televisions in the neighbourhood.
So, no, I've no knowledge of using technology to get into trouble. None whatsoever.
What's Technology (Score:2)
Does home-made gunpowder qualify as technology?
Well.. yes. Sort of.... (Score:2)
missing option (Score:2)
"Nearly started WWIII with an acoustic coupler, a talkbox and an Imsai 8080. Scored with Ally Sheedy. Like the rest of this option, the last part was entirely imaginary. Dammit."
Pranked a computer in high school using Turbo C++ (Score:2)
When in high school, I wasn't in any of the computer programs they had but I was on my own a bit of a tinkerer and was busy learning Borland Turbo C++ at home. At school I'd dink around with the computers in the lab (386sx16's) which were also being used to teach Turbo C++. I wrote a program that made a low sound for several seconds and then said "Oh, sorry, I couldn't control myslef!". I setup the autoexec.bat to run it and then restore the original version of autoexec.bat. I didn't get in trouble because
hid the trashcan (Score:2)
Detectives came one day.. (Score:3)
while I was at bible camp during the summer, to find out about this porn empire's boss. My parents explained I was a 12 year old, and wanted to know wtf they were talking about. Some kid bought some porn (I also sold mad games/apps) from me on 1.44 disks, a kid from another school, $1 per pic - and his mom caught him looking at it....she called the cops, I ended up as a target. When they found out I was just a kid they basically interrogated me to find out any of my sources -- I ratted out this dude who had a private board that couldn't be accessed by anyone and they basically let me go without charges. Oh, they also asked if I had ever smoked weed, and went on about weed for a bit - and told stories about "just one joint kid, just one joint! leads to murder! I've seen it all, you think you're small time, think it's just 1 joint, then you get SHOT in a DRUG DEAL gone WRONG.." that type of stuff - which I think made me cry for a minute or two.
None of the credit card or more interesting mischief ever made it to the authorities. I can only think back and imagine how bad it would have been for me now - early 90's was the shit, could actually explore and play and try things, now...........play around and expect to get ass raped in prison before you reach the age of chest hair.
old tech (Score:2)
crashing bikes and billy carts, trying to fly with cardboard wings, mini fire bombs, etc., computers didn't make it any better, just easier. Those are, and still are, fun times!
Didn't get caught... (Score:3)
My school, back in the early/mid 90s was a really good one, save in one respect; IT. They didn't have any proper IT teachers on the staff (in fairness, most schools didn't back then) and the subject was "taught" by an extremely elderly priest, based on course-notes he'd bought from somewhere. Being a private school, however, money was not in short supply and the actual hardware was really good by the standards of the time.
Now... myself and a few of my friends were significantly more IT literate than the old priest they've got running the subject. Not hard - the guy doesn't know how to do anything other than read out pages from his folder of course-notes on how to use basic DOS/Windows 3.1 applications (which was the full extent of our IT lessons). Given that we had an hour per fortnight of this crap for five years and that we basically already knew the entire contents of the course from before the day we started, we very quickly get bored.
Bored children get up to no good. There were quite a few pranks over the years, some of which, looking back, were more mean than funny. But there was one particularly good one that we pulled during the latter days of DOS.
With a bit of file/folder renaming, we got a number of the PCs in the lab to load Doom instead of Word Perfect when following his "load up Word Perfect" DOS instructions. These were full retail copies of Doom (ooops piracy), so we flip the game on the PCs we can reach into Episode 3, with all of its satanic imagery, while he was otherwise occupied. This was pretty easy, as none of the PCs had speakers and our priest's eyesight wasn't the best (he had to lean a few inches from a screen to make out text).
We then get people to complain that their PCs are possessed.
Now, large chunks of the Catholic Church don't really "do" the whole possession thing any more... but our chap here is of the old fire-and-brimstone persuasion. He looks at the pentagrams, the goat-heads, the piles of skulls.
He says, loudly and clearly, that everybody is to pick up their bags and leave the room. Under no circumstances should they touch their computers. They need to get out. Now.
The IT lab spends the next 2 days locked. Eventually, they decide to call IT support rather than an exorcist and it all gets fixed. We never get found out, but the entire school basically gets a term full of fire-and-brimstone sermons on the dangers of exposure to Satanic imagery.
BBSing. (Score:2)
I ran a BBS back in the day. When I took a job that required being away for months at a time, I eventually decided to let someone else run the BBS. This involved everything but the physical hardware -- he continued the board exactly as I'd handed it to him, and other than the change of phone number and half day of downtime, many people hardly noticed the difference (for a while, till he fucked it up).
The problem came when his board got hacked, and he accused me of having something to do with it. (Never mind
I waited till highschool (Score:2)
Then installed SimCIty on the school network and in doing so brought the network down (unintentional, SimCity had a different bitness than the network and supposedly it didn't like it too much). Got admin rights and used Novell messaging stuff (forget what it was called) to taunt the sysadmin. Wiped the Apple IIe's and IIc's that we had in the library because it annoyed me that the librarian was such a Apple fanboy he replaced the PCs with 10year older macs (could my earlier hijack of the network been part
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Oh but I also deployed Office 95 I think it was and OCR'd the course catalog for a teacher. So: teachers liked me, administration not so much.
Smoke/stink bomb (Score:2)
Cut the heads off the matches, roll it up into a ball of masking tape.
Throw and run.
Fun, when you're a preteen...:)
missing outhouse. (Score:2)
My neighbor down the road had, or rather used to have, an outhouse.
This outhouse was last seen perhaps 50 feet in the air. It appeared to have been rapidly disassembled by whatever caused the ascent..
Unfortunately, whoever did it had approached the outhouse through the woods, and had not taken the trouble to notice that aforesaid neighbor appeared to be having a family reunion in the back yard that day. I truly hope that none of the outhouse parts landed on the tables they had setup with food.
I still cannot
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most school admin passwords I've come across (many) have been "coffee".
Go figure.
No. (Score:2)
I'm Kevin Mitnick.
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He died in the 1980s. Men had split the atom for both v