221–230 of 268 posts
This sentence increases the likelihood that I have crossed paths with the author by something like a factor of a million, as I estimate that the number of people who have ever taken that class is certainly lower than 100k and quite likely lower than 10k.
In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…
I had discovered the windows net send command as a highschooler too. We mainly just messaged jokes back and forth. One student later decided to try the wildcard to send to everyone, just a simple "Hi". It went out over the entire district hitting multiple schools. I forget why, but no one knew who did it at first. But we had some software installed that let the admin/teacher remotely blank screens or lock the compute…
So many pranks, I didn't bother waiting until April 1st to pull them. Prank 1: In high school we wrote a fake DOS for our Apple II+. It accepted commands and ran them, but occasionally would reply with a snarky message. Our teacher was not amused. Prank 2: This was the late 1970s/early 1980s when laser printers cost many thousands of dollars, and neither me nor my high school peers had ever seen one. I found some CGI…
Some 15+ years ago ThinkGeek productized this as the Annoy-a-Tron, a small magnetic circuit board which could run on a coin cell for weeks. Tuck one of these into a well-hidden place and it will dismantle the sanity of anyone spending enough time around it.
Other more refined versions exist now from a plethora of vendors, I will refrain from linking them here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted. I know of several fortune 100 companies that still allow this due to the way they set up email protection with o365 and Proofpoint, ironically. not naming them. I've done similar pranks and got by with the skin of my teeth but would not recommend people do this early in their career especia…
>leadership are sensitive to embarrassment Or they don't want distractions that are too costly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The deal is they pay you a fair amount of money to put up with that. Whereas people such as the gentlemen in the article are causing people stress for no reason and with no compensation - and barely even an acknowledgement of misbehaviour. There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad.
> There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad Bollocks, and bollocks to the parent hot take. Any moral framework that forbids fun, whether it's because it offends God or "causes people (a tiny bit of) stress", is repugnant to me
The reality of professional standards is we can't control what people feel or happens to them but we sure can put a good faith effort in to try and make the experience as neutral as possible. This April fools prank breached that standard in an unpleasant way. I hope there wasn't a student tired and on edge trying to meet a deadline. It'd feel awful to think the print system was out, spend a morning running around and then learn that some IT bloke was abusing his power out of a misplaced sense fun. It isn't a serious offence but it is bad behaviour.
In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…
In high school a friend figured out you could map any network drive to your desktop and access it (Windows XP), and since everyone in the entire school district had a username of {last name}{first initial}, you could gain read/write access to anyone’s network drive (essentially “home folder”). He used it to get test answers from teachers, I used it to create (empty) folders named “porn”, “porn 2”, et al. Anyway when…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In high school a friend figured out you could map any network drive to your desktop and access it (Windows XP), and since everyone in the entire school district had a username of {last name}{first initial}, you could gain read/write access to anyone’s network drive (essentially “home folder”). He used it to get test answers from teachers, I used it to create (empty) folders named “porn”, “porn 2”, et al. Anyway when…
Is it still trespassing if the door was unlocked? Yes. Not sure why so many people have trouble applying the same principles of unauthorized access to computers.
There is a social expectation that people can generally only enter your home with explicit permission, and so if they didn't invite you it's trespassing even if the door is unlocked. But maybe you have some close friends who you get used to coming over and just entering even if you may be out at the moment -- and then it's not trespassing anymore.
Remote computer access is a much younger phenomenon than people living in houses, and so social expectations aren't as established. There's a legitimate need for discussion there.
For example, if you have an open webserver that you want people to access, is it trespassing if people fiddle a little with the URLs and encounter documents that you didn't mean to put out there? I'd argue it would make for a healthier and more tech-savvy society if we didn't consider that trespassing.
If we try to push the houses analogy further, it's a bit like inviting people into your house for a big party, and then somebody enters a room that you didn't want them to enter. It's a faux-pas, but you'd probably also have a hard time if you tried to label it trespassing.
I think the real value in this writeup up of a clever little prank is the way the author/prankster could map out the social reactions and how the spirit in which the prank was received cascades through a whole entire organization in ways that hinge on little cues, little things about who knows who and whether you're physically present before a particular impression crystallizes in people's minds. It's just such a gre…
The trickster is indeed an ancient archetype that can bring both wisdom and chaos. Historically, however, my understanding is that prior to Plato, essentially all knowledge, including philosophy, was understood to be received from divine sources. It was through the Socratic dialogues that the idea of knowledge as being something gained through human reason gained a foothold. One could easily argue then that Plato was…
In one particular European tradition, maybe? But elsewhere the trickster may themselves be a divine source of insight. Hermes in Greek, the Southwest American Kokopelli, etc.
My point is that the trickster as philosophical root is an idea that has tendrils far beyond a Western viewpoint. I cant find the ref now but IIRC some Native American traditions have the viewpoint that connecting to the divine cannot be made without first laughing, as that opens the mind to the new experience. Reminds me of some Far Eastern traditions where you need a sharp break from your normal world view to achieve an enlightening breakthrough.
In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…
As I said there, back in the day I wrote a C++ program that was basically an IM interface on top of NET SEND. Fun times.
For a couple minutes observed people coming up to a terminal, trying a few things, and stepping away in frustration.
I sure hope administration did restart the terminals overnight to return regular function; normal users were unable to access the power & reset controls.