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Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

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Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#61

Post by unalone »

cschep wrote: post #59
unalone wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a problem with that essay. It makes good points, most of which I agree with, but Raymond states them as values to be learned without explaining why. He essentially states his own beliefs without giving reason for some of them or explaining why such mindsets are useful. (Or: he shows rather than tells.) The phrase that stands out most upon first glance is this: Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic…

What is your connection to the hacker culture, if not problem solving?

From some lens, my approach could be seen as problem solving. I've always viewed it as more of a creative art: I view the things I create as concepts. "What would happen if a web site worked like this, for instance, then I create every to revolve around that central theme. Some of the stuff I do is geared at problems, but I feel that viewing mistakes as bugs is a very sterile approach and I hate it.

I don't have a lot of the traits that go alongside hackers, either. Coding languages don't fascinate me, by-and-large. When I look at a language, I figure out exactly how to get things done and then I don't look at it again. As a result, I don't find much fascination in discussions about programming, which is rare among hackers.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#62

Post by ram1024 »

unalone wrote: post #61
cschep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your connection to the hacker culture, if not problem solving?

From some lens, my approach could be seen as problem solving. I've always viewed it as more of a creative art: I view the things I create as concepts. "What would happen if a web site worked like this , for instance, then I create every to revolve around that central theme. Some of the stuff I do is geared at problems, but I feel that viewing mistakes as bugs is a very sterile approach and I hate it. I don't have a l…

Stephenson categorized techies into two sub-categories. The forger and the honer. the forger would create new tech, and then abandon it to pursue the next new thing. the honer would forever dabble in non-start tech, envisioning and forcing it to do wildly inventive things that the creator never envisioned. perhaps you two are simply two sides of the same coin.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#63

Post by ram1024 »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
unalone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in high school, a friend told me he had been diagnosed with ADD. His parents had him tested because his grades were suffering. My friend and I have similar personalities, and my grades were similarly hit-and-miss. I went home and asked my mother if I had ADD. Her response: "Probably." I'm grateful that I had parents who accepted my quirks as a part of my personality and not as problems to be fixed.

I guess I got lucky, or I would have been on ritalin or some other fashionable (or profitable) drug for sure. I'm 43 now, 44 in March, when I was a kid ADD did not yet 'exist', and from my experience with my sons teachers the teachers in the schools that I went to were of a better grade than the teachers he has to content with (and that have to contend with him) today. I think the latter is the biggest factor in the…

the old solution to Attention Deficit Disorder was corporal punishment.

lemme tell you, it was wildly effective. so much so that ADD didn't even exist until they started doing away with the practice...

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#64

Post by theotherjimmy »

tptacek wrote: post #53
jollyjerry wrote: post #44

If your cousin is interested in doing that kind of work, why not suggest him to volunteer with the school? All the other responses seem to romanticize the rogue hacker. Instead, I think he should come clean, and do his work in the public. He could offer to audit the school's network. For a 13 year old, this would be a great opportunity to teach him to be professional and helpful.

This is a fantastic way to get your cousin expelled from school, and to provide him with a shiny new juvenile criminal record.

from my experince at 16, you are correct. volenteering with te school will get you into trouble. get the kid a computer of his own with an open source operating system on it. this is a) harder to break than windows and b) a more friendly platform for exploration. I did this at 13, but my parrents are hacker literate.

I cannot comment on ethics though, or parrenting. Both of my parrents were computer scientists at one time in there carreer, and I still bounce Ideas off of my father. Personaly, I think this is the best way to grow up with such a skill set. my only regret is that I have not had much motivation to hack when I can have a rely interesting discussion with my father.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#65

Post by Timothee »

jimbokun wrote: post #57
sounddust wrote: post #12

When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name) and basically maintained the computer lab for the rest of the semester. I never did any harm in the process. The administrator, upon finding out what I had done, recognized that I knew what I was doing, and supported my work. I fixed permissions that repaired apps that had been myster…

"When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name)" Holy cow, so you mean this doesn't just work in the movies, but in real life, too?

Exactly. My first thought when reading the original question was: "Show him 'Wargames' and explain to him how it's not good to start a nuclear war!"

It's funny that this story starts with this similar point.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#66

Post by Zev »

cschep wrote: post #59
unalone wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a problem with that essay. It makes good points, most of which I agree with, but Raymond states them as values to be learned without explaining why. He essentially states his own beliefs without giving reason for some of them or explaining why such mindsets are useful. (Or: he shows rather than tells.) The phrase that stands out most upon first glance is this: Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic…

What is your connection to the hacker culture, if not problem solving?

Messing around with things, figuring out how they work and making them do something I want them to do. It's interesting to me. Doesn't really solve any practical problem though.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#67

Post by Zev »

utnick wrote: post #34
vaksel wrote: post #3

define "hacking", did he do anything complicated, or did he just guess a password?

indeed, this could mean anything, i got sent to the principal one time for having a windows dos command prompt open, no joke Apparently it was actually a rule in the rulebook that you arent allowed to use the command line because you can do 'great damage'. On most computers it was disabled, but this was computer science class and we wrote console applications in c++ (through visual studio ide) so it had to be enabled…

I'll see your DOS prompt and match you a "changed the desktop background and inverted the screen colors" trip to the principles office.

They wanted to suspend me for two days for that one. Happily, I was able to get another teacher to talk to the principal and explain that computers is "his thing" and that just because it was possible that I knew how to do something doesn't mean that I did do it.

Re: Ask HN: My 13 year-old cousin hacked into his school's system. What advice would you give?

#69

Post by lpgauth »

jimbokun wrote: post #57
sounddust wrote: post #12

When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name) and basically maintained the computer lab for the rest of the semester. I never did any harm in the process. The administrator, upon finding out what I had done, recognized that I knew what I was doing, and supported my work. I fixed permissions that repaired apps that had been myster…

"When I was in high school, I guessed the administrator password of our computer lab (it was the administrator's daughter's first name)" Holy cow, so you mean this doesn't just work in the movies, but in real life, too?

lol, I had to bruteforce my high school administrator password using l0pthcrack... took 2 days using 3 computers.
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