School suspends 13 y.o. for 3 days for IM'ing "Hey!", they call it hacking

[nick1985]

at my school i changed a computer in our lab's shutdown screen from "you may now safely turn off this computer" to "I SEE YOU!!" i was never caught

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: arcas
You have to admit, teachers aren't the brightest people coming out of college. Around here, a new-hire teacher might earn $25k per year and is required to obtain a masters degree within 5 years. How many people go through 4 years of college with the intent of landing a $25k/year job with the added understanding that in order to keep that job, they'll have to go back to school for 2 more years to complete their masters degree?

The brightest and, unfortunately, most qualified individuals tend to choose non-teaching-related majors and accept far-higher-paying non-teaching positions when they leave college. That leaves the school systems to, in essence, scrape the bottom of the barrel for new hires.

That may be true, but then they don't have to be the brightest, just bright enough to teach/understand what they are required to teach.

 

[TekDemon]

Eh, I think the principal might have overreacted but honestly, this sort of stuff pissed off the comp sci teachers real bad back in high school, and pissed me off real bad too, since whenever you wanted to use your computers some idiot would net send a billion goddamn messages. And of course you can see why the teachers don't want people IMing each other during class.

So although they shouldn't call it hacking, the kid's not quite an angel either =p 3 day suspension isn't that bad though...I mean come on, 3 days is nothing. And you don't have to go to school! SWEET!

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: iloveme2
haha cool. i didn't even kno net send existed. I just typed it in on command prompt and it told me how to use it. woohoo this is fun! haha........

hand over your AT license, right now. Your geek priviledges are hereby revoked.

 

[5489]

with my teacher, we shared downloaded DIVX movies

 

[TekDemon]

heh you know, with geniuses like these teachers setting up the computers at this school it can't really be that hard to compromise their computers for real...just saying =p

 

[yllus]

I was suspended from the computer labs for one month in grade seven for changing the sounds on one computer to something we taped using the built-in mic on the Mac. It was retarded. Funnier yet was it instead of stupid typing practice which I didn't need, I got to read books all period long when the rest of the class went in. And I love reading!

 

[Scarpozzi]

NEEDLESS TO SAY BEVERLY NEEDS TO DIE!!!

I mean, THIS is her page on the school website. HOLY FVCK!!!!!!

 

[Scarpozzi]

Who puts the Hamsterdance song on their website in 2003????

 

[Winchester]

When I was at college, we also had that Novell Message system built into every computer on the network. So for my birthday, while I was in the lab, someone left their computer without logging out, so I went over there and sent : "Everyone needs to tell me Happy Birthday today when they see me"

It was funnier than hell. Never got into any trouble though. It was always funny to be in class and send a funny message to someone a few rows up and see them jump when the pop-up came up. I tought a lot of people how to use Novell, someone did get into trouble though, but they sent threats and vulgar language messages and didnt know you could be tracked, dumbasses.

 

[Queasy]

We're talking public school, right? These are the schools that have banned dodge ball. These are the schools that have expelled kids for bringing in Tweety Bird keychains. Schools that suspended a child for drinking red juice and joking with her friends that she was drinking wine. Schools that have Zero-Tolerance policies that are really Zero-Thought policies. Schools that are more concerned with how lil Johnny feels about himself and how environmentally aware and politically correct lil Johnny is instead of whether he can read, write, and perform arithmetic.

Yeah, Public Schools = wasteland. That is why I'm saving my money to send my son to a private school (the red juice incident happened at a public elementary school just up the road from my house).

 

[dman]

Back when I was doing Tech Support for a now defunct OS, I learned about Net Send along the way. Over the course of time we had many net send * with mostly useless messages. Well, one day, after we performed a move of our cubicles, I had misplaced a headset so I Net Send * the group if anyone found them to bring them to me--something I thought was appropriate at the time.

I didn't quite grasp the whole * concept, as it went far beyond the techsupport center.

I got quite the write up for that, but, there wasn't a written policy on it so I just got yelled at. Shortly thereafter there was a written policy.


Anyway, sucks to be that kid because it certainly it isn't hacking, and if there wasn't a policy at school to cover it he should have been told--along with the rest of the class that that behavior is not permitted and if anyone else uses it then they will be punished accordingly. Suspension is overkill and her using him as an example is wrong in this case. But I'm too lazy to send an email to them saying it's wrong. Besides it's not so bad--w/ some time off from school he can spend more time on the intarweb and learn about other stuff he can't do in school.

 

[Cerb]

I wish that had been me
It'd have be great to see my parents rip 'em a new one.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: aswedc
If you were teaching a class in which the average student knew more about the subject than you did, you'd be scared and handing out ridiculous dicipline at every little thing too. Sad, but a fact of life in most K12 schools.

*sigh* I know. Luckily I'm strong-willed and stubborn. You just have to get on the teacher's case when she forces you to call a slash a 'diagonal' but then didn't call the # an octothorp . There are others, but that one sticks in my mind.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Rogue

"I am speaking about one incident in the Birdville School District in which a student was expelled for tampering with the district's computers. Having been a computer teacher in the real world of public education for many years, let me say that suspension of students who are guilty of such tampering sends a message to all students that is beneficial and necessary.

So it's okay for her to send an equally meaningless "message" to everyone admitting she's stupid? She should execute net send domain "I'm a retarded ass who thinks I know what I'm talking about when I really don't so fire me, please"

It's been my experience also that most Systems Administrators in the public school systems are lacking in skills to properly prevent things like this from happening in the first place.

They exist to catch kids trying to get pr0n at school.
That's it. Let's not point out how easy it was at my school to literally WALK AWAY with the county's student records database...

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
NEEDLESS TO SAY BEVERLY NEEDS TO DIE!!!

I mean, THIS is her page on the school website. HOLY FVCK!!!!!!

LOL. That almost deserves to be on webpagesthatsuck.com!

 

[Jzero]

I have half a mind to give that idiot Sweeney what for. It's "teachers" like her that make me lose my faith in the public school system.

 

[MegaloManiaK]

While the punishment certainly does not fit the crime here i think maby you guys have never seen a class of computer noobs learn net send.

It can literaly shut down a classroom quickly. I watched this happen in college in a lower level computer course, i taught a few people to net send and after a day we couldn't finish a lecture becuase people were net sending the instructor on the projector, net sending everyone in class, etc etc.

Although, after that i told the teacher about "net stop msg" and all was good, why any public network like that has the messenger service running is a mystery to me.

 

[gentobu]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
net send is a common trap used by sysadmins and bored administrators to punish wannabe-geeks. The problem would be totally avoided if the admins disabled the service, but it's all a power trip for them.

This kid in my CS class got suspended for net send - but the computer teachers literally do not care and let him use whatever he wants. I'm grateful to have so many people willing to risk their careers if I get fscked up the butt by these idiots (it almost happened once - I was servicing a computer and an administrator walked in)

I wish they'd fscking suspend the wankers that change the screensavers and wallpaper. I spent an hour today undoing cosmetic settings on 23 machines. If they don't start suspending them, I'm going to start ass-walloping them and suspending their accounts - they can fail their damn CAD class for all I care. I just take care of the computers.

Convince your school to put DeepFreeze on all of the machines. Then the students can change/delete whatever they want and all you have to do is reboot and the system should return to normal.

 

[Jzero]

It can literaly shut down a classroom quickly. I watched this happen in college in a lower level computer course, i taught a few people to net send and after a day we couldn't finish a lecture becuase people were net sending the instructor on the projector, net sending everyone in class, etc etc.

Although, after that i told the teacher about "net stop msg" and all was good, why any public network like that has the messenger service running is a mystery to me.

Absolutely. A punishment was warranted for the kid because we all know how fast a new "trick" like that will travel. Pretty soon every kid in school is netsending. This needed to be nipped in the bud, but I think a stern warning would have done the job.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

3y3 h4xx0r3d j00 b0xx0rz w17# mi 1337 n3753nd 5ki11z!

...why do I have the feeling that if this makes the /. front page they'll find out what real hacking (and cracking) is, and that not only the computers, but also the toaster in the faculty break room got hacked into? I understand that school administrators occasionally choose people to "make an example of", but why do they choose the most minor ones?

 

[MPankau]

Originally posted by: Flyermax2k3
Did any of you actually read the article? You do realize he had no prior authorization to use the school's computers/network in such a manner, right? Therefore, he deserves exactly what he got. It may be a "harmless little prank" but the point is that he broke the rules and now he has to pay the price. Good lesson for a kid his age to learn, if you ask me...

edited for spelling

Did you read the article? The school has no written policy on computer use (their first mistake) and they 'wanted to make and example of him'. How retarded can they get?

MP

 

[Ranger X]

NET SEND is hacking to the idiots that don't know about it.

 

[MPankau]

Just guessing at what the scripts did - you probably deserved that one.


MP

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: gentobu

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
net send is a common trap used by sysadmins and bored administrators to punish wannabe-geeks. The problem would be totally avoided if the admins disabled the service, but it's all a power trip for them.

This kid in my CS class got suspended for net send - but the computer teachers literally do not care and let him use whatever he wants. I'm grateful to have so many people willing to risk their careers if I get fscked up the butt by these idiots (it almost happened once - I was servicing a computer and an administrator walked in)

I wish they'd fscking suspend the wankers that change the screensavers and wallpaper. I spent an hour today undoing cosmetic settings on 23 machines. If they don't start suspending them, I'm going to start ass-walloping them and suspending their accounts - they can fail their damn CAD class for all I care. I just take care of the computers.

Convince your school to put DeepFreeze on all of the machines. Then the students can change/delete whatever they want and all you have to do is reboot and the system should return to normal.

Problem being that we already have similar software licensed - the admins are too stupid to keep the deployment server online. However, Deep freeze apparently works on standalones - I'll be deploying that in the lab here next semester, though.

/me calls over teacher and suggests $10.00 lab fee (Perfectly reasonable, since we actually use more than that in DVDR's per student per semester)