[kertong]

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/colu...er/7643262.htm

Sweeny needs a burlap bag put over his head, right before the adminisration of a beating with a metal rod.

[starman]

Christ, the principal's a dimwit. So it the 'teacher'. The worst thing is that it's going to go on his permanent record.

Doesn't ANYONE in the school know it's not a hack and stand up for the kid?

I'll bet his senior yearbook as a lot of this in it:

"Hey"

Mike

[Amorya]

I was banned off my school's computer network for six months because I discovered that they'd left a folder as chmod 777 on the main server - in fact it was the bootup folder that was copied to all the computers. I managed to open it up, but changed nothing once I'd realised what had happened. Some dude looked over my shoulder, repeated the process and erased the folder. I was the one who got the ****.

Crazy thing is, a couple of years later they gave me really high level access and asked me to help them with the security

Amorya

[schep]

hehe.. some one at my school sent "f�ck" w/ net send to *.*.*.* and got in a sh!t load of trouble.. tho i have full read write privaleges to the student home directories on all the server fro the entire district.. as does any one else.. it is just hiden in a different domain.. it used to be same w/teacher home dirs but it go hiden and they did some dumbsh!t so you cant type in adresses in the adress bar in exporer so.. fuk.. i wanted exams damnit.. oh well i have time before finals =D .. but yea.. district server.. NO PASSWORD.. ye.. wtf

[Krusty]

Originally posted by schep:
hehe.. some one at my school sent "f�ck" w/ net send to *.*.*.* and got in a sh!t load of trouble.. tho i have full read write privaleges to the student home directories on all the server fro the entire district.. as does any one else.. it is just hiden in a different domain.. it used to be same w/teacher home dirs but it go hiden and they did some dumbsh!t so you cant type in adresses in the adress bar in exporer so.. fuk.. i wanted exams damnit.. oh well i have time before finals =D .. but yea.. district server.. NO PASSWORD.. ye.. wtf

ehh ... R I T A L I N ...

[stevesnj]

I agree with the suspension. The student has no right to send any type of message to any computer in any public school system. In my school a student is immediately suspended for disrupting a school network in any form with the possibility of expulsion and we have expelled a few for just trying to do so. We had students disrupt classes in progress even if the words are offensive or not and you will be faced with the discipline stated in the student manual. This kid knew exactly what he was doing, he even said in the article. But 3 days is plenty.

The writer also says the computers are paid for by taxpayers but they are owned by the school and district so they (the district) are instructed to have them used in accordance with the school board rules. They are not for personal use or experimentation. This is not what public educational computers are to be used for.

[khufuu]

That's appalling.

[starman]

How can you agree with the suspension when it was based on "hacking"? How many times do kids do NON-DESTRUCTABLE things with school property and not get suspended for it?

What I don't like about the suspension is that it's based on ignorance of how computers work. If I wasn't allowed to poke (pun) around with computers back in the early 80's, I wouldn't have the senior position I have now.

I think it's a bad decision on the administration.

Mike

[DeathToWindows]

In my district, malicious damage gets you suspended... but the admins would just chuckle at a good joke (so long as it was nonoffensive).

Suspension is overkill.

[dracoleb]

It's kind of like getting in trouble for accessing the internet. Oh no! You connected to another computer!!!! Playing with the system is the best way to learn. We used to do a bunch of weird stuff in my A+ class, rather than get in trouble they just put us on our own network. Fun stuff, we would get to class and it would be like "hey, my computer isn't working" the teacher would just say "fix it"

[Krusty]

Sounds like the kid just typed a 'net send' message .. which is built-in dos command line functionality.

I understand what you're saying about 'must be used in accordance with school board rules; ... but the article clearly stated there WAS NO rule governing this. The school could easily block that functionality if they wanted to.

Guess the widely-used-but-unauthorized 'net send' GUI I wrote at my last job (complete with dropdown list for favorite recipients, listbox for selecting multiple recipients, a history of sent msgs, and color coded 'sent message' status text ) would have gotten me expelled if I used it in school

[kertong]

I can't believe you agree with the suspension, either. He's just a kid! If he exhibits curiosity in something, he should be encouraged to poke around and learn more about it, as long as its not destrutive. Active learning is probably the best way to learn!

The kid did not destroy anything, hurt anything, nor even change how any of the systems were configured. He just simply used a built-in feature of DOS (built-in!), and messaged everyone with a friendly "Hey!". I'd chuckle.

I can picture it now. I'm going to walk into class when school starts in 2 weeks, and break the ice by saying "Hey!" to everybody. You know, as a gesture of good will, to start the new semester off with. Suddenly, two men in black suits, sunglasses, and radios will appear behind me and say "Sir, you'll have to come with us."

Man. I hope this experience doesn't stifle the kid and prevent him from actively going out of his way to learn. I figure if he's interested enough to listen to his dad rant about DOS and "net", he's got a good future ahead of him. Encourage it!

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
In my district, malicious damage gets you suspended... but the admins would just chuckle at a good joke (so long as it was nonoffensive).

Suspension is overkill.

In my district, the admins are utter morons. They prevent us from installing stuff, which is good and all, but you can right click, make a shortcut to the C drive and have full read/write access, also start MS-DOS, Regedit, and other stuff that I shouldn't be doing.

[Earth Mk. II]

I don't think the kid should be penalized for the school's ignorance or failure to block a harmless feature within their own network.

What's ironic, when you consider the whole culture of computing and specifically the open source movement, is this:

If [the students] are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished.

How can we expect children to actually learn anything if we don't let them explore the world around them - in all it's forms, including digital?

The school went way overboard when they suspended that kid.

[stevesnj]

I know I am the minority but when parents find out that the offender was not disciplined there will be upset parents. So it is better to discipline then do nothing. Kids are disciplined for cutting class, lateness, and bad language. These offenses effect the student and maybe one other student, but when an event like this disrupts the entire school this is not acceptable at all.

Yes three days are plenty, too many in my opinion, but doing nothing lets others do the same. If others are allowed to do the same and no schoolwork is getting done because the computers are down then parents will be yelling and screaming. Also as many times as these networks are secured they find a way around. Districts cannot hire Cisco guys to secure our networks every time there is a problem so A+ and Net + techs are hired to save money.

[Nebagakid]

bunch of dumb ****s

[Earth Mk. II]

Granted some discipline needs to take place. And I can see how sending a message to everyone is a disruption to a class - however, a 3 day suspension? That's overkill. He didn't even get a warning.

To penalize a student for taking an interest in learning, albeit in an unconventional fashion, by removing him from class for three days is unacceptable. There has to be a better way to show the student how his actions affect others and may be disruptive to his own and other student's educations as a whole, rather than completely removing him from class.

Honestly, I think a warning and a phone call home to the parents explaining the situation would have covered it. I'm assuming he's a smart kid and his parents seem to be active enough in his life to show him an archaic DOS command, so I think it's safe to assume they wouldn't want him disrupting other student's educations.

Discipline should occur both at school and at home, otherwise it's worthless.

[Cipher13]

3 day suspension? Great, the kid gets a holiday.

If this happened on my network (which it wouldn't), the kid would get warned the first time, and told not to do it.

The second time, he would have his account deactivated for a few days. Third time, I'd pass it up higher.

[stevesnj]

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
Granted some discipline needs to take place. And I can see how sending a message to everyone is a disruption to a class - however, a 3 day suspension? That's overkill. He didn't even get a warning.

To penalize a student for taking an interest in learning, albeit in an unconventional fashion, by removing him from class for three days is unacceptable. There has to be a better way to show the student how his actions affect others and may be disruptive to his own and other student's educations as a whole, rather than completely removing him from class.

Honestly, I think a warning and a phone call home to the parents explaining the situation would have covered it. I'm assuming he's a smart kid and his parents seem to be active enough in his life to show him an archaic DOS command, so I think it's safe to assume they wouldn't want him disrupting other student's educations.

Discipline should occur both at school and at home, otherwise it's worthless.

I agree...very well put.

I know he wants to learn but he can only do this when under teacher instruction not on his own. If he was learning how to do network messages at the time and was instructed by the teacher...fine. It seems he was doing this just to do it and not instructed to do it. Also if his father was familiar with this type of messaging and what it can do his father should of told him to only do this at home. We love it when students share their knowlege of what they can do and as teachers we encourage it!! But do not experiment without instruction or permission. There are rules we have to follow also.

[dtriska]

stevesnj, you're coming off as very, very ignorant.

"If others are allowed to do the same and no schoolwork is getting done because the computers are down then parents will be yelling and screaming."

Give me a break! Do you even know what net send is?

"I know he wants to learn but he can only do this when under teacher instruction not on his own."

I'm glad you weren't one of my teachers. Independent/active learning is the best way to learn.

Anyways, I was thinki-- Hey! What's this in my inbox? OMG!! Someone left a message in my inbox! I've been hacked!

[starman]

I know he wants to learn but he can only do this when under teacher instruction not on his own.

Bullshit. I was allowed to be alone in the lab for the second half of my junior year and all of senior year.

If it wasn't for what I was able to do, and the trust that the teachers gave me, I'd never learn a goddamn thing.

EDIT: And at Trenton State, I worked (as in: paid) in the Holman Hall Computer Lab. An entire lab of computers all to myself, and we had a LOT of fun in there after the lab closed. We'd hack, fiddle with Norton 1.0, play games, talk about compilers, etc.

And no teachers.

Mike

[iNub]

What this kid did was the equivalent of standing in the middle of an auditorium during a speech, (when you're supposed to be quiet) saying "hey!" then sitting back down. What would happen to him then? He'd get shushed. He'd get a dirty look from the person behind the podium. Disruptive, yes. Destructive and worthy of suspension, no.

When I was in high school, 3 days was for insubordination and truancy. One time saying "hey!" in the middle of class wouldn't merit anything but a "sit down please" from the teacher.

What it boils down to is educators being afraid of technology. Either they're afraid of being replaced, or they're afraid because they don't want the students to know something they don't. In the mind of a (bad) teacher, knowledge is dangerous if it's knowledge you don't also possess. A good teacher wants their students to surpass them in every way. All we are seeing is the quality of education we are providing for our kids.

I hope this is fixed by the time I have children.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
I know he wants to learn but he can only do this when under teacher instruction not on his own.

While I do believe that students need to be taught their actions can and do affect others (hence the need for some discipline in this case) but I can't agree with that.

If the kid is actually interested in computers and wants to learn more about them, experimentation really is the best way to learn. Unguided study isn't without it's merits, and the most rewarding experiences I've had have been with something I discovered and explored on my own.

Unguided extracurricular study is a good thing.

[- - e r i k - -]

We'd use net send all the time in our computer classes. Looks like error messages, and can be a lot of fun

[Link]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
We'd use net send all the time in our computer classes. Looks like error messages, and can be a lot of fun

We used to randomly punk our graphics teacher this way.. every time she stood up she got like 20 net's