Puberty sucks? Parents suck! About hacking and adolescence...

[___]

I just got off my phone with one of my little cousins (well he's 16 now). Yesterday night, we were trying to set up his CHIP. I bought two for christmas to give to my cousins, so they'd learn to have fun with computing, instead of becoming i-idiots.

Since he is going to finally buy his own computer soon, I thought that would be a good starting point to get accustomed to installing OS and firmware on devices.

He borrowed his moms laptop (windows vista) and I gave telephone support installing drivers, downloading chrome to use the stupid chrome extension for flashing the CHIP with an OS. Obviously we needed to restart the computer a lot (thank you microsoft) and he had to ask his mother to unlock the computer for him. We were almost done with the installation of the driver, but windows being a bitch wouldn't recognize the CHIP... another reboot would have sufficed.

Anyway, my aunt was fed up with always entering her password again. I told her how to temporarily fix it by enabling automatic login, but instead she opted to change the password into "123" and would've changed it back after we were done (because that would be so super practical.... or something). Windows of course complained that the password was too short. So she happily types away and tries all kinds of other combinations.

That's where the panic started. None of the new passwords would be accepted, she thought we had broken her computer. LOL

I hate trying to explaining password problems over the phone, people are so thick when they think they know what they are doing. Obviously she had set the first password she tried and was just warned about the length of the password by the OS and it accepted the password anyway. She wouldn't believe me, let alone her son. Of course he had to take the full blame, and she concluded that ultimately it was our fault.

And of course he was now forbidden to buy his own laptop, that he has been planning to buy for several months!

She thought, we must have done something that changed her password... ahem. Okay, sometimes it's easier to just let the people think that they are right... so I spent 2 hours writing a detailed step by step manual for my cousin on how he could prepare a boot medium with a password recovery linux distro and how he could repair his moms computer... I kinda felt responsible for fucking up her laptop, eventhough it was a typical user error, but what are you gonna do?

This morning I was ready to give further support. Guess what: She found out that the password was 123... surprise surprise!

At least my cousin can buy his own laptop now and she kinda believes that he really did not fuck up anything.

DEAR PARENTS: Please fuck off! If your kids are some day supposed to help you get your shit straight, when it's finally time and you have no idea anymore what you are doing on your computers (so basically right now), give them a chance! Give them a chance to at least learn something useful to do with a computer. There is so much paranoia that kids might break something, when really it's their parents own faults and stupidity because they themselves never learned it the right way. That is the way we learn how to fix things again! Always complaining, that their kids are only whatsapping, youtube watching, video gaming. But finally, when they do want to do something educational/useful, they are not allowed?

And don't blindly change your administrator password... give your kid an own login account FFS if it's the only computer in the household.

At least he now has a universal manual on how to hack pretty much any vanilla windows machine... (oh god what have I done?)

EDIT: corrected grammar oddities and forgotten words... because I was typing in a haste and a little bit upset ^^

 

[Binky]

"Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown"

 

[JDTAY]

Thank you reminding me that CHIP exists. Now I'm gonna end up buying PocketCHIP, and it'll set me back over half a month in my progress toward Pyra.

Man, I have two nieces and a nephew, but they're not old enough to learn programming yet. Why does it take kids so long to become cool? >_>

 

[FBnil]

He borrowed his moms laptop (windows vista)

That is like borrowing a production machine to do some tests...

You can turn that around:

You disrupted the harmony between parent-child. And almost made him lose an upgrade to an essential piece of hardware, where he could start CHIPping.
Later he will have to do the install again, and transfer all his created CHIP programs onto the new laptop when it arrives.
In my eyes you are like those big companies, that sell that big product that does nothing until it is configured. Then, let the customer struggle for 2 months, before asking for help, and deploy directly to production... and blame the company for their rules and processes. That is "Bad customer care".


Of course, pushing a bit to let the child at least have an environment to fiddle with was the right choice of action. But don't be angry at the parents. If the child gets something easy, it is not worth it. If it is challenging, it is rewarding.

 

[comradekingu]

ophcrack works on vista. And vista is deprecated.

Teach your cousin how to install Linux|Gnu on the computaar, and everything will be fine. BUTTANS! BUTTANNNNNS!

 

[levi]

If the mother is still using Vista then springing the glory of Linux on her is not likely to ease her concerns of her son breaking the computer. Although you can easily rig it to just go into a web browser on startup, and that might just be enough for many parents.

 

[elw3]

16? has no own latop? But why? I bought a laptop in a second hand shop when i was 15 or so... or was it the price?

16 is waay too old to start learning stuff.

 

[___]

That is like borrowing a production machine to do some tests...

You can turn that around:

You disrupted the harmony between parent-child. And almost made him lose an upgrade to an essential piece of hardware, where he could start CHIPping.
Later he will have to do the install again, and transfer all his created CHIP programs onto the new laptop when it arrives.
In my eyes you are like those big companies, that sell that big product that does nothing until it is configured. Then, let the customer struggle for 2 months, before asking for help, and deploy directly to production... and blame the company for their rules and processes. That is "Bad customer care".


Of course, pushing a bit to let the child at least have an environment to fiddle with was the right choice of action. But don't be angry at the parents. If the child gets something easy, it is not worth it. If it is challenging, it is rewarding.

The challenge is not a technical challenge that someone could learn from, it is an irrational challenge that cannot be overcome with a positive learning experience which would be: I am an adult, I cause an error and blame you. since you are younger and I am the authoritative point of reference, you are automatically at fault, eventhough you propose a viable solution (not changing the password, but deactivating it temporarily).

also I cannot see the comparison of me to a corporation or the borrowed laptop with a production machine as true.

1. I have no financial gain in this at all.
2. I am not restricting access to information or hardware but providing a free and open (ok we could argue semantics here... allwinner cpu blablabla) platform for development
3. Customer support is something completely different. My cousin is not my customer. It would rather work with a teaching metaphor... and please do not mix up corporate capitalism and education or I am going to be sick.
4. My "customer support" was live the whole time. I have spent hours of writing tutorials and was on the phone with him and my aunt the whole time.
5. I did not disturb any parent/child harmony, I am part of the family and as an adult cousin have a completely different connection to my cousins than any parent could have. I am entitled to having this relationship. Maybe in the slightest social psychological sense, I can follow what you mean by that. But then I'd hold against that, that this model of relationship and social analysis is long obsolete, and a systemic approach would be correct. A systemic approach would suggest, that I am already a dynamic part of the whole network of social relations a "child" (he is old enough to drive in the US, far from being a child but close enough to not be taken seriously?) and would be placed pretty close on a family grid/board as I am a close family member and am cultivating a strong relationship with my cousins for more than a few years.
6. the "production" machine is a multimedia laptop for home use. It is not being used to drive large machinery, or deliver data on narrow deadlines, no production cycle is being disturbed. Yes it's an annoyance to have a computer problem when you'd rather write an email and be productive...
7. Our solution was presented live on the phone: Try the first password you typed, when windows complained that it is too short. She did not follow the advice. The problem would've been immediately solved. This is about admitting, that you as a parent do not always know better than your kids.

Anyway, you could say, that as a teacher I risked getting the kid into trouble with his parents because of stirn/possibly outdated views that they have. A problem actual teachers do face every day with multiple traps dealing with adolescent children coming from different religious/cultural backgrounds. Bad customer care?

Also: I wasn't proposing for them to switch to linux, I just wrote a tutorial on how they could make a bootable medium to boot a password removal distro, to get control over their account back.

Well I am not particularly angry at my aunt. I find it mind bogglingly stubborn though. It ticks me off because it reminds me of my own struggle with my parents.

My dad got our first 286 and back then he was interested in computing. it stopped right after that when we got new hardware and quick enough I was building my own computers from spare parts and left overs I mooched off friends/junkyards. My dad never accepted that I was more knowledgable until I moved out with 18. As 13 year old I was allowed to be on my computer in my own room for a maximum of 1,5hr a day. I started programming DOS games with a doomlike 3d engine together with a friend. Because I kept going over the limit, my parents locked away my computer for half a year. They didn't understand that I was learning how to code, but thought I was wasting my time playing computer games. That still hurts me today, both are academics and social psychology was their profession! I guess today they have accepted, that people will not go blind or stupid because they spent a lot of time in front of a screen.

@FBnil: I just understood what you were trying to say with the bad customer care remark! I should've mentioned, that I got the chips for christmas, but my cousins came to visit for a few days after new years. The CHIP was not going to be used until we could do a hacking session over the phone, meaning when I was actually free to do it and my cousin as well. So it wasn't like he was struggling for two months, just 2hrs with me on the phone.

 

[FBnil]

Sorry man, it was maybe too harsh worded. All I wanted you to see it from the parents perspective so you could see a full picture. While I still give you a thumbs up for guiding a new 'techie' into the world of technology.

The challenge is not a technical challenge that someone could learn from, it is an irrational challenge that cannot be overcome with a positive learning experience which would be: I am an adult, I cause an error and blame you. since you are younger and I am the authoritative point of reference, you are automatically at fault, eventhough you propose a viable solution (not changing the password, but deactivating it temporarily).

Exactly. It's frustrating, but it is how things go; in many countries it is the same: we both understand that less tech-savvy people tend to see technology as black boxes and any change is problematic (like having a new remote control, or a new password, or the START bar at the left instead of the bottom, for us little things for non-tech savvy's a big hurdle).

It ticks me off because it reminds me of my own struggle with my parents.

Wow, quite the opposite with my dad. He gave me a CBM64, and when that one died, even gave me his CBM128D (and those things were expensive back then, also the software).
The XT in my parents bedroom was always available, and TurboC, DBASE and TurboPascal were available to make text graphical startup menu's, that could change the font, or change the autoexec's to maximize memory for a game. Unfortunately, CPM was not succesful, although it was fun for me to type on a commodore and print it out on the dotmatrix from the PC (I required thermal paper, which was more expensive).

Reading back your text, it means that your parents did not see Informatics/InformationTechnology as a viable career. But don't worry too much, the pace of learning was slower back then (BBS, MUD, COM/LPT/Hayes), so you actually had this thrive and need to make up for time, which kicked off when you became 18. That't like winding back a toycar, and letting go... you have more speed and momentum now.
And I was also on a 1.5 hours max of TV or Computer per day diet. I did not find it strange, as there was so much else to do (playing outside, playing indoors, making my audio tapes and creating funny magazines for the kids on the block, making cables between buildings to pass messages and candy in a tincan). Otoh, the 1.5 hour diet means that you program on paper, design, then sit down to type your idea. I consider it a plus. Especially when making graphics on quadricular paper, then summing up the bytes, etc.

as a teacher I risked getting the kid into trouble with his parents because of stirn/possibly outdated views that they have

Indeed, it is always a risk. Although most parent now leave parenting up to the school, instead of doing it themselves (has to do with the fact you need 2 parents working nowadays to have the same money as 50 years ago)

The CHIP was not going to be used until we could do a hacking session over the phone, meaning when I was actually free to do it and my cousin as well.

Ah.. my wrong assumption then.

 

[___]

yeah I am not really angry about my parents setting a limit. I am a bit pissed still, that they did not give me the benefit of the doubt and didn't support me, but rather cut me off completely.

I had a C64C when I was about 15, which I bought from the father of one of my school buddies. It was 80 euros and I had to save up for it for over three months (other expenses, of course I didn't have the discipline to save up in one go back then). I used that C64C in my little basement tinkering corner a lot, almost everyday. When I was 17 I went to canada for a year as an exchange student, meanwhile I had stashed my C64C away together with two giant cases full of 5,25 floppies in the attic, in a very well organized box.

While I was away, my dad threw it in the trash without even asking before, and when I came back he told me he thought it was an old keyboard... along with all my PC game bigboxes and all my other stuff.

I tried showing them what I was doing so often... they just weren't interested. Now I am in my thirties... it had put me off computing and programming for years.

EDIT: Correction... I had a C64C and not a C128... I have a C128 now though, but sadly no PSU ^^

 

[TeDaDeS]

I guess I was lucky my school director was fond of computers. My mom didn't work with computer but each class at school had one, so I started using one at the age of 4 and I was pretty handy with them. So my mom bought a C64 with a cassette drive when I was 6, so even if we wanted to play we usually played outside while the game was loading (or we stared at the pretty colored lines). For me school helped a lot by convincing my mom computer skills were going to be the essential in the future. I think it's good to have someone in your life that can teach how to work with computers.

 

[FBnil]

along with all my PC game bigboxes and all my other stuff.

Ouch... I feel your pain man... mine got stolen(lost?) around 1999 ... they took the floppies too...
My mom analizes each paperscrap and if a paper snot
[doublepost=1487536634,1487536517][/doublepost]

computer skills were going to be the essentia

My mom, as an accountant pushed me to learn how to type properly and have the same WPM as her. Never surpassed her though, but I can still type 'fast' if I transcribe spoken text and such.

 

[___]

talking about my exchange year reminds me: I was very surprised at how much cool hardware they had at my highschool. Every classroom had at least one computer and the computerlab actually had machines that you could use for something modern.

In Germany, it was very uncommon to have a PC in the classrooms in the 90s. The Canadian highschool obviously had more money as it wasn't entirely public, but in my German school days there was zero interest in teaching kids how to use a computer. I did take computer science class in 12th grade, because we had a teacher who would offer this in his free time (!). Sadly we all were miles ahead of him. He was still tying to teach us turbo pascal on windows 2000 PCs in 2004. We did switch to Borland Delphi, but me and my buddies were laughing our butts off about the horrible IDE... But at least he tried and meant well.

Might have been different for others in Germany though, not sure if every school was as shite as mine concerning computer science. Also: I'd take tuition free schooling over computers in every classroom any day.

 

[levi]

:
Unfortunately, CPM was not succesful, although it was fun for me to type on a commodore and print it out on the dotmatrix from the PC (I required thermal paper, which was more expensive).

FWIW, I've never come across a dot matrix printer that takes thermal paper. I guess it'd be possible to have a head of pins that scan across and press the paper against some hotplate, but most thermal printers I've seen (in PoS terminals and on the ZX Spectrum in the main) have been line printer variants.

 

[hitbyambulance]

my semi-rural grade school had an actual computer lab with Apple ][e machines in the early 80s (this was in Minnesota, where MECC was based, so maybe that had something to do with it? they were also the publishers of, among many other titles, The Oregon Trail) - this was super vital towards helping me get me access to working on computers early on, since we didn't get one until 1987.

 

[Kev2442]

Nice story, but I agree on 16 being a bit late (never too old though, my late grandpa was 85 when he bought his first laptop) to have one's own PC. I guess now they first have smartphones, then computers.
My brother introduced me to tinkering with computers in my early years and, after a few years of tech support, when I was about 11 he basically told me to google it myself. Note : never again replace SP2 files with those from SP1. (from what I remember, that's most likely what I did)

I had a C64C when I was about 15, which I bought from the father of one of my school buddies. It was 80 euros and I had to save up for it for over three months (other expenses, of course I didn't have the discipline to save up in one go back then). I used that C64C in my little basement tinkering corner a lot, almost everyday. When I was 17 I went to canada for a year as an exchange student, meanwhile I had stashed my C64C away together with two giant cases full of 5,25 floppies in the attic, in a very well organized box.

While I was away, my dad threw it in the trash without even asking before, and when I came back he told me he thought it was an old keyboard... along with all my PC game bigboxes and all my other stuff.

That's just sad. Hopefully it wasn't worth much at the time, except of course for the sentimental part.

My first computer, wow, takes me back. It was an antique donated from my uncle to my brother, who gave it to me when he bought his.
At the time of Athlon XPs and the last years of Win98SE, I was the proud owner of a Pentium 90 (soon upgraded to Pentium 133 - without MMX - and an ATI Rage 128 Pro) booting Windows 95 (that's where I'm the young one here - it came out a couple months prior to my birth) from a whopping 1GB hard drive.
Ah, the memories of booting into DOS to run Screamer 2, NASCAR Racing, and running Win95 to launch SEGA Rally directly from the CD. Of course you wouldn't expect me to own a joypad at the time, as much as I loved (and still do !) racing games.

And you know what ? As much as I think old CRTs are partly responsible for my glasses, I wouldn't take back a single minute of nerding around if I could.
Take care of your little cousins : if they're willing to try this stuff at their age, they might have a promising future.

That's all from me folks,
END OF LINE.

 

[Pickle]

C64/128
486 Compaq (spent $200 for 4mb to get it to 8 mb, so could play SW Dark Forces)
Pentium Compaq (i forget the clock, maybe 75 mhz)
Pentium 100 mhz
Athlon 1.2 Ghz (first new PC I bought)

 

[TeDaDeS]

My mom, as an accountant pushed me to learn how to type properly and have the same WPM as her. Never surpassed her though, but I can still type 'fast' if I transcribe spoken text and such.

I had an actual typewriter to learn to type, I can type blindly with 10 fingers which is really useful sometimes (I'm using the nubs on the F/J).

talking about my exchange year reminds me: I was very surprised at how much cool hardware they had at my highschool. Every classroom had at least one computer and the computerlab actually had machines that you could use for something modern.

In Germany, it was very uncommon to have a PC in the classrooms in the 90s. The Canadian highschool obviously had more money as it wasn't entirely public, but in my German school days there was zero interest in teaching kids how to use a computer. I did take computer science class in 12th grade, because we had a teacher who would offer this in his free time (!). Sadly we all were miles ahead of him. He was still tying to teach us turbo pascal on windows 2000 PCs in 2004. We did switch to Borland Delphi, but me and my buddies were laughing our butts off about the horrible IDE... But at least he tried and meant well.

Might have been different for others in Germany though, not sure if every school was as shite as mine concerning computer science. Also: I'd take tuition free schooling over computers in every classroom any day.

I don't know any school at that moment that had computers, the one I was one had them because of the school director. They had color screens (maybe 80286?), I remember because we made visual stories with animations. Which is pretty nice for the 80's.
My first own computer was an 8086 4MHz/8MHz (turbo) with dual floppy drives, not sure if I still had to park the HDD before shutting down.

N
That's just sad. Hopefully it wasn't worth much at the time, except of course for the sentimental part.

It is, I can't imagine how that would be. I would be devastated if my parent would have done something like this.

C64/128
486 Compaq (spent $200 for 4mb to get it to 8 mb, so could play SW Dark Forces)
Pentium Compaq (i forget the clock, maybe 75 mhz)
Pentium 100 mhz
Athlon 1.2 Ghz (first new PC I bought)

Dark Forces was the stuff. Our family PC was an 486DX2 with TjengLabs graphicscard and a soundblaster 16bit to have all to nice crisp MIDI tunes (if you could configure all the stuff like DMA/IRQ etc to the right settings).

 

[___]

I love how my rant turned into all of us fondly remembering our first computers

Darkforces was awesome! I loved my first PC. it would barely run duke nukem 3d, but we had so many games and shareware stuff... and geoworks! way cooler than win 3.11.

Well I have a C64 again and am hopefully getting some more equipment from one of our awesome forum members. That eases the pain thanks @sm0kew0n

first world problems...

 

[TeDaDeS]

I love how my rant turned into all of us fondly remembering our first computers

Darkforces was awesome! I loved my first PC. it would barely run duke nukem 3d, but we had so many games and shareware stuff... and geoworks! way cooler than win 3.11.

Well I have a C64 again and am hopefully getting some more equipment from one of our awesome forum members. That eases the pain thanks @sm0kew0n

first world problems...

I think it's all of that I appreciate about the Pandora, everything I ever wanted as a kid into one little futuristic handheld (it's your color TV and C64 in your, rather big, pocket).
Even reminding me of my dual-floppy PC with its dual SD slot.