I’ve just been reading a copy of The Hackers Handbook by Hugo Cornwall I got of Amazon (link to a text file). Fantastic book, although its a bit out of date, unless you use a ZX Spectrum on a day to day basis. It did remind however of “hacks” me and my friends managed to do at our (ex) school in days gone-bye…
Gluing two 2 pence pieces together would fool the drinks machine to think it was a £2 coin.
Although all of the internal and network drives were limited so that we could not access them in Explorer, if you created a link to one of them in HTML or Word, clicking the link would take you straight to that drive. We where only given 100mbs of space for all of are 5 years of work (including GCSE coursework) so we would use a little bit of the internal hard drives. Stealing a loaf of bread from a fat greedy baker.
We all knew a long list of proxies.
We caused Windows Media Player to be banded and blocked from all computers. The reason? If you renamed a program wmplayer.exe, it would run. No questions asked!
For one of my last years, I was allowed to bring a laptop to school (dyslexia you see). Anyhoo I plugged it into the network. Forgetting to disconnect it from the network (on the system) I connected it into another Ethernet port. I apparently created a “loop”. The system was down for a day.
Firefox was on most of our key-rings due to the schools decision to use IE6.
Teachers passwords where some of the worst. Password was a common one, as well as their first name.
In some boring classes where they foolishly let us on a computer, we used to have printer wars. Whenever somebody submitted something to the que., we deleted or diverted it. This used to really piss off the teachers!
We found that the “This site is blocked” web-page was automatically generated and not a single HTML file. What did we do? With a little HTML we made our own.
Bluejacking was a constant amusement. No matter where you were, people would send messages and images all over the class. God I love Bluetooth.
Not really a hack, but my laptop saved me and my friends backs many a lesson. Some ass-hole thought it would be great to steal the laptop and mess about. Stupid fucker. So I walk up behind him, one hand I put on the laptops lid, the second on the screen. “If you point here (points) it runs Tetris (or something).”. He puts his hands on the keyboard, and I slam down the lid. Taught him not to touch others property.
My friend tried to turn on his phone in class, but when it does it makes one hell of a noise. So he switches on the phone, hides it in his pocket. The teacher looks up at me and him. I slap the laptop, “bloody thing!”.
Sure, most of these “hacks” make me sound more like Dennis the Menace than Kevin Mitnick. But hey, its was the school days. The years of 2002 to 2007. The most other kids could do was print a picture of Goatse. I miss the days of 2002 to 2005 (July), 2005 (September) to 2007 can rot though. Simple times, simple pleasures.
Oh btw, most of these “hacks” took place on a Windows XP Pro SP2 Network. Unless your sysadmin has no social life, most of them will still work. 
Prom. One of the worst words in the world. Its all American. It reeks of cheese. Nothing about it is elegent. The word is a whore of the english laungage. Created in the 50’s, still used today. The right of passage for each and every teenager. Anyone who is anyone is there. Shame about the people who are there though. For some girls its one of those things which must be done correctly. If something fucks up, the night is ruined. Some of the girls at my (ex) school are Gas Mark 9 in human form. Others are brass monkeys. Yes, its whats on the inside that counts, but some of these girls are living proof you can’t polish a turd.
“I spent £1000 on a one of a kind dress. It was made by Jewish concentration camp workers in World War Two. The Nazis stole it and hid it with secrete piles of plunded gold. The Alleys found it on D-day. Its been in a safe in the Bank of England ever since. Wow, its amazing!”.
Shame your not though love. Nice dress, Internal Mess. Go back to MySpace. My mutantion of a suite comes from three well known names in fashion. George, Clarks and MyTuxido.co.uk (which is powered by Perl fyi).
Girls, its like an entirley different world. Hell, there are great girls out there with great personalities, but my (ex) school is like a pack of pokemon cards. You hope to find a rare Charazard, but end up with some self obsessed Pikachu. I better get off to bed, I’m getting grumpy. Perhaps I’m just being mean? Nah!
Listerning to my local BBC Radio station (Solent). My granddad loves it, its just what he need. Bit of banter mixed with a bit of music. The current text in question is “How do you like your eggs?”. Well, how do you like your eggs? Current voting, fried is at 60%. On the subject of eggs, what ever happened to eggy bread? One of the many questions that man will never answer.
Well, today was officially my last day at school. Yeah, I left a couple of weeks ago, but today I left. Everybody is leaving some time this week, today was my day. I finished my last GCSE (Enviomental Science) at 11.02, then went to school admin and got myself signed out. Thats it. My 12 years of school, 7 at Primary and 5 at Secondary (though it felt like 7) terminated, just like that. No more Homework, Coursework or Schoolwork. No more uniform or “after school detention educational help”. I can now relax.
Now 3 months of relaxation, collect a good set of GCSEs and go to collage. 
