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6 year old hotwires car-heads to highway
D3 writes "Who knew how easy it could be to
hotwire a kiddie car? This 6 year old had no problem. " Heh-I needed to read something like this. Kids-they're gonna take everything over. Thanks to modnar for a more detailed story.
Kind of makes me wonder. I see the possibility for good and bad in this. On one side, the child should be punished for not sticking around where he should have... but kids will be kids.
On the other hand, maybe the kid has a little more brainpower (at least, a means to an end) than most 6 year olds who are just worried about nappy-time...
Now, I'm not saying this is the smartest kid in the bunch, but he's not the dumbest. Heck, if it took him a mile to get caught ON THE HIGHWAY, no less, then I'd say it's the motorist's fault for not getting a clue at that point.
Karnal
Give this Kid Windows and that's an other wasted talent - :-)
give him Linux - invest in him and wait for the IPO of his firm
Bye
Lars
I mean really, kids are smarter than people think. When I was six I made a turing machine out of paerclips and rubber bands in my spare time, when I wasn't talking the differential calculus course at the local community college. No one made a big deal about _that_, so I don't see why people think this kid did anything amazing.
Sheesh...the media these days
Come on. The question isn't whether or not it happens, but whether or not it happens more often when the child is in the care of the parents or at a daycare center.
Saying that you shouldn't use daycare centers because your kid may wander off, is like saying that you shouldn't use seatbelts because people occasionally get suffocated by them. The argument simply doesn't hold. If you are certain that the risc is higher with a daycare center than if the child is in your care, they stay with the child if you can - contrary to with seatbelts, there are no conclusive studies that say whether a child is safer with the kids or in daycare, so it's the parent's own call.
A recent Scandinavian study, however, correlates violence in adults with whether or not the person in question was in daycare as a kid, and found the the chance of violent behaviour was a lot higher among those who spent their entire childhood under the care of a parent.
One of the explanations was that those who spent time in daycare learned to respect limits at an earlier age than those who were looked after by their parents, simply because they weren't shielded as much, and got to interact more with other kids and adults, and a "real world" environment.
If that's true, then isn't a kid that wanders off from a daycare center also likely to try to wander off in his parents care? The question then is, is it more likely that he learns that speeding along a highway in a toy car is stupid from trying it, being stopped and talked to, or by being handheld by his parent, and kept on a too short leash to be able to try anything out?
No, I'm not advocating letting kids do whatever they want, but you should consider that the more you shelter your kid, the less he or she learns about the outside world. Sooner or later the kid grows up enough that you aren't able to control it anymore.
What then? Would you rather have a kid that has gotten the chance of getting in a fight, or falling of his bike, and knows that both hurt, and have learned to be careful, or one that thinks fights and car chases look cool, and haven't learned to think for himself.
Woohoo! He told her to shut up? He was probably running away. Boy, wonder where this kid is going to be at 8?
Last Day... Logan 5.
There... is... no... sanctuary.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
> big deal...my 6 month old has his own linux distro ready for distribution..KidieLinx
big deal! i've got sperm with their own websites!
j.
I live in Fairfield and I see Dixie highway
out of my window. The traffic is extra heavy
even during the night. 40% of vehicles are
heavy trucks doing 60 m/h. What I'm saying
is that there is no way this kid could survive for more than a few seconds. Also, it's not the area where people give shit about anyone.
Dead and dying dogs sometimes are lying for days on the side of the highway.
>What you don't seem to understand is that it's
> not the act of plugging in wires that impresses
>us. It was the fact that he UNDERSTOOD THAT HE
>HAD TO. He understood that this toy will not
>work without juice. The battery has juice. One
>gets juice from the battery to the toy by
>plugging in wires. The wires are hidden. I have
>to find those hidden wires and plug them in to
>get juice from the battery to the toy.
Alright in that vein, we are to believe that six year olds are not capable of understanding the basics of electricity. Well, that might have flown for truth when I was younger, but we're dealing with a plugged in society these days. The fact that kids are able to mimic gestures such as plugging in a wire does not impress me.
>In what fucking fantasy world did you grow up?
>Most of us who grew up to become hackers didn't
>have rich parents to get us access to computers
>when we were 6 (yes, once upon a time personal
>computers were expensive). You're not only
>showing your age, but you've just shown your
>immaturity. When I was 6 years old the only
>computers in the school were in the office. Most
>people didn't know that a personal computer was
>when I was 6. I got my first computer when I was
>8. I used to write goofy little programs on it
>in basic. It was my goal to try to create an
>Eliza type program (way before 'Eliza") but
>after a few hours I'd screw off and play with my
>Atari or go to the park to squeeze girls' butts.
>Before we had computers we hacked just about
>everything else, our toys, our radios, TVs, you
>name whatever else. The hacker spirit has
>nothing to do with computers. It has to do with
>curiosity, exploration and ingenuity. If you
>think hacking is just about bytes, bits,
>computers, and programming then you're not
>nearly as much of a hacker as you think you are.
Now as far as your flame bait goes, I'll bite. Wow, you are 3 years older than me. How do I figure? Because I hacked my radio (an old single speaker tape player and AM/FM thing) when the thing broke. I hacked my walkie talkies and found out how to make my voice control my radio controlled car. You want to flame, you better know your target.
Btw, my parents weren't rich. My dad had a computer not made by IBM or Apple. I used CP/M. You are right, computers were and are expensive. That's probably why I used that until 1989. It's only now, another 10 years later that my dad upgraded from his 386. I used a 486 until last year (a graduation present from my H.S. graduation in 1994). I figured I better get a better one before I entered the industry.
Thanks for the flame.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
(holding a leafy sprig) "And the plants! And the animals that eat the plants! They all ultimately get their energy from a nuclear source. WHY AREN'T THERE WARNING LABLES ON THESE THINGS!"
Florence: "Don't shout too loud. You might start another government agency."
See more biting social comment in Freefall
Note the nasty brutish expression, the strong jaw, the aggressive eyes... It must've taken the photographer ages to get a photo like that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oh for chrissakes, he was KIDDING.
Oh! Oh! Melting the plastic battery case is mandatory. When timed properly the plastic would melt just enough to hold the little spring in place. Otherwise to spring would fall out every time the batteries were changed.
"separating salt into natrium and chlorid ions and smearing it some unfortunate kids lunch in kindergarten..."
What is this supposed to mean? Since you could not have possibly really seperated salt into its elements in any real sence of the word, the only interperatation I can come up with is that you disolved it and poured salt water on your friend's sandwich. This is hardly an impressive feat.
Oh, and in english, we call it sodium.
Yes, YES YES
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The media totally hyped up this story..
:)
6 year old kid "hotwired" a car (meaning plugged in the battery) and drove for ONE MILE.. can you imagine how long it would take for a Power Wheels to go one mile, especially without being stopped by a driver???? Unless he is in the boonies or people drive Power Wheels' as a true means of transportation, there is definitely some exaggeration there.. well unless the kid IS a genius and rigged the car to go say 60/mph
I'm not impressed... why, when I was six, I was stealing things like Continents, transients, and the rights to 'Peanuts'. Now show me a kid who can
do good PR for Stalin... then you've got a deal.
-- "'It was horrible' recalls former child" - Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head
There's a bit more detailed article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Apparently at least one person called 911 and (as I live about 5 miles away) the road isn't all that terribly busy. It's not like he was driving on a major interstate or anything.
It is obviously the male instint "Insert Plug A into Recepticle B" kicking in. See, testosterone put to good use!
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
If it were my son (almost 4), he'd be heading to the airport to buy a ticket so he could ride on an airplane. I'm serious. I mentioned that to him *once*, so every time we pass the airport, he reminds me how easy it is for me to take him on an airplane ride...just buy a ticket!
The kid in the story probably knew the way to Toys 'r Us or something.
My son knows landmarks and streets. I can easily imagine him driving a car down a familiar street (no fear involved) to get to the zoo, or home, or the airport. His powers of memorization are astounding. He also knows the Mac three fingered salute to bail himself out of a toddler game lockup -- he learned that at age 2 1/2. And he's memorized some key scenes from A Bug's Life, including "...now *that's* funny." Wish I was burning neural pathways that quickly.
And if his daycare didn't know he was gone for an hour, I'd pull him and his sister out of there faster than oatmeal dries in a Disney(tm) bowl!
Consigned to flames of woe.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
This kid has the raw materials to become a (jedi knight) hacker.
This is the classic story of a fallen hacker. He took advantage of the lax security at the day care. He took advantage of the lax security at reruns for wee ones. He went out exploring. He was seeing the world from a new perspective, and even though he wasn't the only one to blame he was the first to get picked up by the pigs.
As long as his parents don't come down too hard on him for this, and destroy his creative and exploratory nature he has the potential to become a hacker.
And I thought that I was smart for figuring out how to negate the "child proof" medicine bottles, and prevent my mother from locking out the windows on her '86 LeBaron.
LK
I feel sorry for the kid. He has probably always been at daycare from day one, probably not breastfeed and was left to cry himself to sleep. He is crying out for love and attention from his parents. Shame on them from having to have two jobs so they can buy into our evil consumer culture.
. . . and try him as an adult.
(I'm sick of all this liberal coddling.)
---- "When I grow up, I'll know far less"
Oh, you too? I was just obtaining my Master's degree in Differential Equations, was holding down a full-time job at NASA, had built a nuclear powered submarine from Lego's and K'Nex in my bathtub, and was captain of the College debate team. I also tried out for runningback on the college football team, but they said that at 2'9" I was just too easy to tackle. No one really considered me a child prodigy either. As a matter of fact, I got grounded for a week when I got a B on my test over Linear Homogeneus Recurrence Relationships with Constant Coefficients.
+--
Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
none. the other kids all got run over.
Dude. I live in Butler County, Ohio, although I think probably on the other side of the county from where this happened (at least I don't recognize the day care center or the shop). This made my day. I wish I could've seen it.
-adr
duh. i was taking trans atlantic flights on commercial airliners at age 8. just give your kid a simple checklist..some skyflyer cards (british airways use em to identify kids flying alone+record mileage) and he should be able to fly. no biggie.
i heard about it on the radio this morning on the way to work, they did a guess which story is bogus thing, i sure thought that was the one they made up, it sounds kinda ridiculous. This must be a pretty smart 6 year old to reconnect the wires, i wonder if he reads slashdot? :) anyway does anyone have any more details on this?
This kid definately has the hacker nature. Rewiring things, boldly going places where other kids only dream, and then getting arrested by the cops for it.
--
yes, but the first bracket was 0-18, implying that there weren't enough really young people to merit further division. That is the joke.
This is a non-story. The media made it sound interesting by using the word "hotwired".
Why is everyone acting like the kid must have been a child prodigy to know how to reconnect the wires? I'd guess the "electronics" under the hood consist of nothing more than battery-to-gas_pedal-to-motor, and the store owner probably did nothing more than disconnect one of the wires from the battery.
But that doesn't make much of a story, so unfortunately, lots of people are going to picture this boy genius defeating some kind of security system.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
one million seconds? about 12 days?
This kid is obviously intelligent and independent.
We must stop him before he becomes a threat to our stable and predictable society.
-CJ
What were you doing when you were six?
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
He doesn't really need a cover, though. That kid stole the toy!
------- CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The funny is the comments where I work: The kid has a future...
The sad: If that was a "bustling" highway, then about 20 cars must have passed this kid in his one mile joyride. Why didn't any of them get the kid off of the street?
This kid is obviously Slashdot material!
I think we need a new poll:
How old are you?
1) 0-6
2) 6-12
3) 12-18
4) 18-22
5) 22-30
6) 30-40
7) Old fart
I'm bothered by the fact that half the replies I read about this are still amazed that a six year old could do this.
Let's consider that at six, children are entering first grade. They are expected to be able to do things that are simple tasks. Plugging a wire into a receptacle is a simple task.
This kid was no prodigy. Most hackers will attest (at least those who had the benefit of a nearby computer) that at six, they were doing simple toy programs in BASIC considering that was the language available. We all know programming these programs requires simple logic. I was throwing IF-THEN statements into my programs at six. The kid simply did this in engineering terms.
Get over the fact that kids are smarter than they let on.
The only amazing aspect of this story lies in the incompetence of the daycare and the store next to it, as well as the fact that (I'm assuming) the kid wasn't hurt. We all played Pole Position as kids, so his driving isn't surprising. What is surprising is that no one else on the road hit him, considering that adults tend to be far worse drivers than kids. You have seen them try to play those video games, haven't you?
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Most Six-year-olds could have done this. Fact of the matter is, most adults underestimate children and think that they can't have anything of value to say much before the age of, say, twenty-five. That's probably one of the reasons we're subjected to years of incredibly boring tripe in the school system.
Have a little respect for the intellects of our children. They're not stupid, they simply lack experience.
Prozac is for depression. If he suffered from depression they wouldn't have been able to pry him off the couch.
This child clearly shows signs of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. He must be put on Ritalin so he can be properly desensitized by the Teletubbies tapes on non-stop loop in daycare facilities across the nation.
It's not unheard of.
I think I was six when my father presented me with a broken transistor radio, originally belonging to the office secretary. After fiddling a little, I found the spring that'd slipped off the power switch and reattached it. I presented the working radio to my parents, who oohed and aahed and praised me. Of course, my father then took back the radio and gave it back to the secretary.
I think this event had a profound effect on my life.
The stories I've heard have convinced me to stay away from day care for my kids. For those who care, one good way to find a decent day care center is to:
- Make sure the center is licensed by the state.
- Call the person who licensed the center and ask them about it, especially to see if there have been any complaints.
- Look for a center with experienced staff.
The (typical) reason for this crap to happen is that the center has young, inexperienced, and underpaid workers on the staff, who either may not care or may not know how to take care of 20 kids.My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Pope seen screaming inside glass box...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
this is rediculous . a kid simply connects two wires and is hailed a genius . what has our society come to where we praise a kid for having common sense . this is a definite sign that we need to raise the bar on our children's education and demand more from them . children are sponges for information and absorb anything and everything they see and hear . i was reading and writing and doing basic addition and multiplication by the time i was three not because i am a genius but because my mom stayed home and taught me . just look at our current elementry school system . it is a joke . i was so bored with what elementry school had to offer me because my mom had already taught me everything by the time i went into kindergarden . in first grade i was doing my sister's fourth grade homework not because i am a genius but because it was at the same level . the LORD knows i am not a very smart guy and i am as average as they come but i had great parents who worked with me and never put boundries on me and taught me that i can do anything if i put my mind to it . the focus of this article should be on some little kid but on the daycare and secondly on our childrens education system
phuqed up
No. Violence is violence, and breeds violence. If the kid gets the idea that causing pain is an acceptable way to deal with a problem, he'll resort to that whenever given the chance.
Have you ever seen the phone booths in London? Fully half the hooker's cards over there are either about spanking or getting spanked. That stuff bends you for life.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Our opperating system is so easy to you that even a todler can figure out how to reboot it, witch is good beacuse it crashes every 10 minutes....
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
------- CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't think he was completly kidding. Any kid that age that had the balls (boy right?) and skills to sneak outta a preschool walk about a mile to that other place (the other story said the toy shop was a mile away approx) find that car pop the hood and go off with it down the highway. That takes serious planning and a certain drive. I bet that kid would make a great hacker, or atleast someone I'd be proud to say I know.
What a stud.
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
It's really sad what day care centers have come to. Heck, even when I was a child, things went on at day care centers that would have qualified as neglect or abuse nowadays. I remember being confined to the corner for reading some older kid's t-shirt outloud because it was highly offensive, yet nothing was done to the child WEARING the shirt because they didn't want to be bothered. I remember them forcing my little brother (who was only 5 at the time) to eat an entire bar of soap... and they didn't even TRY to consult my mother before administering this type of unusual - and potentially harmful - punishment. We never had children disappear from the premises, however we had day care workers leave kids out on the playground unsupervised when it was time to come inside just because they didn't feel like chasing them down... and I guess they didn't realize how easy it is to climb over a cyclone fence.
I know many people fault parents for not spending time with their children, but in the modern world where both parents need to work to make ends meet, day care is often the only solution the have for supervision during work hours. It is a shame that while society is forced to have to trust in other people for the well-being of their children that often those who are put in charge don't keep up with their duties as they should and then the industry itself gets a bad name. Inadequate training is often a contributing factor to the low quality of child care. I happen to know many of the workers in centers are often high school students who are working during the summer, or graduates who have no official training or certification.
I don't know about you, but if I'm going to entrust the life and health of a child to someone for the duration of 8+ hours then they'd better have a piece of paper to show me they know how.
-- Shadowcat
kageneko@kageneko.net
"I can roleplay. I can frag. I can PK while you lag."
How true. A 5 yr old wandered away from a daycare and almost got hit in heavy traffic. But get this: there were FOUR ADULTS and only 13 CHILDREN!!!
Come on, that's a better ratio than most daycares and no one noticed! (and I used to look after kids myself, I know what it's like to be around them...you never let them out of your sight)
Prozac, shmozac.
This boy needs Gleemonex!
If water were beans, I'd be 70% beans.
What do you think this kid's gonna do when he grows up? Keep an eye on your cars, Cincinatti!
:)
Mommie SERIOUSLY needs to take sonny out to the go-kart track some Saturday.
Moped, trailbike, maybe learn some small engine
repair. Earn cash fixing lawn mowers.
Then maybe the Jr. NASCAR competition.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"Cram it ma'am."
-Nelson Muentz speaking to Marge Simpson
Child beating isn't the best solution, but hey,let's face it, sometimes the wife ain't home.
You know, I've heard people say a lot of weird things in my time on Earth, I've hung out with a lot of freaks and drug users and garage philosophers, and I've heard just about every opinion and idea that could possibly come out of a human's mouth. And you know what? I have never once heard anyone say "I've been thinking about moving to Ohio."
I really don't see why this should be so amazing except for the courage of the kid. Every kid knows how to plug and play with wires. (At least every kid with a minimum of intelligence).
:)
Buy your kids a lot of lego. Buy your kids constructions sets - you will find them grow and prosper.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
We never had children disappear from the premises, however we had day care workers leave kids out on the playground unsupervised when it was time to come inside just because they didn't feel like chasing them down... and I guess they didn't realize how easy it is to climb over a cyclone fence.
.. 2-6 years or something I was in a day care senter or whatever it's called. We used a lot of time, when the weather was good, outside. We were climbing trees and doing all kinds of 'dangerous' stunts. I remember klimbing some sort of "thingie" made of metal, hanging from my legs and dangling with my head down. I lost my grip with my legs and went 1 - 1.5 meters down, and hit a metal bar.
.. and the branch hit me in my head. painful. I learned that I should not play on thin branches.
;))
I really do not see the problem with this. When I was
Of course it was painful - but it was a learning session. I didn't take chances with that again.
Another time a branch of a tree I was climbing broke - and I fell 2meters down
(no wonder I've become what I've become?
.. My point is that you learn from that kind of things. Worst case is that a kid breaks an arm - who cares? It's painful, but it'll be all right in a month or so. Okay, worst case IS that someone dies, but accidents will always happen. it's better that kids play and learn and get sharpend, instead of getting dull and non-intelligent, since they can't explore and play around.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
While I agree with your solution (not having kids), I think you need to realize that the vast majority of the people in this country (US) can't afford the kind of lifestyle you're talking about. Most people in this country are pulling in well under 30k a year. And most jobs also take place during normal business hours, often preculding the possibility for both parents to work in staggered shifts.
If your proposal were to become the norm, I also think it would negatively impact women. Let's face it, if a couple has a 10 month old child, A man who working 60 hours a week isn't going to get as much shit as the woman does. So who's gonna be stuck at home with the kid?
Mom. And we tried that. Women who work outside the home (regardless of whether they have young children) are happier and more adjusted than women who don't. Plus there's issues of dependency and subservience that we're not even getting into. And that all has bearing on a child's upbringing.
But like you said, problem solved if they don't have kids.
You're failing to see my point here. The point is, parents are paying for their kids to be supervised, not left alone to play without adults around.
"...we had day care workers leave kids out on the playground unsupervised..."
That right there is my point... the word "unsupervised". All children should be allowed to explore and play, yes, but when people are shelling out money for their children to be watched, the day care workers are being paid to keep an eye on the kids. Leaving a child outside unsupervised is just an accident waiting to happen. It's one thing for a parent to make that decision. It's another for someone unrelated to the child whose job it is to look out for their well-being while their parents are unable to.
-- Shadowcat
kageneko@kageneko.net
"I can roleplay. I can frag. I can PK while you lag."
Give or take 3600 seconds - I should probably check my birth certificate a more exact time. Or is figuring your birthday as a time_t just too geeky?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Lots of fun it was. That was when I first learned how to turn a battery into a resistor by putting it into one of the plastic cases and connecting the one terminal to the other. It's a wonder I didn't blow myself up or at least scald myself. The buggers did get warm, though.
Much more fun than construx or lincoln logs. YMMV.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Yeah, he may be smart, but how long would it take him to hotwire all those cars into a Beowulf cluster that Rob would make a [drool] comment about?
I thought these kids' identities aren't supposed to be revealed in the media like this, especially w/o parental permission.
Im surprised the cops (after roughing him up a little) didn't charge him (as an adult of course) with felony theft, reckless endangerment, crossing property lines in the commision of a felony, driving without a license, driving underage, trespassing, driving too slowly, and (all together now) assulting a police officer!
What's next for little Johnny?:
In a follow-up to yesterday's story where little John T. Carpenter hotwired and piloted a mini Monster truck away from the Kiddie Kampus day-care center; today Johnny "Woz" Carpenter wired his parents old Tandy computer to his speak-n-spell. By combining these two devices JC's "computer" can decrypt the popular Barney cartoon to reveal a hidden meaning:
Die Microsoft Die!
Even if he didn't "hotwire" the car, we should all be proud of his accomplishment...Ohio needs more bright youngsters like this.
I can't believe all the huffy posturing people are doing here. They appear to feel threatened by a six-year-old. "Hotwiring a car at six? That's no big deal. I was regularly consulted by MIT at 2 and a half!" Give me a break.
This is just a smart kid people, get over it. He showed a lot more originality than almost anyone here ever did at that age, and so we all become defensive. Calm down. Nobody's going to come and take your Big Brain trophy away.
Next time I hear somebody on this group praising noncomformity, I'm going to know what really to think about it. You people are no more tolerant of unusual thought than the police who arrested him.
Sheesh.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Call or write your senator now! We need to Save The Children(tm). These powered drive toys need to have the battery and other dangerous areas of the toy locked so kids can't get at 'em. Don't batteries contain ACID? And can't they EXPLODE or leak DANGEROUS CHEMICALS if charged improperly? And can they START FIRES if shorted? Any why are these vehicles able to be operated on DEADLY HIGHWAYS? We also need a feature so that these vehicles disable themselves BEFORE they get near a highway or road. SAVE THE CHILDREN! SAVE THE WORLD! YOU MUST EITHER SUPPORT THESE MEASURES OR ELSE YOU MUST BE SUPPORTING DEATH TO CHILDREN EVERYWHERE! WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND SENATOR TODAY! YOUR CHILDREN'S LIVES ARE AT STAKE!
The story left out the fact that there was a police pursuit to stop the kid. A bunch of officers in little battery-powered police cars and battery-powered motorcycles chased the 6-year-old at speeds in excess of 10mph. Witnesses said the most frightening thing was the "Woo Woo" siren noises the police were making with their mouths.
The pursuit stopped when one officer shouted, "Bang! I shot you! You're dead!" The child responded with, "Did not!" The officer then replied "Did too!" This went on for several minutes....
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
At home I had this nifty 150-in-1 (or something like that) electronics kit from Radio Shack. It was a piece of cardboard with all these components mounted on it, connected to springs for terminals and numbered. You could hook up different projects from the book that came with it, just by making the numbered connections (connect terminal 1 to 55, 23 to 62, and so on), and it would explain a little about how it worked. A great toy for the young hacker, wonder if they still make 'em?
When I was a wee lad, sometimes my dad would take me into work with him, show me the big machines with the blinking lights in their specially air-conditioned room, and let me play with the card punch machine. I had an old TI programmable calculator (with red LED display) when I was nine or ten; didn't see BASIC until I was eleven - and that was on a PDP-11, hardly a PC.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
She should have beat the hell out of that kid. Rude little bastard. I only wish I could connect two wires and get on slashdot. Sigh. kcin
I could have done the same thing at six. I'm sure most of us here could have as well. The difference is, most of us wouldn't do such a thing. Proof of grand intelligence, this event is not. But it does prove that he has guts and cunning, and though I may wish I had had the courage to do something like that, I'm rather glad I have a much more sharply honed sense of self preservation :)
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
It may not have much to do with age, but physical ability. At five, I had teeth to take toys and little electric motors apart. The same teeth could strip wires. I found these wires fit electric wall sockets and discovered electricity was pure energy. Luckly, I conducted these experiments very early in the morning before the parents would wake and the loud pops would go unnoticed. I would draw pictures of wires, batteries, motors, powering cars, etc. I knew too much... I was dangerous...
My mom took me shopping for my fith birthday so I could choose my present. Radio Shack was popular at the time and I found the box for an electronic project kit bigger and more colorful than the box of a flashlight. It went over, because my dad had an interest in electronics. They helped me build a single transistor radio. I remember picking up my first country radio station (that was back when country music was real!) For xmas of that year, I asked Santa for nuts, bolts, and wires. Twenty five years later, I work at a wire and cable specialty manufacturing plant as the sole senior technicican on my shift. My dream came true in the grandest sense.
Using Microsoft software is like having unprotect sex.
Bite the hand.
So many people are making a big deal cause a 6 year-old could reconnect the battery. I'm not impressed.
When I was BARELY 2 years old(2 years, couple weeks), I taught myself how to feed the tapes on my parents' reel-to-reel tape player so I could listen to cheezy christmas songs.
A 6 year-old being able to reconnect the battery isn't funny. His joy-ride is funny. The lack of response from the daycare center is disturbing. His hacker tendences are a godsend (WOOHOO!!!!). The amazement we all have that a 6 year-old hotwired a kiddie-kar? That's sad.
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
astonishing that not one driver who noticed this kid pulled their car over on the shoulder and stopped him. Not like he was speeding, I'd think you could stop something going at 5mph or under. No, they'd rather get on their cellphone to 911! Doh! How about immediate action that protects the kid?? I mean, one woman is quoted as telling him to get off the road -- why didn't she GET him off the road? And his response -- "shut up!" *sighs* this kid needs some parental guidance. I can't imagine being 6 and telling an adult to shut up.
I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that has no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And Muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
Ay, oh, where did you go, Ohio.
Kid was probably headed back home to work on his pod racer.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's quite obvious the above poster never tried the saltwater electrolysis experiment. I did - although I was well past six years old by then.
:)
What is produced by passing an electrical current through saltwater is chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide solution. Sodium hydroxide is corrosive and a stong skin irritant, and will make you skin peel if you spill it on you. (Yes, I learned this the hard way.) Spraying classmates with it is a pretty cruel thing to do, although at that age I probably would have tried it too.
The only reason I have a hard time believing that a six-year-old did this is that saltwater electrolysis will corrode the electrodes very quickly, and selecting appropriate materials to prevent this is a non-trivial excercise. Someone would have had to have helped with supplying or setting up the apparatus, even if the 6-year-old knew how to use it.
Many TVs have an option to set the channel up/down buttons to skip non-broadcast channels. Newer TVs will even set this up automatically. I played around with this when I was a kid. It is possible to set all channels to skip except one, meaning that anytime you pressed the channel up/down buttons it would go back to that one channel.
I've noticed time and again that a lot of people out there don't know how to do anything, and they're afraid to (or too lazy to) find out how to do anything, and so they're absolutely confounded when someone uses their brain to do something. I certainly don't consider that child a genius, but I can understand how many people would, because they can't fathom what it must feel like to exercise their minds....stretch out and learn by _doing_
Insert mind here.
Kickass! Nice to see another west chester person on slashdot, almost gives me hope for this sorry place.
Jacob
>I don't know about you, but if I'm going to entrust the life and health
>of a child to someone for the duration of 8+ hours then they'd better
>have a piece of paper to show me they know how
Whereas it's perfectly okay to entrust a child to someone 24/7 with no proof at all of their competence... provided they're fertile.
Yeah, me too. As parents, several of us at work are picturing how today would be going for the parents:
1. Talk to kid about event.
2. Find new day care by tonight.
3. Call attorney.
But, anyway -- scary but funny story. Anyone who has a toddler is shaking off the heebies right now.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
>>So why aren't you out distrusting all authority? Time's a-wastin' LK. Get on the ball!
You just don't get it huh? Political activism is similar to hacking in this respect.
This kid is a great example of what I mean. It's a part of your nature. It's something that you do all of the time whether you're aware of it or not.
LK
Moderator: (-1) Flamebait
Oh Lord Kano, you're just sooooooo smart and cool. What with programming Eliza and squeezing girls' butts down at the park when you were 8.
I'm so glad you're ever vigilant, protecting my liberty when it's not even in danger.
>but in the modern world where both parents need to work to make ends meet,
>day care is often the only solution
Sorry, but there's a better option. Don't have kids. If you can't afford to take care of and spend time with children, then you shouldn't be having them. You would go buy a $85,000 car if you only make $20,000 per year? Why be as stupid when if comes to having kids? Stagger your work house so someone is always at home. One parent can quit and everyone can cut back on extras to take care of their kids. It's pathetic how people nag about "not being able to make ends meet" while they drive around in new, huge, his and her SUVs. Watch cable TV with many premium channels, in their 4 bedroom house (for just the two of them), etc. Take a good look at your situation before you cry about being 'financially strapped'. If you can't afford kids and are unwilling to give up some luxuries to be able to raise your kids right, then you should not become parents. Kids are a responsibility, not a right. And they're *your* responsibility, not your employer's or the government's.
We are the seventh most populous state thank you very much. We also have more land zoned urban as a percentage of our land area than any other state. (I believe we are the top in land area zoned urban, but I have had problems confirming that.)
Butler County has about 350,000 people, and is one of the four Ohio counties that compose the Cincinnati metropolitan region (which also extends into southeastern Indiana and Northern Kentucky...but anyway.) The road itself is actually an important roadway in that area.
What are they teaching these kids? Obviously this goes way beyond shop class.... Supposedly, young kids are much better at learning new concepts (especially languages) than disgruntled, addle-pated teens. Tech worker shortage - hah! This could be the wave of the future!
"Forget Montessori, Mommy and Daddy are sending you to DeVry PreSchool"
Plus they taught him proper U.S. driving etiquette:
"I told him he was going to get hurt, he'd better get out of the road - and he told me to shut up."
Wonder if he flipped her the bird?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I'm sorry, but I don't care how rude a kid is there is absolutely no reason to beat a child. I seriously hope that you never have children, just the thought of a child beater with kids makes me sick to my stomach. This is a sad world we live in!
---
After reading this story, the old Blue Oyster Cult song, "Career of Evil" keeps going through my head.
This kid must read /. Next: 6-year-old hotwires Popemobile, takes off through streets of Rome.
Posted by DonR:
Was anyone else worried that it took the day care center over an hour to notice that he was gone?
---
Donald Roeber
Maybe the kid didn't "hotwire" the car? It's possible that the guy at the store just made up the part about having the wires disconnected, so as to seem like a "victim" rather than a "contributor".
'Course, it's just a thought...
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
It's Obvious what the kid was doing, he must have wanted a place to put a car mounted mp3 player...
This guy was "floored"?????
I have absolutely no problem at all believing that the kid could have done that. When I was 7 (yes, I know that's older than 6) I got a reputation in my neighborhood for being able to fix things. Neighbors would show up with some stereo or something that didn't work, and either pay me to fix it or just say I could have it. Usually, It was as simple as unscrewing the case and connecting a wire or belt, or replacing a fuse.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I have to agree, using nicer language, that this story is not really news or even news for nerds. It is amusing, and I'm glad i saw it, but it shouldn't really be up next to "new computer headset" and "will linux beat Windows2000"
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
>I'm so glad you're ever vigilant, protecting my liberty when it's not even in danger.
God protects children and fools.
Sometimes he needs help.
LK
Posted by Open Matrix:
First let me say that this is a true story as told to me by my mom.
My brother at age 3 took the keys from my moms purse and got into the family truck, started the engine and since the truck (a standard) was already in first gear the truck went. My mom realized within minutes that he was gone. She looked outside and didn't see the truck and at first thought it was stolen but then she saw it in the neighbors yard with several neighbors gathered around. The neighbors said that he had managed to drive it between a couple of trees just barely wide enough for the truck to fit through(luck?) and several other amazing things that I can't think of right now and eventually bumped into a tree two lots down. The engine died and when the neighbors looked inside he was trying to start the truck again. Not exactly hotwiring but close enough!:-)
...and that he's headed towards the side of good, not evil.
What's wrong. It only takes me two. Ont to remove the safety. The other to pull the trigger.
So why aren't you out distrusting all authority? Time's a-wastin' LK. Get on the ball!
Well, when i was 6 years old, i already knew how to cuss and yell, and i told many stuck up adults with condescending additudes to shut up. It didn't matter if what they were saying had any merit, because the way in which they said it was so blatently offensive that they deserved what they got. According to my mother, once this well-intending 80 something year old man made a stupid condescending remark (you know the sort of dumb stuff people say to kids in funny voices) and i replied with "what kind of a f**king remark was that?!?". Luckily he was a little hard of hearing.
I guess my point is that if the person that pulled him over had possibly asked him where he was going, or offered help, or even just been polite about it, she probably wouldn't have gotten snapped at, and might have actually been able to help the kid, or at least engage him in conversation until the parents/cops/whoever could get there.
In any case, that is just the sort of bunghole thing i used to do when i was a kid... I mastered the art of electric stuff, firecrackers, etc... at an early age, and i can sympathize with the kid because he was probably as bored (or more so) than i was when i was that age, and he needed to go and seek something stimulating, and more importantly something under _his_ control. It's frustrating being a kid when adults assume you can't make plans on your own, so they force theirs on you. My parents were good about not doing that (that's probably why i never ran away, or blew anything important up, or whatever else) but i can't say as my various schools were as good.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Posted by FreeGestalt:
... which puts it at an almost three hour journey to the store. Frigging amazing kid, let me tell you --- and a pretty blind day care.
I hate to be the big skeptic, but I kinda doubt that this is true. Although according to USWestDex both businesses exist in the greater Fairfield Ohio area, a quick map check indicates that these two places are 11 miles (or so, depending on how you trust MapInfo) apart. Now that is a damn long way for a little tyke to be traveling (before he got the car, if you will remember).
Adult legs moving at a good clip put in about 4 miles an hour
Skeptometer = Redline
When I was 6, I used to take Tiger LCD games apart, small household appliances, telephones, and basically any small electronic unit I could get my hands on (Including my Commodore when I got it) and experiment with them. I didn't know of many other kids who did similar things, but it's not unheard of.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
After seeing children this age these days makes me sad. My three year old cousin can't comprehend a simple logic game (Bounce victims from a burning building to an ambilance,) and when we are doing nothing at all he stops gets a crazed look in his eyes and does that Power Rangers crap to me. And just about every other child I see is the same way. This article gave me new hope in the children, the people who will care for me when I play Quake XXXVI in a retired home. I sure as heck hope more children are like this, or else we would lapse back into barbaric apes.
At 6 I was able to turn on my dads system and play games by my self. Before that I used an old C64 to program BASIC and play those wonderful games (ohh...memories) At 10 I mastered Pascal and wrote my own game (Card Sharks, you get a card and guess if the next is higher or lower. Uses ASCII graphics. Started to add VGA graphics then I grew up.)
One things for sure, when I raise a kid, I'll be sure he get's his own system very early like I did (I must be dreaming, unless I find a geek-girl that ain't gonna happen.)
Come on, it wasn't really a kid. It was Mini Me. After Austin Powers 2, Dr. Evil and Mini Me landed in Hamilton, Ohio to see what trouble they could cause. Being so close to the home of Larry Flynt, they figured that there should be some evil waiting to happen.
One question that wasn't asked...
Where was the kid heading?
Just out for a drive around the neighborhood, or did he have a destination?
--T
_____________________ This Space for rent.
Obviously, the day care center didn't discover he was missing because he constructed a life-like replica of his head with play-dough, and made a dummy of himself during nap time. Duh!
Whether or not he is a genius, he's definitely got a healthy disrespect for authority and a serious will to drive. I'd be so proud if he were my boy. He's either a hacker or a racer I say get him a computer and kart and see what happens.
He didn't "rewire" anything...
All he did was plug in the battery.
Any parent knows that 6 year olds can put things together (ever heard of legos?)
Take two plastic shapes that fit together, put them close together, and any 3 year old will figure it out. A six year old had better be able to figure it out, or he's not going to be able to fix toast at 30.
He obviously learned this from something he saw on the Internet. A child could not possibly figure out how to plug a battery wire into a plug connection. We need to do more to protect our children from the Internet.
But seriously, if it was a Power-Wheels, you just plug one end of the wire plug into the recepticle and "vrooom." Most 2 year olds are probably capable of this.
You think the storeowner really pulled the wires out? Makes a decent cover for forgetting to lock down the vehicle...
I certainly wouldn't go pulling a kid off the side of the road. Not my problem. If I went and grabbed a kid out of his powerwheels car off the side of a highway I'd probably end up getting charged with child abuse myself just for grabbing the little brat.
Some whacko liberal California courts seem to think so. Nevada has officially passed a bill making spanking explicitly legal. And like it or not, physical pain is an excellent motivator in kids (or adults too). Don't do X and you won't get spanked. No one's talking about really beating the shit out of anyone here, but then some people see no difference between a spanking and a clubbing with a baseball bat. Do you?
Now if he had hotwired a real car this would make for an interesting story, those battery powered cars don't have that many wires besides that you think somebody would have seen him taking off from the store where he took it from, it 's not like they can go 30mph or anything.
The interesting part of the story is why the daycare didn't even know he was missing until the cops told them they had picked him up.
When I was in preschool I was thinking "Hum... I could crawl out the bathroom window and run outta here and would get in no trouble because I'm so young. The older I get the more trouble I can get into."
Someone needs to pull out the beatdown stick and displine the child.
~Kevin
:)
Just give him some Prozac. Get rid of all those anti-social tendencies and make your little geek-boy into a little girl!
The government will even pay for it! What more do you want?
-- Slashdot sucks.
i drive the highway that the kid was on just about every day. i can honestly say that i probably wouldn't have expected to see such a sight.
... people ten times his age have problems keeping from getting smashed up.
btw, its a very busy road. five lanes of 35 mph traffic
actually, the funniest thing i heard about this story was when a motorist (female) got out of her car to say "honey, you shouldn't be in the road, its dangerous (or something to that effect)" -- the kid replied "Shut Up!" ahhhh road rage, at such an early age.