I don't think many people know that pulsing dual-wields works much better than holding them.
I personally enjoy the SMG/Magnum combo. Hold the trigger on the SMG; squeeze off rounds as quick as possible from the Magnum.
That's the only thing for which I find that weapon particularly useful.
Gamecube games currently take the longest to come down in price. Their best sellers cost $30 where the PS2 greatest hits only cost $20. I've also noticed that it takes many of their games a long time to come down in price compared to PS2 and XBOX.
While I agree that Nintendo games take forever to come down in price (I can -finally- buy Resident Evil 4 now.), I believe their best-sellers [the Players Choice titles] go for $20. Of course, the exception is Super Smash Bros. Melee, which does sell for $30, despite the fact it's over four years old and has sold six million units.
Well, I intentionally leaked the password. Yes, I leaked it knowing that it would spread to people who would abuse it. Of course, it was never my intent for people to start changing grades and compromising the system in such a serious manner.
And I -did- admit that a line must be drawn -- I personally think that line resides between use that's benign (which true hacks are) and wherever your use starts to result in any harm of significant magnitude to other people.
While I don't agree that the students should have been expelled, I personally would have liked to seen them banned from any further use of school computers for the duration of their highschool career, under that caveat that a violation would result in their expulsion.
My intent of releasing the password was, honestly, 1.) to brag (Everyone likes knowing and telling secrets), 2.) to pester our incompetent admins (They sure pester us:) and, 3.) in hopes that perhaps they would learn something from the experience. Using such a weak password, especially for at least TWO things that are important, is never a Good Idea. Perhaps they should have found software that doesn't show the password to anyone who cares to doubleclick the system tray icon.
I wasn't connected at all to the ordeal, or even questioned, mostly because I'm not [too] stupid. I was largely careful. I didn't go traipsing about VNCing random people just to flex my ego. Sure, I'll be the first to admit that my motives for letting the password leak were a bit childish, but I truthfully didn't think it had potential for such serious abuse.
At my highschool, VNC is installed on every networked computer. The admin and his underling use it to monitor [read: frighten] students when they suspect they're doing something they oughtn't be [wasting bandwidth] and to administer computers without getting off their fat asses. [Note: I find the latter a valid purpose, however.:] Sometime during my sophomore year, I had a moment of insight and clarity and realized that the VNC configuration dialog shows the VNC access password "hidden" behind asterisks. Calling upon my testicular fortitude, I Googled for a small utility that would show whatever was behind those asterisks. I ran it. The password materialized before me: "walterxx". WTF?!
Come on. "walterxx"? That's even worse than "Trexler50"... though slightly less-guessable. Further probing showed that "walter" was the BIOS password on computers where it's restricted to 6 characters and is "walterxx" on those where it isn't. But I diverge.
Anyhow, I've never used this information for any malevolent purposes myself (or any purpose at all, really), but I let the password "slip" to, I'd say, a good half-dozen people. Unfortunately, it spread, as all good and meaty information does, to several students less-imbued with morals than I. They began VNCing random people and installing malicious software (I think they were exploiting computers with a piece of software called 'Optix'....), including worms, on their computers. They apparently also changed grades.
This is clearly going too far. I see little harm in VNCing your friend in another class (or the same class:) and fucking with him [though I'd much prefer if you didn't], but the extent they went to is uncalled for. Luckily, my school didn't call in the feds, but dealed with the students "in-house". I think they received about 5 days of in-school suspension. I mean, I see the admins "fear-tactic" use of VNC just as Big-Brother and Orwellian as the next guy and condone closing it immediately on login, but as soon as you start harming other people, you know you've crossed the line.
Obviously, I'm not exactly sure what the students in this article did, but declaring it a felony is completely absurd. I doubt they were doing anything so significant to warrant more than in-school disciple as the USAGE POLICY STATES. If you're experimenting, the school ought to know that that's the tendency of teenagers, especially when given a challenge (and toys). The offenders should have been disciplined, not felonized.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think many people know that pulsing dual-wields works much better than holding them.
I personally enjoy the SMG/Magnum combo. Hold the trigger on the SMG; squeeze off rounds as quick as possible from the Magnum.
That's the only thing for which I find that weapon particularly useful.
Well, I intentionally leaked the password. Yes, I leaked it knowing that it would spread to people who would abuse it. Of course, it was never my intent for people to start changing grades and compromising the system in such a serious manner.
:) and, 3.) in hopes that perhaps they would learn something from the experience. Using such a weak password, especially for at least TWO things that are important, is never a Good Idea. Perhaps they should have found software that doesn't show the password to anyone who cares to doubleclick the system tray icon.
And I -did- admit that a line must be drawn -- I personally think that line resides between use that's benign (which true hacks are) and wherever your use starts to result in any harm of significant magnitude to other people.
While I don't agree that the students should have been expelled, I personally would have liked to seen them banned from any further use of school computers for the duration of their highschool career, under that caveat that a violation would result in their expulsion.
My intent of releasing the password was, honestly, 1.) to brag (Everyone likes knowing and telling secrets), 2.) to pester our incompetent admins (They sure pester us
I wasn't connected at all to the ordeal, or even questioned, mostly because I'm not [too] stupid. I was largely careful. I didn't go traipsing about VNCing random people just to flex my ego. Sure, I'll be the first to admit that my motives for letting the password leak were a bit childish, but I truthfully didn't think it had potential for such serious abuse.
At my highschool, VNC is installed on every networked computer. The admin and his underling use it to monitor [read: frighten] students when they suspect they're doing something they oughtn't be [wasting bandwidth] and to administer computers without getting off their fat asses. [Note: I find the latter a valid purpose, however. :] Sometime during my sophomore year, I had a moment of insight and clarity and realized that the VNC configuration dialog shows the VNC access password "hidden" behind asterisks. Calling upon my testicular fortitude, I Googled for a small utility that would show whatever was behind those asterisks. I ran it. The password materialized before me: "walterxx". WTF?!
Come on. "walterxx"? That's even worse than "Trexler50"... though slightly less-guessable. Further probing showed that "walter" was the BIOS password on computers where it's restricted to 6 characters and is "walterxx" on those where it isn't. But I diverge.
Anyhow, I've never used this information for any malevolent purposes myself (or any purpose at all, really), but I let the password "slip" to, I'd say, a good half-dozen people. Unfortunately, it spread, as all good and meaty information does, to several students less-imbued with morals than I. They began VNCing random people and installing malicious software (I think they were exploiting computers with a piece of software called 'Optix'....), including worms, on their computers. They apparently also changed grades.
This is clearly going too far. I see little harm in VNCing your friend in another class (or the same class :) and fucking with him [though I'd much prefer if you didn't], but the extent they went to is uncalled for. Luckily, my school didn't call in the feds, but dealed with the students "in-house". I think they received about 5 days of in-school suspension. I mean, I see the admins "fear-tactic" use of VNC just as Big-Brother and Orwellian as the next guy and condone closing it immediately on login, but as soon as you start harming other people, you know you've crossed the line.
Obviously, I'm not exactly sure what the students in this article did, but declaring it a felony is completely absurd. I doubt they were doing anything so significant to warrant more than in-school disciple as the USAGE POLICY STATES. If you're experimenting, the school ought to know that that's the tendency of teenagers, especially when given a challenge (and toys). The offenders should have been disciplined, not felonized.