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A comment on I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015). Parent comment

Re:I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptograp... by kingcharles on Friday January 28, 2022 @07:04PM (#30122256)
When I was 11 I social engineered the son of the computing teacher to get all the admin passwords. Then I fucked around with a whole bunch of stuff and showed a friend. When they figured out it'd been hacked they weren't sure who did it, but my buddy broke down very quickly and let them know lol.

I was banned from the computer lab for the whole of my secondary school years. It didn't matter though, because when I was 12 (~1989) the headmaster dropped computing from the school curriculum as "computers are a passing fad". They just used the computers for typing up essays after that.

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Re:I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptograp... by Anthony-G on Friday January 28, 2022 @07:50PM (#30122570)
> Computers are a passing fad.

That reminds me of the Decca record label executives rejecting the Beatles in 1962 because “guitar groups are on the way out”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_Decca_audition

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Re:I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptograp... by cbozeman on Saturday January 29, 2022 @09:49AM (#30126693)
It's hard not to be critical of this headmaster, but I do have to question both the intelligence and the wisdom of someone who, in 1989, could not clearly see computers had no chance of becoming a "passing fad".

Picking up a copy of The Wall Street Journal at any point in the previous ten years could have clearly indicated that... and any school at which there's a "headmaster"... I would expect the WSJ is not a foreign entity to them.

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Re:I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptograp... by kingcharles on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:27PM (#30156320)
The fact the parents allowed it to go through, in hindsight, is absurd. The computing teacher did try to teach us outside of school hours some times, but I failed the Computing GCSE (F grade), which is hilarious as at the exact same time I was being offered a job at Argonaut Games after Jez San tried out my 3D engine.
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