Saturday, February 10, 2001

Batman has got to be the coolest hero around. I mean, he's got all these nifty gadgets, he's knows all these tricky martial art-like moves, he's got some sort of innate sense of what's going on (similar to Spiderman's spider sense), I mean, he's just got this aura of cool.

As for super-villans I think are pretty cool, I'd definitely have to go with Magneto, arch-nemsis of Professor Charles Xavier, of the X-Men. I mean, if nothing else, a little force field, seemingly unlimited capacity for flight, and other metallurgical manipulation is awfully nifty, and powerful, no less.

Back to Batman though, I just watched Batman Returns, and I continue to think it's my personal favorite of the Batman movies (discounting those I haven't seen, being the animated ones). I mean, consider, it's got Keaton as Batman, and in my opinion, he was the best at it. It's got a very good looking villian, Michelle Pfeiffer playing Cat Woman, and best of all, it's got hordes of waddling penguins, albeit they are evil, and have explosives strapped to their back.

Anyhow, I'm debating whether or not to watch SNL, or to try to get some work done on Commodities, or my science fair project, or to just sit at my computer and "chat" with whoever's on. Hmmm....

Wednesday, February 07, 2001

My story for today: I got banned from using the school computers for an indefinite period of time.

I guess this all began last Tuesday. It was during a "Tech Team" meeting, and I was just playing around on the computer, looking for security flaws so that I could report them to Mr. Reynolds. During this time, I discovered the publicly accessible folders problem. I asked Mr. Reynolds (the computer lab supervisor) about it, and he said that it had been like that for a while. Of course, this was a pretty big concern to me, but I just accepted it at first and went about my business, further investigating the extent of this problem.

In doing this further investigation, I discovered that teacher's folders were publicly accessible, and immediately brought this to Mr. Reynolds' attention. He called in a higher admin, Mark somethingorrather, and he asked me how I did it. I went back, and showed him how I did. After this, he acknowledged the problem (students access to their own grades) and went back to the server closet, presumably to fix it.

The next day, the teachers' folders were now protected, yet the students' folders remained open. On Wednesday, the day being discussed, I did little more to further my investigation of blatant security holes. Consider the following analogy. We as students know that we don't have a right to privacy of files, from administration. The same applies to lockers, and their contents. The school can search them as they see fit, however, the locks are there if the students care to keep their peers out. So, why then, did the administration suddenly deny the students locks?

Anyhow, Thursday is when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Thursday after school, Alex Tyo and I were in the computer lab, spending some time further delving into the limits of our illegitimate access. A couple of friends were there too, and we were all just hanging around, the friends doing work, me and Alex investigating the flaw. So anyhow, even though we know that the teacher folders appear to be protected, we keep on tinkering around, and discover what may have developed into a greater flaw. What prevented further knowledge is the fact that shortly after we alerted Ms. Brooks (the teacher in the room) that we may have found another flaw, she called in Mr. Reynolds, who promptly kicked us out of the computer lab, and made sure that for the rest of the day, we couldn't go near any of the computers.

Ok, so fast forward to today. Today, during school, during the first couple periods, Alex gets nabbed by the Vice Principal to begin interrogation / accusation. He has to leave for a Spanish test, comes back later during the day, comes out banned from computer use. The following period, I get called in, get accused of many violations of acceptable use, all of which, in my mind, are either bogus threats used for intimidation purpose (i.e. Blogger during school, outside e-mail even under extreme circumstances, etc., bogus because many many many people do this stuff, yet I get crap for it...) or attacks that are unfounded, unreasonable, and based on rules that are unjust. Anyhow, I come out of this meeting confused, preoccupied with the fact that I may have missed my only ride home, and banned from school computer use.

Now, time to clear something up that a lot of people (including the administration) have harassed me about. Inculcation.Net. This website, prior to it's apparent deconstruction in light of the proverbial shit hitting the proverbial fan, was basically a place where somebody, whom even I do not know, contrary to popular belief, put together a means for collaboration on various assignments, as well as a forum for complaining about school. There was collaboration on Economics current events quizzes, and there was collaboration on English Vocabulary assignments. Then there was the post that seems to have fanned the flames of this ever growing problem. The post basically detailed how to abuse the security flaw, and encouraged nondestructive abuse as well.

Anyhow, this post now forever lost with the exception of the people who printed it, saved it, or authored it, was printed and used during the interrogation of myself and Alex Tyo. We were asked questions like "Did you publicize this?" or "Did you contribute in any way to authoring this?" Connected to this issue is the fact that apparently a lot of students seem to think that I am responsible for the maintenance of Inculcation.net. This is simply NOT TRUE. Here's what happened, in full, in spite of whatever I may have told you before, seeing as I've been spreading a lot of stories in order to perpetuate the shroud of mystery.

I started this with the intent to do stuff like Economics commodities, and I didn't know if that would be against any school policy, so I set up the domain, the hosting, the blogger account, etc. However, I never really took any substantial action in this regard. Here is where stories start to blur. I got an e-mail from some random freemail account (something@hotmail.com, I forget, and it's no longer in my Inbox) saying they'd take over. I was more than happy to oblige. I gave them the information they needed to take full control, passwords, account names, etc. And within a few days, I couldn't do anything more, during this time period, I also removed myself from the blogger account I had created, because they way I figured, I don't want accountability for this.

So anyhow, I kept on developing HTML stuff, like the implementation of the discussion board, etc., but really, it was just an e-mail address. non_compos_mentis_insurgent@hotmail.com. That's all I really knew about this person, and continues to remain all I really know. So, simply put, the person behind Inculcation.net is unknown to me. Yes, I've contributed a lot to discussion boards, and yes, I'll admit, I played a major role in it's creation, I'm sure, but I am not responsible what did get posted there about school network security. Maybe indirectly, because I did tell a few people who asked me how it's done, when I told them their files were accessible. Is it really a crime to let people know that their files are open? I, for one, had a lot of files I deleted immediately upon finding out, because there were a lot of files I was simply uncomfortable having my peers have access too. I don't mind if the administration can see it, but other students?

Anyhow, I hope that this has cleared up any confusion. I think I'm certainly not done with this. Another quick issue... on my report card, for what was originally a pass/fail course, I got a grade. A shitty grade at that. Nobody was told this was going to be a grade. I'm contesting that too. Aw damn. I just submitted an opinion article complaining about student government too. Damn, my school is gonna hate me.

One more thing: Question of the day: Can I be held accountable for information posted on my own website? I mean, that's totally out of school, and really beyond their jurisdiction, I would think. If they're persecuting kids on the grounds of what's on their website, that's really fucked.

Tuesday, February 06, 2001

What a wasted snow day. I could have gotten so much more work done. Well, at least it wasn't a total loss. My day pretty much went like this:

1. Get told at 5:57 AM it's a snow day.
2. Go back to sleep.
3. Wake up around 9:00 AM, 3 hours later than usual.
4. Neglect to eat breakfast for some reason.
5. Go downstairs to consider the options for the day, and check email.
6. Discover the following as items for a to do list:

  • Work on Java Set project
  • Physics Problems
  • Study for AP Stat
  • Read next chapter of The Great Gatsby
  • Fill out a number of forms, most importantly my science fair application due tomorrow.
7. Start work on Java Set problem, and make some headway into getting groups of 3 made using happy nested for-loops.
8. Stop to go eat something.
9. Come back downstairs, to do some physics work and read a chapter from The Great Gatsby.
10.Get bored, and realize that Oni came in the mail.
11. Promptly spend many hours playing Oni.
12. Realize the incredible waste of time that I just committed and get back to work, starting with
13. a shower.
14. Write what I did today so far.

So there you have it, an almost completely wasted snow day. Back to homework I go.