This reminds me of something I did when I was a kid. I put together a Windows XP shortcut that would shutdown the computer on a delay and pop up a message that told you that you were infected along with how to cancel the shutdown command, if you were quick enough.
Well, I was showing my friends in the computer lab and the teacher came up behind me and saw the message. He freaked out, I freaked out, so I didn’t get it canceled before the PC shutdown.
All of the sudden I was in the principals office accused of uploading a worm to their network. Coincidentally, there were issues effecting their entire network and I was the easiest target.
To this day I’m still furious at that teacher. Instead of listening to what I had to say and realizing it was a simple windows shortcut, he berated me and told me it WAS a virus because anything that shuts down a computer like that is.
He could have taken a look and been impressed that someone at that age had the ingenuity to put it together, but instead assumed the worse and killed my passion for computers for many years after. I have half a mind to find his contact information and tell him that he was, in fact, wrong and what that did to kill my passion.
I’ve noticed that most people are barely computer literate and don’t understand when you try to explain the difference between something like a shortcut and computer virus.
I actually dodged a bullet like that myself once. I used SMTP to send an email with a spoofed “from” address and got accused of hacking into someone’s email account. I lucked out that I got to plead my case with someone who understood networking.
This reminds me of something I did when I was a kid. I put together a Windows XP shortcut that would shutdown the computer on a delay and pop up a message that told you that you were infected along with how to cancel the shutdown command, if you were quick enough.
Well, I was showing my friends in the computer lab and the teacher came up behind me and saw the message. He freaked out, I freaked out, so I didn’t get it canceled before the PC shutdown.
All of the sudden I was in the principals office accused of uploading a worm to their network. Coincidentally, there were issues effecting their entire network and I was the easiest target.
To this day I’m still furious at that teacher. Instead of listening to what I had to say and realizing it was a simple windows shortcut, he berated me and told me it WAS a virus because anything that shuts down a computer like that is.
He could have taken a look and been impressed that someone at that age had the ingenuity to put it together, but instead assumed the worse and killed my passion for computers for many years after. I have half a mind to find his contact information and tell him that he was, in fact, wrong and what that did to kill my passion.
I’ve noticed that most people are barely computer literate and don’t understand when you try to explain the difference between something like a shortcut and computer virus.
I actually dodged a bullet like that myself once. I used SMTP to send an email with a spoofed “from” address and got accused of hacking into someone’s email account. I lucked out that I got to plead my case with someone who understood networking.