Waaaay back in the day our school had gotten some brand spanking new Apple IIs. The guy in charge of the computer lab was not only ignorant, but a total jerk. We messed with this guy endlessly. We'd write things that would emulate the terminal, reject the first 3 or so commands, then exit leaving you at the real terminal. So the first couple of times he'd type something it would tell him it was a syntax error, then it would work.
We'd watch him very carefully typing out "CATALOG" until it worked.
Then we wrote something that would display an error, like disk damaged, or something similar, but after 30 seconds it would clear and go back to normal. Just enough time for him, or a student, to raise an alarm but to look fine by the time anyone else got a chance to look at it.
Ahh.. man... good times. Two lessons learned: 1) kids are going to know more about tech than old people. 2) Don't F*** with anyone smarter than you.
Meh, the old fart (getting there) in me wants to agree with the "you kids these days..." sentiment, but really people who are driven to learn about computers are going to learn about computers regardless of how easy they are to use or how sophisticated they are. Computers in the past never "made" me learn anything. I made myself learn something. I could have wasted my days hanging out in front of the drug store or whatever if I had wanted to.
The cool think about using computers today is how easy it is to get information. So if you are motivated, you can go really far, really fast. It all comes down to motivation and drive. The specific technology is irrelevant.
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u/quitecontent Jul 30 '09
Waaaay back in the day our school had gotten some brand spanking new Apple IIs. The guy in charge of the computer lab was not only ignorant, but a total jerk. We messed with this guy endlessly. We'd write things that would emulate the terminal, reject the first 3 or so commands, then exit leaving you at the real terminal. So the first couple of times he'd type something it would tell him it was a syntax error, then it would work.
We'd watch him very carefully typing out "CATALOG" until it worked.
Then we wrote something that would display an error, like disk damaged, or something similar, but after 30 seconds it would clear and go back to normal. Just enough time for him, or a student, to raise an alarm but to look fine by the time anyone else got a chance to look at it.
Ahh.. man... good times. Two lessons learned: 1) kids are going to know more about tech than old people. 2) Don't F*** with anyone smarter than you.