Hackers and GEEKS

Ok if this post is wierd..
its because I am wired and peppy as **** cuz of coffee, pepsi, and lots of sugar n creamer.. (For the pepsi of course <G> )

N e ways.

I was thinking about my life

I grew up with the wooden spoon. Hick Like town. I was a geek tho through and through (I think its genetic but both my parents are hicks)

Anyways, I wasnt getting along with any of the dumb hick or gang croud. at school... I was failing. (Guess I didnt care)

I look in the news paper and read about Choice 2000.. And ONLINE public Highschool

http://www.choice2000.org

I went to that school which was BBS based (Worldgroup GALACTICOMM)
Gawd it was create.. gotta love the registry of users and the teleconference..
I went to that school for pretty much my whole high school life.

That is how I became a TRUE geek.

After the first year the school went Internet based through the telnet protocal.

that was when it happened.. Boy meets NET. Your life is about to change..
First I was in it for all the dirty pictures.. but after that wore off. And I was on my windows 3.11 for workgroups with TCPmanager, dialing up to a backyard ISP and going to school..

I found many things..
first it was the jolly roger cook book
then the anarchist cookbook..
then it was the warez scene.
and the movie "HACKERS" came out..


I was INSPIRED!
****, I was a geek back then but look at these cool hollywood people. (I know it sounds like a crappy newbie but back then i had no life.. I think I went outside like an hour a year .. if that.. and only at night.. I slept all day and had a windows macro log me into class and log everything while i was sleeping..)

I was truely a VAMPIRE.

Then I found light... SLACKWARE LINUX

Loaded linux up (PAIN IN THE ASS TO CONFIGURE) and learned to love LYNX (No my computer was crap it wouldnt load xwindows not enuff ram)

I found this exploit called BONK (Yes i used to be half script kiddie)

I found bonk because I was looking for code for my C class..

I read the txt file accompanying it on an ftp..

Bonk - Fragmented packet proggie DOS attack of some sort.

I decided to see what it did..

I put my schools TELNET address in the command line.. Ran it..

It quoted the word <BONK> six or seven times on my screen as it sent packets

then stopped

It wrote "SUCCESS" and terminated..
next thing I knew.. My school wasnt answering connections.. Hmm... I sat there thinking "What the hell" and then it hit me.. I was the happiest man in the world.. I CRASHED MY SCHOOL USING LINUX.. Tho it was completely Script kiddie.. it was beautiful.. I was a new man...

Well it lasted an hour until i got a phone call telling me I was suspended.... but hey.. IT WAS WORTH IT!!1


anyways from there my inspiration in learning how to hack became extremely intense..


And thats why I am here...



Ok well there is my life story..

Would love to hear some of you guy's...

heh L8R

Interesting story there Evilseed, hehe...mine's quite a bit different but here goes. Mine will start with HS, as before that it was just screwing around with the C64/etc...

1990 - Start HS thinking I was going to be in a different world where I'd be around my peers, etc. Boy was I wrong, I ended up being around the same losers who were just older and then cared about things like fashion/image/etc. ROTC was the only thing I really did good (classes with numbers were good too) until I got into the 10th grade computer class. The whole 'this is your keyboard, this is your mouse' regime put me to sleep and I ended up with a 99 because the teacher gave me a 99 on my exam saying "I didn't deserve a 100 because I slept all year". I continue with ROTC and computers (parents had a PB Legend 18CD that I paid for the ISP for a telnet session to the college, hehe) until I graduated. Big thing for me was networking BNC/Coax/ARC from the library to the office to the administration building. This done while others are interested in going out on friday nights, dances, football games, etc...

1994 - graduated HS and couldn't wait to get into college where I thought once again I'd be in a different world with my peers, etc etc you know the drill. Wrong. Now those same fscknuts aren't interested in computers like I am, they're wanting to go out, get drunk, get laid (great but there *are* other things to do), and other non-important things to me. Once again, separated from the "normal" crowd to do my own thing. Lasted one year before I got an offer to go to Wash. DC for a sysop job for a startup company at 25k a year. This entailed learning "unix"...something I had no idea of outside of the telnet for the mud I played (Sanctuary/Turning Wheel/Astral Void anyone?). So I picked up a copy of the "Unix in a Nutshell" by O'Reilly.

<fast forward 5 years of HP/AIX/Solaris/Red Hat/Slackware/BSD and other unix/linux OS'/NT/Windows everything>

Year and a half ago: met dreamy gamer chick who's into online rp boards and loves playing video games with me (Diablo 2, etc). Rox0r on!

14:32 12/17/01: typing right now, hehe....

That about answers all of my history with mainstream "professional" computer experience. So far, I'm 14 years in (started at 12) and no college after that first year.

I love muds..

Ever played "Legend of the Red Dragon"

or "Usurper"

heh

Lets see. I think I got my first puter when I was like 4 or so. My dad and I started learning how to program our own games. Not that I remember much programming, but oh well. I really got into it when I found a guest account at MSU that didn't have a password. Imagine, a free dialup account. And this was back in 89. It was really expensive back the, so I was really happy. That was when you paid by the minute to connect, but I found a way on without paying. Well, that was when I started finding muds and other fun ways to talk to people online. Well, it all just developed from there. I remember when the WWW came out, I thought it was the stupist thing possible. It was so damn slow over a 14.4 connection. Well, they really haven't improved it any if you are on dialup. Oh well.

I guess mines a whimsical tail about booze guns and computers, well actualy I didn't get a pc till hs so it's just booze and guns and drugs too can't forget the drugs.

Quote:

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Originally posted by zepherin
I guess mines a whimsical tail about booze guns and computers, well actualy I didn't get a pc till hs so it's just booze and guns and drugs too can't forget the drugs.

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That sounds a lot like my high school story, except that I'm still living it. I'm mostly into guns and computers...not a whole lot of booze. But since I was diagnosed with depression, the guns have been temporarily taken away. :( That's a SURE way to help...take away one of the things I love the most. That's also where the drugs come in..PAXIL! :D That makes computers, guns, and drugs....we're not all that different from one another! :bigsmile:

I finally talked my parents into buying a computer when I was a senior in HS, 1995...the good ol' Packard Bell (remember them?). Ran Win311 until the 95 update (had to have it...Start me up!)...100MHz pentium w/ 8 MB RAM (doesn't get any better than this, dad!) Bought the 'DOS for Dummies' book...read it and started playing around with commands (-h -s -a, etc.), and soon had to format and reload the foolish 'recovery disk' that all prepackaged comps came with. Eventually learned how to strip the PB interface (it looked like a library thing with point and click graphic icons in the screen...click on the library = reference software, globe = internet access, etc.) out of the system, left with the Windows GUI...(Start me UP!). Soon learned that I couldn't play classic games without DOS, like the original DOOM, and (my favorite, i still play it...)Master of Magic . Eventually, I started downloading drivers, etc(through a long distance BBS, at the time) and learned how to flash my BIOS...sigh, format and reload again... then it ended...no more computer, as i inadvertantly fried my motherboard while trying to upgrade from the onboard video card to a...damn, i forget what it was called(it came with a game called 'Scorched Earth'...a 3D sim, and the first MechWarrior)... anyways, after that, i fell out of knowledge, until a few years later, when i began screwing around with friends' comps, and based upon what i had learned originally...just kind of adapted to things, and then adapted again, and then again, and...here I am, still learning...

Ouroboros

Right on! Down with lame-o hardware! PB hardware back in the day wasn't anything to write home about...I remember my first major screwup was killing the back-plane bus (remember those vertical cards?) by installing a "tower" video card backwards into the ISA slot just because I couldn't get it to fit right the other way (wonder why)...

The thing people don't realize is that you have to constantly continue screwing around with things because if you don't, you'll fall out of said knowledge (as stated by Ouroboros) very quickly.
It's an ongoing education. As it is, my sister graduated from college last saturday and while she used computers the *entire* time (had MUCH more exposure than I was given), she's dumb as a freaking brick when it comes to troubleshooting anything on it.
Maybe it's not important to some people, but man, if computers aren't everywhere nowadays, it would seem to pay off if people understood how they worked to a degree. Most people view computers like the power company. You flip the switch and booya, the lights come on. All that without knowing how the blasted thing works.

Geeks unite! Down with nerds! (booksmarts don't really help at all here...)

I just watched the movie: "the net"
:D

I was a total math, chemistry and electronics freak growing up. My parents got really pissed off more than once when I took some peice of electronics (calculator, radio, atari) apart to see what was in there and how it all worked. Yes... i had a chemistry experiment blow up, but nobody or anything for that matter got hurt. Scared the hell out of my mom though. :D

I didn't have my own computer when I was in grade-high school ( I am in my late twenties), what I did have though was a University Library within walking distance, and they had computers (mostly dumb terminals), lots of them, running VMS and Unix. All the programming books a kid could want on the shelves too. So, I began reading and playing and the next thing I knew I was *on* the University server with an account that did not beliong to me. I did not do anything malicious, just took a look around and then made my exit quietly.

When I graduated High School, I went back to that University and enrolled as a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Major. 5 outstanding years worth, I had a great time, drank lots of beer, ate a lot of pizza and asian food, became a little less of a geek on the outside, and still much more of one on the inside. Yes.... I am the adult who takes his Hewlet Packard 48GX RPN calculator to the grocery store. Where is my pocket protector? :D ( lmao, I have Doom for my 48GX, I love HP calculators!!!!)

And so, 6 years after University I am still interested in what first caught my attention with computers; programming, games, and security.

damn everyone has long posts, but they are good and worthy of reading. Souleman good pic.

I remember what that video card was - a Matrox Mystique! Had a clown/jester on the box...

I also attempted, successfully, to install a brand spankin' new 28.8 Zoom! Modem, which never worked correctly, as the factory installed...ready?...an INTEGRATED SOUNDCARD/MODEM...sigh...come to think of it, if I had gotten that vid card in without frying the motherboard, it wouldn't have worked either, as the vid chips were integrated into the motherboard(killed 2 birds with one stone, in retrospect) also, and i wouldn't have known how to fix it at the time...sigh...:rolleyes:

Ouroboros

Well I feel that it is my turn to elaborate on my life.

I love it. life is so cool. I meet cool people everyday, i learn new things every day. It is a good thing.

I live in Kailua, Hawaii(good), I recently moved a couple months ago from Hickam AFB, Hawaii (bad). (btw lived in maryland for a year or two but dont remeber anything i was 1 or 2 at the time).
anyways my family's first computer was one of those old macs from the late 80s i believe(like a computer in a single metal box very cool) than a crappy, newer mac. it was ok but i didnt learn much from it. then, a few years ago my dad finally gave into getting a windows computer ( when i think back it wasnt that long ago at all and to look at what i can do now {not saying that windows is good but it opened a lot of "windows" for me. [get it ha ha. nm.]}) one of my brothers friends then introduced me to mIRC and i was amazed. at first my brother wouldnt let me use it because he didnt want me to get him kicked off somehow plus it had taken him a long time to learn how to use it. In about a 2 days I vastly exceed his knowledge of mIRC by myself, and found myself d/ling everything i could including the fateful, innumerable, hacker texts out there and read and read and read. At the same time I got into the warez scene and made my self a few bucks now and then. I thought now " my god, what the hell did i miss during my life. there is so much knowledge here."
My dad vollunteered for a library so i would occasionaly visit there to go check out there computer books and learned more from there. they even had computers that i could try to crack so i could use it. didnt really work out. mostly because the ones i could use were broken.
High school begins. I meet my sweetheart and destroy the school one fire after the another (yet it still stands. DAMN, DAMN this confounded place of bordem and hellish torture!!!) just when i enter HS the stars and the planets soon fall into some ****ed up allignment and i fall in love with marijuana (mind you HAWAII marijuana:eek: :eek: :eek: )well thats a whole other forever life altering post.
anyways my HS recuires us to vollunteer someplace so i volunteer at a network for a local hospital. My job was to help people fix there computer, no real network stuff. but I was handsomely rewarded with my very own *FREE* 1yr old Dell Optiplex GX110 800mhz 10gb HD 256ram valued at $1,500. for helping them out a lot.
Now I can learn even more.
conclusion

I know sooo much (not compared to a lot of you out there. Socrates said; ' the only way to know everything is to understand you know nothing' and i live by that, therefore there is always something to learn.) and through learning about hacking/networking/computers/programming/etc..
i have but my self a stairway to a great paying job and satisfying life (hopefully). I uphold the true hacker way of learning, not destroying and will continue to do so.

all im saying is that im only 16 (just had my birthday), I have barley taken a step into this world and there is som much more i have to do. so ...
...

*

what just happened?!

"DUDE, I havent seen anybody smoke a 40 so fast!!!!"

"yeah man, you were all talking about what your life was like."

huh?

nevermind. hey man is there any left.

"no."

damn. lets go check out the ocean. its so trippy right now.

"okay"

It was AD 1982
It was the mighty TI99-4A
16k of ram
the only os was the built=in BASIC
you could do neat stuff like:
10. print "help I'm stuck inside this computer"
20. goto 10
RUN
It was AD 1995
It was the mighty 286
You had ALL POWER in your hands!
like:
format a:/s
Who knows where it will all lead?:cool:

I still remember having my Acermate, having an Adlib soundcard and running Microprose games. The dot matrix printer,
god it seems like it whas yesterday.

i'm still in HS and it sucks

i got my first computer, a 386 and i was a newbie gamer at everything.
then i started getting really good at games. one day i heard on Times For Kids that some kids got filthy rich by making their own games. ever since then, i've been studying as much as i can in CS&E and programming, which lead to networking and internet, which lead to cracking, which lead encryption and somewhere along the way i picked up philosophy, advanced mathematics, physics, and linguistics.

anyways, the kids in my HS suck ass because i'll be talking about something technical with my friends and some dumb blonde will interrupt us and say something completely inane. although, she is really hot...

oh, i don't crack programs anymore....freeware for all!!!

i love linux and don't waste your time with antipoints

Good OLD AMIGA 500. Best friends through thick and thin. Then came big blue and crushed the poor Amiga into obscurity....... DAMN DAMN DAMN BIG BLUE!!!!!

Remember space invaders???

I loved that game.

I've been interested in computers ever since but never focused on them until recently.

I hated HS and graduated in 2.5 years. My BF was a major geek. That should have been my first clue. I then worked for a couple of years in sucky jobs and then went to college where I majored in Medieval History.

After college worked in HR *gagg* almost killed me. I had taken a lot of computer classes i.e. unix, programming etc. in college for fun but never thought of it as a career. Finally went to a counselor who steared me towards working in the tech field where I could finally put all those computer classes to work.

I love it. :)

First computer I touched was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A (built in 1980) My dad wrote some games for it so I could play. The thing used cassettes to save data! btw: These cassettes ar now very cool to use as a DJ intro (When you play them as audio cassettes you get a sound like when you listen to a analog modem connection, without the rumble). In the meantime that I played with the Texas and the BASIC on it, my dad had already upgraded to a 8086 @8Mhz / 64Kb. LOL current desktop @1800Mhz / 512Mb. It's unbelievable how fast the industry developed powerfull affordable computers.

My dad got me a CBM64

It rocked... I started basic, ended up writing machine code...

I got my own 286AT late 80-s and it was like heaven... the 256color greyscale images...
WOW, that's reality...

Now my AMD1000 is to slow for XP, my PII300 is even faster, but hey, it runs LINUX....

Long live the free software community.....

When you are talking tech stuff
with your friends,
and a really "hot " chick comes up and
says something lame and off topic,
here's what you do.
Say "hi judy(sally,susie),did you join the
drama club? I hear they're doing
Romeo and Juliet. I think you'd make
a great Juliet. I just LOVE that story..."
then you stare into her eyes and say
"It's about this guy and this girl
from totally different backgrounds,
different worlds, and how they manage
to fall madly in love with each other."
You can talk computers with your
buddies some other time.
:cool:

It all started for me when I was around eight I think. I went to my moms work and they had windows for workgroups. I love messing with that thing. I just wanted to know how it worked. About four years ago my mom and my sister pitched in for a computer. The same computer I'm using now. A win95 box. I loved messing with it. Then one day I came across some web site and I downloaded a trojan. I didn't even know what it was supposed to do. Then some girl told me she could get rid of it. She said she had a program called sub7 and she could go in and take it out. I downloaded the server and clicked on it(I didn't know what it did at the time). I gave her my ip and she went in. I was amazed, I didn't know you could do that with a computer. Then after that I was a script kiddie for a long time thinking I was a real "hacker". I got out of that and I learned about how to break into things without trojans. Now I'm learning c++ and I just keep learning new things. I cant wait till I get linux. I'm done with breaking into people's computers for no reason now. But if I'm bored I'll mess up a kiddie porn site just for kicks. Well I'm still learning and that's never going to stop.