School days can be long and monotonous. Who hasn't spent many an hour staring at the clock and counting the seconds pass on by? I mean plenty of subjects are intriguing and we pay attention, but having a little fun to pass the time or garner a rise in popularity is always irresistible.
As the use of computers and technology grew, tinkering with school systems became that much easier.
So many students have figured out backways into the educational interwebs in order to wreak a little havoc. And as long as nobody released a virus or doxxed anyone... what's the harm? Let's have a little fun.
Redditor u/AtmosphereForsaken82 was wondering what shenanigans some of us have gotten into with technology and school, by asking:
How did you mess with computers at school?
I wish I had had the capability to run around the computer systems of yore. I would've sent Madonna music videos to everyone's screens. That would've been more productive than PE. At least I think so.
Let's Play
Knight Ageofempires GIF by Age Of Empires CommunityGiphy"Installed Age of Empires Two on each PC."
Gaming the System!
"So many gaming memories from school computers lol. Shared resource drives were the bane of our high school's existence, because I'm pretty sure we didn't have any IT staff, or if we did, the students were just smarter than them honestly."
"Among other things I remember stashing: Halo PC LAN, a SNES emulator with a handful of ROMs, computer tech typing assignments everyone would just copy and slightly modify. One kid had the Paris Hilton tape on there and watched it very openly in art class."
Control+ Alt+ Down... Voila...
"Screen shot desktop make as background... hide icons."
"I did this, but went one step further. Back in the day of Windows XP (and maybe earlier), control+alt+arrow key would flip the screen orientation. I.e. ctrl+alt+down would flip the screen upside down. So... Take screenshot, rotate image 180 degrees, control+alt+down... Voila."
"Suddenly their desktop is right side up but all their mouse movements are all reversed and their "icons" no longer work. Once came back to find my roommates monitor in uni upside down. Forgot I did it to them over the weekend. Teehee/oops?"
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While many of life's big events like weddings and births bring us joy, even the smallest of gestures or gifts can leave a lasting impression. Especially if y...The Backdoor...
"There was no internet when I was in school and MSDOS was the rule of the day, so no fancy hacking, downloading, or whacked out wallpaper. Instead, two of us were commissioned to write attendance software for the school. We put in a backdoor wherein any time either of us showed up as tardy or absent, the record was immediately deleted. We used but didn't abuse this privilege so as not to attract too much attention. It worked perfectly."
Nirvana
nirvana GIFGiphy"Late nineties, high school. I synced 5 computers to play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in a round. Teacher wasn't happy."
Nirvana. Now that sounds like an idea. You kids already play too many games online. And don't they teach hacking classes in high school these days?
15 Minutes
Cbs Love GIF by LoveIslandUSAGiphy"Created a shortcut saying to not click it. When someone did, given like 15 minutes later, the computer restarted. Any unsaved work was deleted. They can't complain because they clicked the icon."
F5
"It's not really messing with the computer but I used inspect element to change the text in my school's website in detention and the kid next to me thought I was hacking and told the teacher, I pressed F5 to refresh and the teacher told the kid off for trying to get me in trouble, he looked so confused when everything was back to normal, also my friend once rearranged the keys to spell swear words, no one noticed for weeks tbh."
The Tortoise
"By giving LOGO's turtle random high numbers before leaving the computer class, so the little fella would go bananas and scribble at speed of light until it covered all the screen. Probably that could be stopped by just pressing a key but it used to drive the teacher insane, and hearing him yelling and cursing was the best."
- V02D
Shut it Down!
"I shutdown all the computers in the lab from my computer, including the teachers. Most in the class knew that I had done it but they didn't mention it."
- Charn22
"In the early days of computing, when they became small enough for one to be shared by multiple users on a college campus, it became sport to crash the whole system. The admins opened the machine and physically altered the machine (which was the way back then) to include a new "crash" command, which took all the sport out of it."
Death
robot computer GIFGiphy"I hid the taskbar, the icons and disabled a lot of basic settings. Then I put the blue screen of death as the wallpaper."
All it takes is a couple of innocent clicks and the next the you know... chaos. What a way to get through the day. Kids can be so devious. LOL.
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