My Neighbour, the hacker.



  • OK, first time poster here, so be gentle with me :)

     

    I've had my own place for years now, but I spent a long time (10+ years) living in shared accomodation - a large house in north london split into 10 bedrooms. During the course of those 10 years, I had many different housemates, but the one I will always remember best is the 'hacker' who lived in the room next to me for about a year.

     

    He was a young (20ish) Canadian guy studying sound engineering at a nearby college, and we got on pretty well. We'd hang outin each others rooms sometimes and he'd show me all the music stuff he was doing on his computer, which was genuinely impressive, and I'd show him various stuff I was up to on my computers, various bits of coding - at the time I was a beta-tester for BT for this new technology they were thinking of bringing out, called 'adsl'. I had a 2mb (for a while, both up and down, until they changed it) connection at a time when 56k modems were pretty cutting edge - anyway I was running stuff on the link, a web server, an IRC server and other stuff and he was amazed at what I was doing. That, combined with the fact I helped him out with a few problems with his PC and that was it, in his eyes I was a computer genius

     

    Then, he decided he wanted to be a 'hacker'. I tried in vain to describe to him the differences between 'hacker', 'cracker' and 'script kiddy' but he just wouldn't accept it. He was going to download all these 'kewl' hacking programs and 'own' people. dood. I lost track of the times I'd get an excited knock on the door and then get the story of his latest 'hacking' explots. It started to get annoying after a while, but we got on well in other ways, and he was my neighbour, so I lived with it.

     

    The ultimate moment came, however, when he hammered on my door and yelled at me to come to his room. I went next door and he told me that someone had tried to 'hack' him but he had caught him and was 'owning him back, dude!'. Investigation showed that he had installed a firewall on his PC (this was very unusual back then, people used to dial up to the net and sit on a public IP with no protection, generally) which had flagged up an attempted inbound connection, so he was running fping (floodping app, ICMP DoS) back at the IP address. He was so proud of himself.

     

    A quick reverse DNS lookup later and I worked out he was trying to DoS an AOL proxy server. By pinging it over a 56k modem. I didn't stop laughing for hours. 



  • @Zadkiel said:


    OK, first time poster here, so be gentle with me :)

    What kind of place do you think this is??? :-) 

    I've lurked around this site for a while now, even had a story posted a while ago.  But first time on the forums.

     Welcome!

    @Zadkiel said:


    at the time I was a beta-tester for BT for this new technology they were thinking of bringing out, called 'adsl'. I had a 2mb (for a while, both up and down, until they changed it) connection at a time when 56k modems were pretty cutting edge - anyway I was running stuff on the link, a web server, an IRC server and other stuff and he was amazed at what I was doing.
     

     Myself from years ago would be soooo jealous of you =)

     @Zadkiel said:


    A quick reverse DNS lookup later and I worked out he was trying to DoS an AOL proxy server. By pinging it over a 56k modem. I didn't stop laughing for hours.

     I heard about that.  It was the downfall of AOL.

    But seriously, did you let him in on the futility of the effort? 



  • @osuwizzard said:

    @Zadkiel said:


    at the time I was a beta-tester for BT for this new technology they were thinking of bringing out, called 'adsl'. I had a 2mb (for a while, both up and down, until they changed it) connection at a time when 56k modems were pretty cutting edge - anyway I was running stuff on the link, a web server, an IRC server and other stuff and he was amazed at what I was doing.
     

     Myself from years ago would be soooo jealous of you =)

     

    Yes, think of all the local ADSL BBS' that you could have signed into and downloaded 1.44MB partitioned RAR WaReZ with...oh wait, none, hehe.  That brings up another WTF, people who thought it was pronounced "Wah-rez" and not just a respelling of "wares".  I guess "Gamez" was "Gay-mez"?



  • @Soviut said:

    Myself from years ago would be soooo jealous of you
    Join the club.@Soviut said:
    That brings up another WTF, people who thought it was pronounced "Wah-rez" and not just a respelling of "wares".  I guess "Gamez" was "Gay-mez"?
    You should see what it's like in countries where english is not their native language. Here they pronounce tombraider tom-raider, alias ah-lias and lineage line-age.  And not just random people, this is how it's pronounced on tv as well. I cringe every time I hear one these.

     



  • @DOA said:

    You should see what it's like in countries where english is not their native language. Here they pronounce tombraider tom-raider, alias ah-lias and lineage line-age.  And not just random people, this is how it's pronounced on tv as well. I cringe every time I hear one these.
     

    I would like to see you pronounce "Bommelding" without an error. It's a simple dutch word. Go ahead.



  • @DOA said:

    You should see what it's like in countries where english is not their native language. Here they pronounce tombraider tom-raider, alias ah-lias and lineage line-age.  And not just random people, this is how it's pronounced on tv as well. I cringe every time I hear one these.

    I think about ANY dutch word is too much for him. Just listen to people from "those stooooooopid countries where Dutch is not their native language" pronounce "apartheid". EVEN on TV!!! The horror...


  • :belt_onion:

    @Dlareg said:

    I would like to see you pronounce "Bommelding" without an error. It's a simple dutch word. Go ahead.

    Which pronounciation would you like? The one that means "bomb alert" (by emphasizing the second syllable) or the one that means "silly little car" (by emphasizing the first syllable)?

    "Bom-melding" versus "Bommel-ding" I mean



  • In case anyone got confused english isn't my native language either. And I live in my own country. The point I'm making is that I'd like to see my copatriots get a clue and learn how to pronounce certain words if for no other reason than to avoid looking stupid in front of foreigners. Tourism is our largest industry after all. 



  •  @DOA said:

    In case anyone got confused english isn't my native language either. And I live in my own country. The point I'm making is that I'd like to see my copatriots get a clue and learn how to pronounce certain words if for no other reason than to avoid looking stupid in front of foreigners. Tourism is our largest industry after all. 

     

    Shit man, you have your own country?! 



  • @DOA said:

    .@Soviut said:
    That brings up another WTF, people who thought it was
    pronounced "Wah-rez" and not just a respelling of "wares".  I guess "Gamez"
    was "Gay-mez"?
    You should see what it's like in countries where english
    is not their native language. Here they pronounce tombraider tom-raider, alias
    ah-lias and lineage line-age.  And not just random people, this is how it's
    pronounced on tv as well. I cringe every time I hear one these.

    "Warez" was loaned/mutated into Russian as well, but here it is pronounced "wah-RYOZ".
    Now cringe.



  • @Zadkiel said:

    which had flagged up an attempted inbound connection,

    <censored>CSE exam question number <whatever>:

    "Your computer has just received a packet from the network. What will you do?"



  • @osuwizzard said:

    Welcome!
     

    Thank you :)

    @osuwizzard said:

    Myself from years ago would be soooo jealous of you =)

    It went on for a really long time. I think I was a 'tester' for about 2 years all told. The first year of which was 2mb/2mb and then they dropped it to 2/1 and then to 2/512. Most of the work they were doing was on a content portal, they had this special site with streaming video (movie clips, cartoons etc) and all this other content for the extra bandwidth you had available, but I hardly ever used it, except when my 'duty' as a beta-tester guilted me into it. I guess I wasn't the only one, because they scrapped the whole thing when they went retail.

    I left BT years later, but for a long time my BT ADSL customer number was 00000009 :) 

    Also of interest was how they condensed the equipment down. For most of the 2 years I had this huge pile of kit, 4 boxes, each larger than a modern fully-featured ADSL2+ wireless router/modem. The first was a splitter (essentially, a microfilter), the second was labelled 'bridge' then came the modem, and finally the router. Then when it went retail they came and took it all away and replaced it with the dreaded and hated alcatel 'frog'. I wished they had left me the old big kit, at least those didn't need rebooting twice a day.

     Anyway, back to the story:

    @osuwizzard said:

    But seriously, did you let him in on the futility of the effort? 

    I tried, in between the laughter, but he just didn't get it. He didn't even understand how the program worked, to him it was just a magic program you ran and it made the IP stop working, so trying to explain *why* it was futile would have required far more effort than I was willing to put in.

    Oh, and he ended *every* sentence with the word dude. dude.

    Zadkiel



  • Damn, I thought for sure he had pwned up 127.something :)



  • @bjolling said:

    @Dlareg said:

    I would like to see you pronounce "Bommelding" without an error. It's a simple dutch word. Go ahead.

    Which pronounciation would you like? The one that means "bomb alert" (by emphasizing the second syllable) or the one that means "silly little car" (by emphasizing the first syllable)?

    "Bom-melding" versus "Bommel-ding" I mean

     

    Dutch is awesome. I was in nl a few weeks ago, and my host pointed out this sign which had a two-sylable word... can't remember it now, but I managed to pronounce it correctly, which he said was unusual for an american. Anyway, he said that the word actually means, "Nice tits!" but that it had been colloquialized into a synonym for "Excellent!". We ended up at this nice steakhouse in The Hague, and above the description of the steak I got on the menu, it said, "Nice tits!"

    Dutch is awesome.

    Finnish is pretty good, too, though - I was in Finland before that, and apparently, in Finnish, the word for "frustrated" is literally, "to want sex but be unable to get it". True...



  • @PeriSoft said:

    We ended up at this nice steakhouse in The Hague, and above the description of the steak I got on the menu, it said, "Nice tits!"

    ...and apparently, in Finnish, the word for "frustrated" is literally, "to want sex but be unable to get it". True...

     

     

    I'm moving to Europe now.  Nice meeting you, everyone in the US... 



  • @burntfuse said:

    I'm moving to Europe now.  Nice meeting you, everyone in the US... 

    So you want to live in a place where "nice tits" is more likely to result in heartburn than orgasm?  And where sex is apparently so rare they just decided to use sexual frustration to represent all forms of frustration? 



  • @PeriSoft said:

    I was in nl a few weeks ago, and my host pointed out this sign which had a two-sylable word... can't remember it now, but I managed to pronounce it correctly, which he said was unusual for an american. Anyway, he said that the word actually means, "Nice tits!" but that it had been colloquialized into a synonym for "Excellent!". We ended up at this nice steakhouse in The Hague, and above the description of the steak I got on the menu, it said, "Nice tits!"
     

    I can't think of such a word.

    Where was this sign, exactly? 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    So you want to live in a place where "nice tits" is more likely to result in heartburn than orgasm?  And where sex is apparently so rare they just decided to use sexual frustration to represent all forms of frustration? 

     

     

    I was thinking of it more like this: in a place where even common expressions involve sex, well, there would probably be a whole lot more sex going on.



  • @burntfuse said:

    I was thinking of it more like this: in a place where even common expressions involve sex, well, there would probably be a whole lot more sex going on.

    Could be, but the examples posted could definitely be seen from more than one angle.  Now, if the word for "favor" is also the word for "blowjob", I think you would have a point.  Just avoid France where "orgasm" is analgous to "death". 



  • @dhromed said:

    @PeriSoft said:

    ... Anyway, he said that the word actually means, "Nice tits!" but that it had been colloquialized into a synonym for "Excellent!". ..
     

    I can't think of such a word. ...

    Me neither... Damn... You sure he wasn't just doing of those old *fool the foreigner* tricks?

    Of iets in het plat-haags misschien?



  • @DOA said:

    .@Soviut said:
    That brings up another WTF, people who thought it was pronounced "Wah-rez" and not just a respelling of "wares".  I guess "Gamez" was "Gay-mez"?
    You should see what it's like in countries where english is not their native language. Here they pronounce tombraider tom-raider, alias ah-lias and lineage line-age.  And not just random people, this is how it's pronounced on tv as well. I cringe every time I hear one these.
    Same here, though I can say that at least we do try to keep the original English pronounciation, unlike the Spaniards that love translating every single thing into Spanish, or pronounce it in ways that make me cringe. Usually they wrongly translate terms when they do, like instead of using archivos (files), they use ficheros (chips, like in casino chips; or the small cards you used to find in the library index).

    Then of course are the "pronounciation nazis" who somehow insist on saying hatmail, hallywood, gaggle (they forget how to pronounce oo, it seems) and even have the nerve of questioning me, when English is actually my second-native language, as I lived my first 7 years in the U.S. My favorite example, however, has been see-you-per-man.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Same here, though I can say that at least we do try to keep the original English pronounciation, unlike the Spaniards that love translating every single thing into Spanish, or pronounce it in ways that make me cringe.

    Have they been talking to the French?


  • @Kefer said:

    Me neither... Damn... You sure he wasn't just doing of those old *fool the foreigner* tricks?

    Of iets in het plat-haags misschien?

     

    Must be one of those. If you look in synoniemen.net (synonyms.net) none off those words even resembles anything like "breast". (the second option he gave was that it was a word of the the Hague dialect)



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Usually they wrongly translate terms when they do, like instead of using archivos (files), they use ficheros (chips, like in casino chips; or the small cards you used to find in the library index).

    Could it be that ficheros originally was used to refer to the file system records, and was by extension applied to the files themselves?

    Spanish computer terms sometimes vary from Latin American ones, for example, in Spain ordenador (which is similar to the French ordinateur) is used for computer, whereas in Latin America computadora is more commonly used, so it could be that archivos is used in some places but not others.


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