Kids 'using coding skills to hack' friends on games, expert says So AVG don't differentiate between the fact that 11 year olds are programming and the lack of a moral compass to guide how to use those skills. What next, withdraw chemistry from the cirriculum so nobody might figure out how to make stuff that goes bang?
Well hey, they learned how to code before even doing a computing A level, good for them, shows what can be learned without a linear course at a young age. On the other hand, I find the lack of parenting disturbing. Even so, they could at least be taught to use those skills for good, rather than Runescape monies.
Pretty impressive if the program is really from a 11 year old kid. Sure I can see the warning sign there, if the kid is making programs to steal account information from other players, in 5 years he is making programs to steal credit card information and so on. On other hand, it isn't so hard to make a window application nowadays with Visual Basic or similar program? You can pretty much make the whole GUI in rather simple editor and then just set the functions for every field and button. Propably possible to do with only few self written lines of code, it ain't anything like very complex console program where you have to write so many lines of code, that you will be bashing your head to the wall when you start fixing the errors you are getting (But still very impressive from a 11 year old, shows how easy it is really with right tools and maybe few tutorials)
I am not impressed. Most sites and software have practically 0 security. Like they don't even bother encrypting passwords. With Visual Basic or Flash you can make full GUI programs in minutes, and its packed with library functions already done, like a single line of code can allow you to download a picture from the web and load it onto the project where you want. Might as well have functions like "Tetris", and "SpaceInvader", where you pop in the graphics and voila a full game.
How many programs had you written by age 11, Goodbytes? I had done 1, on a school computer that had been donated by the MOD. It was not brilliant.
I think 2, if I recall correctly. I did them using QBaisc, considering the tools and programming languages available at the time.
Mmm, sounds like typical over exaggerated hysterical bulls**t They give one example, why not more if they are convinced there are lots of kids doing this, there might be one maybe two kids of that age they discovered that are exceptionally talented and could do this but people that often do such things like to tell others about it and the kid/s that coded this might well have given copies of the program to their friends at school, hell I would have The report seems to imply that lots of kids are computing and coding geniuses but most of the kids I know have as much interest in computers as they have in ancient history.
Certainly by AVG. I particulary liked this quote : "As more schools are educating people for programming in this early stage, before they are adults and understand the impact of what they're doing, this will continue to grow." said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at AVG. Which schools? Where? & surely if kids are learning real programming at that age it simply bodes well for their skills (and therefore prospects) in later life? To discourage education relevant to the modern world is just daft, in my opinion.
I started programming in Visual Basic at the age of 10. Within a few months I could make neat looking GUI apps with few problems. I think I will stand on the side of 'it's impressive for an 11 year old, but nevertheless not very difficult to make'. However, it is very impressive that whoever made this made it look genuine enough to fool some kids, and it is widespread enough to get into the news.
Good. I hope more kids become aware of the things that can happen on the net. Might make them feel more accountable for their actions, and reduce the frequency of Gabes Theory being right.
Ah, if I remember right that just runs it down in one column. Add a ";" to the print statement & it scrolls left to right too! (sigh) memories of haunting John Menzies, the staff never figured out how to break that loop, they always pulled the plug instead....
Hah, I put that as an easter egg on the Intranet at work. Once found, the kids get a welcome message 'Greetings Dr Falken...' with a list of programs including 'a nice game of chess' and 'global thermonuclear war'. Choose the latter and it'll run through a connection sequence with a 1 in 7 chance of dropping you at the NORAD login page. Kids who guess the username and password (or look at the page source) get a launch sequence, causality estimates and the 'strange game' message. The main website isn't so fancy. We still have chess as an easter egg with a short Matrix sequence if you do the Konami code on the right page.
good to see their doing something productive rather then taking drugs hanging around on street corners.
Well yeah, all the kids need to be down and cool like anonymous, so dark and cool, and, erm, anonymous.
