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11-year-old takes school network by the horns
networkworld.com — When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Millbrook, Ala., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager. For Penn, it ’s been the experience of a lifetime, even getting to select and install a gateway security appliance largely by himself.
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Another win for open source! I love this story and wish more companies would realize exactly how much they can save by going to SourceForge.
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Someone get them on your IT staff STAT!
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Can I torrent on your network?
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Wow! Smart kid. Great digg!
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Cool -- pics of the wiz kid in action here: http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2008/032808 ...
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Why is this getting dugg down? Oh right, he didn't diss McAfee! Shame on you...
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what the fck is that last pic
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I see he still has to learn about cable management... oh well, he's 11.
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Big *****' deal. Technology prodigies are a dime a dozen in our modern society. There's always someone that you can turn to for your tech needs, and if you don't have someone to turn to, chances are, its you and and your friends come to you instead.
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Pshh, dude i can TOTALLY do what this kid did, and I'm only twice his age with twice the experience. And another thing "I was in diapers half my life" is no fscking excuse.....
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I totally Digg that heatsink on that Pentium 3, all 600mhz!
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So true through a lot of schools:
Six-grader Penn took control of the network reins after the existing network overseer left right before the start of the school year and Penn's mom Paula, the school librarian, had computing duties dropped in her lap.
Schools are turning to libraries as their "it departments".-
Like that's something new?
I was there. Librarians were the de facto IT department in the early 90's. -
As above said, this is nothing new at all. Our school's library was called the Media Center. I knew more about computers then the librarian/IT at my school. Even the old lady that teached Java programming couldent keep up with my programming. ***** I play MMO all day I barly coded back then.
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Damn, at 12 I was at 8th (I'm quite ahead at studies...). Just installed my first Linux system at 10. And hacked the whole school's network to download stuff. I even got access to the M$ NT server that held the notes and personal info system... But never did anything wrong ;)
Then some years after, I discovered bit-torrent... and started downloading like crazy (we had a T1 line!!)
Ahh, Good times!!!
Still good for the boy.
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McAfee - "The antivirus solution chosen by 11 year olds."
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And no one else.
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"Because most 11 year olds don't know any better."
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McAfee licks my nuts. Know what I use? Linux. Plus my router of course :P
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Wasn't what he really wanted, he had to make sure it fell within the school's budget (RTFA)
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The Enterprise edition of McAfee is actually quite good.
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Try Nod32, kid...
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His taste sucks in that aspect, but you gotta respect his taste for Kaspersky. It kind of even outs.
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***** A+ Certification.... I swear that boy has the Geek Squad mentality.
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Because Geek Squad is definitely better than anything you could achieve with an A+ Certification.
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If you can tell the difference between a cd/dvd-rom and a cup holder, you're able to be a Geek Squad Service Agent.
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If you can tell your peehole from a usb port then you're Geek Squad material.
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I have no love for geek squad or A+, but I doubt I could do either at 11. give the kid props for what he's been able to accomplish!
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I have a friend who once said to me "I just got my A+ programming certificate".....facepalm
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I doubt most Geek Squad members have the A+ certification.
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I dunno, is he any good at stealing porn off of peoples' computers?
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Haha. "Somethings wrong with it...I NEED MORE PROGRAMS TO FIX IT!!!"
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He chose MCAFEE for a school network? Fail.
And how do they expect to get that running on Sub-Win2k machines anyway?-
"The school took advantage of a Microsoft effort called Fresh Start that offers free software upgrades for schools with donated computers, switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000."
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I got the impression that he purchased software to run a network GATEWAY, not individual anti-malware suites for every oldass PC they run.
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No, he purchased hardware. It's an appliance! Like the Google search applicance. It's a blade that's designed to get mounted in a rack enclosure. The network traffic gets filtered through it, as it acts as a gateway (the gateway to WAN), and also from WAN to LAN, protecting the [entire] network behind it.
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"The school took advantage of a Microsoft effort called Fresh Start that offers free software upgrades for schools with donated computers, switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000."
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doshindude, more like DOUCHIN
he's 11 for christ sake, he probably gets more than you too =P -
He installed a "McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance". The article does not say he installed McAfee AV software on the computers. There is a difference. All traffic goes through the "McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance". I would still have AV software running on the machines though.
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RTFA
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There is a big difference between the McAfee home software and the McAfee corporate software. And no matter how much resources McAfee sucks up on a home computer it's still better than Norton.
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Man I feel like such a failure. This kid's got one hell of a bright future.
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McAffee you say? All I had to do when my old school ran that was tools > addons to disable the security = I mean the kid is smart, no doubt about that, just maybe not a super genius type.
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Smart kid, but Mcafee? That's the equivalent to using Norton.
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Come off it Mcafee is far better it doesn't detect itself as a virus for one.
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Meh norton sucks but symantec av is hotness.
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Also Mcafee does not randomly pop up and update in the middle of...1. Watching porn..2. Playing a FPS(Killing you and leaving your body to be tea-bagged to no end)...3. In the middle of a WoW(=gay) raid. Damn you Norton.
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Both McAfee and Norton are horrible... Use Avast!
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As I said earlier, the Enterprise edition of McAfee is actually quite good and many top businesses use it.
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The enterprise edition is really lightweight (or was when I used it) and can in no way be compared to norton.
NOD32 does a fine job imo.
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i never thought i read a digg story about a kid installing McAfee
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Why is everyone focusing on his choice of software product? The real accomplishment here is installing Windows on 60 machines, removing hardware, mapping a network, and just being able to do something he enjoys. He may not be some coding genius or a tech wiz yet, but he's pretty damned good for an 11 year old.
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Seriously, you work with what you have. When I was 11 I didn't even ***** know what the internet was. All I did was play Encarta MindMaze and Solitaire ...
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Yeah, from the comments above i got the mental picture of a bunch of thirty something basement dwellers talking ***** on an 11 year old...get a life guys, what the ***** were YOU doing when you were 11?
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While I agree with the sentiment, when they were 11 (if they are 30 now) computers weren't prevalent (or point-and-click) enough for this situation to have occurred for them. Maybe they're just jealous.
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Getting laid.
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Learning Fortran and German.
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Your mom. I happen to be 11 years older than you...
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Stop lying all of you.
I was masturbating. -
"what the ***** were YOU doing when you were 11?"
Playing playstation games, a year later getting a monster P3 clocked at 500mhz , and believe it or not for the next christmas asking for a linux distribution and getting 3 debian cd's (2.2 potato i think) -
tinkering on a compaq so ***** yo couch
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When I was 11 I was using older PCs to play DOS games. If I'm lucky my main PC was a 386. First it ran DOS and than Windows 3.11. I rearranged the boards inside (all ISA) and then had to deal with jumpers. My internet, the only choice I had was AOL in my area @ 35kbs.
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I guess everyone on digg was a child computer prodigy, quietly tinkering away in their room to become a... digg troll.
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Both of my parents were computer programmers, that's how they met. My mother did Cobol on an IBM key punch machine while my father worked for IBM. So he brought home computers that were going to be junked for me. It's not my problem that I was lucky and had a father who showed me how to do these simple tasks when I was very young. And since I'm an allergenic Asthmatic I couldn't go out side and play sports so my options were limited to books, TV, PC, & video games.
In short go screw your self.
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Starcon and Rogue ftw!
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Hell yeah, MindMaze rocked. Encarta '97 FTW.
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He didn't map a network. A Network Map is a hardware diagram, it deals with hardware. The article states that he mapped the network to see what computers had what software. WTF
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actually if the dumb peice of ***** tech people would let me touch anything i would have crashed there gay network when i was 11 and as for the software choice its all full of fail he should have opted for xubuntu linux to replace the fail that was windows 2000 and 98. Its not like linux is hard to install its so easy my 5 year old cousin can do it so i'm pretty sure this kid SHOULD know how to do it unless hes like many of the tech kids i know and are complete retards when it comes to anything computer maintinence or high grade tweaking
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I need this kid to have a chat with my CIO, they would be on about the same maturity level.
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