4. Does your child read hacking manuals?

If you pay close attention to your son's reading habits, as I do, you will be able to determine a great deal about his opinions and hobbies. Children are at their most impressionable in the teenage years. Any father who has had a seventeen year old daughter attempt to sneak out on a date wearing make up and perfume is well aware of the effect that improper influences can have on inexperienced minds.
There are, unfortunately, many hacking manuals available in bookshops today. A few titles to be on the lookout for are: "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson; "Neuromancer" by William Gibson; "Programming with Perl" by Timothy O'Reilly; "Geeks" by Jon Katz; "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling; "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland; "Hackers" by Steven Levy; and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond.
If you find any of these hacking manuals in your child's possession, confiscate them immediately. You should also petition local booksellers to remove these titles from their shelves. You may meet with some resistance at first, but even booksellers have to bow to community pressure.

5. How much time does your child spend using the computer each day?
If your son spends more than thirty minutes each day on the computer, he may be using it to DOS other peoples sites. DOSing involves gaining access to the "command prompt" on other people's machines, and using it to tie up vital internet services. This can take up to eight hours. If your son is doing this, he is breaking the law, and you should stop him immediately. The safest policy is to limit your children's access to the computer to a maximum of forty-five minutes each day.

6. Does your son use Quake?
Quake is an online virtual reality used by hackers. It is a popular meeting place and training ground, where they discuss hacking and train in the use of various firearms. Many hackers develop anti-social tendencies due to the use of this virtual world, and it may cause erratic behaviour at home and at school.
If your son is using Quake, you should make hime understand that this is not acceptable to you. You should ensure all the firearms in your house are carefully locked away, and have trigger locks installed. You should also bring your concerns to the attention of his school.

7. Is your son becoming argumentative and surly in his social behaviour?
As a child enters the electronic world of hacking, he may become disaffected with the real world. He may lose the ability to control his actions, or judge the rightness or wrongness of a course of behaviour. This will manifest itself soonest in the way he treats others. Those whom he disagrees with will be met with scorn, bitterness, and even foul language. He may utter threats of violence of a real or electronic nature.
Even when confronted, your son will probably find it difficult to talk about this problem to you. He will probably claim that there is no problem, and that you are imagining things. He may tell you that it is you who has the problem, and you should "back off" and "stop smothering him." Do not allow yourself to be deceived. You are the only chance your son has, even if he doesn't understand the situation he is in. Keep trying to get through to him, no matter how much he retreats into himself.

8. Is your son obsessed with "Lunix"?
BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.
Your son may try to install "lunix" on your hard drive. If he is careful, you may not notice its presence, however, lunix is a capricious beast, and if handled incorrectly, your son may damage your computer, and even break it completely by deleting Windows, at which point you will have to have your computer repaired by a professional.
If you see the word "LILO" during your windows startup (just after you turn the machine on), your son has installed lunix. In order to get rid of it, you will have to send your computer back to the manufacturer, and have them fit a new hard drive. Lunix is extremely dangerous software, and cannot be removed without destroying part of your hard disk surface.

First off, this post is so full of misinformation that the only thing I can pray for is that this is a huge joke on dear Reginald's behalf and he is attempting to cause an uproar which has happened. If not;

Lord of the uninformed, thy name is T Reginald Gibbons.

First off, lets lay down a few simple facts which you have overlooked in your "expert" knowledge of all things hacker.

Numero Uno; A hacker is not someone who breaks into a computer for malious intent, but to garner information to increase his knowledge. Not to blackmail, not to destroy, hurt or intentionally harm anyone, but to learn. The definition that you have described is that of a cracker, a malious person who breaks into computers with the intent of destroying systems, information, data or stealing it to sell to others.

Number Two, the books you named in your point 4, which include "Cryptonomicon" and "Snow Crash", by Neal Stephenson are not hacker's manuals, and in fact have very little on the whole dealing with hackers, much less explaining how to do it. In your infinite wisdom if you bothered to read the books you'd understand this. They are cyberpunk FICTION, not hacker's manuals.

Number 3, It's LINUX, based off the UNIX system which never had even a passing aquaintance with the Virus you call Windows. Deleting it causes HD(Hard Drive for those of you without two brain cells) errors and harms it? Since when is this? And since when is it illegal considering 97% of all major businesses and corporations including the U.S. Government use it for backbone servers and terminals. But I forget myself in dealing with those who are unenlightened and still believe the Propaganda of Gates. You see, Linux is a stable operating system that works and doesn't malfunction, error out, crash or totally slag your system if you so much as look at it. Plus, unlike the capitalistic Microsoft Virus, it's free.

4. AMD is a superior product to your wintel systems by all definitions and designs and if your son wanted one for his system it's only to have a more powerful and more stable system.

5. Bonzi-Buddy, Comet Cursor, Flash are hacker programs? Now this is a first for me. Since when did a program to change the shape of your cursor become a hacker program? And since when did a multimedia program designed to create new visual entertainment in the web world become the tool of the dark side? As for Bonzi-Buddy, it's just an waste of HD space.

6. Apparel. Bright clothing, Pacifiers, glow-sticks. Sounds more like fetish then hacker. Glow-sticks and bright clothing are typical for those of the punk rocker, ska, or other closely related groups. Pacifiers...have yet to see those. To my knowledge, my hackers generally perfer dark colors with a catchy design emblazened across the back.

7. Accidemic decline. Hmmm...now this is an interesting one. If he preforms poorly on sports teams he must be a hacker because every all-american lad is quite adept at any number of sports from tennis to basketball to baseball, golf, bowling, soccer, racket ball, boxing, wrestling and swimming and let us not forget football and him still being the head of the debate team and the chess team. *rolls his eyes* Yes, we all are like that aren't we? *points out bitter dripping sarcasam* As for classroom achievement, perhaps, but not always, it is the teacher. In some cases it's the material presented, or the way it's presented. Sometimes it's just the class itself, or that the student is so bored with the class because he does know something more then the regular Joe Average that he slacks off. Perhaps this is a cry for attention to you the parent to notice him as a person and not as an onamental figure which you obviously do to your children. When I read your post, after throwing up my dinner, I picture you in your suburban home in america, two cars, wife, kid, etc. And when those party guests come over it's always "This is my Son Johnny who recently got an A on his history report and my daugter Susie who is the best writer in her class. Isn't that nice?" Now that is child abuse.

You say because your son is slipping in grades or didn't make first string he's associating with a high class hacker group hellbent on world domination and must be stopped no matter the cost. Here's a little bit of information for you, Mr. Average America. The chances of your child making it into a prestegious hacker group or society is less then you winning the lottery. In the world of the bit and the baud you and your son are about as adapt as a dog is as flying. And unless your child starts programming C++ in his sleep and deciphering 128bit encryption keys over breakfast chances are this isn't the case.

Next on the list: Quake. Quake is a video game created by ID Software that lets you portray the role of a person going around in first person shooting things with guns. I reiterate one word from the previous statement; GAME. If you think this is a virtual reality that is used as a common spawning pool to plot the destruction of governments you're sorely mistaken. Quake is, while I admit pointless and rather stupid, a game. The only hacking going on there is with a chainsaw. And you want to try to bring this up to your child's school? Jesus H.P. Christ in a Macintosh! What type of parent are you? Not only are you about as ignorant as a todler when it comes to things binary, you want to socially ostrasize your child, make everyone including faculty, staff and peers hate him, fear him and whisper things behind his back.

And with things like that and thinking in such ways you wonder why your child suddenly becomes defensive around you? Doesn't want you near them? Hell, I wouldn't want you near me either for fear you'll try to destroy something else of mine. But after socially killing him what is destroying his home life as well? My my...perfect parent indeed.
Do you take one lump with your hipocracy, or two?

Changing ISPS? Hmmm...lets see here...change from AOL, an ISP which takes you forever and a day to sign on to, gives you 5 minutes online then boots your sorry butt off. And you enjoy this? *rolls his eyes again* And for your information, security on AOL is about as protective as you logon password for windows. I.E. Hit Cancel. *shakes his head* AOL is one of the biggest breeding grounds for Warez Puppies and Toolz Kiddies that I have ever seen. And look up those definitions if you can't figure them out for yourself.

New hardware as a sign of a hacker. Well golly, if that's all it takes my dad must be a hacker and so must be my little brother...

I mean my dad was only in the Air Force for 20+ years serving his country as a communications tech, but now that he wants to upgrade his system to a larger harddrive to allow him to install the new games he bought he's a hacker. Wow, I'm sure he'll love that. *dry laughter* And my brother requesting more RAM for his computer so his game will play faster and quit lagging, but because of his request, he's a hacker too.

And now, reading back over some of your finer points, I again laugh hysterically.

To quote a paragraph;
"These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone."

Telnet runs on windows, is it a hacker program then too? And I'm going to break into my stero system across the room using my computer that isn't hooked up in any way to my computer much less the same power circut. Yup...sure am...gonna go crash NASDAQ with a cellphone and overthrow the government with my clock radio. *nods* Yup...sure am... right after I steal non-existant credit cards right off your system. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker? Extremely gifted programmer perhaps. Perhaps he is a hacker, if using the term as it was originally used back at MIT when computers were coded by hand each time and people developed programming shortcuts called "hacks".

And whats this about DOSing into someone's system? DOS, which is Disk Operating System, would be the stupidest thing in this modern age for someone to attempt to hack with. I mean I can remember telnet hacking alright but never DOS hacking... Ummm...the command prompt your little boy blunder is trying to hack his way into is the base underlying system of your computer.

And as for the argument in the comments about Female Hackers on a whole. There are quite a few out there, more then you would think, and as for the bit about scene whores, I've never seen that happen myself but if you have all the more power to ya. Female Hackers inferior to Male Hackers? And why is this? Because we as a society can not accept the possibility that a human without a penis is capable of doing anything better then those with one. *laughs softly to himself* Hate to tell you but I know quite a few female hackers that would send your 'puter into meltdown for the meer indication that you thought males were superior to them. While yes, there are males that are superior to them I'm sure, I'm also sure that they are superior in skill to quite a few male hackers and crackers out there.

And in conclusion of this drawnout trite discussion of the lack of intelligence brought forth in this post, I say this. If you brought your son or daughter a 'puter for christmas, and they become infatuated with how it works chances are they're not becoming hackers but learning a useful thing in today's society. Technology is growing and if you think because your child spends to much time on something they enjoy that you should cut them off, then I feel sorry for you when your child is 25 and still living at home because instead of that cushy job in Cali working for $100k a year they're stuck working at McDicks asking "Do you want fries with that?" Who do I blame on that one...bingo...you guessed it...Mom and Pop.

The chances of your child becomming a cracker, much less a hacker, are astronomical. The hacker of old, the true hacker, the keyboard cowboy, the silcon samurai is gone mostly. There are a few of the good ole boys and girls left kicking. Mostly the net, vast and infinite as it is, is filled with the Hapless Technoweenie, the Warez Kiddie, the Toolz Puppy and the Prog Pirate who just found a neat script that a real hacker took hours to program and suddenly thinks he's the next best thing to sliced bread.

Have fun Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average, and remember these simple words. The problem with the hacker isn't with your son or daughter...it's with you. It starts with you and will only end when they are rid of the likes of you. So before you go off accusing society, the internet, and everyone else, take a look in the mirrior and see if the problem really isn't with you.