On Friday Judge Pechman sentenced Parson to 18 months in jail and 10 months of community service for propagating the crippling MS Blaster Internet worm in 2003 that wrought havoc on up to 50000 computers around the world with both personal and business pc's affected.

“Many of the mental-health problems from the household you grew up in contributed to this problem,” Pechman told Parson, adding that he was much less mature than his 18 years at the time of the crime.

Pechman told Parson: “What you've done is a terrible thing. Aside from injuring individuals and their computers you shook the foundation of the system.”

Parson had admitted last August to intentionally causing and attempting to cause damage to a protected computer by authoring and spreading a version of the worm that spread rapidly on the internet, clogging computer networks.

Using the internet name, "teekid," the high school student from Hopkins, in the state of Minnesota, initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea after striking a plea bargain with prosecutors in order to reduce his sentence.

MS Blaster, also known as the LovSan virus, exploited a weakness in Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating-system software. It infected computers and then commanded them to attack a Microsoft website.

The company learned about the attack early on and took steps to prepare for it. Nonetheless, Microsoft was affected by the attempt, and spent more than $1 million investigating Parson's Blaster variant and helping customers whose computers were infected.

From http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/1420.html
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No comment from Codewarriorz Thoughts.

wet1: check your dmusic notes.
sorry for late reply.. it was a bad semester at that time.

"Nonetheless, Microsoft was affected by the attempt, and spent more than $1 million investigating Parson's Blaster variant and helping customers whose computers were infected."....

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Should read ....

"Nonetheless, Microsoft was affected by the attempt, and spent more than $1 million investigating Parson's Blaster variant and helping customers whose computers were infected by THEIR failure to secure their operating system from being exploited by (from the way the story reads) an individual who is mentally deficient.

One could read this to say that even someone who is mentally retarded could hack this OS....

Judge Pechman told Parson: “What you've done is a terrible thing. Aside from injuring individuals and their computers, you shook the foundation of the system.”

The really "terrible thing" is that "the foundation of the system" wasn't UNRAVELED, instead of just shaken.
If it had been worse, MAYBE Gates & Co. would see the way to make a decent OS.
Maybe . . . but then again, maybe not.

what is this "system" he speaks of.. the status quo in which microsoft pwnz y0ur s0u1

[Disclaimer: The foregoing opinion by Diogenes2 is that of a computer user who has been frustrated too many years with inferior operating systems pushed out the door too soon by Bill Gates. This user has invoked a self-defense mechanism — rearranging his circumstances so that he can function with Mac and Linux instead. At this point, although he is struggling to sympathize with hapless Windows users, he also knows that there probably needs to be a painful crisis (major cyperspace catastrophe in regards to MS OS's) before there is any substantial hope for significant if not lasting change...which could benefit us all.]

In the meantime, I say, (for the common good) LET THE CRISIS COME!

Moved over to mac system osx-after replacing my scanner, burner, printer, have had no problems for years now.... so nice!

"he was much less mature than his 18 years at the time" and he "shook the foundation of the system."

This would not have been possible if the system did not inherently suck from the outset.

Makes you wonder what kind of damage a rational college graduate could have done if they had applied themselves to the task.

Let's wait and see...

Inherently doing the world a favor by destroying the sytem from from its own faults? That kid isn't retarded, he's a genius.

Don't get me wrong, everybody that got Blaster got what they deserved. But I think it's funny/pathetic that he's citing psych. problems for writing a virus

I agree with ya on that one Sherm.

That cracked me up, too.
It's like George said about just think what a 'rational' college graduate without issues could do!

(Actually, we know that kid really is rational, and probably pretty smart, too . . . at least with computers and programming. Perhaps smarter than many 'stable' college graduates in some respects. That's what makes this whole thing so humorous.)

Going back in history, weren't there a few budding geniuses who seemed to be off-kilter during the time they were making their mark?

BTW, someone who made a reference to comparing this kid's skill with MicroSoft's programmers had an interesting train of thought.

I think it all goes back to his childhood when, after booting up his new windows box on christmas morning, he got his first blue screen of death. Then his second. Then his third.. after getting nearly 55 million blue screens in the first month of useage alone, he began developing deep psychological problems rooted in rage against microsoft.

Sherm, that's clever!

"Going back in history, weren't there a few budding geniuses who seemed to be off-kilter during the time they were making their mark?"

Almost all of them, Sherm.

Remember the unibomber? He was supposed to be a genius wasn't he?

Geniuses always seem to be off-kilter because they see things like nobody else sees them. So either everyone else views them as insane or they end up actually going insane.

the unibomber was a dork.

" Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life."
-- from Nobelprize(dot)org.

From another source:
Albert was such an under achiever in all subjects other than math and science that his parents suspected that he might be retarded.

At the time of the publication on the theory of relativity, the people that read the papers met them with skepticism and ridicule. As the other papers were published, they were viewed the same way. Since these papers were so advanced, only a few physicists even understood them.

100 years later, they're still proving him right.

May be he was immature at the time but he was smart!

18 months in jail and 10 months community service! I think this is a extreme penalty. After all nobody got hurt. This kid is na hero and now he is also a martyr. The problem with disproportionate sentences: For the same price I will rather do some real damage rather than just enoy people.

Immature? Yeah right.

What should he have done? Studied more in english? Read those stupid books that there's no point in reading?

Math and physics are all you need to know.

" Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life."
-- from Nobelprize(dot)org.

From another source:
Albert was such an under achiever in all subjects other than math and science that his parents suspected that he might be retarded.

At the time of the publication on the theory of relativity, the people that read the papers met them with skepticism and ridicule. As the other papers were published, they were viewed the same way. Since these papers were so advanced, only a few physicists even understood them.

100 years later, they're still proving him right.

What should he have done? Studied more in english? Read those stupid books that there's no point in reading?

Math and physics are all you need to know.

TO BREAK MY BORO !!!!