As I mentioned earlier, the students I have been working with as part of my internship are part what educators label “Gifted and Talented” (henceforth referred to as “GT”). This is not to say that everyone else is ungifted or untalented [sic], but rather many of these individuals exhibit a number of common characteristics which are given that label, such as: intense passions (strong emotional connection with their work), very creative & innovative and of course, socially inept (err…). One identifying technique used to “discover” who fits into this category is the Scholastic Aptitude Test, conducted through the Duke Talent Identification Program. Many of the high school students that I have encountered this summer took the SAT when they were 12 or 13 and scored ~1000+ (or about 10-15% lower than many incoming college freshmen). Of course, one problem with using standardized testing is that many GT students are in fact poor test takers, “too creative,” dyslexic or simply apathetic (”hey, I don’t need a test to tell me I am smart”).
In Week 2 of the camp, I befriended two young men who were entering their Freshman year of high school in the Houston area, Brandon and Nick. Brandon partook in the Law class and Nick attended the Computer Science session. The Law seminar included a detailed Mock Trial in which each member of the class participated – I was one of three counselors assigned to the group (distracting them on more than one occasion…).
Anyways, I discovered one day that Brandon’s laptop (yes, he brought a laptop to a week-long summer camp) booted up into FreeBSD. I soon learned quickly that both Brandon and Nick were competent computer nerds and accomplished 1337 h4×0rs in their own right. In fact, I was able to talk at the same geek level as I do many of my friends without having to water down any of the gobbledygook. To get a better idea of their eclecticism, here are brief bios of each:
Brandon is all of 14 years-old and currently works as a volunteer at the Harris County Public Library in the I/T department. He has been using Linux for 3 years, BSD for 2 and is an accomplished web designer (he won the Texas Computer Education Association’s middle-school contest in ‘03). Additionally, he has maintained numerous sites over the past 2 years, is proficient in HTML/PHP/C and has gobs of print graphics experience. He sees that computers are becoming a bigger part of criminal cases and would like to work in law via the technology aspect. Of course if being an egg-headed CSI agent falls through, microbiology is another career he would be interested in pursuing. His personal blog is accessible at h4cl.net.
Nick is also 14, and is currently working an internship at a 3D Design firm in Houston that specializes in medical imaging. He is proficient in graphic design, programming, and webmastering (he is conversant with VisualBasic, Macromedia ActionScript, C, C++, PHP). He is skilled with 3D modeling and animation (3D Studio Max, Lightwave and Maya) as well as Flash. One of his pet projects currently involves a FreeBSD emulator that uses Flash as the frontend and is written with ActionScript. He is also involved in RootHack (as is Brandon), an organization of white-hat hackers that set up a controlled network specifically for perfecting hacking skills. Additionally, he is involved in a Linux Kernel Audit team, which, has, to date, discovered several 0-day holes in the Linux kernel. On another note, he is known among the PLA (Phone Losers of America, a phreaking organization) for coke-machine hacking which I have witnessed first hand. His personal site, which is located on a co-lo he maintains is at ch0p.com.
So there you have it, the sequel to Triumph of the Nerds in progress. Here’s hoping that they become Fightin’ Texas Aggies in the near future.
