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The Next Bill Gates

Bob Young
2 min readDec 7, 2018

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The next Bill Gates started fifth grade this year.

[Flashback to August, 2018]

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working at an expensive private school, getting student computers ready for the new year. Yesterday I was working on the laptops used by the fourth grade kids. One of the computers was in suspension, and the last user was still logged on. To protect his identity, let’s say his login name is RogerD.

I got out the password list (they’re assigned, and the students can’t change them) and looked up RogerD’s password. Hmm… now, this is odd… as I type the password, it’s like the keyboard is broken… nothing appears on the screen…

When I typed the fourth character of his password, the screen briefly flashed the picture of a space alien, and then it went black — mostly. There, suspended in the blackness, rotating slowly, in three-dimensional stainless steel letters, was a very short word: “No.”

Locked out of the computer by a fourth grader.

Capital N. Lower case o. Period. No.

The keyboard and mouse had no effect.

So I rebooted the machine to regain control of it, and then wiped it.

Part of me hates the little stinker. The rest of me admires him.

Later, I was speaking to the school’s owner. I asked, “What can you tell me about RogerD?” She said, “Oh, he’s extremely bright. He loves computers.” I told her what he’d done to one of the laptops. Then I said, “If he learns self-control, he has a great future ahead of him.” She said, “That’s exactly right.” She also said, “And his older brother is even smarter.”

So, in about eight years, look for two brothers to change the world as we know it. Or sooner.

After all, why wait until you finish school to change the world?

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Bob Young
Bob Young

Written by Bob Young

CISO, Director of Information Security, and Security Consultant. Also, I wrote some books that have nothing to do with IT. http://www.amazon.com/author/bobyoung

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