High School Student Michael Stone Arrested for Encouraging People to Hit F5 - 2,720 Views, 7 Comments
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Some people just have no sense of humour. That would apparently include both school and law enforcement officials at Lake High School, and in Lake Township, Ohio. That is where Michael Stone goes to high school, and the scene of where Michael Stone committed his heinous crime: encouraging people to hit F5. Yes, that’s right. Michael Stone has been arrested, just months before he was to graduate from Lake High School, for encouraging people to press the F5 key on their computer. :gasp: Now, of course, there is a bit more to the story than that, but depending on how you look at it, perhaps not much. You see, on many computer systems, and certainly Windows computer systems, F5 is the ‘refresh’ key. Yes, it’s true. Michael Stone was arrested for encouraging people to refresh their screens. When viewing his school’s - Lake High School - website. Now, it’s also true that he encouraged a lot of people to do it, sharing his encouragement on blogs and in chat rooms. It’s said that he wanted to see if a computer system could be crashed merely by people doing screen refreshes. Stone will never get the chance to find out, because the school noticed when the computer system started slowing down, and their IT person figured out what was going on. Whew, good thing! Still, the school was not amused. And neither was Frank Forchione, the prosecutor who filed charges against Michael this past week. Said Forchione, “Michael said it was a joke. We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke.” Wow, aren’t you a big tough guy, Frank? Added Ferocious Forchione, “This new technology has created a whole wave of crimes, and we’re just trying to find ways to solve them.” Oh c’mon, you know that the word he actually used was “new-fangled”, but some kind editor decided to take pity on him. On the other hand, I’m thinking of moving to Lake Township. It’s obviously a very safe place to live and raise a family, if the worst crime they have to worry about and focus on is some kid having people refresh their computer screens. Anyways, back to Michael Stone, who has been charged with a felony for slowing down his school’s computer system. (As one observer commented, “This school must have a pretty bad webserver if simply clicking on refresh brings the server to its knees.”) So what will happen to Michael? Nobody really knows. Because he’s being charged with a felony count of “disrupting public services”, and because he is 18, he could actually be facing jail time, although insiders believe that he will likely get away with doing public service and probation. And I’m guessing that this ordeal will be the most education he’s ever received from Lake High School.
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High School Student Michael Stone Arrested for Encouraging People to Hit F5
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So if I go to that website and keep hitting ‘F5′, will I be arrested too?
Comment by Marc — 1/11/2006 @ 9:46 am
Glad we got that whole terrorism thing straightened out, so we can deal with the REAL threats.
Comment by Christopher W. — 1/11/2006 @ 12:18 pm
You hit the nail on the head when you said “I’m guessing that this ordeal will be the most education he’s ever received from Lake High School.”
Might have been wrong but what ever happened to cutting a “Kid” some slack. Sounds like he might have some real leadership qualitys though. Politics, or maybe school administrator? Naw too smart.
Comment by Alex K. — 1/12/2006 @ 5:41 am
I don’t find his actions funny one bit. At this point he probably doesn’t need jail time but he definitely needs a wakeup call that will send a message to the rest of his fellow students that messing with computer systems will not be taken lightly. Will you still see it as funny when they decide to see if they can crash the libraries computers? Etc. Etc. I’ll just bet you’ll be roaring with laughter when you hear that he graduated up to cracking into bank systems and transferring your funds into his account.
Comment by Buddy — 1/12/2006 @ 11:39 pm
I think they should have given him life in prison. Sound unreasonable? So does having him arrested. What a waste of taxes and time on stupidity. Why not spend your time on bully programs within schools and make a more productive mark on society? F5, this.
Comment by Juju — 5/6/2006 @ 10:43 am
haha, thats pretty funny. thats really harsh that they are actually arresting him though, i think a suspension or something would be sufficient. is it really his fault that the schools servers are that bad?
Comment by michael — 2/18/2009 @ 7:39 pm
Michael Stone is my cousin, I find it actually rather amusing. I know it’s been a few years since the ‘inccident’ but our family still gets a kick outta it. I think people should have given him a break, really, if you guys knew our family, you’d think his action was one of the more innocent things a person could do. And I personally thing that there are worse crimes that people are getting away with that no one is doing jack shit about. I mean come on people.
Comment by Rowan — 11/15/2009 @ 6:13 pm