Final Exam

Question #3

I learned about violence in video games from Sean Kinsella's web page "The Pit". I learned that some people are worried that violence in video games teaches children to be more violent. Companies that create video games argue that there's nothing wrong with them and that they don't make kids more violent. There have been psychological studies that show that violent video games do in fact desensitize us to the violence and do make us more violent. Parents are blaming computer games and the internet for their children being more violent rather than blaming their selves. One thing that is for sure is violent video games are more popular then ever. I learned that there should be some restrictions or rating on games that you can't play until your older and more mature to handle the violence. The games are being more and more lifelike and by killing people in the games it looks real and then it would desensitize you and if you were to actually kill someone in real life it might not seem like a big deal cause of the killing in video games. I learned about hackers from Garrett Hudson's web page "v0rtex". I learned that there is a variety of hackers not just computer hackers. I learned that computer hackers aren't all necessarily bad and that their even good in certain ways. I learned that hackers actually help companies by hacking in to their systems and forcing them to always be creating new security programs. This way only a few people will be able to hack into the system cause if someone figured out how to break into the system and then the company didn't update their system word would get out of how to break into the system and tons of people would get into it and do whatever they wanted. There is a program called netbus that you can control other people's computers with once they have installed it. A famous hacker named Kevin Mitnick was released on January 21 after being in jail for 5 years for 25 counts of computer and wire fraud violations. He proved that there are security holes and that we don't live in a perfect technological world. I learned about the new thing in computer music called MP3's from Leeward Chears site "Scorcher". I learned that mp3's have been around since 1995. I hadn't heard of mp3's until about a year ago. I learned that mp3's are highly compressed formats of digital music. I didn't know what mp3 standed for before his presentation and now I know it stands for MPEG (moving picture experts group). I learned that they are high quality sound and are just 1/12th the size a normal cd-rom track would take. It is easy to download a mp3 player and an mp3 and listen to the song in under 30mins. The problem with mp3's are that people can copy songs off a cd and make them into mp3's and people that have a cd burner can make themselves customized cd's for virtually free. I learned that there are now walk mans that plays mp3's that could be downloaded straight from the home pc. It can hold 64megs and won't skip cause it has no moving parts. When a crime is committed by a first-time offender or by someone not considered a threat, oftentimes punishment is suspended or very light. I intend to further research hackers. Like what Garrett said hackers can be friends as when new browsers and programs are released hackers route out bugs and report them to vendors. Companies all around are improving their security programs hoping to keep hackers out. There seems to be a distinction between harmful and harmless hacking. They think that crimes of no ill intent and crimes of curiosity should be treated more like the real-world civil offense of trespassing. I found the information on the following sites: http://www.techweb.com/wire/news/1997/09/0915hackers1.html