This time around we got to talk about
some of my favorite topics. Hacking and social networking.
The video that we watched about the
secret history of hacking is something that I watched a couple times.
I have been a big fan of the Woz for years and I knew quite a bit
about Captain Crunch already. I had built several different “boxes”
in my day. I knew some of the tricks they were talking about. The
2600 whistle was long gone and we had to find other ways of having
fun with a telecommunication system. It's knowing those things that
have helped me place safeguards on my systems (both computer and
phone) so that I'm the one that knows what's going on with them.
Kevin Mitnick was also someone I had
previously done reading on in the past. I knew about his fun with Sun
Microsystems and Motorola. Was he trying to do devious things with
the information like sell if off to competition? I don't believe he
was. He is just a curious guy that happened to go a bit to far. A lot
of people just don't know when to stop. Information collection can
become quite addictive.
All of our talk about Julian Assange
and WikiLeaks, and anonymous... I am not sure they all went about
putting information out to the masses the right way. Some of the
information that they had (like anonymous having the names of police
officers) were posted and should not have been. Not only were the
lives of the officers at stake, but possibly the families of the
officers as well. It's one thing to disagree with the tactics a law
enforcement agency users, but it is another to put innocent people in
harms way because you disagree with those tactics.
This last week's discussion has also
been one that I have enjoyed. While I got to it late, I always
thought about the whole Social Media and Twitter with the Middle
East. Personally, I never really imagined or saw places like Iran or
Egypt as being a hot bed for the internet and a social media
revolution. You go to places like New York or LA and you see all
these people with phones all the time, taking pictures of traffic
accidents or sending text messages out while they are walking and not
really paying attention to what is going on in the world. That's not
how I picture the Middle East at all. I still see them as being an
area that is a bit behind when it comes to technology. Kind of like
in the 80's when it was big news that you had a VCR and it was a huge
top loading device, but top of the line for the time!
On a side note about of of our readings
for the week, I find it kind of odd that we read an article from what
is a well known satire site. While the information that is in there
is interesting to read and does have several citations in it, it
seemed off. I didn't expect to see that in the readings. To me it's
almost like having the NBC Nightly News cite an article from The
Onion as a news source.
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