Think playing around with computers is just good, clean fun? Well the Congress is increasing the penalties for intentionally causing harm through hacking - how do you feel about 20 years in a Federal slammer??
Check out these sites for the latest info:
On the other side, the government is looking for top security experts because The Pentagon has just disclosed that China has planned cyber attacks as a major part of their war strategy.
And, what if you want to work with computers in the future? Did you know that the office of homeland security is calling for strict background checks on all network administrators? Those childish pranks could just end up blocking your career path.
Full details of the plan, National Strategy for Homeland Security 
Media Hype
Although I am concerned enough about the West Nile Virus to write about it in The Spirit, I want to be certain that everyone realizes this is not a major threat. The main reason I have been pushing this is that there's something we, as individuals can actually do about it. Reducing the mosquito population is always a good thing and, if we can delay WNV's arrival in Jefferson County by even a few months we may miss the worst of the threat since good equine and probably human vaccines will be available by next year.
But all the breathless coverage of WNV on TV has reminded me of a seasonal problem in all media news coverage which you may not be aware of, it's called The Silly Season and occurs in mid summer when congress is out of session, many people are on vacation, and little seems to be happening.
This forces reporters and editors to fall upon any problem and blow it all out of proportion. In most instances you are far, far more likely to be hit by lightning than to encounter one of these dangers personally.
Remember the year of the shark, 2001? You couldn't watch the news without another shark attack being hyped yet there are just as many attacks this year and virtually every other year. In fact, 2001 wasn't a particularly bad year for shark attacks.
Before that it was school shootings in a year when there was no actual increase, just some dramatic TV footage.
Remember Post Office workers going "postal"? It's happened before, it still happens, but the year of "going postal" wasn't much different from any other year as for the actual numbers.
This year it's WNV and child abductions. While both are real threats, did you know that child abductions are actually down in numbers from previous years? Certain politicians are pushing this as if it were a new and growing danger, but kids are actually safer from this threat in 2002 than any other year in the past decade. In this instance a child is far more likely to die from falling of a bicycle and hitting their head while not wearing a helmet than they are of being kidnapped by a stranger.
So, please keep things in proportion and be wary of any summer news story which seems to get too much hype, they only disguise the REAL threats which are much more mundane and include:
Poor use of child safety seats
Letting underage kids use powerful ATVs (outside of a poorly maintained jet fighter, probably the most lethal vehicle made.)
Reckless teen age drivers
Gun accidents
Overweight complications
Tobacco
Drunk driving accidents
Domestic violence
Hospital and other medical mistakes, and so on,
Any or all of which individually are thousands of times more likely to kill you or a loved one than the standard fare of Silly Season threats.
Dangers of hacking
Hacking, breaking into people's computers and more properly known as cracking, was a fun game for a long time when the courts were ignoring the importance of computer systems, but no longer. Today you need to really think twice before hacking into someone's computer or defacing a Web site.
Just this summer the Dean of Admissions at Princeton was demoted for hacking into a Yale computer system.
Christopher J. Chinnici of Philadelphia pled guilty to a felony charge involving defacing a library's Web site TWICE. He got a $15,000 fine and will spend 1-3 years in prison.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0815story110800_news.shtml
Think sharing music is fun?
It may be a criminal violation of the copyright laws. A young MIT computer worker just got 33 months in a federal slammer for doing just that.
If you want a challenge, download a copy of FreeBSD Unix and try to figure out how to use this powerful and complex operating system, don't hack into other people's computers, they don't allow keyboards in most federal prison cells.
Think playing around with computers is just good, clean fun? Well the Congress is increasing the penalties for intentionally causing harm through hacking - how do you feel about 20 years in a Federal slammer??
Check out these sites for the latest info:
On the other side, the government is looking for top security experts because The Pentagon has just disclosed that China has planned cyber attacks as a major part of their war strategy.
And, what if you want to work with computers in the future? Did you know that the office of homeland security is calling for strict background checks on all network administrators? Those childish pranks could just end up blocking your career path.
Full details of the plan, National Strategy for Homeland Security
