SO! I explored the project gallery on the scratch site. I guess first off, scratch is kind of limited in the way it functions. It is very similar to the lego mindstorms program i used to play with when i was little. But overall, there are some pretty amazing things that can be done with it.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Dolfus555/162167
Here is a project someone made based on Mario Galaxy. I messed around with it for awhile, and it was really fun. For something created from scratch, pardon the cliche, it is really well done in my opinion. I would like to use his gravity functions in my project

Ok well as sad as this may be, i just got sidetracked. I played a game on the site that was supposedly a remake of an old Pokemon game, so after trying to make the darn thing work i went ahead and downloaded an emulator and played it myself. =) Ah, the old phases of pokemon, anyways.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Oldschooler2/63748
I'd like to learn how to que up commands like this game has done, i think thats pretty cool

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/archmage/9397
this is a VERY cool concept. Its a creator program inside a creator program O.o, i might be able to use this while making my game :) 

So, for the past couple of weeks we have been dealing with and experimenting with PMOG/The Nethernet. Now, before i begin my criticism/bashing extravaganza, i would like to say that this is a very cool and innovative idea. As far as i know, it is the only one of it's kind which even makes it more unique. The mission, datapoint, and ping system are fun and tend to drive the user towards continuing to do missions and gather more of said "items". I'm not sure i agree with the class/leveling system. I think all items need to be avalible to everyone and maybe have different bonuses for classes. I wasn't happy that you had to be a level X benefactor in order to lay puzzle crates. That may be one of my larger complaints. I found many situations called for a puzzle crate in order to force the user to actually learn from the missions. Ok, /gentlemode off.

This system may be the worst learning tool I've seen in awhile. It has so much potential to be used for extensive lessons while mantaining fun at the same time but the mission system allows users to just click away and gain datapoints while not learning a thing except that those that move faster win. I think a few things could be done to make the system actually work. Mission "Next" choices could be blocked out until a particular question has been answered. If there was a place for the mission creator to also add in a question in correspondence to the step the user is currently on, learning would be reinforced and i think the game would also give a greater sense of reward. Also, the datapoint system is kind of infuriating. I think missions and websites should give more DP. This would allow greater user to user interaction while not really doing any harm to the mechanics of the game. Also, the answer to proceed system described above could be implemented as a bonus DP reward. As in, the user dosen't HAVE to answer them but if he does, he will receive a lot more DP than he would if he dose not.  

http://thenethernet.com/missions/nerd_subculture#share

Above is a link to the mission.

The mission will bring you back here so go to the mission first before worrying about the bold font :)

So! Now that you know about the geek subculture, Do you think you are a geek? If so, why, and if not, describe your vision of a geek. Leave your answer as a comment to the same question on my blog :) The best answer will be awarded 500 dp!

 I found Newitz's interview very interesting. Some greater questions in my opinion would be How exactly could politics and technology better each other? Are the use of blogs and BBSs interconnected with the improvement of politics? In this year's election they played a vital role with the youth culture, was the 08 election ground breaking in this aspect? I cannot get my mindjet to upload as an image unfortunately but i have various topics and subtopic interrelated through this question. I think a broader challenge to Newitz would be how could hacktivism influence politics through the use of technology? THat would be quite interesting indeed.

If the portal dosen't work, heres the URL: http://pmog.com/missions/survive_doomsday#share

 PMOG: Passive multiplayer online game. It is quite a  unique game. THe idea seems to be to capture the idea of collecting obscure, yet useful information and data in a playful form. The basic idea is that there are data points and data pings as the two forms of currency. Datapoints can be used to purchase items that allow you to continue to play the game. Before i delve deeper into the game, allow me to explain a few of the items:
Mines - Can be planted on websites, when another player visits the site, the mine explodes sapping them of their datapoints
Armor - Protects against mines, instead of damagin your data points the mine wil consume a armor token
St. Nick- prevents a target player from planting a mine, multiple Saint Nicks can be placed on a single player
Crate - Storage unit for data points
Portal - A link to a different site that is on another site. Scenario: You visit URL A, a portal pops up that takes you to URL B

THere are more of the items but these are the only items availible initially. SO! The basic currency is datapoints, how do you accumulate these? Missions! Your main source of DP will be missions that other players create that involve you going to different URLS and "learning diferent things based upon they want you to learn. I will profess however that one can simply click through th emission w/o actually trying to learn anything. This undermines the use of the site though. To continue however, there are two basic facitons, order and destruction. Players more inclined ot plant mines are deemed destruction. Others that create missions, leave crates, and make portals tend to be players for Order. 

The leveling system is kind of weird. Based upon what you do in the game, you gain different statistics and abilities. For example, if you lay many mines, you are deemed a destroyer and as you gain levels of destroyer, eventually you can lay mine crates that are essentially traps. Another example are the pathmakers which specialize in creating portals. As a pathmaker gains levels, he can create a better version of a portal that allows more uses until disfunction.

Missions can generally be used for informative purposes if enough description is involved and questions are asked perhaps players would take the time to peruse the site before clicking next in order to get their data points. The key would be to asking questions that require answeres before allowing the player to move on.

I've played with it for awhile. It is definitely a cool program and if you stop to think about the programming behind it, its quite mind boggling. However, All in all, this still seems to be a simple replacement for pencil and paper. But yet again, isn't that what technology is in essence? A few uses i could forsee for this program:
Pre-writing
Organization of ideas in a group setting
Research projects (keep track of connections)

Definitely would like to see a way to ease the ability to use it. Perhaps add a "drawing" type mechanism that allows the user to daw his own relationships and the program simply smooths out the line created.


Overall, Cool program. 

 Matthew Fitzpatrick

First Year Seminar – Hackers

“The Other Side of the Coin”

            Maniacal, egotistical, evil, and just plain scary are words often used to describe hackers in this age. The shocking fact of the matter is that these “evil” doers are only recent in their rise to fame and the forefront of the media. However, where there are criminals, there are protectors. The police protect you from burglary, murder, and the other reality based crimes, but whom do the masses turn to when their virtual world threatens to crumble under the weight of blue screens of death and black hats? Simply put, the good guys. White hats, sneakers, and penetration testers, These “Ethical” hackers are the good to the cracker’s evil. One particularly notable white hat is Tsutomu Shimomura; the man who caught the most infamous cracker.

            When someone thinks of a famous hacker, most minds make the leap to some guy sitting in the dark doing something he is not supposed to be doing. The monitor bathing our criminal in its eerie glow. Some would call this person interesting and worthy of intrigue. I, however, would prefer to take a closer look at the guys who catch these devious villains. Tsutomu Shimomura is both an interesting case and a sad case. Potentially the only reason his name is pinged on Google is that someone hacked his systems. Not just any hacker however, this guy was he real thing; Kevin Mitnick. At the time of Mitnick’s arrest, he was the most wanted criminal hacker at the time. Breaking numerous laws, fleeing arrests, stealing when and what he wanted, and violating his supervised release, Mitnick was one nasty black hat. However, I don’t really want to talk too much about him. I’d much rather focus on his capturer. Shimomura, while a citizen of Japan, was raised in Princeton, New Jersey. With a Nobel Prize winning father, it must have raised quite a few eyebrows that Shimomura had neither a formal high school education nor college. For a time, He did study under Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate, at Caltech. After Caltech, Shimomura began work as a staff physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Later, in 1989, he changed jobs again to work at the physics department at the University of California doing research and also working at the San Diego Supercomputing Center. The part of Shimomura’s life that I am most interested however occurs in 1995. The story goes as thus. Kevin Mitnick, already a criminal hacker, sent an IP spoofing attack on Shimomura’s computers in San Diego. This method of attack attempts to overload a computer with different IP packets of data. The spoofing part comes in when referencing the fact that the source from which the packet is sent is forged as a different address allowing the attacker to force the attacked to respond to an IP address other than his own.

For more on IP Spoofing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing

This particular attack worked and Mitnick gained access to Shimomura’s personal computer. His private e-mails and software were Mitnick’s. As I could only imagine, Shimo was outraged. He decided upon the course of revenge. I would be inclined to believe that little known to Kevin Mitnick, he had unwittingly created his own demise.

            After Shimomura was hacked by Kevin Mitnick, He set out to catch him.  That in itself is rather impressive. At the time, Mitnick was the most wanted hacker fugitive in America. I don’t know if he was a household name or anything but he was definitely well known. His first hacking jobs were small in his high school days. His first alleged “hack” was when he tricked the punch card system for the subway when he was only twelve! Obviously, Shimomura was up against somewhat of a child of genius.  Unfortunately for Mitnick, Shimomura was no layman and the federal government is not something to be taken for granted. Tsumoto was so enraged by the attack on his personal systems that he put together a team of computer experts to hunt Mitnick down. Even without any federal help, I could see this team alone being able to catch Mitnick, however, with the help of the federal government, it was all over. Within two weeks of the start of this electronic manhunt, Mitnick was caught. Their search lead them to a national phone company which in turn allowed them to trace Mitnick’s calls to Raleigh, North Carolina. After arriving at the airport, Tsutomu links up with a phone technician and used a cellular frequency direction finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow down the call’s source to a local apartment complex in the area. After a twenty-four hour stake out, Mitnick is finally arrested and taken into federal custody. Shimomura had finally done it. He had not only gained his personal revenge, but he had put one of the most illustrious computer criminals behind bars. He had out hacked the hacker Kevin Mitnick. His crusade against his injustice was finally over.

            After closely examining the timeline between Mitnick and Shimomura, it is easy to see that Shimomura’s part in this “Mitnick saga” was brief. This was neither the beginning, nor the end for Kevin Mitnick. After being indicted, a slew of legal work ensued. The story of Tsutomu and Mitnick are what I would call the more typical hacker story. He is not a people hacker, he isn’t a hacker of a different little thought of realm, and his realm is the virtual world. He is a white cap hacker, a prime example in his capture of Mitnick. Not only did he capture a criminal but also he even collaborated with the FBI. There are some hackers out there who would rather die than ever even be thought of with the FBI.  Tsutomu went both through a manhunt at this time and a changing of his own persona. The system of black and white hats essentially determined the next years of his life. Kevin Mitnick’s actions when he hacked those computers based in San Diego caused a cascade of events to fall into place. Up until that point Shimomura had probably not even considered the world of hackers would have such an effect on his life. But, the simple fact is that because Mitnick hacked him, He became a white hack for the epitome of the “system”, The FBI. Without his help, it is doubtful that Mitnick would ever have been caught considering his hacking spree had gone on uninterrupted for two years previously. During the course of this journey, Shimomura got his fingers in more than is seen at first glance. His corporate involvement at San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC), Federal involvement with the FBI, his unavoidable contact with the dark world of hacking via Mitnick, and a more than personal involvement in the effort to protect computer users makes him a prime example of a white hat hacker.

 

For more info:

http://www.takedown.com/

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/top-10-famous-hackers-042407/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat

http://www.takedown.com/coverage/sdsc-experts.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

http://www.takedown.com/bio/tsutomu.html

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Tsutomu-Shimomura

http://www.gulker.com/ra/hack/

             

 When one thinks about the 1960's, the foremost thought precludes to the historical counter culture known as "Hippies". Free love, a transcendalist mind set, overall, the attempt to find a higher level of consiousness through the use of meditation, drugs, and other aesthetic pleasures. For this assignment we were told to dig deep, so, i did imo. I jogged over to page 38 of Google's results and came up with this.

http://members.chello.at/manhard.schlifni/Webpub/Transformational/transformational.htm

I guess the first thing worthy of mention would be this author's definition of technocracy. "The regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates the industrial society." So, its pretty much exactly what we have been debating in class except the overall picture of "The Man" (fight the power kinda thing) is mixed in there. People who have "expertise" have the power, the people that have the power rule. Pretty simple right? Yea, very simple, until the freakin hippies come along eh? So the counter culture of 1960's had a goal. This goal was to rid their society of the big dogs, the guys that controlled it all, in their own words, the "regime of corporate and technological expertise". Sounds vaguely reminiscent of hackers...Actually, its pretty much the exact same message many of the hackers we have read about preach. If that's the case, we are looking at something huge here. Not just the introduction of computers, but the introduction of the hacker mind set. It may be possible to actually peg this down on a time line and be able to say: "Here! Here is where it all began!."

So the idea and premise was there, but where were the hackers? They came shortly after in the form of "cyber punks" and "cyber society". From my perspective, it seems the general idea was to create one large cyber community. The idea was that community is defined by communication and sharing of information instantaneously would create some sort of mega cyber community. Another idea of this time was a self-regulating system. The belief was that no system is perfect, especially our government because there is not enough feed back for it to truly be a self regulating system. But in a cyber society, there is unlimited amounts of instantaneous feedback. If there was enough feedback, decentralization would occur spreading the power even further to the people. This would somewhat accomplish what the counter-culture had in mind.

A lot of this stuff is theoretical and never actually expressed in reality. Many of it is though. The fact that an idea can start in such a small group and spread so rapidly and efficiently attests to the power of underground media and technology. The new age of communication via the internet bodes change for the world. Ideas are freely shared, information and news spreads like wildfire. The melting pot is bubbling, the time is coming in my opinion. The world is due for another big change, is that big change Obama? Or has it yet to come? I couldn't tell you. But depending on the next couple of years, i wouldn't be surprised if 10 years down the line people in this class looked at Obama as a type of people hacker.

I found this site to be very interesting and fun. Kind of like a puzzle. www.hackthissite.org    Its completely legal but i would suggest signing up with a hotmail or gmail account. Don't use your trinity.edu one.

 In this day and age, technology and those who utilize it seem to rule supreme. These technocrats believe that they have mastered that which other humans cannot even begin to comprehend. Those of us who look at a computer and see only e-mail and internet may as well be lesser human beings in their eye. However, one cannot fully appreciate the depth of their superiority complex until one has dealt directly with one of their kind. I have dealt with many technocrats on several occasions, sometimes its no big deal and they come off their high horse but other times i end the conversation shaking with rage.

I am no idiot. In fact, i believe it safe to say anyone going to Trinity is not. I'll try to relive a conversation I had with my internet service provider.  I was playing video games on a lazy Sunday afternoon. All was going well, i was killing terrorists and successfully completing my assigned missions. Then, i stared at my character's  body as it froze. None of the keys responded. Then, i got the dreaded server disconnect message. I promptly shut down my computer and started to pull out my bag of tricks to fix the problem. I did everything that could be done, my Dad and I have troubleshooted router/internet connectivity issues many times. So, i call SuddenLink. They start to talk to me as if im a complete idiot. As if this divine checklist they have been given makes them some how better than me. I tell them everything i have done already and STILL they persist to ask me, "Sir, did you unplug your router for 10 minutes and plug it back in again?" Jeez, a monkey knows that a hard reset can fix simple problems like that -_-. That was one of my encounters with a technocrat, or maybe a better word would be a lackey of technocracy? I'm unsure. 

I guess another point that should be made is that I myself have fell victim to the technological superiority complex. Bless my mother, but she knows absoulutely nothing about computers or how they work. She most definitely falls into the category of, "Give me e-mail and nothing else". I wouldn't even be suprised if turning the damn thing on would become a hassle at times. (Her computer stays on all day) Unforutnately, her ineptness with computers led to my arrogance. She always asks me to help her with it. Like how to get to her e-mail, how to set a new background, or how to just pay bills online. All of these things seem like child play to most anyone my age but to her, this was a new machine with its own set of mysteries and difficulties. I can gurantee with 99% certainty that no one knew how to set a background the very first time they turned on a computer. So, she would ask, i would do. I was one of those guys who would just grab the mouse and do it. Had i simply taken the extra 5 minutes max to teach HER how to do it, she may have gained some knowledge in the subject and not feel so helpless around computers.

I personally believe that technocracy and the existence of technocrats was unavoidable. And it may not necessarily be a  bad thing. I mean, there will always be people out there that are better than you at something and because of that are arrogant. Computers are only one aspect of this superiority attitude. It is everywhere in life, and if you don't want to be a victim of such a thing, you should constantly strive to better yourself in all aspects of life.

 Well, i guess first thing is my name is Matthew Fitzpatrick. I am  a huge nerd/geek when it comes to computers, at least games i suppose. I play WoW, CS, some of the old Warcraft games and any thing that really interests me. I play football here at Trinity and at the moment i am pursuing the Pre-Med track of study. I'm still unsure on exactly which major i will decide on but like i said, at the moment, I'm focusing on Pre-Med. When I think of a hacker I tend to liken it to modern graffiti. Its a unique way in my eye to show a skill. When a hacker changes something, or breaks into a system he or she is almost showing off their understanding of the way that system works by bending it to his or her will. That is extremely impressive in my book. I am very excited to both learn about hacking and i also hope that along the way i may learn how to hack a little bit. Everytime i think of hackers though i think of someone very skilled in many different programming languages so i can only imagine that its extremely difficult. Or maybe it is just as simple of knowing which line of code to cut and paste, i haven't the faintest idea so i can't wait to figure that out. That was just a basic intro i suppose, if anyone ever wants to talk to me about WoW feel free, i love talking about games and surfing all the gaming sites as our peer tutor said he enjoyed as well. -Fitz