Jobs In World Wide Web Essays - Hacker, Hacking, Identity Theft

Jobs In World Wide Web In today's fast-paced world, the high-tech computer industry offers a unique opportunity for high-paying jobs. Many people start their careers much younger than I have, so consequently I have to search for a career in a field that will offer me adequate financial rewards in a limited amount of time. I started working with computers four years ago, upgrading systems, and increasing modem speeds to enable me access to the World Wide Web. I find programming to be the most interesting area of Computer Science; there is a subculture within this area that call themselves hackers. There seems to be a negative connotation with the word hacker. This is a misunderstanding because these programmers, who consider themselves to be hackers, are not the evildoers that the media portrays them as. Some misguided souls do attack systems for profit and pleasure, but these are usually the wannabe hackers; they are referred to as crackers or cyberpunks. True hackers do not waste their time with these typ es of antics. It is similar to an artist who, instead of painting a beautiful picture, sprays profanity on a city wall. There are many misconceptions surrounding the artform of hacking. Computers have made our world and lives much easier. In the past, many jobs were done by hand. Computers have replaced calculators. Word processing is now much faster and more conveienent than it was when we had to use typewriters. Not only can we type and correct errors much quicker since it can be done on a computer, but we don't even have to type at all as a result of dictation software, which allows us to speak to our computers. Computers revolutionized our world. We can communicate through e-mail with friends around the world. Research on any form or type of information is readily and easily accessible through the Internet. Computers have opened doors to people all over the world that just twenty years ago were not even dreamed of. Through all this innovation computers are, nevertheless, electronic components. They can only do what man tells them to do. This is how Alan Gauld, a computer programmer, explains computers: The logical thinking comes into play because computers are intrinsically stupid. They can't really do anything except add single digits together and move bytes from one place to another. Luckily for us some talented programmers have written lots of programs to hide this basic stupidity. But of course as a programmer you may well get into a new situation where you have to face that stupidity in its raw state. At that point you have to think for the computer. You have to figure out exactly what needs to be done to your data and when (Gauld). Who are programmers? They are people who write the software, which runs the hardware in your computer. Without the software, computer systems would be electronic components incapable of performing any useful operations. There are types of programmers, who are called ?hackers?. In the early 1960's, university facilities with huge mainframe computers, (like MIT's artificial intelligence lab) became staging grounds for hackers. At first, a ?hacker? was a positive term that described a person with a mastery skill of computers who could push programs beyond what they were designed to do. Today's ?hacker?, however, comes with a negative connotation. Eric S. Raymond reveals this about hackers: There are a bunch of definitions of the term ?hacker?, Most having to do with technical adept nests and a delight in solving problems in overcoming limits? There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back to the decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ?hacker?. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the UNIX operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are in call you a hacker, you're a hacker. Kim Kamondo elegantly explains it this way: The computer-cracking culture can be broken down into four basic groups. To the general public, the term