Monday, July 13, 2009

Friday, July 10, 2009

Hacking

When it comes to hacking, there are a lot of misconceptions; first of all hacking doesn’t necessarily have to be online. The term “hack” is defined as “modifying something to make it perform what it wasn’t originally designed to do”. So if you can turn a flashlight into a laser, that’s a hack! Another misconception is that all hackers are malicious, immoral, illegal psychopaths. When in fact there are many several kinds of hackers such as, Wight hat, grey hat, and black hat hackers. Wight hats are the good guys, they hack legally (yes it’s possible) and help secure websites. Black hat hackers have preformed illegal acts in unthought-of of ways. Finally, grey hat hackers, are a hybrid of black and Wight, but most of them have never carried out an act against the law. So in summary

“there are people who hack for personal gain, and those who don’t.”—Unknown

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Today’s topic: large denomination bills


The US currency as we know it consists of the $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 dollar bills. But before they were taken out of circulation in 1969, $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills were used, primarily for hefty financial transactions, and organized crime. When the electronic money system was introduced, banks could safely run money back and forth. So President Richard Nixon halted their use to help fight organized crime AKA mafias.