Week 4

1. My topic for my research essay is going to be about how the internet has become a useful tool for pedophiles.

The first journal article I researched is called "Child Pornography Online: Myth, Fact and Social Control". It was written by Robert Bauserman for the Journal of Sex Research in May 2003. This article is mainly a review of another book called "Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online" written by Philip Jenkins. In this report we learn that Jenkins went undercover online to find out how the mind of a pedophile works. Jenkins spent most of his time on web based bulletin boards were pedophiles would meet to discuss their "hobby" as they call it. We learn that these pedophiles have little fear of the police, because of limited laws dealing with internet child pornography. Instead they are more frightened of private groups and hackers who infiltrate their programs and destroy their images and videos.

The second journal article I researched is called "Child Pornography and the Internet" written by Robert S Mueller III. Mueller is an F.B.I agent. Mueller talks about F.B.I programs such as the Innocent Images National Initiative which has been around for 10 years targeting sexual predators on the Internet. Most of their operations are undercover and currently more then 250 agents who investigate these cases. He also discuses how these pictures of children are not just photographs but live acts of molestation. As these predators become desensitized they might be encouraged to go out and find children of their own to molest.

The third journal article I found is called "Regulating the Internet: The new battle against child pornography" written by Lesil C Esposito in 1998 in the Case Western Reserve Journa of International Law. Esposito discusses how the internet is now the primary medium for pornography and how pedophiles use the internet because it is virtually unregulated by law enforcement. He also discusses how national boundaries do not exist in cyberspace. I've learned that in many countries such as Spain and Sweden possession of child pornography is not a crime. Esposito discusses a specific convention called The Convention of the Rights of the Child which was ratified in 1990. While it attacks the problem on internet child pornography at an international level it has not been effective because of a lack of effort at national levels.

These three journal articles have given me a lot to think about for my essay. I'm starting to see that some of the problems with child pornography over the internet is due to problems both nationally and internationally. I'm surprised and disgusted that many modern western countries do not have laws against the possession of child pornography. I'm also interested to learn that hackers, who I thought were criminals themselves, actually pose a great threat to pedophiles and their community.


2a.) Here are my answers to the scavenger hunt

1. What is the weight of the world’s biggest pumpkin? 1,502 pounds, grown by Ron Wallace of, Rhode Island; weighed on October 7, 2006.
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/giants/record.htm

2. What is the best way to contact Grant Hackett? I would go through the Australian Institute of Sport and ask for the contact details of his manager, Brian Taylor.
http://www.ausport.gov.au/contacts.asp

3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue? A giraffe’s tongue is approximately 18 inches in length.
www.on-the-matrix.com/africa/giraffe.asp

4. Define the word ontology in your own words. Ontology is basically the study of existence. http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/

5. What was David Croenenberg’s first feature film? David Croenenberg’s first film was a 7 min long Independent film called Transfer (1966). He then had two full length independent films Stereo(1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). However, his first major film was Shivers (1975) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000343/

6. When was the original 'Hacker's Manifesto' written? Janurary 8, 1986 http://linuxreviews.org/dictionary/Hacker_Manifesto/

7. Why do all phone numbers in Hollywood films start with 555? For many years, 555 was unassigned as a dialling code in the US and could thus be used to prefix fictional numbers with impunity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2357,00.html

8. What is the cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes? The cheapest way to travel from Crete to Rhodes is the overnight ferry, this saves you money because you don’t’ have to pay for a hotel for the night on the island. http://www.greektravel.com/faq/index.html

9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts, this week of March 1965? I’ll Never Find Another You by The Seekers.
www.onmc.iinet.net.au/topspot/1965.htm

10. Which Brisbane band includes Stephen Stockwell on keyboards and vocals? He played keyboards for the Brisbane punk band Black Assassins
www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm

Here are the answers to section 2b

1. What is a search engine?
A searcg engine is a program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user.

Reference www.netsetgo.com/glossary.php

2. How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
Search engines give each document they find some measure of the quality of the match to your search query, a relevance score. Relevance scores reflect the number of times a search term appears, if it appears in the title, if it appears at the beginning of the document, and if all the search terms are near each other; some details are given in engine help pages. Some engines allow the user to control the relevance score by giving different weights to each search word. One thing that all engines do, however, is to use alphabetical order at some point in their display algorithm. If relevance scores are not very different for various matches, then you end up with this sorry default.

Reference http://www.webreference.com/content/search/how.html

3. What are some of your favorite search engines? Why do you like one more then the others?
Some of my favorite search engines are Google, AOL and msn. I like Google the best because the results are usually what I'm looking for. It ranking system is very good so I get the results that I want. It's good because you can also search specifically for images too if you want. Google is also one of the best known search engines and when I think of looking for a search engine it's just the first one that pops into my head.

4.Can you find some current news stories about search engines?
This is a pretty good article http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2615
The article is basically examining whether or not Google is stealing content. Google has recently settled some law suites over infringement rights with pictures and texts. Google compiles lots of news stories in one section and it seems unfair to some of the newspapers. Google might provide the link to the story but the viewer doesn't stay around and browse other stories, instead returning back to Google to look for more stories. This seems a bit unfair to the companies that Google links it too. In my opinion Google really isn't doing anything wrong. If it wasn't for Google then no one would go these newspaper article websites in the first place.

Even though I now know the difference between the Internet and Web I'll......oh who am I kidding, I'll still use the words interchangeably. In fact I usually don't even say the Web, I almost exclusively say the Internet which means I'm just straight out using the wrong lingo.

Netiquette. Now here's something that really upsets me. I hate flamers. They are the most annoying little mongrels on the Web. They especially like to enter political discussion boards. This can be especially annoying when your on the verge of actually make progress on an issue and then a flamer writes something and suddenly you've got a battle of words again and all progress made is lost. Then you have the other sort of flamer that has a valid point to their argument, but are just so damn rude in their reply that you want to smack them. I actually am happy that a lot of the discussion boards and chat rooms are now banning flamers if they leave nasty comments. It teaches people to try and respond to things that they might disagree with calmly and in a civilized manner.