Homework 1: Web Searching
CS 102
50 points, due Feb. 16, 1998
Choose any five of the following topics to research:
- It will soon be possible to file for divorce on the Internet.
- A US Nazi Web publisher was taken into custody in Germany.
- A man was charged $250.00 for a Neiman Marcus cookie recipe.
- If you open a piece of e-mail with the subject ``Good Times,'' your
PC will be infected with the so-called Good Times virus.
- A man was jailed because of a computer glitch.
- Flaws in Microsoft Internet Explorer allow hackers to steal user's
private encryption keys.
- Someone got 2,500 parking tickets because his license plate says
``NOPLATE''.
- The Y2K problem caused IRS computers to declare 1,000 taxpayers to be
in default.
- Convicted prisoners are used by an airline to take reservations.
- A vandal broke into Yahoo and posted a ransom note demanding the
release of Kevin Mitnick.
Using the Web search engines of your choice, determine whether or not each
of your five topics is true. In some cases you may have to sort-out
conflicting reports.
Write your results up as an MS Word document. For each topic, provide the
following information:
- The relevent information you found regarding the topic.
- The search engines consulted and final query strings used.
- The URLs of the sites you used in researching the topic and an
indication of the trustworthiness of each site.
In evaluating your work, what will separate an ``A'' from a ``B'' will be
the thoroughness of the research. ``Thoroughness'' here refers to
answering questions related to individual topics. For example: What
happened to the Nazi Web publisher? Who is Kevin Mitnick? What is a
computer glitch? It also refers to checking enough reliable sources that
your conclusions are correct. It does not refer to citing 10,000
URLs. Because MS Word has spell- and grammar-checking tools to assist you,
I will be evaluating spelling and grammar.
Send your Word document to me (to the address kelliher or
Send mail to kelliher AT DOMAIN goucher.edu) as an e-mail attachment. Your results are
due by 11:59pm on the 16th.
Thomas P. Kelliher
Thu Feb 5 16:31:15 EST 1998
Tom Kelliher