1. What is the difference between an infraction and a crime?
2. Why would Marcus rather destroy the RFID than reprogram it?  What does that say about him?
3. How would you describe Charles?  How does he compare to Marcus and Darryl?
4. Who are Van and Jolu?  What do we learn about them in this chapter?
5. Who were the girls they met at the massage parlor?
6. What interrupted the fight that was going to break out?

1. Why is Marcus known as w1n5t0n online?  Why doesn’t he use his own name?  Do you think he is smart to do that or not?
2. What is a “tell”?  Do you know anyone who has a tell?  Do you think you  have any tells?
3. Why is the instant messenger called “IMParanoid”?
4. What does Marcus think is wrong with “gait recognition”?
5. What was the problem with Darryl’s choice of reading matter?

In general we will be talking about online aliases, laptops in class, and security, too!

If you want it in installments, you can get it from Daily Lit.

If you want the whole book in any of a number of formats, you can get it from Doctorow’s own website.

A prettier version of the pdf version can be found on another part of Doctorow’s site.

You can get it from Scribd in a number of slightly different layouts.

If you want the audio book as read by a computer, check it out on archives.org. It is not the best audio book you have ever heard, but there is something interesting about listening to a book about computers and hackers read by a computer!

We will only rarely use the book itself in class, and on those days I will bring what we will work with.  It is not necessary that you print the book out — unless you really want to.  If you do, I suggest you download the official pdf version from Doctorow’s site.  It is smaller than the pretty one.

1/19/11 Note:  I have uploaded a copy of the official pdf to Blackboard if you prefer to get it there.

1. Avoid long sentences

2. Avoid long paragraphs

3. Use active verbs

4. Change directions up front

5. Say what you mean

(Yes, I know there are only 4 tips here. That’s all he had in the original post, though.  If he edits his post, I will add the fifth tip here as well.) (Edited 1/11/11 to include the missing tip!)

Mr.  McPhee explains what he means by each one of these, so check his original post out for more information.

If you are in both classes, you might want to consider using categories or tags to keep track of posts for the different classes.  To do that, when you make a post, you can just add a tag that might be “095″ or “094″ for instance.  If you want to do categories, you have to set them up through your dashboard and then assign a category to each post.

Check out this screen shot to see what I am talking about.

The areas with circles are where you can add tags and categories.  Tags are easier because they require no set-up, but either one does the job.

1. Please make sure that these blogs are in English.  Remember that they are for an English class!
2. Please make sure that you check for comments.  If you have set it up so that comments need moderation either in the beginning or permanently, you will need to moderate them.  At some point, your classmates may be graded on whether or not they comment on your blog, so you need to make it possible for them to do that.
3. Please feel free to change the way your blog looks.  It’s more fun if it reflects you and your personality in some way.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the blogs or about anything else related to the class.