The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
IÕm a junior-high teacher. This means that I spend part of my time thinking about cheating. ItÕs sad to say, but Google has allowed a lot of students to claim a lot of information that isnÕt their own. But really, thatÕs okay because it also makes it easier for teachers to find it all. As far as I know, itÕs never taken me more than a minute or two to find something that has been plagiarized and handed in. The amount of information out there is phenomenal and anyone with an Internet connection can find it. This is why it is just so easy sometimes, so tempting, to take some of the things that you find online and use them for what we need. Cheating makes me angry. ItÕs dishonest. Which is why I was wondering when my own two kids wanted to buy a cheat card for their Nintendo DS. Gamers have a completely different attitude toward cheating. As my 10 year told me when I questioned him about buying one of these cards, ÒItÕs not really cheating. ItÕs more like using all of the resources that you can.Ó This gave me something else to think about. I admit it, I used to cheat when I played Civilization. For a long time I couldnÕt figure out how to win the game. Then checking out some webpage I found my first cheat code. It told me to simply click some combination of buttons and I would get unlimited money to run my society with. Soon, of course, I was dominating the world night after night. It was boring. This is what I wonder about cheating. DoesnÕt it make it boring? IÕve written before about how my kids had discovered YouTube when they get stuck on video games. They try to figure things out on their own, but after a while they head to YouTube where someone leads them through, step by step, how to finish a difficult level or beat a certain boss. Is this cheating too? Almost every video game out there has two different websites, starting with the official one made by the company that actually designed and built the game. This one usually hosts video trailers that try to convince you to buy the game, screenshots showing off the great graphics, and maybe even a forum from the company where you can ask a question. The better websites are, of course, the unofficial ones. These are made by people who just love to play the games. These sites eventually host all of the things that the game studios really donÕt want you to have. They usually have maps of every single level in the game. This way you know how to complete the level before you even start. The maps will show you where the meanest bad guys lurk and where the all of the treasures are hidden. The unofficial sites also host all the cheat codes, the new characters, weapons, or vehicles that you can unlock by completing different tasks in the game. These sites host forums where advice is traded back and forth by gamers, and they often let you post videos showing how to do things. If you really want to play the games well, these are the sites that you need to pay attention to. But are they cheating? New surveys out show that over 94 per cent of people donÕt respect intellectual property. This means that movies are stolen, music is illegally downloaded, and pictures are used without ever saying where they came from. Are the two related? Is using cheat codes on video games just another sign of the same thing? Honestly, I donÕt really think so. Like my son said, using cheat codes is really just using the resources that you have available to you. Doing any kind of job, wouldnÕt you want all of the information that you can lay your hands on as you are doing it? Tech Notes runs Mondays.
