FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH

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Larsson, Matías
AR512
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Assignment 2: Narrative-Imaginative-Descriptive

DRAFT
Hacking Case Anonymous Reportage

One night two hackers decided to hack a bank’s bill. They were two old good
friends in a small house in New York, who knew a lot about computers. Their dreams of
their whole lives have been to hack a bank and become millionaires. Apparently that
night was a great opportunity to take action.
They had just arrived from a computer-dealer’s shop downtown, and bought the
two routers they lacked of to complete the hacking operation. Excited by their anxiety
they established their computing room in the living-room, connected all cables in their
places and began working. They entered the bank’s archives and finally changed some
numbers. With great amusement they both took out some beer and drank all the night.
As the plan followed, one of them was supposed to go personally to the bank and get all
the 5’000’000 dollars they had put into the account.
At 10:00 a.m., the morning after, Matt, the older guy, owner of the house and the
account, got up and changed clothes while his friend remained asleep with a beer bottle
in his left hand. He loaded a gun just in case and left away towards the Merrill Lynch
New York’s bank ready to get their money out.
(also paragraphing) Having asked a bank-guard where he could take away great
amounts of money, he headed towards the manager’s office, knocked at the door, and a
secretary told Matt to wait nearby since the manager Mc Donald was on the phone. 15
minutes of waiting time seemed an hour for the anxious and nervous newly rich robber.
He stared out of the window as a cute girl walked past the street when his cell phone
rang; it was Ben – Matt? Where are you? – I’m at the bank just about to take away our
fortune. – Wait, hold on! I’ve been trying to enter the bank’s archives and someone has
apparently changed the password, it seems they’ve noticed we’ve hacked the archives…
why don’t you wait 5 minutes and let me enter the bank’s archives again so I check
everything is going on as we planned it. – Don’t be fool Ben! – He ended the
conversation just at the time the manager opened his office door – Mr. Matthew
Peterson? – Yes sir. – Come in please, take a sit… so what do you need? – I want to take
my money out of my account. – All of it? … Right now? – Yes sir, if I can. – Well well,
let’s see…
The manager began researching for his account in the computer and said allowed: -
5’000’000 dollars, well I’ll give them to you right now… - He went to another room
and after 20 minutes came out again with a black thick suitcase. He opened it and it was
full of 100 dollars notes. Matt saw this suitcase and couldn’t believe it. ( ) Manager
said: - do you want to count them by yourself? – Matt didn’t answer, he felt
uncomfortably nervous, he was all sweat, his anxiousness wouldn’t let him breathe, and
finally… he suffered a heart attack. Ambulances arrived but it was too late. Matt
Peterson died that morning at the Merrill Lynch bank in an attempt to take 5’000’000
dollars out from his account.
Ben got this news by the afternoon when after calling Matt at his cell phone
repeatedly, got worried and drove to the bank.

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Larsson, Matías
AR512
0012

From one joyful moment to another all went wrong. Ben went…. that same
afternoon to Matt’s funeral and returned home crying, feeling as if it was his funeral too.
Benjamin remained in his bed thoughtful. The stolen money lied in Matt’s account.
Matt didn’t have a family, nor-parents, nor-cousins, nor-nephews alive. Where will all
that money to? How could he take it away if it wasn’t his account?
What happened the following day… as I heard was that all those 5’000’000 dollars
may have been absolved by the state. All was lost, all was gone for Ben Mayer, a poor
21 year old fellow died of a heart attack due to stress and depression. No-one could
prove certainly why Ben got to that extreme of stress, but I wouldn’t open my mouth.
The day after his death, a black suitcase arrived to Ben’s house with a will, Matt’s
will, in which he stated clearly that his property should be given to Benjamin Mayer
(his best friend) in case he died.
Where did all that money end? Well… as I said, I won’t open my mouth… but why
not tell you that Benjamin had a servant… ?

See to word order and punctuation mistakes

Assignment 2: Narrative-Imaginative-Descriptive

Hacking - Case Anonymous Reportage

- Hey Tom, how come that you have such a spectacular car…a beautiful house
in the seashore…when two months ago you were nothing more than a
servant?
- It’s a long story… do you wanna hear it?
- Why not?

One night two hackers decided to hack a bank’s archives. They were two old good
friends in a small house in New York, who knew a lot about computers. Their dreams of
their whole lives had been to hack a bank and become millionaires. Apparently, that
night was a great opportunity to take action.
They had just arrived from a computer-dealer’s shop downtown, and bought the
two routers they lacked of to complete the hacking operation. Excited by their anxiety
they established their computing room in the living-room, connected all cables in their
places and began working. They entered the bank’s archives and finally changed some
numbers. With great amusement, both of them took out some beer and drank all the
night. As the plan followed, one of them was supposed to go to the bank and get all the
five million dollars they had put into the account.
At 10:00 a.m., the morning after, Matt, the older guy, owner of the house and the
account, got up and dressed up in formal clothes while his friend remained asleep with
a beer bottle in his left hand. He loaded a gun just in case and drove towards the Merrill
Lynch New York’s bank ready to get their money out.
Having asked a bank-guard where he could take away great amounts of money, he
headed towards the manager’s office, knocked at the door, and a secretary told Matt to
wait nearby since the manager Mc Donald was on the phone. Fifteen minutes of waiting

2
FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH
Coursework portfolio
Larsson, Matías
AR512
0012

time seemed an hour for the anxious and nervous newly rich robber. He stared out of the
window as a cute girl walked past the street when his cell phone rang; it was Ben –
Matt? Where are you? – I’m at the bank just about to get our fortune. – Wait, hold on!
I’ve been trying to enter the bank’s archives and someone has apparently changed the
password, it seems they’ve noticed we’ve hacked the archives… why don’t you wait
five minutes and let me enter the bank’s archives again so I check everything is going
on as we planned it. – Don’t be innocent Ben! – He ended the conversation by the time
the manager opened his office door – Mr. Matthew Peterson? – Yes sir. – Come in
please, take a sit… so what do you need? – I want to take my money out of my account.
– All of it? … Right now? – Yes sir, if I can. – Well…well, let’s see…
The manager began searching for his account in the computer and said allowed: -
five million dollars, well I’ll give them to you right now… - He went to another room
and after 20 minutes came out again with a black thick suitcase. He opened it and it was
full of 100 dollars notes. Matt saw this suitcase and couldn’t believe it. Mc Donald
said: - do you want to count them by yourself? – Matt didn’t answer, he felt
uncomfortably nervous, drops of sweat fell down from his forehead, his anxiousness
wouldn’t let him breathe, and finally… he suffered a heart attack. Ambulances arrived
but it was too late. Matt Peterson died that morning at the Merrill Lynch bank in an
attempt to take five million dollars out of his account.
Ben got this news by the afternoon when, after calling Matt at his cell phone
repeatedly, got worried and drove to the bank.
From one joyful moment to another all went wrong. Ben went that same afternoon
to Matt’s funeral and returned home crying, feeling as if it was his funeral too.
Benjamin remained in his bed thoughtful. The stolen money lied in Matt’s account.
Matt didn’t have a family, nor-parents, nor-cousins, nor-nephews alive. Where will all
that money end? How could he take it away if it wasn’t his account?
What happened the following day… as I heard all those five million dollars were
absolved by the state. All was lost; all was gone for Ben Mayer, a poor 21 year old
fellow who died of a heart attack due to stress and depression. No-one could prove
certainly why Ben got to that extreme of stress, but I won’t tell anymore.
The day after his death, a black suitcase arrived to Ben’s house with a will, Matt’s
will, in which he stated clearly that his property should be given to Benjamin Mayer
(his best friend) in case he died.
Where did all that money end? Well… as I said, I won’t tell anymore… but why
not tell you that Benjamin had a servant in his house…?

Gripping story!! Very well written. 34 out of 40 points.

Assignment 3: Reading and writing. Based on the following article:

Web underused in time of crisis

Technology commentator Bill Thompson says the web was a powerful tool - but sorely
underused - during the airport chaos caused by arrests on Thursday for alleged plotting to
blow up planes.

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Larsson, Matías
AR512
0012

This should be coming to you via e-mail from Venice, where the cybercafes have
started offering wireless connections and you can even log on while sitting at the
waterbus stop.

Instead I'm sitting on my living room floor trying to decide whether the 1900
Ryanair flight to Forli I booked myself on Thursday night will actually take off, and
looking at the Trenitalia website trying to decide whether I'll be in Italy in time to
catch the last train to Venice's Santa Lucia station.

Thursday wasn't a good day to try to get off this island of ours.

I woke to the news of the new security procedures and growing chaos, but since
my Easyjet flight from Gatwick wasn't until that evening I decided to go to the
airport anyway, hoping that the system would have settled down a little.

Unfortunately Easyjet cancelled all their flights from Gatwick, Luton and Stansted
and I was left stranded.

After queuing at the British Airways ticket desk I learned that they weren't selling
any tickets at all for flights within the next two days, so it seemed was no chance
of getting on a plane that day.

The information screens were little help,

showing flight times that had long passed, so
I headed to a café downstairs and paid for a
day's wi-fi.
None of the airlines has anything as useful as an RSS feed for flight
updates that I could subscribe to

From my laptop I was able to check out the various airline websites and get a
sense of what was going on.

Showing remarkable efficiency, Easyjet were already offering any passengers on

cancelled flights free re-booking, so I moved my flight to Sunday, the earliest
available slot and one that seemed to stand a chance of flying.

Then I surfed around, looking at news services and airline sites, and found that
Ryanair was running a limited service from Stansted.

Desperate to get away, and confident that if I could get anywhere in continental
Europe I could get a train or even another flight, I went there to see what was
available.

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0012

When I finally made my way to the Ryanair ticket desk at Stansted at around 4pm
on Thursday afternoon I was told that they were full and there was no chance of
getting out that evening.

I couldn't even buy a ticket for tomorrow, as they weren't selling any tickets at all
from the desk.

When I pressed her the woman at the counter did check and tell me that there was
one flight to Italy on Friday morning with spaces, but she couldn't sell me a ticket.

So I sloped off to the corner of the terminal, got out my laptop and managed to
make a booking, a lot happier than the man at the desk next to me who was getting
increasingly frustrated.

I may have used the web to get a flight, but it hadn't been my first choice for
finding out what was going on earlier in the day.

While everything was developing during the morning I had the TV and radio on,
and let my attention drift between them while I checked my e-mail, packed and got
things together for the day.

I didn't use the web because things were happening so fast that the ability of
speech-based media to break news immediately and the way I could split my
attention between what I was doing and what was being said was invaluable.

But once I got to the airports and into the maelstrom the net was vital.

Even if I'd had a portable radio with me, the information I needed was too detailed
to be provided by the mass media.

With my laptop I could check detailed lists of cancellations and try to find another
flight.

The few attempts I made to call reservation centres at BA and Ryanair were as
futile as I knew they would be, but I managed to get myself booked on the morning
flight to Milan - since cancelled, as you might expect, but rebooked for the evening
- within five minutes of being told there were spaces on it.

Of course it was far from perfect. There's no way to book a flight for the same day,
and Ryanair didn't bother to send me an e-mail overnight to tell me that my early
morning flight had been cancelled, even though they insisted I provided an
address.

And none of the airlines has anything as useful as an RSS feed for flight updates
that I could subscribe to.

But without the web it would simply have been impossible.

I now face another problem, of course. The new rules mean that I will have to
check in all of my luggage, including my phone and, crucially, my laptop.

Do I trust the baggage system, with the danger of damage or pilfering, with my
PowerBook? I don't think I can take the risk, so it's going to have to stay home and
I'll cope by using cybercafes or whatever other access I can find.

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And that means if anything goes wrong I'll be completely stuck. I won't even have
my phone, once I've checked in my bag.

In the old days any working journalist would head off on a story with a pocket full
of loose change so that they could phone the office - I wonder if I'm allowed a few
euro coins in my clear plastic bag?

Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme

Digital Planet

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/5245080.stm
Published: 2006/08/04 11:02:48

I’ve been analyzing the article “Web Underused in Time of

Crisis” which was published on the BBC network. It is based on the
experience Bill Thompson, the technology commentator of BBC,
went through during a turmoil caused by the arrests due to a
terrorist’s attempt to blow up planes in an English airport.
He states that the web was “underused” and ignored in such a
chaotic situation, being this technological advance a “powerful
tool”, a convenient alternative to book tickets and follow the flight’s
schedules.
I strongly support Thompson’s main idea; the web is a very
important innovation of modern times, and offers great facilities
and alternatives of communications and media’s distribution from
which people in general do not seem to take advantage.
In my opinion, people should be more concerned about the
facilities offered by the web; they can be of great help in times of
crisis up to the point that when you start using it, it becomes nearly
a must. This is clearly shown in Thompson’s report: “But once I got
to the airports and into the maelstrom the net was vital.” “But
without the web it would simply have been impossible.”
In Argentina, the web is practically unused. People are
generally concerned only about the advantages offered by e-mails
or chats and the web pages’ finders such as Google or Yahoo. But
they are missing other facilities such as long-distance study
programs, or virtual trading pages such as Mercadolibre in South
America or the global E-Bay service, Tickets’ bookings for flights or
whatever you can imagine could be facilitated by the use of the
web.
Argentina is not a country with end technology, moreover, a
great proportion of its population live in poverty, which implies they
cannot afford computers or easy access to the Internet. But
concentrating my analysis on the sector of people who can access
the web, I find that the younger generations are more in touch with
the web than adults since the least generations were born among
technology and its cyclic advances. Different is the situation of a
sixty-year-old person trying to understand technology and being
aware of the facilities offered by it.

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Technology is apparently advancing quicker than what people

are aware of, so that’s why many others are not up to it.
Although the Internet is a powerful tool that facilitates life, it is
a very personal decision whether to take profit of it or not, I know a
lot of people who hate the Internet while others criticize their
position. The truth is that this anti-technology people provide sound
arguments such as that it is unnatural to dedicate our time to a
machine, and quiet boring.
Regarding those persons who do not get along with computers
and the web, but I still understand the web as a revolution of
modern times. It is up to us to cling our selves to it, take profits,
and live in a modern way.

Quite original reading passage, very good supporting arguments. 8 out of 10.

Assignment 1 – Argumentative & informative

John F. Kennedy’s Assassination

John F. Kennedy was shot to death in 1963, in Dallas. He was hit in the head and
throat when three shots were fired at his open-topped car, while he was travelling
through the main business area of the city. One of the murderers was identified: Harvey
Lee Oswald.
However, it is unbelievable that still today nobody knows for sure why he was
killed and by whom. Will we ever get to know? I do not think so; many years have
passed since the assassination occurred. During this lapse of time, evidences have been
destroyed and many witnesses have died. But we can still make our own suppositions to
provide answers to this question.
At first sight it appeared that the crime consisted in an attempt towards the
government of the United States. Shortly after the shooting, it was a time of great
confusion, since it took place during the cold war, people started to wonder if the crime
was not part of a longer attack. But some evidence began to prove that it was a whole
conspiracy within an agent of the FBI, James Hosty, who appeared in Oswald’s address
book. But later on, the FBI provided a typewritten transcription of the document in
which Hosty’s name and phone number were deleted. More over, two days before the
murder, Oswald went to the FBI office in Dallas to meet Hosty, and he when found that
Hosty was not at work, he left a letter for him. When Oswald was arrested, he was
immediately murdered, and in order to destroy evidences completely, Hosty was asked
(by his supervisor) to destroy the letter, and Hosty did so. Here we can clearly see that
the government was involved in the crime but we still can not prove who gave the order.
To my mind it is reasonable to take Lyndon B. Johnson as the promoter of the crime
since, before it, he was the vice-president, and it is sound to say that he was motivated
by a great ambition for power.
Johnson is greatly suspicious of the crime also because he had enough power to
create a secret conspiracy with the FBI. Indeed, the first official investigation of the

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assassination was established by him two weeks after Kennedy’s death. This
commission of investigation was headed by Earl Warren under the supervision of
Johnson, universally known as the Warren Commission. It is quiet suspicious the fact
that Lyndon Johnson was the one who took action in informing the world on what
happened, since this would let him narrate his own version of the crime according to his
plans, in order to hide evidences.
There are many other controversial theories about President Kennedy’s
assassination. There are many people that sustain the existence of an unknown
conspiracy involved in the crime, but they also state Oswald was not involved at all
since shortly after his arrest he insisted he was a “patsy”, and never admitted any
participation in the assassination. This supposition gives place to another version of the
conflict. Supposing there was another conspiracy with nothing to do with the FBI, we
can think that Oswald was first, unfairly accused as the murderer and soon assassinated
in order to make people think he was the assassin (and the conspiracy did not want him
to reveal information which in fact, he would not have since we are supposing he was
innocent).Taking advantage of Oswald’s relationship with the FBI agent, would have
also been of great convenience for this people by causing confusion by involving the
FBI.
There are still a lot of theories to mention but which cannot be proved. Despite
the attempts of many people to find and prove someone to blame, a lot of years have
already passed, and year by year it turns more difficult to get a concrete response to this
mysterious question: Who killed John F. Kennedy? Being without an answer yet is
astonishing. Without any doubt and without sustaining the murderers’ commitments, I
can conclude that whoever the author of the crime was, they did it in a very effective
and shrewd way.

Very interesting investigation, clearly expressed in quite good language. 34 out of

40