Tutorial IV: Computer Security Risk

It has come to my attention the importance of computer security. This loosely used term is vital to the computer user. I am going to educate you on the importance of computer security.
First we must understand the computer risks: 

Internet and Network Attacks
Unauthorized Users
Information Theft
System FailuresHere above is a list of possible security risks. Lets go through and explain each one.

Internet and Network Attacks:
Internet and Network attacks are the most common form of cyber abuse. Hackers, or crackers, cyberterrorists are computer users committing crimes against other computer users. The definition of cybercrime is "Online Internet based illegal acts". This means any act of hackers violating your computers security to change or steal you personal information is considered a cyber crime. There is many different ways cyberterrorists use the Internet to destroy people personal computer. These terrorists use computer programs such as viruses to infect your computer in negative ways. These viruses are made to destroy or cripple your cyber use. Each one is designed to perform different functions, but ultimately with one major goal "computer destruction". Other forms of Internet abuse is from applications such as worms, rootkits and Trojan horses. These all sound different but are made for the same reason.

Unauthorized Users:
An unauthorized user is a person is using a computer without permission. This would not fall under the cybercrime law. The vulnerability of your computer is a high risk. Without computer passwords or locks enemies or associates can freely access your computer. Which has private information that is now shared with the wrong people. Many business's must be aware of this security risk. Potential clients and employees could cripple a business if an unauthorized user hacks of steals valuable information. Selling company information, secrets, or evidence to accuse large corporations. Financial records are now computer accessible.Which leads me to my next point.

Information Theft:
This is one of the most important security risks. Due to the amount of information stored on computer nowadays; hackers are subject to stealing and personal information. An example: I was on the web and bought a cell phone case. Days later my credit card number were taken off the web and used unauthorized by individuals who I did not know. I lost hundred almost thousands of dollars due to this cybercrime. My point is valuable information such as bank information, SS numbers, credit card numbers, address and even phone numbers are on the computers and even the Internet. This information could put our lives at stake. Identity theft has been a major campaign for the last couple of years. Companies such as ID watchdog and Lifelock are designed to ensure protection of personal information that is access online. Identitytheft.com states over 7.2 million homes affected by identity theft per year. This means watch the information you list, monitor your and your children's websites. Information theft is a huge industry for hackers and cyberterrorists.

System Failure:

Our last point we have is System Failure. Many computers today are destroyed by lightning. This can cause loss of information stored on these computers. Its a loss of money and time. People do not understand the importance of surge protectors. These devices are designed specifically to protect the device plugged into its outlets. Its is estimated 5 million computers are destroyed yearly by lightning strikes. You can buy surge protectors for cheap. $5 dollars could sace you hundreds for insuring your computer with a surge protector. All computer companies do not have lightning stike guarantee's. Above I have posted a screen shot o my search results for screen protectors

Discovering Computers 2010 (Cashman Series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_security

http://www.pcworld.com/article/126083/the_10_biggest_security_risks_you_dont_know_about.html

^^^^^Definitely best article to read^^^^  #james #marcic #jamesmarcic 

Secure Email Project

I have just completed my secure email project. This project was very interesting. I was never aware of signed and encrypted emails. This was new surfing in new waters for myself. I must admit though, I found this project more direct and understandble than the Access project. This project was smooth. I started early and finished with plenty of time. I am really enjoying learning more and more in the computer world. I have a grasp of terms and phrases I would never of known unless this course. Below is a picture of my Thunderbird inbox. Here are my two email replies from Professor Means. I have highlighted the two with Arrow indicators.

In the article shown above, there is a report on email security. The importance of email security in the expanding computer age has become very prenevolent in the past couple years. The article focuses on how company's can become less vulnerable to data breaches through company emails. Many business are coming into the light of securing employee emails. Internet and data security is important to the survival of a young or old corporation. Leaking of precious information can cause loss of money, profit, and power.
The article states the email market has been steadily growing for the last decade. Between between 2005-2008 over 600 million new mailboxes were established through providers. The biggest loss of email security is through servers. To save email data a company needs a server to store all the data. Mass storage can lead to deleted information that is essential to a business.

Another form of email security loss is from the employees. More and more people are working from home offices or on the road. This requires laptops or portable computers. This means employee have access to offline email messages. So evidently this has a critical risk factor in data security.

The article states "A large risk to email data within the enterprise is unlawful access to highly sensitive mailbox information". Many offices trust employee's with information. Constantly secure management of these data files is important to its security. Breaking information hackers are less of a problem then mad employees taking there anger out on the company. Data loss from employees selling information, or taking the information to use for themselves.

Access Project

I must say this access project has been though. It has taken me a long time to complete this assignment. I had to take 2 extra days just to get the work done. I was unable to complete the project in the projected time due to high school work load and I had the busiest couple of weeks in my business. Which is good news, but it come with a price my school work. Anyways,

This project has thought me how to correctly use access. I have learned to create more queries, forms, and reports. I must say the easiest of the three would have to of been the forms. I enjoyed spending time doing the form; it took no time at all. The reports on the other hand, took me for a loop. I am not even sure I was able to successfully complete the project due to the reports. I thought the wizards were a much needed help through this process. I would have never been able to finish if it wasn’t for the discussion boards and the help button the Access 2007 bar. The project took me forever to import the excel file. I was using 2003 access at first and was not successful in import the data and I couldn’t figure out why. I tried and searched and got aggravated. Then finally it came to me. I had to download the 2007 office, and open every file in 2007. Success.

Finally, I am going to give my two cents on the Microsoft access. I was able to do the entire project very smoothly. I had complaints at the beginning from the reasons above. Except now after I realized my mistake I was able to more smoothly finish the project. I would one of two things to make access more efficient. I would either update the information on past office suites, or try and update all computer systems to the newer software. I know money is the issue, but this way every person will have the best and more reliable and data sufficient sources.

The project itself was great. I ran smoothly through the videos, and was able to complete most tasks without having to rewatch. The one complaint I had about the project is I would have had one other video segment just for troubleshooting. I had so many issues due to stupid little mistake's that could of been prevented. I would like to see in a clip, not long only 5-10 minutes just going through the common problems with this project. As you can see my complaint is not a critical issue, but more of a suggestion to improve the work and learning experience of the student.

Tutorial 3: Internet and Search Engine's

Internet and Search Engine's

There is one common problem every internet user faces on a daily basis.  That is correctly searching the internet! Everyday millions of people log onto the internet. Google performs more than 2 billion searches worldwide everyday. That equals out to be 83.3 millions hits every hour. That does even add in website such as dogpile, yahoo, bing and so forth. Today I am going to show instruct you searching the world wide web.



There are many different ways to search the worldwide web for information. First we have “search engines”. Webpedia.com defines a search engine as “a computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet)”.  The search engine takes your data being searched and runs each word through a computer database. Then it has a program that sorts out each character/letter, each of these characters returns millions of results. The web application collects the results and lines up the best suited order of the words or phrase. This process sounds very complex, but seach engines are able to do this is a matter of seconds.  Here are some other examples of search engines: yahoo.com, bing.com, google.com, ask.com, yebol.com, blekko.com

                                                  



Screen shot by James Marcic
Copyright 2011



Above I have taken a screen shot of Google. I have searched the word "Money". Here is a list of result generated just from Google. Now compare these to screen shot below of Dogpile.com.

 Second, we have “meta search engine”. Wikipedia states “A meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source.  This is pretty search engine type is very simple to understand. Meta search engines collects all the information from other search engines and compiles the best results from every page. This actions has its  up's and down's. It has all the best results, which if you are certain of the information, you find the information very easily. The bad side is it does not give a broad search return. Meaning, it only compiles the best results and not a variety of possibilities. In this case will not help the user who is just browsing around. Some examples of Meta search engines are: profusion.com, Kartoo.com, dogpile.com, and surfwax.com.



Screen shot by James Marcic
Copyright 2011

The screen shot above is dogpile.com, we are seaching the word "Money". If we compare the different results given to us. Not very many of the possible examples of  the word "Money" is on both web sites. This shows you how vastly different each and every web search engine or meta seach engine could be. I would suggest when searching information on the web always check atleast two seach engines. This will come in very handy. I would go even as far as to suggest searching both Meta and regular search engines.

How does google compile information:

Google for example has these programs called “bots”. You can think of this application as millions of little spiders crawling all over the web domains and collecting data from every URL. These spiders obtains one web address, then that one web address links to two others. Those two link to on continually for millions of web pages. Just think of how complex and long that system of information would be, millions of web pages, billions of articles, trillions of words. The bots then return to Google, where a database copies the information for use. This action is performing 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. These bots never stop working. This gives google the most up to date information on every website.

Here are some articles on these google bots :

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=182072

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebot

Here is a video to you NEED to watch about googlebots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usyYXNNBRjc

PRESENTATION AND WEB 2.0 PROJECT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMwaXSMqBVc

Presentation Evaluation Rubric

Name of Presenter: James Marcic

Your Name: James Marcic

	Missing or lacking	Meets the minimum but could be improved	Excellent
Is there a logical flow and sequence of content? How could it be improved?			Yes. I presented information very well.
Does the presenter anticipate questions and answer them in the right place? At what points did you have questions that were not answered?		Could of answered the question better. Did go along with the presentation well though.
Did the presenter grab your attention in the first 30-60 seconds?			Yes, good opening line.
Did the presenter ask questions and spark your curiosity?			. Yes. Interesting subject. I enjoyed the presentation.
Did the presenter set the context with a concise explanation? Is it clear what the presenter is trying to share?		Yes. Helping the economy is emportant. Should of elaborated more though.
Did the presenter validate any claims?			Yes. Good sources and information.
Did the presenter avoid inconsistencies and errors, typos and unbelievable claims?			Yes, all were believable and consistent with presentation.
How well did the presenter avoid clutter?			None. Great job with white spaces.
What did the presenter do to ensure readability?			Yes, very few words, and more talking.
Did the presenter say it, and then show it or did he/she read the slides?			Said the information and then showed it. Well informed…

 The Project

My presentation was to pitch an entrepreneurial idea to a venture capital company. This project has helped me to learn how to set up a PowerPoint presentation. This alone was not an easy task. I was unaware of the extent of how in-depth you can customize a PowerPoint presentation. There is timing involved, page entrances and animation. All of these play key roles in developing a fantastic presentation.  I learned how to use web sites such as Authorstream or Jing to transfer PowerPoint presentation into video format. These application websites transferred the PowerPoint into MP4 format, which could be transferred to a Web 2.0 site. I used Youtube to stream my media to the public. Youtube is a great tool for publishing and downloading amateur videos to the web. Youtube has comment boards for people to critique your video to help you become more video proficient. I am a young entrepreneur, and I made a presentation on my small company. This turned out to be a great tool for my company. I am able to get free public advertisement through Youtube, and also I can post link on our website and facebook accounts to hopefully obtain more business. This project also taught me when presenting an idea to an executive board you need to be very clean and clear in your presentation.

Self Critique

My presentation was an idea, an idea that will hopefully turn into an entrepreneurial dream. My presentation was an entrepreneurial pitch to a venture capital company. I pitch a small chicken coop company. The context flow of my presentation was very direct. I answered many question and all before they were asked. I allowed time between the slides to help the listener to compute the information given to him or her. The content was filled with statistics, images, graphs, and information. 

The presentation was well put together. The narrator keep ahead of the PowerPoint slides; he  knew about the topic. This is a key aspect of presentation success. If the presenter is uneducated about his or her topic the presentation will instantly lose any chance of success. This presentation was very thorough in describing the different coops. The Presentation has a whole slide dedicated to the statistics of the chicken industry. This I thought really helped to push the idea of hopefully sparking interest in the investor. All his claims and statistics were very accurate and he used very reliable sources. The graph helped the investor to envision the possible capital.

The presentation topic was rather interesting to learn about. I could have grabbed the reader’s attention more in the first minute. I tried to start with an unusual approach, by starting off with loud and enthusiastic remarks. This would get a reader’s attention but not enough to keep them entertained by the issues present. The readability of the presentation was very helpful, but I feel like I used too many word. I had too many list. I felt this might have been a distraction for the investor. They would be focusing more on the the presentation said, then the presenter.

Critiquing is a very useful tool for people to view the presentation and give feedback. I learned a lot from other classmate's presentation. What I should include, what should be described more, what not to do. I believe I am more satisfied by my presentation after critiquing other classmate’s projects.

Creating my Avatar

This is my AVATAR. His name is James.

As you can see I have created myself an Avatar. I have experience creating avatars, I have one on my Yahoo email account. I was not sure if we were aloud to use websites other than ones listed on the CreatinganAvatar document. Anyways, I went to http://www.meez.com/ and created myself an avatar. It did not take me long, I created a profile and began to adjust the avatar. I shopped for clothes, shoes, accesories, got his hair done. Come to find out almost everything actually cost real money. I had to drop all my custom outifts and start fresh. I went to the free section and picked some clothes out. It took me alot longer than expected. But eventually, boom I finished. And there you have it. My avatar.

Tutorial 2: The world of .MP3 and .WAV

MP3 or WAV

MPEG layer 3 file or MP3, A widely used term to describe the use of downloading audio files to any electronic device, such as portable media player, computer, smart phones, and CD’s. Waveform audio file format or WAV, is another computer acronym that is for the most part is unknown to the average computer user. WAV is a standard way computers store audio bistream. These two download files are very similar, but are made up of different component. The question is which one of these would you use to download your audio files. Let me explain the two file types.

MP3-  In 1995 the Moving Pictures Expert Group develops MPEG layer 3 to compress reduce the amount of data to represent audio files downloaded to computers of other media equipment. The way MP3 works is it takes the audio file and compresses it to one tenth of the size, and loses very little of the original quality of the file.  The audio file cuts out the extra sounds that the human ear cannot pick up, such as low static. The MP3 is on a setting of 128 kbit/s, which is very fast.  MP3 are known today as the most effective way for storing audio files on any electronic device. Since its wide spread popularity, MP3 players have taken their name from the fast downloading and smaller data files that are stored on the device.  

WAV- In 1991, IBM and Microsoft developed the waveform audio file (WAV). The original creation was developed to store audio bit stream on computers, mainly PC’s. The WAV stores audio files in chunks, and is downloaded through linear pulse-code modulation (wave lengths). The WAV files downloaded slower compared to MPEG layer 3. The WAV is on setting of 16 kbit/s, which is very slow. The files are not compressed and therefore have large amounts of data. There is a benefit to not compressing the files; with more data the sound quality would be significantly better than the leading competitor, MP3. More professional sound artists use WAV, because the better quality and ability to manipulate the data more easily since the file is not compressed.

So let’s compare the two:

                                                       
THE GOOD

      Waveform Audio Files                                                               MPEG layer 3

Better Quality	Small size files
Easier to EDIT	Compressed Files
None compressed files	Faster download
	Files transfer to more devices

                                                           
THE BAD

      Waveform Audio Files                                                           MPEG layer 3       

Slow download	Cant edit easily
Bigger file size	Not as good quality
Cant work on all electronics’

   To determine which of the audio file is right for you, you have to know what you want. If you are professional looking to edit and manipulate audio files, then WAV would be the best choice for you. If you are an average Joe or Jane and only download music for your Ipod or CD’s, your best choice is the MP3. The MP3 files don’t take a toll on the computer memory and leaves the consumer happy and satisfied by the product and service received. The WAV is a huge chunk of memory, but has the better quality.The bottom line is, what the consumer is looking for determines which audio file he or she will use." If the shoe fits, then wear it"

SOURCES:

http://www.computerhope.com/mp3.htm

Computing in 2010- Shelly Cashman Series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV

         For my blog post, I am going to depict the events of the Excel Project. This has been an interesting project; I am have common sensewhen it comes to computer programs. After this assignment I became well informed about the keys and process and use of microsoft excel.  I have taken a computer course in high school, but it never dealt with excel before. I shocked when I saw all the data in the columns and rows. In the following paragraphs I am going to tell you the excel difficulties I have to deal with and the new information I acquired.

        After watching the videos on the windows program, I started immediately with the project. It was very easy at first, but when getting into formulae and pivot tables the program became very difficult. I learned a lot through the process of this project. I learned how to adjust rows and columns; I learned how to adjust print preview setting and to make the spreadsheet visually appealing. I learned how to name cells, group cells, and add new columns with cells. The video in the Sakai website helped me through this project. I was able to learn about simple functions that organized the spreadsheet. 

        Excel formulae and pivot tables are very usual tools to calculate individual cells or information as a whole. I have learned to write formulae’s that figure mathematical equations or possibility statistics. Pivot tables are used to compute large amounts of information to figure statistics on information. There are many types of formulae functions: (If) function is used to compute probabilities, (Max, Min and Average) are used to sort through information to configure the data. These formulae are great to know, but if hard to remember, excel has a help functions that walks you through different excels functions. It goes step by step to thoroughly explain the issue. Below is a example of my pivot table. You can see how the rows, columns, and how the pivot table was able to find the average heart rate of selected age group and gender.The columns are the age groups, while the rows are the gender.

Tutorial 1: Applications Software, What is it?

While reading our text book “ Discovering Computers 2010” I came across a intriguing topic “Application Software”. I never completely understood  this term "application software". So I began to read and research and fill my head with all I could on the issue, until I thought I had learned enough. I then decided to put to use my new found knowledge, and write about it in my blog. In this tutorial blog 1 I am going to teach you what is application software and its use.

What is Application Software?

 To my understanding application software is a computer designed programs to serve the needs of the targeted user. Wikipedia defines Application software as “Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks.” What this means is every computer can download programs to help the user to complete their electronic task. Task such as writing papers, email a friend, play video games, and designing web pages.
 SoftwareHistory.com suggested the first software program was created in the 1960's. Just ten years after the creation of computers. Today application software consists of two main styles of  software, horizontal and vertical applications. Horizontal applications are general and very common applications and are used to help the different users and organizations in their everyday computer related endeavours. Horizontal applications are typically more basic and a lot less expensive than vertical applications. Vertical application on the other hand is for specially designed and formatted applications to help the specific groups and individuals. Vertical applications can be very expensive, ranging anywhere into the tens of thousands. Organizations such as banks, schools, law offices use vertical software.  This brings me to my next point…

How can Application Software be used? 

There are many different varieties of computer applications. The textbook gives four important groups for application software uses:



Photo courtesy of www. Mashable.com
All media on mashable is listed as public domain 



·        To make business activities more efficient



·        To assist with graphics and multimedia projects

·        To support home, personal, and  educational task

·        To facilitate communications



Business activities: There is a large demand for computer applications in the business world. . Business owner's can use these applications for document management or spreadsheets for accounting the business finances. Also there is applications for presentation software to create visual aid to communicate ideas and messages. Some examples of this application software are word processor, business software suite, or project management software.

Graphics and Multimedia: Graphics and design is large growing profession. Digital animation has become very popular in the entertainment worlds. Applications such as or photo editing software assist designers with the animation process.  Professionals such as engineers and architects use desktop publishing software or computer aided design (CAD) to design new building ideas, building structure, or vehicle design. These applications play an important role in the structuring process.

Home/Personal/ Education: The most common used computer applications are for personal and educational use. There is a infinite number of applications that are designed to entertain, educate, and assist the user. Here is a list of personal applications software: Personal finance software, Home education software, travel and mapping software, tax preparation software, Entertainment software(computer and game consoles). This is considered the most widely used application software on the market. 

Communications: Email has become the fastest way of communication. Applications such as instant messaging, chat rooms, or even this blog were all developed by computer applications. There is many different types of communication software and all were created to assist the computer user in communicating between people over long and short distances. Here are some other examples: Internet(Facebook, Myspace, twitter), RSS aggregator(keeps track of changes to website), Video chatting.

~Here is a small section dedicated only to hand held computer devices~

SMART PHONES: Smart phones have become the newest technology in cellular devices. Cell phones are considered miniature computers with phone applications to make them into communication devices. This advance technology has become the new era of application development. Apple and android have flooded the mobile application market with hundred of applications and widgets. The market is unlimited to its future.

courtesy of Mashable.com
All media on mashable is listed as public domain

What could be the FUTURE:

Here is a video link to the future of computer application software.

It is in another language, but gives the example of the possibilities.

 >>>>>>>watch this VIDEO<<<<<<<<

Video courtesy of youtube.com

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/application.html

http://www.scsite.com/dc2010/ch12/weblink

http://www.softwarehistory.org/history/Default.htm 

Discovering computer 2010 textbook- Living in a Digital World

Author Gary B. Shelly & Misty E. Vermaat