Presentations - Cyber Security

I decided to make a blog post on the group that presented cyber security. Cyber security has been really interesting to me, and it's actually the area I'd like to work in for my future job. I decided to present on a different topic because I already know a lot about cyber security and I wanted to explore something new. Despite this, I was actually surprised to have learned a decent amount from the presentation. I think was due in part by the fact that each group member could take a different approach to the large umbrella categories that we chose. I was interested to hear that the first virus was called a worm and began on Arpanet. Then, of course, came the email viruses which launched cyber security into what it means today. As it was mentioned by the presenters, the demand for cyber security will constantly grow and grow and most likely will continue to do this throughout our lifetimes, in any foreseeable future. When one presenter brought up the idea of webcam hacking it reminded me of a time when I actually decided to explore the very thing. After poking around in areas of the web that I'm not even sure should exist, I was able to see through everything from street cameras likely there to show the weather, to classrooms of students in other countries, to seeing out of the webcam at a desk in somebody's house. Although I hate the idea of looking through random cameras around the world I think the only reason I explored them was because I was so amazed that it was so easy to do and public for anybody to see. The only other thing that stood out to me was the idea of flash drives being used as hacking tools. To me, it seemed like something you may see in a movie or maybe a kid from my middle school would bring some basic script file to run on the school computer in order to call himself a "hacker", but I hadn't really considered it to be a serious threat.

What Makes a Community - Can Technology Provide What it Takes?

To me, there are only a few things that are essential for a community. The first is people. There needs to be a group of some intelligent (or at least somewhat intelligent) beings for a community to form around. For our purposes, human beings will be those living beings. The next is communication. There needs to be some way for those beings to understand that there are other beings that exist. The communication doesn't even necessarily have to be complex. The last thing is some kind of reliability between the living beings. I believe there has to be some common ground. This can be a similar interest, a cultural connection, or anything along those lines. With all of these things together, we're able to have a community. Say there's a group of people living in a neighborhood. They can be a community since they are a group of human beings, able to speak to each other, and their common ground is the fact that they live in the same area. Now, take a group of people who, for example, all see online that there is a concert going on in their area. They can all meet up regularly at the concerts and their common ground could be that they all enjoy the same artist playing at the concerts. In this situation, did technology create the community, or did it simply help the creation process? What if there's a group of people who log on to a video game's forum site. Many people post topics and talk with each other daily. Here, we again have a group of human beings communicating with the common ground being they all play or are interested in the same video game, except this community exists purely online. I think this is a great example of how technology can provide what it takes to create a community, and as you can see, its not much different than a community outside of technology.

Dot.Com to Dot.Bomb - My Thoughts

It seems that as the world wide web began, it was thought to be a ground breaking invention. People were excited about its existence and what it could be used for. Although, it quickly became a grounds for competition. Just like advertisement on radios and over television, the internet became an additional place for competing companies to battle for control over the consumer market. Because of this, many companies began and many companies ended. Fortunately, a lot of the companies ended because they were bought out and re-branded or re-purposed into something new. Essentially, many companies and businesses were spawned, some ended but many merged, and we ended up with the big names we have today, such as Microsoft and Amazon. What's interesting to me is that so many businesses began, yet only the ones with promising futures snowballed into the large corporations they are today. However, there were even many promising internet start-ups that ended when the dot com bubble burst. So many people saw value in internet-based start-ups, that their stocks began to increase, only by too much. When the collapse (the dot bomb) hit, many companies outright ended, like I mentioned before, while some companies that survived (specifically Amazon and eBay) were  able to grow to stock value higher than the value during the dot com "boom", as it's called. It's interesting to see such a ground breaking invention cause such influence only to crash and burn in a relatively short time. Luckily, the world wide web and dot companies were able to stabilize into what they are today.

Job Security - Where did they all go?

In class we talked about a series of jobs that are no longer relevant due to the advances of technology and, more specifically, the internet and the web. As for the main question of where did all the workers go, I don't really have that complex of an answer. I just believe they were forced to move onto to other things. Some likely moved into the very technological replacement that put them out of work, and some probably found other jobs. This got me thinking about the one thing that many people don't consider when looking for a career path; job security. Lets say you spend 8 years studying and working with everything there is to know about newspapers right before they become obsolete because of digital newspapers. It's kind of an obscure example, but in such a case you would likely move into digital newspaper production to further your career and to stay employed. If you instead work for a retail company as a cashier that completely moves all of its sales online, it puts you in a position of loss with nowhere to transition. For people in that situation, I just assume they found other work. The best case scenario would be a career that has its demand increasing. The next best would be a career in an area that, if it were to die, would at least have transition options. The case of my second example would be the worst case scenario. Although job security is sometimes very difficult to predict, it's something that needs to be considered to avoid that worst case scenario.

eCommerce - What wouldn't I buy?

What's interesting to me is the idea that when the web first began it was amazing to see the few items we could purchase online, whereas now it is amazing to consider the few items that we CAN'T purchase online. The total flip in that sense seems to come up in the most interesting situations. Maybe it's just me, but the idea that our thinking flips as certain aspects of life become the norm intrigues me. Either way, the only items the come to mind that I wouldn't but online are the obvious ones. I don't see myself purchasing a house or a car online in almost any circumstance. Then there are some items that I would hesitate heavily before purchasing online depending on the type, such as food and medicine. Certain foods and certain types of medicines I would hesitate to purchase online. For example, I would be fine purchasing name brand over-the-counter headache medicines or maybe even general allergy medicines, but I would not purchase strong pain medications online. When I think about it, I think the only reason I wouldn't buy the first two items I listed online is simply because I can't see them in person. If I say the car or house in person before hand then I might go through with payments online but I wouldn't find and order a car or purchase a house without ever seeing in in person. I guess I just don't like the idea of paying a ton of money for so much uncertainty.

Scavenger Hunt

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w8fYK2vUkyq22VzUpBS_l607sbxZvDOwfE4uG6hZB9E/edit?usp=sharing

You can't miss it ^

There's the progress we have on the scavenger hunt in a document you can see being edited live. Does thus post need 250 words too? (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

The Sea of Uniqueness - Thoughts On Guest Speaker Erik Hanberg

Our guest speaker on Monday the 24th spoke about his experiences with self publication and it got me thinking about using technology to publish yourself or your products. How does technology affect publication? Publicity? Advertisement? Does it help you or your product become more noticeable than others? What if the "others" all do the same? Is your product still more noticeable, or was it just placed in another sea of others? It's almost undeniable that technology and perhaps even just the internet itself can give you a huge advantage in advertisement and publicity for a book, a movie, or whatever it may be. The thing is, the effectiveness seems to decrease as a platform, such as the internet or maybe a website, grows larger. I would argue the most ideal way to publish something is by putting it on a growing platform, where that something is unique to anything else on that platform. In other words, you want to find the sweet spot where a platform is large enough that a lot of people will see it, giving you better results, but not so big that your product goes unnoticed along with many others. Unfortunately, a platform like this is rare, hard to find, and hard to predict. There's not much we can really do besides spread our advertisements everywhere we can and hope it takes off. That's why we jump on new inventions like the internet, always eager to try and get the snowball rolling. Even if you think you have something unique, if you throw it into the sea of uniqueness, is it really unique after all? Did that even make sense?

The Source - My Experience With a Basic Hypertext Markup Language Page

I've created multiple web pages using HTML in Adobe Dreamweaver so I thought I'd just play with some unfamiliar tags. The packet given in class mentioned the marquee tag, which I have never heard of. After playing around for a bit, I came up with a paragraph in which I copied and pasted, split up each sentence leaving one per line, and used the marquee tag to scroll each sentence across the screen at declining speeds. This looked bad because the faster and shorter sentences finished and looped first, so I looked into limiting the loop count. After this, I left just the last sentence without a loop limit, so each line would scroll making a slanted pattern of sentences, while the last, and slowest, sentence would loop forever. I was thinking perhaps the last sentence of a real meaningful paragraph for a real webpage might be shown in this way to leave more of an impact.

This got me thinking about how there can be so many parameters and possibilities hidden behind one simple tag. Not to mention all the colors, sizes, and font possibilities with the text used in other tags. Although considered primitive when compared to the modern website, the unlimited possibilities with using basic HTML to create a page is arguably more advanced.

Cognitive Reference - Mail & eMail

The idea that new inventions are named to evoke previous knowledge in consumers is quite interesting to me. Cloud storage gives us the idea that it's up in the air like a cloud. Notebook laptops perhaps give us an idea of their size or main purpose. Most notably, email gives us the idea that it's very similar to regular mail. Both are methods of communication but vary greatly in cost and speed. Emails are sent and received almost instantaneously, while postal mail can take days depending on distance. Postal mail can be used to deliver physical objects such as money, checks, even packages of stuff, whereas email can only send digital information. Photos can be sent through email without needing to be printed out, saving money. Email can be used to communicate the same message to many people without the need to mail multiple letters. Emails can send links that can be easily navigated to through the receiving party's computer, whereas a link sent through postal mail would have to be manually typed in. Although email has many advantages over postal mail, it seems that, at least within the foreseeable future, email could become obsolete while postal mail would not. Instant messaging systems are now being used as a more practical way to quickly communicate while email is left as sort of a formal communication system, used in schools and in businesses. It's possible that we will see some service combining the these two into a universal communication system under a different name entirely. This is, at least, more likely than teleportation being invented to send large physical items and packages around the countries. For a long time to come, we should expect to still have postal mail to send gifts to our relatives or even shipping companies to bring us our impulse-bought items online. Although it's truly unlike that any drastic changes with mail or email will happen anytime soon, we have to consider how fast technology movies and how quickly aspects of it grow out of date. Only time will tell.

Redemption - What I Want Out of This Class

I hate being forced to take a class that I don't like or don't need. A lot of people would agree with me that it's difficult to take something away from a class if there is little there to take, it's frustrating to be in, or if, perhaps, the teaching style is difficult to work with. In fact, I transferred out of my required writing course just after 2 days of class because of a conflict in my a schedule and because of a personal conflict with the content. That being said, when I was told I had to take an elective course I decided that I wanted it to be a class that I would enjoy. Now obviously that's not a unique idea, everybody wants to enjoy their classes, but I wanted it to be a class that I would take even if I wasn't required to. This way, I feel like I'm doing what I want to do not what I'm forced to do. Since I'm studying for an information technology degree in hopes to do UWT's cyber security masters program, I figured this course would be very enjoyable for me. Although I wasn't really sure what to expect when going into the class, I was more than right about it being enjoyable. The class is mentally engaging, interesting, and about a topic I love. I was essentially hoping to get a fun, interesting, and worthwhile elective class experience out of this course and I'm quite sure that is exactly what I'm going to get.