May 7 – Something for everyone.
INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINE: FIND SOMETHING NEW FOR YOU TO LEARN on a computer. Just for fun, go to google search bar at http://www.google.com and type in: primer, computer introduction and be amazed at some of the things that pop up in the search results. I found an acoustics primer at http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/acoustics/chapter1_intro.shtml, a basic HTML Introduction at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478141/Basic-HTML-Introduction.htm, and a primer on computer image processing and analysis at http://www.microscopy.fsu.edu/primer/digitalimaging/russ/index.html. It is no wonder that your results were so wide? What if now you wanted to know something about a car seen in an old photograph and the caption reads “circa 1909 E.M.F.” so go to google.com again and type in a search for the term: 1909, e.m.f. car in order to bring up the EMF auto home page at http://emfauto.org/index.php and browse any of the other other links you like as well. There will come a time when you need to find more specific information in your coursework for a research paper and then you will need to know about the advanced search features available in some search engines for returning very precise search results. Let us believe someone is taking a course in Microbiology and wants to write a term paper about the Bacterial Exotoxins of Escherichia coli commonly known to us as E.coli. Go to Google.com and at the right end of the search bar are tiny letters which read: Advanced Search and click on that Advanced Search feature. In the first textbox for “All of These Words” type in e. coli and then in the text box for “this exact wording or phrase” type in: bacterial exotoxins, then click on on the Advanced Search button. I saw an article today in this search result titled “Bacterial Protein Toxins” and that was about “toxigenesis, the ability to produce toxins, as an underlying mechanism by which many bacterial pathogens produce disease”. The URL of this article from which my above quote came, is http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/proteintoxins.html. You can see then, that from this one example of an advanced search, you can pretty much find any specific example you want. Advanced Search also includes a feature to not show a page having a certain word or phrase and I have used that before to exclude pages with the words sell, sale when I wanted to exclude commercial pages in one particular search.
Cnet News at http://news.cnet.com/ is my favorite site for top technology news headlines. You can click on “Latest News” tab at the top and today I read “Worm targets Windows users on Skype and Yahoo IM, injects malicious links in e-mail, Word, and Excel files, and automatically copies itself to USB drives, Bkis says.” That is certainly something we would want to find out more about. Right? Think of the impact of those infected USB drives hitting computer labs in school classrooms. This link I just gave you and the “Latest News” tab is a great way for a student to keep up with Internet Technology news bulletins but the student needs to know how to protect their own computer and how to avoid Instant Messaging worms. I cannot teach that, but I myself avoid any Instant Messaging (IM) sites.
AVOID IM AND STOP THE UNAUTHORIZED USE OF SOFTWARE
Young teens use Instant Messaging and haven’t a clue about the dangers of malware, which includes, viruses, trojans, worms, and any other malicious software code that can be passed from computer to computer. Protect all computers in the home with anitvirus software and buy a license for each computer… otherwise the computer company either doesn’t download updates to multiple copies of its software at the same IP number on the Internet, or it files data that your household is using unauthorized copies. Also if you have same license number on your software installation as your buddy across town who also owns the box it came in, but you have a different IP number than the registered owner, you can be prosecuted. IP stands for Internet Protocol and each computer has a piece of hardware for sending and receiving packets of information over the Internet. Each NIC card , one for each computer, has its own IP number and that is way computers can be traced backward to whoever began a computer infection, or who sent the first malicious attachment in a major virus attack…computers are traceable. The time the message was sent can be tracked also. Be a responsible computer user and respect everyone’s right to use the Internet responsibly.
TEACH A TEACHER TO TWEET CLASS ASSIGNMENTS ON TWITTER
It would be so much easier if a teacher would just log in to the class twitter page he/she set up at http://www.twitter.com for free, so that his/her students can follow the tweets on their own twitter page and immediately see when the new assignment is posted. It just needs to be copied and pasted from the instructors regular spot for posting assignments. If a teacher is too prickly about tweeting on twitter for the benefit of the class, perhaps a student in the class would tweet the assignment and pass the tweet address to the other students. Think of one thingfirst: Many computer networks at schools are run by Network Administrators trained in security who set the rules and protocols about which the rest of computer network follows, and certain URLs (Web addresses) can be blocked from a school’s computer network for security reasons.
STUDENT BE AWARE IN CLASS
The computer console the instructor uses is capable to looking at your screen remotely at any time. Some courses or computer lab classrooms have a student policy prohibiting the use of the Internet during a class lecture. Follow that rule, please, or be willing to lose your computer privledges, take a grade drop, or be expelled from that course with an F, and possibly banned from other computer classrooms… can’t it wait until class is out? Same with cell phones, and we all know the drill on that one. Use a computer responsibly, especially at school.
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR
Are you requiring user authentication for any user on any computer in your entire network so you know or can find out which person was using any console on any particular date and time from your network records, should you be asked to produce that information? Companies want that kind of security ahead of time, before an employee creates a problem which could open the company to liability from damages incurred from the employee’s improper computer useage during company time. How good is the security of company networks? How are you going to prevent any further loss of company’s client/customer data?
IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY http://www.ieee.org/societies_communities/societies/computer.html
IEEE Computer Society members work in a wide range of computing fields such as artificial intelligence, graphics, microprocessors, IT, networking, information security, and software engineering. Its members enjoy a variety of programs and services, including a Distance Learning Campus with hundreds of course modules for Java, Cisco, XML, Microsoft Technologies, and much more. A person may join IEEE.org and the IEEE Computer Society as a student or graduate student, just so you know you do not neet to be already working in a related field to get the benefits of thousands of articles, books, courses as a free benefit of membership. Check it out. Begin at http://www.ieee.org to first read all of the types of technologies represented by IEEE besides only the Computing Society. The home page of the IEEE Computing Society membership at this time costs $50 USD to join for the rest of the year and have access to all of its benefits which you can read about at http://www.computer.org/portal/web/guest/home . One of the benefits is free access to hundreds, often thousands of available professional enrichment courses. Worth taking a peek.
NEW TO COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IN THE ENTERPRISE? OR A STUDENT COMPUTER PROGRAMMER?
You can share with us (blog@hitmill.com) your own favorite sites for programmers and I will tell you about a couple of sites a student may like: For OOP languages, there is http://www.cetus-links.org/ Microsoft Developers: How To Use The Developer Support Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/242971 and MSDN Front Page News http://blogs.msdn.com/.
Java Developers: Sun Developer Network (SDN) http://developers.sun.com/ Students: NetBeans is an open-source Integrated Development Environment, IDE, an extensible platform, and an open-source community. See it: http://netbeans.org/
Object Pascal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal (RE: Embarcadero Delphi) Delphi from embarcadero: http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi .
HISTORY OF TECHNOLGY – AUSTRALIA
History of the Totalisator http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/ by Brian Conlan. Brian also programmed on core languages and the PDP11.
The Reign of the Totalisator Unlikely History of Australian Computing is recorded here in the Rutherford Journal.
Sir George Julius by Brian Conlan.
I tried to put a little something on todays post for each of you readers. Something new to interest you. Let me know if you a particular topic of interest related to Internet or Computer Technologies. Reach me at blog@hitmill.com.
Galcalia is a take on Calgalia, Twitter’s IT Tweet about Internet Technologies is @Calgalia. Sometimes more needs to be said on a subject announcing something new, something a student in Technologies wants to know about, so a blog good.
Send your own announcements only if it applies directly to college students learning the Internet or Digital Graphic Technologies… not including CAD, but more fine arts, and the commercial apps. possible in Digital Graphics Design and the Internet Technologies for Students. This blog will not like commercial links unless there are benefitting the Fine Arts, Digital Graphic Technologies, or Internet Technologies as suppliers for students, and no online stores please. Students can Google commercial links, online stores, and find their own. Hot news in these fields, please send it to me. I will avail an email account to this blog.
ANNOUNCEMENT: ADOBE.COM
Adobe has released, begun selling Creative Suite 5. Students be sure to get your student prices locked in by ordering from your student campus store. In California you can use a Community CollegeStudent Body Card to purchase at a state college/univ. or see if your own bookstore on campus is an Adobe Reseller (ask the manager of the bookstore). To view products, see http://www.adobe.com/. Click on Products and find the Creative Suite options.
EVER WONDER? WHEN IS A MAC USED IN CLASS?
School campuses usually are using Mac computers in classrooms for any Digital Graphics Courses. Consult your own college ahead of time. You may have to ask a manager of Fine Arts about the Digiotal Graphics question if there is not a separate Digital Graphics Department, or try an e-mail to the instructor to ask if Macs are used. It would be nice for course announcements at colleges to specifiy when Macs are used in class, right on the course schedule in the catalog. Please ask your college to do this.
WHEN IS A PC LAB USED FOR A CLASS?
I have personally seen PC Labs used for classes about Microsoft products, (Microsoft Office products such as Word, Excel, and Access as well as for Keyboarding courses and Microsoft proprietary computer languages such as Visual Basic.NET, C++.NET and for Web Services, and for some Computer Networking courses.
COURSE CATALOGS ARE LACKING in giving students information about the Computers used [PC or Mac] in course announcement schedule booklets… nice to know before enrolling if that is an issue or you are not able to use a Mac.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE FRESHMEN have survey courses , COMS100, which is not using a computer but is lecture , textbook course and then COMS110 or lower, is the first hands-on course for those needing to know the overview of computer use. Community Colleges are still seeing some high school grads need hands-on entry level computer work so the course stays on schedules and fills up fast. Register early.
COLLEGE BOUND?
Consider sharing a color laserJet printer such as the HP Color LaserJet 1518ni which is a network printer that can work off a shared router in the dorm room… Check first with your dorm person or if in a house or apt., you will need a shared DSL connection to set it up. I used a wireless router and make sure my phone is not 2.8 frequency for a Dect 6.0 frequency lately so the computers, the wireless laptops and wireless cell phones and wireless cradles can all get along.
One student can buy the printer and own it. Ink will be 4 colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black and the cartridges are a lot cheaper in the long run about pages /per cartridges against the smaller printers, but $75 a whack for a large laserJet cartridge. I buy two sets of all 4 outright when I buy the printer, then just replace one as the need arises, so always have two sitting back…I wouldn’t want to have to go shopping in the middle of printing a homework at the last minute.
CONSIDER AN INK JET PRINTER.
Quality of print is not as good as the lazerJet but the price is better for the printer. You will be buying a lot of ink more often with this smaller sized ink cartridge and will not get the corresponding number of pages for a cartridge. By the time you buy enough cartridges, to equal the volume of ink in one laserJet cartridge, you will have also paid more for that volume of ink. Here, bigger ink cartridge is better (not for initial cost), but a savings in not having to buy so many cartridges of the lesser price to get the same job volume printed. It is your decision. Digital Graphics classes need a good printer. Adobe software courses such as a PhotoShop class, an Illustrator class will be doing printing of high resolution. I favor the LaserJet production for high resolution graphics, unless I send my photo files to http://www.mpix.com for printing. Homework at school, may not have to be so discerning. Professionally, use the more professional quality result for your clients.
B&H PHOTO VIDEO has catalog, AUDIO, COMPUTERS, CAMERA SUPORT, SOFTWARE, HOME ENTERTAINMENT and more…. They are a huge store in New City which will ship direct and take phone orders. (See below)
Technologies and Courses Requiring any Camera, Lens, Video, AV Projector, Computer, Home Entertainment, Software etc. I want you to know about requesting a catalog from http://www.bhphotovideo.com. They are the current biggie for Professional supplies in any of the above mentioned fields Audio, Video, Photography and more… Other than B&H, the manufacturers Web sites will be a good place for more information. For Photographers wanting to know more about camera support, tripods, monopods, maco light support, pano clamps and supports, then you need to see the catalog from Really Right Stuff, a store in California which ships direct. http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/
That wraps it for Thursday May 6, 2010. “Galcalia” , Student.
galcalia 