Day 24

What are some common internet scams? Example: click scams, international modem dialing, paypal fraud, pump-and-dump stock fraud, advance fee fraud. Nigerian 419, Spanish Prisoner, craigslist pay first scam. How do these scams work? How does the internet/web make this kind of fraud easier to perpetrate?

I don't know much about internet scams, so I'm excited to learn about them. When I was doing some preliminary research I found that internet scams can also be referred to as internet fraud, which is a more proper title. Internet fraud "refers generally to any type of fraud scheme that uses one or more components of the Internet - such as chat rooms, e-mail, message boards, or Web sites - to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to other connected with the scheme"(http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/internet/).

Here are some sites that I found:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/common-internet-scams.html
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/internet/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud***
***Spanish Prisoner and Nigerian 419 examples of these
http://www.chiff.com/a/dotcons.htm
http://www.419legal.org/internet-scams-general-discussion/#

Day 22

How does email work?

An email is simply a text message being sent over the internet. Originally they were fairly small, but with the technology of attachments, email messages can be quite large now. All email messages go through some sort of email client. These clients include Microsoft Outlook, Eudora and more. Regardless of the type of client you use, they all do 4 things: display the header of your message, select specific messages to read full body text, create and send new messages and lastly add attachments.

Here is a diagram of simple email server--if you have an email server, you can send and receive emails.









A someone wanted to send an email over to someone over a simple email server, this is what would be going on:

the person would connect to their email client and write an email. The email server would have a list of accounts that could receive emails. Every account would have a text file, meaning the server would have a text file in its directory. Mine would be layfield.TXT. Someone who wanted to send a message to me would write up their email and select me as a recipient. Then hit send. When send is it, the email client connects to the email server and give it the receivers name, senders name and text of email. The server formats the email and adds it to the layfield.TXT file.

Once more emails start coming in, the files are saved in the order they are received. Then when I go to check my email, I can click on the headers and decide what I want to read in full.

Today, people use the real email system to send and receive emails with 2 different servers. These 2 servers are SMTP server (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP3 Server or an IMAP server. The SMTP deals with outgoing mail and the POP3 or IMAP handle incoming mail.

here is a diagram of the real email system:
















information gotten from: http://communication.howstuffworks.com/email.htm

Day 18

net neutrality basics:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2108558&page=1
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/102209-fcc-takes-first-step-toward.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174296/net_neutrality_faq_whats_in_it_for_you.html

opponents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality#Opponents

verizon's point of view:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10379932-266.html
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Verizon-Net-Neutrality-Is-a-Mistake-Pure-and-Simple-665943/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHTt0vW4bmE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9jkFX3ncTE
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-seidenberg-blasts-net-neutrality-debate-continues/2009-10-21?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FW0

FCC:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/fcc-net-neutrality/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/net-neutrality-announcement/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/fcc-expected-to-announce-support-of-net-neutrality-monday/

Compromising?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10380709-265.html
http://policyblog.verizon.com/Tags.aspx?tags=net%20neutrality

Day 17

My IP address at the moment is:

152.33.70.2

I decided to look up the domain of the bank my Dad runs:
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/xenithbankinorg.com

Day 16

1. What was the word you were sent, and what is its definition?
I was sent "ensorcel". The word ensorcel means to bewitch (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ensorcel).

2.What was the word you were trying to send, and what is its definition?
I was trying to send the word "willywaw" or spelled "williwaw", is a violent arctic wind that howls down steep sided mountains and slams onto the ocean. It can also be a whirlwind encountered in the Straits of Magellan (http://www.willywaw.com/whatis.html).

3.How long does it take you to send your message using this method?
It took our class a collective of 55 mins to send 27 messages.

4.Was it easier to send or receive a message using this method?
I thought it was easier to send the message. I thought this because although it was difficult to get a space to send one, when you had that space you could call out the number. With receiving you had to make sure you were listening and then be sure that you were able to hear the correct number. A couple of times I got my 1s and 0s confused and when that happened I got the wrong letter.

5. What were some of the bottlenecks?
Some of the bottlenecks that occurred during class where that people started to talk at the same time. When this happened we called collision and you had to wait a random amount of time until you called your person again. Another bottleneck people encountered was that they couldn't get all the numbers written down--it is confusing to listen to only 1s and 0s because they start to run together! The final bottleneck we discussed were the random intervals. Some people would wait a long time after a collision to resend their message, while others would try again right after the collision was called.

6. How could you speed up this process or make it more efficient?
We tried a couple of different tactics to speed up the process--going in a circle, starting with one person and then having that person who received the message send their own message and so on. We found though neither of these were successful because there were long lulls or people were skipped all together. At the end we went back to the original way we sent messages--just randomly calling out names and hoping no one was trying to send one at the same time. In the end it this was the most efficient because by the end of the session only a couple of people were talking at once. Although it was all confusing, it was a fun exercise and a cool way to relate networks.

Day 15

What are some ways that we can design a network to handle (smoothly)
a) addressing and b) communication conflicts in a bus topology?

To address the communication problem I would give each computer an increment of time that they could send out a message. For example A could send information out every 5 seconds. B could send out on increments of 10 seconds and so on. There would have to be an exact starting time though so computers wouldn't get confused or be sending out information all at once. Another problem would be if there were a lot of computers on one bus system, then time increments would get longer. I suppose if this were the only solution to the communication problem, there would have to be a limit to how many computers were on a bus system.

I'm not sure how one would address the address issue with network design. Perhaps each computer could have a signal that they give off at all times so other computers could locate them. It would be kind of like a lighthouse--blinking so you could find it. Again, if there were a lot of computers on one system, the signals would have to be all different so there would have to be a limit of computers on each bus system again.

Day 9

1. "Good artists copy, great artists steal" -Picasso
Steve Jobs quoted Picasso when he was talking about taste. In the movie he talks about when you want to replicate something you bring in ideas of things that have already been created (http://atypicaljoe.com/index.php/site/comments/jobs_picasso_quote_great_artists_steal/) and you use them as a starting off point to make your product.


2. The "look and feel" lawsuit was between Apple and Microsoft. From what I gathered from the movie and Wikipedia, Apply sued Microsoft because they felt like they were copying their idea of the GUI when Microsoft came out with the Windows 2.0 and 3.0 operating systems. Apple ended up losing. The court ruled that Apple couldn't get "patent like protection for the idea of a GUI"(wikipedia.com).

3. I'm not really sure how this quote corresponds to the "look and feel" lawsuit. I could understand that Jobs felt as Microsoft was stealing his ideas, but then he would be calling them "great" and from the movie, I gather that he doesn't think they are great. I think that neither companies copied or stole from one another. They just built upon and bettered existing ideas. If people don't create things and then people elaborate on those creations how would we make anything to begin with?

4. here is a pie chart of the different market shares for operating systems.