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Showing posts from October, 2018

Project Presentation

For the assignment to plan a subject to talk on and present in front of the class I have put a lot of thought. The main subject I'm focusing on is the case of identity in the virtual world. From the days of anonymous message boards made under screen names to now when we are giving away more and more of our personal information to the online communities we live in. Why should this be worrying you may ask? Well, we model all things virtual off of their real world counterparts with so many more possiblities. With this comes identity theft. I would like to present on how the features of personal identification are quickly slipping out of our own control on the web. From just using usernames and passwords to two factor identification is having to adapt rapidly to stay secure from hackers or scammers. New innovations threaten this and I would like to investigate them. One is adobe's new software that will allow you to edit and alter clips of people's speach to even make them say

The Future of Journalism

With new technology around us, everything is changing. One area affected by new inventions is journalism. From the printing press allowing the mass publication to radios providing live commentary to television bringing pictures and broadcasts from the world into our homes. The newest innovation seems to be the internet. Allowing constant contact to anyone in the world the World Wide Web is changing journalism. It is up for debate whether this is good or bad as it allows any person to publish anything without checks for factuality. A video published to Youtube with the title Epic 2015 is purely satirical in nature, but in the wrong context to any college tech class, it could seem like pure truth. The same thing is true about The Onion and their social media spinoff Clickhole which post parody news stories that can get quoted and passed on as fact. The question now is where is journalism going? My thoughts are that there will always be a need and a source for reporting, but some o

HTML

I was surprised at both how easy and tedious creating a webpage can be. I never thought to make one before so this was a completely new experience with all the unexpected pitfalls. To start I downloaded notepad++ and started a new document. The first time I ran my web page just as a test I was expecting something to go wrong. I followed the guide closely, mostly. The numbered steps made the process simple to follow. Saving the file as a .html out of the editor and double tapping it on my desktop chrome opened up… to nothing but the words Nolan's Tech Blog as my header emboldened on the top left side of my screen. I eventually found the source of my problems that I had spelled marque wrong and forgotten a back slash to end it off. After adding some text and other details like a blue background and inserted a smiley face image I finally had it. My own primitive web page popped up. This experience of building something of my own on the internet while somewhat silly has also been v

Email vs Snail Mail

How is the physical mail system similar and different to digital email? To start, email was designed with many of the same concepts and protocols as conventional mail to make it understandable. To mail a letter one must place it in a mailbox with an address destination and a return address. The mail carrier then picks it up and brings it to a post office where it is then brought to a mail distribution center and sent to the intended zip code and address. Similarly, to send an email the message goes from one user’s address to the website mail server which is like a big post office which then sends it to the local mail server of the recipient’s address. Both services come with scams and spam advertisements that take advantage of the importance we put on them. There is mail fraud when people steal other people’s letters in the real world and hacking when people steal emails from people digitally. While much of the etymology has remained mostly the same the word email has become i

Class Thoughts

     I am excited about this class. I have always been interested in technology and would like to one day have a career in it. Because of these reasons, I am sure TINST 207 will be a great learning experience for me. It is rarely realized how much technology is influencing our daily lives from all around. Even more so people including myself do not know how all of it works. From the earliest creations inventors like the world wide web's by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to the structures and systems like TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocols.      The project for this class especially interests me. I like to work in groups and give presentations and this is one of my favorite topics. However, this project will push me to look farther into new technologies that I know little about. One possibility for the project could be Digital Health Technology like the new art pieces that require users to set down their devices to perform other actions like turning on a desk light or