Most programs are available for one-time downloads, but the Norton package can be downloaded on other computers. It makes sense that companies would only want their programs to be available to the student or faculty member, not their families and friends as well! But, I realized a problem with the Norton site. It prompts you to renew your subscription periodically, which involves a fee that can be avoided if one only knew that a new license code has to be entered every year for academic license products. Noone informed me of this, so I paid to renew my subscription for the past two years! I did not know that I could get the new updates for free with a code! I wonder why Norton doesn’t recognize a customer as having the program under academic license so that they can ask for the new license code when renewals are available? Some students knew about this I’m sure, but I did not and I know my friends and family who downloaded the program don’t know about this either. Maybe because Norton knows their program might end up on the computers of a student’s friends and family as well, who will pay to renew the service since they will not want their computer to be unprotected after it had been protected for a year under the software. By making the program distributed by the university available to many computers, it is like free advertising and customer recruiting for Norton, because those who had the program for free will be scared to live without it and will renew it. It could be like a scare tactic, or it could just be smart business. Perhaps Norton tells us about the free code in the fine print of the agreement that noone reads when the program is downloaded. The benefits of the Value-license program offered to universities lists “requires no commitment beyond a one-time purchase” as a perk, but if you are like most people and missed the fine print informing users of the free code, than you may have been paying for the service that should have been provided to you for free as part of your student services cost in tuition.

The two issues in the article which really caught my attention were net neutrality and privacy rights, and both seem to tie with the efforts of many Democrats to stifle the pervasiveness of big business in certain internet freedoms. Net neutrality had been challenged in the Senate’s telecom committee, but a vote on a bill to outlaw what the article refers to as “high speed toll booths” ended in a tie. Now that Democrats are in power, Taylor alludes to the possibility that this proposal to further isolate lower income people in the world of internet and technology will fail. Where many lower income people already lack internet access because of the cost of computers and internet service, and lack of knowledge or transportation to public access outlets like libraries, the telecom and cable industries proposals to have faster service available for fees is, in a sense, widening the digital divide between those with access to resources and those without access. We talked in class about a theory of the internet as infrastructure that has become neccessary in serving the public, and this “tax” on internet service would be like ideas to tax the lower income people for services that they use like welfare, without taxing the rich. 

Another issue that is once again in the tech spotlight is internet privacy, which we have discussed extensively in class. Democrats have always advocated internet privacy, especially since the passing of the Patriot Act. However, in addition to protection from internet privacy invasion by the governmnet, they are also advocating internet privacy from online companies and consumer data groups that make spyware and adware. Although fourteen bills relating to internet privacy were voted down in the past two years, Taylor and others are hopeful that the Democrats will stand up for consumers’ rights in internet access and privacy!

http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/10/magazines/business2/election_tech.biz2/index.htm?postversion=2006111306

At my internship, I had to enter information from a printout of an Excel database into an Access database. I remember inquiring why the database could not just be transfered from Excel into Access, and my boss and the secretary both said that they could not figure out how to do it! I wondered if they had used the help function but I guess that they hadn’t and I just took their word for it that it could not be transfered! Perhaps the original database was not made in Excel which would explain why I had to do this. All I know is that it was a time-consuming and rather boring project, but when I finished, I did quite a few interesting things with it. I used a database of landlords, potential landlords, and tenants in a local municipality and cross-referenced it with a list of property and EIT payers in 2005 provided by the school district to narrow the list down to tenants who may not have been claimed by their landlords and who may not have paid their taxes. I felt like I was a detective and it was actually alot of fun, although it may have been easier had I known how to apply some of the functions that I learned in the lab last week like the “select, project, union, difference, and product” functions to create new tables from a database of tables. I could have created new tables to identify “potential landlords”, “landlords and claimed tenants”, “unclaimed tenants”, “tenants who paid taxes”, “tenants who have not paid taxes”, etc.

I definitely see how using the “join” function in databases can help public and nonprofit officials sift through data to compare populations and sub-sets of populations in order to target specific policies and programs to certain groups, and in order to assess the needs of the demographics in their regions.

But sometimes, downsizing isn’t always the best way to go about innovative measures. Mainframes are slowly making a comeback because of their ability to facilitate operations that use a large amount of power and memory at once. One example from the article is the University of Toronto, whose administrative personnel use a mainframe to aid with particular functions, and can buy “extra power” for times when the university’s network will experience high volumes of traffic like during enrollment.

Another huge advantage of mainframes is their security features. The article states that even smaller companies might choose mainframes for the simple fact that they use long strings of complex code to encrypt data and keep “top-secret” information from being accessed externally or even stolen internally. Research and development branches of for-profit universities might even want to use mainframes to protect intellectual property, I was thinking. I’m not sure what Pitt uses, but because they are a school focused on research, I would think that they would want to keep certain findings and experiments undercover.

The article mentions a company in Brazil using an IBM mainframe to manage an interactive online game that they are developing. While it would be really cool to have a game where alot of people can play at the same time, the ability to facilitate such complex interactive activity could be useful in many other respects, like information sharing and educational purposes for example. While this could seem insecure, maybe the ability of mainframes to use complex encoding might make their use very important for international research and development efforts. While I don’t know much about their capabilities, imagining what mainframes could do based on what I know impresses me, and makes me beleive that sometimes simplification and efficiency sacrifice a vision of the “bigger picture”.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech/10/30/reviving.mainframes.ap/index.html

My previous experiences with databases at my internship mostly included data entry, although I did compare information and use the search function for certain projects. Once I created a data sheet for a water line insurance program that my company was doing as a side project. The database over 2,000 entries, and then realized that I screwed up about 300 entries because I put the wrong water company in those particular cells. I had to go back, delete them, and retype them all. However, if I would have known how to copy, drag, and paste, then I would have saved myself some time!

The cool thing about databases is that we can sort quantitative and qualitative data for the purposes of organization, ranking, computations, analysis, and many other functions. They can be such an important visual as well as a practical and useful aid for us when we are public managers and need to analyze data about populations and other statistics. Yes, we will likely have people who can create databases and compute statistics for us like statisticians, but it is much better for a manager to be informed at some level on the basics of all skills they will come across in case they need to make changes, add data, or even create their own database to explain something to staff or council members for example.

Another experience I have had with a database system was during my internship at the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office in the pre-trial and ARD department. They DA’s office uses the CIMS (Criminal Information Management System) database program to sort information about particular defendants. It tracks their personal information,  including aliases and physically identifying information like tatoos, court dates, sentences, and previous convictions. The system was relatively simple to operate, but one problem I noticed was that their information was not as up-to-date as it should have been. I spent alot of time helping them input information from case files into the database, but I felt that if they used a more sophisticated databasing system that could be accessed by other District Attorney’s offices in surrounding counties that it would have been more efficient and more useful. Also, the database did not help with paperwork reduction, as every defendant still had a thick paperwork file to sift through with arrest reports and case information documents. I saw that the database did help when trying to track down information about defendents without searching for their file, but the database was case sensitive, and not “smart” enough to pull up all related names when performing a search.

I know I will probably come across and need to use databases for the rest of my life, and I feel that the FIT lab last week really helped me learn some important basics for utilizing Excel and creating datasheets. It was actually kind of fun! And I really want to thank Lori for teaching us how to apply Excel to an everyday part of our lives by creating budget sheets. I really really really need to start budgeting, and I think by making a sheet on Excel I might actually stick to it!

According to an article on CNN.com, Microsoft Explorer will introduce the first upgraded version of its server in years because of its eroding market share. While Internet Explorer took up 93% of the market two years ago, it now only has 86%. Still seems like alot doesn’t it? Well, Firefox is emerging as a major competitor, with 11% of the market and growing. The advantages of Firefox is that it is a more secure browser, blocking pop-ups that may contain viruses and other nuisances, and it is free to download! The article states that Microsoft has made it so that the new version, which is not in the final stages yet and offers competitive features in relation to Firefox, can be downloaded for free and will be offered next month to XP users who want more security for their computers.

Could this be the beginning of the Microsoft kingdom’s demise? Or will their research and development teams come up with even better servers to continue to control the market? Well, Microsoft has made a last minute change where people looking to upgrade will have a “clearer choice” to pick a competing version from Google or Yahoo according to this article, because of an antitrust battle in Europe. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next couple of years and even a decade from now. Maybe the Microsoft kingdom will become an empire, lasting through the technology era and into the next.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/10/19/microsoft.webbrowser.ap/index.html

So, could we live with cookies? Well, I learned from the FIT lab that while having too many cookies on a person’s hard drive could take up memory and slow it down, and that frequently deleting them can prevent certain servers from finding out what the person is browsing on the internet, that deleting them can actually restrict your access to certain sites. For example, Doc showed us that by deleting his NY Times cookies, the website didn’t recognize that he was an online subscriber to the paper and denied his access to the full stories. So we are, in a sense, punished for deleting our cookies and preventing servers from monitoring our surfing.

The Digital Divas wondered in their lab what exactly we will do to protect our privacy, and advised us to weigh the costs and benefits of doing so. I decided for my personal life, that I will stick to encryption only when it is required for my activities, like online banking and paypal accounts, for example. I do not deem it necessary to protect any of my email or schoolwork posted on courseweb. However, if I ever decide to develop some sort of invention or theory, I would probably want to protect that from invasion. Similarly, if it is required in my field of work, I will have to utilize encryption and other protective measures to protect the intellectual property of my place of employment. I also will not delete my cookies, now that I know what they are and what they do, for the purpose of protecting the monitoring of my surfing, but I will clear them every once and a while so that my computer doesn’t slow down too much! Otherwise, right now I see no reason to worry myself too much about the invasion of my internet privacy, but I might change my tune if something would happen, like my identity being stolen!

Something else that I learned was that the program “Weatherbug” is actually a big offender of monitoring and that it can really slow down your computer. They are always asking you to pick a “sponsor” for your Weatherbug, usually some sort of online university, and they then send you automatically to the website for that organization, making a few cookies appear in your folder. After hearing this, I immediately deleted the program from my computer. I figure if I really want to know the weather, I will just visit the Weather Channel’s website, and I will also never have to hear the annoying chirp of the “Weatherbug” when there is an update about the local weather.

The article goes on to say that many young people are realizing that online social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook can actually be detrimental to not only their social lives, but could be threatening and harmful to their professional lives as well. Michael Bugeja, and journalism professor at Iowa State, expresses dismay at the lack of face to face communication that has resulted from the increase in technological advances in social communication and networking. I especially liked his opinion on what he views as the rudeness that these new advances can cultivate. He mentions seeing couples walk down the street holding hands while both are on their cell phones.

I wholeheartedly agree with this perception: nothing irks me more than being out at a restaurant with somebody who insists on answering their cell phone in the middle of dinner. If a person is expecting an important call, then I won’t mind, but if they keep answering their phone or spend over a minute talking, I start to feel a little annoyed. I know I have been guilty of this before, but I have known people who will spend a few minutes on the phone before the meals have been given to us, which is usually the time reserved for conversation! As far as the social networking sites go, I am a member of Facebook. I fought it for a while, and then one day at the library while I was making fun of a friend of mine who was obsessing over a post on her boyfriend’s Facebook wall, she set up an account and a profile for me against my will, complete with a picture that she uploaded from her webshots. This was last fall I beleive, and I definitely remember times that I have clicked around Facebook for almost an hour, wasting time that I should have been spending doing homework or researching information online. Lately I have been refraining from checking Facebook, and once I start applying for jobs at graduation, it will definitely be gone. I don’t want a potential employer to see anything from my undergrad days that might be a little crazy!

I agree that these networking sites can erode solid communication in relationships because of the same ambiguity that exists in text messages, IMs, and emails. A person’s tone or inflection is important in conveying emotions, which is lost in virtual communication. I have seen too many friends get upset over posts on their’s or friend’s pages.

I like Henderson’s decision to spend more quality time rather than digital time with friends. I wish some more people would stop the obsessive text messaging and MySpace surfing and hang out together once and awhile!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/10/09/facing.the.faceless.ap/index.html

Primary sources are quite interesting, including first-hand accounts from interviews or eye-witnesses of people or an event, especially primary sources relating to a famous person, like friends or family. However, I think that secondary sources tend to be even more interesting, because they include analysis from people who are just as interested in the topic as you, if not more! They can provide insight into things and angles from which to approach a topic that are new and interesting.

One time when I had success with this was when I was writing a paper on the Protestant and Catholic relations in present-day Northern Ireland. Not only did I find alot of primary sources, but I found alot of secondary-source analysis and observations that really helped me paint a well-rounded view of relations today. I know it is because I chose a topic that I was really interested in, so my searches became more focused and narrow, and I really wanted to obtain information from reliable but unique and interesting sources. I need to rededicate myself to performing curiosity driven research for my classes now, so that I might find all the things I need to really dive into an interesting topic and make it relevant to those reading my work.

A time when I had success with my new serach engine abilities is when I was compiling research for a paper I was writing for my human resources class on wellness programs. Because there is little secondary sources and testimonies from particular organizations about their experiences with wellness programs that come up when simply typing in “wellness programs” in the search box, I really had to narrow my search by typing in “wellness programs” AND lawsuits, or “wellness programs” AND small businesses. I ended up pinpointing specific testimonies from organizations, both public and private, that had different experiences with wellness programs and I ended up getting some informative secondary source evaluations of the programs.

Well, contrary to my posture in my digital nugget of two weeks ago, it seems as though the government has decided that it is worth their time to crack down on internet gambling and regulate it. But, instead of regulating it to tax it and use money to help educate gambling addicts and children, they are making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to the online gambling sites. Yes, Congress has passed this law and companies located in Britain are waiting for President Bush to approve the law, but it remains to be seen what the Justice Department will do to enforce the law. Perhaps they will not aggressively enforce it? In my past article, which was a story from 60 Minutes, when asked why they didn’t crack down on illegal gaming site, they Justice Department said that they have “other priorities”.

One of the major issues in the case now is the large amount of money that the online gaming business generates, estimated to have been about $12 billion in 2005, and the amount the industry will lose after the U.S. Congress passed the law. Shares for the industry lost about $6.5 billion on Monday.

“We believe that this will have a very material impact on the long-term prospects of online gambling, and in particular poker,” said analyst Julian Easthope at UBS. “This will lead to a rapid decline in the use of online poker sites.”

PartyGaming generates about 78 percent of its revenue from the United States, while Sportingbet gets about 62 percent there.”

PartyGaming said in a statement: “If the president signs the act into law, the company will suspend all real money gaming business with U.S. residents, and such suspension will continue indefinitely.”

It is funny how Congress picks and chooses what to legislate for moral reasons and what not to legislate. They argue, for example, that Phillip Morris and other companies have a right to be in business, and they are heavily regulated. Why can’t online casinos be considered a legitimate business like riverboat casinos, but they could be regulated like the online porn? Perhaps online gambling sites could be put under filters protecting children at home and school computers, like porn sites are.