Week 14 - Muddy

Another muddy week for me this was a lot of techniqual terms in this week that took getting used to there was a lot of information about storage however that can benefit a lot of people if utalized the right way

RAID
Raid stands for Redudant Array of Inexpernsive Disks and the main focus of RAID is to run multiple drives and treat them all as one. This will increase capacity, speed, and even reliability. It works a lot faster on Hardware then software. There is 4 including one new type of RAID
RAID 1 - aka mirroring
This means there is two different drives with the same data written on both of them which is good if one single disk fails you still have the same exact data with no errors backed up on the other disk, so there is no data loss and still runs at full speed. RAID1 also has a hot spare disk which is idle till one disk fails then it kicks in and backs up the data.
RAID 0 - Striping
Two or more drives and spreads the data across all drives evenly which makes the disk run a lot faster but there is no redundacy so if one disk crashes they all lose the data
RAID 5
This bridges the gap between RAID1 and RAID0. Data spreads across all disks except one which is used as a backup so it runs like RAID0 but if data is lost on one disk it runs like RAID1 and has back up disks to help out this one also has a hot spare.
RAID 6
Is a new version being started that is like RAID 5 but instead of running if only one disk dies this one can run even if two disks die.


There was a lot more information in this section as well which went into depth about the best storage choices for your business.

Week 13 - Clear

There is so many risks that you computer has when it comes to maintaing it to its full potential and making sure it does not get a virus or something else on it that can erase your information, download bad bugs into it, or make your hard drive crash all together.

Security Risks

Internet and network attacks such as virus or worms
Unauthorized access and use
hardware theft
software theft stealing program usage such as Microsoft, which raises the prices on software for everyone else
information theft such as identity theft
system failure - hurricanes, floods, etc.
wireless security - Don't connect to unknown networks

Ethics - The standard that determines whether an action is good or bad - Piracy, Information accuracy, intellectual property rights/copyrights.

Privacy - information privacy refers to your right to deny access or restrict collection or use of your personal information, limit personal information you give out, don't reply to spam.

 However if you are smart with your online usage, downloading, and information sharing you should have no problems with your computer there is many ways to protect your computer from these problems. They have anti-virus software programs that can block spam and pop ups so that it is less likely for you to get a problem on to your computer. Sharing your information is to up to you, find out exactly who you are talking to before you send out personal information such as social security numbers, driver license numbers and other information that can be harmful if given to the wrong person.

Secure email

I found a Q&A page from The University of Kansas that has a bunch of information about how they use secure email in there medical field. This helps to hide health insurance information from other users who should not have access to it as well personal identity information and financial information. Then this informational page goes over the steps to encrypting messages and how you know if your messages are encrypted or not. As well it tells you how/who you can message to see if you are doing it right. Its interesting to know that medical colleges use it to hide patient information from the curious world.

http://www2.kumc.edu/security/secure-email/se-faq.html

Another similar page I found was for the Commerce bank and goes over questions about there online security with their email which is another very important business to have this because they can send out bankers information such as social security number or bank account number over email and if some one can hack into this it can cause a lot of problems such as fraud or identity theft

http://www.commercebank.com/about/security-center/secure-message-center.asp

Over all secure email can benefit a lot of companies if used right. Banks, schools, hospitals, even day cares are all important business's in our community that I am sure we all want the information going into them to be secure but still be able to have easy access to the information that is important to us so email is convenient way of transferring information and as long as we can make this secure we can transfer data with no problem.

Week 12 - Muddy

There was a lot of information in this week it was a little diffecult to keep up with it all. over all learning about everything was pretty interesting however. Learning about all the types of networks we have PAN which is personal area, LAN local area network, MAN metropolitan area, and WAN wide area network which is the internet. also learning about all the addresses that keep you connected to the internet like how your TCPIP address consists of 32 bits. there was a lot of information about the LAN and WAN area networks. How with LAN there is multiple ways to get LAN such as ethernet LAN twisted pair of copper wire but you can fall into problems with this because it needs to be installed the right way or it may not work also it is not to good if you decide to extend your internet access width because it is only for a certian length. Fiber opics is another form where there is no electromagnetic interferance such as a lightning storm.

Also it was interesting learning about NIC which is a network interface card this connects nodes to networks it can be integrated on your computer or even on a USB port and every NIC is unique. The NIC knows who you are but not where you are kind of like a social security number. The hub is where all computers are hooked up to one network and everything that is sent out is sent out to every computer this can have security issues that is why a lot of people will pick switch instead where you can pick who you want to send information to.

Skype

http://www.screencast.com/users/Chelsea352/folders/Jing/media/a89669e9-dd96-4351-b239-93002232a879

(My internet did not want to upload the video to this actualy blog but here is a link to it via TechSmith)

This is my Skype video with my dad and his girlfriend. I had used Skype back home at his place a lot because my sister and two nieces live in Canada, and my brother and three nieces live in Amsterdam so this is a real cool way for us to interact with each other seeing as we dont get to see each other very much. I had never tried it on my own since I moved to Gainesville so its kind of cool I downloaded it so my dad can talk to all three of us while he is in Clearwater.

Avatar

 

Making an Avatar was rather interesting I went to a couple different sites messing around with them but meez.com ended up being one of my favorite. I could make the Avatar pretty much any way i wanted to by adding all kinds of different hair styles, and cloths style. you can even pick over 40 shades of skin tones. On this site you can make the avatar look almost exactly like you. Another cool feature about this web site is you can add all kinds of backgrounds and animations to your avatar, you can add almost anything from a skull chasing you around biting you in the but, to almost any dance move you can possibly imagine, I went through a whole bunch of them as just "try on" where you can try on anything because in the long run you are supposed to by the items with points you gain. It was pretty interesting and entertaining messing around with the avatar sites.

Microsoft Access Project

I defantly learned a lot on this project and it did take a lot longer then I thought it would. Using almost all microsoft products before and knowing how to use most of them from powerpoint to excel I did not think that I would have much problems with this project, but to my suprise I had no idea what I was doing. If I had tried to open this up and just work in it on my own I would have failed, I went step by step with the lectures and videos and it helped a lot. Learning how to make your own table was probably the easiest part because it was a lot like excel, but as we progressed into the Query's things started to get harder it was interesting to see how you can group information and make them line up in the order you wish. Then with forms and reports you can make your presentation very understandable to others. Showing each member of the gym and what all their information is.


There is many ways you can enhance this project and only a few of them were even went over in the lectures. You have multiple tools you can use to make this project even more understandable. You can add colors and cool fonts to make it more appealing to the eye. You could also separate the member by their age if you would like or even the city in which they reside in. by adding even more detailed information it might be easier for some one else to view your database sheet especially if they have never worked with one before.