Secure Email

I haven't received a response from the professor yet because I sent the email so late this evening, but I am determined to finish as much as possible tonight.

http://www.management-zone.com/technology-sarbanes.html

I found an interesting article that talked about the new need for email security in publicly traded companies. Ever since the passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 all publicly traded companies have been beat down by the government in every way imaginable. One of the ways that our politicians felt that they could leach a little more money out of the cooperations was by mandating the use of secure email. All publicly traded cooperations with a market cap of 75million or more have to comply with this new increase in the standards in relation to the email. Sarbanes-Oxley has guidelines for all electronic security in the cooperations including secure, and encrypted emails.

The web site that I found was suggesting the use of a particular program to conform to the regulations, and talked about the other aspects of electronic security that should also be addressed along with the secured email service.

week 14: Muddy

This week was particularly difficult with the culmination of the secure email project. I found that the encrypting of emails to be particularly difficult to figure out. This is a little embarrassing after I eventually figured out where the security drop down arrow was it is incredibly simple, but for quite a while I was completely lost on this one.
I think this new encryption deal is useless for me now, but I definitely see how this could be supremely valuable in the future when I have sensitive information that I am transferring to someone. Particularly in the case of a cooperation with financials or legal information traveling in the emails.

I am waiting at the moment for the teachers response, but I am fairly certain at this point that I have figured the digital signature and the encryption out.

Week 13: muddy

This week brought with it a few snags in the form of licensing. I was suprised to learn how complicated the single user agreement is. I always thought that the single user agreement was far more constrictive in nature than it turns out to be. I was under the impressio, before this lesson, that you were not allowed to use a program on another computer if one failed without breaking the law in some way. For example I would not have reused an old copy of windows on a new computer even if no longer used on another computer.

The more I looked into the single user agreement software contracts the more I felt that they were written to be fair to both the users and producers. I think, however, that the average person in college sees no problem with piracy because of the high costs involved in purchasing many of the products that they want. I think that much of this behavior is beginning to change because of the major companies like Microsoft releasing versions of necessary products like word in student and trial versions. I think that this will reduce piracy because it will give people an alternative when they can't afford a retail copy but need to use the program.

The single user agreement makes me feel that I am getting more than I previously thought for my money. I now feel that I have a much improved understanding of the purpose of a single user agreement.

Week: 12 Muddy

I really can't point to one thing in particular that was any muddier than the rest this week. I had a very hard time just getting rolling this week with the database project, because the program was so foreign to me. I think in particular I had the most difficulty getting the form fuction to cooperate and update the correct part of the members field. I found it very difficult to have it publish my inputs into the correct fields. I found that using a button and tasking it with the recording fuction to the members field was the easiest way that I could figure out to complete this task.

I also had an impressive amount of trouble getting the excel spreadsheet to import what I wanted it to. I had to revise the entire spreadsheet in excel first then save it to a different format. I could then import the data to a NEW field, adjust all of the data and add phone number, then I moved it successfully to my members field.

Database Project

Wow,

This database project has really opened my eyes to the power of these programs. I really learned about the process of assembling a database and how you can make it work for you by organizing your data into meaningful reports. I learned how to import excel spreadsheets, which turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. I found that rearranging the delimited information in excel first made things much easier.

I really think that the skills and information that I learned in this project will help to serve me greatly in the future by enabling me to create more professional data presentations. I feel that the Query function in Access is incredibly powerful and I managed to do thing that I would never have imagined before with the data after finishing the project. I also feel that the "form" function would be incredibly valuable to a business that needed to be able to quickly enter information into a database. All-in-all I think it is amazing that this program is not more widely used through high school and in the normal business environment, because I feel that it takes the data and puts a finishing touch on it.

Week 10: Clear

Week 10 brought with it some topics that were very challenging. The most challenging topic or concept for me was of wireless security. I now know that there is basically no way that I will ever get my wireless network fully secure, but I also realized that I don't need to worry since I don't live anywhere near populated areas or a road or anything that might pose a threat to my internet security.

I found a relatively helpful site that further explained some of the steps required to secure the wireless networks.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/wireless_secure.htm

I think that I understand some of the steps that are needed to help secure the networks, and I plan to look at my parents network next time I see them, because they are constantly complaining about problems with it.

Excel Project

This week has been particularly demanding with the excel project. I considered myself to have been of moderate abilities with excel and now my skills have been tested to the highest degree. I have developed a much greater understanding of the us of pivot tables and how they are useful for the presentation of data in a much more user friendly format. I used to argue with my sister that has an MBA about the usefulness of Pivot tables, but I really see how they make the presentation of findings that much stronger.

The "IF" function is something that I never used before this class and I feel that it also greatly enhances that power of the findings in a data set. The ability to categorize data quickly into a "Pass/Fail" or any other group using the "IF" function makes the data set much easier to navigate and efficient at presenting information to a user.

The final hitch in this project was getting the page layout set to take up the entire landscape legal size page. I had to revert back to my excel scavenger hunt assignment to figure that one out. I tried to fit the document another way, and managed to get it to work, but I knew it wasn't how the teacher had suggested. I adjusted it to take 1page wide and 2pages long and it fixed the document.

Week 9: Muddy

Pivot tables are the least user friendly gadgets ever invented. It is absolutely incredible to me how useful and powerful this excel program is. This week I found the topic of pivot tables to be extraordinarily difficult and I am surprised that I have come to understand them as well as I do now.

I found a lot of very useful information on pivot tables on the Microsoft website and I felt that it helped to clear up some of the very basic conceptual problems that I had with the application of the pivot table.

The pivot table is a very powerful tool that can be used to extract meaningful data from a spreadsheet quickly and effectively. The only problem that I still have with the program is that it feels like steering the Titanic when it starts to misbehave, and I feel that you have to become a master with the program before it will treat you kindly.

Week 7: Clear

We'll, it's the end of week seven and I'm still hanging in there. This weeks lecture was easier for me to understand, even if my quiz grade of 80 doesn't back that up. The topic that was clearest to me was that of booting a computer. I new the basics of how a computer cranked up but now I really feel like I understand it very well.

The first thing that happens when you turn the computer on is that the computer runs code from the BIOS, which is interesting to me since I have messed with setting in the BIOS so many times and never realized how basic it was to the functioning of the computer. The other interesting thing was how the MBR holds such vital information, which would explain why I had such difficulties years ago when one of my computers had a corrupted MBR.

If you are interested in seeing more that you could ever be interested in on the topic of POST then Here It Is.

Week 6: Muddy

Well, week six came, and with it brought a whole host of new topics that I hardly understood. The most perplexing of all the topics this week was the pdf of disk storage. I would never have imagined how much is going on inside of my hard drive right now. I found the fact that the hard drive spins at up to 10,000 rpm incredible, seeing as most race cars have trouble getting to those speeds.

Wikipedia had quite a lot to add here, but all in all I felt that after looking through the pdf a few times I gained a good understanding of the functions of a hard drive and the different types that exist. The Wikipedia page does not really go into the different types the same way the teacher had it in the lesson, but does further explain accessing and storage.

Web Story 2.0 at OneTrueMedia.com

I hope you enjoy my web 2.0 project.

This is the story of my Father's 1972 911 targa restoration.

Please participate in my survey and let me know what you thought. The survey is a simple multiple choice questionnaire.

I have found that this project has shown me very much about how to manage media files online and create a story that others might enjoy and possibly share with you. I am not sure how valid the skills are to business. I imagine that in some business it could be very useful, but to be completely honest I couldn't think of a time in the oil and gas business that I would ever make up a story board and put a project together in this way. I will admit that I feel I have greatly improved my skills with both the computer and the internet in making this project, and I am sure that some aspects of this project will come in handy in business in the future.

Week 5: Muddy

This week killed me with the processor. I have a very hard time wrapping my head around the processor and how it works. I find it amazing how the CPU can do so much and yet is still bound by seemingly simple problems, such as a branch. I had a hard time understanding pipelining and how it could make such and improvement over previous methods of processing.

I found a site http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~melhem/courses/1541/tutorial/ that had a tutorial on pipelining that helped to clarify how the process happens and why it is such an improvement. I didn't understand why you couldn't have each column working a separate problem until I realized that they are basically different work stations and can only work on certain steps.

After the tutorial I feel like I understand how pipelining works and how it helps to streamline the process of working out a problem that finds its way to a processor.

Week 4: Clear

This weeks topic that was most clear to me was images, and in particular native vs. interpolated resolution. Some imaging devices such as digital camera's and scanners will advertise an artificially high resolutions due to their resolution boosting interpolation programming. The native resolution is actual gathered data from the image whereas the interpolated resolution fills the space between two real pixels with an average of the two which will create a blurring effect when the colors are strongly contrasting.

I think that it is particularly important for businesses to know whether their copiers and scanners use native or interpolated resolution because it could cause a problem if the exact resolution is needed in a copy, such as in maps or detailed drawings.

I found an interesting website that had much to add about interpolation and its benefits/drawbacks. The website http://www.scantips.com/basics07.html had a very interesting write-up about interpolation, particularly in scanning devices. The most important thing that the website had to say in my opinion was that interpolating does not add detail, only filler.

Week 3: Muddy

It's week three and I'm finding myself even more confused about the material. This week was all together muddy for me but I am pretty sure that I have a good handle on things now. The concept that I found most difficult to understand is how the address that we type in, such as www.google.com actually has no relevance to how the computers find the site. I shouldn't say that is was completely muddy until I went to an external web site for additional information because I did grasp the material very well be the time I finished with the class material but I did find I very interested web site that talks a little more in depth about the DNS and every things else about it.

DNS stands for Domain Name System and in a nutshell it translates domain names that mean something to humans to numbers that mean something to computers so that they can look it up and then send you were you want to go.

Week 2: Clear

I think that this week has brought with it a very interesting topic in my opinion. I find it fascinating to see the transformation in the world of technology that has taken place over the last century, and particularly the last few decades. Even in my lifetime, a mere 23 years its unbelievable how far we have come. I remember having computers that only had DOS and one floppy drive, and it wasn't one of those space aged 3.5inch, the good old reliable 5inch super compact. When we finally got a 3.5inch floppy I thought it might be impossible to fill the full 1.44mb capacity of that modern marvel. Since my meager beginnings I have seen every step of Microsoft's operating system, Windows, and dabbled in C, C++, Visual Basic, Java Script and made a few web sites including my latest for a friend at www.huegenics.com. Through all of this I was never really exposed to the history behind how we got here.

I'm not sure how to explain this to someone because it's not so much a concept as it is a background, but basically there is an incredible and sometimes seemingly unconnected chain of events that lead to me being able to write this blog for my online class today.

This is important for the businesses today only because it is always good to know how we got where we are today. Another reason I think that it is important to keep track is that this history is being made everyday with new technologies appearing around every corner.

There isn't really one particular site or resource that connects particularly well with my post but http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/ is a very interesting timeline that shows the progression of computer technology beginning in 1939 with the founding of Hewlett-Packard and mysteriously ends in 1994. I honestly had a very fun time surfing through the years.

Week 1: Muddy

Well,

Week one in ISM3004 has brought a few unexpected twists for this semester. I have always considered myself as computer literate, but I am quickly realizing that I am comparable to something close to a sloth, I get the job done just not very quickly.

The first subject of the course, which was netiquette what completely foreign to me. I had never heard of the term netiquette, in fact the blog spell checker hasn't. Netiquette is a term that describes exactly what it sounds like, etiquette for the net. It is the social skills that enable everyone to enjoy the internet and function in a "polite and civil manner."

I think that netiquette is important in a business environment because it really won't function any other way. You don't want your IT employees demeaning other employees through emails or vice-versa. Employing netiquette makes it possible to be even more efficient in a business environment.

There is a very en depth look into the world of netiquette thats available at http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html. I think it might be a little too en depth but maybe some of topics that seem more obvious to me don't to others.

First Test

Hi Everyone,

This is the first test of my blog post.