Final Exam Blog Post

Okay everyone this is going to be my final blog post for the semester. For this post I decided to look at two similar articles that talk about the damage malware has caused to two specific areas within Japan.  Now for those of you that didn't read my last blog post:

"malware consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior."(Wikipedia)

The two articles I looked at come from the website "Scoop.it" On this website you can find a bunch of post about different issues. The two articles I decided to look at deal with malware and how it is being used to steal very sensitive information relating to the Japanese Government and Mitsubishi Industries which is one of Japan's largest companies.

In the first article: "Japanese Parliament Cyber Attack". The Japanese Parliament talks about how they have come under a cyber attack from a server within China.  In the upper house of the Parliament not to much damage was done, but in the lower house it was said that passwords and other data were stolen and sent back to a server within China. Just recently a number of Japanese diplomats information on the countries they travel to has come under attack.  The intent behind this attack was to steal any pertinent information relating to the diplomats operations.


In the next article: ""Warplane and nuclear plant data were at risk in Mitsubishi Heavy attack" by Dean Wilson. The Japanese government expresses their frustration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries after they had a cyber -attack on their facilities and failed to report the issue in a timely manner. In this instance, it's reported that highly classified data might have been stolen from over 83 computers and servers.

 "The company also revealed that they found evidence that suggested information on fighter jets and helicopters designed for Japan's Ministry of Defence and nuclear power plant and anti-earthquake data was pilfered by the hackers." (Wilson)

Because of this attack the Japanese government has threatened to penalize the company due to confidential information being released. 

In both articles the culprit behind each of these attacks looks to be China. In these cases malware is being used in the worst form possible, because who is ever behind the viruses is using them to steal advanced technology information or in this case find out what their enemy is doing. As most people know China and Japan don't exactly have the best relationship between each other. There is a lot of built up tension between these two countries ever since the last World War.  For this reason it doesn't surprise me that the China seem to be the usual suspects when things of this nature happen in Japan.

In the chart below you will see how the vast majority of malware being sent is coming from China.

 Picture from this site

 

Overall, I am a little worried about some of these cyber-attacks.  You really don't know how much information has been stolen until it's too late. I believe companies need to have stronger safeguards in place to prevent these attacks from happening. We live in a world today were someone can create something so destructive just from behind their own computer. As I always say, individuals and corporations need to be more cognizant of their surroundings and stop being so naive. Instead of waiting for something catastrophic to happen use more preventative measures to combat these such things.

ds106 Assignment #5

For this ds106 assignment I decided to do another spubble. For those of you who still don't know what a spubble is just click on this link for more details "Very Own Spubble."While the spubble is not the most challenging of all the ds106 assignments, I find it to be one of the funniest and most enjoying. I believe this picture was taken while I was in Shibuya. My friends and I found this really cool pet store where they had dogs just running around on the floor.

Common Everyday Object

For this ds106 assignment I chose to take a picture of an everyday object and manipulate the colors around the object. For more details on the assignment you can look here "ds106 Common Everyday Object." So for this assignment I took a picture of Tokyo Tower for anyone who doesn't know what the image is. For me this is a common everyday object because I see it everyday on my way to school. For this semester I have yet to go up to the observation deck. When I was in Tokyo for my first time I went up during the day time but I heard the view at night is in some respects better. I have a couple more weeks left in Japan so I am going to definitely put that on the "TO DO LIST" before I leave.

Regular picture of Tokyo Tower

My view of Tokyo Tower lol

Roppongi Street View Story: ds106

The name of this ds106 assignment is called "Street View Story." The purpose of this assignment is to use Google Maps or Google Earth to find a street view picture of a place you have been to, then to explain the significance of the picture. So for assignment I grabbed a picture of a club I have visited a couple times out here in Tokyo. While it's definitely not the best club in Tokyo, they do play very good music here. I choose this picture because just last weekend while I was there celebrating my friends birthday the police came and shut the club down. It was kinda a big scene there were some 50 cops and there was even a news crew filming the whole incident. It wasn't until later that I  found out the reason the club was shut down. Apparently the club had been operating without a license to allow dancing and to be open past midnight, which I found to be funny.  The club was frequented by a lot of foreigners, so now that it's closed I'm not exactly sure where they are going to go now. I've posted a youtube video clip of the incident below:

Car Lust DS 106

For this Ds 106 Assignment I decided to choose Car Lust as my topic. Audi's in general are my favorite car, but this particular make and model is by far my dream car. It's not to often that I have a chance to see this car in public due to how expensive it is to buy. However, I did see this car parked in the front parking lot outside my apartment. It stood out so much than any other car in the area. Seeing this car makes we want to work harder, so that I will be able to buy it one day.  I think I may have went and started studying right after I saw this car lol. Overall, this is by far my dream car and when I see it in person, it shows me that you can have the nicer things in life as long as your willing to put to time and dedication into your work.

Malware

I'm not even sure how many people are familiar with the term malware. I for one have heard about it but never really did any reading on to to fully understand what it really does and how it can affect your computer.

Wikipedia defines malware as: "short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior."


In today's society you can find malware anywhere on the internet. A common place to find it is on social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn. Hackers have discovered that people who use these social networking sites are not very cognizant of the information they look at of share. 
A form of malware that can be found on Facebook is through the use of random friend request from people you don't know. This tends to be very common because it seems that most users will add anyone who ask to be their friend. While I have never had this problem, because I don't add people who I don't know personally, I have seen malware through some of the videos that are posted on Facebook. 


The main motive behind malware is so that hackers can steal you personal information such as bank number, social security numbers etc. 


Ways to prevent malware on your computer are through the installation of anti virus software. While this has proven to be very effective, you have to continually check for any update that may be needed for the software. If you fail to continually update your computer you are just leaving the door open for another malware attack. 


While there are many options out there to protect us from malware, in the end it still comes down to us and how cognizant we are of the things we do on the Internet. Those programs can only be as effective as the person using the computer. If you are continuously going to push the limits on things you do on the Internet then you are only asking to get something in return.  

For anyone who is having a problem with malware on your computer, I Found this youtube video that shows you step by step how to remove malware from your computer. The video is kind of long but I think it can be very helpful.

Final Exam Question: What is the name of the company that Facebook has partnered up with to protect users from malicious links?
Answer:Websense

My first Spubble

Ok, so this is my first attempt at a spubble for my first DS106 assignment. A definition of is spubble is when you take a picture of yourself in which your body language, gestures, etc. suggest one thing and then play off that using a speech bubble. To find out a little more detail about the assignment click on the this link "Very Own Spubble." A little background on the picture. It was taken while I was in Osaka and going up this ridiculously long elevator to get to the top of this observation deck at in one of the tallest buildings in the city. I guess if I do any other assignments like this they will be about my travels while out here in Japan.

Blog Assignment #3

For this blog post I am going to give a summary/response to "Timmmmyboy's" blog post "We Are All Artist".

In Timmmyboy's blog post he talks about how you don't have to be a designer or an art major to be artist. Art is very subjective meaning that while it may not be considered art to one person it could be considered genius to someone else. In his post Timmmyboy says "creativity is not inherited". What he means by that statement is that you have to learn to be an artist. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and time. He says that people who seem to just be naturally gifted with creativity probably grew up in a household that brought about creative thinking. For instance, the individuals dad may have been in a band while the mother was a writer. It's from growing up in that kind of stimulating environment that spawned the creativity within that individual.

Another one of my favorite statements from the blog post was when he said "when we are forced with challenges that we are uncomfortable with, we are most creative."

I totally agree with this statement because it's during those moments that we have to think outside the box because the norm isn't going to get the job done successfully. For me personally, while it is very difficult to find solutions at first to those difficult challenges. I feel that it's during that time I can think the most creatively and sometimes come up with my best work.

Overall, I was really able to connect with a lot of the points that Timmmyboy was making in his blog post. Art doesn't have to be a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Art can be something as simple as a simple drawing of anything. However, in order to become a really good artist you are going to have to work on you craft everyday to master it.

The Movement of Autotune Music(Practical Activity)

Image: Computer using Autotune by A_Minor through Creative Commons

For this blog post I want to take the time to focus on Music, but insted on music as a whole I want to focus on the segment of autotuned music, which seems to be prevelant in many artist music today. However, this movement has grgone beyond you average artist and srpead acoss to averge Americans across the country.

I can remember the first time I heard an autotune song. It was during the year 2000 when T-Pain came out when an album that consisted of mostly autotuned songs. While this wasn't by any means the first autotune song to come out, that distinction belonging to Cher with her song called "I Believe", It was my first time ever experiencing this new kind of music. When I first heard this new sound I was Indifferent at first. I didn't think it was great or bad,I just knew I had to listen to it some more before I could form an appropriate opinion on it. As the years passed I began to notice more and more artist use autotune as a part of their music. Unfortunately, like most things it began to grown on me. Something I wasn't to high on when it first came out, has now become something that I often look for in artist music.

As Johnny Sharp refers to in his blogpost "Finally, The End of Autotune" in 2008 when Jay Z came out with his new album called Blueprint 3. He wanted to try and put an end to the whole Autotune movement by releasing his new song called DOA(Death of Autotune). However, while his attempt was admirable, it seems that he only further adavanced it's movement.

Image: Blueprint 3 by d-q's through Creative Commons

Today, the autotune movement just isn't in music. You can find almost anything autotuned nowadays.  Almost everything sounds better autotuned. For example, in andrews thoughts and stuff blog he takes Martin Luther Kings Speech and autones it.  He was able to take a speech that was serious and create a little humor, because it seems like MLK is singing to singing to the crowd.  In aonther

While all those are funny I have found a group of people on youtube who autotune everything that is reported on the news. The video below is one of my favorites of theirs.



As you can see videos like this can provide a lot of entertainment for people.

Another autotune video that is pretty funny to listen to in Kim Kardashians autuned song called "Turn it Up", this is absolutely one of the worst song I have ever heard and you can see by the amount of dislikes on the video that most people agree with me.



Has it really come to a point where you can take any celebrity make an autotune song and produce the the hell out of it and think it will sound good? I for one don't think so. In my opinion if you suck at singing in general you will not sound any better in autotune.

Overall, I think the whole autotune movement is fun and adds a lot of excitment not only to music, but to oridinay people who put their own videos in autotune. Nowadays you can purchase your own autotune app for you phone, Now isn't that cool lol. In Microsoft Man  blog post he explains how you can doenload software on you computer to autotune your voice on there. I really like the direction of autotune and hope it continues to grow in everything we do.

Midterm Practice Post

Bridge in Japan



Image: Picture of Bridge in Osaka by OSU commons through Creative Commons

History of Japan if you didn't know

Social media and it's contributions to Business.

Social media plays a very important role in how businesses reach out to new potential customer or current customers. In today's society social media allows business reach customers that they would never have been able to meet had their not been a social media outlet for them to connect through. For certain business such as sports franchises, Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, linked In, and google+ allow these sports franchise's to advertise to potential customers at very low cost to the company, as well as, keep their current customers informed on the progress of their favorite team.  

 Lets take the NBA  for example, where 28/30 teams have a team-page on Facebook and Twitter. These teams have realized that social media is a great platform to reach their customer and inform them on upcoming games, discounts, and activities. 

                                                    

However, while social media has become popular among many sports franchises, not just the NBA alone.  Social media can be used to tarnish the name the name of the team. For instance,  MLB has taken measures to ban all employees of major league teams from posting any pictures of their teams logo to their Facebook, Twitter, Myspace page.

"Major League Baseball has drawn the line by instituting a social media policy that, among other things, prohibits employees of all 30 major league clubs from using the name or logo of any MLB team on a personal social media site or from linking to an official MLB site from a personal social media site. So, in effect, an employee of a MLB team cannot have a link to his or her team’s website or use the team logo on his or her Facebook page or other social media site. Some would say that is cutting off the nose to spite the face."

Actions of this kind seem to defeat the purpose of social media, because the best way people learn about something is through word of mouth. 

However, while it seems likes actions of this kind seem to be silencing the the expressions of thousands of employees. Major League Baseball is just doing what any business would do, which is to protect it's profits. Business don't want employees posting inappropriate things on to their social media pages. Actions of this sort have can have an adverse affect on each individual business.  

  Other sports teams have also instituted a ban on social media to the players of the sport. For instance, the NBA and NFL have instituted bans on the use of twitter and Facebook 45-60mins prior to the start of games. 

 Overall, the success of a business in today's society depends on how successful and how well companies use social media to their advantage. The benefits of social media are endless. Companies are able to network at a much more affordable cost than previously before. Instead of survey's done by market research companies, Facebook allows users to like any items that are a favorites to them. This type of information is invaluable and very important to the business model of business today

       

                                                                

Pop Culture.

The definition of "Pop Culture" can have a lot of different meanings, it just depends on who your asking. To me pop culture differs from generations. My idea of popular culture is probably completely different from what my parents view of it is. The things that were popular in society when they were growing up are still what's popular to them today. Whenever I play new hip-hop or rap music that is popular today, my parents would either tell me to turn that garbage off or ask what the hell they are saying. At times I can agree with them on the fact that today's music has much less meaning than it did in the past.  However, this is what is popular in today society. 

One cultural aspect of popular culture that is pretty contemporary is fashion. I think most people have a good idea of what is fashionable for different age groups. While I admit, there are still some people living in the past with what is fashionable. I believe their is an overall consensus between people of what looks good.

Anyway like I said earlier. I believe that pop culture is generational for the most part. While there are certain parts that have a common ground among different people. For the most part popular culture changes with the times and it will continue to do that for the foreseeable future.

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell...(Blog assignment #1)

After I finished reading the Internet in a Nutshell, the first thing that stuck out was how fast the internet has developed in such a short amount of time. In a mere 42 years we have gone from sending a one word message from two computers in California, to what we call today as social media/networking on a global scale.

In today's society the internet plays such a vital role in everything we do. We can virtually almost do everything from behind a computer screen today without even having to go outside. But in my opinion the internet plays a larger role than that. As we have seen during this year with the Middle East riots. The internet has played an enormous role in allowing the world to hear other people's struggle and their will for change in their country. People from those areas where their voices were once silenced are now able to let their voice be heard around the world.  In a way the internet is liberating people from nations all around the world. It's like a wild fire that won't burn out.

However, on the flip side of the internet liberating people it can also cost you your job, as we've seen with the Anthony Weiner story(Weiner Gate)lol. For people that don't understand how to use some of these social networking sites, maybe the best thing to do is not to sign up. Because when you tweet personal pictures of yourself to someone, those pictures are going to everyone that is a follower of you. However, Twitter does have something called a DM(direct message) unfortunately, not everyone know how to use it. It's so unfortunate cause he had so much promise...LOL

Overall, I am grateful to be growing up in an era where we can connect with anyone from around the world at anytime. I am even more intrigued by where/ what the internet is going to be in the next 42 years. If we have come this far already, who knows what the future will hold. Anyway I hope you enjoyed what I had to say. If your interested in reading the article I will post it below.

PEACE,

-David-

Here is the link guys
http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/

Ted Nelson & Doug Engelbart

Here are two interesting links on Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart.

In the the first link Ted Nelson demonstrates his Xanadu Space software and how it represents hypertext.

In the second link Doug Engelbart demonstrates the new controlled device called the mouse.

Introduction

Ok so this will be my first real post that has any real meaning.

My name is David. I'm an senior accounting major at Temple University Main Campus. I am here studying abroad at Temple's auxiliary campus called Temple University Japan in Tokyo. This is my second stint in Tokyo, my first being last summer. I really enjoy everything Japan has to offer. I think to culture here is one of a kind and you would be hard pressed to find a similar society anywhere else in the world.

Anyway the purpose of me creating this blog was to give reflection to the readings and topics that are discussed in my CIS computers class.  However, being this my first experience blogging, you will probably find me writing about my different personal experiences while out here, along with the required blogs I have to do for class.

So like I said before stay tuned, because I am gonna try and make the most out of this account. Who knows, I "MAY" even decide to keep it up after the semester is over lol.

Hello World

Just testing this out. Stay tuned for more