Last updated: 10/3/00
Link back to course Welcome

Agenda for Class 3 10/4/00 (Computers, the Internet, and Society only)

1. Announcements
   1. Use the signing form on the course web site sometime during class tonight.
   2. Weekly course reports are part of the course assignments.
   3. You should be working on conference postings.
   4. If you have not yet filled out the online course information form, please complete it this week!
   5. Quiz 1 will be in two weeks, one hour at the start of class (strict time limit). The Quiz 1 Topics were posted on the course web site about two weeks ago, with notice through the computer conference. With the exception of word processing topics, the Quiz will not cover material that we have not gone over by tonight. At the end of class tonight we will review the topics and remove those that we have not gone over. The test questions will be answered in a MS Word97 file saved to a test floppy diskette supplied for you. The file name will also be specified.
2. The Internet in the news
   1. On June 30, President Clinton signed a bill authorizing the use of digital signatures, and on October 1 the law went into effect. The law does not specify which of many possible forms of digital signatures will be used, but leaves that up to businesses and customers to work out. The law also says that users can insist on "wet" signatures, but businesses expect that digital signatures will be so much more convenient, secure and faster, and less expensive, that they will be accepted rapidly; one estimate is that more than 80% of signatures will be digital within five years. Here are some of the forms that are possible:
      1. Signing normally on a pressure-sensitive pad that records, not only the picture of your signature, but how hard you press at each point, and how fast the stylus moves. These last two sets of data make your signature more secure from counterfeiting.
      2. A scrambled number assigned to you by a company that acts like a notary. VeriSign and Entrust Technologies already off these.
      3. Authentication by the company with which you are signing the contract, based on personal and financial information that you have previously given them.
      4. Swiping a signature card issued by the company with which you are signing the contract, or by a third party acting as a notary.
3. Issues for Quiz 1 and Essays - go to handout / Computers and Society
4. Convergence - coming together
   1. Hardware
   2. Information services
5. Common elements in Windows - go to handout / Windows common elements
6. The Internet - go to handout / The Internet: Structure, Function and Applications pick up at I.G
7. Links / URLs. Links (OK, and color. And graphics.) are what make web documents different from the print documents you create. Links come in two varieties -- relative and absolute. But first, the anatomy or a URL (Universal Resource Locator, what you type into the Location or Address window of your browser.
   Example:
   http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isp/drbowen/internet/welcome.htm
   1. http:// - The method (of transfer). http is optional. Other methods are
      1. ftp:// (File Transfer Protocol)
      2. telnet:// (Logging into a computer with a command line interface)
      3. gopher:// (Earlier test-based protocol without links inside documents)
      4. file:// (You can open a file directly in your browser to check it out, without going through the web server, and this is the method used in that case. If this appears in a link or an IMG tag, the web server will give users an error message, so be careful if you see it in these circumstances.)
   2. www.cll.wayne.edu - Domain Name of the web server. You can also use the numerical IP address, e.g. 141.217.142.149
   3. /isp/drbowen/internet/ - The path of folders to the requested file, from the "document root" folder of the server.
   4. welcome.htm - The name of the requested file. The browser displays files with extensions of htm, html, gif, jpeg, and jpg, and for others, asks if you want to download the file. If no file is listed, web servers are configured with a default file name, which is sent from the folder in the URL.
   5. What is shown above is an absolute URL.
   6. A relative URL drops at least some of the information above.
      1. If only the filename appears, it is assumed to be on the same server and in the same folder as the present document. I strongly recommend this for
      2. If folders are shown, preceded with a slash, the requested file is assumed to be on the current server, and the path is from the document root of the present server
      3. If folders are shown, without a preceding slash, the folders are assumed to be subfolders of the present folder on the present server
      4. The symbol ".." means one level up from the present folder (the parent folder of the present folder). This can be repeated to go up several levels. subfolders can be specified to down from that level, also.
   7. Relative URLs allow much greater flexibility in restructuring a web site, since files can simply be moved, and the URLs do not have to change. The files can even be moved to a different server without being changed. Keep a web site in one folder (or a few folders at most), and use relative URLs whenever possible.
   8. Links and IMG tags contain the URL of the referenced files. Wherever possible, these links should be relative, not absolute.
8. Word Processing overview - go to handout / Word Processing. Also includes using Word to create your personal web page
9. Uploading your personal web page and any pictures to the web server
   1. HTML file
      1. On the course web site there is a link to an upload web page
      2. On that web page, for personal web pages, the User Name is inetf00 and the password is stustu. Leave "Destination Web Site" at "all"
      3. Click the Browse button. This will open up the File Upload dialog
      4. In the File Upload dialog, navigate to your folder, select the HTML file and click Save
      5. On the web page, click Upload Now
   2. Picture files
      1. The only difference is that in the File Upload dialog, you will have to change Files of type... to All Files (*.*)