Agenda for Computers, the Internet, and Society for 11/11/03

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Last updated: 11/10/03

Agenda for Class 11 on November 11
(Computers, the Internet, and Society only)

This agenda and class are for Computers, the Internet, and Society only.

Changes from original agenda:

Quiz 2 - one hour
Announcements
1. Student Evaluation of Teaching for this course will be next class - December 2.
2. Essay 2 due by email by next class - December 2.
3. Final Exam is December 16. It will be cumulative, since the beginning of the semester.
4. Final Exam topics is a handout tonight for review during next class.
Reminder of what you should be doing online on a regular basis -- these are part of the grade
1. Signin, from the lab, only on days for the class(es) you are taking
2. Weekly course report (if you are taking both classes, a single report will do)
3. Conference postings (one for eCommerce, two for Computers, the Internet, and Society, three if you are taking both). In order to count towards the requirement, postings should be (a) minimum of five lines and (b) about the course topic(s).
4. Not required, but do it anyway - check your email on at least a weekly basis. Don't have email: use hotmail - it's easy and free. See me if you need help.
Last assignments - reminder (see syllabus and assignment schedule for details)
1. Essays
2. Personal web page
3. Getting ready for Final - it will be cumulative
Using Microsoft Access (database) (handout)
1. Download demo file WebLog.mdb from IST 2710 web site - www.is.wayne.edu/gst2710
Internet Trends (handout)
Review of Internet security - Release 2.1
1. Identity brokers - data intermediaries (Pg 282 ff)
  1. Dyson writes that individuals are afraid of being exposed to public scrutiny by wholesale breaches of their personal information. On the other hand, the complete opposite, anonymity, has problems also. She makes two points here:
    1. From the point of view of society, complete anonymity permits or at least does not restrain antisocial behavior. She cites the example of Internet communities that virtually destroyed themselves through complete anonymity. Some visibility may keep us close enough to the straight and narrow that society can be functional.
    2. The individual wants some information to be public, since this fosters trust and the ability to make deals, buy goods, trust information, and so on.
  2. Dyson predicts that there will be companies that manage this for you as a paid service, like your credit card company or the credit rating bureaus do. They will guarantee your credit, in the case of the credit card company. Dyson predicts this practice spreading to other areas. You would reveal yourself to you data management company, and in the future they would vouch for your credit, your trustworthiness, your moral character and so on, without revealing the information on which that is based. So you could subscribe for the level of service that you wanted. If the company lied about its ratings of you, it would lose its credibility, which is its source of value.
  1. Information broker
  2. Encryption at destination as well as en route
2. Internet Trends (handout)
Viruses
1. File extensions that can contain viruses
2. Virus hoaxes are false warnings about computer viruses. Why do this? Creating a good virus can be difficult and can land you in jail. Creating a virus hoax is easy, and you probably would not go to jail if caught. And you can write a good scary email and sit back and watch it spread. Many virus hoax messages simply make small changes in a previous hoax and resend. I have gotten several virus hoax notices in these classes; hence this topic. A virus that destroys its host computer, or deletes all the files on its hard drive, cannot spread itself after it does that. Any notice of a virus that will destroy all of the files, destroy the computer, or something like that, is probably a hoax. A favorite phrase is that IBM, or AOL, or IBM and AOL, have verified that this hoax does all of those terrible things.
3. To check out notices of viruses and hoaxes, I like the following web sites (IBM has apparently stopped selling its own antivirus program, and along with that stopped listing viruses and hoaxes.
4. McAfee
  1. http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/
  2. http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=hoaxes
5. Symantec
  1. http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html
  2. http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
6. Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC - US Department of Energy antivirus site)
  1. http://www.ciac.org/ciac/
  2. http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/