Last updated: 9/29/03
Link back to course Welcome

Agenda for Class 5 9/30/03 (Computers, the Internet, and Society only)

1. Announcements
   1. Use the signin 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 one week 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 Word 2000 file saved to a test floppy diskette supplied for you. The file name will also be specified.
2. Why are markets mentioned in this course?
   1. Markets use the computers to work internally, Internet for communications.
   2. Internet increases speed and volume
   3. Internet increases influence of customers
   4. Internet decreases need for distributors or middlemen or middle companies
3. The Internet (and markets) in the news
   1. Resignations at New York Stock Exchange now total 3 - issue is transparency
   2. MSN closing chat rooms because it is currently impossible to separate children and child molesters online
   3. Identity theft more extensive than thought
   4. Computer vulnerabilities continue at a high rate - Protecting Yourself Online
   5. Issues in online music downloading
      1. Copyright - who is it protecting. Length of copyright?
      2. Professional Vs amateur
      3. Digital copies are perfect, can be done more quickly, low-cost equipment.
      4. Disintermediation - the disappearance of the middleman
      5. Business model for the Internet
      6. Upstarts Vs established parties
      7. Universal Music's plan to cut prices - retail stores don't like it. Squeezing retailers may handicap new artists, cut into sales increase from lower prices
      8. Foreign countries don't have our legal system, don't think they can stop this.
      9. Movie distributors looking at music downloading, trying to figure out how to do it better.
4. Word Processing overview - go to handout / Word Processing. Also includes using Word to create your personal web page
5. Personal web pages. HTML editing tool available here is Netscape Composer - go to handout / Making Your Own Web Page
6. Issues for Quiz 1 and Essays - go to handout / Computers and Society
7. Convergence - coming together
   1. Hardware
   2. Information services
8. Common elements in Windows - go to handout / Windows common elements
9. The Internet - go to handout / The Internet: Structure, Function and Applications pick up at I.G
10. 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.