10 Things I Didn’t Know About Wireless Connections

1. Wireless is short for wireless connections.

2. Wireless connections include everything from two-way radios, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wireless networking to other things we might not associate with the same idea, such as garage door openers, wireless computer mice, keyboards, wireless TV headsets and even satellite television.

3. Wireless connections use a form of energy, such as radio waves, infrared light, laser light, visible light, sound waves, etc. to transfer information over both short and long distances.

4. The most common use of wireless connections is to connect laptop users from location to location, although the use of cell phones, via satellite is increasing.

5. “Wireless” must not be confused with “cordless”.

6.  In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter invented and patented the photophone, a telephone that conducted audio conversations wirelessly over modulated light beams (which are narrow projections of electromagnetic waves). The was the world’s first wireless phone conversation.

7. The theory of electromagnetic waves derived from the research of James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday.

8. It was Hertz demonstrated that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted and caused to travel through space at straight lines and that they were able to be received by an experimental apparatus.

9. Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun were awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution to wireless telegraphy.

10. In order to have a wireless connection, there needs to be device for receiving and sending the signal. Three kinds of wireless connections are Bluetooth, infrared, and WiFi (wireless fidelity).

10 Things I Didn't Know About SpyWare, Adware, Malware, Phishing, Viruses & Trojan Horses

1. Spyware is a computer program that takes information, secretly, and transmits it to display ads, opens a pop-up window, or other actions in a browser window.

2. Malware, is the use of Spyware with a malicious intent.

3. Phishing is a very bad scam using e-mail, where an email directs you to a form that asks you to put in personal information under false pretenses.

4. Adware or advertising-supported software is computer program that automatically displays or downloads ads after the software is installed or while the application is being used.

5. If Adware also collects personal information without your knowledge it becomes spyware.

6. Trojan horses, taken from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology, is a form of malware that appears to perform a desirable function for the user but really is allowing unauthorized access to your computer system.

7. Trojan horses can be find there way into your computer by, software downloads, 1.) where a Trojan horse is included as part of a software application downloaded from a file sharing network, 2.) from Websites containing executable content (docs with an ".exe ending", in email attachments, and in software that can be exploited to allow installation of a Trojan horse. (i.e. flaws in a web browser, messaging client, media player, etc...)

8. Trojan horses allow a hacker to have access to a target computer system, remotely, and making it is possible to do various operations.

9. A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. A true virus only spreads from one computer to another(in an executable code).

10. The term "virus" does not really apply to malware, adware, and spyware programs, because they do not have reproductive ability. 

10 Things I didn't know about Tim Berners-Lee

1. That he was born on June 8, 1955.

2. I didn't know he was credited with creating the World Wide Web. (Dang! I wish I had thought of it!)

3. I didn't know it was first used on Christmas 1990 to send a communication.(Merry Christmas!)

4. Time Magazine, in 1999, named him one of the "100 Most Important People of the 20th Century", and in 2007, he was ranked in The Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses, alongside Albert Hofmann. (Pretty cool, huh?)

5. He is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (Busy guy.)

6. And, in 2009, he was elected as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. (wow!)

7. That he is a    computer scientist. (Dah!)

8. It was while he worked as an independent contractor at CERN in 1980, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to make sharing and updating information among researchers easy, without having to physically be there. It was here that he built the prototype system, that was named "Enquire". In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet, by taking the hypertext idea and connecting it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas. The result: the World Wide Web. (It was meant to be.)

9. In 1994, he started the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C). It worked to create standards to that make the web what it is today. (Thank you)

10. He was taught to "believe in all kinds of unbelievable things". (That's how magic happens!)