Computer, Internet and Lifestyle

Identity Theft Through Computers and the Internet

2009-01-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes. My days as an Information Security technician occurred at a time when identity theft was still in its infancy. The victims of identity theft are actually a surprisingly young group, demographically speaking. The highest rate of identity theft is occurring in individuals aged from their mid twenties to their mid thirties. And identity theft through computers and the internet accounts for a portion of these incidents annually. About one in every eight Americans experience Identity theft on computers and the internet each year. Identity theft on computers and the internet can occur through fraudulent requests for personal information and through online buying services that are not secure sites and by having your personal computer compromised by someone you know and trust. More recently, identity theft has been connected to the use of social networking sites like Facebook. Read on to learn how to protect yourself from this fast rising crime.There are safeguards you can implement to reduce the chance of identity theft through computers and the internet. A majority of identity theft that is going on is by means of offline activities, like stealing wallets, checkbooks, credit cards, mail and other personal items that contain critical identification information. Identity theft that occurs through computers and the internet tends to happen very often when your own personal computer is breached.

You can reduce your chances of this happening to you by using passwords to log into your computer, even if you're the only one using it, by changing your passwords on a regular basis and by not leaving your laptop open when unattended. These days, almost everyone has personal information stored in their computers. If you have selected "remember password" on a web site and someone goes to history and visits your frequently or recently visited sites that are linked to credit cards, other banking information and or electronic tax records, then you could be an easy mark for identity theft on your computer and the internet.

Although online identity theft is an ongoing threat to personal security, there are many companies developing and marketing software to counteract the threat called, anti-phishing software. Phishing is when someone uses the internet and sends an e-mail (spam) to a user making false claims to be a legitimate and recognized business entity in an attempt to scam the user into giving certain private information that can be used for identity theft through computers and the internet. Anti-phishing software may help, but is not a guarantee for protection, so make it your practice to keep your personal information secure to reduce your chances for identity theft on computers and the internet.

Another technique that malicious hackers and criminals use for identity theft on computers and the internet is spyware that gets into your computer and grabs lots of stored information including financial accounts, passwords and other critical information that will allow this individual access to your money and identity. So along with all the wonderful benefits that computers and the internet offer us in our daily lives, there is always, lurking out there in cyberspace, the possibility of identity theft on computers and the internet.

Clean Your Computer From A Virus

2009-01-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

Having a virus on your computer can slow down your computer, install spy ware, or let hackers into your computer to steal your information.
Knowing how to clean your virus-infected computer is easy. Here are some tips to show you how.
As soon as you thing your computer might be infected you should disconnect your computer from the Internet and any networks you computer might be on.
This is to ensure that the virus does not spread to other computers.

If you have an anti-virus program installed make sure it is updated first then run a full system scan.
The anti-virus might not detect the virus if the program is not updated.

Some anti-virus programs will detect the virus, but will not be able to remove it.
If that is the case, you can get a different program but downloading it from a non-infected computer or you can go to your local computer store and get a different one there.

Most anti-virus programs will ask you to restart you computer after it is finished scanning. Once you restart you computer run another scan to make sure that the virus is gone. When you restart your computer make sure that it is still disconnected from the Internet and other networks.
The best way to combat against viruses is to be cautious of programs and files you download. Do not open any e-mail messages or attachments you do not recognize. Get a good anti-virus program that is updated frequently and run system scans regularly.

What is Nanotechnology?

2009-01-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest scientific trends of the 21st century has been centered on something incredibly small: nanotechnology. You’ve read about it in the papers, heard glowing reports on television, and perhaps you’ve enjoyed reading about the possibilities of nanotechnology in science fiction.

But what is nanotechnology? That is the most difficult question to answer, even though it’s all over the news these days. The crux of the problem is that it is beyond the understanding of most people. Unless you’ve studied it extensively in university (and even then the picture isn’t necessarily complete, trust me) you won’t know what a quantum dot is, or what an atomic force microscope does. To understand what nanotechnology is, you need to accurately encapsulate the academic struggle that is going on as we speak. You’ll need to know the underlying science that drives it, the tools we use to apply it, and the potential benefits and dangers of it.

Symbols

Just a word of warning before we continue: I’ll be using metric units throughout these extensive discussions. No one does nanotechnology with US Imperial units. Let’s run through the units of length from largest to smallest

m = meter (the metric standard unit of length, or 39.4 inches)

cm = centimeter (100 cm per m, or 10-2 m)

mm = millimeter (1000 mm per m, or 10-3 m)

mm = micrometer (1,000,000 mm per m, or 10-6 m)

nm = nanometer (1,000,000,000 nm per m, or 10-9 m)

Å = angstrom (10,000,000,000 Å per m, or 10-10 m)

Definition

Nanotechnology is a broad term for the application of scientific understanding towards fabricating devices and materials at the nanometer scale.

To give you a perspective, consider that the computer you are using right now uses a wide array of micro technology. Computer processors are often fabricated using processes in the micrometer regime. The latest processors are encroaching on the nanometer regime with new Extreme-Ultra-Violet lithography that pushes the envelope with 0.09 mm feature sizes (which converts to 90 nm).

In order to qualify for the term nanotechnology, the yardstick (if you forgive the archaic reference) is about 20 nm or less for the constraining feature size. That’s about the size when you start seeing significantly new forces governing the behavior of materials. We’ll discuss this shortly in the science sections.

Topic Breakdown

As we move through our nanotechnology series, I’ll cover the bare essentials starting with the basic scientific principles that we seek to take advantage of in the nanoscale regime.

Once we have covered the science, we will quickly move on to the major synthesis methods utilized by researchers around the world.

The next sections will deal with the tools we use to create nanotechnology along with the potential benefits of nanotechnology in its various forms.

At the end we will discuss nanotechnology and its close ties with educational institutions and researchers around the world.

Moving On

Yes, that is it for the basic overview of nanotechnology. The topic is too broad to spend discussing it on a superficial level. Read on for more information!

Monitors

2009-01-25T13:04:00.000-08:00

The monitor hasn’t gone through many technological leaps throughout the past 2 decades but most people take the modern monitor for granted. Computer monitors began as simple Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT) based on developments for the television.

The main four specifications for monitors are screen size, resolution, color, and refresh rate capacity. A modern monitor is 17” diagonally, and can run up to 2048x1536 in resolution, 16.7 million colors (24-bit) at a refresh rate of 100 Hz. While you’d be hard pressed to find a graphics card that could render this much information in 3D, or a monitor that was big enough to properly show 2048 vertical lines and 1536 horizontal lines, it’s still possible. To give you some perspective, consider that the original color monitor, the CGA, was usually 14” diagonally, and had a maximum resolution of 320x200 in four colors. Another important (but often overlooked) specification is the dot pitch. This term refers to the spacing between pixels on the screen. A smaller number indicates a denser array of pixels that translates to higher detail.

The most widespread computer monitor in use today is still the CRT. The problems with the CRT are numerous. First, with increasing screen size, the depth of the actual monitor must increase proportionally. What you end up with are massive, heavy monitors if you want big screens. Second, they are hard on the eyes. Everyone who’s stared at a regular monitor for a while can vouch for this. Lastly, they consume large amounts of power and give off ample amounts of heat.

For obvious reasons, laptop computers have never used CRT screens. Throughout their history the laptop has relied on thinner display technologies that were often quite expensive. The Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) was the first and most popular form of thin, color displays. Other, more exotic types of thin displays are based on Light Emitting Diodes (LED) and plasma discharge technology.

Due to recent advances in manufacturing and quality, the LCD screen has slowly crept up on the old school CRT for desktop PCs. Businesses are finding that the LCD screen saves valuable desk space and consumes less power, while being easier on the eyes. Furthermore, LCD screens are flat, meaning that the distortion of images no longer occurs. Though a modern desktop LCD screen still costs significantly more than a CRT monitor, the benefits you incur are priceless.

If you can afford the hefty price tag, LCD screens are the way to go. They’re smaller, lighter, take up less space, and display more vibrant colors and details. The great thing is, the price can only head downward as manufacturing steps up and LCD screens penetrate deeper into the PC market.

Motherboard

2009-01-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

Thinking about motherboards makes my head spin. I could write pages and pages of annoying acronyms like PCI-e, LGA775, or FSB. But I won’t! I promised myself that I wouldn’t do it. I don’t have the patience to plod through the flood of system specs out there.

My problem is that mobo (short for motherboard) manufacturers release so many different motherboards sometimes it can feel like a crapshoot to pick one.
can only stress that you educate yourself as much as possible about the specs and capabilities of a motherboard before you buy it. A motherboard, as the name suggests, is the key piece of hardware that everything else relies on. Though it’s closely related to the processor (in fact, they’re usually designed in conjunction), motherboards will define the character and capabilities of your system because it’s the one thing you can’t upgrade in your system without getting a new one.

A motherboard has all of the expansion slots, input ports, RAM slots, hard drive connectors, etc. that will coordinate the efforts of all constituent components. The defining characteristic about a motherboard is its chipset. Make sure you know exactly which chipset you’re getting because it will define the kinds of components you can get.

For instance, the LGA775 chipset for Intel’s Pentium 4 processor requires a new kind of processor that has no pins. Instead, the pins are on the motherboard and the processor only has flat connection pads. The LGA775 chipset also requires PCI-express expansion slots. It might also require a different power supply. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure exactly what it requires. I do know Intel’s mPGA478 chipset will only take micro-pin grid array Pentium 4’s (the ones with all the pins sticking out) and does NOT support PCI-express.

So, this example illustrates the need to know what your motherboard can handle, because you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole no matter how hard you happen to ram it. AMD chipsets are another beast altogether. They too release many different chipsets that are compatible with their processors.

To make things worse, motherboard manufacturers will release many different boards with the same chipset, but with different on-board features. Some manufacturers place on-board video cards, sound cards, and Ethernet adapters on their motherboards. If you don’t need or want any of them, then don’t get those specific models.

Yes, motherboards are messy business. So messy, in fact, that I’m going to cut it short right here. Just remember that they’re very important, and you should do as much background research as you can because it’s the core of your system.

Hard Drives

2009-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

You won’t get very far these days without a sizeable hard drive. A hard drive is one of the key components in a computer system in that it represents a data bottleneck. The tradeoff between being able to store lots of information (permanently) is that this ’physical’ system of plates and scanning heads is about 60,000 times slower than RAM storage. However, the hard drive is where all the data in your system is stored. The operating system, all of your programs, and your music/movies are all housed in the hard drive. Back in the day, I remember having a 100 MB hard drive was a big deal. Now, 100 GB is the standard, which represents a 10x jump in size requirement over a decade. Considering that the average game is about 700 MB to 4 GB in size, and that applications and downloads can slowly chip away at your hard drive, having a big one in excess of 60 GB is definitely a good idea. But wait! Size isn’t the only thing that matters here. Other specs like RPM speed, buffer size, and transfer rate define how well the hard drive will perform, regardless of how big it is. The higher the RPM, the faster you will be able to transfer data and seek programs. Most hard disks these days are rated at 7200 RPM, but there are some out there that go even faster (but they’re more expensive). When it comes to buffer sizes and transfer speeds, let’s consider the three industry standards for personal computing:

Old School IDE: the Regular ATA Drive

All computers come with support for a regular IDE drive. These are the most common hard drives with the flat ribbon cable data connector. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using one of these unless you’re a performance nut. IDE drives come in different flavors of transfer rate. The specs that define an IDE drive are the UDMA rating and its buffer size. The UDMA rating lists the drive’s transfer speed. Most modern motherboards can support UDMA 133, which can handle 133 MB/s of data transfer. Furthermore, the buffer size for IDE drives is either 2 MB or 8 MB. It’s been found by many benchmarkers around the world that a regular IDE hard drive with 8 MB buffer is competitive to the other higher-end models in performance, but comparatively cheaper.

S-ATA: Next Generation

A new standard developed by over 80 companies is the serial-ATA drive, known as SATA. This new standard promises easier installation and configuration, along with transfer rates up to 150 MB/s. Considering that UDMA 133 drives with 8 MB buffers can come close to these specifications, there’s no real point in getting a SATA drive right now because you won’t be able to mix the two types within the same system.

IDE-RAID

Once a niche market for servers, the Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) was an old standard created to allow servers to connect many smaller hard drives to form a single large storage space. Transfer rates for RAID are incredibly fast because two or more hard disks are used at the same time for the exact same operation. If you want a RAID setup, you’ll have to buy a RAID controller. They’re not that expensive though, and if you want to hook up two 120 GB IDE drives to a cheap RAID controller it won’t run you more than $400. However, I’m a bit suspicious of why you’d ever need this. Considering that a 160 GB hard drive with an 8 MB cache goes for a quarter of this price, I’m hard pressed to figure out why you’d need such high storage amounts and transfer speeds. Unless you’re doing a lot of crazy stuff like ripping and encoding DVD movies, there’s just no need for these kinds of numbers!