Final project attempt

My experience using the app inventor software was one of mixed feelings.  Even after I read the instructional page and videos on youtube, I still felt that there were things which I had difficulty figuring out.  Of the things that I was able to figure out, I quickly realized that in order to actually make my app, I would have to be in control, or have access to several things that the university currently controls or hasn't even created yet, in order to make the app work in real life.  It was easy to set up the screen the way that I wanted, but it was rather difficult when trying to put the things that I wanted in the app.  For instance, It was easy to drag the image tag into the app, but it took awhile for me to get the UML image to show up, and in the right position. It was also frustrating when trying to use the blocks editor, even after viewing instructional video's. After about an hour, I started to understand how to use the blocks.  The emulator part of the app is very helpful as well, because it lets you see actually how the app works, or in my case, doesn't work.  The things that did work were the placing of images and whatever else on to the template in the design part, although some of them haven't been created or are things that I can't access because UML owns them.  In order to actually make the app, I would have to work with the school, to be able to access the inside of the ISIS site, to be able to link things from the site to the app.  As recently as today, I was having problems with the ISIS web site on my phone, so it would be awesome if somebody actually created this app, but as I said, they would have to work with the school, or get credentials from the school.  Basically, all I could do was make a screenshot of what I wanted to do because of the non-existent content and the lack of being able to use links from the actual ISIS site.  This app would save lots of student and faculty frustration. 

Screenshots from presentation(rather than making a video of pictures)
Last 2 slides
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXEKJxoo7uoAZGQzM3J0bndfMmhqMmhxamd2&hl=en_US

UML ISIS APP

The UML ISIS app encompasses all of the main features of the ISIS program, making it more usable, and making the process of using ISIS much more expedient.  It will have all the main features, like adding and dropping classes, as well as advisor chat sessions and skype access with tutors.  Buy the full app to be able to use the ISIS APP to its highest capabilities.

Not satisfied with the description? check out this presentation

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXEKJxoo7uoAZGQzM3J0bndfMmhqMmhxamd2&hl=en_US

- Ben

Anonymous Homework

One issue that has been covered in class that has surprisingly caught my full attention is the web-hacker group named Anonymous.  I had heard of he group before, but after reading the articles and watched some of the video's about this group, I am intrigued.  I believe they are doing a great service to the internet by exposing large corporations and groups for their believed wrong doing.  Having said that, these issues are also important:

1. Viruses are computer programs which can replicate themselves, and can spread from computer to computer. Your computer can attract a virus from files that you download, a link you click on, or an attachment in an email.  For instance, if you click on a link while on Facebook, the link then installs the virus, enabling the hacker to log into your account at anytime.  He can then send the same virus to all of your friends and repeat the process.  This is a Huge Pain. (ringageek.com)

2. Worms are also self-replicating computer programs, although worms are malware programs which use the computer networks to send copies of itself to other computers in the network.  Malware programs can do this while being undetected by the user.  Worms can sometimes only affect the network by consuming bandwidth, but can also do much more severe things to networks.You can contract a worm in the same manor you can contract a virus. (ringageek.com)

3. Trojans are programs that are installed in addition to programs which the user wants to install.  You may contract a trojan while trying to download an important program, without even knowing it.  Trojan's can harm your computer by stealing valuable information and trojans can even crash your system.  (webopedia.com)

4. DDOS (Distributed denial of service)attacks are carried out by groups or organizations whom want a computer-related resource to become unavailable to it's users.  A site or service is targeted, and then hackers try to limit the service by increasing the traffic, or crashing the system by overloading it, making the service unavailable to regular customers.  An example of this would be Anonymous crashing the Mastercard and PayPal websites.  (Techtarget.com)

5. Brute force password cracking is done by the process of taking passwords that have been recently saved or used on a computer system.  This might be done to plant a virus or malware to someones account. (lastbit.com)

6. Phishing, is just as it sounds, it is someone or a group of people presenting themselves as an agency, or organization which can lend service to customers, but they just take the users information.  These sites are just used to look like real sites which provide the users with service.  It is just like fishing, trying to lure in unsuspecting internet users.  (Webopedia.com)

7. Port scanning is when someone scans your computers open ports, to try to find a way to break into your computer.  This can be done while you are searching the web, with no idea of this occurring. 

8. Email spoofing is the forgery of an Email header, so the reader believes the email is coming from someone they know or a company/organization that they trust.  Most spoofed emails can simply be deleted, but some people send credit card numbers and other information to people who they believe are authority figures.  This could be a real pain.  (Techtarget)

9. Ransomware is a computer program, (malware) that takes over and holds a computer system hostage until the owner of the system agrees to pay a ransom for the system's release.  This doesn't happen too often, but could happen as easily as any malware being installed on your computer. (Scambusters.org)

10. Social engineering attacks are those which target individuals who will share important information, or tricking them into doing deviant acts at the will of the perpetrator.  It is defined as a type of fraud, and/or covering up crimes by using other people.  This could happen by a head hacker using many subsequent hackers to carry out parts of a master plan, with it taking much time to trace anything back to the leader. (Symantec.com)

Also, Hacktivism is defined as: the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends (dictionary.com).  The definition could be expanded to say that hacktivism is also the use of computers to commit crimes, deviant acts and disrupt the online community.  To Deface a website, this means that someone is attacking a site, to make it display something different then what the author of the page wants.  (webopedia). This could happen to any site or person that angers a hacker, they could break into the site's code and change it.  A Web Sit-in is when lots of users repeatedly try to access a single website, and try to slow it down, or even crash it. (webopedia).  This could also be seen in antics done by Anonymous.  Email bombing is a type of DOS attack, where users try to overflow an inbox, or a server hosting the inbox, in order to slow it down or crash it. (cert.org) 

The hacker group Anonymous is composed of international hackers who want to remain anonymous at all times, while acting out against people/companies/organizations who do wrong, or something of that nature on the internet.  They have hacked web sites such as Mastercard in retaliation for the comoany blocking donations to WikiLeaks.  They have also defaced websites, and are currently threatening to do internet harm to politicians involved in the Mexican Drug Cartels.  Lulzsec, short for Lulz Security was believed to be a separate entity from Anonymous, but was then believed to be sharing information with the group.  It is likely that after the disbandment of Lulzsec, after the "50 days of Lulz", that the remaining members joined up with Anonymous.  Lulzsec committed many major hacks during their reign, including a NewsCorp website and claiming responsibility for taking the CIA website offline.  Lulzsec was way more active and hostile than Anonymous.  (webopedia)

These hackers often use Forums, and Internet Relay Chat to communicate with each other (Briefing on Anonymous).  A "script kiddie" is a less skilled hacker that uses programs and viruses created by others to do their hacking (Briefing on Anonymous).  Script kiddies are an essential part of the group, because there are so many of them. 

Timeline: 1. Anonymous Releases Twitter Hacking Tool: The hacking group released an online tool to the public that would allow someone to dictate what shows up on millions of Twitter feeds.  They uploaded a malware program that could be used by people to change other's twitter feeds.  9/22/11

2. The Spanish police Web site becomes the next victim in a DDoS attack. The group Anonymous crashed the Spanish Police web site by driving much traffic to the site. 6/13/11

3. U.S. Senate spokesperson confirmed that the Senate Web site had been breached, but no sensitive data was taken. Lulzsec claimed responsibility for this, they used malware and other programs to breach the security of the website, they could have defaced it. 
(All info from Redmondmag.com)

I will keep this brief, but I believe that hackers do have the power to change the internet for the better, rather than the worse.  If they keep doing positive things with their hacks, I believe much good can come from it.  Although they do run the risk of more governments making internet restrictions more and more tight. I also do believe there is a connection between the arab spring and Anonymous.  I am not sure what it is, but I feel that there must be some connection between the two. 

INFO PROVIDED BY:
http://lastbit.com/rm_bruteforce.asp

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/phishing.html

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2004/virus.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/distributed-denial-of-service-attack

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/port_scanning.html

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/email-spoofing

http://www.scambusters.org/ransomware.html

http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/social-engineering-fundamentals-part-i-hacker-tactics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_sit-in

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/email_bombing_spamming.html

Wikileaks Post

1. WikiLeaks is a private web site where whistleblowers, and everyone else with information they want spread around the internet, can do that via WikiLeaks. It is supposed to be anonymous, but it is not foolproof, as in the case where Bradley Manning got caught.  WikiLeaks publishes the data on the web for the world to see.  They have published over 1.2 million documents so far, but are struggling for funding as of late.  WikiLeaks is a great way to get classified documents out to the public, so we can see what is really going on at times of war.


2.  As i have previously mentioned, Bradley Manning has a very large involvement with WikiLeaks.  Manning was enlisted in the US ARMY, and was specializing in the intelligence field.  Manning had severe "personality" and people skill issues at training, according to his superiors. They didn't want to send him in to combat, but a lack of intelligence personnel made it so he went over anyway.  Manning now had access to many important classified documents due to the governments new file sharing system.  Manning had seen many terrible things in combat, and in transcripts, so he decided to download the documents. Manning sent the documents to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who then revealed a video of twelve civilians and journalists being murdered at a press conference in Washington, D.C.    Manning is now being held in a military prison for treason. 

3. The financial blockade that has been put upon WikiLeaks has caused severe damage to the site's functionality of publishing documents.  They have had to go into full time fund raising, while they try to keep the site above water.  In October 2011, most of the ways WikiLeaks collected donations were cut off, as Visa and Mastercard made it so their users couldn't donate to the site, as well as freezing the site's accounts.  With all of their assets except cash frozen, they have lost 95 percent of their revenue, according to Julian Assange.  He believes the blockade is "un-lawful".  WikiLeaks is now accepting Bitcoin donations, as they try to stay up and running.  Bitcoin, an internet currency which fluxuates in market value is not backed by any real currency, and can easily be copied.  It is used by many people on the internet, from hackers to grandparents.  If WikiLeaks can get enough Bitcoin donations, then sure, they could help, as Bitcoin can actually be used to pay for real goods on the internet. 

4. When classified government information is publicly leaked, there are different aspects of the impact that the information will have on a society.  First, when information is leaked, people are initially going to be shocked, and then upset, and then they will take sides.  This information will divide a society, members who agree with what happened, or with witholding the information, and those who are outraged by the information being hidden.  On the ethical side, if information is hidden from the public, then it should be for a good reason, right?  That is almost never the case, as the ethical thing would be to tell us the truth about what is happening, but that never happens, so the government will never win the "ethics war" with the American people.  For the cultural impact, when information is released, it sets a standard of people wanting to know more, now that they have a taste of what is out there.  The culture has changed, and people want all information to be released, and they will do more drastic things to ensure it's release. 

As for the topic of keeping secrets from the public, the issue is a little different.  For the social issue of keeping secrets from the public, it may be wrong, but there are things that would be better kept under the rug.  We will never know how many secrets our government has, and we never will, but most of them will never directly affect us.  Every government keeps secrets, and people always want to know more.  For the ethical view, It is ethical for governments to keep some secrets from people, since some of the information needs to stay classified.  But it is unethical for them to keep information from us on issues where something major is messed up, or something that they need to own up to.  For the cultural aspect of keeping secrets, there can be a few positive and a few negative things that can happen.  For the positive, citizens could be happy that the government isn't constantly showing them threats, or things that would make them always afraid.  For the negative, citizens could be angered that the government is concealing things from them and start cults/activist groups like anonymous to find out more information and wreak havoc. 

As for the WikiLeaks financial blockade, the social impact of it is that people are pretty angry about it in general, because they feel that the blockade is just a way of the government trying to shut down WikiLeaks, because it is showing files that the government does not want us to see.  For the ethical factor, I believe it is unethical for the companies to freeze Wikileak's accounts, because the site has done nothing to harm any of the companies, they show that they wl comply with anything the government tells them to do.  For the cultural impact of the WikiLeaks financial blockade, this could create groups in culture that will try to get other ways of keeping the site financed.  For instance, groups of hackers are starting to band together to try to keep WikiLeaks afloat by donating large numbers of BitCoins, as well as attacking the credit companies web pages. 

UML Student E-mail

If you are a student at Umass Lowell and want to expand your horizon of student email capability, or are unaware of what your student email can do, here are some tips/tricks for using it. It really is a great service to us.  https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXEKJxoo7uoAZGQzM3J0bndfMWRqOGo0cGRm&hl=en_US

UML Survey

I have recently conducted a survey of Umass Lowell students, mainly fellow members of the hockey team, to make observations of whether students that live on campus are happy or unhappy with their accomidations.  Of the people that answered that they live on campus, only one-half of them are happy with their living space.  Six of the nineteen people surveyed live off campus, so they didn't answer if they were happy or not. Fourteen of nineteen people surveyed were confident that they are going to finish their college careers at UML, at least for a bachelors degree.  Two people said they did not want to finish at UML, and three said they were unsure.  The results can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnEKJxoo7uoAdGN0aF9Gd3JFSUJrSEdNMnRuYkFoeFE&hl=en_US#gid=0

Digital Nation

This post is will talk about an issue that does not have to deal with hockey, but is one that is interesting enough to be talked about anyway.  I have recently watched an episode of the PBS publication "front line". This episode talked about how technology has "taken over" or dominated some area's of today's society, especially when it comes to children.  The first thing that stuck out to me, was the fact that kids today just seem to "get it" when it comes to matters of modern technology. I mean, I adapt to new technology fairly quickly, but in the documentary, I witnessed a middle school student who probably has the same qualifications, if not more, than I do as a Sophomore in college. This was just mind boggling, as I watched him surf the web, through his classmates blogs, and through web sites that he has created. I am just now doing some of these things as a 19 year old, I can't even imagine what this kid could be doing when he is 19. The main thing that I think I am trying to get across here, is that technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the education system.  While I was in my senior year of high school, my teachers started using smartboards, and more modern technology. Now, my old high school has virtual classes, where they can stay at home, and still be in class via a laptop and a webcam.  I have this same option for most of my lectures in college, which prove to be very helpful for exam reviewing.  Most kids in my old high school bring their own laptops to school, which is also similar to a lot of my college classes.  This was unheard of when I was in middle school, nobody had their own computer, nevertheless a laptop.  I feel that computers and technology will become more widely used for educational purposes, as well as health purposes in the near future. 

With all being said about how good technology, and the internet can be, there are also some severe risks to using this modern technology.  People can become addicted to the internet, and technology, most often it is videogames that people become addicted to.  I can’t say that I have never played a videogame for an extended period of time, but I knew deep down that it was not good for me in some way.  Kids and adults alike can become dependent on video games and virtual reality simulators in ways that are disturbing to me. Kids in South Korea have become so addicted to their videogames, that the government has actually had to set up “camps” for kids with an addiction to videogames. We haven’t quite gotten to that stage in the United States, but having seen some of the kids behind me in school, I can’t say we are too far away from that.  Another thing coming from the use of all this technology is distractions.  People who use this technology are very opt to getting distracted easily.  I, myself can get distracted by my phone, Ipod, facebook or many other means of technology.  Kids say that they are very good at multitasking, while scientists beg to differ. I would have to agree with science on this one, I know I am not a very good multitasker, although I make my best effort to.  All in all, technology is great in some area’s like education, health care, and business, but can also prove to be problemsome when it comes to helping us focus on the task(s) at hand.