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The What and Why of websites
What type of resources can
you find on the Internet?
Online: newspapers; journal and;
magazines. Also live: television; radio, music, video.
What does the Dept of Defense
have to do with the Internet? Department of
Defense established the Advanced Research Projects Agency
or ARPA which was vital in the development of
the internet. They developed a 'spiderwed' like system
where computer could communicate in a decentralized
way to ensure continuation of communication if one area
is destroyed.
What is the relationship
between an IP address and a domain name?
The English words of the domain name
are translated to numbers used in the IP system. Internet
protocols is four numbers strung together by four dots.
Domain name is the URL universal resource locator (website
address). The numbers and the name correlates but the
name is usually prefered as it is easier to remember.
What does a top-level domain
indicate? It indicates the general type of
Internet domain, such as "com" for "commercial,"
"edu" for "educational," and so
forth. It is a portion of a Uniform Resource Locator
(URL) or Internet address.
What is a client-server model?
This model is of network services is when a
server responds to or handles the a request of a network
and in turn provides a specific service such as data,
e-mail, file transfers, and other network services.
The service is used by a client, program, a computer
or another system. The server and client do not necessarily
need to be on the same computer.
What is a platform? A
platform is any base of technologies on which other
technologies or processes are built. It is also an underlying
computer system on which application programs can run.
On personal computers, Windows 95 and the Macintosh
are examples of two different platforms. On enterprise
servers or mainframes, IBM's System/390 is an example
of a platform.
A platform consists of an operating
system, the computer system's coordinating program,
and a microprocessor, the microchip in the computer
that performs logic operations and manages data movement
in the computer. The operating system must be designed
to work with the particular microprocessor's set of
instructions. As an example, Microsoft's Windows 95
is built to work with a series of microprocessors from
the Intel Corporation that share the same or similar
sets of instructions. There are usually other implied
parts in any computer platform such as a motherboard
and a data bus, but these parts have increasingly become
modularized and standardized.
What does it mean when someone
says "a client for a particular platform"?
It means that the client program is designed to work
with one or more specific platforms and each platform
requires a specific kind of client.
Three basic applications
for using the Internet.
(a) Webrowsers such as Internet explorer
and netscape;
(b) Chat services such as IRC and
ICQ and;
(c) Visual picture viewers such as
Wingif and Jpeg View (Mac).
How stable are the resources
and services on the Internet?
The resources on the Internet are
not very stable in comparison to say a public library.
This is because there is a 'no holds bar' approach where
anyone can get on the Internet and put on bogus information
and therefore academic research can be problematic.
There have also been security problems where people
have been duped out of money. However, there are certain
measures one can take when working on the Internet such
as thoroughly checking Internet resources and ensuring
some sort of reliable identification and encryption
system when disclosing personal and financial information.
How is the Usenet useful
to you as a student? It allows students to
find information about subjects that they are studying.
Also, because there are other students using usenets,
they can share and swap information with the other students.
Why is culture an important
consideration when communicating interculturally?
It is important as if certain knowledge
about a particular culture is not known, then communication
can be filled with
misunderstandings and this lack of knowledge can impede
the desired message getting across.
Who is Martin Rimm, and why
is he (in)famous?
He some research into sex on the
internet and his findings was that there is an extremely
high number of sex visits to sex sites on the internet.
However when his researh methods were quereied they
were found to be inauthentic.
Why should you be very careful
about using Internet references for academic work?
Because of the public nature
of the internet, just about anyone who may not neccessarily
be an academic, can put whatever they want on the internet.
Also, people can establish sites under false pretenses
and intensionally publish incorrect and unfounded information.
More informaiton
Read
information on website ethics
Read
an article on internet privacy
Read about Website
Controversies on the net
Read about the development
of the Internet.
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