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This page last updated on Thursday, May 22, 2003 16:20:06
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It won't be long before
wintry weather threatens the Omaha area. If poor weather conditions
force the University to close for all or part of a day, your most reliable
source for accurate information is the Creighton University weather
hotline at 280-5800.
Info from the final: I curved everyone's grades by 24 points. The high was 126, low was 92. Average was 109, median was 111 and 18 people took the exam. If you want to pick it up, they are in the folder outside my office door.
FINAL EXAM - Tuesday, May 6, 2003 at 4:45 - 6:00pm
Final exam review notes are here I have written the final and it's all true/false and multiple choice questions, if that will help you in your studying.
You can pick up the graded Quiz 10's from outside my office door. I am grading the fourth assignment and hope to have them to return to you at the final exam.
Due to a funeral, I will not be in the office on most of Monday. I should be back sometime in the mid-afternoon. If you have questions or problems with your assignment, send them to me via email. I will be available via email to answer questions on Saturday morning and evening, and on Sunday morning.
Just a reminder that you need to turn in a
printout for your TechTip as well as doing the presentation. I
haven't received everyone's, and I need them before the final exam
time. It's too late to do any additional TechTips, however you need
to turn in a printout as well or you lose 50% of the points. From
the syllabus:
Tech Tips and News
There is always something new and often exciting in the technology field.
Twice during the course (once before Spring break, and once after)
you will make a presentation to the class on an interesting website, a new
product, a new service, or something new and exciting in the technology
field. You can use any of the
presentation media in the classroom.
You must turn in a one-page typed sheet to me when you present.
This brief report should describe to me your site, item or news as
you present your Tech Tip. Each
Tech Tip should take about three minutes to present.
Reminder about the Wade and Seagate Lab hours of operation during Finals Week: Saturday, Noon to 6:00pm; Sunday, Noon to Midnight; Monday-Thursday, 8:00am to Midnight; Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm. We are closing at 4:00pm on Friday, May 9th. I will have some openings for daytime hours if you are interested in working as a lab monitor this summer. If you are, email me and I will be in touch.
Good review of the different types of Media - such as Cat1, Cat3, Cat5, etc. here
Thursday, May 1, 2003
When you were online using Grokster, did you get a message from the RIAA?
Your HP printer cartridges will self-destruct after a certain date. Shades of Mission Impossible and Get Smart? I needed a new color printer for home, and didn't want those "chips in the ink cartridges" so I bought a Canon i550. So far, it's a very good printer.
Interview with the president of Grokster
Architect Jean Nuvell or Dr. Evil? You decide!
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Firms call for open, high-speed Internet
Yahoo, AOL and MS join in an anti-spam effort. They say that spam is their customers #1 complaint.
Quiz #9 today! And then just so we can get another one in, you can guarantee that there will be another quiz on Thursday. Thursday is the last day for TechTips as well, so plan accordingly.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Record labels suing Napster inventor and venture capitalists
Man acquitted after saying virus downloaded porn onto his computer
Cable modems are 50% faster on average, than DSL lines
Happy 50th, Shane! Shane! Of course, you have to mention this one as well
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Irate NASCAR fan sends 500K emails to Fox after the race is bumped for baseball
Saying 'no thanks' to the Internet
Windows 2003 is a small step forward
Password-stealing emails spread
Tech Tip time is running out! You have tonight and the next three classes. If you do not do a second tech tip, you won't get the points. You have been warned!
Thursday, April 17, 2003
No class - Easter Break!
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
How is the network information gathering going? One question that I would like answered is what is the lease time that Cox is giving customers on their cable modems. It used to be one week, and it has changed. What is your lease time?
Who plays online role playing games?
Remaining chapters to cover: 12, 13, 14. One more assignment to come soon! Only two quizzes left as well.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Judge throws out Harvard student's challenge to the DMCA
Singapore is using web cams to enforce SARS quarantines
Everything you wanted to know about the Turing Test but were afraid to ask
Great page for today's topics of AI and Expert Systems
 | American Express' Authorizer's Assistant |
| Practical application at Ford |
| Expert System FAQ |
| Fraud detection using Neural Networks |
| Fraud detection and prevention |
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Copy-protected CDs: Artists can be the losers
Benetton says "no" to RFIDs for now...
Whoops! Microsoft key code released on the Internet
Assignment Three is handed out today
Some info for today's lecture re: network devices
| Xerox Alto Computer 30th Anniversary |
Posted
by michael on Saturday
April 05, @10:26PMfrom the back-in-the-day dept.
aheath writes "The New York Times has a story about the 30th anniversary of the Xerox Alto computer: How Digital Pioneers Put the 'Personal in PC's. According to the PARC Factsheet "The Alto Computer (1973/1980) included the Graphical User Interface (GUI), WYSIWYG editing, bit-mapped display, overlapping windows, and the first commercial use of the mouse." The concepts prototyped in the Xerox Alto contributed to the development of the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows 1.0."
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Happy 30th anniversary, cell phones!
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
CBS Refuses to Broadcast Ad for Gateway Computers
Service Pack 1 in WinXP can cause programs to take up to 10X longer to load
Most IT experts do not trust Microsoft
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Bring your HTML books to class today!
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Keep a' reading chapters 8 and 9. It's about time for a quiz, too!
Hotmail restricts outgoing messages - you are limited to sending only 100 messages a day. This is an attempt to curb spam.
Review of the new version of RedHat Linux, version 9
Librarians want $450K each for putting up with porn-loving patrons
There was a question about page 5 on the midterm, in regards to the "uptime" question. Since there was conflicting information on the notes and the handouts, I will give those of you who had them marked wrong the points. Just get me your test back, I will check them out, change the grade, and get them back to you.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Windows NT 4 is Microsoft's own worst enemy
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Welcome back! We are going to start on Chapter Eight (Telecommunications and Networks) and Nine (the Internet) as they are tied together. We'll also toss in some hardware about networks and the phone system.
Hope you don't get this frustrated with your PC!
Rancor at the latest ICANN meeting in Geneva
Windows RootKits Rootkits explained
The more you are on the Internet, the less TV you watch, survey says!
Ever wonder what happens to RAM that fails quality assurance testing?
Inside the Microsoft internship program
The web browser is 10 years old today (3/14)
File traders feel their activities are not wrong
Email a RoadRunner address, and get scanned? Their reply here. And the members reply.
Latest MS IIS vulnerability - spent a couple hours patching these servers and the RedHat servers.
The Gettysburg Address, if done in PowerPoint
P2P SWAPPING NETWORKS CATER TO PORN
AMES, Iowa (CBS.MW) -- Adult and child pornography, it turns out, are
the most requested files on peer-to-peer networks such as LimeWire and
KaZaa, according to research by a computer security firm.
Palisade Systems said Tuesday that it connected to the largest swap network, Gnutella, for 17 days last month, monitoring 209 million search
requests. Of these requests, 42 percent of searchers were looking for porn and 38 percent were looking for music.
"When you do the study and you see the results, you say, 'Holy Toledo'," Eric Schnack, chief operating officer for Palisade
(http://www.palisadesys.com./), told the San Jose Mercury News.
"Virtually everything there can have 'game over'-like consequences" for a corporation.
Attorney Daniel Langin (http://www.langinlaw.com/contact.asp) said the
research highlights a critical problem for companies whose employees access file-swapping networks. "The amount of sexually explicit
materials traded over P2P may open up an organization to discrimination suits such as a hostile workplace," he said. "Especially dangerous is
P2P use associated with child pornography, which is a felony-level
offense."
| More on SCO vs. IBM Lawsuit |
Posted
by michael on Friday
March 07, @01:30PMfrom the circumstantial-evidence dept.
Colin Stanners writes "SCO has held a TeleConference and put up a page with information on their lawsuit against IBM. The key phrase (from their complaint) is: 'It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.' Their page also includes a Q&A, presentation, and exhibits, although these are mostly licensing agreements and not code." Bruce Perens had an interesting comment on the situation, more than one group is trying to organize a boycott, and Newsforge has a story based on SCO's press conference this morning. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
| Proposed Usenet Death Penalty for Australia's Largest ISP |
from the cutting-off-hand-to-spite-face dept.
supine writes "David Ritz has issued a request for discussion on applying a Usenet Death Penalty to Australia's largest ISP, Bigpond (and it's parent company Telstra)." This brought back to memory the time when AOL was facing similar charges.
Some comments on the second assignment:
| It seems some people still have trouble vertically centering text. This is a simple command and I am surprised that so many are still not doing it, even after I explained how and gave a link to a tutorial. I will continue taking away points for not vertically centering text. |
| Same comment about page numbers. Once again, the title page is not numbered, and the first page of the text starts with number 1, not 2. Points will continue to be taken away for incorrect numbering. |
| When I specify 1" margins, and reports are turned in with 1.5" or 2" margins, is the problem a lack of attention to the requirements or not knowing how to do margins? I believe it's the former as I have explained and linked to a tutorial on margin settings. |
| Several commented on the supposed high prices of the Gateway models that Creighton sells. CU is reselling the Gateway business series models, the E-4600 series. Gateway, like Dell and Compaq, have both business and consumer lines of PCs. The consumer lines have a much shorter lifespan, sometimes only being available for 30 days. The components change often, such as the type of video card or hard drive. The business models stay in production for at least 9 months and often longer, and are consistent in the components. That is very important to a business - for example, when I order 40 machines to replace the ones in BA 111, I want them all to be identical. That would not be the case if I were to order the consumer machines. Also, the business models default to a tower case as opposed to the smaller desktop cases, in most models. As an aside, I was involved in the bid review for the PC contract last year. We chose Gateway again as they are giving us a 30% discount over list prices on the E-4600 models (and subsequent ones) and a set discount on the various laptop models. Compaq did not bid, and Dell would only guarantee pricing for 90 days, and then only with an official quote (which sometimes takes 30 days to get). Gateway also allows us to sell the same models to students, faculty and staff whereas Dell would not allow us to do so, and would only give a 3% discount for personal purchases. I'll fill you in later on more aspects of the bidding process. |
| High score was 50, low was 25, average was 46, median was 48, n=16. |
Midterm exam score distribution was as follows: High score was 148, low score was 110, average was 129, median was 130 and n=16. There were two students who did not take the midterm and thus received a 0.
Midterm letter grade distribution for the class:
A = 5
B = 8
C = 3
D = 1
F = 2
Thursday, March 7, 2003
Midterm exam, no news updates
Midterm Exam Results:
Total points possible = 150
High score = 148
Low score = 110
Average score = 129.1
Median score = 130.5
Number taking test = 18
Number who did not take test = 2
Row #2 was the highest average-scoring row! Congratulations
to row #2!
Extra credit answers were:
Compaq was the
first PC manufacturer out with an 80386 processor-based PC
RED HAT linux is the
distribution we use on Grackle
Bill Gates was arrested for speeding - here
is the info w/mug shot
Note on the exam: I made a typo in the fifth page. The grid questions were supposed to be worth two points each, instead of one. So I graded them based on what was written in the instructions, one point each, instead of two. So everyone got 16 free points on the exam.
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Battlestar Galactica is coming back!
Midterm review is at this link
Hope the weather doesn't get so bad that the University cancels classes!!!
The name game: Lindows versus Windows
Major security hole found in sendmail - did you patch your servers yet?
IBM to repair smoking monitors It's not their only bad piece of hardware, nor this as well.
Midterm grades will be based on:
5 quizzes at 20 each = 100
1 midterm exam at 150 = 150
2 assignments at 50 each = 100
1 TechTip at 50 = 50
1 webpage work at 50 = 50
Your grade will be your total points out of 450
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
OUT OF THE OFFICE - I will not be on campus this week, with the exception of class, as I will be taking Linux administration training at the AIM Institute. You can email me, or leave me a voice mail and I will return the message in the evening. Class may run long, so give me until 5:00pm. If I am not here by 5:00, then there is no class. I will also be able to email from class so I will post a message to the class list if I won't be able to get back down to campus on time. Based on the class last month, I should be able to be here on time.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Forgot to give you back your assignments on Tuesday. Comments about assignment #1 are below.
Inside the development of Windows NT
Pennsylvania requiring ISPs to block sites with child porn
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Opera
releases a "Bork edition" You can see a screenshot
of the result here
or here. Oh,
and by the way MSN does not pass the W3C Markup Validation Service.
Dialectizer is here
Advice to Microsoft, from a departing insider
Project Penny Black: A plan to charge for email (Microsoft Research)
If a killer asteroid is coming, don't expect the government to tell you!
Do you run Windows XP? Well, it seems that anyone with a Windows 2000 CD can get into your system without a password and copy off files. More info here. Of course, you can do this with other operating systems as well. Points out the need for physical security of your computer.
TurboTax writes to your boot sector (this is a bad thing)
Proposed NE computer recycling law
Some rambling comments about Google
Chronicle's article on Microsoft's Paladium
New privacy menace: cell phones?
Tom's Hardware benchmarks 65 CPUs from 1989 to the present
"25 years ago today (2/16/03), Ward Christensen and Randy Suess officially announced
the creation of a little project they threw together with a 300 baud Hayes modem, a Z-80 based S-100 computer, and a phone line. They called it
"Chicago Bulletin Board System" (CBBS) and it was the first dial-up BBS.
From this beginning, BBSes grew into the many thousands and became an entire industry, and when the Internet started to mature with the World
Wide Web, the users who had cut their teeth on BBSes moved over to it. So raise a toast to these two fellows for a quarter century of great online
times."
Slashdot discussion
and at textfiles.com and
at chinet.com
Comments on the first assignment:
Many did not follow the formatting instructions, specifically using 1"
margins. Also, when using Word or any other word processor, you need
to learn about using section breaks so that your page numbers do not start
on the title page! Title pages are not
numbered, and the first page after the title page is numbered as 1.
You do not need page numbers if you only have one page after a title page,
but if you have more than one page of text, title pages are necessary.
Also, when doing a title page, make sure that the text is centered
VERTICALLY as well as HORIZONTALLY. Lots of people didn't set their
margins at 1", instead using as much as a 2" margin!
Finally, be sure to staple your pages together so they don't get lost.
For info on section breaks, check
out this excellent page. Click for info on vertical
centering. Click for info
on setting margins. Oh, and anyone using Liquid
Paper on a report will automatically fail the assignment (you know who
you are!)
Results: N=19, High=50, Low=45, Average=46.8.
Thursday, February 13, 2003
My life as an unintentional porn spammer
What button do web surfers use the most? The answer is here. Here's some scholarly research on it.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
An interview with Dennis Ritchie
Using technology to monitor workers can backfire, and decrease your productivity
Intel Centrino chip to debut March 12
Current Information Technology newsletter
People who use public-access computers should be cautious...
Dude, you're getting a rap sheet!
Thursday, February 6, 2003
Leaking capacitors muck up motherboards - this is what happened with the Gateway E-3400 series. A sad tale I will tell in class today.
Major e-tailers charging sales tax on purchases over the Internet
Does MSN deliberately break the Opera browser?
Just a little explanation on the assignment: You don't have to buy your domain unless you really want to. This is just an exercise. Just go through the process far enough with the registrar of your choice, and get the pricing information needed for your assignment. Today we will talk more about #2 on the assignment, such as hosting and co-location arrangements.
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
Rick Berman: Post-Nemesis and the future of the Star Trek franchise
One drawback to email filtering
An interview with John Perry Barlow, founder of the EFF
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Nothing new!
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
OUT OF THE OFFICE - I will not be
on campus this week, with the exception of class, as I will be taking Linux
administration training at the AIM
Institute. You can email me, or leave me a voice mail and I will
return the message in the evening. Class may run long, so give me
until 5:00pm. If I am not here by 5:00, then there is no
class. I will also be able to email from class so I will post a
message to the class list if I won't be able to get back down to campus on
time.
Sony to phase out 17" and 19" CRTs
| MS SQL Server Worm Wreaking Havoc |
from the no-man-will-know-the-day-or-the-hour dept.
defile writes "Since about midnight EST almost every host on the internet has been receiving a 376 byte UDP payload on port ms-sql-m (1434) from a random infected server. Reports of some hosts receiving 10 per minute or more. internetpulse.net is reporting UUNet and Internap are being hit very hard. This is the cause of major connectivity problems being experienced worldwide. It is believed this worm leverages a vulnerability published in June 2002. Several core routers have taken to blocking port 1434 outright. If you run Microsoft SQL Server, make sure the public internet can't access it. If you manage a gateway, consider dropping UDP packets sent to port 1434." bani adds "This has effectively disabled 5 of the 13 root nameservers LINK TO SLASHDOT ARTICLE IS HERE eEye security bulletin here. MSNBC article here. Oh, and Microsoft activation servers are down as well, so you cannot register and activate any MS products. Many ATMs were out of order. Check out the Internet Traffic Report.
Related to this, as I write this at 10:42am on Saturday, for the last two hours the University has been off-line. I can access COBA resources but nothing in the Computer Center. Their telephone hotline was last updated shortly before 9:00am and reported no problems, and I cannot reach the http://itnotices.creighton.edu page to see if it is updated. UPDATE at 11:00am - after talking to an operator, it seems that the Computer Center has isolated itself from the rest of the world. No connection to any machine in the Computer Center server room is possible. No timeframe yet as to when the connectivity will be restored. That is why you can connect to other servers on campus (like this one) but not to email, http://www.creighton.edu, etc. UPDATE at 2:30pm - the entire University is offline now, and the x1116 number has not been changed. UPDATE at 3:40pm - part of the University servers are back. I can get into Bluejay, but not anything in COBA. The ITnotices page is not updated and the phone message has not changed since 11:00am. UPDATE at 4:30pm - Some CU sites are back, but nothing outside of the computer center. Hotline at x1116 has not been updated since 11:00am. A few email messages are trickling through to the outside world. 424 messages queued on Bluejay. UPDATE at 7:00pm - the recorded message at x116 has been updated and JD states that our network is down to the SQL worm going around. I know that they have a few SQL servers in the server room. Connectivity is still down, although I can get to Bluejay. Email is not going through and I cannot update our class web pages (I am updating this at home from a copy saved here). UPDATE at 7:36pm - CU's connectivity to the Internet seems to be back up, I am going to try to save these updates and check the mailqueue.
On Bluejay, try the command mailq. Then pipe it through wc, (the command to type is mailq | wc) which counts lines to give a rough estimate of the number of messages in the queue on Bluejay. At 15:55 the number is 477.
Check out this graph - talk about traffic dropping! And here is Eppley, cut off from the world
The Race Is On to Kill Kazaa (Wired magazine 2:00 a.m. PDT) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa.html The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under. Sixty million users are all over the world. Pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug on Kazaa. By Todd Woody from Wired magazine.
An attorney is suing eBay over negative feedback left on him
Thursday, January 23, 2003
One thing not to do with your quizzes!
MonsterHut ordered to stop spamming by judge
The porn industry wants you to share - an interesting take on file sharing, versus what the RIAA wants. Consider also what SouthPark's creators are doing here and here.
What resources go into making a DRAM chip?
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
I've sent a message out to the class email list
called the "January 2003 Netcraft web server survey" that lists
the most popular web servers. These are the machines that serve out
web pages to you across the Internet. There is an interesting
comment about Windows web servers in there you might want to take a look
at.
"I poisoned P2P Networks for the RIAA"
The first chapter of Kevin Mitnick's book is online
Microsoft product lifecycle dates - check your email for a message about this
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Welcome to the first day of class! Please check
back here at least every day as I update this page with class items, interesting
things, and whatever else comes to mind.
You will need to join our class mailing list. At the present time the mailing list is mis253d@creighton.edu. (NOTE! This is a change from the syllabus, which calls the list mis353d). You will need to be on this list for important class information. To join, send a message to majordomo@creighton.edu, leave the subject line blank, and in the body of the message (on the very first line) put the phrase subscribe mis253d email@address - where email@address is your email address where you read your mail every day. Then send the message. Once I get the request, I will add you to the list. You will need to do this before the next class.
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