information and communication technology of today

ICT Lesson 8: Nicknames

2006-06-05T13:46:00.000+08:00

Nicknames are used to remain 'anonymous', sometimes.

Hi Junx.

ICT Lesson 7: Email as a Communication Tool

2006-05-29T00:16:00.000+08:00

Email today can be used not only for writing text messages across the globe. It has become a tool for multimedia exchanges. It can be sent from handphones, computers, PDA and more. Also, emails can be used to update blogs, activate the switch of home air-con system, update websites and many more.

However, at this point, an email is being awaited in the inbox of DIZZYDIZAY.

To TheSeventh,

you have travelled so far in your rabbit's hole. It is now time to reveal yourself to me privately and explain your main purpose in the calumny. A simple email would save you from the brunt coming to you as I hold back on ICT Lesson 8 and beyond. You may email dizzydizay@gmail.com to make your peace.

(friends of TheSeventh, above is one way to wake up the rabbit)

ICT Lesson 6: Indexing and Archiving

2006-05-28T12:38:00.000+08:00

Ever since the Internet started many years ago, it is known that contents that is shown on the browser are downloaded onto the computer first before being displayed on the monitor screen. Log files and temporary caches store these bits of information whenever a user browses a particular page on the Internet.

ICT tools of today also have their own way of keeping track of information exchange. ICQ have a log folder, MSN also have a log folder, forums have a log folder, thus it is not wise to believe that all entries were deleted when one faced with the following page (reference: Lesson 4)

The ICT tools today have changed, there are automated "robots" and "spiders" browsing the Internet round the clock doing jobs for humans. As long as servers host them on the Internet, these automated "creatures" can have access to them. This is what we called Indexing and Archiving.

Google.com states in its website the reason it sends robots and spiders to take snapshots of webpages that are available on the Internet, in case the original page is unavailable.

It is therefore through technology today that we can retrieve deleted or removed information and obtain valuable "missing" information to trace writers such as

ICT Lesson 5: Laws Governing the Internet

2006-05-28T12:02:00.000+08:00

before we go further, it is important to stop and reflect how easily we can put across our ideas and thoughts across to the masses in the Internet. many ICT tools exists today and users worldwide are connected to each other without boundaries 24 hours a day.

a simply click of the mouse would connect us to a friend miles away across the globe and we could be chatting with that person as if he's just next door.

many Intellectual Property (IP) laws have been implemented to protect owner's rights. due to the rising use of Internet to download resources, many simply pilfer from the Internet to pass off as their own.

freedom of speech, many users want to believe that they can say anything on the Internet without any prior logical thinking or consequences to the parties involved thus laws have to be implemented to move with the times and to protect individuals in the Internet.

as one may use the Internet as a convenient tool to attract the attention of masses when trying to put across his/her ideas, it is worthwhile to stop and realise that they are such laws in countries such as the DEFAMATION ACT

click on the image above to spend some time reading the Defamation Act before any calumny or slander is made on any person so that you would be aware of the consequences when you freely make false accusation on any person.

on the same note, it would also be a good time to make aware the youth of today the punishments meted out when criminal offences are committed. click on the link below to view so that one would understand that we have laws to abide to before personal attacks are made (browse section 500).

ICT Lesson 4: Service Unavailable

2006-05-28T11:29:00.000+08:00

As Internet applications are made of up many computers linked across many nations, we sometimes may get error messages for our favourite ICT tools. This could be a temporary delay, downtime or could even go to many days if the problem cannot be rectified easily.

The most common one would be

The bottom part of the error message state "Cannot find server or DNS Error", this would simply mean that the server you are trying to connect to is offline at the moment. Only the server administrator would know what's happening to the server for this error message as usually the problem lies with the server itself. One may get frustrated easily when faced with this error message as one may have lots of resources to retrieve from the server. Thus, if the visitor lacks the technical knowledge of the ICT tools he/she uses regularly, he/she would put the explaination similar to villagers blaming witchcraft when things occur that he/she personally couldn't explain due to lack of knowledge.

Sometimes you get a 502 - Bad Gateway error message. This is usually a temporary error as this is usually caused by a bad communication between your computer and the computer you are trying to reach.

Another type an interesting service unavailable is when the page or content you are trying to reach again has been deleted or moved. This would show up as

and a special lesson on this would be conducted soon.

ICT Lesson 3: Forum as an ICT Tool

2006-05-27T19:38:00.000+08:00

Forums as we know is a widely available medium to express our ideas, thoughts, comments, questions to the masses. ICT tools such as blogs, p2p chats, msn, icq requires you to add members and thus the mass factor lacks in a certain way.

Sometimes we discover an exciting forum that probably could attract mass audience eg. http://www.sgforums.com but realised that it's not so popular thus we then search for another popular one eg. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/forum/index.htm in the wish that the content would be read by the masses.

Forums are applications. One of the popular forum application and free to install by any server owner is phpBB forum. You can download this forum tool from http://www.phpBB.com

All you need is a web server, php scripting processor installed and your audience as members. An interesting feature of every forum tool is the Administration tool. As we know, people can express many personal thoughts in blogs, chats, msn, etc. Therefore there have to be a way to track the person who type the characters on the keyboard at that exact date and time.

For phpBB, the Administrator is capable of

*note IP tracking of posts and posters

among a wide range of features of the phpBB forum application as described in http://www.phpbb.com/features.php#admin

Although the Forum application is one way to log the IP Address, the server itself would have a server log file that keeps the IP Addresses of visitors with a neatly arranged table based on date and time.

ICT Lesson 2: IP Address

2006-05-27T18:51:00.000+08:00

An IP Address is like your fingerprint. It travels with you wherever you are in cyberspace at that moment in time. You may change your IP address if your "renew", use another computer or simply use it at one time in school and another time at home.

To see for yourself what's your Network Card IP Address, goto your START button and launch Run. Then type "cmd /k ipconfig" and press the ENTER button on your keyboard. If you are on a router network, the IP Address that's listed would most likely starts from 192.168.*.* or if in a school network it would be 10.*.*.* but these are just internal IP Address because in the Internet the IP Address would be like 203.*.*.* , 202.*.*.* and this would depend on the IP Address assigned by your Internet provider. However, all these IP Address are interlinked and in the end it would be translated back to the original computer where your fingers did the typing on the keyboard.

One simple way to check your Internet IP Address that would be logged in forums, chats, blogs or any other place in cyberspace that you visit is to click on http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/ This is now your fingerprint at the point of time characters on your keyboard travels into the CPU of your computer, into your Internet connection and finally lands and remained etched in your choice of ICT tool.

Actually, its easy, its like using your handphone number to connect to another handphone number. So if your IP address is *.*.*.* and a website you wish to goto, eg. http://info.channelnewsasia.com/bb/index.php , its actually your IP address connecting to another IP Address 202.172.227.115

Therefore, with the time and date and identity you'd registered, your Internet IP Address would be captured in the server's log file and if needed the information can be used to trace back all the way to which computer was used to type that forum posting, blog entry, upload pictures, listen to music, etc at that particular date and time.

A good resource to learn about the technical details on IP Address can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_address

ICT Lesson 1: History of the Internet

2006-05-26T15:17:00.000+08:00

the image below shows the first world wide web (www) server. we shall start with something interesting first, one that we can relate easily. without a www server, we would not be able to download pictures, listen to music streams, participate in forums, download Pokcast or was it Podcast? (new form of audio listening that's picking up, i am impressed with individuals who are willing to try out and pick up new ICT tools) and many more. basically a www server host lots of applications to users worldwide. if a connection to this www server got lost, we would then have a server down.

photographed on August 10, 2005, by en:user:Coolcaesar.

as adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:First_Web_Server.jpg

This NeXT workstation (a NeXTcube) was used by Tim Berners-Lee as the first Web server on the World Wide Web. Today, it is kept in Microcosm, the public museum at the Meyrin site of CERN, in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The document resting on the keyboard is a copy of "Information Management: A Proposal," which was Berners-Lee's original proposal for the World Wide Web. The label on the cube itself has the following text: "This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!"

if you are interested to know what's Internet before pictures and sounds came about, do click on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

the link contains lots of information on how everything we now take for granted started with just digits and characters on the monitor screen.

what slacky day

2006-05-26T14:19:00.000+08:00

this entry is just to prevent a dead link ...
click on http://fuzionistical.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-am-new-owner.html to start from
the beginning.

hate that "slack" word. penned originally by the previous owner. it kills the enthusiasm lots of people put in. hope i would be able to change that mindset of others.

i am the new owner!

2006-05-26T10:49:00.000+08:00

hi, the previous owner gave up this blog name as a particular page became popular ... sensitive parts covered so as not to smear any names especially a respected educational institution in public. can't believe there was a "mysterious" individual who hardworkingly register and post in cyberspace without logical thinking and not realising that the anonimity is limited.

so i am the new owner now.

"computer expert", love this term somehow, been doing so many low-level IT work that i feel that it's time to do a higher level IT work. perhaps 4 years of not practising higher level IT i believe, so do stay tuned if you want to see more high level IT research work.

weblog or blog as it is popularly coined, sounds difficult, never had it before till now. somehow it's too simple, WYSIWYG, guess that's what technology is for, making things simpler for the world to collaborate.

nice blog name actually, absolutely no meaning, although 2nd hand, didnt expect it's so easy to take over, unlike buying a car or house, so many paperwork. imagine trying to take over a domain name, that one too troublesome.

my nick shall stay as dizzydizay, wanted to pretend to be TheSeventh initially as we take this journey inside the rabbit's hole but then why should i let someone else take credit rite? but first, please accept my apology, i have learnt my lesson, now please let me move on while i teach everyone a thing or two about ICT, a tool that I hope one day will make us better informed people. there are people we should look up to for factual answers in this world, in order not to make the world full of hatred and lies. i hope to teach you well in this area, not in a casual manner but with strict formality because you may never know when you need these IT skills in your working life.

well, over the next few days, this would be a place for IT research, educational and informative for visitors, nothing exaggerated or slandering, will start with the lesson on IP Address and how the Internet started with these wonderful digits.