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Posts Tagged ‘Caution’

Cool Science Projects for the Science Fair

August 10th, 2009

I was under the impression they were supposed to be cool science projects, but I just could never get the hang of them. I feel so fortunate to have come across the secret to the coolest projects…

I can still vividly remember the look of disapointment on Bens face. It was my first try at planning a science fair project, but still I really upset my son. I sill feel sad about the whole thing.

It all went wrong and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t thought I could be clever and get a free science project online, none of this would have happened. All that time spent planning and preparing, and still a complete faliure…

The free project I grabbed off the Internet was absolutely awful! It seemed that everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The water and salt speedily became insoluble, the balloons burst leaving my kitchen in a awful mess, and I’m not even gonna go into the price of the materials for the experiment.

Thats when the state of affairs elevated. Ok so considering my prior faliure, I went back on the internet and purchased a science package this time. What a complete waste of time and money! I paid $25 for the kit and it was completly useless, they gave us nothing of real value. Oh it was just awful! All they did give was details to a really boring science project and a list of materials adding up to another $40!

The other day I was reading thru a couple of articles on a site that I go to often, when I saw an advertisement. It read: Earn money for charity by writing an article about your experience’s with science projects! So I emailed them and said: Hi, I saw your ad and would love to offer my experience and extend advice to other parentd. So here I am.

So lets think for a moment, for the science project we need a…

• Purpose
• Hypothesis
• Supplies
• Procedure
• Data
• Results
• Conclusion
• Research

Now thats hard work, believe me!

But check this out – I recently found a great way to take the pain away. It puts us all in a unique position of being able to actually enjoy ourselves, whilst helping our kids learn science. And for me thats what these science fair projects should be about; associating fun with learning. You see, I never realized this, but these are the most important years of our child’s life. Why? Because at this age they’re minds are extremely susceptible to the emotions that they feel. All we need to do is increase that link between fun and learning and I’m told our kids are guaranteed to achieve more in later life; as they will grow up loving to learn.

What I found even more amazing was that in goes so much further than this. It is now believed that it has good effects in other parts of their lives as well. Not only will they become more acadmically active they will also become better in social situations. Wow!

A few weeks ago the time for preparation for the science fair finally arrived. My son came to me at the breakfast table and said, “Mom can we do a fun science projects this year”? I told him I would make sure we do. Yet I had no idea how I would make it happen considering I could no longer rely on the internet! A couple of days past and I was really nervous. I couldn’t find anything off line that looked as if it would actually work. And the idea of it going wrong again was eating me inside.

Well I was very impressed with the kit. It gave us the detailed explanation to a winning science project and it all worked out great!

Well, thats it, my search is over I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed with most of what I found, and I advice you to exercise extreme caution before investing time and money into a science project! Whatever you do, I wish you and your kid a fun and healthy year to come.

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Digital Mp3 Players For A Great Music Experience

August 9th, 2009

Digital MP3 players are probably the most popular music devices today. For, it is with the advent of digital MP3 players, that MP3 downloads has become immensely popular among music lovers. The digital MP3 players allow several songs or pieces of audio to be stored without occupying a large amount of storage space.

MP3 audio files can be played on a computer, using software applications such as Winamp or Windows Media Player as well as on specialized digital MP3 players such as the Apple iPod. For all these amazing attributes the digital MP3 players are believed to usher in the dawn of an MP3 era.

There are several well known brands that have created a niche in the digital MP3 players market. Read on to get the right one for yourself:

Sony MP3 Players: Sony has earned the reputation of being a brand that manufactures top notch music players in the world. Procuring a Sony MP3 player with a minidisk player will allow you to view or store photos along with the other functions.

Sandisk Mp3 Players: Touted as user-friendly, the Sandisk MP3 players are known for affordability without compromising on performance. Buy any of these for a great music experience.

Transcend MP3 Players: Instead of opting for an over the top design, transcend MP3 players have adopted a design that is modest. If quality is what you are focusing on and looks don’t matter then Transcend MP3 player is the one for you.

Zebronics MP3 Players: Zebronics MP3 Player is upbeat about technology yet highly affordable to the masses. Omega ‘MP3DJ’, ‘MP3DJ Sigma’, ‘MP3DJ Delta’ is among the best selling brands of MP3 players from Zebronics.

If you do not own any of these great digital MP3 players then hurry just get one for that incredible music experience. You may procure one at a physical store or at an online mart. Most of the online marts display a wide variety of digital MP3 players from various brands and offer attractive discounts. And to add to it, most online marts offer free shipping options. So, if you want to buy digital MP3 players as gifts, online marts are indubitably a great option.

But one word of caution before you procure any of the digital MP3 players is that you should always check whether a particular brand is compatible with your current computers operating system. This means checking for PC or Mac compatibility before you make your purchase. You might also find that some digital MP3 players include features, such as voice recorders, FM radios, and even video players.

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Computer Security: Computer Security Ethics and Privacy

August 7th, 2009

Today, many people rely on computers to do homework, work, and create or store useful information. Therefore, it is important for the information on the computer to be stored and kept properly. It is also extremely important for people on computers to protect their computer from data loss, misuse, and abuse.  For example, it is crucial for businesses to keep information they have secure so that hackers can’t access the information. Home users also need to take means to make sure that their credit card numbers are secure when they are participating in online transactions. 

A computer security risk is any action that could cause lost of information, software, data, processing incompatibilities, or cause damage to computer hardware,   a lot of these are planned to do damage. An intentional breach in computer security is known as a computer crime which is slightly different from a cypercrime. A cybercrime is known as illegal acts based on the internet and is one of the FBI’s top priorities.  There are several distinct categories for people that cause cybercrimes, and they are refereed as hacker, cracker, cyberterrorist, cyberextortionist, unethical employee, script kiddie and corporate spy.  The term hacker was actually known as a good word but now it has a very negative view. A hacker is defined as someone who accesses a computer or computer network unlawfully.  They often claim that they do this to find leaks in the security of a network. The term cracker has never been associated with something positive this refers to someone how intentionally access a computer or computer network for evil reasons. It’s basically an evil hacker. 

They access it with the intent of destroying, or stealing information. Both crackers and hackers are very advanced with network skills.  A cyberterrorist is someone who uses a computer network or the internet to destroy computers for political reasons.  It’s just like a regular terrorist attack because it requires highly skilled individuals, millions of dollars to implement, and years of planning. The term cyperextortionist is someone who uses emails as an offensive force. They would usually send a company a very threatening email stating that they will release some confidential information, exploit a security leak, or launch an attack that will harm a company’s network. They will request a paid amount to not proceed sort of like black mailing in a since. An unethical employee is an employee that illegally accesses their company’s network for numerous reasons. One could be the money they can get from selling top secret information, or some may be bitter and want revenge. A script kiddie is someone who is like a cracker because they may have the intentions of doing harm, but they usually lack the technical skills. They are usually silly teenagers that use prewritten hacking and cracking programs. A corporate spy has extremely high computer and network skills and is hired to break into a specific computer or computer network to steal or delete data and information.

Shady companies hire these type people in a practice known as corporate espionage. They do this to gain an advantage over their competition an illegal practice. Business and home users must do their best to protect or safeguard their computers from security risks. The next part of this article will give some pointers to help protect your computer. However, one must remember that there is no one hundred percent guarantee way to protect your computer so becoming more knowledgeable about them is a must during these days. When you transfer information over a network it has a high security risk compared to information transmitted in a business network because the administrators usually take some extreme measures to help protect against security risks. Over the internet there is no powerful administrator which makes the risk a lot higher. If your not sure if your computer is vulnerable to a computer risk than you can always use some-type of online security service which is a website that checks your computer for email and Internet vulnerabilities. The company will then give some pointers on how to correct these vulnerabilities.

The Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center is a place that can do this. The typical network attacks that puts computers at risk includes viruses, worms, spoofing, Trojan horses, and denial of service attacks.  Every unprotected computer is vulnerable to a computer virus which is a potentially harming computer program that infects a computer negatively and altering the way the computer operates without the user’s consent. Once the virus is in the computer it can spread throughout infecting other files and potentially damaging the operating system itself. It’s similar to a bacteria virus that infects humans because it gets into the body through small openings and can spread to other parts of the body and can cause some damage. The similarity is, the best way to avoid is preparation.  A computer worm is a program that repeatedly copies itself and is very similar to a computer virus. However the difference is that a virus needs o attach itself to an executable file and become a part of it. A computer worm doesn’t need to do that I seems copies to itself and to other networks and eats up a lot of bandwidth. A Trojan Horse named after the famous Greek myth and is used to describe a program that secretly hides and actually looks like a legitimate program but is a fake.  A certain action usually triggers the Trojan horse, and unlike viruses and worms they don’t replicate itself. Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses are all classifies as malicious-logic programs which are just programs that deliberately harms a computer. 

Although these are the common three there are many more variations and it would be almost impossible to list them. You know when a computer is infected by a virus, worm, or Trojan horse if one or more of these acts happen:

- Screen shots of weird messages or pictures appear.

- You have less available memory then you expected

- Music or sounds plays randomly.

- Files get corrupted

- Programs are files don’t work properly

- Unknown files or programs randomly appear

- System properties fluctuate

Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses deliver their payload or instructions through four common ways. One, when an individual runs an infected program so if you download a lot of things you should always scan the files before executing, especially executable files. Second, is when an individual runs an infected program. Third, is when an individual bots a computer with an infected drive, so that’s why it’s important to not leave media files in your computer when you shut it down.  Fourth is when it connects an unprotected computer to a network. Today, a very common way that people get a computer virus, worm, or Trojan horse is when they open up an infected file through an email attachment. There are literally thousands of computer malicious logic programs and new one comes out by the numbers so that’s why it’s important to keep up to date with new ones that come out each day. Many websites keep track of this.

There is no known method for completely protecting a computer or computer network from computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, but people can take several precautions to significantly reduce their chances of being infected by one of those malicious programs.  Whenever you start a computer you should have no removable media in he drives. This goes for CD, DVD, and floppy disks. When the computer starts up it tries to execute a bot sector on the drives and even if it’s unsuccessful any given various on the bot sector can infect the computer’s hard disk. If you must start the computer for a particular reason, such as the hard disk fails and you are trying to reformat the drive make sure that the disk is not infected.

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