This American Historical Review was unlike any other that I have read.  The read itself was not difficult to get through but the amount of digital information that was linked to this particular historical review was a little over whelming.  There was so much information to look at and there was what seemed to be an abundant amount of sources that was referenced to support the arguments that were being made.

If I was going to to use this historical review to write a paper I would want to check the authenticity of the references to ensure that the information that was being provided was authentic and true.  The section Methods was in my opinion, the most important section of this historical review that tied into what we are currently doing in this class.  It was interesting to read about how the use of digital mapping with historical content was tied together to create all of the information that was in this website.  The digital material that was provided by this historical review gave a great visual representation of the central argument that this review was making.  I think that it was essential that this review have the section Methods to provide the readers with some knowledge of how to interpret the digital maps that were provided and how the historical information played a key part in making the maps.

Reading this historical review was a great experience and it really shed some light on the use of digital materials to drive home an argument.

Here is a look at what my hunting trip will look like this season.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=206938126096777955840.0004cc36f83eac5ffa810&msa=0&ll=38.261367,-77.719345&spn=0.390882,0.85556

The following screen shots are not interactive but they show the route of the trip that I will be taking this hunting season.

So now that I have disclosed my hunting area I hope that I don’t find someone in the area that I am looking forward to hunting.

I wanted to tie every marker together to  show the actual route that I was taking but I could not figure out how to tie them all together.  Overall it was interesting putting this map together.

Here is the chart that I created.

chart.googleapis.com/chart?chf=a,s,000000|bg,s,E8F4F7|c,s,FFFF88&chxr=0,13.333,93.333|1,1946.667,2005.333&chxs=0,000000,9.833,1,lt,000000|1,000000,9.167,0.667,lt,000000&chxtc=0,10&chxt=y,x&chs=434×300&cht=lc&chco=0000FF,80C65A,FF0000,000000&chd=s:Ybdimtususmmnppssmln,XUUZYTOOJQVYYYcccY,QTWYdeZVUUQRPPRWYeed,WXbjefdbbjleebe&chdl=Chocolate|Hard+Candy|Gummies|Licorice&chls=2,10,0|3,10,0|1.1,19,0|2.667,7,0&chma=|10,2&chm=r,E0E0E0,0,0.133,0.833&chtt=Favorite+Candy&chts=3E2222,11.5

So creating this chart was a lot of fun.  I tried to make it as complicated as possible to make use of as many tools as possible.  I tried switching through the different types of charts but with the information that I plugged in the bar graph was not working too well.  The information that was provided is not accurate.  Here is what it looked like when I was putting it together.

The hardest process of putting together this chart together was figuring out what information I wanted to display.

Personal security is very important and there are a few things that you should always keep in mind.

• How vulnerable is your computer when connected to a public network?
• Are your passwords strong enough to withstand being hacked by someone who is trying to hack you?
• Do you use the same password for all of the different accounts that you access on the internet?
• What safety precautions have you taken to keep your personal information secured on your computer?
• Is there anyone else who has access to your personal information that can compromise your personal information or computer?
• Do you have any accounts that are linked together?

These are some of the questions that I asked myself when doing my self assessment of my personal security.  After asking myself some of these questions and taking a good look at my personal security there was only one area where I need to do a better job.  I use the same password for almost all of the accounts that I access.  The only good thing about the password that I use is that it is 12 characters long.  I use a combination of upper and lower letters to include a number.  I am pretty confident that anyone trying to hack my password would have an extremely difficult time figuring out.  The biggest drawback to having just one password for everything that I use is, if my password were to get compromised then every account that I access through the internet will be at the mercy of that hacker.  This is a risk that I have endured for as far back as I can remember.  I am confident that my password is solid.

I have answered my own questions with great confidence that I have taken the precautionary measures to secure both my personal information and computer from being vulnerable to hackers.  I also have other computers that I am responsible for in my home.  I have a private network in my home which gives all of the computers in my home access to the internet and access to shared information from a shared external hard drive.  I am the administrator of my personal network and I am the only one with the password to access my private network.  Unfortunately the password for my network is also the same for all of my other accounts.  I believe that the strength of my password gives my the confidence to use it without feeling that it will ever get compromised.

I use the following software to secure and to protect all of the computers in my home.  I have been using this software for many years and it has proven to be the best that I have used.  This software has many features and the parental controls make it very easy to control the websites that your children or other computers in your network are accessing on the internet.  I am the administrator on all of the computers in my home.  When my kids try to access a website that they do not have permission to access, they either do not try to access it or they ask me for permission to access it.  They only get permission after I have visited the website and ensured that it is age appropriate for them.  I also look for links to other website that might put their computers at risk.  Another feature that is very nice to have is the web surfing feature that scans the websites that you are trying to visit for potential treats and this gives you a peace of mind that the sites that you are visiting are safe.  This is a feature that protects my kids from potential risks when surfing the web.

I feel that I have the right software to protect all of the computers in my home. I taken every precaution to secure my personal information and those of all of the computers in my home.  I am also the administrator for the private network in my home and I am the only one in my home with the password.  My wife does know the password but she only knows it in case something were to happen to me.  My wife does not have a clue on how to troubleshoot our home network or how to troubleshoot any of our computers.  Whenever there is an issue with any of our computers or even the home network I always get a phone call about how to fix the problem.  Most of the time I can guide my wife to fix the problem but there have been a couple of times when it just had to wait until I got home.  The only issue that does need to be addressed with my personal security is the password that I have used for several years now.  I am not sure if I will ever change it because I have used it for several years with no issues.  I am fully aware of the risk that I can be in if my password were to be compromised but I feel confident that my password will not get compromised.

This story is one that too often occurs these days.  It is just tragic what happen to the gentleman in this story.  I could only image what it would feel like to be violated in the manner that Matt Honan was.  Just as Matt felt most deeply hurt by the photographs that he lost, I think that losing the photographs would have impacted me in the same manner.  My wife and I have almost 57,000 photos that we have taken digitally and several hundreds more in actual photos.  I have backed up all of our photos unto a few external hard drives.  I feel lucky for never being a victim of being hacked and having my digital life taken over and I hope that it never happens to me.

I was blown away by the fact that Phobia was easily able to hack into Matt’s digital life using some of the most popular giants in the digital world.   You would think that it would be a little more difficult to hack into someone’s email address, I Cloud, or whatever else is gets hacked.  It is true that with a little of the right information you get access to a lot of things.  I have been hesitant to link accounts and to get involved with sites such as Twitter but I know that there are many people out there in the world who just can’t get enough of these types of sites.  In my opinion when your life revolves around the digital world you become vulnerable to being hacked unless you practice security measures that would make you a hard target for someone who is looking to hack someone just because.

I also believe that it is important to back up your personal computer and important digital content, regardless of what it might be, on a regular basis to ensure that you know that if ever you were to become a victim of being hacked, you have your digital life backed up in a safe place.  I think that it is important that people who spend a lot of time on their computers plugged into the internet that they should ensure that they have security measures in place to protect them from threats.

Unfortunately Matt, like others who have been victims of similar hacks would like to go back and back up their digital life.  What is interesting about this article is that Phobia explained the method that he used to hack into Matt’s digital life and how he was able to do it with ease.  The companies that allowed this to happen should be embarrassed; they should look at their security measures and make them more stringent.  Another interesting thing about this article was that Matt agreed not to press charges in exchange for the knowledge of how he hacked.  It was interesting to hear that Phobia felt bad about what had happened to Matt after the fact.  It did not seem to matter to Phobia as he was hacking Matt’s digital life.  Hopefully Matt learned a very hard lesson.

Matt has done a great thing by telling his story of how he got hacked.  I definitely took a lot from this article and interestingly enough I was not aware of how easily someone can take over your digital life if someone really wanted to.  The key important factor about this article is assessing your digital life as it is now and determining if your digital life is at risk of being hacked.  The other important lesson from the experience that Matt had is to not assume that your digital life is safe.  You are always at risk of being hacked but it is the security measures that you implement before that will make you less of a target of being hacked.

So after surfing through this website and figuring out what its purpose was, it was very interesting to find that by typing in a word or phrase in the search box, you can look into the past and see what has been written in TIME Magazine.  I am pretty sure that there are copyright laws that prohibit the use of written articles that were published in TIME Magazine.  This website gives you access to everything that has been written in TIME Magazine from 1923 – 2006.  Just like the videos that we watched about music sampling the phrases and bits and pieces of articles that have been written by TIME Magazine are exposed through this website for anyone to use.  There should be a method of insuring that the words that were written in TIME Magazine are protected.

If this website was used solely for educational use I do not feel that this would be a problem.  If you were looking for something to write about it could be very easy to search through this website and use of its content.  We learn in the process of writing papers that credit must be given if any words from a source are used.  Those words must be cited in some method depending on the style of paper that you are writing.  It is no different using the words or phrases from any other written content and giving credit where it is deserved.  What is interesting is that there is a link provided by this website on how to cite material by this website.

In the case of this website, credit should still be given to TIME Magazine since everything that is shown in this website are words written in TIME Magazine.  Anyone who should stumble upon this website might cite this website as their source but they would be incorrect.  There should be a warning statment that exemplifies that if any content is used from this particular website that TIME Magazine should be given credit for the words that are used.

When you first open this website there is no statement that shows that TIME Magazine has given permission to this website to expose its content.  There is a statement that says that its content has been taken from the TIME Archive (which us freely available online) and that it could not release its full context.  In my opinion this website could be used as a tool to search material that has been written in TIME Magazine but those that are conducting research for a particular type of context should use TIME Magazine’s website to download its full context.  I do not believe that this website is ethically using TIME Magazine’s content and it should have received permission from TIME Magazine to expose its contents in the manner that it has.  I believe that if anyone is going to use this website to conduct research on a particular word or phrase they should properly cite the source even if it is coming from another source that makes reference to the content that is being used.

Unfortunately for TIME there content is accessible through their free online archive and this particular website is taking advantage of the information that TIME is providing.  I do not believe that this website is providing its information legally since their is no way to regulate the information that is used by those that are visiting their website. The least that this website could do to ensure that TIME was cited properly is create a link to generate a cite for the particular magazine that the words or phrase are being used from.

We have learned that the amount of information flow on the internet can be endless.  There are ways to properly give credit to those that deserve credit for writing certain material.  Unfortunately when information is not protected by copyright laws that information is subject to be used however the user pleases.  Just as music can be downloaded from the internet to make new music so can words and phrases from different sources.  It must be more difficult to regulate the words that are being used that were put together by someone else.  With the continuation of digitizing all written material that has ever been written that information becomes susceptible to being used in other context without receiving credit where it is deserved.  Hopefully as technology continues to evolve there will be some sort of software that will have the capability to sift through a data base that will be able to decipher written material and compare it to known written material to ensure its authenticity and originality.

“The Amen Break” is a sample of music that has been used in numerous amounts of music tracks of all sorts.  It is a short bit of music that has withstood the hands of time and used to make current music which has been extremely popular in different genres of music.  It is unfortunate that the creators of this music have not been reaping the rewards from it uses across all types of music.

The problem that is seen in these current days was not an issue when “The Amen Break” was created.  Today we hear all sorts of music that has been created digitally with the use of computer software.  It has become fairly easy to create three to four minutes worth of music with the right tools.  My fourteen year old son has downloaded free software from the internet to piece together sound bits of music to create your own music.  It does take a little bit of time to line up the different sound bits and making them sound as one.

As stated in the video that we had to watch, there has been a lot more copyright laws that have been implemented to safeguard the sounds that are now created.  Gone are the days when musicians are recorded singing or playing their music in its entirety.  In current recording studios the technology exists to correct for mishaps that might occur when recording and in many instances those that are being recorded do it in segments which are later put together by someone who edits the music to sound seamless and crystal clear.  Thanks to technology we hear musicians that are flawless and always in tune.

In the other video that we had to watch, there are artists that create music using sounds of music that has been recorded by other artists.  This is an ongoing controversy that has been going in recent times.  Copyright laws prohibit the use of certain sounds to be used without paying for the license to use those sounds.  There are those that agree that sampling and making the music your own is a form of art and there are those that believe that those sounds should only be used if licenses have been purchased to use those sounds.

In my personal opinion, I believe that sampling is a great way to take music that was created in the past and made modern.  I also believe that credit should be given to those artists that had created the original sounds of music where the sampling was taken from.  Although the sounds that are used to create new music are sounds from the past it does take time and understanding of what is acceptable in current times to make a new song.  Copyrights should be put in place to protect those original sounds so that they are not used in the same form that they were used to make money; but music samples that are used with similar sounds to create new music should not be prohibited as long as credit is given to the original artist that created those original sounds.

It is true that artists that produce new music from old music are not looked upon the same as an artist who is making new original music; but at the same time, that artist that is using sample music from the past is somehow paying tribute to those old sounds by making them new and keeping those sounds alive.  As technology continues to evolve so will the software that is used to create music.  The ability to safeguard sounds will continue to be a challenge for all artists who are in the music industry and as long as music continues to be digital there will always be the possibility of original music to be used to create newer music.

Photography has come a long way.  There is nothing more innocent than looking at photograph and interpreting it how you perceive it.  It is this innocence that is constantly attacked by those that produce images to influence what we see.  Just as discussed in the article, our brains have a method of processing the information that we are seeing and we then use that information to make sense of what we are seeing.  This process takes all but a couple of seconds at most.  We then use the experience and knowledge that we have gained through the years to decipher what we are looking at.  We believe in photographs because we are not trained to detect those that have been altered or those that have been cloned to make us believe in then.  It is always easier to look at a photograph and believe in it than to look at a photograph and look for those visual cues that lead you to believe that it is not true.  We are all creatures of good faith so we are easily fooled by photographs that are faked and made for us to believe in them.

Digital photography is relatively new compared to film photography.  As the digital world continues to evolve so will digital photography.  There are many photo editing softwares out in the market but the one that is the most popular for its enhanced photo editing tools is Photoshop.  Photoshop is a sophisticated photo editing software that can do almost anything to an image.  It is pretty easy to alter an image with the right software.  If there is something that you want to do to an image you can do it in Photoshop and make it look like an original.  It takes a trained eye to reveal where an image might have been edited.  This is one of the many reasons why digital photographs are so believable.

We have all heard of the expression “A picture is worth more than a thousand words”, this catchy phrase puts things into perspective as far as how much a photograph is valued for what it represents.  This is what really makes us vulnerable to the images that are printed in magazines, new papers, and other types of media that we might ponder upon.  We must learn to take a little more time looking at images to find the truth in them.  We can not just look at an image and expect to believe what we see.  I am sure that there are some who do not always believe in what they see in the media but there are those who do not know any better and believe that every image that is printed on magazines, new papers or other medias are true.  Photo editors will do whatever they have to, to have their images printed and if they are getting pressure to edit a photo to make a story that is what they will do.

It is unfortunate that photographs are no longer used as they were shot.  Photographers are always under the pressure to produce an image that is unique and different and using photo editing software has become a method to enhance those photos.  Photo editing has become part of the process of developing photographs in the digital world.  Photography will always be used as a weapon to influence those that are targeted.  We must not always believe in the images that we find in material that is used to tell a story.  There might be more to the story than what the image or photograph is telling you.

The Pyramid of Giza is something that has been studied and researched by many.  I am sure that there are thousands of students across the world that are looking at this exact page that I have added here to get some basic information about the Pyramid of Giza.  A lot of the information that you see on this screen shot is probably pretty accurate.  This is a historical monument that has been studied for a long period of time and there is a lot of information that has been revealed since its existence.

This particular topic may have more accurate information than others because it has so many sources.  Here is a screen shot of the sources that makes up this article.  When looking through the different sources you notice that there are some reliable ones as well as some that might not be so reliable.  The only way that you can really tell if the source is reliable is by going to the link that has been provided and read about where the information was retrieved from.  Usually if there are several sources that are used you can conclude that there might be some pretty good accurate information that is provided.

The discussion that is provided for this topic has to do with the questions that might be the most common when researching this topic.  In my opinion Wikipedia has done a good job of providing good information about the Pyramid of Giza.  If the information that you might be looking for is not in this article there are enough sources provided that you might be able to find the information that you are looking for in one of the sources that has been provided.  If you still can not find the information that you are looking after reading this article and probing around the sources that have been provided, then you will still have a great start in looking for the information that you are looking for.  Here is a list of books that have been written on this particular topic to include multiple links to find more information that might be helpful when researching this topic.

I feel pretty confident that the information that was provided about the Pyramid of Giza is accurate.  Although there is the possibility that there might be some information that is not  accurate because some information that was in this article has been provided from a source that might not be reliable, I would feel comfortable using the information that has been provided by Wikipedia to write a research document on the Pyramid of Giza.

Here is the page that I would not feel comfortable using as a source because of the amount of sources that have been used.  Clearly you are being warned that there is not a reliable source and this site is asking for help to improve this article.

After taking a good look at two different topics with different amounts of information provided it is pretty clear that as long as are using an article that has many sources to justify the information that is provided, you can be comfortable knowing that the article that you are using will have accurate information as long as it has many sources and sources that are reliable.

So the first item in the scavenger hunt took several hours to complete.  One of the reasons that it took me so long to complete was because I did not have a full understanding of what Op-ed was.  I thought that I understood what it was but once I started my search it began to get complicated pretty quick but I was not sure if what I was looking at met the criteria for the first item.  Once I had a better understanding of what the criteria was it did not take that long to find something.  Here is the item that I found.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20372411

The second item to be found was not as difficult to find.  I did my best to locate something that was older than what I found but I could not find anything that was older than this newspaper clip.

Harness Sun’s Rays to Power Solar Battery

Here is the last item.  This website had the best information about the last item that we were looking for.

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/history-initiatives-info.htm

This scavenger hunt was a lot of fun and challenging.  It was really interesting to go through the many website and resources available to find the content that we were looking for.  The first item really took my a long time to find but it was my fault for not understanding what was being asked of me.