As a part of our course we are required to demonstrate our ability to use various search engines to find specific information. The following is a list of questions:
1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
2. Who invented the paper clip?
3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
6. Who is the creator of email?
7. What is unique about the political organisation of the Kingdom of Nri?
8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of Australia directly, what is the most efficient way?
9. Which Brisbane punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of? 10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
Task 1.
I started with a search under Ask.com, which gave me this link http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=31&click_id=31&art_id=qw957707941236L112&set_id=1
Which provides us with the Love Bug Virus originating in Zamboanga, in the Philippines
by a hacker who identified himself as "mailme", "spyder" and "ispyder".
I then went to http://webcrime.tripod.com/id14.html which gave us the name of the script kiddie, (a script kiddie being the derogatory term used by coders, for people who just copy other peoples code without creating anything themselves) that wrote the virus, a Filipino computer studies student called Onel de Guzman was the said to be the culprit. However due to the lack of cybercrime laws in the Philippines he was never charged.
Task 2.
For task 2 I directed the browser to altavista.com to find out who invented the paperclip. It took me to http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpaperclip.htm where it states that Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany in 1899, since Norway had no patent laws at that time.
Task 3.
For task 3 we had to find out where the Ebola virus got it's name, once again I used the altavista.com search engine and came up with http://www.idph.state.il.us/public/hb/hbebola.htm which states that it was discovered in 1976, Ebola virus was named from a river in Zaire, Africa, where it was first detected. As a side note, until recently only three outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever among people had been reported.
Task 4.
For the biggest recorded earthquake since 1900 when records were starting to being kept, http://ask.yahoo.com/20000823.html states that it occurred on May 22, 1960, in Chile and measured 9.5 on the Richter scale. More than 2,000 people were killed, 3,000 injured, and 2,000,000 left homeless.
Task 5.
This task was an easy one for myself as I deal with this issue on a very regular basis. I came across http://ww.techeez.com/windows_tips/bits_in_a_byte.htm which gave us that there are 1073741824 kilobytes in a terabyte.
Task 6.
In this task we had to work out who was the creator of email. From the various readings the actual first instance of email is attributed to a Computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson who is said to have invented internet based email in late 1971. Under ARPAnet several major innovations occurred: email (or electronic mail), the ability to send simple messages to another person across the network (1971). Ray Tomlinson was experimenting with a popular program he wrote called SNDMSG that the ARPANET programmers and researchers were using on the network computers (Digital PDP-10s) to leave messages for each other.
Task 7.
This task was a little more time consuming than the other tasks as the searches were suggesting a lot more irrelevant websites, eventually i came across this article at http://ahiajoku.igbonet.com/2002/. This article was on how the religious beliefs of these people permeate almost every part of their existence. With regard to the political structure of the country the article states that 'Before taking any decision, the Igbo have the tradition of gathering together to discuss matters of interest in order to arrive at a consensus and agreement. This is call in Igbo Igba izu (consultation). This is the basis of Igbo republicanism which E.G. Ekwuru (199:134) calls the Consensus philosophy, but referred to as Unanimity by T.U. Nwala (1985:168). Thus modern democracy is not after all foreign to the Igbo because it has its root in Igbo origin and thought. The Igbo life did not start with colonization rather before the advent of the Europeans Igbo already had a philosophy, established structure of government, education and technology.'
Task 8.
For this one we had to figure out the most effective way to contact the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard. After some frustrating searching I stumbled across this site http://www.directory.gov.au/ which provides you with the direct contact details of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Which if your interested are as follows:
Enquiries: (02) 6271 5111
Fax: (02) 6271 5414
Website Link
Postal Address:
PO Box 6500 Canberra ACT 2600
Location:
One National Circuit,Barton ACT 2600
Task 9.
Here we had to try to figure out the name of the band of which the Griffith University lecturer is a member of, here for the sake of a bit of variety i used the Google search engine which provided us with:
http://www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au/2005/content/standard.asp?name=StockwellS
In the article it states that Stephen Stockwell is a member of the punk band 'Black Assassins'.
A bit of further searching provided us with their home page:
http://www.blackassassins.net/
Task 10.
After some searching on definitions of Web 2.0 I think a reasonable explanation would be that Web 2.0 is a development platform which is based on and around the existing World Wide Web to enable more people, easier access to participate in online communities, such as uploading and sharing content. I think Richard Monson-Haefel's statement from http://apsblog.burtongroup.com/2007/04/web_20_a_simple.html states "Web 2.0 is an Architecture of Participation built on the World Wide Web", this simple statement encompasses the various aspects of Web 2.0 as it being designed towards increasing the participation of the general public in the world wide web. Author Tim O'Reilly also provided a very insightful article in which he gives excellent examples of how Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 differ at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html with this statement "Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core". In a later blog entry Tim O'Reilly gives another definition, stating "Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices" found here http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html.
So in conclusion to task 10, I would have to say that Web 2.0 is just a new way of connecting and indexing information with the key principle of Web 2.0 being that the service is designed to gather information so that it automatically gets better the more people use it, due to the software's ability to store, combine and track links through things such as RSS feeds, so the more an article is used and referenced the greater the ability of the software to provide people with other useful information about that topic.
Well that's it for me for today hope these answer your questions. ^_^
Fare thee well.
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