3.5 Other kinds of data All the data we have had so far in the database has been text or numbers. I have mentioned that another type of data might be dates. Modern databases, however, can store other kinds of data than text, numbers and dates. They can also store graphics, moving pictures and sounds. 1 E-government In many countries, e-government has become part of government policy. The UK government has a large e-government project under way, as do the governments of the USA, Australia and Japan, to name just a few. The ‘e’ at the start of ‘e-government’ stands for ‘electronic’, and e-government usually refers to the use by governments of ICTs. In many ways e-government is not a single activity but many activities. However, in the UK and many other countries, there is a degree of central c Introduction This unit is from our archive and it is an adapted extract from Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies (T175) which is no longer in presentation. If you wish to study formally at The Open University, you may wish to explore the courses we offer in this curriculum area. Many governments across the world are moving towards the use of infor 1.6.2 Different types of sound Sounds come in four categories.
Sound effects. Many UIs contain a range of warning beeps and reassuring sounds confirming that operations have been completed. These can include naturalistic sounds, such as the sound of a piece of screwed-up paper dropping into a waste paper basket.
Music. Many composers use computer systems to compose music, and programs such as games make extensive use of music. Short sequences of mus 1.3.4 How to use colour to good effect The effective use of colour is a complex and technical area. In Table 2 we have listed some general guidelines. References 6.2.2 Threats and vulnerabilities A hacker who threatens your organisation's information assets is taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the media and systems which handle them. Vulnerabilities and threats clearly go hand-in-hand: each threat is directed at a vulnerability. The relationship between information assets, threats, vulnerabilities and existing defences is illustrated in Author(s): 6.1 Introduction Section 5 discussed the ISMS planning and documentation process in general and also went into the details of Stages 1, 2 and 8 of the ISMS documentation task. In this section, we shall discuss Stage 3 of the ISMS documentation task and see how to define a systematic approach to risk assessment. We shall also look at the asset identification task. The remaining two tasks, risk assessment and risk treatment, are outside the scope of this unit. 7.3 ADV: Some spam mail includes ‘ADV:’ in the title. This indicates that it is part of the system used in the US to allow spam mail but to highlight that it is an advertisement. You can then make an informed choice as to whether to read or delete the message. ADV: also allows users of email systems that have filtering facilities, such as Outlook, Eudora or Pegasus, to set a rule that will automatically remove the message. The way this works is that some email systems allow you to define a s 3.2.1 Obtaining patches and updates Start Internet Explorer. Choose Tools > Windows update from the drop-down menu at the top of the browser screen. (Note: if you are using a computer at work that is controlled by an IT group this option may be missing, as it can be disabled in a corporate environment.) If you are unable to find the ‘update’ option, you could try the Microsoft update site. Follow the on-screen option to scan your computer and see the number of updates that are available to you. 3.2 What do we mean by patches? Microsoft Windows is an example of an operating system (OS). These operating systems contain millions of lines of code, and inevitably there will be some errors in that code. Some malware writers set out to find these errors, or holes, in the code and exploit them to their own benefit. Whenever holes are found (by IT security people or groups, malware writers or the software developer) the operating system manufacturer will issue a fix for the particular problem. These fixes are referred to a 1.1 The growth of malware The figures below show how the problem of malware has increased over the last 30 years. 1 What this unit is about The recent huge increases in ownership of home computers and ever-widening access have been obvious boons to many peoples' lives but, as with many things that improve life, there is a downside. The downside with computers is that software crashes, hardware fails and some Internet users want to cause havoc or vandalise your computer. In this unit we will look at a few of the problems that other people may cause you. Normally when we talk about malicious software we are referring to virus 3.3 Focused search sites An alternative to using general purpose search engines is to make use of focused search engines that only index known genealogical sites. For example, the Genealogical Society of the UK and Ireland (GenUKI) provides a search engine. 3.1 Searching for your ancestors In this section we consider searching for information about your ancestors. We cannot hope to cover all the techniques and information required to research genealogy, family history and local history; there is only time in this unit to scratch the surface. Some of the activities here are open-ended; please do not spend too long on them. If the subject interests you, you can revisit it after the course finishes, making use of the genealogical resources in the Appendix. 7.5 Active and passive tags Read the extracts below. Using the information they contain, make notes about the main differences between active and passive RFID tags. You will get more out of this exercise if you make a serious attempt to d 4.4 An introduction to WiFi WiFi (from ‘Wireless Fidelity’) is used to connect devices together in one of two network configurations known as ‘ad hoc’ and ‘infrastructure’. We shall explain these terms shortly. (As a starting point, though, you could look up the terms ‘ad hoc’ and ‘infrastructure’ in your dictionary.) In wireless LANs, nodes are usually referred to as stations – probably because each communicating device acts as a radio station with transmitter and receiver. These func 4.2 Basic principles of wireless transmission I've never quite lost the sense of wonder at the way information can be transmitted with no visible link between the sender and recipient. When I was a child I used to think that sound came through the wire linking my family's radio to the mains electricity supply (I was born before the days of battery-powered transistor radios) and I couldn't understand why my parents referred to it as ‘the wireless’ – since clearly it wasn't. I now know that the wire simply fed the radio with the elec 4.1 Introduction The focus of Section 3 was on LANs that use some kind of physical medium (for example, copper wires or fibre-optic cables) to connect together network nodes. In this section we'll be examining wireless networks – that is, networks that transmit data through the air (or space) using radio waves. There's nothing new about wireless: the principles of transmitting information using radio waves were discovered over a century ago. However, using radio waves to provide the transmission links 3.4 Protocols and standards You have already met the idea of protocols in Section 1 – rules to govern how information is sent, transmitted and received. Protocols can be explained using an analogy with the way people talk to each other. When we talk we don't simply string words together in a random fashion: we have a set of rules (grammar) that determines the order of words and the way sentences are constructed. Understand didn't have other us difficult if it would be quite rules each these for to we. We hope t
Activity 12 (exploratory)
Table 2: Making e
1974 First self-replicating code (Xerox) 1982 First virus on the Apple platform 1984 First conference papers on viruses presented 1986 First recorded virus infection on the PC 19
Activity 24
Activity 30: exploratory