How Secure Is Your Network?

 The industry I decided to discuss is the financial industry. The financial industry includes sectors related to the IRS, credit unions, banks, individual retirement, accounting, and payroll. In this industry, every one of these organizations relies on information retention and gathering for operations. A credit union must gather new member information for prospective members, run them through a customer identification process to determine if they can do business with them according to federal laws. They need to then assign account information to that person by creating a profile that will retain their personal information, current monetary balances, history of transactions, etc. Federal law also requires these financial institutions to maintain records of this information to aid in the prevention of money laundering and many other crimes. As millions of people rely on banks and credit unions to keep their assets secure, the roles of information technology increase tremendously. Computers maintain this information more efficiently than humans and they have far fewer errors than humans. If people were to continue to process the high volume of transactions by hand and retain only a paper trail, billions of dollars would be lost in the process. 

With my current experience in financial institutions, I have found that being technically literal is a requirement in the constantly changing industry. I find my learning and relearning several OS and software required for my daily work. I have to troubleshoot a few programs a week or find workarounds for applications as the standard app is going to constant updates. The financial industry would not function properly in these times without the use of computers.  

More Computers At Work!

Computers are seen in every establishment. It is very common that your job can't be completed if your company does issue you a computer. Many industries come into mind when I think about the important technology plays now, but the industry I will focus on is the financial industry. The financial industry includes sectors related to the IRS, credit unions, banks, individual retirement, accounting, and payroll. In this industry, every one of these organizations relies on information retention and gathering for operations. A credit union must gather new member information for prospective members, run them through a customer identification process to determine if they can do business with them according to federal laws. They need to then assign account information to that person by creating a profile that will retain their personal information, current monetary balances, history of transactions, etc. Federal law also requires these financial institutions to maintain records of this information to aid in the prevention of money laundering and many other crimes. As millions of people rely on banks and credit unions to keep their assets secure, the roles of information technology increase tremendously. Computers maintain this information more efficiently than humans and they have far fewer errors than humans. If people were to continue to process the high volume of transactions by hand and retain only a paper trail, billions of dollars would be lost in the process. 

With my current experience in financial institutions, I have found that being technically literal is a requirement in the constantly changing industry. I find my learning and relearning several OS and software required for my daily work. I have to troubleshoot a few programs a week or find workarounds for applications as the standard app is going to constant updates. The financial industry would not function properly in these times without the use of computers.  

Pinging and Tracing. Why are they helpful?

 When trying to access a website, your computer sends packets through routers that eventually gets to your destination site. The destination site then returns the site information you requested back to you through routers. I’ve never pinged or ran a trace command before, so this activity was enlightening. I use a VPN on my devices to have access to streaming services back home, so I have my location set to San Francisco. It is also good to note that the ISP limited the internet speeds on base to 100mb download on base, where I live, versus off base where it is tremendously faster. It took about 143ms to send and receive my packets from google. I decided to ping Canada.ca and gouvernement.fr, respectively, and Frances’ website took 284ms, which Canadas’ timed out. Since gouvernement.fr requires more routers, I figured that it would time considerably while Canada.ca timed out. I did attempt to resolve the issue of why Canada.ca timed out, and I found that I needed to enter the third domain of www to get the website to respond. After doing so, it took that site 173ms to respond to my trace and ping.

Each of these commands is great for testing the speed of your connection and determining issues with your connection. The ping command can help you determine if the destination host is active, which is essential in determining if you have problems with your router or ISP or if the host destination has too much traffic. The tracers/traceroute command also helps with choosing if you have hardware glitches that simple troubleshooting cannot determine.

Ping Testing

Tracerts

 

Canada.ca With Third Domain 

Comparison of Daily Used Database Applications

 The main word processing software that I use is Microsoft Office. I have been using this software for many years of my life and I would consider myself experienced with its’ word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation. All the applications have the same layout regarding formatting text. The word processor focuses more on creating and storing formatted text, so it was more useful for me to create my text. Word processor has more ways to format text giving the writer more control on the textual design of their documents such as creating a technical paper. The disadvantage of the word processor is it is difficult to create tables or illustrations to further elaborate on the text in the document. Microsoft spreadsheet Excel is better suited for creating tables from data or simply creating tables to help organize statistics in a document. The assignment that requested that I use a spreadsheet to create a data table and pie chart was effortless due to the formatting capabilities of Excel. I could enter, sorting, calculating the information provided into spreadsheets cells. Spreadsheets would also be best for creating personal or business budgets since data can be controlled easier. The disadvantage of any spreadsheet is that it is not simple to text or illustration documents such as essays or presentations in excel. Using word for the text documents first then transferring it to excel is the best option. Presentations are best created in PowerPoint, Microsoft Office, where text can be formatted into illustrations. Each bullet that I created on the word document made up it’s on slides where I changed the animation of the text, transitions of the slides, design of the slide. Presentations applications can also be best for creating a presentation on an idea pitch to help attract and keep the attention of their audience. The disadvantage of presentation applications is their inability to handle the formatting of data or large text. Both data and text can be created in the presentation application, but the design doesn’t fit well.

Reviewing Applications with an IT Mindset

 Review of YouTube Music App

            In our text, Vahid and Lysecky 2017, stated that "In 2016, streaming music hit 251.9 billion streams and accounted for 38% of all audio consumption, becoming the largest share of audio consumption. Also, 80% of the U.S. population streamed music in 2016, an increase of 76% from 2015" (sec. 6.2, para. 4). Many kinds of music streaming services around, such as Amazon Music, Pandora, Apple Music, IHeartRadio, etc. I have found that the relatively new YouTube Music app to be one of the best out. This app incorporates both playlist and on-demand streaming.

YouTube Music recently replaced Google Play Music, which was usually pre-loaded onto android devices as the primary music player. YouTube music's predecessor was a decent streaming app, but it had many bugs that needed to be addressed such as some music not streaming, not having adequate licensing rights to many sounds, to name a few. Now, the YouTube Music app seems to have addressed all of these issues while adding some additional features. It includes features that we have all grown to love with Pandora, such as creating a playlist tailored to the user by suggesting music/artist to the user, similar to what the user streamed previously. It gives you the option to like or dislike sounds so the app can learn what to stream in the future. It also provides the opportunity to add music to a personal library or playlist for quick future reference, similar to what Google Play Music offered. The newest feature that is usable is the feature to select any song and toggle between the songs' official music video or to listen to the song. (See Figure 1). The app allows you to upload your music through the app to be added to YouTube. The app also allows you to view the same content on a PC/Laptop with the same design.

Figure 1

This screenshot shows the home screen of the app. Content differs per user and app current suggestions. 

The design follows a similar style to that of the YouTube website. The color scheme stays true red and black, making the app seem a little more soothing. The app still focuses its' homepage on displaying new music within your preferred genres and popular music while still having your playlist at the top (See Figure 2). This allows for seamless functionality as the app is clean, straightforward, and relatively easy to navigate. The developers made sure to attempt to remove unnecessary in-app links to avoid confusion. When selecting an artist, in this case, Sam Smith (See Figure 3), you can easily navigate through a radio of artists similar to Sam Smith, play his music specifically, and see what his most popular releases are. When streaming a playlist, you have the option to cycle through the queued songs or open the queue to select a song that you wish to listen to now. The app stays current on all the new releases as it is directly linked to YouTube, where most artists release their songs to generate publicity and revenue.

Figure 2

Play media comment.

This screen record demonstrates the app's feature to toggle between music videos and songs.

Figure 3

This screenshot demonstrates what you first see when selecting an artist and your options for streaming. 

With all of these great features, there is still some recommendation that I believe will assist in the functionality, design, and usability. First, when using the app to stream music, the app will not autosave the previous song/playlist in the queue if the app isn't used for some time. This doesn't allow you to stream your music seamlessly if you are using the app for your primary streaming service while driving, instead of the radio. You must manually enter the app and select the playlist/library/artist you were listening to previously. This takes away time for your commute. Second, the shuffle feature should be made so that it's easier to select. The shuffle option is tucked away and only assessable when viewing the entire queue list, which you must manually select to navigate to. This feature isn't suitable for streamers looking for a handsfree experience that Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Pandora offers. The final recommendation for improvement is to give people the option to have more control over their recommendation list. If you were to dislike a song, the app would take away many other songs similar to it, and you may miss out on songs that you may have liked. Adding a feature in the app to review the songs you disliked/liked and reverse your previous option will make the app more functional.

Overall, the YouTube app is in the right direction for what we expect from our music streaming services. It still has more features than it's competitors don't offer.

References

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/

YouTube Music. (n.d.). Retrieved October 06, 2020, from https://music.youtube.com/

Programming With Scratch

 

Programming Languages

With the program Scratch, I found the use of block programming straightforward and easier to use. After a few tutorials, I understood how to figure out what kind of program I wanted to code, and the tutorials helped me know how to code with scratch. The difficulties I encountered with the program were not capable of getting a character to change costumes while moving simultaneously. Not being able to do this made it difficult for me to create the program I envisioned truly. To overcome that, I did more tutorials on the program and decided to compromise on not changing the costumes while moving to get my desired output. This program helped me understand the differences between high-level and low-level programming. This program used high-level programming that utilized an interpreter to translate my source code. Although scratch wasn’t directly similar to Code Combat, which uses block programming, it had many similarities. Continuous coding was one of the most useful tools to assist me with not having to re-input the same codes continuously.

As a novice programmer, I found that scratch was the easiest to use compared to machine language, assembly language, and high-level languages. However, scratch does allow much control over the program as the source codes were already generated for me. Scratch used an interpreter to translate the inputs in machine language that is a low-level language that I do not have the extensive knowledge to understand fully. Assembly language is easier to understand than machine level but more challenging than that of scratch programming. I can imagine the scratch program got its core fundamentals from the high-level languages, but the scratch program is still a high-level language compared to the others as it is more user-friendly.

Low-level languages consist of languages that are machine specific and require expert knowledge of computer hardware. These languages include machine language, binary code that is directly understood by the computer, assembly language, and sets of symbols and letters that require translation to machine language. Low-level languages give the programmer more control of a program but require more time to create. High-level languages use symbols and English in their instructions and need an interpreter or compiler to translate into machine languages. A high-level language is easier to use for me as it doesn’t require me to understand binary code yet. The most popular high-level language today would be C++ programming. Low-level languages would be suitable for creating operating systems programs as it allows more control over the coding. High-level programming is useful for creating applications such as mobile apps.

 

Link to the Scratch program.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/432173835