Week 4-Using the www

Lecture Summary

This week's session was concern with distinguishing between the internet and the web. The web is said to be an "abstract virtual space of information". it was "developed by Tim Berners-Lee (a researcher at CERN) in 1989". It has made sharing information easy and interesting. A down side to this is that, it only works with the presence of the net. A net consist of two or more computers connected to one another with cables.

Tutorial

In this tute session, we began by looking at a number of web sites. After our observation, were to state how each of the following websites, http://www.haggishunt.scotsman.com/ and http://www.molossia.org/ attempted to appear as authentic. Futher more, we were to construct a list of four clues which suggested that such websites are in fact a "spoof". The website, http://www.molossia.org/ attempted to appear authentic by creating the name molossia. This may appear to be authentic as there are many countries in the world, with similar ending, e.g. Indonesia etc. The four clues which give this website away as being a spoof are:

1. On the very front page there is a tab which says,"teachers click here" This gives you the impression that this a hypothetical nation created for fun.
2. On one of the page it said "This is not a recognized educational institution, military or otherwise, and is not accredited"
3. The navy only have 2 main weapon and in the "war against mustachisten", they are not dress for the occasion, e.g. not Camouflaged
4. Use of informal language.
   
   
   

The website http://www.haggishunt.scotsman.com/ attempted to appear authentic by saying it's an organization but in the URL, it's written as .com and not .org. The four clues which gives it away as a spoof are:

1. On the page it has picture of what they discribed as haggis but in their dictionary, haggis is defined as a sheep's intestine.
   
2. They used madeup words such as Farqhuar Farqhuarson


3. Discrbing themselves as an organization while in the URL, they use .com instead of .org


4. When you click on the gleneagle link, it comes up with something completely unrelated to an hotel.
   

Other website which we also visited is http://www.martinlutherking.org/. Before i visited this webpage, base on the url, i was expecting to find information on the life of Martin Luther King. After visiting the website, my first impression was that the this is a non authentic website as the content appear false. After researching on Martin Luther King, i found that the content are infact false and does not depict the life of Mr King. Although Mr King wasn't a raper, on the website it had a link to a so called rap lyrics which was unrelated to Mr King. The website appear to be discriminative.

Reading 1 summary: "a brief history of the internet"

The first person to invent the net was Mr Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Mr Robert was the mind behind the computer research. He was the first to recongnise that computers can be interconected in a manner that allow people all over the world to share information over the net from the comfort of their own home. In 1965 Mr Roberts, Kleinrock and Thomas Merill conducted an experiment which allowed access to information previously impossible. These three genius connected the TX-2 computers in mass. Two years later, Mr Robert developed and published a network of computers. In 1969, they connected a host. This was the "main computer that control specific function of the network or files". In 1972 the electronic emailing system was introduced (Email). Furthermore, this was also the time in which the first public demonstration of the network technology was held.

Reading 2 : History of the world-wide web

The world wide web (www) was an advance from the internet. It is a network of sites that can be searched and retrieves by a special protocol known as a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).In 1980, large number of hosts were connected to the internet. It was then predicted that "the system will eventually grind a halt". 1984 marked the introduction of the Domain Name Servers (DNS), which made the name of host computers easier to remember. Furthermore, tiering systems such as org. gov. edu. com. and country code were also introduced which once again, made the name of host computers easier to remember. In 1989 a guy by the name of Tim Berners-Lee designed the concept of WWW. The name world wide web, originated from a brower which he made in 1990 and named it, " the world wide web". From then onwards, the number of host and the number of websites increased to thousands and millions. During this period, the development of school, bussinese and club based websites were took place.

Search engines

Some examples of the largest and most flexible search engines include: Google, Alta Vista, and Northen Light. Google was established in 1998, while Alta vista and Northen light was established in 1995. Search engines operate by selecting individual web pages or documents. In general, they have a smaller search field compared to dictories. Moreover, some may give a selction of results from different websites. Search engines uses spider which are provided with four information sources. These informations include: page title, Description, Keyword and the the text of the document itself.