User:Sonnyali

Midterm
The research topic I chose for my Midterm was providing energy from fusion. The promise of fusion, if scientists can get it to work, is huge. Unlimited power without any carbon emissions and very little radioactive waste. Iter’s job is to show that fusion can be achieved and controlled for sustained periods in the tokamak design. It will not be a power station itself. That is the job of the next generation of fusion reactors, which will be built by countries individually with knowledge gained from the Iter experiments. It's just a demo project. There is a virtually limitless source of fuel in the world’s oceans to feed future nuclear fusion reactors. And though there are some radioactive waste products that come from the process, they all have short half-lives and will become inert within a few hundred years, as opposed to the thousands of years for which waste from fission reactors stays dangerous.

Final
=== Introduction   === https://wiki.mozilla.org/Learning/WebLiteracyStandard This cite is a great source for someone who wishes to better their web skills. I think this cite could be very useful for children or adults who are beginning to learn about the web. The Web Literacy Map is made up of three strands: exploring, building, and connecting. The building strand just happens to be my favorite. It has great sources for coding/scripting that were beneficial to me. This cite not only makes it easier to elegantly consume the web but also to write & participate on the web. http://www.crisistextline.org/join-our-efforts/volunteer/ is a free 24/7 national crisis-intervention / counseling service conducted exclusively through SMS text. Texting has become a fundamental way to communicate, particularly among people under 20. Volunteers use the nonprofit's web-based platform to provide emotional support to texters who are dealing with a wide range of issues– bullying, self harm, suicidal thoughts, and more. The "10 Lists to Keep If You Want to Be Successful” article really stood out to me, mostly because of how crucial some of the guidelines are. Everybody has goals and hopes of fulfilling these goals, but not everybody has planned the entire journey towards the achievement. A lot of us like to keep a mental book of notes hoping that we will remember it all, rather than a physical copy that we can come back to anytime. Not only is writing things down a better way for our brains to remember things, it’s also an amazing way of keeping yourself organized.

Privacy and Freedom of Speech
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/11/the-need-for-computer-specific-fourth-amendment-rules-in-the-cell-phone-search-cases/ This article stands for the need for computer-specific Fourth Amendment rules in the cell phone search cases. The new technological facts give the government dramatically expanded power under the old Fourth Amendment rule. To allow a complete search of the phone in every case, a complete forensic search through the entire computer, would give the government a tremendous power to invade a person’s privacy. In my view, that justifies a new Fourth Amendment rule to account for technological change that helps restore the prior balance of power. The point isn’t that “cell phones” should get a new rule. Today’s cell phones are really just personal computers that happen to be small enough to carry around. The real issue is digital evidence vs physical evidence.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2031908/the-5-biggest-online-privacy-threats-of-2013.html. The 5 biggest online privacy threats article really outlines the main risks you may encounter online. Things like cookie proliferation, where the invisible cookie software agents track your browsing habits and personal data. One of my favorite topics was the risks of seizing cloud data. Primarily because of how easy it is to grab data from the cloud, because it’s that easy makes you wonder how easy it is for government agencies as well. And there’s only going to be more of that data to love in coming years: Gartner predicts that 36 percent of U.S. consumer content will be stored in the cloud by 2016. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/encryption1.htm. From this article I learned computer encryption is based on the science of cryptography, which has been used as long as humans have wanted to keep information secret. It also helps to distinguish the difference between symmetric-key and asymmetric-key encryption types. An example the article provided to help understand a symmetric-key encryption that I found helpful: “Think of it like this: You create a coded message to send to a friend in which each letter is substituted with the letter that is two down from it in the alphabet. So "A" becomes "C," and "B" becomes "D". You have already told a trusted friend that the code is "Shift by 2". Your friend gets the message and decodes it. Anyone else who sees the message will see only nonsense.”

Intellectual Property
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.http://creativecommons.org/about. This cite has everything you need to know about Creative Commons and how it works. Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. To achieve the vision of universal access, someone needed to provide a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. That someone is Creative Commons. http://www.pewinternet.org/2004/12/05/artists-musicians-and-the-internet/ Artists and musicians believe that unauthorized peer to peer file-sharing of copyrighted works should be illegal. However, the vast majority do not see online file-sharing as a big threat to creative industries. Artists and musicians are more likely to say that the internet has made it possible for them to make more money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work from piracy or unlawful use. Copyright is the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc. http://copyright.laws.com/copyright-law. It is important to know exactly what a copyright is in order to understand how it is to be used or applied in a legal setting. Copyright laws in the United States state that copyrights are legally exclusive rights that are granted to the author or creator of a creative work. This cite that I chose to share does an exceptional jobs covering some of the important things about copyright. Among these rights are the rights to copy, distribute, adapt, and amend the work.

Crime
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/16/nsa-computer-spying_n_6694736.html. The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives. The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the U.S. agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-removes-been-choice-and-other-ad-blockers-from-its-app-store-2015-10. This article mentions how Apple’s iOS 9 operating system saw the company approve ad blocking apps for the first time. Most just block ads on the Safari web browser, but some developers took the idea further by creating apps that installed root certificates in order to block app-based ads. The problem is that by doing so, these kinds of apps had sight of everything a user was doing online, from browsing to making purchases. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/upshot/how-many-deaths-did-volkswagens-deception-cause-in-us.html?_r=0. This particular article tells you how Volkswagen deceived emission test on eleven million of its car's, and how this will effects the public safety. Also the author goes on to explain a lot of people don't consider this a big deal to public safety, and that Volkswagen action caused toxic waste, harmfully chemicals, etc. Then he cites in his article past information about Volkswagen regulation regarding emission.

Employment, Education and Entertainment
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/education/turning-to-education-for-fun.html?_r=0 These days, examples of what is often called edutainment are everywhere. As the word suggest, edutainment combines aspects of education and entertainment into products and experiences that seek to improve learning by making it not just painless but also pleasurable. Entertainment values have come to dominate many aspects of life, but another trend has been playing out, too. Call it the academization of leisure. http://www.parents-choice.org/article.cfm?CFID=5cbdf341-e699-47fa-a0d8-d9c3924294c5&CFTOKEN=0&art_id=172&the_page=editorials. The author expresses his views on edutainment as well as some fearless feedback. I want to share my favorite part of the article hoping it will intrigue you to read the rest. In the article it states, "I also have a problem with word “edutainment” itself. When people think about “education” and “entertainment,” they tend to think of them as services that someone else provides for you. Studios, directors, and actors provide you with entertainment; schools and teachers provide you with education. New edutainment companies try to provide you with both. In all of these cases, you are viewed as a passive recipient. That's a distorted view. In fact, you are likely to learn the most, and enjoy the most, if you are engaged as an active participant, not a passive recipient. So I prefer to focus on “play” and “learning” (things that you do) rather than “entertainment” and “education” (things that others provide for you). My preference is for “playful learning” rather than “edutainment.” It might seem like a small change, but the words we use can make a big difference in how we think and what we do.” http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3754742. This article explains how new electronic devices are being used in schools and how teachers agree that students seem to be more prepared because of it. They even stated that students with different learning levels benefit from it greatly because you can adjust it to the students learning needs. It gets students more motivated to learn. What I enjoyed about this article is that it was informational, and it didn’t just list one mobile device that was helpful to the students but it listed all the main ones like cell phones, tablets, iPads and eBooks

MidTerm Provide Energy from fusion
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/25/iter-nuclear-fusion-cadarache-international-thermonuclear-experimental-reactor-steven-cowley. The scientists and engineers in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance think the solution is nuclear fusion. They want to recreate a star in a box on Earth. Everything about the project, known as Iter, formerly known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is huge. The main fusion reactor will be built on a flattened area of concrete that has been blasted into the hills at Cadarache and stretches to 60 football pitches. The issue at hand is it took more energy to fuse atoms at Jet than the scientists got back out at the end. Which is useless if you want to use the technology to build a power plant. Iter’s primary goal is to fix that problem by creating what they call a “burning” plasma, something that keeps going without the need for external heating, in the same way that a log fire keeps burning after it has initially been set alight by a match. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a16849/mit-nuclear-fusion-magnetic-field-advance/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1457_220786503. The era of true nuclear fusion may be fast approaching thanks to some cutting-edge work from MIT. While fusion has been demonstrated before, it's always used more energy than it's created. But finding a new way to apply a strong magnetic field to a prototype device, the MIT team has learned how to better contain super-hot plasma, and that's a step towards practical application. The magnets used here are built from rare earth barium copper oxide, a superconductor material. By coiling a fusion device with the magnets, you can generate a strong magnetic field, and this particular material makes the fields stronger and minimizes the size of the equipment needed to generate them. The reactor core itself is nothing new, just a lightly modified tokamak fusion reactor design scaled down, By reducing the size, the team has a scale model to work with to help get them to that sweet spot where fusion produces more energy than it takes in. They haven’t done anything completely new here, they’re just doing it better. http://www.iter.org/. This group is a multinational cooperation between 7 countries (though one is the EU, so it's more than 7) that are striving to create a fusion reactor. The website is full of press releases and articles about the organization, and there's a more consolidated timeline as well. They are using the latest technologies that the various countries have to offer, such as niobium-titanium superconductors and neutral beam injectors (these are used with other technologies to make the plasma in the reactor reach 150,000,000 C).

Evaluating and Controlling Technology
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/12/the-shrinking-digital-divide/. Mobile telephones grew faster than almost anyone would have predicted 15 years ago, to the point where at least 94% of the world’s population receives a signal. This article demonstrates how mobile smart phones are shrinking the digital divide. The mobile internet is not just changing the way we think, it is evolving how we consume, and create content online. Rather than browsing, more likely we tend to use apps. Which are convenient and enable us to easily access all the of features built into a smart device. Unfortunately, not every country has access to every app store, and not every app store has access to every app. http://www.wired.com/insights/2015/01/the-digital-divide-is-not-binary/. This article talks about how getting the world access to the internet is key, but it is only half the battle. The author insists we think bigger. Ensuring not just that affordable access is available, but also that there is demand that leads to adoption and usage. Only in this way will the full economic and social impact of the Internet be felt by all. https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/plate-tectonics. This simulation is great tool to help understand plate tectonics and how the plates move on the surface of the earth. The simulation allows you to change the temperature, composition, and thickness of the plates for different results. When I played with this simulation a few years ago i enjoyed creating new mountains, volcanoes, and oceans.

Risks, Failures and Responsibilities
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level_Computing/AQA/Computer_Components,_The_Stored_Program_Concept_and_the_Internet/Consequences_of_Uses_of_Computing/Emerging_technologies. This article shows how the history of computing is short and spectacular. Technological advancements come with tons of consequences, and usually the positive always seem to out weigh the negative. The consequences of technology have touched on almost every part of our lives, simplifying or automating much of what we do. Cars are more fuel efficient and safer, food is cheaper to produce, and you can buy products from the other side of the world. To live without a mobile phones or the internet would be unthinkable for some. What consequences the future holds and how lives will change is an unknown, but it is likely our lives will become ever more intertwined with technology. https://www.edb.utexas.edu/petrosino/Legacy_Cycle/mf_jm/Challenge%201/website%20reliable.pdf. How can you tell if a website is a reliable source? The Internet contains some high quality sources as well as some very unreliable, biased sources of information. That is its nature. Anyone can post on the internet and that puts a higher burden on you as a researcher to evaluate the quality of each website you use whether it’s for a class assignment or your personal use. Sometimes Internet sources can be more accurate than print sources. Sometimes it better the other around and better to stick with the print sources. Different courses may require research of different levels of academic rigor. This article is designed as a guide to help you evaluate whether a particular site is appropriate for your purposes. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150709/TECHNOLOGY/150709895/growing-dependence-on-technology-raises-risks-of-malfunction. Though technology has made our lives easier, it has become more of a headache than help when thinking about the breakdown risks. When technology breaks down now a days peoples lives go haywire. For the most part, technology has worked smoothly while hatching innovations and conveniences that have made our lives easier and our jobs more productive. This article talks about how computers could bring more frequent headaches as they link together with billions of other electronic devices and household appliances. A phenomenon that has become known as the “Internet of things.”

Anytime, Anywhere
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/02/12/can-paypal-beat-apple-google-amazon-and-icahn-in-the-wallet-wars/. Money is going mobile, and the race is on to control the flow of bits and cash across a billion smartphones and at millions of online and physical locations. Research firm Gartner estimates that mobile payments will top $720 billion a year by 2017, up from $235 billion last year. Right in the middle of it all: PayPal. PayPal moved $180 billion in 26 currencies across 193 countries last year, and its revenue grew 20% to $6.6 billion. That’s 41% of eBay’s total revenue and 36% of its profits. PayPal, purchased in 2002 for what everyone thought was an outrageous price of $1.5 billion, is now worth at least half of eBay’s $70 billion market capitalization, with many people thinking it could be worth more. http://money.howstuffworks.com/paypal.htm. The idea behind PayPal is simple. It uses encryption software to allow people to make financial transfers between computers. That simple idea has turned into the world's primary methods of online payment. From a buyer’s perspective, PayPal changed the way people exchange money online. Behind the scenes, though, its didn’t fundamentally change the way merchants interact with banks and credit card companies. PayPal just acts as a middleman. While the computer limits you to a fixed work space, a smartphone can go anywhere, any time. It gives you the freedom to do your homework and look up information, wherever you happen to be, whether at a friend’s house or during your lunch period at work. Not only is the Internet available on the phones, there are thousands of apps available as well. Apps that cover everything from math and history, to understanding bird species and learning about weather patterns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store. http://www.apple.com/music/.

Technology Advances, Social Trends
http://www.thetech.org/tech-awards-presented-applied-materials/global-humanitarian-award. John P. Morgridge and Tashia Morgridge are the 2015 winners of the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award, presented by Applied Materials. In their married life, they developed a passion for charitable giving. I think they were the right candidates for this award for all their contributions internationally. They donate principally through CARE, an organization dedicated to fighting poverty, and The Nature Conservancy. The Morgridges also took the Giving Pledge, joining philanthropists like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg in a promise to give away the majority of their wealth in their lifetime. http://www.popsci.com/heres-look-facebooks-internet-drone. Facebook has designed a UAV drone that will allow the plane to fly up to 3 months without out needing to land. This is a huge development in the future of computers. The drone was designed to provide internet access in remote areas where there is no internet connection. While most people are worried that drones are dangerous, truth behind the concept to bring internet access to the world greatly outweighs that fact. Having the ability for reliable internet access will have a great advantage over military installations in the area, internet connection for GPS beacons while exploring uncharted areas, and most importantly, providing internet access for educational resources to parts of the world that currently do not have internet.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-world-in-2050-2014-6?op=1. In the next decade, major car makers expect to release cars with self-driving features, such as steering, parking, gear-shifting, and braking. Reading online most experts say driver-less cars will operate entirely without a human occupant’s control by 2035. Driver less cars will be safer because they can draft closely behind other vehicles and eliminate human error. In the U.S., driverless cars could result annually in 4.95 million fewer accidents, 30,000 fewer deaths, and 4.8 billion fewer commuting hours. They will also save Americans $500 billion per year in costs of car accidents, fuel, and lost productivity, according to the Milken Institute. These predictions in my opinion are logical and rather reasonable. My personal confidence in driver-less cars continues to grow as the technology continues to advance.