Embedding files into your web page.
Before streaming media was a viable medium, if you wanted to add some music or a video file to your web page you had to embed the file onto your page with HTML code. The issue with embedded files is that you have to wait for that file to load when going to the web site, so if it was a big file you could be waiting a long time for the page to load. Which was really annoying and painful in the dial up Internet days. If the web page designers were considerate they would give the user controls to the file, so that it could be stopped or played at the user’s discretion. But some designers would not leave any controls, making it impossible to stop the music. So every time you went onto that page, you had to listen to the music or see the video..
Embedding was done by the use of the embed tag. Such a tag would look like the following.
<embed src= “files\music.wav” autostart=“true” loop= “true” hidden= “false” height=“15” width = “155”></embed>
SRC—Is the location of the file you are embedding.
Autostart—Is the condition of whether or not the file starts playing on the page load. Set accordingly with the true or false statement.
Loop—Determines whether or not he file plays through once and stops or repeats. Set accordingly with the true or false statement.
Hidden—Determines whether or not the user will be able to see the control. Set accordingly with the true or false statement.
Height—The height of the control
Width—The width of the control
With streaming content now common place, embedding files has lost some of its appeal. Embed tags are now widely used to embed links to streaming content.
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An interesting game that people have come to play is to search their name on Google and other search engines to see what results come up. There can be little to nothing in the results, maybe a facebook or MySpace page, if you have them. Perhaps something of note you did that was written about on the net somewhere. If you have your resume floating around online, it may come up on sites other than the ones you submitted it to.
The goal of most websites out there is to collect your information in addition to your business. And once they have your information, they store it for their own market research or some places sell it to their partners. Their intentions are usually laid out in the company’s “Privacy Policy” and sometimes the “Terms of Use”. And even if they say they don’t sell or share your personal information, you never really know. I still get random mail on occasion and wonder whose list I got on.
The great fear of course is potential identity theft. Thieves can get a good amount of information on someone from just their online presence. And if they do not have much of a presence, information can still be obtained from the few websites that do have it. This is why you always hear about user account information being compromised by attacks on the websites. Thieves are seeking the company database to get names, account numbers, social security numbers, etc. And with all of the services out there trying to merge with other services, the problems will probably just increase. It shouldn’t stop you from living your life normally, but just be mindful of what information you share on the internet. As private and secure you may think it is, it isn’t always.
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Popup Windows Are Not Always Evil
As with most technology, it can be used for good or for evil. The name popup has synonymous with spam, spyware, malware, viruses, and the other negative attributes of the internet. But before its use was corrupted by spammers and other malicious individuals it was used for convenience.
The original use of pop up windows:
- The ideal main use of a popup window was to let a user on the page visit another webpage or page within the page, without leaving the current page. This was convenient for viewing larger images by themselves, filling out forms, or visiting partner sites of the page you were currently on.
- Even today, many websites offer virtual help that appears in the form of popup boxes. The virtual or real technicians will assist you with the questions you type into their chat window boxes.
The downfall of popup boxes:
- The annoyance factor began when web developers started to use them for advertising. When going to a webpage, a user would see the page and in addition multiple other windows advertising different products and services.
- And while most of these pop-ups were just ads, others were scripts and links to malicious software.
All major browsers feature Pop-Up blockers to counteract the abuse of pop-up boxes and windows.
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Is There Any Point of Trying To Censor The Internet Anymore?
Censorship has always been a subject for debate. It forms have grown over time from its beginnings to a protester on the street, to newspapers, from the start of film, the rise of television, and the worldwide phenomena of the internet. In whatever century you look back at, the people in charge assumed the power of telling people what they should and shouldn’t look at, read, and in general what knowledge they should be privy too. Even though it sounds like a conspiracy theory, it is true. Corporations own the media outlets we get our news from, so anything that is against the company’s interest may not make it to your evening news.
China has been back in the news lately for their censorship issues they are having with Google. Mainly Google doesn’t want to deal with it anymore, especially after they got hacked by forces within China. The Chinese government is known for greatly censoring what information its citizens are allowed to view. Google would probably hate to break business ties with such a large consumer market, but it looks like they may have reached that point.
Also popping up in the news with an Internet censorship plan is Australia. If this plan goes through, the Australian government will be allowed to ban whatever websites and content they like without explanation.
Again we see more example of over parenting by government forces. It always starts out with lines such, as it is to protect the children or to preserve common decency. But the end result is the government using that as an excuse to hide whatever they want from the people.
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McDonalds to Offer Free WI-FI Access in 2010
McDonalds has been offering WI-FI access for the past few years, but it was for a fee of about three dollars for two hours of service.
Now starting this coming January, access to the Internet will be free in select McDonalds restaurants that offer WI-FI access. But charging for hours of services was kind of dumb, because how many people plan to spend hours inside of a McDonalds? The idea of fast food has always been to quickly get your food, eat, and go. There are less corporate food places that are already offering free WI-FI, so in part this is a move to compete with them. But probably more so to compete with Starbucks, who also charges for Internet access. Though it is known for having people spend all day on their computers inside of it. McDonalds has already been trying to get some of Starbucks’ customers by starting their own specialty coffee line.
This sounds like a good idea in the theory that people will mainly use this service to quickly check their email or road conditions while they are eating. But it also may bring the downside of people just loitering inside of the restaurant all day, taking up the space of people that want to eat. The other annoyance will be if they raise the food prices again to pay for all the bandwidth and other Internet service costs. But we’ll just have to wait a month and see what happens next January.
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