How to Use a Proxy

A short tutorial on how to use a proxy.
This is not a list of proxy’s and you need to find one before you can use this. Just go to one of the main search engines and type in “proxy list.” You should have quite a few options come up. Get one of them and highlight the whole bar, right click on it, and click copy. Then on your internet click the tools drop down menu and click on internet options. Go to the tab marked connections. Above the Cancel and Apply buttons there should be a button marked “LAN Settings.” Click on it, and a dialogue box should open.

It will be divided into two parts, but you just want the bottom half. Click on the box the reads: “Use a proxy for your LAN…” Now right click on the top white bar and click paste. Make sure that the port is 80 and also check the box that says: “Bypass proxy server for local addresses.” Click okay and you are back at your home page. Enter any site into the address bar and you will be sent to the proxy homepage instead. Now just enter the website that you want to browse and you are good to go!

Notebook Computers: College Majors May Have Different Minimum Requirements

A brief look at the various schools within one university setting that require different hardware minimum requirements.
What notebook to buy is one question that most parents will be asking sometime in the future as their student or students prepare for college. Previously, I had written an article on how to purchase a notebook for the college student. Perhaps a better question to ask is, "How should the notebook be configured?" After all, this is an expensive purchase and purchasing the wrong notebook can be a real "bummer." Let's look at a few of the "schools" within one university to see just how their requirements differed among the various "schools:"

1. The School of Business, and College of Education and Human Services, and College of Liberal Arts at one major university had the following minimum hardware requirements:

Windows XP Professional or MAC OS10.X Operating Systems
1.4GHz processor (Centrino, P4M, MAC)
60GB or larger Hard Drive
1GB RAM
CD-RW DVD-ROM Drive
10/100 Ethernet
802.11b wireless network
1GB Flash Drive
Recommend a 3 to 4 yr. service plan on the computer

The College of Fine Arts however, had these minimum hardware requirements for student notebooks:

Mackbook Pro
15 inch display
2GB RAM
120GB Hard Drive
Super Drive Recommended
3 year Apple Care Protection Plan recommended;
Within the College of Fine Arts, the music department had the following minimum hardware requirements:

MacBook Pro or Windows XP Professional
1GB RAM
80GB Hard Drive
USB Flash Drive
10/100 Ethernet
802.11g wireless
CD-RW DVD ROM
Service plans recommended
As you can see, each college or school within the university may have their own minimum specifications for notebook computer hardware. It is recommended that you speak with the admissions office or the Information Technology Resource Department to obtain the specific minimum hardware requirements.

iTunes Sales Surging?

There has been a great amount of controversy over how well the iTunes Store, formerly called the iTunes Music Store, has been performing. Last week a research organization issued a report based on credit card invoices that stated that sales of music, television, and movies
over at the iTunes store were falling dramatically, but now Apple and two other research organizations actually believe iTunes is not only not dropping, but increasing dramatically.

Initially, Nielsen's Soundscan division did a study which stated that for the last three consecutive quarters that digital-music sales have been down a great deal for all online services. Fuel was added to the fire when in December a company called Forrester Research decided to see if they could determine how this slump affected the iTunes store. So they conducted an analysis of a large amount of credit card transactions to determine how well the iTunes store was performing. What they found was rather interesting.

Forrester's report was particularly devastating to Apple. The report started that since January of 2006 revenue had fallen by 65 percent on a monthly basis, and that the size of each transaction shrunk by 17 percent. This news caused Apple's stock price to drop nearly two dollars or by about 1.8%, but the story does not end there.

A company called comScore Networks, which is a research firm with a lot of experience in these types of studies, stated that the revenue from Apple's digital music service actually rose by 84 percent during the first three quarters of this year, whereas last year increase was 67 percent for those three quarters. comScore's report also stated that the size of the transactions were up a total of 10 percent.

Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore networks, made a statement to Market Watch about their findings. He stated, "As Mark Twain might have said, the rumors of iTunes' death have been greatly exaggerated. In contrast to a recent research report indicating that iTunes sales have declined by 65 percent, comScore data show that iTunes sales actually grew 84 percent during the first three quarters of 2006 versus year ago."
The company's analysis is based on the behavior of one million US consumers who gave comScore permission to look at their financial transactions, and the sales data from iTunes was part of a total of over 8 million transactions observed by comScore.

So what's with the disparity? Many have criticized Forrester's research because it did not rely on a big enough of a sample size, creating the possibility for error. Apple has also stated that Forrester's research is "simply wrong," and that iTunes sales are
fine.

What is the OSI Stack

Defines OSI and its history. Describes the seven layers of the stack.

OSI means Open Systems Interconnection. It refers to the layered architecture used in computer communication design. The architecture was developed by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). It defines the way communication is passed from one layer to another in computer systems, ultimately passing through seven different layers. The simplified representation of the OSI stack shows neighboring layers communicating with one another, through specific entities within them.

In the OSI stack the layers that interact with a human are called the higher layers. They are given the conventional levels of 5, 6 and 7. Below these are the four other layers that normally don’t interact with humans. They are called the lower layers. Normal interaction between these layers is initiated by a human from the seventh layer in one computer system, goes down to the lowest level, interfaces with another computer system, and rises up the layers of this second computer system up to the seventh, which then provides the interface with another human. A brief description of these layers follows.

The seventh layer is also known as the application layer. It operates closest to a human user. It interacts with the application that interfaces between the person and the computer system. However, the application being used directly by the user is outside the scope of the seventh OSI layer. The seventh level identifies communication partners, governs resource usage, and basically ensures quality of communication. File transfer protocols (FTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Telnet are examples of applications contained entirely within this layer.

The sixth layer is also called the presentation layer. It primarily determines how a computer presents its information e.g. the type of characters or file formats to use. In this way, it resolves problems that would otherwise emanate from different file encryption and origins. It then communicates with the fifth layer, also called the session layer. This layer establishes a communication session and basically organizes data into packets.

The fourth layer, called the transport layer, governs reliability and timely delivery of data to the higher layers from the lower ones. This is accomplished through data flow control, package segmentation and error control. The Transmission Control Protocol is an example of this layer. The layer is adjacent to the third one, called the network layer. The network layer provides virtual circuits which provide switching and routing for the data from one node to the next.

The second layer is also called the data link layer. In it, the logical organization of data bits transported over a medium is defined. Data gets encoded into a valid signaling format for the first layer, called the physical layer. An example of the data link layer is the HDLC (High level data link) protocol. Finally, the physical layer conveys the data stream (bits) in form of electrical impulses or radio waves at the mechanical level. Hence the cables and cards used in computer communications are part of this layer.