Reflection Blog 19

.txt and .doc files are both file types that store text information. .doc files have an advantage over .txt files because .doc files can store formatting while .txt cannot. .jpg and .gif are both file types that store image information. .gif has an advantage over .jpg in that .gif files can store animations whereas .jpg files cannot.

We cannot have just one universal standard format for all of each media type because different types of programs and machines have different rules and standard that govern information interpretation.

Reflection Blog 18

One advantage of using hexadecimal and then converting it into binary rather than just using binary directly is that some people/machines prefer interpreting hexadecimal information rather than binary code. Color images might be encoded using a different number system by using symbols to represent particular colors. Adding more colors to an image increasing the amount of code needed to represent the image.

Reflection Blog 17

One might magnify or reduce an image (e.g. make it twice or half the size) by tweaking the amount of pixels used in an image.

Expanding my heuristic so that it accounts for encoding images that contain color would significantly increase the amount of information (i.e., bytes) needed to represent the image.

Reflection Blog 16

A small compression rate for one set of text might be just as good as a large compression rate for another because different sets of text are composed of different font styles, text sizes, and characters.

One major challenge for developing a good text compression heuristic is the face that there is no "best method" for developing a good text compression heuristic. There is no such thing as a "one size fits all" approach for heuristics because different sets of text are composed of different font styles, text sizes, and characters.

Reflection Blog 15

The meaning of "large" or "small" varies greatly in terms of data size depending on the type of data being stored. For instance, short emails usually take up about 2 Kilobytes (2,000 bytes) of data whereas a hard drive might contain 4 x 1,099,511,627,776 bytes of data. As you can see, there are many different ways that data can be used and the scale of this varies greatly depending on the type of data being stored.

Reflection Blog 14

What is Internet Censorship?

Internet Censorship is defined as “the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet.” (Wikipedia)

Why does Internet Censorship exist?

Internet Censorship exists for several different reasons including self-censorship for moral, religious, or business reasons, or out of fear of other legal consequences.

The extent of internet censorship

The extent of internet censorship varies greatly between different countries. Most democratic nations, such as the U.S., engage in only mild to moderate internet censorship. However, some countries heavily censor general information such as political news in an attempt at reducing intellectual discussion between citizens. One prime example of this is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, more commonly known as North Korea. The North Korean regime censors all information regarding international affairs with the sole purpose of propagating the false idea that their nation is the most powerful nation in the world.  Their methods have been likened to totalitarian propaganda and blatant brainwashing.

I just talked about how Internet Censorship can be used for malicious purposes. What are some beneficial things that internet censorship could possibly bring about?

Almost all advocates of internet censorship argue that the main reason the internet needs to be censored by the government is because it can possibly reduce access to illicit drugs, sex trafficking, human trafficking, and child pornography.

The problem with this, though, is that all of these things have existed since the beginnings of human civilization, way before the internet was even remotely considered a practical idea. Furthermore, the internet is not even the main procedure by which people access these things. So essentially what we’re doing is giving the government power to eliminate nothing. Soon after this, the government will pass more legislation to increase their scope of power, like they always do, which in this case will be in regards to the internet.

Reflection Blog 13

I found the "elements" tool the most interesting out of all the developer tools because the "elements" tool showed all of the various elements of code that made up a webpage.

One thing I was able to do with the developer tools was look through the code under the "elements" tab and try to figure out which part of the code referred to which component of the website.

A benefit of using these tools is that any user is able to access the source code for webpages and understand how they work. A concern or caution of developer tools is that some people who run websites may not want their users to look through the code that makes up their website.

Reflection Blog 12

Domain name differs from IP addresses in that domain names do not change whereas IP addresses do. The domain name of a website refers to the web addresses that humans are familiar with, such as "www.google.com". On the other hand, an IP address is a collection of numbers and periods used in the TCP/IP system to send and request data.