And this is why I don't use Internet Explorer

It may be the most common and used internet browser out there, but as far as security goes, Internet Explorer is flawed. Period.

A security flaw in Internet Explorer (versions 5 and up) poses a serious threat as it enables hackers to hijack the users' passwords. Even though the most sensible thing to do is to switch to a different browser (temporarily or permanently), the head of Microsoft UK's Windows group, John Curran, says that, "I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw."

Wrong! Switch to a different browser as soon as possible, seriously. FireFox is a fast, excellent, customizable browser-it has spell checker too! Other decent alternatives are Safari and Opera.

Trism for the iPhone: Game Makes Big Dollars

CNN recently wrote an article for an interesting new game called Trism.

The game, created and developed by Steve Demeter, is a very simple puzzle game which aims to match-up the same colored triangles together to earn points. What makes the game more interesting is that it is also affected by the way the user rotates the iPhone.

Demeter is one of many game developers who are making money off of being able to create their own game and sell it on the Apple App Store.

OLPC XO


OLPC stands for One Laptop Per Child.

These laptops are quite interesting. It currently runs on Linux but there are plans to make Windows XP available someday as well. As it doesn't have much of the power-consuming features (hard drive, CD/DVD drives, etc.), it is a self-powered device that generates it's power from a hand-crank generator.

The purpose of these laptops are to give children living in third world countries a chance to learn things in a different way. People can donate for one at LaptopGiving.org. As an effect of the Give 1 Get 1 program (G1G1), for every one that a person donates for, one laptop is given to a child in a third world country.

Visual Basic


We've recently moved on from Turbo Pascal to Visual Basic. Aesthetically speaking, Visual Basic is more pleasing to look at and work with than Turbo Pascal, it is somewhat the same coding-wise though.

To get the hang of this program, we were asked to created a Hello World program. After that lesson, I am now more familiar with the tool of this program and I find it easier to work with.

Day of Remembrance


Today marks the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. At Notre Dame Regional Secondary (Vancouver, BC) a Remembrance Day service was held to commemorate the loss and sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers during the war.

Poppies were worn to remember these fallen soldiers. During a presentation by the grade 12 Acting class, a song by Coldplay played throughout their performance. Part of the song's lyrics somewhat fit the overall feeling of the situation:

"Tears stream, down on your face
When you lose something you cannot replace "

Microsoft Announces New Operating Systems

Windows Vista Logo
Yesterday (October 27, 2008) Microsoft unveiled details of two new operating systems. Currently, the most commonly used Microsoft operating systems used are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Although frequently criticized, often by those who've never used it, Vista is actually a very stable, rich environment in which to work, particularly when used with up-to-date machines.


Nevertheless, Microsoft has decided to press ahead with successors for Vista. In late 2009, Windows 7 will be released. It will be much like Vista. Around the same time, Microsoft will release Windows Azure, an operating system that lives on Microsoft servers an not in your computer. This is called Cloud Computing, the "cloud" being the Internet. Basically this means that you won't need an operating system or programs: they will all live in the "cloud."



Whether this works out or not remains to be seen. However, many companies are already trying this, both with Microsoft and with Google products.


"Cloud Computing is one of the most used technology buzz words at present."

ICT 12 Student Blog List (Updated)

Ava Balingit

Ryan Battistel

Sofia Busse

Nicole Ceralde

Nathan Chiu

Tomasz Cieslik

Jonathan De Maeseneer

Danila Di Giacinto

Sonia Di Palma

Lia Estrellado

Kimberly Francisco

Dilantha Geekiyanage

Nikko Henderson

Nikka Komisarski

Steffani Mastromonaco

Caitlin Nery

Conner Olenick

Andrea Strazzullo

Adam Troczynski

Nikko Tagle

Alannah Villella

Jason Wong




This is an updated list of the student blogs.
Tomasz and Sonia are added.


Binary

The Binary Numeric system is restricted to two simple numbers, 1 and 0. When put in a certain sequence called bits, these two number can represent numbers.

Ex.
0001: 1
1010: 10
1111: 15

Number Guesser

We've been working with a program called Turbo Pascal to created a game wherein the computer would choose a number from 1-100. The game is meant to give the player clues if their guess is too high or too low.

This program has gone through 3 different versions. The first being a simple version of the game and the third being a more complex version (along with the introduction of using procedures to divide the code into different sections.

Global Anti-Piracy Day (The Day After)

Apparently yesterday (October 21, 2008) was Global Anti-Piracy Day. Kind of a late post, but better late than never, yes?

We all know that the programs (at least most of the really good ones) out there cost money. An example of that would be Adobe Photoshop. It's an amazing graphics/photo editing software that comes with a pretty hefty price... say about $700-$1000 USD, it really depends). It's quite expensive, but it's highly worth it.

Most people would buy it, but to those who really want it but don't have the money, they resort to buying (or downloading) a pirated copy. This hurts the businesses that actually sells these programs legally.

Microsoft if trying to put a stop to that. Follow this link to read more about it.

ICT 12 Student Blog List

Ava Balingit
Ryan Battistel
Sofia Busse
Nicole Ceralde
Nathan Chiu
Jonathan De Maeseneer
Danila Di Giacinto
Lia Estrellado (Me)
Kimberly Francisco
Dilantha Geekiyanage
Nikko Henderson
Nikka Komisarski
Steffani Mastromonaco
Caitlin Nery
Conner Olenick
Andrea Strazzullo
Adam Troczynski
Nikko Tagle
Alannah Villella
Jason Wong

These are the blog URLs for my ICT 12 class colleagues. The class is using Blogger throughout the year to record information about various programs and techniques.

This list will be updated to include several blog URLs not presently available.

iGoogle

Today I signed up for the iGoogle service and made a couple of minor custom changes. I added a custom widget to display my IP address.

Programmingggggggggg

Newly created blog, it was pink before, but it was too pink. So I opted for the more eye-pleasing green. C:

Also, will be working on (as well as learning) new forms of coding. 8D It all looks familiar thanks to my RO/Scripting experiences from days past.