Resources and Summary for Task 1: Understanding Spectre and Meltdown Exploits
1.This article is about a newly discovered threat within the hardware of the computer known as the meltdown and spectre bugs. It tries to explain how the vulnerability works using different analogies to help the reader have a better understanding of how it works.
This article tries to bring across the complex nature of the CPU into a better understanding of how these two exploits work. The use of analogies will make a reader with little knowledge of programming and CPU have a better understanding of the exploits with ease. The writer compares the bugs to bank robbery in which, information is stored in the highly guarded vault and inside the vault, there is safe deposit box to be opened only by the safe owner. In order to access the safe box, you have to fetch a password inform of a paper stored inside the vault and if anyone else tries to access the safe apart from the authorized person, s/he is shot on sight by the guards. For a thief to steal the password, s/he uses a highly sophisticated device that can eavesdrop safe owners password an uses it thereafter without fear of being shot. To parallel it with the bug, someone who is not a device owner has the ability to listen to the computer’s program that stores important information and steals. Later, the attacker uses them to there own advantage.
The main point that the writer tries to derive here is that the CPU programs executes a series of transient instructions. The CPU has to determine what is to be executed and what not to. Bad results are done away with and the process continues. These bugs allow a malicious program to be able to read data from other programs. In a typical environment, programs should not be permitted to read data from other programs. Giving a program ability to read any kind of data from another program will have exposed secret data such as the passwords stored in the password manager within the web browser, personal files such as photographs, and instant messages.
I found this as a useful tool to help one understand clearly what kind of threat that is being addressed in a simple analogy that every person could well understand. Also, the complexity knowledge behind the function of the CPU and how the vulnerabilities can be exploited and how to avoid have well been articulated.
Resources and Summary for Task 2: Evolution of GUI Operating Systems
2.The article is about the how apple-Lisa, the first GUI personal computer of the Apple Inc, has evolved since its making in the early 1980s. It is chronological of events of Lisa development and making since 1978 Apple project and the theory behind the naming of this powerful General User Interface(GUI) personal computer. One of the Apple founder Steve Job was initially on the project team that was assigned to develop Apple-Lisa but was later on reassigned to Macintosh.
The article is a true revelation of the available resources which documents the development of the GUI personal computer at Apple company which is one one of the oldest company that produced GUI computers. Apple Company well renowned with Mac operating system which has done remarkably well in the market was the driving force in choosing this article.
According to the article, Apple Lisa was a more advanced gadget as compared to the Macintosh in many ways such as sophisticated operating system hard disk drive, multitasking capabilities, a memory that was well protected, high-resolution display, and it could support up to 2 megabytes RAM. The naming of this GUI computer had lots of theories as it coincided with the name of Steve Jobs daughter Lisa who was born in 1978 as well as that of Lisa’s team member Larry Tesler’s daughter but the company stated that it was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture well known as LISA.
Lisa was introduced into the market on January 19, 1983, and it could cost a total of $9,995. It was the first commercial personal computer that used the GUI and a mouse with an embedded Motorola 68000 CPU with a clock rate of 5MHz and a 1 MB RAM. It required the use of two “twiggy” diskettes drive that was not reliable and as such a second revision of the hardware was done in 1984, Lisa 2, which sold at the range of $3,495 and $5,495. This was accompanied with an upgrade of single Sony 400k microfloppy drive. The upgrade incorporated the updated booting ROM as well as I/O ROM and incorporating inlaid Apple logo and the first snow white features.
The article was of great use in trying to shed light on the way GUI computers have been evolving and the technology being employed up to date.
3.This article is about Sigfox, a French company that deals with the Internet of Things connectivity and communication space and has been in action for a while now. The reason as to why I choose this article is to understand how Sigfox Low-Powered Wide Area Network works and its popularity around the globe since Signfox does not only deal with IoT device connectivity only but also goes ahead to provide a public network to local networks.
Resources and Summary for Task 3: Platforms and Technologies for LPWAN
The writer of the article describes how Sigfox is different from other IT network providers in terms of marketing. The company sought to partner with other companies that are located in higher places where they can mast their antennas. According to the report presented in 2016, Sigfox has a complete nationwide coverage in 6 countries, more than 14 other countries network is being deployed. The approach being employed by Sigfox sets them aside as they not only welcome investors but also partners with them in rolling out the network to extend its coverage. Some of the companies that have partnered with Sigfox includes Cellnex Telecom in Spain, Nettrotter in Italy, Arqiva in the UK among others. The company seeks to provide a better network putting in mind the ecosystem and as a result, it has been able to compete well with other IoT network providers such as the Semtech.
The article sites that Sigfox acts as a network provider and not a hardware vendor with no provision of a hardware solution. Its work is to provide connectivity of the IoT devices and it has placed itself among the globe best network providers.
The usefulness of the article was to help have a better understanding of one of the world great company that provides IoT device connectivity network and how it is different from hardware solution providers.
4.The writer intended to show the difference between the sip and VoIP and at the same time how they relate to each other. The choice of the article was based on the way it brings out the differences and similarities in that they are two different entities but VoIP largely depends on the sip.
The writer of the article explains SIP as a protocol used for setting up, signaling and controlling multimedia sessions such as video/audio call, multimedia messages, among others. a During a call set up, sip is used in this phase using the proxy server application layer implements it. As a result, call and transfer of data can happen between the two parties who are at both ends in a peer way. Generally, sip performs a variety of tasks on VoIP such as registering the caller to the proxy server, checking whether the user is available at the other end and if available, it determines which capabilities are there to be utilized such as audio codecs etc. It will then set up the session between the nodes and manage sessions till the node terminates. SIP has become so popular in VoIP as it is flexible to be integrated with other system and software, and also internet applications which suit well to the modern way of business.
Resources and Summary for Task 4: Understanding VoIP Protocols
In addition, the article cites that a SIP being an open source will ensure interoperability. It is a prerequisite for any company developing VoIP to first check SIP compatibility before the product is launched. This has been the reason as to why the call for SIP has exponentially hicked.
The article well articulates the need for SIP in a VoIP environment and that is one of the most useful pieces of information any aspiring web developer like me should know before venturing into the industry.
5.The article is all about blockchain technology which is believed to be the future internet. I choose the article as it well defines the logic behind a blockchain network that has been gaining more attention worldwide in the current era.
The writer categorically states that it all started with cryptocurrency and as explained it is a ledger that cannot be corrupted and will be the center of the economic transaction. With the use of the distributed database and that the node can be able to join the network voluntarily. The information stored in the database is public and can be easily verified who is the primary source in the case of google documents. Lack of centralized system makes it difficult for hackers to access information and corrupt it.
According to the article, the idea of decentralizing blockchain was to jointly manage the databases that record a variety of transactions such as land registry, record keeping, bitcoin transaction etc. it is also a way of eliminating threats that come with the storing data centrally such as a hacking system which is boosted by encryption techniques that protect the node. The rise of the blockchain new web 3.0 will create a room for a better governance system as it will enforce transparency to the public and a transparency election. It will also create file storage space with well-protected mechanisms. The other avenue is the IoT interconnectivity network that will be able to connect devices without being hacked.
This article is rich with a better explanation of what blockchain technology is all about. It is an eye-opener to any web infrastructure user.
6.This article is about the voting of an internet neutrality rule that was commissioned by the FCC to determine the best-case scenario of the internet rules. I picked this article due to rich information pertaining net neutrality rule on the internet usability.
The article provides the information of the core net principles were built on during former president George Bush which gave the user freedom to access internet materials lawfully and use online services and applications. The debate on net neutrality has been a tug of war between communication company’s legal laws as communication companies and analyst views it as a way of welcoming more innovations and increase in technology advancement while the other group of activists and analysts’ views it as a way of company trying to earn more from the clients while undermining the development of the underserved areas who will be marginalized by this influx in technology. Telecom has the free will to slow down or even bock any contents with an analyst on the other side seek calls for a maximum variety of content to the users and since the telecom lack competitor, it will, in turn, prioritize contents that have been paid for neglecting the rest.
Resources and Summary for Task 5: Mechanisms of Blockchain Technology
The content further notes that free internet will in future disappear and that user will have to pay for the contents to they want to be accessing. In this case, small business will struggle much to compete with the large companies as they are unable to pay ISPs. Paying the ISPs will have a greater advantage of fast services while other have to with slow and unreliable services
The article was important to help learn that net neutrality will in one way or the other have to face uncertain future where free services will be a thing not to be heard of and in order to acquire better services over the network one will have to pay a token for them,
7.The article is about the jobs that can be replaced by artificial intelligence one of the field in ICT and those that cannot be replaced. I picked this article because it provides a proof of the continuous growth of artificial intelligence field but at the same time looking into the limits of the artificial intelligence.
The writer of the article depicts how automation of services at Hubspot will render most of the people jobless and citing just a number of the field that will be affected by the growth of information technology. Some of the marketing jobs at Hubspot faces competition from automation and computerization and people find the field requiring less manpower despite its expected growth in future. The articles evaluate the likelihood of the following jobs to be automated or computerized which will lead to a reduction of human labor. These jobs include but not limited to telemarketers at 99%, bookkeeping clerks at 98%, Compensation and befit manager at 96%, a receptionist at 96%, courier at 94%, proofreaders at 84%, computer support specialist at 65%, market research analyst at 61%, advertising salesperson at 54% and finally Retail salesperson at 92%. The drop in percentage is as a result associated with human interaction and at which instances can a machine perform better than a human and at times where human will provide a better outcome than the machine.
In addition, the article also provides an insight of the jobs that will find it hard to be replaced by machine as they will need human assistance to provide direction on which is the best way forward for the company. The position includes the executive officer, general manager, and other management positions, human resource, planer, writes, software developers, editors, and graphic designers.
Resources and Summary for Task 6: Implications of Net Neutrality Contravention
The importance of the article is that it has well defined the scope and the limits of technology bearing in mind that it is not all jobs that are at risk of being automated. Otherwise, most of the manure work that requires little human interaction is on the verge of being automated.
8.The article is about machine learning in artificial intelligence and the reason why it is important. I choose the article due to well-elaborated analysis on machine learning.
The article is an art of good description of what is machine learning and what it entails. It also covers the uses of machine learning and the fields mostly required the knowledge of machine learning. The knowledge of machine learning correlates to that of data mining and deep learning. The two methods of machine learning, supervised learning and unsupervised learning are well covered in this article that will help the learner have a deeper understanding of the field.
It further states other methods that are used in machine learning such as the reinforcement learning and semi-supervised as other methods that can be embraced. Finally, it identifies that for a better understanding of machine learning an individual should be well versed with the algorithms and processes used.
The article was of much importance as it helped to have the firsthand information on machine learning and an insight into the deep learning of machine learning and where to start from.
9.This article is about go programming language which is one of the open source programming languages. The reason as to why I choose this article is because go programming language is gaining a lot of popularity in the current world among programmers due to its ease of use.
In this article, it reveals the motivation towards the development of the go language which was fuelled by a slow compilation of the codes by the C and C++ compilers. The program is a product of Google company created by three programmers Rober, Rob, and Ken in which they started working on it at around 2007 and was made available to the public at around 2009. Motivation towards the development of go language came from the fact that some of the fast programming languages such as C were never safe with lots of errors while compiling, interpreted languages were slow and depend on interpreters to work well even though they are safe. Others such as Java would require the virtual machine to run its code. Thus go was meant to overcome all of those hurdles and create a fast, independent and safe program.
The article further points out advantages associated with the use of going programming language in that its compiler compiles code directly to machine code since it does not have VM making it fast to compile a program. It complies to cross-platform in that it is compatible with other operating systems. It is safe and reliable and it offers the best platform for oop in a concurrent environment using standard libraries.
To note some of the disadvantages of the go programming is that it does not support function overload and with strict rules to be adhered to its runtime not that much secure. Also, it has a small number of packages if you compare it with other languages such as Ruby.
The article was helpful as it was able to provide a basic idea of yet another programming language little talked about but highly demanding in the market with companies such as Google, uber, docker, Dropbox among other using this language.
10.This article is about internet bots. This article is a recap of how internet bot works, types of bots and how they affect the day to day internet activities.
The article well highlights that there are two types of blots, good and bad. Anytime an individual call for internet services, blot provides a useful job and performs a useful work such as operating search engines, scanning vulnerabilities, and website monitoring. Despite that useful work, they can be used by a malicious person to inject malicious codes encountered on the websites. An example of the bot is the distributed denial of services (DDoS) attack. It makes a network to be unavailable from access by the user for a while. It saturates the service making it be temporarily suspended or interrupted. They are often performed using botnet which generates large traffic against the target site. DDoS may create a bad reputation for a company online brand and at times may compromise client’s data.
In order to understand how bots work, the article comprehensively covers the topic in bold. To just generalize, bots crapes pertinent information whenever they come into the site. They are able to fetch data from the website database which works against company’s reputation. Tackling the bots there are some of the approaches that a company should have to adhere to. Statistically analyze structural web requests and their header information and then co-relate with what the bot claims. Other ways are challenge-based and website behavior approaches.
The importance of this article is that it helps to understand how blots work and how they may cripple internet services of a certain company. Mitigation process highlighted will help avoid future attacks and denial of services over the internet.
References
Miller, P.,2018. Explaining Meltdown with parallel worlds, libraries, and a bank heist. [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/6/16854668/meltdown-spectre-hack-explained-bank-heist-analogy
Christoph, D., 2007. Mac History.[online]
Available at: https://www.mac-history.net/apple-history-2/apple-lisa/2007-10-12/apple-lisa
Rosic, A., 2016. Blockgeeks. [Online]
Available at: https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/
Coren, M.J., 2017. Quartz. [Online]
Available at: https://qz.com/1158328/what-will-happen-now-that-net-neutrality-is-gone-we-asked-the-experts/
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