Welcome to Study Hall! The Internet can be a great resource as long as you know how to use it. Here you will find tips for effective web research to help you get the most out of the Internet.
Maya
Cyber Defender & Databank Supervisor
Because of her unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Maya started out as a librarian. While she loved her job, she wanted to do more to help protect people.
Since Cyber Villains such as Ms. Information and Elvirus can corrupt websites and the information on them, Maya teaches people to protect themselves by using caution when visiting websites and avoiding sites that are not trustworthy.
Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime
- Chinese Proverb
Anything chocolate
Interests:Browsing bookstores, baking
July 28 2008
Summer Reading: Week 8
How is your summer reading coming along? If you haven't registered yet, please do so at the Carnegie Library's site so you can track all of your progress this summer.
Last week I found a charming short story on the Internet, A Feast for the Computer Bugs written and translated from Swiss to English by Emil Zopfi. In the story, the bugs out in a meadow are becoming sick from a nearby insecticide factory. They hold a meeting and convince the Bee to go investigate the factory, because she can travel farther than the other bugs.
The Bee manages to get inside the computer that runs the factory, where she meets the "computer bugs." Curious about her talk of meadows and flowers, the computer bugs free themselves from the computer and escape to the meadow, shutting down the factory and saving all the meadow bugs.
In this story, the "computer bugs" were not really computer bugs, but actually electronic components that just look like bugs. If you've ever looked at a circuit board from a computer, you can see it has many little metal and plastic bits attached to the board that make the computer function. These can include transistors (like in the story), resistors, microchips, operational amplifiers, diodes, microprocessors, and many other components, some of which look a lot like bugs with lots of legs.
You can learn more about how circuits work and how personal computers work on the How Stuff Works Web site. Don't forget to log how much time you spend reading!
posted by Maya
topic: Summer Reading
July 22 2008
Finding Reliable Sites: Library Research Databases
When you sign up for a library card, you are gaining access not just to all of the resources in the library building, but also all of the library's online research databases.
Libraries subscribe to countless online databases of magazine and newspaper articles, financial information, investment reports, medical pamphlets, encyclopedia articles, biographies, and full-text books, and then make these databases available for free to their patrons. Some of them can be accessed online any time of day through the library's Web site, and some of them you must access from the library's computers.
All the work of deciphering if a resource is reliable or not has been done for you by the library, and all you need is a library card!
posted by Maya
topic: Finding Reliable Sites
July 21 2008
Summer Reading: Week 7
How is your summer reading coming along? If you haven't registered yet, please do so at the Carnegie Library's site so you can track all of your progress this summer.
Computer bugs are a daily concern for all software programmers and can turn up in any software program. Bugs can be caused by something as simple as a typo, or by many complicated procedures running at the same time, or can even be intentionally caused by hackers and cyber criminals. I'm sure you've even come across a few, they can be quite common even in "finished" software because it's very difficult to test absolutely all the possibilities. The more complex the software, the harder it is to hunt down all the bugs, and many companies just don't have the time or resources to fix them all.
Intrigued by what I read about the 10 worst computer bugs in history during the first week of Summer Reading, I decided to find out what made them so bad. I was surprised that several of them were not in the kind of software that you'd buy at the store, but in major systems that relied on custom software programs to keep them running smoothly. Systems like the trans-Siberian gas pipeline and the AT&T telephone network have come to a grinding halt because of something as simple as a computer bug! Some bugs cost companies millions of dollars and were very embarrassing, like the Mariner 1 space probe. But I think the worst ones are the ones that put people's safety and lives at risk.
Many companies now include ways for people to report back to them about bugs they have found and release "patches" for their software that fix bugs discovered after the product was released. You can read Dr. Keen's Cyber Defense Tip: Patch your vulnerabilities to learn more.
At this site you can vote for which bug you think is the worst one, and don't forget to log how much time you spend reading about computer bugs, even on this site!
posted by Maya
topic: Summer Reading
July 14 2008
Summer Reading: Week 6
How is your summer reading coming along? If you haven't registered yet, please do so at the Carnegie Library's site so you can track all of your progress this summer.
Last week I decided to try out one of the many Web sites where you can read books for free. I chose the classic 1915 story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, from the site Planet eBook, because I knew that it was about a bug but I had never actually read it.
It's a very strange tale of a hard-working young man who awakens one day to discover he has turned into a giant bug. Without knowing why he has changed or if he will ever change back, he and his family have to learn to adapt and move forward with their lives. I thought it was a rather sad story and it really made me think about how people treat one another.
I love reading classic novels because many of them have very rich stories and they open a window into another time period. There's also a good chance that they are a classic because they are so wonderful that everyone enjoys reading them. Then again, sometimes they aren't, but I like to give them a chance and decide for myself rather than just listening to other people's opinions.
There are many great sites that let you read books for free, and not just the classics. Why don't you try and find some? Don't forget to log the time you spend reading online books too!
posted by Maya
topic: Summer Reading
July 8 2008
Research Tip: Share your resources
If you have found some great resources on the Web for research, be sure to share them with others! Not only will they be grateful for the help, but they may just return the favor and save you some research work as well.
You can even work with a teacher or librarian to set up a list of good Web resources that everyone can use and contribute to.
posted by Maya
topic: Research Tips
July 7 2008
Summer Reading: Week 5
How is your summer reading coming along? If you haven't registered yet, please do so at the Carnegie Library's site so you can track all of your progress this summer. We’re about halfway though the summer so hurry up and join!
Last week I did a little research on the famous millennium bug, or the Y2K bug. Did you ever hear about that one? It was the year before Commander Omni took over the Academy, and I was still working as a librarian. I remember everyone making such a fuss over what turned out to be nothing. People even wrote entire books about it!
The fear arose because many computer programs stored the year date as two digits instead of four (like 99 instead 1999). People thought that on January 1st at midnight, when all the computers’ dates rolled over for the year 2000, that computer programs across the globe would have major issues since the new year would be 00 and the software would confuse it with 1900. People were afraid that everything, from banks to subways to electrical companies, would just stop functioning and the world as we know it would end.
Fortunately, this was a problem that was foreseen well before January 1st and most governments and businesses had prepared contingency plans and back-up systems to prevent any major catastrophes. Some places did experience minor problems, but most were fixed right away and the world certainly did not end. In fact, the backup systems and preparations made for Y2K have been very useful during several major events that have happened since 2000. It just goes to show you that an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure!
You can read more about it on this site. Don’t forget to keep track of the time you spend reading the Web sites!