What are Internet Pirates?

Where do pirates like to shop the most? Taaaarrrrget! Okay, I know that's a bad joke (and probably doesn't make much sense outside the US and western Europe), but today we're looking at what, exactly are Internet pirates. They get discussed in the media, laws made against them, and are blamed by some to be the cause of all of the music industry's problems. You may be an internet pirate and not even know it!

"Internet pirate" is a term for someone who steals items from the internet instead of buying them through legitimate channels. This can be music, movies, software, or anything else digital. The term "internet pirate" became popular when Napster was at its peak and people were downloading music left and right. Have you ever downloaded a song from a program like Napster, Limewire, or Bearshare? These are all programs that are designed to allow people to share large files between each other, but people have taken over to share large copyrighted files between them and millions of strangers.

I've noticed an uptick in parents unknowingly pirating songs because their children download a program like Limewire on the computer and tell them that it's a place they can get music, TV shows and movies for free. They don't tell them that it's illegal, that they can be fined thousands of dollars, that it's a good way to get computer viruses, and/or have their internet provider refuse them further service. How can you know if you've been accidentally stealing your content? Did you pay for it? Did the maker of content explicitly say they're giving it away for free? If the answer is "no" to those questions, you've been pirating content!

Practical Tip of the Day:

As previously stated, pirating content is a good way to get viruses, malware, corrupted files and content you do not want (like porn instead of a TV show) downloaded onto your computer. Because of these as well as the legal and ethical reasons, I strongly discourage pirating. Where should you go to get these things then? iTunes, Amazon and Google Play are the three biggest content providers on the Internet. And yes, you have to pay.

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What Is Google Docs?

It seems that more and more things are being done online. We keep our files online, we talk to people online, we place games online, and now you can make your business files online as well. If you're used to Microsoft's Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) or to Apple's iWork suite (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) you won't be too confused when first you meet the Google Docs suite.

Google Docs does the basics of what you're used to doing in your normal office programs, but cuts out most of the bells and whistles. You can create a word processing document, a presentation, a spreadsheet, a form, or a drawing. You needn't remember to save as it auto-saves up to Google's cloud regularly, and you also have the option of downloading it to your computer so you can work on the document offline assuming you have a similar program on your computer. (You can also upload a file from your computer to Google Docs if you wish to work on it from any computer with internet access.)

You can also share your documents with others with a click of a button, allowing others to either download your document, view it online, or work on it online with you. These are handy options for people who need to collaborate with others who may use different types of computers or programs. It also has a very nice price point- free. That's right, you pay nothing for Google Docs; It's included in your free Google account. Now, keep in mind what I said in the beginning that it is missing some whistles and bells, but if you only do basic document creation and editing, I recommend checking out Google Docs.

Practical Tip of the Day:
In Google Docs, you have many options on which way you'd like to download your document. If you'd like to be able to edit it on your computer without having an internet connection, downloading it in the common Microsoft Office format is recommended (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint), but if you do not need to be able to edit it and would like to make it the easiest to view on a wide range of computers and mobile devices, PDF format is best. PDFs (portable document format) are not easily editable, but are able to be viewed using software that is usually included on modern computers, and easily downloaded in case it isn't there. Picking the format of your file is important as it dictates what you can do with your files, and how you can do it. Choose carefully!

What is Email?

People have been sending each other messages since history began. At first they were physical signs, then verbal, eventually written, and now electronic. In a time when most people only buy stamps to send out holiday cards or bills, email has become ubiquitous. While a lot of people know how to send and read email, not everyone understands exactly what email is.

It is, in the most basic sense, a letter that is typed and sent over the internet (see previous post) instead of sent via traditional mail. That's it! Only not. Email is popular because of it's speed. Typically, once an email is sent it only takes a few seconds for the recipient to receive it. Just like how you can send pictures with a traditional letter, you can also send pictures in emails, but you can also send other things like a website address to a news article or a cute video.

Here's a small crash course on email terminology:

Inbox- This is where you receive your new messages. This is typically the first thing you see when you go to your email. Think of this like your physical mailbox. You open it to check if you have any messages.

Outbox- This is where messages are kept while they are waiting to be sent. Think of this as your mailbox with your outgoing letters in it- flag up- waiting for the mailman. Mail is only kept their briefly.

Sent- This is where messages you've sent are kept. This has no good analogy to physical mail unless you're the kind of person that photocopies all the messages they send out before they actually mail it.

Spam (aka Junk)- What does canned meat have to do with unwanted messages? I'll spare you the history lesson (it's actually much more boring than you'd think), and just let you know that it's the electronic equivalent to junk mail that typically fills up your physical mailbox.

Practical Tip of the Day:
Often times, new computer users ask "Where should I get my email from?" Just like picking your child's daycare or your TV service provider, this is an important decission since your email address is like your house address- it's where people can get ahold of you- so you don't want to change it too often. There's no clear-cut answer to which email service is best, though.

More and more people are using Google's free Gmail addresses, but often your internet provider (the company that set up the box for you to get internet) gives you a free address as well. I usually tell people to ask their friends which they use, just like where they get their car serviced or who their doctor is, personal recommendations are often the best way to find a good solution for you.

Special Edition: What is SOPA?

When you can count your page views on one hand, and you get three people asking for a particular topic, you're inclined to oblige. That being said, today's topic is bit more complex than I'd normally cover, but I feel fairly confident that I can explain this in a way everyone can understand.

SOPA- A.K.A. the "Stop Online Piracy Act" hopes to spur innovation and entrepenuership by preventing people from steal other people's copyrighted material. Sounds good, right? I'm a fan of new things, and I'm not a fan of people stealing things. The problem lies in how they do it though.

SOPA's original form (by the time this is read it's possible that it's been amended, so bear that in mind) contains language that would allow the US Department of Justice or the copyright holder to seek court orders that would:

A. Stop payment to the websites from any or all advertisements
B. Shut the website down temporarily.
C. Bar search engines from linking to the website.
D. All of the above.

Still doesn't sound too bad though, right? If a website is redistributing stolen goods it deserves to be shut down and punished, right? Well, here's the catch- the wording allows those things to happen not only to websites that knowingly do that, but also to websites who are unaware of it, or aren't actually doing anything wrong at all! Now, at this point you might be inclined to consider this "spin" by the liberal media or whatnot, but hang in there with me.

It does actually state that the above penalties can be enforced as soon as the alleged victim issues a complaint regardless of whether or not the claim turns out to be true. This would mean that YouTube would be down while it's under investigation if a teenage girl singing a Brittany Spears song counts as copyright infringement. It would mean that if ever someone posted a picture of a Coke can on Facebook it would also go down. Google would most likely cease to exist, or, if it did, it would be censored from every webpage that may-or-may-not potentially have copyrighted material.

If you hear your techie friends ranting about SOPA, you now know why. It is seen in the tech community as the largest threat to Internet censorship yet, and the Internet is the largest example of America's right to Freedom of Speech. When the Internet begins to become censored it will be viewed as the largest infringement of civil liberties yet.

Limitless power with limited numbers

Yesterday I mentioned that computers all come down to crunching numbers. In a way, computers came into being by people not wanting to do math themselves. (I can totally appreciate this- my ability to do even basic math in my head goes down as the number of digits involved goes up!)

You probably already know that computers are electric; You have to plug them in for them to work. What they do with that electricity is amazing. Sparing you the the techno-babble for a second, the electricity goes into the different parts of the computer and causes teeny-tiny bits to become electrically charged. If something has a charge it is called a 1. Yes, simply a one. If something does NOT have a charge, it is a 0.

This is why when you see movies like the Matrix you see all these scrolling 1's and 0's on the screen. Yes, it's mostly to make it look cool, but they're trying to invoke a sense of computing on the most basic of levels. It is from this collection of ones and zeros that you are able to read this now. That we're able to watch funny baby videos on YouTube, or chat with old friends on Facebook or any number of things. Pretty amazing, huh?

Practical Tip of the Day: All websites have addresses- just like houses- and, just like a house, you need to know it's address to get to it. If I want to visit my friend Sarah, but don't know her address, what could I do? Well, I would look her up in the Whitepages! Website addresses are often able to be found in search engines. These use complex math to find the most popular pages that match what you search for, and give you the results. Google is one of the most popular search engines, but there are others like Bing and Yahoo.