2 February 1999 - CSCI E-1 - Harvard Extension School

[Music] oh [Music] oh sure they're actually all on the back table there by the door [Music] he [Music] than [Music] okay okay now I know it's off all right let's stop it repeating there um let me just tweak this microphone for a moment can everyone in hear in the back hear me all right yeah any need for more okay welcome to computer science E1 introduction to personal computers and the internet my name is David men and I will be your instructor for this semester some of you may recall a woman's name uh Laura Noble Peele on the original course catalog she has since moved to Minnesota and I've been asked to take over the course in herstead but I promise this semester you will have a fantastic time and by the semester's end we'll walk away with a firm grasp of both what computers are as well as what the internet is before we begin let me take a quick survey of people how many people here actually have a computer at home if you could raise your hands that's fantastic because it will make our lives easier um how many people and it's okay to raise your hand to this one have never actually used a computer before there's no shame in this okay that's fantastic this course will be designed to accommodate both the most novice of users I.E people who have not even seen or touched a computer before as well as for the more intermediate users people who use computers work people who use computers at home before we proceed has everyone picked up the four handouts from today if not just at some point grab them from the white table in the back of the room and we will discuss exactly what these handouts are for later okay out of those of you that have used or have computers at home how many of you have not used the internet before okay very interesting this is actually pretty much on par with what statistics say in the United States for instance our answer to the trivia question for today um does anyone have a ballpark figure they'd like to toss out 10 million it's in the right range of numbers but it's actually higher in the back not that high not that High um it's in the millions you are certainly not expected to know this already so guesses are encouraged 10 million's too low five billion too high 100 million 100 a little too high that's pretty close as of mid 198 mid 1998 it was at 60 million now that was up from 45 million internetworks computers only some six months before that so you can only imagine what the numbers are like now and what the numbers will be like come the year 2000 this course is purely an introduction it is a survey course on the internet and on personal computers what we're going to do today is cover some of the administrative um information for the course what are we going to expect of you what are you going to have to do for this course um what are we going to learn in this course and then the latter half of the course today what we're going to do is go ahead and proceed with a discussion and an exploration of what the internet is day one we will Define for you and explain what exactly this worldwide web what this email system you've been using at work or home actually is before we begin though are there any questions ad administrative topical anything goes okay yes no no I as of now I have no intentions to that was purely sensationalistic for today um okay let me preface everything we are going to do in this course by saying in this classroom there is never a dumb question because frankly there's no more introductory course that you could take than computer science E1 here at the extension school so please please if nothing else throughout this semester never feel intimidated in asking a question of either me or or of your teaching fellows please we invite any and all questions what exactly are we going to be doing in this course well as you see on page one of your syllabus we have a few expectations of students and again if you haven't picked up a syllabus yet all the handouts are in the back of the room um please at any point if you cannot see things on the screen cannot hear me talking cannot hear um non Mission Impossible music coming out of the computer please just raise your hand and we will address the issue as you see at the top of the expectations list um weekly lectures plain and simple you're already here already so you're all doing very well in the course thus far um we will be here every Tuesday with a couple of exceptions that are noted on the syllabus from 5:30 until 7:30 um lectures will begin 5 minutes after after 5:30 um and we will conclude at 7:30 on the nose um between lectures what we will essentially do each week is have a five to 10 minute break roughly in the middle so that you can go grab something to eat can uh take a break from listening to me expectations furthermore weekly sections um you're probably familiar with the idea of sections from past schooling or from other extension School courses sections are going to work as follows we have three outstanding TFS already hired for this course that will each week lead a group of 10 to 30 of you in a Hands-On section in one of the computer classrooms in Harvard's computer labs and it's at these sections that you'll actually take away practical and hands-on experience with the topics and with the issues that we talk about in lectures it is crucial that in addition to attending these weekly lectures that you do attend section because sections will prove most entertaining as well as most valuable and I think you will get a great experience out of actually working with the machines because it's my philosophy that people tend to learn better by doing rather than learning solely by listening to someone else homework assignments PL and simple there will be 11 of them if you take a look at today's assignment one the internet part one I trust you will find this assignment rather straightforward and rather easy um however the first few questions of it will require that you do the reading due next week um which is notated on the syllabus um granted some of the future assignments will become progressively more difficult although I do not think you will find any of the tests any of the assignments in this course to be particularly difficult if you do your reading if you attend lectures and attend sections you will do well in this course and that is my promise to you so in addition to doing well you will take away a vast stronghold of knowledge two-hourly exams they will be 60 minutes each they will occur roughly halfway through the semester and at the close of the semester you know obviously that lectures are going to be two hours each week so what we're going to do after each of the midterms each of these hourly exams is we're going to treat you to two guest lectures one of which which is going to be most likely um subject to his schedule a fellow from the software industry who's currently working with his own company on developing voice recognition software um is this a term that's familiar to people okay could someone just raise your hand and tell us what is voice recognition software though we won't spend too much time on this but exactly it takes your spoken words words a computer that is and then does something in response to them so for instance this fellow that we're going to have come speak with us develops software whereby I can speak to my computer and say dear Mom and on the screen will appear the words dear Mom without my ever having touched the keyboard after the second hourly midterm we will have most likely some fellows from the information technology industry joining us um from their own web consulting company this is going to be a company that produces websites commercially for companies and I think you'll um find it very interesting exactly the steps that go into that sort of development and also what it's like to actually be in the IT industry nowadays finally a final project um this will be and what I think is the most enjoyable part of the course and most fulfilling is the creation of your own website on the internet we will teach you how to create web pages we will teach you how to put those web pages on the internet so that at this course's conclusion you can write home um and tell your parents that you just created your first web page and you can go visit them or they can go visit it rather on the internet from anywhere in the world you will learn HTML which is hypertext markup language which is the programming language so to speak with which you create web pages so I trust you will find that very exhilarating to finally see something of yours um on the air so to speak internationally accessible learning a lot having fun those are pretty much given expectations for this course grad as you notice above here 40% of your grade will be determined by homework assignments um this is for the reason that it's with homework assignments that you will take the most knowledge away from this course I do not intend for these homework assignments to test your knowledge of what I have said in class or of what your TFS have said in section but rather to solidify what you have already learned in lecture what you have already learned in section so I think you will find each of them to be enjoyable in their own way um and they will not be simply cut and dry questions about what did we talk about last week they will be much more interesting than that um more on that later uh ourly exam one and two in your final project will all be equally weighted at 20% of your grade participation is not factored into your grade in this course and this is a philosophical decision of mine I take it upon myself to be the one responsible for eliciting conversations from you in both lectures and with your TFS in section I want this course to be a course where you can speak up at any time answer a question ask a question make a comment by raising your hand and please do not feel hindered by the size of this course or by the subject matter to ever feel um disinclined to participate I in particular do invite that and take that on as my responsibility to get you to participate not yours books how many people have gone to the coupe already or elsewhere to pick up the books for this course okay has did anyone run into any problems with securing them there are which one is that okay okay they're out of one no let me touch on that right now um as you know uh sitting in front of me here I have seven books I certainly do not expect you to go out and spend hard-earned money on seven textbooks which will run um several hundred dollars instead we have three required books for this course namely the complete idiots guide to creating an HTML for web page Page information technology the breaking wave and all of these are listed on your syllabus in detail and how the internet works quick overview of what these books are going to be all about for us information technology this is essentially going to be the general textbook for the course this book touches on everything and it touches on everything well um you'll notice in doing your first homework assignment that all of the pages are laid out in um two-page spreads so that essentially this book limits topics to a single piece of paper that you can look at all at once so I think you'll find it an easy read but I also think you'll find it a valuable read how the internet works this book I love it is replete with pictures and arrows and very short descriptions of how the internet works and I think you will really get a sense particularly with the colorful Graphics Etc of what the internet is all about we will use this essentially to bolster all of our discussions of the internet both at the beginning of the semester and then later at the end and finally the risk of insulting my audience this semester I selected the complete idiots guide to HTML as I mentioned but I do think you will find this a fantastic book for the very reason that it really holds your hand through the process of creating a web page we will walk you through this book in section and during the latter portion of this course we will create as I said your own web pages on the internet and we will follow the directions essentially outlined in this book for the reason that once you go home home or once you come back to the computer labs on weekdays or weekends um you actually have the same reference with you you have the same teacher in hand so to speak you'll notice that there's a CD in the back this contains files computer files containing all of the examples used in the book which I think you'll find a valuable resource because you no longer will have to stare at a page for half an hour only to type in Verbatim what that page is telling you to do you can just copy it over to your personal computer or to whatever computer you happen to to be using are there any questions on these three required books for the course yes Grossman Library um as you're probably referring to my reference on the syllabus that all of these books um required and recommended books alike will be on reserve in Gman Library it is on in the second or third floor of sver Hall um sver Hall is one of the Harvard College buildings in Harvard Yard and pretty much you can ask anyone in the yard which building it is if you're facing Memorial Church um as an aside though it is going to be to your right you cannot miss it um let me point that out now um these books are all on reserve so that if you would rather not um shell out the money for any of the books even the required books that's fine with me so long as you do the readings by going to the library for instance that's perfectly acceptable um recommended books these are essentially books I like and books that I think you will find helpful um let me jump to the how Computer Works book this book just like the how the internet book how the internet works book is a fantastic introduction to computer hardware this book covers everything from what a bit what a bite is what a CPU is what a hard drive is all the way down to how a joystick Works how your printer Works how um an Ethernet Network and accelerated gaming Graphics work on PC Computers um it's recommended for the reason that we're only going to draw on Snippets of the information in this book so you do not have to go out and buy these recommend books if you'd like to look at them in the library um all the better you'll find them helpful um but do not feel that you have to spend the money on these recommended books how Max work is essentially the Macintosh counterpart to this other book um I put this on reserve in grman and on the shelves at the Coupe for those of you that are principally Mac oriented users already can actually have the material taught to you from a Macintosh perspective um I would not go out and buy both of these books because you will find a lot of redundancy if you buy them at all finally the latter two books um HTML uh for the worldwide web the visual quick start guide this I essentially see as an intermediate book come the end of the semester once you've been introduced to HTML in both section and by the complete idiots guide um you might want to pick up a book like this or this book in particular to take things to the next level um it's much more of a reference book than it is a hold your hands walk you through the process kind of book finally HTML the definitive guide this is essentially your intermediate to Advanced web designers book it's a great reference book but it's only that this book will not teach you HTML and this is the one they're out of okay that's actually fine because we won't get to HTML until the latter third of the course so they should presumably have the book in by then okay any questions on the books for this course okay and again all of the information we just talked about is listed on your syllabus question what kind of okay that's a great segue sections for this course um we will be teaching sections on both MacIntosh and on PC Computers I.E computers running Windows um however everything that we do in this course has been purposefully designed to be platform independent that is nothing we're going to teach you is specific to the Macintosh OS nothing that we teach you is specific to Windows 95 98 andt we were sent going to be using software that is exists on both Computing platforms that you can use at home on your Mac or at home on your PC that is intentional because we do not want people to feel strapped by this course on Having learned a platform specific um sort of material we will use then Macs in some of the sections PCS in some of the sections it will work on both the CD in the books should work on both it is supposed to it is told to me yes um sections let me ask the TFS to stand up for just one moment um as I mentioned before we're going to be offering sections um in which you'll have 10 to 30 students these are your TFS for the semester Megan Henry who is the head TF for this course Matt Fugi and John Han up on the stairs of the other two TFS these fellas were hired for the very reason that they are experts there is no question they promise me that will stump them and if you do have happen to come across such a question well please let me know and we'll have an TF meeting um in any case you will be meeting with these folks with one of these folks um every week in section for two hours um in both a teaching classroom somewhere upstairs in the science center as well as in the Computing classroom and as I mentioned on the syllabus the design of the sections is as follows the intention of these sections is to one review material that you may have found confusing in lecture um to talk about topics that we might not have gotten to in lecture and on the flip side the purpose of these sections is to give you as I said before this hands-on experience with using computers um it is in section that you will learn how to make your own web page it is in section that you will dissect a computer and look inside and see how it functions um I think you will find sections to be a lot of fun but obviously very valuable as well about halfway just one second just about halfway through today's lecture what we're going to do is take a break as I mentioned before and during that break we're going to do sectioning and by that I mean we're going to pass around these sectioning forms um and have you sign up for specific sections and we will do our best to accommodate your preferences we will be offering sections on uh Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays um from either 5:30 p.m. um to 7:30 or 7:30 to 9:30 but more on that once we hit the break okay administratively that's essentially all I wanted to cover are there questions about what we expect from you about what you'll have to do in this course anything at all okay fantastic okay what exactly are we going to do in this course um we are essentially going to do what I think everyone is here to learn we're going to teach you more about computers we're going to teach you more about the internet because as the hands um show showed earlier I think a lot of you um but not all do have some experience if not with just computers um with computers and the internet as well um so what you will take away from this course is an understanding of you what's exactly going on when you send this email to your mother or what's exactly going on when you type in www.cnn.com what's going on behind the scenes um but let me see exactly where everyone is that what if you could R raise your hand to this what are you hoping to get out of this course if there is one question that you could ask of me right now what would you want to get out of this course anything at all why why are you sitting where you are now okay fantastic the gentleman behind Okay terrific other intentions what's the best Internet stock to buy okay so you want me to make you money okay um but that's good other other intentions what do you hope to get out of this course why did you fill out the registration form in the back okay that's terrific it is exactly my goal to satisfy each and every one of the things although maybe not the internet stocks goal um in this course the way I see this course working is as follows what I hope you will get out of this course is as I said a general understanding of computers and the internet but to the extent that you will be able to hold your own in a conversation with say that guy from the engineering division of your company when you're bump into someone at the water cooler at work or at school or whatever you'll actually know what they're talking about when they mention oh I just got into this cool website last night or hey have you heard about the new problems with HTTP or hey I just learned HTML last night um those kinds of things which to you now hopefully um since you're sitting in this course already sounds like jargon sounds confusing I mean you probably couldn't tell me the answers to those sorts of questions or chime in in a conversation on those topics my goal at the end of this semester is to empower you to have those sorts of conversations um also I suspect a lot of you out there um face the following scenario a lot you're working on your computer or at home or at work and everything's fine you know exactly where everything is you know exactly how to do what you want to do but as soon as say the nephew and the niece come over and they play some games on your computer or the fellow from work decides to play around and install some new cool software in your computer computer you come back the next day and something's different I can't find the software I can't open my document I suspect this is a sort of emotion that people have felt before you can use your computer so long as no one else touches anything you are fine I mean is this a general sense among the crowd okay what we all of us intend to do is to make you more comfortable sitting in front of your own computer so that if so that if the niece or nephew screws up your computer with some hot um fangled new game you know how to fix it you you still know where your word processor is you still know where your resume or your important tax documents are we expect to give you uh additional Comfort to the computer also as I alluded to before we are going to open up and dissect a computer in this course we will literally gut a computer pass its parts around talk about what exactly each of those parts are used for within the Beast itself um so by the course's end not only will you have a general understanding of how a computer works you also we hope be more comfortable with opening up your own computer installing your own memory getting a sound card getting um a new video card for your computer now it's all right if these terms that I'm tossing out now aren't familiar to you because that we will cover them over the course of this semester but you should expect to be much more comfortable with actually opening that lid and you know fixing what someone else is going to charge you 50 or 100 bucks just to install a little chip into the computer um with a little additional effort you'll be able to do that sort of thing yourself um certainly you will be able to make your own web page by the course's end but in the in addition along the lines of uh being able to carry on conversations with people on relatively technical topics what we're also going to introduce you to is the information technology um media um the periodical that you see on the shelves PC Magazine PC World Mac World Windows magazine Yahoo magazine all of these sorts of magazines that you've probably seen in Borders or at the news stand before but have never really felt comfortable picking up because you know there's probably a lot of words a lot of articles in there that you really have no idea how to understand so again what we're going to do in this course is Empower you to you know go pay the 395 for the Yahoo or the PC Magazine magazine so that you can pick it up turn to any page and know and finally have a clue what they are talking about in those pages I mean those are my goals and if we do not succeed in those goals I feel that that will be my failure so I take the full burden of responsibility for getting these um skills into your hands are there any questions now okay specifically what I'd like to do for the next 10 or so minutes is just touch on exactly what we're going to learn in this course you've seen the synopsis both in the course catalog and in the on the first page of the syllabus the internet worldwide web Java HTML browsers search engines news readers email isps modems microprocessors Ram cache what is it all about we have essentially talked about what we will get out of this course but specifically now what kind of information are you going to feel comfortable talking about and feel comfortable reading about in a couple of weeks time well in the latter half of today what we're going to talk about is one of the most fundamental topics in Computing today what's a client and what's a server and why do we care what they are and also we're going to touch on two of the most popular and important services offered by the so-called internet whatever that may be um particularly email and the worldwide web next week we're going to continue our discussion of the internet and learn more about the internet we're going to go over what FTP is what list serves are what usnet news groups are these are terms you might have heard or uh glimpsed In Articles or whatnot we're actually going to tell you okay well how do you get on to these uset news groups how do you participate in these list serve mailing lists URLs FTP searching how do you find what you want to find on the worldwide web well in section in a couple of weeks time well we're going to show you some more effective search techniques so that surfing the web does not take you two to three um wasted hours you can actually get in and get out and within 20 minutes have that piece of information that you wanted right away file types downloading netiquette now this is kind of an interesting term and before we proceed let me just see if anyone has a sense of what netiquette actually is it's not a typo it's not supposed to be etiquette yeah it essentially refers to the uh the social conventions so to speak that have developed in cyberspace so to speak um this includes if you take a look at um emoticons which is the fifth item um on your definitions for today you've probably seen something like this already in either the media or in emails addressed to you the ever popular what is this it's a smiley face why is it written like this well in computer on your computer keyboard you can't put characters one at top the other like that you have to adjust accordingly to what the keyboard can offer you so this is developed into the world famous smiley face you've probably also seen the sad face there's also the devil face and many many many more way more than there really should be nowadays um but we'll show you exactly how to use these emoticons um social conventions as well what is implied if I write something like this on the board or suppose rather that I'm writing an email to my mother and I start the email with uh email to my mother like this there's something interesting or notable about the way in which I've written the start of this email does anyone notice what is special here exactly this is an example of what netiquette is net etiquette by writing in all caps it's um become understood that you are shouting at your person I okay I might have given it away by using this exclamation point but the fact that the beginning of the sentence is all caps means that I'm not saying mom how could you pick me up at the end of this week from soccer camp you're saying mom how could you and that's the implication of writing in all caps on the internet and these are the little intricacies of the internet that you won't really find in uh the manual on how to use the internet these are essentially things that people human beings have developed just because over time so we're going to introduce you to those things specifically and to much much more so that you don't walk away from this course having offended everyone that you emailed during the semester the week after we're going to conclude our discussion of the internet um how does the internet work physically this is the stuff that I find particularly interesting because we can talk about using the web we can talk about emailing our friends and family but how is the email getting there how am I getting this web page from Japan onto my computer in Cambridge Massachusetts well we're going to talk about things like lands which are local area networks WS which are wide area networks essentially bigger networks of computers DNS IP addresses host names terms which you may or may not have heard before but in two weeks time you will have heard of them backbones isps ethernet routers modems firewalls all of these terms refer to physical or conceptual um ideas that play a very important role in how the internet works today so by week three of this course course my promise to you is that you will be able to explain um to your spouse your family your friends or co-workers exactly what the internet is what you can do on the internet and how the internet works so in three weeks time you will have a strong understanding of what the internet is and also how to explain what it is and how it works to someone else in four weeks time we're going to Embark onto an adventure this is the stuff I like most about computers is the physical computers themselves how does a computer work when you throw on the power switch I mean my God how does the computer know that it's supposed to load up the Windows 95 splash screen and then put your green desktop and then put your my computer over here and your recycling bin or your trash can and your hard drive and apple menu on the screen there's a lot of effort involved behind the scenes there and we're actually going to rip open the top of a computer and gut it and show you well how did those pictures get there when you save a document on your computer well where is it being saved uh if you're not printing it out how could you possibly save something that looks like this a 10-page document in a machine that looks like that we'll show you what's going on there um bits bites buses CPUs Ram ROM Etc these are all terms you've probably heard about before but we're actually going to get our hands dirty and take a look at what they physically are um more about computer hardware floppy discs hard driv CD ROM DVD etc etc we are going to cover anything in everything related to computer hardware so that when you pick up that magazine or the periodical advertis ing uh computers for sale parts for sale well you're going to know that oh well I would get a hard drive because I need more space in my computer or I would get more RAM for my computer because it's being very slow right now we are going to empower you to go into a computer store and with your wallet in hand go around to shelves and pick out exactly what you need in fact one of the assignments is going to be and you will have several weeks time to do this to go spend some virtual dollars that I will give you on paper and you will go to Micro Center or go to Comp USA and within the constraints of a budget imposed by me and the TFS we'll have to purchase so to speak a computer according to certain specifications certain types of software all the while remaining within your budget so that you as a student but playing the role of a consumer have to debate well I could get more RAM more memory for my computer but then I really can't afford that really nice um Graphics design program Adobe Photoshop that would take advantage of that Ram so we're going to make you think about the very issues that people like myself and the TFS often think about when we go out and buy computer hardware for ourselves so by the course's end you will not feel intimidated by those salesmen well you might still feel intimidated by the salesman at compa but you will not feel intimidated by the flyers in the newspaper or the price tags on the shelves we then conclude our discussion of hardware and talk about computer software um now software you can kind of cheat by looking at the board but consider someone give me a definition not using the words on the board of what computer software is Hardware is kind of a given it's you know the physical stuff that piece of Machinery over there is Hardware computer hardware but what's software yeah exactly programs the stuff that you can put into a computer the data so to speak once you do the assignment um for the next couple of weeks in this book Information Technology you'll come across a very very good and uh kind of cute definition of what hardware and software is this author defines Hardware as anything you can kick about a computer anything you can't kick is software so think about that and when you read the book that'll make even more sense we'll talk about operating systems the Mac OS Unix Windows terms you've heard before if not used before user interfaces guies and cbii um acronyms you may have heard of before guey let me just random trivia does anyone know what gooey stands for back here exactly and what does that mean though okay what you see on the screen graphical user interface contrast that if you're familiar with Doss with the character inter character-based interface that dos is whereby you can only run programs only do things to the computer by typing at the keyboard no mouse No pointing and clicking no dragging no windows um downloading software will show you how to go out on the internet and download software for your computer and then we'll conclude a week later with more about computer software with the types of software out there um word processors desktop publishing databases some more fun issues like software license licensing why can I not go out and buy Microsoft Word for myself albeit with a price tag of $500 and give it to all of my friends I mean physically there's nothing stopping me I just put the CD in the drive hit install and it installs and the program works but what are the legal constraints behind what you can actually do with software and why does it exist and then a particularly timely issue Y2K what does that stand for year 2000 uh I you'd be hardpressed not to know what that term is nowadays but we'll talk about what it actually is I'm sure you all know that the Y2K problem is a big deal come the year 2000 but why how did we screw up how did the government and companies and programmers in the past years create this problem for us by 16 March you will actually understand what this problem is and why it's so difficult and so expensive to fix and then everybody's favorite we take a break for a week and I test you hourly exam number one as I mentioned it will be 60 minutes and we be followed by a very exciting guest lecture and then we'll really take a break a spring break and you will have no section or lecture this week as is mentioned on the syllabus there this incidentally was essentially my having fun with the presentation software trying to use as many animation uh Graphics as I could April concluding we're going to get into multimedia how do you put sound and Graphics how do you create cool graphics how do you create Graphics that are used on the web well we're going to show you how to do that in section you'll make your own cool personalized graphic a week later we get to the mey stuff HTML now could someone tell me what this means has anyone ever seen that before okay does it look confusing complex could you write that yourself for assignment one like a sorry that's that's the idea of it um more specifically though it's HTML this is the stuff that makes up web pages I will show you once we're done with this these slides exactly what the output of this HTML is but I hope this looks confusing right now and I hope it looks difficult because you will be quite surprised on April 13th to learn that this stuff is not that difficult to do the web pages that you've BR been browsing at home and at work are made up yes of very esoteric information and tags and text as they're called um but by April uh 13th you'll be writing that stuff yourself you'll have assignments where you're writing that stuff and I promise it's not as hard or as confusing as it may look on first glance we will then continue for a week talking about cool stuff in HTML how do you add images animations sounds how do you put tables and um how do you format web pages in a cool way and then finally we get to programming you'll continue at this point working on HTML and working on your final projects in the sections but we're going to proceed in lecture with other topics for the um for the following reason you will find that particularly with HTML you will learn best by doing not by hearing so what's going to happen is I'm really not going to teach you HTML I'm going to teach you some of the concepts behind it some of the the things to watch out for but it's going to be up to your TFS to actually show you how to write that kind of stuff how to program in that fashion because with them you will be sitting in front of a computer typing things as you're being taught and I think you will find that a particularly effective way to learn this programming language um programming though in lecture viruses what's a virus why are they so bad who writes them Java JavaScript methodologies object-oriented programming terms which you've probably heard before but presumably have no clue really what they mean and then we'll get to an intersection between HTML and programming you perhaps heard of amazon.com um other sites that you can buy stuff with well amazon.com has something albeit more complicated but something that um is reminiscent of this HTML here I mean they've got to create for you a user interface so someone has created a web page with that kind of code to allow you to buy books but there's also more stuff involved there there are programs that people have coded programmers have created for amazon.com so that they can accept your credit card and can build your credit cards can send the the appropriate number of books to your home we're going to talk about that week cookies cookies are a term you might have heard of before but what are they really about how do they get on your computer we're going to talk about how websites track who you are how they remember when you go back to amazon.com what's in your shopping basket so to speak parental controls cryptography all very timely issues and then we take another break hourly exam number two and then finally the course will wrap up essentially with an overview of what are the implications of all this stuff that we've been learning what's the point of all of it and I trust by then you will be able to certainly carry on your own conversations with people about it information but you'll also feel more comfortable yourself using your computer shopping for a computer fixing your computer now with that said that is Our intention for this course that is the play byplay for week to week does anyone have any questions excitement disappointments about what we're going to be talking about in this course I essentially hope to touch on anything and everything that you might actually find practical because more than making this an academic course so to speak um it will be a practical course you will take away tangible skills and practical Knowledge from this course ultimately are there any questions about that no okay some of you are probably a little uncomfortable still using Macs using PCS and as you may have noticed on the syllabus sections are going to start next week we're going to throw you in front of mac and or PCS starting next week so how are we going to help you through this well certainly in sections we will never assume that you know how to do something if we haven't showed it to you before sections do not suppose that you know what you're doing Our intention is to teach you during sections how to do what you're supposed to be doing but to help you out what we've decided to offer on various Saturdays during the month of February are optional workshops will you learn what an apple menu is how do you print how do you format a disk uh what's in the a drive what's the C drive how do you copy and paste essentially we're going to teach you in these optional workshops platform specific skills I.E skills that will help you use Macs or help you use PCS but these are going to be skills that will serve you throughout the semester and that's why we're offering them so soon these are skills so that you know come time to make your own web pages well you already know how to copy paste you already know how to copy part of your web page from here and just paste it over there we're going to give you these basic skills so sometime either next week in lecture or in your sections next week we will um announce when these uh optional workshops will be offered there'll be two hours though one and a half to two hours in length they'll be offered on various Saturdays throughout the month of February and they will be tailored specifically to Mac or and PC platforms you'll be welcome to attend one of them say a Mac one or both of them a Mac and a PC one Etc they are purely optional however and they are intended to help you through this course okay are there any questions okay yes in the back it is posted on the internet um if you take a okay okay how long ago did you look though okay okay the short answer to it is that it has been up for a couple of months it's possible that the extension school had their link broken from the course catalog um what I can reassure you that it is that it has been there and if you turn to page two this is something I was going to touch on later there is a course website as this student just mentioned and I'll show you exactly why that's going to prove helpful for us later um but it does contain among other things electronic versions I.E versions of these documents anything we hand out in hand in lecture or sections on the web so that if you happen to miss a lecture or happen to miss a section for personal reasons you can always be sure to go online and get those documents for yourself um second sections uh any other questions before we proceed yes sure the question is um could I talk for a moment about how we can how you can utilize your computers at home for this course well everything that we do in section as I said will be platform independent which means that even if you're being taught in section on a Mac you'll be able to do the exact same things at home maybe just with differently named software W on your PC um essentially we'll be using the web in section we'll be using a program called Microsoft Word which you're probably already familiar with which is a word processor a typewriter type program Adobe Photoshop which is a graphics program but for the most part we're going to be using programs uh we're going to be using Netscape and we're going to be using a program called telnet which will allow you to access the Harvard email system at home you will be able to email your cour head um or your TFS rather or communicate with other students you will be able to work on your web page at home um provided you have an internet connection you'll be able to do or practice everything we do in section at home with one or two exceptions will the question is would you need tnet yes but as you'll learn in section the software that this course is going to use for the most part is freely available and you can download for free most of the software we're going to use onto your home computer does that answer your question okay one what what is a computer let me just toss this out right away a computer at its most basic level this is after all introduction to personal computer so let's introduce ourselves anyone what is a computer okay yes oh I'm sorry electronic device okay a typewriter and a calculator put together that's an interesting definition and fairly accurate other comments I mean what what's a computer it allows you to store information exactly other comments on what a computer does the way most people and at least I certainly see computers is that they're intended to be a timesaver if nothing else as you'll learn too when we get to our programming and our HTML lectures we're going to see how logical everything is about the fundamentals of a computer now let me qualify that by saying there's a lot of things about Windows in the Mac OS that aren't quite logical you've probably stumbled across those bugs before um but programming which is the creation of programs software that computers run is something that's very methodical for instance how would I go about writing a program well it depends what what task might I do daily that I could simulate with a computer for instance how about just waking up in the morning and putting on my shoes you could actually write a program for that and tell a computer okay you know wake up in more wake up in the morning go find shoes go find socks put on shoes put on socks now the fascinating things about computers is that they can do things like this albe it not physical things at a much faster rate than human beings can actually do themselves and what you're going to learn about computers is that they Empower us to implement um procedures that by hand might take us a very long time to type something up on a typewriter and fix it would take incessantly long unless we could actually just go back and edit things without retyping documents um so what I would like to do now um is defer further discussion of what computers are um for a later week because what we're going to do with the latter half of this lecture is embark on our tour of what the internet is now before we do that though I'd like to do sectioning for the course um and it looks like we will be fine with our current staffing needs for this course um as of this morning 59 students were registered for this course so what I'd like to do now is go ahead and have everyone sign up for their sections for this course the TFS will go ahead and pass around these forms what you're going to see on the back of this form are two lines one of which asks you for your name the other of which asks you for your email address if any and at the bottom of the sheet what you'll see is three boxes specifically we're offering sections on Tuesday nights 5:30 to 7:30 Wednesday nights 7:30 to 9:30 and Thursdays 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. now I can cannot stress enough that this course is intentionally designed to be platform independent it won't matter if you're in a Mac section or if you're in a PC section so do not just one moment do not do not choose your section preferences based on what kind of computers you use at home rather choose them on the basis of what time and what day works best for you now you'll notice there is a Tuesday section from 7:30 to 9:30 um I know a lot of you may commute or may only be able to take one evening out of your days out of curiosity how many people here are from New Hampshire anyone okay people from Vermont Connecticut this is actually very interesting because last semester when this course was taught there were a number of people from Connecticut New Hampshire and Vermont is anyone here not living in Massachusetts okay all the better but that doesn't mean you don't have a commute what we're offering intentionally on Tuesdays after lecture from 7:30 to 9:30 is one of the sections and this is intentionally offered for those of you that don't want to have to Trek to Harvard's campus twice a week you can stay here I'll be it for 4 hours but I promise you that sections and lectures will certainly um serve to keep you awake during that time but um bear in mind that that option is available to you okay so let's go ahead and do this I'll walk around and answer any questions once you're done filling out the forms please pass them to my right to your left over here and leave them on the floor for the TFS to pick up and let's come back here at 6 uh 40 and we'll continue our discussion and embark on it uh on the internet I don't know I got Che home can I email you tomorrow sure that's fine certainly what's that did you okay just one you're we're at 85 let me take a quick survey actually could if you could stop filling out the forms because I don't want to cause you unnecessary work um how many people here are definitely taking this course how many people have decided that as of now okay and how many people are on the fence or are pretty sure they're not going to take the course okay I apologize for the confusion but what I want to do on the basis of numbers now is give you a different form it's the same idea but based on those hand raises what I want to do is offer a fourth section for this course um one moment please though okay we're at 89 we're at how many did you count I think she said 85 85 yeah you want to have them just write in yeah write in the other section write 87 we can only do 75 let's do only all right let's do this okay we apologize for the confusion we just don't want to have to do this again next week um if you could do the following what we're going to do is stick with these forms but if you have any interest in the following section please just make note of it um and the the additional section that we are going to offer is on Thursday from 7:30 to 9:30 um you don't have to rank that as one of your preferences but in the event that we have to hire a 4th TF for this course what we want to do is allow the Overflow to go into this section so if that could work for you or if you'd like that section please just make note of that on your sheet for now now we'll leave you alone to fill out these forms yeah yeah it's could be tight but there will be drops right that's yeah worst case we'll deal with it later but it's if it's 85 and there were about six or seven hands that weren't up which could probably with this because otherwise we're going to have to move people out of a section how do you think people are doing it's a quiet audience yeah good though is it is it are you being serious okay being serious you never know well you're already hired so you don't have to prove anything right okay this is the sectioning is always tricky if we had 100 I'd pass out the other forms but 85 is yeah just a reminder when you are done with the forms you're welcome to to walk around take a break use the restrooms in the basement just be sure to be back here at 6:40 and we'll proceed yeah I asked the people to put them on the floor and remember to just leave the forms to your left at the end of the aisle on the floor see to another email account if like we have one already through Harvard I work for Harvard so is it a fast account or is it a different address what's the address of the account your current account Jason harvard.edu yeah do go ahead and get the fast account because otherwise you're not going to be able to do the same steps that the other students are doing so just follow whatever steps on that sheet as getting yeah and I'll go over that later before we leave but yeah hi hi um my question is because because uh my native language is not English okay and I assigned for the course today okay I don't know if it's possible or not to take the court I just wanted to ask this in terms of the a language barrier do you mean or we had I had a couple of students in the class last semester who didn't speak great English and they did all right um because I my score from the placement test is 66 okay I want to make a management course so I'm taking I want to take this one okay I would say do stick with the course because I think it'd be a shame if you deferred it only for language reasons um I mean you certainly seem to be speaking on a good enough level that um you're right now I think I understood everything okay that's good I don't think um I mean fortunately a lot of the terms we're going to discuss in this course are defined in English no matter the language you speak um but why don't you do this if you ever feel you're having trouble speak with either me or um first and foremost speak with your TF um whoever that ends up being just so that they can be aware of just the problems you're having just understanding perhaps um I don't think it'll prove a dehab um uh Factor but let us know though if you're having trouble and we will help you out okay very okay great hi I have a friend who's also a degree candidate here who took this course last semester okay who um said that despite the fact that you claim that it's platform independent that it was incredibly an incredibly big headache for him having to do things on a Mac said things are despite the fact that you you know you say their platform there different ways of doing things on a MC and he get like halfway through something and he can stuck on something and it would be an enormous problem for him so I want to know in an age when Bill Gates basically has the entire Market sewn up and like anyone who buys Mac is basically stupid and should be shot why we have to do these things on Mac two issues one is it is easier to teach on Max for people who have never used computers before or we're all going to be using the the twofold and the more uh significant reason is because of space limitations um okay so even for $1,200 we don't Merit Harvard does not have an incredible um Computing facility right now so we are only able to use what they can schedule us for okay well I due to a school schedule I can only do one of these sections okay going to be a problem no I mean that's a if if you can't make any of the others make sure you put an X through that box okay okay sure I'm sorry for the emphasis um in the sections on the max but it's it's what they could schedule us for okay what time are the um the things going to be offered on Saturdays because I work I only work two ships a week two days aay Saturday but I need to one day okay it it's going to most likely be in the afternoon between 1 and 5: um but speak with your TF next week um about I I know nothing about Max I'm obviously gonna have to learn and I can't AF to take time off right once we we haven't booked the rooms yet for the um the workshops but speak with either me or the TFS next week when we announce the specific times because we're going to have to take it based on availability but if your TF or myself needs to meet with you outside of the workshop I mean that's fine we'll we'll help you out even if it's not within the workshop sure hi I need to use sign oh okay sure I didn't get your name David I'm David yes David last name me okay okay I think have okay let me oh just put them on the end of the steps and the TFS will collect them yep here we go another one shouldn't come today because of FL oh sure sure thank you you're welcome um what I know how you sort you sort of unofficially sort of help people like a gentleman lives in Somerville he's he's sort of has a complicated setup to have people have someone go over and set it up for him like is there anything can we refer people we can't do in room type stuff officially if you or you want to refer someone to do it for outside Consulting that work that's fine but it's not something we can offer for the course yeah that's what I'm I for the course but just yeah so that's okay if we just do it yeah no I mean that's fine all the better yeah if you have the time go for it hi did you have a question or just going to be on Tuesday okay but then talking about Wednesday and Thursday I work I them minutes early I can make ACR the street Unice okay sure is okay if I walk like you know 10 minutes like doesn't really matter well it shouldn't be a huge deal um but certainly you know any minutes you miss could be potentially valuable um if it's only 5 to 10 minutes and that's your preference I would stick with it if we're talking 15 to 20 then I would suggest another section okay so doesn't can choose yeah no do 5 10 minutes I think is reasonable hi were you here first I don't know go ahe okay um this is the ideal for meend okay but I mean I've never used a we don't have one home make any differ no I mean granted it might feel a little difficult at first and but that's natural but the purpose of these workshops that we mentioned and the purpose of having the TFS in the computer labs with you is to walk you through steps so we will not leave anyone behind even if you've never touched a Mac before is well I mean so am I GNA be able essentially We Will We Will instruct people on how to make the leap after a couple of weeks have passed um but essentially it won't be a a large leap because the software we're using as I said will be almost identical on both platforms but um we will walk you through inconsistencies in the software on different platforms if that makes sense so in short don't worry about picking the Mac section because we will help you um bridge the gap between the mac and PC differences and I should still get my I I mean work right you do need and I'm going to touch on this later you do need to have this because otherwise you won't be able to do what we're doing in section so did you you registered your email account okay I have a similar question I I have a Harvard account through work do I need an F account also yeah I'll announce this officially but yes because otherwise you won't be able to log into the computers in the science center because you have to authenticate so it is important okay thanks sure hi from 14 okay to 30 I'll be out of the country okay so you think I can take that test earlier yeah we can talk about that why don't if you could contact me say this week or the week before you leave about changing the date for you that's fine we can work something out we can either do it before you leave or after yeah sure that's fine sure I've used a Mac a little bit I use a PC all day and I think all my computer knowledge is from am I going to find a big adjustment or am I like if I'm practicing or am I right there the knowledge I'm going to intake going to screw me up as far as no Thursday's bad for me okay just I have a long commute um I have a second job and taking another class sure I'm trying to like work and then Tuesday looks like I just want to do a look okay go ahead uh no I don't know how to turn it off um I no don't worry about it because as I was just telling a couple of other students the only differences really between Macs and PCs for the purposes of this course is how you launch the software and what software you launch but once the program's loaded it's going to be identical on both platforms so I wouldn't wor are they going to teach us both though like even though we're learning on a Mac but we still going to learn how to do it on you'll learn mostly on the Mac um but as I said the software is going to exist identically for the most part on PCS so what we will do if anything is at least show you how to get to that point of similarity on the PC platform like we'll show you how to launch the program on a PC to get where to the point where you're already familiar from section so you won't have a these definitely AR going to change like this section's definitely going to be right that will definitely be using Max does the extension school have did they have workshops for registering users yes I'm going to talk about that yeah okay let me in this lecture yep before we leave today talk a little did you have a question yeah oh is it announcing thanks that's you a daytime Constructor no not daytime just evening so this still doesn't qualify as Constructor within the course requirements for those look repr okay I can say that again well there are if you noticed in the instruct I guess oh okay whereas I'm required to take a certain number of harru my re interesting I'm not sure how the red tape works on that I do know that the extension school does treat all of its faculty as quote unquote instructors no matter whether they also teach for the college or if they just work um in the real world um but I would defer to the registar well um I so I can't specifically answer that question but okay sure hi is the C open the coupe can I get these books elsewhere like um you might be able to get them there I haven't checked if they're in stock the coupe is right on the corner um out next to out of town news next to the red line it's probably something reasonable like 9 to 7 or so okay so like after this course they be they might I would check honestly but I don't know off hand I didn't sign up to take this course but I might want to pump inedit later you're probably not the right person ask question right it's doable within a certain deadline um you can switch it I would check with the registar though as to what that deadline is oh okay well do catch me after if you have any other questions good okay let's get started in a minute or so Megan I noticed one fellow had picked up the four box section so just make sure that you noticed that I think he might have grabbed it off the desk oh okay but most people should have this three block one just stick with that and even if we overflow past 25 or 30 just we'll deal with that next week okay great okay okay okay in about 45 minutes the TFS are going to come back and post on the walls the section lists sections as you notice on the syllabus will begin next week I.E next Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday so when we conclude today essentially the list will be posted around this room and just take notice of what section you were assigned to um we will do our best as I said to schedule you for your first choice section um in the event we have to give you your second or third choice and you really are not satisfied with that try to stick it out for a week or so a week or two just to see if things settle down because within a week or two we'll know exactly what the enrollment numbers are going to be for the course and we can probably then shift people from one section to another So within a week or two do just speak with me or with your TF about switching sections if necessary we're not here to tie your hands we do want to accommodate you um but numbers dictate um that we um do it in a reasonable fashion okay the internet what is the internet before I Define it I'd like to get a sense of what you think it is right now now again there are no dumb questions and I don't expect you to know this but what is the internet in your understanding rightly or wrongly okay a set of computers that allows you to access websites was the answer that's on target yes in a broader sense though what is the internet that's that's a much more accurate definition the internet is essentially a network of networked computers now what do I mean by that well essentially consider a simplified scenario of what the internet is suppose this is some office building downtown um and there are several companies in this building all of whom are using desktop computers in their offices all of whose computers are connected by some sorts of wires throughout the building within this company there exists what's called an intranet now this is a term spelled int a net and just like an intrastate Highway which is a road that can only take you within the bounds of Massachusetts for instance an intranet is a network of computer whereby a network of computers is simply computers that are attached by wires plain and simple an internet is a network of computers within some geographical local for instance within an office building now this is essentially an arbitrary definition because buildings can vary in size you could have an internet in your house if you have your laptop connected to your desktop computer well you have an internet um because it is within the bounds of your house so it's kind of an arbitrary distinction Geographic defined but essentially inets are small networks now contrast that with a term called interet now Lo notice the lowercase i here now without my actually defining this for you what do you think internet lowercase i is exactly I consider in your mind the highway example the inate highway example exactly what an internet is lowercase eye is well you have some other office building downtown and another one all of whom have computers I'm just using this x to signify wires in the computer all of whom have their own networks in their computers an internet is when these guys have wires at top their buildings connecting them to other computers thereby creating an internet so internet lowercase eye is simply a network of Networks now let me just pause for a moment and point out that a lot of the definitions that I'm going to be mentioning today are printed on this sheet um because it is my um philosophical opinion that I would rather you listen to things we're saying or participate um in lectures rather than writing down tedious definitions and my writing them down on the board so often times if I gloss over a definition it's because it's printed down for you but internet and intranet all lowercase eyes are not on those sheets so that's why I wanted to give give you this pictorial representation okay so now we have intranet and internet defined what is Internet Capital I that you hear about in the media all too often today we've gotten ideas about it but now can you extend the example we have on the board here and Define for me what Internet Capital I is just continue the train of logic that we've just used for these two definitions exactly connections between networks between networks between networks essentially I mean essentially the in Internet Capital I is the allinclusive definition of what um networks are they're Network the internet is a network of networks of networks of networks of networks Etc and it doesn't end until you get to a network of say two computers or two buildings so the internet is essentially a Global Network of computers now just out of curiosity by what means do you think these computers are linked you can probably guess that within the bounds of a building you have wires physically connecting to computers but how about throughout the world I mean we certainly don't have wires stretching from Massachusetts all the way to Japan underwater so far as I know satellites is one way that the internet is governed I apologize if I transposed the Double T and the Double L um other means we've got wires already microwave dishes are another way now these are essentially um you know platters that buildings have a top of one another for a long time Harvard was actually connected to the internet in the following way all of the campus was physically wired with cabling but that cabling ultimately extended to a big um microwave dish which is essentially like a satellite dish essentially um a top a building called Williams James Hall which is just a very tall building in the corner of Campus that microwave dish was aimed at some building at MIT so that suppose this is Harvard here with their little microwave dish here suppose this is MIT here with their own microwave dish all of Harvard's internet connectivity all of the email that I send from my computer all of the web pages that I pull down to my computer we traveling literally through the air so to speak so the interesting point here is that the internet is not necessarily a physical Network so to speak you don't have to have wires you don't have to have a modem over phone wires even nowadays I mean you can have these data beamed across um satellites or between microwave dishes and there are other means by which computers are connected on the internet but we're going to defer a discussion of those until week three when we actually delve into the terms like routers and firewalls Etc that govern how the internet works physically okay so the Internet Is This Global Network of interconnected computers what's that good for I mean can someone toss out one benefit of what this supposed internet is first thing that comes to mind communication is a good benefit of the internet what else what else is the advantage of having all these things connect conected unlimited information exactly for instance I can go find out about companies in Japan simply by going to the address of that company in um Japan physically with my web browser yes I'm sorry time saving yes for instance email um this is something we'll touch on in a few minutes but email is a means by which you can send messages electronically to other people on the internet the cool thing about email is that when you hit send be it in AOL or on the Harvard email systems in udora whatever email you program you use if any at all right now it's sent at the speed of light email travels at the speed of light as does everything you do on the internet um because of these physical wire and these microwave connections data on the internet travels theoretically speaking at the speed of light practically speaking you know that when you're on your 288 modem at home dialing up to AOL you're not seeing all of aol's buttons at the speed of light certainly but that's because of physical limitations on the speed of phone wires on the speed of your modem the speed of your computer Etc again details that we'll get to more in week three but yes speed of communications exactly other advantages business um many companies now have within their own companies intron Nets but Microsoft for instance huge company that it is has satellite offices in Massachusetts and in North Carolina and in Texas but what they're able to do because of the existence of the internet is pretend that everyone sitting at their computers in Seattle Washington where their main offices are they can participate so to speak in a computer network with their counterparts in Texas and in massachusett and in North Carolina that is they can send email to each other certainly that's a given but you could also sit down at your computer in Seattle Washington go to the file menu go to print and print your document from Seattle Washington and have it show up on someone's printer in Massachusetts Because the Internet exists okay how did the internet get here this is a more interesting question I it's totally rational that companies would want to wire themselves together but where did the internet come from why did anyone bother to create these satellites and it did that was exactly the answer I'm looking for um the military this is an interesting historical fact um but nevertheless still very relevant to the form and function of the internet the internet was established as a means of military communication so that you could have some military base for instance um over here in Connecticut though I don't know why there'd be a military base in Connecticut but it's where I'm from um with a military base say in Texas now even as early as the 1950s and 60s there did exist electronic communication of form um there wasn't the worldwide web back then there wasn't email in the fashionable sense that it exists now but there did exist this means of transferring data across um different computers but what the military's intention was to do was to create a network of computers an internet lowercase eye of computers that would withstand nuclear Devastation that would withstand Wars that would withstand um disruption of services now what do I mean by that well rather than just wiring their Connecticut base to their Texas base they wired their Connecticut base and their Texas base to California as well um and to other parts of the country so essentially if all of these red dots Michigan and whatnot signify different military bases what they did rather than connect these bases point to point with wires like this what they did rather than do this was actually create cross wirings a sort of web of wiring so that not only could you go from California to Texas you could also reach computers over a network that goes straight to Massachusetts so essentially they created a web of wiring Etc so that even if some foreign country or some domestic terrorist detonated whatever kind of bomb orle weapon Etc in say the Texas area and knocked out this whole military base well their intram military Communications would not be severed because they could just reroute their data and send all of their email or all their top secret documents or whatever it may be rather than this way here they could send it from here here here here here here whoops oh no there's a line and go straight to Connecticut so the purpose of the military the aim of the military rather was to create a network that was indestructible even if you took out one node the Beast would continue to survive so to speak this original internet was called arpanet which is a term that is mentioned on your sheet of definitions does that make sense though the whole design of the internet why it exists in that fashion still wires so to speak I mean nowadays there's much more um non-physical connections I mean now you do have satellites and microwaves Etc ET the idea though essentially was that rather than create One path from a point x to point Y you would create a point from point x to Y and also x zy x a y Etc now I mentioned the term web before and I only mention it a web because it's kind of like a spiders web every point is connected to every other point um do not confuse that with the term worldwide web exactly which is something we'll get to in a couple of minutes but are there any questions on the origins of the physical internet itself this is why it was created it then became you it began it then became used by universities and academic institutions for the purpose of Distributing work back and forth between professors and whatnot um and nowadays as you all probably know it's been very much commercialized and brought into the mainstream life um by putting commercial websites on by putting personal homepages on the web etc etc it's much more of a mainstream institution but the important thing to remember is that the internet did not just surface in say 1992 or 1994 the internet has been around for some 30 or 40 years it's just we um average people just never really heard about it or were're never given access to it okay there any questions on just what the internet is okay well we know what the internet is then I um presumably what kind of services does it provide us with I mentioned email earlier but before we go into email I want to mention one other service which is the web the worldwide web now what is the worldwide web as far as you know it today without my saying anything further it's the internet um no but for let me follow up with that in a moment um but you'll see why it's so easily equated with the internet other comments what is the web specifically what do you know about it when I say worldwide web what words what phrases come to mind sorry websites okay um what's the purpose of a website or what does a website do I mean it allows you to access information on a computer essentially what the web is is one interface to the internet because what you have to remember is that the internet is something physical it is a network of networks of computers now that in and of itself is not helpful who cares if computers are connected to each other what's important what's beneficial about the internet is that it provides the world with Services one of which is the worldwide web so it's important right now from off the bat to distinguish between internet and the worldwide web the worldwide web is a service of the internet it is not the internet per se okay now the worldwide web we've heard terms like web sites and web pages but what what exactly is that well let's take a look this is a nice segue into something I mentioned before which is the course website um can everyone see the screen up here all right at this size okay I won't point to too many specifics on the site now because it's not as important that we go over the site in detail but what you see in front of you here is a website and to access a website what do you need what piece of information do you need to what piece of information do you need before you can access a website an address and an address is typically of what form could someone just give me any old example of what a web address is Harvard okay let's do Harvard www. harvard.edu that is a web address if I go to that address so to speak with my web browser where a web browser is the popular Netscape or Internet Explorer which even if you haven't used them before you've probably heard the terms before you use a piece of computer software and say I want to go to this address please take me there now if we go suppose now this is the address of this course website if I type in this address up here and actually let's do this if I type in www.h harvard.edu can you you might not see it very well but what I've just done is typed it up here and if I then hit enter this web browser internet explorer which I'm running here is a piece of software that just took me to Harvard University's website Harvard University's presence so to speak on the worldwide web now a lot of you are probably familiar with something like this so I don't want to go into too many details about what the worldwide web is per se because in the next two weeks in section you're actually going to get hands-on experience with the web so rather than bore you with my of how the web Works how you use it Etc I want to leave that to your TFS so that you can actually follow along with them in front of a computer with the exercise we we're going to do among which will be searching effectively shopping online useful skills we're not just going to wander aimlessly for two hours in section I promise but let me go back for a moment and just point out the course website as you notice on page two of your syllabus there is a web address listed there and it is www.c courses. fast. harvard.edu ETC it's at the top it's the second paragraph on page two of 10 on the syllabus and that's something that I'd like you to take a look at as soon as you get a chance this is for those among you that have already had experience with the web and with computers please do not let my generalizations to the crowd tonight as in asking you to go to this website do this and such and such don't let my comments today intimidate you if you are a new computer user or new um internet user that's fine I am all the more glad to accommodate you um at the very basic level but for today I just want to be able to assume that a lot of you know how to use the web so I want to invite you to look at the web page if you don't know how to do that fine ignore what I just said and we'll teach you within the next couple of weeks but this web address if you type it into Netscape or Internet Explorer is going to take you to this web page now this web page is actually going to prove very functional and very useful for this course it's not purely aesthetic it's not there just to tell you what the course is about this is a website that we hope and we expect that you will use over the course of the next semester well how will you use this site you notice already that when I visit the site I am confronted with a sheet of announcements and if I can't figure out how to use the laser pointer in a moment okay um announcements when you visit this website you're immediately going to be presented with this list of announcements that have been um posted by either myself or the teaching fellows it is with this mechanism that we're going to post course-wide announcements for instance snow day don't come to class we'll post that kind of information here although with the groundhog having not seen a shadow today I wouldn't cross your fingers for a snow day um announcements which you'll be immediately presented with if you just play around you'll notice that there are menu options up here at the top which if you point your mouse at it and then click you'll go to the announcements page I mentioned earlier that all of the handouts that we ever distribute in this and also section we're going to post onto the web in the event that you miss section or lose the handout or whatever so for instance if you missed one of today's handouts you just lost it if you click this handouts link on the course website and scroll down you're going to see oh assignment one the internet was handed out today definitions to February 1999 obtaining your own fast account sectioning form these are all pieces of paper that you have now or have had in front of you today and we post them there in elect format so that you can go view them in the comfort of your own home or at work and print them out as well so that's to save us the trouble and you the trouble of approaching me or the TFS to say hey can you go photocopy this for me if you have trouble accessing this stuff that's fine we're more than happy to photocopy it for you give you physical copies um but this is here for your convenience purely there's an assignments link which you might not be able to read um from the back but it's small um but if you click there you'll see all of the assignments that we're Distributing in the course so you see up here assignment one um will tell you when it was distributed when it's due and how to get it essentially again if you attend lecture you will get all of these handouts we'll always print them up for you we will never rely on the web page to distribute new materials but again it's here for your convenience now more interesting about the website if you notice here there's a link called bulletin boards if you click on bulletin boards you're going to see a few options bulletin board for Megan section Matt's section John section if I go ahead and click on bulletin board for Megan section what you're going to see is an opportunity for your input you notice here that there's one message listed it's called welcome and it says here posted by Megan Henry at 4:41 p.m. on Tuesday Etc what I asked the TFS to do yesterday and today was to just post welcoming messages to all of you because what you'll notice here is that once you've been assigned to a section you're going to have your own TF whether it's Matt John or Megan now each of these TFS are going to have these online bulletin boards as we call them now what does that mean well that means this is a place where you can contact the TFS and other students in your section and myself and they can respond to you now the goal of this is to one encourage intra section participation so even outside of the bounds of your classroom um once a week for two hours you can still communicate with your new found friends or your TF or the instructor um from the comfort of your own home so for instance if I click here on this word welcome notice that it's underlined what I'm going to see is Megan's message welcome I am very excited to teach this class and I hope you excited Etc so this was a message that she posted to the course website now if you wanted to reply to Megan all you have to do is scroll down here and I'm simply scrolling down in the window where it says post a reply and simply by providing your name email address which if you don't have already we will get you one and the subject of your reply um re welcome you can post a response to Megan and instantaneously your reply will appear on the web page for yourself and for other students in your section to view so we hope that this will allow you some additional interaction with your TF and other students and also we hope that by inviting you to answer or rather to ask questions online you will be able to hear responses from your TF that are posted publicly this way one person's question will serve many when the TF or when someone else answers it now similarly there's other bulletin boards for Matt and John section um but the idea is the same for them the last thing I want to point out here um incidentally that's the online syllabus which you already have um actually two things software I just clicked on this software link what you will notice here is that we're going to try to simplify the process of your obtaining software for your home or your work computer what do I mean by that well any piece of software we use in section with a couple of exceptions um we are going to make available for you for free download simply by going to this page clicking the link and you'll download the software to your computer now if you don't know how to download software if clicking a link sounds confusing to you don't worry again in the next couple of weeks we'll teach you but for those of you familiar with this terminology already we are providing these links to software here for your convenience um and we're providing both Mac and PC versions alike lastly there's a link up here called links and if you go there you see two options official course related links which if I quickly go there you'll see that these are links that I um or the TFS have posted to be officially endorsed course links for instance the top link is the pace website now you've not yet read your from this book yet presumably um the information technology book but in addition to coming with a CD it also comes with a website that is the preface of this book which is your assignment to read for next week um it tells you what address you can go to on the worldwide web to find supplementary material and the cool thing about this book is that not only does the CD provide you with additional instruction on what these topics in the physical book itself are the website also supplements the book so if you say find the topic of ram confusing and you've read the pages dozens of times and again and again it still doesn't make sense you've even tried the CD and the tutorial is not making sense well there's a third place for you to look which is on the worldwide web itself and a perfect example of why the web is good for disseminating information the book publishers have taken it upon themselves to provide you with a site um from which you can learn more about specific topics so that is why you were assigned to read at least the preface um of this book for next week because it will tell you how to access the web um for this book again if you haven't used the web that's okay please do not be intimidated by my generalizations here um if I go back to this Links Page the last thing I wanted to point out is this link links contributed by students I don't want to be the only one posting interesting information to this site I don't want the TFS being the only ones posting interesting information to this site so in addition to soliciting your input and your questions on the bulletin boards we also provide this link where you can go here and view links related to many many different categories categories that you might see in Yahoo or infos seek or excite these are all search engines that you might be familiar with but the interesting thing about these subject areas is that only you the students in this course are going to be posting these links so the idea of this page is that if you come across a fantastic news site or just a fun site that contains comic strips well we want you to come to this page go to the link that says contribute a link and then at the bottom of the screen here you'll see we ask you for your name your email address the URL or address synonymous um of that link the category of the link a description of it and then by clicking that submit button um or the contribute this link button instantaneously your favorite news site or comic strip site or whatever will be posted for people to publicly follow so we hope this will be a fun way for you to encounter cool links on the web and say hey I like this site some friends of mine in class might find it beneficial too why don't I go post it publicly now again none of this is a requirement we do not require you to participate in these bulletin boards I don't require you to contribute links every week but I encourage you to and I hope that the pressure of not having to participate purely for the sake of salvaging your grade or improving your grade I hope that you will find it all the more um rewarding and fun to go read substantial and meaningful comments and links posted by um other students in this class if you ever have any questions or confusions about the website let me or the TFS know during section though we'll give you a a Hands-On tour of how to use this stuff so don't worry if you don't recall how to post a link how to participate the TF we'll go over that with you in person okay that is the example I wanted to use of a website because it's particularly relevant and I'd like to now embark on a discussion of what email is not on a aesthetical level because all of you are probably roughly familiar with email but how it relates to the internet and how it works but before we go there are there any other questions on the Internet or more recently now the web URL I was going to leave this for the third week but URL is universal resource locator now it's a very clumsy name Universal resource located locator URL is essentially a synonym for web address um www.harvard.edu web address it's a URL they're the same thing in week three we'll actually tell you what's so interesting about a URL um but for today I want to abstract away from the details and just say that these are web addresses yes oh that's a very good question I don't think I pointed this out um what is a link and again if you're a little uncertain as to what the web content here is or how it works again let me reassure you that I'm purposely leaving a lot of these details to section so that you can actually play with it yourself but I can say that yes anything underlined typically in a web page for instance all of these words up here Arts and Humanities business and economy those are links why are they links well if I click on education it links me to the education part of this page which is empty right now but that's because none of you students have yet posted links to this page again oh go ahead okay the question is about how to get faster connections from home um it depends on your internet service provider which is don't worry if you don't understand that term just yet if you want to if you could grab me right after lecture I can pose some specific suggestions um incidentally you will notice that Harvard's internet connection here is very fast those of you with modems at home are probably used to rather slow connections when I set out to design this site over the past couple of weeks I intentionally left it devoid of a lot of Graphics Etc so that the download times would be fairly rapid at least as rapid as possible for you at home so you'll notice that essentially the only graphics are the ones in the menu bar the top the page here so I hope it's it's as fast as possible for you at home and you'll find it particularly fast in the computer labs here yes oh okay um if you post a link to this page it will be clickable it is purely it is perfectly interactive so yes oh did you have something else okay okay let me defer that answer till week three because what I want to do is first wait until You' have actually dabbled with this inse section I'll answer that question now but I don't want to go into too much detail um but in week three we're actually going to get into the more nitty-gritty details here the things I'm glossing over about what is the HTTP why the colon slash what's a URL Etc um in brief answer HTTP is hyper text transfer protocol don't worry about writing that down now it will be on your definition sheet in week three um it's a term we'll discuss in week three yes short answer no again we'll mention that in section but no you do not have to type HTTP colon in web browsers anymore nowadays yes in back Netscape Communicator is essentially Netscape Navigator um with more features um I can explain specifically after lecture if you want to um ask me but for our purposes the same thing yes it will I was going to leave discussion of the fast accounts until the last five minutes of class so let me wait until then um Let Me Wait until then with everything okay email um over the next 10 minutes oh go ahead okay okay interesting question um short answer to the first part of your comment is no you do not need a www in front of in front of addresses it depends on the company okay again these are details that I I wanted to wait until we have a general sense of what things are but the short of it is it's arbitrarily defined it's up to Harvard to put that www there um email addresses let's talk about that now and I'll contrast the two okay email addresses um while I erase while I erase this um could someone essentially tell me what an email is like physically an electronic message that's essentially all it is so many of you have probably used it before um as our hand survey showed earlier an email message essentially has three four parts to it let's say so let's treat this rectangle here as an email document that we're creating on a computer now for those of you unfamiliar with how to compose an email that's fine because next week you're going to actually do this but for now suppose this is an empty email message this is just some f file so to speak on a computer an interface for you you have to provide a couple of pieces of information the first of which is who it's from now most programs plug in your name David mein with his email address automatically so typically you don't have to specify who you are because the very fact that you're using an email program that's presumably just been set up on your computer for you means that the computer already knows who you are um next week in section you'll see why it already knows that um you need to though say who it's to now in the two field what is something that I could write or type rather in the two field of an email message what's appropriate there sorry the name but if I were to just type say um Joe user here you need an email address and before we discuss email address is why intuitively is this not enough exactly there could be many Joe users in the world now just for a moment consider the parallel here with the US Postal Service with a little stamp here if you were to just send a letter a physical letter to Joe user that's going to get returned to Sender why because Joe user quote unquote does not uniquely identify a human being on this Earth it could identify several human beings although it'd be a little odd if someone's name were really Joe user um so that's why we have the US Postal Services systems of household addresses for instance so Joe user is not uniquely identified by this name he's identified by say one Mass a in Cambridge Massachusetts with a specific zip code now what is significant about this address what is better about this address than about the first thing I wrote just Joe user you need a geographical location that's correct and it also furthermore means that unless there's two Joe users living at one Mass a Cambridge Massachusetts Etc this address uniquely identifies a human being on Earth so your mailman can get you Joe user this email without confusing you with anyone else now the same concept applies with email Joe user most likely has a email address along the lines of something like Joe at um say email.com let's just suppose that that is his email address now there's a couple of things of interest to point out about an email address this is a perfectly valid email address because it has several components the first is a username username or uh those of you familiar with ham radios or whatnot this is a handle it's just a nickname for yourself um the at symbol well this is just there for syntax with Joe is going to be at some email address this part here is called a domain and this is essentially the equivalent of that part of the address email.com refers to a specific location on the internet a specific building or a specific company be it what it may um it refers to something specific a specific place on the internet and that's why it's necessary Joe user could be anywhere in the world anywhere on the internet Joe mail.com is a specific say office building you know if this is the email.com company Joe's email is going to go here so this is a properly formed email address which most of you probably already have but with what I've just said you should probably now be able to identify what your username is and what your domain is based on what email address you currently have so this is what's necessary in the two fields of an email address now that technically you could technically send now say this is from mailin at ass. harvard.edu which is my email address technically you could send this email on its way the only problem being well it's blank it's not very interesting but technically you have a return address you have you know David ma in this corner of your envelope and you have your two address you have the Joe user at one massab Etc so even if you just seal a empty envelope it's going to get there same thing with an email if you put the from and the two Fields it's going to get there but that's not very purposeful what typically emails have is a subject line which is just something where you can say um dinner suppose the subject of this email is going to be dinner because I'm trying to arrange with Joe user say a dinner plans for later this week that's the third component subject and then there's What's called the body of an email message and this is the guts of your message this is the substance the content the message you want to send Joe and you know it could be want to do dinner end of body so what we have here now is one a legitimate email because it's got a from and a two address but it's also purposeful because it actually has a subject that tells Joe what it's about and it has a body it gives him a specific message are there any questions on syntax yes okay the question is some people have addresses along the lines of um say Jill unor user at harvard.edu this is purely um a human convention Harvard's administrators decided Harvard email addresses will be first name uncore last name at harvard.edu no technical reason behind it pure choice and that's why you'll probably notice discrepancies in your email addresses if you already have one sometimes you have Jill period ususer at email.com Jill user nospace email.com whatever the important thing for me to point out is that this is not a valid email address for what reason do you think the space in Internet conventions you cannot use spaces in email address addresses or in web addresses now let me answer this fellow's question with regard to contrasting an email address with a a web address and then let me mention the fast accounts that you must um obtain by next week and then we'll adjourn for the evening Jill user harvard.edu is a valid um email address as we said before www.harvard.edu is a valid web address now what's an immediate difference between these two addresses that you might say aesthetically one's a person there's an at symbol I heard exactly I mean this specifies a person somewhere on the internet this just specifies somewhere on the internet um we'll learn in week three exactly why the www is usually there and why the HTTP is usually there but in essence these are the only forms of addresses that we're going to be learning over the course of this semester at least these are fundamental internet practices user um email address web address both serve different purposes um but the reasons behind these conventions will become apparent within the next couple of weeks and before I talk about this green sheet and conclude are there any questions on email yes oh syntax I mean it in the um English language sense it's just the um conventions by which we write something like what this the at symbol is syntax it just it's like the periods and the commas in a sentence it's just necessary if you could quickly glance at your Green Sheet here you'll notice that there is a deadline listed of next Tuesday or by next week's section some of you if not most of you already have email addresses that's great you can continue using that email address to correspond with myself with other students with your TF but you must get get a fast account so to speak what's a fast account this sheet will explain it in essence but the idea is that you need to get a FAS faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard email address because in the computer labs here you must authenticate you must tile the computer what a username and a password is otherwise you cannot participate in sections furthermore we're going to use these so-called accounts to create your final projects and whatnot um so it is very important that you do this by next week if you cannot do it then please speak with with me and I'll arrange for an extension for you with this but it's only going to hinder you if you don't now you notice at the bottom here there is these several workshops these workshops are not the same as the other workshops I mentioned these are still optional but if you attend any one of these Workshops the staff at Harvard will walk you through the steps of getting this required email address so I strongly recommend that you take the hour um or so that these things last to do that because you will save yourself time and effort because they will tell you and show you how to do it I will be here in this room for the next hour to answer questions and to hold so-called office hours um but I do hope you will join us for the rest of the semester in this course because I promise it will be exciting and beneficial to you I will see you next week can I just say one thing really quickly cel hi I'm still in a confused stage I have a at home I just go it okay okay so they have email there which I don't use I haven't used it yet okay okay so I know that I I have my f I did that my f email address but I want to get that to my house okay will I learn how to do that not at these workshops if you already have the fast account what you can do on AOL is by keyword tet right um I would wait a week to do that because the TFS will show you SE how access the email account and they're essentially going show you how to use a program called which will allow you to this account okay once you attended section then go to keyword tet on and they'll tell you how you can do the same thing how I can get P to my house exactly so I'm thinking right thinking the right thing no that's fine sounds good hi I just have a question for you that I just computer me for Access good fast enough IBM global net equally good I honestly don't think AOL is a bad thing especially for students in this class it'll make things relatively easier just because it's so much moreck you