Week 11: Muddy

           This may have everything to do with the fact that I am the farthest thing from a business major and am taking a business class, but all of this talk about collection of data makes me very uncomfortable. This could also be to the fact that I simply do not trust large corporations, not at all.
            I am very skeptical of how easy it has become to collect data on individuals over recent years. I think there should definitely be more legislation restricting this kind of behavior. In fact, I’m quite shocked about how so many people are simply nonchalant about this matter and how it affects them; however, I shouldn’t be surprised when its becoming clearer just how apathetic and complacent people have come when it comes to technology issues.
            First, lets start with the practical, groups like Anonymous have recently made it a mission to prove to IT professionals, corporations, governments, and individuals that what they think about online and database security is a farce. So far they have been quite successful in proving that such organizations that pride themselves on their “security” abilities are far from being secure. Luckily, Anonymous carries out attacks but has no interest in stealing information, however many others with an equal knowledge and ability do seek to acquire such information for malicious use.

You can view Anonymous's posting site in order to see what kind of activities "they" (they have no central leadership and are only loosely connected through sites like 4chan; hence, the quotations) have been up to and obtain explanations from "them" here.
The Logo is offered under the creative commons license by Anonymous. This can be seen by following the above link.

            On another note, Anonymous has sought to single out and attack companies (most recently Facebook) that handle massive amounts of  our (the common people's) private information and help to make it more readily available to corporations and government organizations (such as the FBI or CIA who by law can not spy on citizens, which is ironic because now citizens just give up all the information they can happily. note: before Facebook, it was more common for users to use pseudonyms or usernames when participating in social networking. Facebook changed this by simply asking users for their information to be displayed…this connects back to the previous statement about apathy and complacency).
            This issue came up at a really good time for discussion as Anonymous, three months ago, declared #OpFacebook. Since that time, the collective has disavowed the action, but the website has a lot of activity and the possibility of an attack in the future is possible. The attack would not be malicious per se, but an action take to get Facebook to handle users personal information with more care and consideration. There are many who doubt such an attack is possible (as Anonymous typically uses DDoS attacks), however they have often surprised their critics with they’re abilities.
            As far as my personal feelings and experiences go I have many concerns.
            I used to work an “unnamed” bookstore, where I was made to collect a quota on their for-sale loyalty cards. I was to talk customers in to giving up $20 dollars so that the company could collect data from the customer about the customer and their purchases. What did the customer get for this? A 10% discount. This meant that in a year the customer needed to spend $200 dollars in order to make their money back! After 6 months, I felt ashamed with myself and left the company. The company called this “customer service”; I find it to be predatory and quite opposite to customer service. 
            The fact that a company can turn selling information about people through data aggregators, into a multi-billion dollar industry is abhorrent and that should be obvious, I won't even go into an full explanation of why.
            Other things like RFID chips, seem to be a little weird to me. I personally do not want a chip connected to anything that I carry around on my person. The ability to use this technology to more than just follow an item from production to storage to shipping and finally to store shelves seems obvious. There has been much talk about placing these in ID cards: one would have to be insane to let the government force you to carry an ID that can locate you at anytime. But that is where we are at. These things are becoming more and more acceptable to more and more people. And we go further down the rabbit hole.
           This is just me, this is just opinion. But like the massive marketing and advertising world and public relations field, this kind of thing simply lowers my faith in humanity and unsettles my stomach.

Week 11: Database Project

    I learned a lot during this project. For starters, I learned what a database was. Unlike Excel, which I had some rudimentary understanding of, I had never come into contact with a database nor did I know anyone who was familiar with one. In that sense, every in every aspect of this process I learned something.
    One thing I definitely learned was that, again unlike Excel, there is not a good "undo" function in a database. Once I finished the project-- the first time -- and began to start the scripting extra credit, I somehow removed a members information from the database (you have to love touch-pads). I searched futilely for quite sometime to find a way to restore the data. Finally, I just began anew. Luckily, I had gotten pretty quick with the process on a second (well actually 3rd) go around.
     One thing I would have added to the database would have been adding the "Membership Type" to the "Departed Member Report". My reasoning being that family memberships are going to be more expensive and therefore should be more aggressively sought after (followed-up with) by the business.
      Due to the type of data (i.e. not a whole lot of numerical data) there not a lot you could do with it. You could determine your male-to-female ratios i suppose, or look for a time period where there was an increased number of "Departed members" to try an determine if there was an underlying reason. Also, you could look for the newest members (especially individuals to target people that you could offer a "friend sign-up bonus" to: this would be a program where you give the member a free months membership if they can refer a friend). For the most part, from looking at the scavenger hunt and lecture, I don't see much that would apply with this particular data set.

Week 10: Muddy

I was a little confused after watching the lecture on databases and tables. There are two questions in this section:


1)How do you set a field to be a primary Key?


2) What is the most important characteristic of a primary key?


After watching the lecture a couple times, I determined that this was not discussed.


My first response was to open File Maker Pro and use the help menu; however, it cam up with nothing.
Then, I went to Google, where I found this answer:


"FileMaker doesn't have a checkbox/option like Access to define a specific field as a Primary Key. You can use any field as a primary key and many developers have a field naming convention to remind themselves which field they are using."
"The main thing you should really do with your field you want to use as a primary key is to turn on th validation option to ensure the values are unique and not allow the user to override that."
-this thread can be found here. 


If I have this correct, I think the reason there is no Primary Key is because you can alter what source you want to use as you primary on a flip of a switch. If this is the case that means File  Maker Pro makes it more easy to manipulate data in any way you would like. This seems like a great thing even if the program does have the flaw of not being able to save multiple sorted fields without scripting.


 I think this issue is not so muddy for me any longer. I suppose we'll see when I go to due the database project.