Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Blown to Bits Chapter 3

Other examples of abstractions are radio waves and cars. Now to display a page with advertisements in your browser, there has to be code that is created to show the page. You need your HTML code to have <!Doctype HTML>, <HTML> and </HTML>, <head> and </head>, <Style> and </Style> to decorate the web page, <body> and </body>, <p> and </p>, and image tags for the ads. The ad could be a gif and be at a certain place. The HTML code is repeating itself over and over again so the website keeps running. Now behind that code, there is binary code running to make the HTML code work. The binary code is a set of 1's and 0's all set in a particular order to make the program work. It runs the binary code to make decimals which translates to signals in the computer to make the HTML code to make the web page work.
Not knowing some basics of how a software tool or computer works, and the abstractions they use, could lead to bad outcomes. If someone makes a mistake in code like putting the body tag outside of the html tag, there would be no content to show in the web page. It would just show a blank page. Another instance of not knowing can lead to bad outcomes is when you highlight words in black that you want hidden but people still find out those words. So in the article "Blown to Bits Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion" by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis it says, "Probably someone tried to turn the Highlighter Tool into a redaction tool by changing its color to black, unaware that what was visible on the screen was not the same as the contents of the electronic document. The Italian blogger guessed that the black bars were nothing more than overlays created using the Highlighter Tool, and that the ghostly traces of the invisible words were still part of the electronic document that was posted on the web. With that realization, he easily undid the black “highlighting” to reveal the text beneath." This means that with the knowledge of the program, people could easily undo the redactments exposing the confidential words that would be atrocious to say the least for the one who did the redactments. Confidential information released to the public could ruin reputations, make the enemy more powerful, be an embarrassment, and/or get people fired. Furthermore, if someone was working in an important document, didn't save, doesn't have much knowledge about computers, and then presses ALT and F4 at the same time just to see what it does without knowing what it does it could have terrible consequences. For starters, the document would not save and the person would have to start all over again. Second, the computer will shut down. Thirdly, the person could get fired from his or her job for not submitting the document in time. Lastly, the person might be angry at himself for pressing those buttons leading to unfavorable outcomes like punching the computer.

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