Chapter 5 Assestment

1.) You can verify if e-mails are a hoax or not by visiting Snopes.com, which is a clearinghouse for urban legends and bogus e-mails. The website filters through hundreds of e-mails a day, filtering out all the ones that contain bogus information or are hoaxes. The first example of a e-mail sent to the masses was one that stated a 13 year old girl from Philadelphia named Ashley Flores was missing. Snopes.com received this e-mail and determined that it was false. The second example of an e-mail sent to the masses was an e-mail that claimed Starbucks refused to give free products to G.I.'s serving in Iraq. Snopes.com again received this e-mail and determined it was also false.

2.) The first method you can use is simply saving the website page as a text file. You can also save it as a complete website and store it on to your hard drive with the formatting and images all left intact. Another method, for Mac users, is to save the webpage as a standalone PDF file, which can be viewed in Adobe Reader or Apple's Preview Utility.

3.) Four uses of Fundrace.org include, finding out if and how much your neighbors contributed to political campaigns, finding out anyone that may have contributed to a political campaign including their address and who in the same area contributed to that campaign and you can also use Fundrace.org to organize block parties in order to raise funds for your party or favorite presidential candidate. Jerry Springer donated an amount of $4,600 to Hillary Clinton in 2007.

4.) Liveplasma.com is a visual music "discovery engine". You enter the name of an artist and it displays related bands. By clicking on one of the related bands, Liveplasma generates a map of related bands surrounding it. Its function is to help people discover new bands which are related to and similar to bands that they like. During a search on Liveplasma.com, the website displays the name or the artist you searched in the middle with a web of connected artists around it. The more closely related the artists are, the closer they are in relation to the artist you searched. There is also a target on the screen which allows you to navigate through the web of artists with ease.

5.) Bit Torrent is a method of sharing files that actually makes the files more accessible, in proportion to the number of people downloading them. It works by making everyone's computer pitch in on the job of sharing files. As your Bit Torrent application is downloading the file, it is simultaneously uploading, what you have downloaded so far to other users. Although you need to be careful because many Bit Torrent search sites online point to files of copyrighted movies, music and software. It is illegal to download copyrighted material and may result in jail time for those who use Bit Torrent to download these files.