Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Privacy Policy

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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Computer Training - 8 Reasons Why Employees Hate Your PC Training

I've seen it over and over again. Class is supposed to start and half the students are missing. Over the next 15-30 minutes a few more dribble in, listlessly taking their seats. It's "training day" and oh boy are they excited. Not!
But why? Let's take a look at why your employees don't enjoy training courses, and how you can make better decisions to make your training sessions more enjoyable, powerful, and effective for them.
#1 Boring Instructor
I don't care how well-focused the material and how relevant to employees' job needs, if you have a less than excellent instructor the day will be a dud. Instructors should by dynamic, interesting, flexible, and able to tailor the course to students' needs on-the-fly as much as possible. I'll devote another entire article to finding great instructors, but for now suffice it to say the person has to hold your students' attention.
#2 Topics Not Relevant to Employees' Jobs
I've mentioned this in other articles, but it bears repeating. If class topics are not tailored to your employees' actual job needs, and relevant NOW (not in 3 months when management finally rolls out the update for which students are taking the course), then students will turn off. They know the material isn't relevant, or at least not relevant for quite some time, and they resist the learning process. After all, can they possibly remember the material for weeks or months without using it?
We all have an innate resistance to new things at times, and with this atmosphere employees basically feel they are wasting their time in the classroom.
#3 Instruction is Not Modular
By "modular" I mean that the course should consist of a series of separate exercises that can be understood by themselves, in any order, without requiring the same exercise file from the previous lesson. So many of my students nowadays are only able to attend for part of the course, and if the instruction is not broken down into small, easily understood chunks then many busy students cannot make heads or tails of what is happening.
#4 Class is Too Long
Yep, you heard that right. Management and HR tend to look at training as a quantity situation. The more time spent in the classroom, the better, is the thinking. Makes sense; after all, the more time they study with a qualified instructor, the more they will get out of the course, right?
The theory sounds great. But the reality is, after 18 years in the classroom, I have seen that no matter how great I present the material, students can only absorb so much.
Usually, 5 hours is about the maximum limit of instruction time--and I mean, the absolute maximum. Add in 1 hour for lunch and 2 fifteen minute breaks, and the course is 6.5 hours long. Any time beyond this, and not only does the Law of Diminishing Returns take effect, but it is my contention that harm is done to student's recall of prior material. In other words, it all becomes a great big blur. Surely you remember this feeling in school?
So make your training sessions shorter rather than longer, and you can still hold 2 half-day sessions if necessary, with far better results overall.
#5 Student Skill Levels Vary Too Much
Have you ever been in a class where a know-it-all took over, answering questions and "pushing" the pace of the course to match his/her desired speed? Or how about when a fellow student was clearly slower than everyone else, slowing down everyone's experience?
A computer course is not like a lecture course, where the instructor can just present the material and if students don't understand, they can ask later. In a hands-on computer course, everyone--and I mean everyone--has to be in-sync with the instructor, or the class falls apart. But this is almost impossible when the skill levels of the students vary too much. I cannot emphasize this point enough.
Total beginner students in a subject are usually the course killers--and arguably they are the ones who need it most. There is no easy answer, as these students really do need the training and it is not always possible to hold separate sessions for beginner and more advanced students. One thing that can help is to have the slower students do some self-study prior to the course, or have them go through some of the material on their own. Just keep this point in mind when scheduling and your courses will go much more smoothly and students will enjoy them much more.
#6 Hardware/Software Problems
This might seem pretty obvious, but let me tell you, I have had so many nightmares trying to teach courses where not all the computers work properly, with either hardware, software or even overhead projector glitches. This situation, quite simply, ruins a class. When things work for half the students, and others are madly trying to catch up because their computer froze and has to reboot, or they have a different version of the software (yes this has happened), or they have a different operating system than me (yes, this has happened too!), the class falls to pieces.
And you know what? It's damn embarrassing, because I'm the one in front supposedly "in charge" of everything, but rarely do I ever get a say in or a chance to test the class computers beforehand. Usually a company's IT department handles that and I'm lucky if I can even get some tech support when needed. Often I am not even allowed into a classroom until just a few minutes before the class is supposed to start.
True story, once I was teaching a class with some antiquated portable computers we called "lunch boxes." Think of them as mildly portable computers about half the size and weight of a desktop, with a monitor and keyboard and mouse. They were still friggin' heavy though! Especially carrying 14 of them across a plaza, up 2 flights of stairs (no elevator!)...but I digress.
So I get all the lunchboxes setup, and about 20 minutes into class, 4 of them decide to break. Rebooting didn't help, and while I stepped outside to call my company to try to fix them, the class went to pot. I think I never sweated so much in my life!
I realize this point may seem pretty obvious, but judging from the sheer number of ruined courses due to hardware/software problems, it is worth mentioning. Make sure your computer systems are up to par, with the exact same software versions, prior to the training!
#7 Classroom/Training Room Not Setup Properly
This category encompasses couple of major things, such as...
Lack of Overhead Projector
Prior to the ubiquity of the overhead, I used to have to DRAW what students were supposed to be seeing, on a whiteboard. Or DESCRIBE it really well. Or, go to EACH student and point out what they were supposed to be doing, one by one. Can you imagine how rough, and long, those courses were? And I was good at it too! Yet the onset of the overhead projector made life so much easier in the classroom. Make sure you have an overhead, that it works, and it does not shine RIGHT into the instructor's eyes--please!
Poor layout
I have taught in rooms that were super skinny and very long side to side, which meant I had to literally run from one part of the room to another, and yell to be heard.
Believe it or not, true story, I was asked to teach a course at a company where there was no training room at all, and I stood in the middle of an office while students had their backs to me--no overhead--and I shouted out commands, while other students in adjacent offices--I am absolutely NOT kidding you!--listened and tried to follow along on their computers. What a nightmare! I should have walked out! But I was working for a training company and had not been the one to setup the course; I was just the one to force those poor students through their paces in learning Excel in this atrocious setup. Wow, that one took a chunk out of me!
Bottom line here, is you want a classroom that is well laid-out, with plenty of room between aisles (for both convenience and fire safety reasons), a good working overhead, a whiteboard with working markers, and access to tech support for the inevitable glitch (such as all the computers have a password but no one bothered to tell the instructor!).
#8 Too Many Students in a Class
Although this is rarer these days, I have taught quite a few courses with too many students. Once I had 36+ students in a course, and it was absolute mayhem. Class size should be limited to no more than 12 students. You could go 16 if you absolutely had to, but that is truly the absolute limit.
Even with an extra teaching assistant, often the venues for large courses are so huge that I have to literally yell to be heard above all the noise of the computers, talking, and air conditioner, and just absolutely forget about quality teaching. There's just no way one instructor can keep a large group like this together.
So, don't do it!
Conclusion
Am I frustrated about these experiences? You bet! When they could have been prevented with better planning and a little thought, and when I and my students had to suffer greatly due to the mishaps. But thanks to this handy little article, you won't be making these course-destroying mistakes now, will you?
Computer and soft-skills training can be a blast if managers and HR personnel would simply take into account students' and instructors' basic needs. Hopefully you found these tips helpful, and until next time, we'll solve our problems Bit by Bit.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2488204

Beginner's Guide on Computer Formatting and OS Installation

Recently I helped one of my best friends to format his PC because he was facing continuously decreasing performance issue in his computer. Suddenly an idea came into my mind to write this article from the too many questions being asked by him while we are both working on computer format.
Whenever a new user or beginner thinks of computer format, or wants to format their pc manually, they might have many questions arising in their mind during the process of formatting and installation of new operating system in their PC. Here I would like to explain some highly important things about computer format and OS reinstallation that might be helpful to you.
What does it mean by formatting the computer?
If you have discussed your pc problems with any one and got the answer that you have to format your pc, hard disk or operating system, it means that your computer operating system or more than one of the installed components or software are corrupted, damaged or not behaving as it should.
Formatting pc means erase all the data from your system drive (Hard disk drive where you operating system like windows and Linux is installed) including OS and to reinstall whole OS and all the necessary hardware drivers and software application that you want to use in your pc. In short, it freshens up your whole computer working behavior and performance.
Why you actually need to do this?
Simple, because you want to restore the performance of your pc and remove all OS related issues that you might have been facing. You also have to do this step if your pc and whole OS is infected by computer virus and you need to clean it from the scratch.
What risk is involved, can it be done manually?
According to me, formatting pc is as simple as installing any other application software in your pc if you keep some points cleared in your mind. The main risk involved here is the risk of data loss. Here you must understand the risk of loss of data located on your system drive which may be at the locations listed below.
  1. My documents.
  2. Desktop
  3. My Music
  4. My Pictures
  5. My Videos
  6. System drive (i.e. C:\)
You must backup all the data from above location to make it secure from accident loss of data. Now, the answer to another question that, can it be done manually is yes, you must do it your self. Only you need to do is backup your data and what you must have is bootable disk of your computer operating system.
I have seen many people spending money to format their pc or laptop from the computer shop. It seems difficult only until you don't attempt to do it yourself.

Beginner's Guide to Computer Forensics



Introduction
Computer forensics is the practice of collecting, analysing and reporting on digital information in a way that is legally admissible. It can be used in the detection and prevention of crime and in any dispute where evidence is stored digitally. Computer forensics has comparable examination stages to other forensic disciplines and faces similar issues.

About this guide
This guide discusses computer forensics from a neutral perspective. It is not linked to particular legislation or intended to promote a particular company or product and is not written in bias of either law enforcement or commercial computer forensics. It is aimed at a non-technical audience and provides a high-level view of computer forensics. This guide uses the term "computer", but the concepts apply to any device capable of storing digital information. Where methodologies have been mentioned they are provided as examples only and do not constitute recommendations or advice. Copying and publishing the whole or part of this article is licensed solely under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 license

Uses of computer forensics
There are few areas of crime or dispute where computer forensics cannot be applied. Law enforcement agencies have been among the earliest and heaviest users of computer forensics and consequently have often been at the forefront of developments in the field. Computers may constitute a 'scene of a crime', for example with hacking [ 1] or denial of service attacks [2] or they may hold evidence in the form of emails, internet history, documents or other files relevant to crimes such as murder, kidnap, fraud and drug trafficking. It is not just the content of emails, documents and other files which may be of interest to investigators but also the 'meta-data' [3] associated with those files. A computer forensic examination may reveal when a document first appeared on a computer, when it was last edited, when it was last saved or printed and which user carried out these actions.

More recently, commercial organisations have used computer forensics to their benefit in a variety of cases such as;

    * Intellectual Property theft
    * Industrial espionage
    * Employment disputes
    * Fraud investigations
    * Forgeries
    * Matrimonial issues
    * Bankruptcy investigations
    * Inappropriate email and internet use in the work place
    * Regulatory compliance

Guidelines
For evidence to be admissible it must be reliable and not prejudicial, meaning that at all stages of this process admissibility should be at the forefront of a computer forensic examiner's mind. One set of guidelines which has been widely accepted to assist in this is the Association of Chief Police Officers Good Practice Guide for Computer Based Electronic Evidence or ACPO Guide for short. Although the ACPO Guide is aimed at United Kingdom law enforcement its main principles are applicable to all computer forensics in whatever legislature. The four main principles from this guide have been reproduced below (with references to law enforcement removed):

   1. No action should change data held on a computer or storage media which may be subsequently relied upon in court.

   2. In circumstances where a person finds it necessary to access original data held on a computer or storage media, that person must be competent to do so and be able to give evidence explaining the relevance and the implications of their actions.

   3. An audit trail or other record of all processes applied to computer-based electronic evidence should be created and preserved. An independent third-party should be able to examine those processes and achieve the same result.

   4. The person in charge of the investigation has overall responsibility for ensuring that the law and these principles are adhered to.

In summary, no changes should be made to the original, however if access/changes are necessary the examiner must know what they are doing and to record their actions.

Live acquisition
Principle 2 above may raise the question: In what situation would changes to a suspect's computer by a computer forensic examiner be necessary? Traditionally, the computer forensic examiner would make a copy (or acquire) information from a device which is turned off. A write-blocker[4] would be used to make an exact bit for bit copy [5] of the original storage medium. The examiner would work then from this copy, leaving the original demonstrably unchanged.

However, sometimes it is not possible or desirable to switch a computer off. It may not be possible to switch a computer off if doing so would result in considerable financial or other loss for the owner. It may not be desirable to switch a computer off if doing so would mean that potentially valuable evidence may be lost. In both these circumstances the computer forensic examiner would need to carry out a 'live acquisition' which would involve running a small program on the suspect computer in order to copy (or acquire) the data to the examiner's hard drive.

By running such a program and attaching a destination drive to the suspect computer, the examiner will make changes and/or additions to the state of the computer which were not present before his actions. Such actions would remain admissible as long as the examiner recorded their actions, was aware of their impact and was able to explain their actions.

Stages of an examination
For the purposes of this article the computer forensic examination process has been divided into six stages. Although they are presented in their usual chronological order, it is necessary during an examination to be flexible. For example, during the analysis stage the examiner may find a new lead which would warrant further computers being examined and would mean a return to the evaluation stage.

Readiness
Forensic readiness is an important and occasionally overlooked stage in the examination process. In commercial computer forensics it can include educating clients about system preparedness; for example, forensic examinations will provide stronger evidence if a server or computer's built-in auditing and logging systems are all switched on. For examiners there are many areas where prior organisation can help, including training, regular testing and verification of software and equipment, familiarity with legislation, dealing with unexpected issues (e.g., what to do if child pornography is present during a commercial job) and ensuring that your on-site acquisition kit is complete and in working order.

Evaluation
The evaluation stage includes the receiving of clear instructions, risk analysis and allocation of roles and resources. Risk analysis for law enforcement may include an assessment on the likelihood of physical threat on entering a suspect's property and how best to deal with it. Commercial organisations also need to be aware of health and safety issues, while their evaluation would also cover reputational and financial risks on accepting a particular project.

Collection
The main part of the collection stage, acquisition, has been introduced above. If acquisition is to be carried out on-site rather than in a computer forensic laboratory then this stage would include identifying, securing and documenting the scene. Interviews or meetings with personnel who may hold information which could be relevant to the examination (which could include the end users of the computer, and the manager and person responsible for providing computer services) would usually be carried out at this stage. The 'bagging and tagging' audit trail would start here by sealing any materials in unique tamper-evident bags. Consideration also needs to be given to securely and safely transporting the material to the examiner's laboratory.

Analysis
Analysis depends on the specifics of each job. The examiner usually provides feedback to the client during analysis and from this dialogue the analysis may take a different path or be narrowed to specific areas. Analysis must be accurate, thorough, impartial, recorded, repeatable and completed within the time-scales available and resources allocated. There are myriad tools available for computer forensics analysis. It is our opinion that the examiner should use any tool they feel comfortable with as long as they can justify their choice. The main requirements of a computer forensic tool is that it does what it is meant to do and the only way for examiners to be sure of this is for them to regularly test and calibrate the tools they use before analysis takes place. Dual-tool verification can confirm result integrity during analysis (if with tool 'A' the examiner finds artefact 'X' at location 'Y', then tool 'B' should replicate these results.)

Presentation
This stage usually involves the examiner producing a structured report on their findings, addressing the points in the initial instructions along with any subsequent instructions. It would also cover any other information which the examiner deems relevant to the investigation. The report must be written with the end reader in mind; in many cases the reader of the report will be non-technical, so the terminology should acknowledge this. The examiner should also be prepared to participate in meetings or telephone conferences to discuss and elaborate on the report.

Review
Along with the readiness stage, the review stage is often overlooked or disregarded. This may be due to the perceived costs of doing work that is not billable, or the need 'to get on with the next job'. However, a review stage incorporated into each examination can help save money and raise the level of quality by making future examinations more efficient and time effective. A review of an examination can be simple, quick and can begin during any of the above stages. It may include a basic 'what went wrong and how can this be improved' and a 'what went well and how can it be incorporated into future examinations'. Feedback from the instructing party should also be sought. Any lessons learnt from this stage should be applied to the next examination and fed into the readiness stage.

Issues facing computer forensics
The issues facing computer forensics examiners can be broken down into three broad categories: technical, legal and administrative.

Encryption - Encrypted files or hard drives can be impossible for investigators to view without the correct key or password. Examiners should consider that the key or password may be stored elsewhere on the computer or on another computer which the suspect has had access to. It could also reside in the volatile memory of a computer (known as RAM [6] which is usually lost on computer shut-down; another reason to consider using live acquisition techniques as outlined above.

Increasing storage space - Storage media holds ever greater amounts of data which for the examiner means that their analysis computers need to have sufficient processing power and available storage to efficiently deal with searching and analysing enormous amounts of data.

New technologies - Computing is an ever-changing area, with new hardware, software and operating systems being constantly produced. No single computer forensic examiner can be an expert on all areas, though they may frequently be expected to analyse something which they haven't dealt with before. In order to deal with this situation, the examiner should be prepared and able to test and experiment with the behaviour of new technologies. Networking and sharing knowledge with other computer forensic examiners is also very useful in this respect as it's likely someone else may have already encountered the same issue.

Anti-forensics - Anti-forensics is the practice of attempting to thwart computer forensic analysis. This may include encryption, the over-writing of data to make it unrecoverable, the modification of files' meta-data and file obfuscation (disguising files). As with encryption above, the evidence that such methods have been used may be stored elsewhere on the computer or on another computer which the suspect has had access to. In our experience, it is very rare to see anti-forensics tools used correctly and frequently enough to totally obscure either their presence or the presence of the evidence they were used to hide.

Legal issues
Legal arguments may confuse or distract from a computer examiner's findings. An example here would be the 'Trojan Defence'. A Trojan is a piece of computer code disguised as something benign but which has a hidden and malicious purpose. Trojans have many uses, and include key-logging [7], uploading and downloading of files and installation of viruses. A lawyer may be able to argue that actions on a computer were not carried out by a user but were automated by a Trojan without the user's knowledge; such a Trojan Defence has been successfully used even when no trace of a Trojan or other malicious code was found on the suspect's computer. In such cases, a competent opposing lawyer, supplied with evidence from a competent computer forensic analyst, should be able to dismiss such an argument.

Accepted standards - There are a plethora of standards and guidelines in computer forensics, few of which appear to be universally accepted. This is due to a number of reasons including standard-setting bodies being tied to particular legislations, standards being aimed either at law enforcement or commercial forensics but not at both, the authors of such standards not being accepted by their peers, or high joining fees dissuading practitioners from participating.

Fitness to practice - In many jurisdictions there is no qualifying body to check the competence and integrity of computer forensics professionals. In such cases anyone may present themselves as a computer forensic expert, which may result in computer forensic examinations of questionable quality and a negative view of the profession as a whole.

Resources and further reading
There does not appear to be a great amount of material covering computer forensics which is aimed at a non-technical readership. However the following links at links at the bottom of this page may prove to be of interest prove to be of interest:

Glossary
1. Hacking: modifying a computer in way which was not originally intended in order to benefit the hacker's goals.
2. Denial of Service attack: an attempt to prevent legitimate users of a computer system from having access to that system's information or services.
3. Meta-data: at a basic level meta-data is data about data. It can be embedded within files or stored externally in a separate file and may contain information about the file's author, format, creation date and so on.
4. Write blocker: a hardware device or software application which prevents any data from being modified or added to the storage medium being examined.
5. Bit copy: bit is a contraction of the term 'binary digit' and is the fundamental unit of computing. A bit copy refers to a sequential copy of every bit on a storage medium, which includes areas of the medium 'invisible' to the user.
6. RAM: Random Access Memory. RAM is a computer's temporary workspace and is volatile, which means its contents are lost when the computer is powered off.
7. Key-logging: the recording of keyboard input giving the ability to read a user's typed passwords, emails and other confidential information.

Beginner's Article - A Computer's Hardware

Beginner's Article: A Computer's Hardware
In our modern society the computer is an integrated and depended upon resource. Because they have been in our homes for quite awhile now many companies and individuals alike think that humans are "born" with computer knowledge. If you are age 25 or younger this may metaphorically be true but for the rest of us computers can be a challenge.
I am going to cover the bare basics of your computer here. It is going to cover the Hardware of your computer (Hardware meaning the hard items you can touch, pick up, and manipulate. Software on the other hand is referring to the programs on your computer...you can't touch these per se. Examples are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel etc.).
Your Computer's Hardware & Its Parts:
Your computer is comprised of 4 major parts we all know (this is not including printers, camera docks,etc) : the monitor, tower, keyboard, and mouse. The keyboard and mouse will not covered in this article because if you didn't know what they were you wouldn't be reading this!
The Monitor:
The screen you are looking at right now is the monitors function. It shows the visual data from your computer. A few key words related to your monitor are resolution and viewing size. Resolution refers to the shape and size of your monitors screen and how it processes the pixels which comprise the visual data you see in front of you. If you have a large screen then you will have more resolution (ability to process more amounts of visual data) than a smaller monitor. For instance, if you visit a website with a smaller monitor you may have a scroll bar appear at the bottom. You would move this bar to the right to be able to see the whole screen. Whereas if you view the same site with a larger monitor that scroll bar will not appear because you have a larger pixel resolution and see more data. Viewing Size is a term related to how big your monitors screen is. It is measured diagonally. Take a ruler or measuring tape and hold one end to the top right of the screen and finish measuring at the bottom left of the screen. You should come up with a number like 14.9 or 16.9. 14.9 means you have a 15 inch viewing size screen. 16.9 means you have a 17 inch viewing size screen.
The Tower:
The tower takes on several different names such as CPU, Hard Drive, or just Computer. Technically the "tower" is the case that holds your computers brains (I DO NOT recommend opening the case to see what I am referring to!). This is the outer box of your computer. Inside of the tower there are a lot of wires, circuits, and foreign looking items. We are only going to cover the essentials. The actual "brains" of your computer are screwed inside the tower and it is called the "motherboard". If you have ever seen the inside of a computer you have seen it - it is the largest item in there. On this motherboard sits a chip called the "CPU". CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. Technically it is the "brain" that runs the motherboard and controls the technical settings of your computer. It is a small chip that is usually placed in the middle of the motherboard. If you happen to open the case and want to see what I am talking about DO NOT touch or manipulate this chip - you WILL ruin your computer!
There are other parts that connect to the motherboard which are removeable and be changed out when they "go bad". Your Sound Card (how you get sound from the computer to your speakers) is connected to the motherboard and can be replaced when it goes out. Your Ethernet card (connects your computer to the internet via a special phone line that plugs in the back of the computer to your wall or DSL modem) is connected to the motherboard and can be replaced also. Your computer's memory connects to the motherboard too. These can all be replaced by novices but I must warn you - talk to a professional first to find out the correct tools to use. One static charge from your hand without being "grounded" can short out your computer and it will be un-useable!
This article should give you some basic knowledge about your computer's hardware. If you wish to learn more this should give a foundation for further research. Next time we'll cover Software so stay tuned!
Kellee is the owner of MontanaPA which is a freelance Web Design and Personal/Virtual Assistance firm located in Montana. For years being called out on Computer Tutor calls she came to realize that although the newest generation is extremely computer savvy, the rest of us aren't nearly as fluent! Knowing how wonderful computers can be in our lives, she has set out to write articles which are geared toward the Baby Boomer generation with computer explanations that are easy to understand. Her hope is that she can explain computers and their abilities in such a way as to excite this generation and show what fabulous possibilities await once they are understood!