Beginning Programming With Java

The book I read to research this post was Beginning Programming With Java For Dummies by Barry Burd which is a very good book which I bought from Kindle. If you are new to programming java is relatively easy compared to a lot of programming languages. This book recommends a program called eclipse which is free, for writing java although there are quite a few programs out there that do the same job. Java was developed when someone was writing a program in one of the C languages and was having problems so he decided to write an intuitive language to make his job easier. Java will work on practically any computer as long as it’s not really ancient. It runs on windows, linux and applemacs. The main purpose of java is to write plugins for a website but it can be used to write programs and many electronic items like mobile phones have their operating systems written in it. A darker purpose java is sometimes used for is the writing of viruses and some people disable the part of their internet browser that reads java for this reason. A couple of common mistakes people writing java make are having a space where there should be a character and either having too many or not enough parenthesis. You normally have an even number of these one either side of a statement.

Beginning Programming

The book I read to research this post was Beginning Programming for Dummies by Wallace Wang which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. A friend of mine who used to have a sinclair spectrum and learned to program in basic and pascal told me he used to buy computer magazines. These had the programs written out & at first he copied them out, then started changing things and gradually got proficient in them languages. This book is a kind of tutorial in a simplified form of basic which I’m not going to go into here. There are more computer languages than spoken languages in the world. There’s even one based on the klingon language used in star trek. Many of these languages have different strengths and weaknesses. Windows and similiar programs are written in one of the C languages which can be read on any machine with slight modifications. Some languages like Visual Basic need a small program to interpret them on a computer. AppleMacs tend to use AppleScript. Some languages like Prolog & Lisp are suitable for artificial intelligence and feature advanced decision making functions. The native language of a computer is machine code which is too complex for people to write in. The language you write in has to be translated. HTML is used for websites and plugins are done in java and javascript. Some languages like SQL require a database. Often a programmer will be fluent in several languages but sometimes he will do part of a program in one language and then someone else will use another language to do the rest. Once you learn one language it makes it easier to learn another but it takes a while to become proficient.

Digital Forensics Basics

The book I read to research this post was The Basics of Digital Forensics by John Sammons which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. This book is a good introduction to this field. The FBI has 16 regional training & working digital forensics labs scattered around the United States. Many police stations don’t have the funds for a dedicated digital forensics lab or personnel. It’s interesting that between 2009 and 2010 the total digital data in the world grew by 62%. Dennis Radar also known as the serial killer BTK was caught because he bragged about one of his murders on a floppy disk he sent to a newspaper & a file was found on the disk that led them to a computer that belonged to a church. They found out Radar had access to that computer. They then used DNA taken from his daughter which was a close match to DNA taken from the floppy disk and which showed it belonged to her father. He is currently serving 10 life sentences for the murders. Another case was the case of Casey Anthony who was accused of murdering her daughter they showed that she had searched on her computer for words like chloroform among others. Another case was someone was using stolen credit card numbers to buy merchandise & they followed one of the packages to a house that belonged to a couple who were arrested. They then found that the stolen credit card numbers had been used by other people. This led to 22 arrests and the recovery of $100,000 worth of merchandise. It was obvious that it was a case of organised crime & all those convicted went to prison.