What is computer crime? Computer crime, often called “cyber crime” is any type of illegal activity that takes place on a computer with a network. Oftentimes, when you think of computer crime, you might picture a home user downloading a virus that wipes out his hard drive or spyware that hijacks her system for the purposes of spying. 

Computer crimes can also affect businesses too and they do, sometimes with devastating results. For example, in 2012, the IRS paid a whopping 5.2 billion dollars in tax refunds to identity thieves!

Protect your business and improve your bottom line by staying one step ahead of the cybercriminals.

5 Common Computer Crimes

 Unlike traditional online courses that charge a fee, limit enrollment and provide credit or certification, Moocs (massive open online courses) are usually free or low cost and can host hundreds of  thousands global participants.  Although MOOC have been around for years in the form of collective techie learning gatherings, participation in 2012 has ballooned at a rapid pace likened to FaceBook in its heyday.  According to The Year of the MOOCarticle in the New YorkTimes, edX, a nonprofit start-up backed by Harvard and MIT, had 370,000 registrants in the fall of its first official courses. This paled in comparison to the amount of students that Courseraattained in its first year of online learning opportunities, 1.7 million!

Will MOOCs Replace education as we know it?

Like any new trend, massive participation in online classes has its challenges. Lynda Weinman has ample experience when pointing out that they are by no means a replacement for formal education.  As a former digital animator, special effects designer and classroom college teacher, Linda paved the path for an earlier version of MOOC education in the mid 90’s when she founded Lynda.comas an aide to her own students. Over four million students and 2,200 courses later she’s confident when clarifying that many of the collegespartnered with Lynda.com use the tutorials as added features to their existing courses.  When asked in an interview with ReadWriteBuilders, if high technical companies look at online programs in terms of advancement as a supplement to traditional education or as a way for people to further their careers, Lynda feels that “it’sjust one example of something that you can do to enhance your attractiveness to potential employers. But [it’s also important to have] a portfolio and body of work, references that actually work out, showing that you had success in the past.”

MOOC Benefits:

Applications are becoming more and more sophisticated as languages such as Python open the doors to the world of programming for people who have the creative vision but always felt actually writing code was beyond their grasp.

A large part of any programs success is based on how well it can react to the events which it has been programmed to understand and listen for.

A good example of an event would be when the user clicks a button on the applications window. What happens when that button is clicked?

Well, the first thing that happens is the operating system sends out a message to let any listening software know that the button was clicked. Next, your application needs to do something in response to that event.

Is it possible for anyone to give Microsoft a fair trial? The first half of 2012 is in the history books. Yet the firm still cannot seem to shake the public opinion as The Evil Empire that produces crap code.

I am in a unique position. I joined the orbit of Microsoft in 1973 after the Army decided it didn't need photographers flying around in helicopters in Vietnam anymore. I was sent to Fort Lewis and assigned to 9th Finance because I had a smattering of knowledge about computers. And the Army was going to a computerized payroll system.

Bill and Paul used the University of Washington's VAX PDP computer to create BASIC for the Altair computer. Certainly laughable by today's standards, it is the very roots of the home computer.

Microsoft became successful because it delivered what people wanted.