Posts Tagged ‘how do’
Question Asked: How Do You Determine The Value Of An Autograph?
According to several sources, there are a number of factors that go into evaluating the monetary worth of an autograph. According to the eBay Guide to buying and selling autographs, they say:
Several factors go into determining the price of an autographed item. The content of the photo (is this person known for his/her role shown in photo) and how difficult it is to obtain the autograph. Condition and market are also factors considered in pricing. Demand also has to be considered, especially if the celebrity has become more popular and the demand has increased suddenly. Examples recently include celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Hilary Duff, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom and Bruce Springsteen. Each has either had a very successful film, tour or CD.
You can read the entire article here.
Question Asked: How Do I Recognize Phishing E-mails?
As a follow up to yesterday’s How Do I Prevent Getting E-mail Spam?, CJ has asked today’s question about phishing e-mails.
First, though, I should probably explain what “phishing” is. Phishing is when someone (usually a criminal) creates a “spoof” website that looks just like a popular service that you’d use. America Online, Bank of America, Paypal, eBay, etc. These sites are always the target of phishing.
So, to “phish”, someone would send you an official looking e-mail (the phishing attempt), in hopes that you’d click on the “update your credit card” or “update your password” links, and go to their phony website. You’d then try to login to their fake site, and they’d log your details, and then have access to your account on the real website.
Here’s an example of what a Paypal Phishing e-mail looks like:
Phishing E-mail Example
Note the “click here” link. That link wouldn’t take you to the real Paypal website, but to a phishing site, that would look almost exactly like the Paypal Website.
The good news is, most modern browsers (commonly used IE7 and Firefox 3) try to protect you with giant warning messages:
IE7 Warning Message
Firefox 3 Warning Message
As you can see, the sites that may be a phishing website (assuming you click on the link in the email) are usually already reported to agencies that monitor this sort of stuff, and the alert should pop up to protect you.
Let’s go back, though, to the e-mail, and how you can recognize it.
A phishing email will always look like it’s real. However, most companies now try to make it easier to spot a message that isn’t from them. Paypal and eBay for example, always use your first name when they send you a real e-mail. So if you get an e-mail from “Paypal”, that addresses you as “Dear Customer”, it’s fake. Same with eBay.
Another trick is to put your mouse over the link they give you to click. If you look in the bottom left corner of your screen (or e-mail program) it’ll show you the “real” address that it wants to send you to, not what it actually says in the e-mail. Here, try it:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-done&login_access=123456
What you see on the page, is the “real” URL to Paypal’s website. If you put your mouse pointer over it (don’t click), and look to the bottom left of your browser, you should see the real address I linked to. If you can’t see it, try enabling the “Status Bar” view in your browser. (Go to View in the toolbar up to, then click “Status Bar”, that should fix it.)
The best practice is simple. If you get an e-mail from a company asking you to update any type of sensitive information (credit card, address, social security number, etc), don’t click on any links in the e-mail, even if you’re sure it’s real. Simply open your browser, and type in the website address by hand. That way you can ensure that you’re at the right website, and not a fake. Generally if a company sends you a message that’s real, it’ll be somewhere in their website. eBay, Paypal, and Bank of America all have a “messages center”, where you can read mail that they’ve sent you. That’s the safest bet.
Recognizing phishing e-mails is a gut instinct. If you think it’s phony, chances are, it is.
Question Asked: How Do Solar Panels Work?
What a green question to ask. Solar panels are being used more and more frequently to help reduce the cost of living (long-term), as well as reducing the use of Earth’s resources.
Solar panels are typically made from silicon, of which there’s plenty on planet Earth. They’re typically thin, reflective, and aimed at the sky at varying angles. See example image below:
Solar Panel Example
The solar panels collect protons from the sun, and convert it to energy. Technical explanation below, courtesy of go-solar.net:
Photons from the sun strike the semi conductor material of the solar panel and are absorbed by electrons in the silicon semiconductor. For this to happen, the photons that strike the semiconductor material must be at an energy level of about 1.2. If the energy level is below this minimum, no electricity will be created. About 70% of the photons in sunlight are at, or above this level.
The cost/savings benefit of installing and having solar panels is a bit tricky to calculate. The best I can determine from a few web searches, is that it would cost roughly $35,000 – $40,000 US, depending on how many kilowatts you’ll need to generate. The average household would come out to about $40,000. (At least in the Boston area, where I live.)
The benefit of having a $40,000 system that can generate 5 kilowatts of energy would save you roughly 100% on your electric bill. Let’s do the math:
The average non-energy-effecient American home would save roughly $600 per year with a solar panel system. At that rate, it’d take 66.67 years to make it financially worth your while. Morally worth while? That depends on how “green” you and your family want to be.