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Home/ M2017 ITGS HL section B/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Varjavand Contractor

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Varjavand Contractor

Varjavand Contractor

Obama's win means future elections must be fought online | The Guardian - 1 views

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    Situation: This article pertains to the United States' Presidential Elections of 2008 that was won by Barack Obama and his usage of the Internet as well as Social Media. The reason he won the 2008 elections was not just because of his presidential policies, but however due to his personal reach and trust that the Internet will help fund and run a primary part of his campaign. Social and Ethical Significance: This article talks about how online campaigning is the key to 90%+ of political campaigns of the future and how they function. The article takes the (obvious) example of Barack Obama's presidential campaign of 2008 that was a historic campaign for multiple reasons. The article [published in 2008], claims that the primary reason that Obama succeeded because he "understood the potential of social media to communicate and raise funds - leaving his 72-year old opponent floundering." This campaign is the first election where all candidates utilised online social networks like Facebook [and still popular then, MySpace] to send forward their messages. This article also talks about personal knowledge of a person can be gained by reading a candidate's personal details such as favourite musicians and pastimes. Obama was successful on Facebook, rather than other competition, because he was engaging to people younger to him on his online campaigns, who appreciate casual behaviour, online and offline[while his competition kept it overly professional online]. "At 47, he may be older than the average user there, but Obama is a natural Facebook politician. On his personal profile there - which featured his "Our Moment is Now" motto - Obama named his favourite musicians as Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan, and listed his pastimes as basketball, writing, and "loafing w/kids" " Stakeholders: Candidates - They are the people relying on the Internet and their campaigns, that he can get the kind of reach he needs to move forward in his own elections. Voters - They
Varjavand Contractor

Why electronic voting isn't secure, but may be safe enough | The Guardian - 1 views

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    Situation: With countries such as the UK and India already implementing e-voting as their main method of voting for their desired candidates, it is hard not to see that e-Voting is slowly taking the concept of voting for elections, to a new front. Social and Ethical Significance: The article brings to us the example of the 2003 elections in the UK and how e-Voting "failed to make an impact to the people." That was moreover, because there were many people who didn't own a smart device/laptop, and a few didn't even know what the internet was, yet. The Issue with e-Voting then was that it hadn't made the impact because it wasn't the primary method of communication yet. Online voting has been trialled all over the world now, in hopes that it may be implemented in the future. However, developers have claimed that they see major amounts of issues with the softwares and networks/servers that are online. They claim that the reliability and security standards are very hard to meet, when it comes to e-voting systems. Furthermore, they have stated that th requirements are very tough and too high to be met, unlike other transactions. "Online banking suffers problems but refunds are possible after checking your bank statement. You can't 'refund' a vote and 'vote statements' can't be provided to check your vote was correctly recorded as that would enable vote selling and coercion." Stakeholders: Candidates - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the results of the ballot could potentially be rigged and the candidate would lose his/her chances of winning the elections. Voters - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the voter's vote can potentially be changed, and as a result, the voter feels a loss of security.
Varjavand Contractor

Is downloading really stealing? The ethics of digital piracy - 1 views

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    Situation: Digital Piracy can be publicly and officially classified as an offence or a violation of intellectual property. However, there are many violations in the present time, that people don't think are morally wrong. Social and Ethical Significance: The article takes the opening example of the new Game of Thrones episode which comes out on HBO, and how millions of individuals who wouldn't be able to watch it during the screening time, would download the episode illegally to watch it. It's true, that at some point or the other, people would tend to use means of digital piracy to receive what they cannot without it. Now, it's true, that all assets, ideas and artistic creations be held in common, and kept free for all. They believe that intellectual property, in the form of copyrighted information restricts that idea and creation. There exist these individuals that consider illegal downloading a crime, and that it wouldn't impose any sort of cost on anybody. However, there do exist "fundamentalist protectors" that would believe that illegal downloading equivalent to theft. This article speaks about the ethical considerations of why digital piracy occurs and why it's an issue not very publicly criticised upon. Stakeholders: Producers - Those who take countless hours creating the movie/audio that would be pirated. End users - Those people who would like to watch/listen to the movie/audio clip so that they receive more public entertainment.
Varjavand Contractor

How the digital world is changing our idea of news | Media Network | The Guardian - 1 views

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    Summary of the Article: Major newspaper companies such as the NY Times, and Al Jazeera, emphasise on the need for websites for their articles, to give news under a good amount of time. Stakeholders: Those companies who now need to spend more money and resources in order to provide both paper print and online copies of their news articles. The people who used to read the North Adams Transcript on a daily basis. Social and Ethical Significance: Reliability and Integrity - The fact that news outlets now work on a globalised, 24/7 and instant response system, means that they need to be able to take the risk to upload or run an article about certain news, that a random person must have claimed. As a result, if the news is unreliable, the news publisher is at risk and fault for running a story without backing their facts with suitable evidence. Intellectual Property - Usually there are videos or images online that are taken and uploaded by a person and the news outlets find it as the best feed for the certain news article or live upload. The person responsible for capturing the video or image has the right to reclaim the image from the news outlet if he/she deems necessary. That way, news outlets have to be very cautious about using images and videos, about the certain live news. Application to various scenarios: There are many examples about how news outlets have been warned yet not fined for using copyrighted or unreliable information.
Varjavand Contractor

Why Is Technology Important in Business? | eHow - 0 views

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    Situation: Technology is making businesses more optimised, efficient, and faster. Social and Ethical Significance: The ways that businesses work have changed over the past few years, is all due to the advancements in technology, that allow the companies/businesses/industries to work much quicker, efficient, and cover a much wider horizon, to achieve profits. The use of technology helps in allowing instant communication to any location around the globe, a more optimised mode of production of goods, services or a certain product, a much better, more efficient inventory management, allowing zero loose ends, and not to forget, better management of finances, anywhere at any time. IT systems: Well, IT systems in businesses vary from company to company. However, I'll take the example of a hypermarket chain, and name it X. X would have formal employees,as well as normal employees using personal laptops and smartphones, and that would require IT technicians to create working servers for the company. There would be a website portal for those who would like to order online, as well as customer calling services etc. Then, X would have checkout machines; some self-checkout and some, standard checkout, and these checkout machines would require regular maintenance to make sure it's in proper working condition. Then there would be barcode scanners all around the stores to check prices of a product in store. Application to Specified Scenarios: Supermarket and Hypermarket companies such as Asda, Carrefour, Spinneys, Choithram's, etc run using a similar system as described in the IT systems.
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