Group items tagged

"n turning off analogue"

1.11_people_machines 1.12_digital_citizenship 2.2_edu_training 2.2_hw_networks_classroom

1.11_people_machines 1.6_digital_div_equ_access 2.2_IT_teach_learn 3.2 _software

Stakeholders: Students Advantages for students Productivity applications and textbooks are available to download online - easy global Access. the files are digital, so they can be transfered easily The online texbooks are safe from physical dangers, such as fires Convenience - being able to access iTunes U (university level resources) and the internet Saving time - files in an electronic format can be edited, searched and backed up easily. Disadvantages for students Although the files are safe, the iBook itself is still susceptible to physical damage The files may be corrupt Battery power failures and technical problems (they don't happen with physical notebooks) Access to internet and resources may depend on whether the space has wireless Access to games and rich interactive productivity applications can become the norm. Thence users' attention span may decrease The cost of product, of electronic textbooks and applications is the major issue From an evaluative point of view, I think that using a portable electronic device in place of a physical textbook would not benefit the students very much. The values a teacher is looking for are the ability to focus and listen, and the iBook could encourage the student to run parallel tasks at inappropriate times. The device would not be suitable for younger audiences, and in my opinion, it would contribute to a child being spoiled. Rather more mature users would benefit from this product, because they are more conscious of its function and, most importantly, the price they had to pay for it. Other stakeholders may include Apple, educators and digital course material publishers.

SOPA and PIPA Shelved But Is ACTA Unstoppable?

Better than just stopping SOPA/PIPA/ACTA is to pass well drafted legislation like the OPEN Act: http://keepthewebopen.com/

This article presents intellectual property theft of various companies that work for governments. the article raises many ethical issues.

For details on the Wikipedia blackout that is planned for January 18, 2012 see Wikipedia:SOPA initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Nice video explaining the current issues

The SOPA is mainly adresses the protection of intellectual property of content creators. Obviously this is the one of the biggest advantages being proposed by the act as artists and entertainers will be able to profit more from the content they make. Nowadays much of their content is illegally downloaded from the internet, such as music. However SOPA will have a severe impact on online freedom of speech as numerous websites would be affected by the act and blacklisted as a result. The internet is makes frequent use of copyrighted material not necessarily in a legal way. Doing streaming of such content after the act could lead to a maximum penalty of five years in prison. However the US congress states that protecting intellectual property is not the same as censorship http://agbeat.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/sopa-infographic1.png The image above provides more detail about SOPA including how it will take effect and the impact it would have on businesses. It shows the major supporters of SOPA as well as the major opposers, one of them being Google.

Apparently there are multiple ways of circumventing the SOPA: 1. Using a VPN Service 2. Using Your HOSTs File 3. Using TOR 4. Using a Web DNS Tool 5. Changing Your DNS Server 6. Using Command Prompt 7. Using Foxy Proxy 8. Using MAFIAAFire Source: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/95013/8-technical-methods-that-make-the-protect-ip-act-useless/

This article refers to the security of the network of various high-profile companies (Adidas, Sony), and the privacy of the consumers. To solve the issue of security, companies should tighten up their security for example, by incorporatibg Secure Sockets Layer protection (SSL) and https network protection. In the past, "sophisticated" has referred to Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks. Defending against APTs was one of the tasks involved in a recent EU-US joint test of cyber attack readiness. http://www.itpro.co.uk/637204/cyber-attack-drives-adidas-websites-offline The companies should also be more cautious of their surroundings by monitorning IP traffic and access to the website. Losing personal and/or sensitive data and having it in the wrong hands could cause serious consequences. (http://www.filetransferplanet.com/cyber-attack-forces-adidas-offline/) This personal information could then be passed on to third party companies who can take advantage of information like address and phone numbers to conduct surveys or distribute advertisements. This would cause widespread discotent due to the invasion of the consumers' privacy.

If the proposed blackout were to occur, a greater awareness and understanding could be achieved. This would likely garner more support against SOPA, as websites like Facebook, Google and Twitter are used by millions of people worldwide, most of these people being casual internet users who have no idea what SOPA really is, meaning some would attempt to educate themselves on the subject and try to do something about it. The potential increase in support could lead to more people demanding big companies to 'drop' their support by threatning to boycott said comapnies products/services. As mentioned in an article bookmarked by Tranny Franny (http://www.slashgear.com/sony-and-nintendo-drop-sopa-support-amid-anonymous-threats-03205579), Sony and Nintendo appear to have dropped their suppor after being threatned by Anonymous. Although what Anonymous threatned to do was wrong, it certainly go the point across to both companies meaning a boycott from customers worldwide could change other companies minds on whether or not to support SOPA

Although that seems like a good way to reach a wider audience in order for them to understand the severity of how SOPA would affect the internet, it could be seen as quite unethical. These casual internet users could only use websites such as Facebook to get an quick update, so these could be people who would be indifferent after knowing the affect of SOPA. Why should these people be prevented to access a website they use simply because the website feels the need to make a statement. And in terms of big companies dropping their support, is it really correct for them to drop their support? why did they support it in the first place? If they believe that this act should be made official is it correct for them to "drop" their support simply because too many people are going against it? So they would be "changing sides" out of fear, rather than due to their opinion, which in a way goes agaisnt the point of voting or supporting somethis such as SOPA

A series of private pictures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have been posted online by "hackers" to highlight a bug in the social network. In total 14 pictures of Mr Zuckerberg were posted to image site Imgur under the headline: "It's time to fix those security flaws Facebook".

Although some people have no problem whatsoever with flaunting themselves on facebook, effectively giving up on their right to privacy, some people do appreciate their privacy something that lately seems to be inexistent for facebook users. As mentioned in the following article: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/facebook-having-devoured-your-privacy-wants-more, facebook are slowly implementing a new feature that will suggest events your friends are attending even if you were not invited. This latest facebook bug goes to show how easy it is for someone to lose their privacy on the internet as even facebook founder and creator Mark Zuckerburg is susceptible. Hopefully this "small" incident will increase facebook's concern for protecting their users' privacy and increase its security after complaints that privacy settings are not functioning properly and various users being victims of phising attacks.

The social and ethical issues that relate to this article are that privacy and security and reliablility to a certain extent. What the Anonymous group are doing is basically taking people's personal information such as name, age, adress etc. and putting online for everyone to see, simply becuase they favoured nazi views. This is essentially the invasion of people's privacy as people's information is free for everyone to see. IT is also a security issue as people who feel very strongly against people who favour nazi views, have access to these peoples' adresses and could impose a danger. Reliability is also an issue, as it's mentioned in the article that none of the people that were mentioned in the website were actually confirmed to share Nazi ideals, meaing they are unjustly putting people in danger.

The article does raise some rather interesting social and ethical concerns. The main thing here is of course "Anonymous" breaking the Data Protection Act 1998 with their unlawful obtaining of personal information. While one can admire "Anonymous" fight against neo-nazism, the results they are producing are in fact not reliable. Though, as we've seen in the past, "Anonymous" are skilled proper encryption and security should have been able to fend them off and safeguard all information. Looking back, this would have the ideal to avoid the situation the websites are in now. I cannot see a plausible way of undoing this, and again give privacy to those who had it broken, as the information has been linked to multiple other sites - so perhaps this is only to serve as a lesson for others websites containing personal information.

Well, to be honest the best solution would just to not post any private information online but seeing as that option wouldn't be considered by the 'anonymous' hacker group they could at least find a way and make sure that the only personal information posted online its authentic and from the main followers and contributors to this Nazi supporting website… but I don't really know how they would be able to do this, sooo if anyone knows please share because now I'm curious aha As much as I don't agree with the Nazi ideals and as much as I believe that supporting them is (sorry for being improper here) idiotic. I still don't agree with posting this private information online because as mentioned above, this does pose a major danger to the people whose information has been posted online by the people who have very strong feelings against these Nazi supporters.

This article has made clear that the AdWords advertising system is flawed, it is unacceptable for a large company like Google to lead users to believe that a website can be trusted using the 'sponsored links' and continues to make profit. This goes against the 6th point in Google's philosophy "You can make money without doing evil" although they are not doing it consciously. From the article I understood that the system is run using an automated filter to identify websites which break Google's policy and a manual assessment also takes place by a human. Instead of using just one human, a group of humans can assess the adverts to ensure nothing is missed. Furthermore, an update of Google's databases should regularly take place in order to catch illegal websites quicker.

Google's corrupt sponsored links affects nearly every digital citizen, as Google is by far the most popular and used search engine. There is alternatives to Google, but nevertheless Google is the most popular search engine(we're talking 70+% http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/ ) I agree with Jorge's main ideas above. However, I do not think that increasing the number of people checking would make any large difference. It is their filters which needs an update - something I'm sure they're already doing. It does raise some reliability concerns, being the most popular search engine, you'd expect them not to endorse(even unknowingly) corrupt links.

The social and ethical issues related to this news story are reliability, privacy and anonimity to an extent. Privacy as the information from the buyers credit card is given to what seems to be an unknown person or company. The multiple stakeholders seen would be the buyer, Google and the advertiser. Although it is via Google that the advertiser gets sell his product, it is important to understand that there are most likely thousands of advertisements added daily to the Google search engine and, referring back to Jorge's point, it would be very likely that humans would fail to see such mistakes as well after repeatedly going through hundreds of adds everyday. The trust and reliance that people have on Google can be misleading and it is evident that to solve such an issue people must be awared of the several scams that they are exposed to every single day in order to prevent this sort of problems.

This article further increases the already notorious fear of databases containing people's details being accessed by undesired people, who could potentially use this data to cause harm. This raises a serious privacy issue, as, although it has not been confirmed, these hackers have accessed the Steam database which holds up to 35 million people's credit card data and email addresses, posing a threat to a large amount of people. Although it is not known if any harm came of this attack, security measures such as changing password and transferring credit card data to a more secure service (Steam Guard security service) were suggested to Steam users. This is a solution that doesn't undo the harm that has already been made, but is still a positive measure as it can help prevent potential future attacks from hackers on this database.

"Valve has officially rolled out its new Steam security system, Steam Guard, which allows users to lock their accounts to a single PC if they so choose. Steam Guard essentially blocks all attempts to access a protected Steam account, then sends verification emails to a registered email address which allow the account owner to monitor account activity and grant access on a single PC at a time. " http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/17/valve-launches-steam-guard-security/1 This ensures the 35 million users "the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods", especially if they use Steam in public spaces such as cibercafés. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/03/valve-introduces-steam-guard-to-fight-acount-phishing-and-hijack/

This article presents intellectual property theft of civil servants. The article raises many ethical issues such as of privacy, anonymity, security etc. The hackers have accessed private information of government officials, (some of them who work in sensitive areas) their details and emails. Some officials fear that their e-mails can be quickly cracked using off the self software. Some companies client's credit card numbers and addresses were also hacked. The hackers, who are an anonymous groups have clearly violated the privacy rights of individuals. Exposing civil servants data can turn out to be of serious problem for the government. New methods should be developed to secure these confidential data.

There are various different ways in which security could be improved to prevent a similar incident from happening. It is mentioned in the article, and by Benjon that simple of the shelf software would be capable of decrypting the passwrords stored on the Stratfor database. This in my opinion is quite shocking as Stratfor offers its service to government officials all around the world, most likely for a monetary fee, and seem to not care whether or not the information they are MEANT to secure is infact secure. This issues could be easily solved by improving their encryption technology to or close to military grade encryption. It is most likely that the company's reputation has been severely damaged and rightly so.

Nice link here explaining basics of military encryption: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/Advanced-Encryption-Standard Also I follow this guy's blog and he always has some interesting stories on security and has done a lot of work in the world of cryptography: http://www.schneier.com/