Friday 5 December 2008

Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people’s computer files.
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people’s intellectual output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.

Refer to Computer Ethics Institute


Questions for your Blog Activity

1) Do you agree with all the 10 Commandments of Computer Ethics above?
2) Which do you disagree with (if any)?
3) Do you think they leave anything important out, if so explain what?
4) What is not covered above that should be covered?


In my opinion the ten commandments of computer ethics mentioned are good guides if practiced in the actual day to day work in interacting on the computers. However, as we can see in our everyday lives, there are always people twisting the ethical system of using a computer and misusing them in a number of communications. People are using other individual’s details to steal identity, and more astonishing thing is that using the computer to abuse innocent children in a manner of harming their fellow human race.

In general I agree with the Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics mentioned. Nevertheless, as I had been bombarded by spam mails recently I would like to include one or more to it.
1. Thou shalt not misuse other e-mail addresses.
2. Thou shalt not pass e-mail addresses to a third party without getting permission from the individuals.

The things I would suggest to cover on the Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics could be, like considering the disable people to access the computers without breaching their human rights or discriminating them. This suggestion is purely due to my past experience that, be it software or hardware which is not designed to be accessible is unethical.


Reference:

Ramon C Barquin. Home Page. Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics. [Online]. Washington D.C., Computer Ethics Institute.
Available from: http://www.computerethicsinstitute.org/
Accessed on: [04 December 2008].

Sunday 30 November 2008

How could you advise a visually disabled friend to complain about a website they couldn't access?

How could you advise a visually disabled friend to complain about
a website they couldn't access?

I would advise a visually disabled person to complain about a website which he/she couldn’t access a website by taking legal actions for breach of his/her human rights on the website owners. The reason for this is that under Disability Discrimination Act 1995, web sites should be designed to some certain standards to be accessible to all people with different disability reasons.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 aims to end the discrimination which many disabled people face, and gives them rights in, facilities and services to be accessible without discriminating them.

The three points below are some solutions for the case:

1. Commercial and public websites has to be designed in a way that which could be accessed by disabled people. One of it could be putting accessibility button in order users could change the size of fonts putting alt tags for images and keyboard options for navigations.

2. Colours of texts and graphics should be understandable by the viewer.

3. There should be a screen reader on the website so that visually disabled person can have an option of hearing what the contents are.

Legal cases which have made this precedence in law:

The UK Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 states:
"It is unlawful for a provider of services to discriminate against a disabled person [...] in refusing to provide, or deliberately not providing, to the disabled person any service which he provides, or is prepared to provide, to members of the public."

A qualifications body discriminated against a blind person Sam Lafif, 30, IT Project Manager who decided to study for a Project Management Professional (PMP) in September 2004. Although the company was a US based it was the first company without presence in the UK (United Kingdom) to be liable under the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act.
Sam Latif uses software called JAWS to convert text on her computer to speech letting her read documents and browse the web at work. When she decided to get the PMP qualification she then applied to Project Management Institute (PMI) to obtain the qualification. She was sent copies of more than a million guide. However, she did not get an electronic copy that she could read using her JAWS software. In the end she paid a student to read for her and she prepared for the exam. There was a problem during the exam as well. One she wasn’t allowed to use her computer for a reason that the system may corrupt the good function of computers. She then requested the test centre to download her JAWS software on to one of the computers, but her request was declined. She sat the exam at a third party test centre in Edinburgh with assistance or a reader and she described the exam experience to OUT-LAW. Latif went on to pass the exam, however, she had lodged a legal case proceedings against PMI under Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995. The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) supported her case.
In the end the case was heard at a Tribunal after a pre-hearing result and pre-hearing Tribunal. On the Tribunal court hearing it was concluded that the respondent has not established that it took all such steps as were reasonable in order to prevent the claimant being put at a substantial disadvantage by their practice of exam questions being read by candidates in a Test Centre, and thereafter recorded their answers.
On 19th October 2006, PMI was ordered to pay compensation of £3,000 for injury to Latif’s feelings.

PMI appealed against the decision, but the appeal was lost on 10th May 2007 and the Tribunal upheld the ruling in favour of Sam Latif.


Reference:


Directgov. Home Page. (2008). The Disability Discrimination Act 1995. [Online]. Available From: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm
Accessed on: [28 November 2008].

Duncan R. 2007. Websites May Require Visually Impaired Access In California. Available from: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/13/websites-may-require-visually-impaired-access-in-california/ Accessed on: [01 December 2008].

Trace R., D Center & I Jacobs. 1998-2007. Web content accessibility Guidelines. Last revised: 17 January 2008. [Online]. University of Wisconsin – Madison. Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#Guidelines
Accessed on: [01 December 2008].

Friday 21 November 2008

Advantages and disadvantages of 3-Tier Architecture in Web Development

The advantages and disadvantages of 3-Tier Architecture in Web development:
A 3-Tier Architecture has 3 essential components
A client PC
An application server and
Database server

Advantages:
a. Managing data is independent from the physical storage
b. Migration to new graphical environments is faster
c. It is possible to make changes on the presentation level without affecting the other two (business or data access layer)
d. As each tier is independent it is possible to use different sets of developers
e. Since the client doesn’t have direct access to the database business logic is more secure
f. When one tier fails there is no data loss, because you are always secure by accessing the other tier.

Disadvantages:
a. It is more complex structure
b. More difficult to set up and maintain it as well
c. The physical separation of the tiers may affect the performance between the three
d. It is more difficult to built a 3-tier application


Reference:

CommentCaMarche Network. (2008). Networking 3-Tier Architecture. [Online]. Available from: http://en.kioskea.net/contents/cs/cs3tier.php3
Accessed: [21 November 2008].

Sinha, R., Boutelle, J. & Ranjan, A. (2008). 3-Tier Architecture. [Online]. San Francisco, SlideShare Inc. Available from: http://www.slideshare.net/guestd0cc01/3-tier-architecture
Accessed on: [20 November 2008].

Saturday 15 November 2008

Advice to next year's students about preparing for the A1W group presentation

“With hindsight, what advice would you give to next year's students about preparing for the A1W group presentation?”

Preparing for the A1W group presentation:

The advice that I would give to next year students of A1W preparing for their presentation are the points below. In order to prepare a good presentation, the points below are some of the main points which can give you a kind of good guidance. First, get to know people and make mates as fast as possible.

A good and effective presentation should have certain criteria’s like:
1. You have to know what you are doing(the subject), and form a group don’t wait to be put into groups as you might waste your time and not get well with the group you haven’t pick yourself.
2. Know your audience, and find out how long your presentation will last by rehearsing it several times. The introduction and summary bit is very important as well as the main body. The reason to that is, that you are preparing your audience what you are going to tell them and concluding by what you have told them on the summary slide.
3. Make your research as much as necessary and mostly do not forget to reference it at the time you collected the materials using the Harvard referencing system.
4. Prepare audience friendly and apply simple animations to your slides
5. Make group meetings as much as necessary
6. Whenever you meet record the minutes of meetings, names of attendance, locations of meetings, who attended and not, what progress you made so far, etc...
7. Having made your research and putting them on slides, book one of the presentation practice rooms and rehearse it and if possible ask someone from the learning support to be your audience and give you feed backs
8. Have good communication with your group members and if any group member keeps dragging you make her/him aware that it is a group work
9. Remember also you are doing presentation. Therefore, how you present yourself counts, make eye contacts; prepare to answer for any question arises.
10. Last but not list have full name contact of every group member and never live it too late. The earlier you do it the better your presentation will be.

Friday 7 November 2008

Three typical functions performed by the Apache HTTP Web Server

(i) Describe THREE typical functions performed by the Apache HTTP Web Server?

Three typical functions of Apache HTTP Web Server:
1. It features configurable error messages
2. Apache is used for tasks like when content needs to be made available in a secure and reliable way. The example to this can be sharing files from a personal computer over the Internet. A user installs Apache and put the files in the Apache’s document root which then can be shared.
3. It converts or rewrites a URL


(ii) compare the similarities and differences between the terms ‘Static’ and Dynamic’ Web sites?

Comparison of Static and Dynamic Web Sites:

Static Web Sites are those which send exactly the same response to every request. Each page is separate document and there is no database that it draws on. The way you edit it also is different than dynamic sites. Each page of a static site is edited by going into each page and edit the HTML, so you would either do it yourself or pay for it. The example of this can be an old HTML document which displays just a static site. Static Web Sites do not change very often. With dynamic web sites there is a difference to how the request for pages is a bit more complicated. For each request, the page is constructed from information stored in files such as images, textual content and programming logic. It is also written using more complicated code and can do a lot more. A typical example to this can be making an area where you could log in and change various parts of the site, such as adding information or products. This is because each page is constructed based on the information in a database.

Another differences can be static web sites ending in .html or .htm, but dynamic sites ending in .stm, .asp, or .php etc.
The similarities of both the Web Sites are:
1. They both translate the URL
2. They manage and store websites of the WWW(World Wide Web)
3. Without the existence of both the sites there would not be the World Wide Web displaying the way it displays.
4. They are both useful whether the site we access is static or dynamic

Reference:

Purple Oar Software. (2006-2008). Static v dynamic web sites. [Online]. Available from: http://www.purpleoar.co.nz/static-v-dynamic Accessed on: [17 November 2008].

Wise R. (2001). Dynamic or Static?.[Online]. Available from: http://websiteowner.info/articles/pages/pagetypes.asp [Accessed on 17/11/08].

Saturday 1 November 2008

Thorogh research of the subject

The 10 points below give guidelines for undertaking successful Group work.

They are all important.
You have to meet certain criteria (for effective Group work) in order to be successful in this assignment.

1. You have to thoroughly research your subject, not only from the link supplied but also from library and other internet sources.

2. You must reference your sources using the Harvard scheme.


3. You should read and understand the section in essential about group word. http://essential.tbs.uce.ac.uk/acadwork/groups.html

4. You must hold regular meetings and post the minutes on your section of moodle in the group work forum. Your group and tutors can see this, but other students can’t.


5. You should aim to hold at least three planning meetings which will be minuted.

6. Minutes should consist of the date, time and place the meeting was held, who attended, what everyone’s roles are and the action points and who should be undertaking them.
Meetings after the first should go through the action points begore deciding on a new set of action points.

7. You should hold rehearsals – there are two practice rooms available bookable through the Learner Support Centre.

8. Your presentation should last 10 minutes with five minutes for questions.


9. Read the assignment question before starting on any of this.

10. Any queries about this procedure please post them on moodle forum.

Question:

Any queries about this procedure please post them on moodle forum
Your task for this week’s Blog Assignment is to select one (from the given list of 10 items above) which you think will be most important for your Group work assignment and explain your reasons why you have made this choice?

Answer:

1. You have to thoroughly research your subject, not only from the link supplied
but also from library and other internet sources.

I have chosen the first item from the above, because I believe my group will benefit from researching in different numbers of sources rather than looking only in one material or from the link provided. Making a comprehensive and thorough research about the subject, could make group members to know all the areas of information gathered from the sources. This could play an effective method of knowledge, although it can sometimes consume time. Therefore, in my view the first item would be the most important method to take.

Friday 24 October 2008

Advantages and disadvantages of mobile Internet device for sending and retrieving e-mail messages

In your own view, give:

Two advantage AND also
Two disadvantage


Of using a mobile internet device for sending and retrieving email messages?

Advantages:

1. It is one of the recent technologies which enable you to communicate to your mates at anytime from anywhere.
2. Easy to carry it, download music, photos, access to www and e-mail your mates when even they are not available. It gives you unrestricted access to the full internet and web-based services when on the go.

Disadvantages:

1. It is expensive for everyone to have it so your communication can be limited if your mates haven’t got one. Even harder when you are abroad, where there might not be mobile signals.
2. You can be targeted by burglars for having such an expensive gadget. It is hard to read the text you received in such a small screen. You also get small pictures unlike you get on the PC or Laptops.


Reference:

3G forum. (1999). 3G Wireless Internet for T-mobile Nokia 6680. [last updated 28-June-2005]. [Online]. Available from: http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/June2005/1682.htm
Accessed on: [23 October 2008].

Thursday 16 October 2008

Why IP addresses are due to run out shortly and propose what solutions have been put forward

Describe (using your own words) why IP addresses for devices connected to the Internet are due to run out shortly and propose what possible solutions have been put forward to address this massive ‘time-bomb’?
The IP addresses are due to run out, because in the last few years its users have been growing dramatically in huge numbers. Since technology is growing every single minute the users(we) are demanding more than the IP address can offer. Due to our huge demand and the growthe of technology the IP addresses are vulnerable to run out very recent.
The solution to the above is that to develop a new technology before it runs out. Some predict that the IP addresses will run out by 2010. As this factor concerned to many users, there has been the driving factor in creating and adopting several new technologies, including classful networks, CIDER addressing, Network Address Translation (NAT) and IPv6. However, as of 2008, IPv6 is generally seen as the only practical long-term solution for IPv4 address exhaustion that is readily available.
Reference:
DSL, Hosting and Co-Lo. (1999-2008). Running out of IP addresses. [21 October 2008]. [Online]. Available from: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/ Accessed: [21 October 2008].
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., IPv4 address exhaustion. [Modified 17 October 2008].[Online]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Accessed: [21 October 2008].

Tuesday 14 October 2008

How Yahoo and Google search engine works and what engin I prefer

Blog Questions for Week 2

There are three parts to this question:

a) Describe how the
www.Yahoo.com search engine works and give one advantage and one disadvantage in this method of searching?
b) Describe how the
www.Google.com search engine works and give one advantage and one disadvantage in this method of searching?
c) In your view explain which search engine you prefer to use when searching the web and justify why you have this preference?

You may find the following resources useful. Remember to reference all your sources properly in your Blog (using Harvard referencing).

1. How the Yahoo search engine works:
Yahoo search engine works like other search engine by searching a database of the full text of web pages automatically harvested from the billions of web pages out there residing on servers. It searches the web via search engine, and it is always searching a somewhat stale copy of the real web page.
In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the yahoo home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo’s excellent shopping search engines.
The search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders. These crawl the web, finding pages for potential inclusion by following the lines in pages they already have in their database. After the text had been put on the search engine it finds the relevant information and links.
Advantages:
It is easy to find information basically about any thing you want and be able to communicate with the vast majority of people. You can learn many things from the different webs how they gather their information and also you will be able to see pictures, watch video clips and so on.
Disadvantages:
It can make you lazy by depending on the Internet to even find materials for you course work. You will get lots of pages on the searched results you shouldn’t get. You might be tempted to view pages which are illegal, or misuse the net.

2. How does the google search engine work
The google search engine works by storing information about many web pages, and retrieve from the www itself. The pages are then retrieved by a web crawler or some times known as a spider. Google store all or part of the source page as well as information about the web pages. Google not only indexes and caches web pages but also takes snapshots of other file types, which include PDF, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and much more.

Advantages.
It is a fantastic resent technology to play with and find huge information about anything if it exists on the Internet. You can find web pages, pictures, news, and so on. It is the easiest way of educating yourself on line where you don’t have to go long distance to get access to colleges and universities.

Disadvantages:
The page can display millions of pages which you do not need and it is time consuming to get the relevant information. When you are viewing pictures and video clips you might misuse the net and view pornography pictures or download hacking tools.


Reference:

Berkelay University of California. Home Page. (2008). How does search engine work?. [Online].[Last updated 27 January 08]. Available at:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu Accessed: [14 October 2008].

Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. (2008). Major search engines and directories.
Available from:
http://searchenginewatch.com Accessed: [14 October 2008].
Web search engine, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., The search engine. [Online]. [Modified 9 October 2008].
Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org Accessed [14 October 2008].

Monday 6 October 2008

One similarity and one difference between a Blog and an E-Mail

Give one similarity and one difference between a Blog and an E-Mail?

1. The similarity between an E-Mail and a Blog is that both are a means of communication electronically.

2. The difference between them again is:A Blog is a website which displays in chronological order and often provides a commentary, news on particular issues, such as food, politics, religion, or local news. It also provides some links to other blogs. It allows readers to leave comments.

Where as an E-Mail is a system for sending and receiving messages electronically over a computer network. A message gets sent by one person to other or others. An E-Mail always contains an ‘at’ sign where as a Blog never does.