Crime & Crime Prevention

Crime and crime prevention are two ever evolving things to do, as new types of crime are commited, new crime prevention methods are needed to find people who commit these crimes. As crimes start to utilise technology more, so must crime prevention. New technology can be used to assist crime though, however. Such as the rise of email leading to an increase in phishing as they use the new form of media to trick people into becoming victims of indentity theft.

Here is another example of criminals using technology to better commit crimes and illegally acquire money

By infecting computers with software which will force the user to pay, using logo's from key enforcement agencies to seem legitimate, and convincing 2.9% of users to pay, a statistic which adds up when installed hundreds of thousands of times.

However technology can go the other way. An example of technology helping crime prevention though, can be seed in this article

It shows how the theif usageof facebook caused him to be caught, as the police managed to find his facebook post and use it as evidence to find him.

All of this shows how the evolution of technology needs to be followed with a similar evolution of crime prevention, and as such law enforcement is trying to increase the level of technology available to it ahead of the criminals, leading to a decrease in crime year on year for the past decade. This is positive, but relies on crime prevention having access to technology at arate faster than the general public or criminals.

Copyright and Social.Media

copyright law is traditionally an effective way to protect your private content from being used by others without permission. However, the rise of social media and the sharing nature of it has caused issues with privacy, as when you upload a photo to a social networking site, you are uploading the picture for anyone to see (and without privacy settings that anyone can potentially see), allowing news networks and others to take your photos and use them without your permission, as they are public.

This creates a serious issue, as private images can be distrubuted through social media like facebook even after you close your account, which means these images can still be used. Where thye law decides to take this will be interesting, as it is currently a legal gray area.

Texting

Texting (SMS, or short messaging service) has changed the way society works since it's inception. It has changed our life in a variety of ways, as texting is mainly done on mobile devices, with harder to use key pads than a traditional keyboard (or spoken language), as well as having a fixed character limit to each text that can be sent between 70 and 140 characters, not only will you save time by making shorter messages, you will also save money/

This would lead to the assumption that people simply make messages as brief as possible. Although this is true to some extent, the actual result of essentially incentives being given to those who shorten their messages is the development of "text speak" text speak is essentially a cut down version of the English language, removing all non essential letters and shortening common words, removing the majority of vowels and more.

This has a big impact on our lives, as instead of using full language in our free times, we are using what is almost a completely different language, leading some to argue that English grades amongst those groups who text the most (teenagers) will lower. It also creates another gap between the young and the old in society, as only those who frequently text will understand text language, building barriers.

In conclusion texting has had a massive effect on all of our lives, allowing us to send short messages to each other while on the go. Although not all of it's effects are positive, it's still a great influence on our lives, and a step towards a more technological future.

Government Acts And Their Effects On IT

I did a presentation on ICT. Here It is, in picture form so we can close our eyes and pretend.

 

Downloading Goods and Services

A lot of goods and  services that were once physical items are now moving to the internet, such as entertainment and with the rise of online services such as iTunes, Netflix and Steam, there is very little media that can not be bought and consumed without having to leave your computer screen.

There are many reasons why these services are so popular, the first being convenience, as it takes very little effort to buy things, as once your credit card details are stored, you are often able to make purchases with a single click, a lot faster than going out and buying a physical copy.

A second reason is pricing, as all digital sales are a lot cheaper, because all manufacturing costs are reduced to zero, and some of the savings are given to the customer

Finally, impulse buying is a lot of easier to do through the internet, as you can want something and buy it immediately with the internet and be listening, playing or watching it immediately, as it takes just a single click once setup.

Online Entertainment

The internet can be used for a number of things, as well as being an educational haven and a social hub, the internet also has a massive amount of entertainment on it. This is because. as websites have increased in complexity from simple HTML Pages consisting of just Text, images and hyperlinks, to stylish pages using a variety of programing languages and tools.

One of these tools websites have started adopting is adobe flash, a program originally intended for animation which is now used for online videos and video games. One from of online entertainment  now commonly used is youtube, which provides millions of videos to be watched at any time, by anyone.

 

as well as yiutube and other videos sites, there are also websites devoted to games, such as:
Runescape
Kongregate
Newgrounds
with the latter two also incorporating social elements. As well as both these massive used of flash, there are also many other forms of entertainment on the internet, as the internet enters mainstream and more and more people use it as a source of entertainment, more innovative ways to make websites are being found.

Life in the Informatioo Age - Education

over the course of the last 30 years, the way we can consume information has vastly changed. Where traditionally we would have needed to use physical information sources such as books and people with the knowledge, both being incredibly subjective piecs of information. Since the start of the information age, and the birth of the internet a plethora of new sources of information are available, and the vast majority of information can be available with just a few key strokes.

In addition to the internet being full of information, learning in schools and colleges is slowly being done through computers, with vertual learning enviroments. This allows students to be taught without the assistance of a teacher, and may lead to a decline in teaching and education instituitions as computers can fill their roles for a far lower cost.

Apple

Apple as a company are renowned for their odd practices, and their highly desired, highly priced products. In addition to having high prices, apple also have excessive profit margins, leading to them being the most valuable business in the world, in terms of share prices and cash reserves. Part of having these high profit margins, however comes from minimizing production costs by basing production in China, with Foxconn.

Foxconn, although able to produce the parts at low cost, raise serious ethical issues in the manner in which they deal with their employees, such as an employee who was seriously brain damaged doing his job, is being refused payment of his medical costs for not showing up to the factory, even though he is seriously brain damaged and unable to speak.

Apple have been very bad at dealing with these issues, as even though they have the profit levels to allow them to pay costs which ensure ethical staff treatment, they do not. This may eventually lead to their reputation being tarnished, leading to them being unable to charge the same prices.

Catalogues

Catalogues were once the preferred method of letting your customers know about the products you had on offer. They came with high costs and were impossible to update, but were a way of increasing sales by letting products check your range of products without entering your store, resulting in higher sales. However, with the rise of the internet, popular catalogues, such as Argos, Next and Littlewoods all now have online catalogs, which have all the benefit of a catalogue with far lower costs.

After these popular catalogues started realising this, many turned online, here is a list of catalogues which are now online, and either have moved away from physical catalogues or intend be moving away from them soon:

Argos
Next
Littlewoods
Very
JD Williams
Simply Be

The Purpose of Ebay

Today I visited Ebay to discover the purpose of it and other online auction and shopping websites. The purpose of ebay is to provide an online auction service which will allow buyers and sellers to connect to buy and sell goods. The difference between ebay and a retail store is that anyone can sell their goods, resulting in a massive selection of choice for the end user The target audience is anyone interested in buying or selling things they own or need, and are willing to use the internet for convenience. in the process.

Communication Over IM and VoIP

Communication over the internet has become a vital part of the internet, allowing people to stay in touch and send messages from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. However, Email itself is not enough for this, as the delay between emails can slow down the communication process. This is where two relatively new forms of internet communication come in.

Instant Messaging, or IM is a service which transfers messages between you and another person using the same service in real time. It is an effective way of having a conversation as opposed to a series of delayed messages, and is often used in place of actual conversations, or phone calls because of its 0 cost and extreme convenience.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP, or Voice over IP) is a service which allows for the transfer of voice over the internet, in a manner which creates a conversation very similar to a phone call. The difference between a phone call and VoIP is the way it is transmitted. Mobile Phones typically use radio waves to send the phone call from device to device, whereas a VoIP call uses the internet, resulting in less problems of bad signal if both participants have reasonable internet connections.

Although IM and VoIP are both great systems of holding a conversation, there can be problems to using the internet for communication:
Latency -If Either recipient has a slow connection, there is a big delay (latency) between a message being sent and a message being recieved, which can defeat the purpose of a real time conversation if the latency is too high
Reliance on internet connection - internet connections are not stable in all parts of the world (or even all parts of the country) presenting serious issues for some people as internet becomes more and more frequently used for communication.

Using Mobile Phones in Public Places

Mobile phones are a fairly new tool, having only entered main stream use over the past 20 years, and as such a vital parr of everyones life, the societal norms to fit this new tool have to be slowly created. For instance answering your phone in a public place, talking on your phone in a quiet enviroment, turning of your phone in sensitrive areas, or in a particualrly strong case using your mobile phone while attempting to be served at a store. In the case of one store, they have decided to completely ignore any customers talking on their mobile phones, an interesting new way to encourage human interaction.

4G Networks (i've stopped numbering these)

4G is the fourth generation of mobile data networks, being the succesor to 3G, and is used to transmit fast internet connections to devices on the move, through a phones data service, which are able to rival speeds of broadband and wifi hotspots (with download speeds up to 100Mbps)

The need to have broadband like speeds on the move stems from watching high definition (HD) videos, downlo0ad large files and more heavy duty internet activities. 4G is currently only roled out in a select number of countries, sich as the US and Canada. For the majority of the world, howerver 4G is still in it's early stages and offered by very few networks at very high prices. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the only Mobile Operator that offers 4G coverage is Everything Everywhere, at plans which start at prices far above the normal, and only covering 70% of the UK. This makes 4G an incredibly niche product in its current state, but in future with 100% adoption and competitive pricing, 4G can do incredibly things for our mobile phones, as we will be able to use our phones fdr more and more of our internet needs.

ICT Lesson #14 - Women and IT in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the article Dr Mayuri states that "A reliable power supply to operate the computers, a well-functioning telephone network to transmit data, foreign currency to import the technology, and computer-literate personnel are all prerequisites for the successful use of IT" are all things africa does not have enough of and needs more of to improve it's IT. However, the number one thing Sub Saharan Africa needs to do to make the most out of it's IT is to use existing technology as effectively as possible. Although there is limited IT currently, starting again everytime new technology comes out is not wise, and africa should instead focus on making the most out of what is currently available to them.

ICT Lesson #13 - The Wrong side of the digital divide

There are many countries (such as Chad, Mali and Niger) on the wrong side of the digital divide, and there are many reasons for this. First of all, these countries are also generally less economically welathy than first world countries such as the US, and creating the ifrastructure in those countries to support fast internet and telephone lines is not a fiscal priority, due to the large number of more serious issues such as their population not having access to basic food or electricity. This creates a problem since being on the wrong side of the digital divide is a self sustaining issue, as the longer they stay on the wrong side the further behind they will get and the more resources will be needed to correct it. This creates a serious ethical issue in both those countries and first world countries as to what the correct step is.

ICT Lesson #12 - The Digital Divide

The digital divide is a serious issue, and some countries are on the wrong side of it, such as Guinea chad and Niger.. This is because there is a large infrastructure problem in those countries, where the necessary phone and electricity lines are missing to provide the necessary power and internet to those countries for them to power and connect their Internet devices to the internet. This creates a serious problem, as it means limited few have access to the internet, and with more and more vital services (such as booking, job searching and information) being on the internet, it creates a divide between those who can access the resources, and those who can not.

 Unfortunately,this divide also affects wealth, as many wealthy people can pay to have the necessary infrastructure built, but the poor can not, and as the internet can create more wealth this widens the gap between the rich and the poor in those countries. To fix t6he issue of the digital divide, public computer and internet resources must be made available, and the necessary power and telephone lines built to allow and citizens to pay for a private line, or the divide will get larger and larger.

ICT Lesson #11 - Entertainment

Entertainment has evolved over the past 100 years on a massive scale, as people have more free time with which to occupy. To capitilise on this free time, more and more mediums for entertainment are being developed. For instances, in the 1900's the only form of entertainment was newspapers and social interaction and now we have a plethora of entertainment with technology, and game consoles, computers and televisions.

ICT Lesson #10 - My Journey to Tottenham

In this lesson we learnt about using the intenret for navigation, and to test this we planned a journey from Bedford to tottenem court road, in london by car

As the image shows, it takes 1 hours 10 minutes to get to tottenham court road.

For contrast, I did the same journey, but via public transport (train) departing one hour from now (15:00)

ICT Lesson 9 - Government Spending

Today we are researching e-governments and the digital divide. The government is looking to save money by taking their services online
There are four components to a goverment website, ranked by order of usefulness to a consumer

 - GovernmentIn addition, the govement is trying to save 1.3 thousand million by moving services traditionally done via phone and physical locations to online websites. This is possible because the cost to the goverment for keeping staff employed, having a physical building and more is very great when compared to the simple cost of a domain and website hosting, allowing them to save massive amounts of money by moving their services online rather than keeping physical locations.

ICT Lesson #8 - How Email Works

The weather has matched the predicitions from Monday  Today so far the prediction has been correct.

 

 I worked on email today,. discovering how it works, the risks and more, and I piut it into a powerpoint presentation. Here is that presentation/

 

ICT Lesson #7 - Online Banking

Today we looked at online banking, and I made a presentation on it

ICT Lesson 6 #1

Today I checked the weather against the predictions from Monday, So far the predictions were right for the morning, but for the past 3 hours the prediction expected rain, and in reality it has still been good weather, contradicting the report of the BBC.

ICT Lesson 5 #2

I have gathered a summary of the next 5 days of weather, and will compare them against what actually happens to see how accurate they are. Here are the bbc's prediction of the next 5 days of weather
http://imgur.com/3BnIv

also this teacher is really good and i know I'd give him an A

ICT Lesson 5 #1

In this lesson we are studying weather patterns and various other ICT related things.

ICT lesson 4 #2

Over the past 2 days I worked on a powerpoint presentation showing how email works, the risks of email and usage statistics. It is probably done now

ICT lesson 4 part 1`

Today we need to link to things.
Here is a list of links:

Link

ICT lesson #3 - Emailing Links

I sent my blog via email to a variety of people, using the following message:

"The following is the adress of my blog http://andrewadems.blogspot.co.uk/

Please review this and send me comments

Please send me the address of your blog"

I eagerly await their responses.

ICT Lesson #2

So far in this lesson, we were shown what to do, and we're going to start now.

ICT Lesson #1 - Search Engines

In the ict subject course assignment, we made a blog. In the blog we have to write a detailed description of what we've done. So far this lesson I have created a blog and written a  blog post

Also today, we had to search on various search engines about a celebrity and a sport, and see how many results we attained, and how that changed as we searched on different search engines. This showed us that although search engines use different algorithms they still deliver similar results. We also checked the office for national statistics, where I discovered this
"In July 2012 overseas residents completed an estimated 3.2 million visits to the UK, five per cent lower than in July 2011."

The first Blog Post

I had a good lesson. That teacher guy is good. I'd give him an A