Weekly Task 4 - Digital Divide

To start talking about digital divide, we should firstly define what it is. The digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalance both in physical access to technology and the resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. Knowledge divide reflects the access of various social groupings to information and knowledge, typically gender, income, race, and by location.

Our point of view on digital divide is made based on analyzing views of Jack Kemp freedom work, UK government, Howard J. Blitz and EU Commission.

First of all, we would like to discuss UK government plan of tackling digital divide. As we think it is quite bright idea to lease computers to pupils. This will provide all pupils, even in villages or far away towns with teaching materials. As we all know, investing to children is a good investment. Children are our future and this investment will somehow ensure our bright future. In another words, this is the long term investment for the country. But UK government has no plan for other groups. They are ignoring such groups as pensioners, disabled persons and others. In their point of view there is no single word about this issue. Even if the person is old or disabled he or she shouldn’t be left behind the development. They are part of the society as we all are.

Another advantage of this plan is removing barriers such as cost, lack of training and confidence. This is definitely the key to success. This issue can essentially decrease digital divide. Also government is concerned about local authorities and how they work with their citizens. This issue is also an advantage. With the help of computer technologies and databases, all procedures between authorities and citizens will be standardized and personal contact will be more polite. Moreover, people will be able to use this service without leaving home and queering.

Second thing is from Howard J. Blitz. It is a fact that government’s budget is made of tax payment. But as we think, government should bring benefits to their citizens. We think that paying taxes to the government in order to carry out digital divide is worthy. This will lead to citizens’ living standards upgrade and development of the country. The only thing is that government should not use violent actions or threats of such actions to make people pay. People should know and be sure that their money “is working for them”. This is the only way to make this system work.

Next one is EU Commission. It is said that it may declare broadband “a universal right”. From our point of view, it is wonderful plan that can be used not only in European Union but in the whole world. We all know how awful it is to have slow internet, when every link is opening very slow, users are becoming tired and so on. But imagine what if internet would be quite fast. It will change everything. People will be able to run their eBusiness from everywhere. But the only problem of this issue is money. Companies that provide such high speed internet should be supported by the government because the costs of such internet are really high.

The last view to analyze is by Jack Kemp. He says “Many folks in government are looking for a digital divide problem to solve when they should be reforming taxes, lowering interest rate, and removing regulatory barriers that stifle economic activity in poor urban communities all over America”. This is a two-side problem. When people are trying to concentrate on one problem, other problems are starting to grow. As we think, he is right when he says that the government should take some steps towards solving economic problems. But Jack Kemp is wrong when he is talking about tradeoff between solving economical problems and digital divide.

According to these views and our own experience and thoughts we made some outputs. First of all, we think that every country is aiming to be fully digitally covered. If it won’t be, so more and more people will be coming to big cities where internet is available. The movement of the people to the crowded cities will be inevitable. Another thing is that there should be no discrimination. Every person should be able to use internet and all sources of information. This can be done with some courses that government can organize for some small fee. The output for this action will be great. Also we think that government should make contracts and agreements with companies providing internet. Maybe dividing the country to sectors and allowing the company to work in limited sectors will make profit for all.

Weekly Task 5 - Ideagoras

The main idea of Ideagoras is to tie companies that are searching for external solution of some problems they face, and people all around the world ready to solve them. The idea itself is not that much revolutionary because before some companies also placed at their web-sites proposals to individuals to find the solution of the problem for some reward. But now web-sites like http://www.innocentive.com/ or www.mturk.com were created and marketed specially to combine all the companies seeking for solutions in external world and all the talented people from different fields of education ready to spend time trying to solve problems for significant reward.

Speaking about advantages and disadvantages of this model, it is difficult to say what it has more. But at least watching through above-mentioned web-sites and searching through the Internet we can say that companies use the model and individuals try to find solutions offered and succeed in that quite often. The idea of creators of special web-sites is working and gaining momentum step by step. (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070215_251519.htm)

Advantages for companies:

When a firm turns to Ideagoras it usually means that it cannot solve some problem internally. And posting announcement for a competition with a corresponding to the amount of work reward, it can reach hundreds or even thousands of bright-minded individuals from different fields, with lots of ideas. A company will get so many different proposals that it would not have even after a very long work of its own department. And what is probably more important, is that a problem would be solved with absolutely different approaches. So the firm might get some ideas that have never come to her workers’ minds at all. Speaking about time, usually using Ideagoras saves a lot of it, because in a short-time period company gets hundreds of ideas. And the department would have to study them step by step, still forgetting about some.

Another important issue is financial aspect. What is less costly: to maintain the whole department for solving some kind of problems or simply use the web-site to find good idea and pay a reward? The answer is obvious. A company does not have to employ people for a full-time job. So it does not have to pay salaries every month or different kind of compensations. A firm simply finds a suitable idea of solving a problem, pays a reward and protect intellectual property rights.

Disadvantages for companies:

A key disadvantage for a firm is that because of several reasons their offer might simply be forgotten by solvers. For example, it can happen if the problem is really extremely difficult so seekers will turn to other proposals. Or the reward might seem not corresponding to amount of work and time spent for seekers.

Speaking about money, companies also can face a problem that they do not know the reasonable amount of reward they should place on the site. On the one hand, they should make people interested in their offer. And on another one, they do not want to overestimate it.

Advantages for individuals:

Finding some suitable task and finding the solution might be interesting for individuals because of several reasons. The first one is financial aspect. The point is that really talented and properly educated people can earn significant amount of money not even having a full-time job. That can be interesting for people looking for some kind of freedom. Or, of course, this can simply be an additional way of earning.

Staying at the web-site and solving some tasks given successfully, individuals also get a feeling of satisfaction. Deep inside of our minds we are all competing with each other. And a feeling that your idea was the best of hundreds others can be for sure even more important than the reward given for it. Finally, at the web-site while working on tasks people may face some other very talented people and maybe organize a community. They might exchange some ideas, gaining experience from each other.

Disadvantages for individuals:

There are more disadvantages for individuals than it might seem first. Two main issues are money and intellectual property rights. The person who had the best idea gets a reward, usually several thousand or in some cases several hundred thousand euro or dollars etc. But the company might save million dollars on investigations plus later it can earn much more on developing the idea and selling products or services connected to it. So we can say that the reward is not honest in some cases.

Furthermore, because of some rules about identity the individual would not even have a possibility to prove that was his achievement, for example, trying to employ to some job place. And speaking about intellectual rights, according to agreement they all come to the company, so the person would not have a possibility to earn on his idea in future at all.

These disadvantages are really significant because an individual faces a choice whether to get quite significant reward for his idea immediately or try to develop it himself, facing lots of risks but having a potential to earn many times more.

How our University could use Ideagoras:

There are quite many problems each University faces speaking about students that can be better solved with their direct participation. A very simple example from life is that staff might organize a kind of Ideagoras when trying to solve a problem of planning canteen menu for a month or, let’s say, half a year with given names and amounts of products they will have. No one knows what students want to eat and in which combination than they do. So the plan would be to plan everyday menu knowing the total starting balance of products and approximate everyday consumption. Of course, the reward to the best idea should not be that huge, but an amount of about 100-200 euro might get many students interested. The proposed idea is chosen extremely easy just to show where we can use the idea of Ideagoras in our casual lifes.

Privacy Policies of the Web Sites

For this weekly task we have chosen two web-sites -TOPGEAR.COM,

as a part of BBC.COM - the web-site of British Broadcasting Corporation

&

BLIZZARD.COM - the portal of Blizzard Entertainment -
- one of the top companies which produces computer games (StarCraft, Diablo, WarCraft and WoW)

About
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Privacy Policies of almost any web-site have common information, but sometimes it can be written in different ways. Privacy Policies explain what kind of personal information the web-site collects and how, as well how it uses collected info. How the web-site uses users' IP adress, browser cookies. To whom gathered information is shared (in marketing purposes for eg.). As well, Privacy Policies have the information about the users' rights regarding the collection of personal info. Besides that, Privacy Policies provide the information on how the personal information secured and encrypted.

TopGear / BBC
Online Privacy Policy
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As one of examples we chose a web-site of world’s most famous TV program about automobiles and everything related to them. There are two ways of using this web-site: with registration or without it. If the user does not log-in, he loses nearly nothing, the only one significance difference is that it would be impossible for him to post comments. He can still read the articles or watch all the videos.

But if the user decides to register it is not difficult to do that. The button for making that is in the top right corner. All the information that is asked from the new user is ordinary, nothing special: screen name, e-mail, and password. Like on most other web-sites to complete the registration the user has to put a tick at the sentence saying “Tick this box if you accept our terms & conditions and code of conduct” that contains links to the documents itself.

What seems a little bit strange for us is that the page of registration contains links only to Terms & Conditions and Code of Conduct. But in Terms&Conditions document there is a sentence “By accessing and using our website and any content and features therein… , you indicate your acceptance of these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Code of Conduct and any other notice. The Privacy Policy and Code of Conduct can be accessed from links at the bottom of our webpages.” So if the user wants to see how information about him might be used he has to find the document himself. As it was said before, Top Gear belongs to BBC Company so the privacy policies of the web-site about automobiles are the same as of bbc.co.uk. That is why we found the document at the site of BBC.

The document is written with a simple language accessible for everyone. It includes 15 points; all of them are not that large so if the user wants to read the whole document it would not take him much time to do that. The BBC uses cookies and collects IP addresses from visitors to the BBC websites. IP address can be used for several purposes like blocking disruptive use, counting number of visits from different countries and also re-directing the user to the local versions of the web-site in some cases.

What is important is that if the BBC proposes using personal information for any other uses except said in Private Policies, they ensure that they notify the user first. This guarantees that private information would not go to some third parties. And the user will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw consent for the use of his personal information. The only one case when BBC might provide users’ info to third parties is when it is required or permitted by law. Speaking about cookies, on the BBC's websites cookies record information about user’s online preferences and allow to tailor the websites to his interests. Information supplied by cookies helps to analyze the profile of visitors and help to provide them with a better user experience. If needed, the user can see the list of cookies and ways to minimize their number following the link mentioned in the document.

All in all, the Privacy Policy of BBC is usual for temped user. The only issue that seemed new to us was point about young users:” If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission before you provide any personal information to the BBC. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.” We have never heard that before 16 years old children might have any limitations on using the features about web-site simply about cars. So officially some of our members broke the agreement with the BBC Company not following this rule about 3 years ago.

Blizzard Entertainment
Online Privacy Policy
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Privacy policies of the Blizzard Entertainment include information about types of information collected and how is it collected, and also how the company uses collected data. Here we can see that privacy policies explain what is the IP-adress and how it can be used by the company (Blizzard Entertainment), as well we cann see info about the web-browser cookies and how they are used. What is really important in the case with MMO-gaming - Note to Parents. Virtual enviroment can cause some problems if user behaves in the wrong manner and that's why parents should monitor their kids playing such games (Blizzard's World of Warcraft for eg.) Blizzard's Privacy Policies include info on how the information is shared and which rights users have regarding sharing of their personal data. And even more - how they can contribute to the current policies (propose amendments, corrections, etc.). Blizzard Entertainment made a right decision by putting the list of web-sites to which these Privacy Policies extend its influences.

In our opinion, Blizzard Entertainment made their Privacy Policies clear for everyone - you don't need to be a lawer to understand what is behind the words there. Language is plain and doesn't have any jurisdictional terms.

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Blizzard Entertainment Privacy Policies
TopGear/BBC Privacy Policies

Security in eBusiness. Viruses & Hackers.

"Your computer is infected"

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive.

Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.

As for some examples, we have been searching through the internet and found Top Ten List of viruses.

1. Creeper - (1971) This is noted as possibly the first ever computer virus. It infected computers on ARPANET. Mostly harmless, the concept of Creeper has infected the minds of rogue programmers through today.

2. Elk Cloner - (1982) Despite Apple's marketing that their systems are less prone to viruses that was not always the case. Notable as possible the first personal computer virus, Elk Cloner infected the boot sector of Apple II floppies.

3. The Morris Internet Worm - (1988) The grandfather of computer worms, the Morris worm infected Unix systems and was notable for its "accidental" virulence.

4. Melissa - (1999) The Melissa virus is notable because it is a Word macro virus. It cleverly spread via e-mails sent to contacts from the infected users' address books.

5. ILOVEYOU - (2000) One of the most widespread and rapidly spreading viruses ever, the ILOVEYOU virus spread via e-mail, posing as an executable attachment sent by a friend from the target's contact list.

6. Code Red - (2001) IIS on Windows servers were the target of this virus. It also launched denial of service (DoS) attacks.

7. Nimda - (2001) Nimda used seemingly every possible method to spread, and was very effective at doing so. Nimda is notable for being one of the fastest spreading and most widespread viruses ever.

8. Sasser - (2004) Sasser exploited a buffer overflow and spread by connecting to port 445 on networked Windows systems. The chaos caused was possibly the worst ever, as systems restarted or crashed.

9. Blaster - (2003) Blaster exploited a Windows operating system vulnerability and let users know of its presence with a system shutdown warning.

10. SQL Slammer - (2003) This tiny virus infected servers running Microsoft's SQL Server Desktop Engine, and was very fast to spread.

We would like to go in details about the first one on the list – Creeper. The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in the early 1970s. Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies in 1971. Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.

And from our personal experience, we can add that now most of the viruses are spreading through the Internet, Emails, software and others. You may just download the file and you won’t know if there is a virus there. Even antivirus programs can’t detect all of the viruses. Most of viruses (about 70%) are spreading through Emails. You receive just a letter of advertising and when you open it the virus automatically downloads to your computer.

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Hacker, in the original sense of the word, is a man who loves studying of details of programmable systems, learning issues to enhance their capabilities and programming something with enthusiasm. Nowadays, the word "hacker" is primarily used to determine the person who uses his or others' knowledge in the field of computer and other high technologies to commit criminal activities, such as, for example, illegal entry into the closed network.

Kevin Mitnick, breaking into ARPANet

Kevin Mitnick is considered the most famous hacker in the world. Journalists call him the father and founder of hacking; he has become a household name in the world of information security. One of the biggest successes came to Kevin Mitnick in 1983, when he made a truly impressive act. At that time he was a student at the University of Southern California. Using one of the University computers, Mitnick entered into a global network ARPANet, the predecessor to the Internet, which at that time was intended for military purposes and united large corporations and universities.

When he got into the network, Mitnick reached the most secure computers of that time - computers of Pentagon. He got access to all files of the Ministry of Defense. There were no traces of information theft or damage: Mitnick acted simply because of curiosity and was checking his abilities.

But one of the administrators found the act of invasion and raised the alarm. The investigation revealed the author of the attack, and Kevin Mitnick was arrested right on the territory of the University campus. He was condemned and served his first real sentence for unlawful entry into a computer system, having spent six months in California Youth Authority's Karl Holton Training School, a juvenile prison in Stockton, California.

This case has shocked people who were related to the field of information security and largely thanks to it Mitnick gained his fame. However, he did not stop hacking on that and had flurried the world for many years more. Everything was over for Mitnick when, after nearly two years of harassment, he was arrested on February 15, 1995 by FBI agents and sentenced to 5 years and 8 months. After serving the sentence he is now a security specialist and owner of his own company “Mitnick Security Consulting”.

References & Sources:

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Wikipedia

Brighthub

Habrahabr / 1 / 2

Trindelka Net

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