Week 12 Assignment

When the cartoons came out there was a huge debate as to whether or not it was ok to publish this sort of thing. Many said that we need to protect out right to free speech and others said the cartoon went to far. In my opinion i believe that the publisher should have handled it a little better. Yes they have their freedoms but they have to be able to handle the consequences. I am not saying it was wrong or right for them to publish the cartoon but they should have known what was going to come and they should have had a response or answer to it. This way when the outburst happened they would have a way to counter it and show that there is a way that free speech can work. I don't believe that the cartoon publisher should have backed down but i do believe he was not prepared to handle is actions when the cartoon was published.

Net Neutrality

The fundamental issue here is do all content providers have the right to have traffic treated equally? And, do network owners have the right to choose what traffic can travel over their network? Some people/orginaztions that are for net nuetrality are Free Press and Professor Lawrence Lessig. Advocates of Net Neutrality are concerned about the power this would give to network owners. My opinion on the subject is that i believe no one person or corporation should have control on what they want to stream and what they want to hold back.

Week 10 Assignment

There is a huge debate right now that has been going on for a long time and that is if file sharing shoudl be legal or not. I believe that file sharing should be legal. Some say that it hurts the artist but with file sharing, that artist might have nver been discovered. Most bands make a lot of thier money on tour and seling merchandise as well. Some may call it like shoplifting a CD from a store but i feel that it is completley different. The internet was intended for people to some together and share ideas with one another. File sharing is part of the "new" internet where people can share interests that they have with one another. Of coure there are things that show file sharing as something that is bad and there are things that show file sharing in a positive light. But it is a long debate that will most likely not have a end in the near future. So for now instead of trying to stop it all together (which i feel is near impossible) we should try to decide how to handle it better. Sueing kids out of college is not the way to fight file sharing. When we do i feel that file sharing will lend to new ideas and programs taht will change the internet once again.

Assignment 7

Big Brother seems to be closer to reality as we advance in technology. Point in case being RFID. RFID is radio frequency identification. What it basically does it help you track down lost pets or help you get through the freeway faster by u sing a FastTrak. Some potential benefits of RFID is that it would allow you to move faster through things that would normally take time. Such as the FastTrak example or even shopping where you can walk out the store and it would know automatically what to bill you for. There are however, privacy concerns. Concerns such as you would always be known where u are if u passed through one of the RFID scanners. If someone was able to hack into a server somewhere, they may be able to find out where you are. Also if someone had a RFID scanner, all they would have to do is stand outside your house and run the scanner. They would then know what you have in your house to steal and they may even be able to tell when you are in or out of the house. This is a huge concern to some people and i believe we need to work on this before we rush RFID into the mainstream population.

Assignment 6

This article kind of scared me. It's not like its a small company trying to steal information but instead a large widely used company invading the publics privacy.
What this does is makes fear become larger. Instead of feeling safe, we realize that even within our own country we are being watched and recorded. It is almost like a "Big Brother" feeling.

Hopefully in the future we will not have to worry about who is watching us and who is invading our privacy. As of right now if I called family who lived in Colorado I wouldn't know if i was being recorded or if i was being listened to. Ever since 9/11 the country has been living in fear and we have been slowly been coming back to normal. When something like this come along, all it does is back track us into fear again and we have to start all over. We need to start in our own country first before we decide to "help" other countries.

Assignment 4

Before the lecture in tuesdays class, i had hardly any knowledge of what e-waste was. I never knew about the different types of metals in computers or how dangerous some of the things could actually be. As we continue to advance in new technologies we will be producing more and more e-waste. Dumping it onto other countries is not solving the problem but only making it worse. I see trash bins outside that are made for just recycables and regular trash. The city right now is trying to get a program started where you throw out food waste in a seperate container so it could be used for energy later on. I belive that we should have a seperate similiar idea where we have a trash bin just for e-waste. It would make sense seeing how people are buying new technologies every day and throwing out their old ones. This could be a good start in controlling what happens with e-waste and help save from the damages this problem creates

Assignment 2

When you are a kid growing up you never have to worry abotu a social security number, a drivers license number, or bank account number. But, when you become older these things come at you fast. To me these things are just number and dont pose any threat to me. I never worried abotu having my information stolen or my privacy imposed on. I regularly sign up on different websites and such or give me credit card information to places that i am buying from and never give it a second thought. Some palces that i am comfortable giving my information to are places such as banks or insurance companies etc. When i come across things that i dont trust as much i try to make my decisions very carefully now. Places such as ebay or when i am interacting with places i have never heard of or seen before. I try to give them as little information as i am allowed to. After hearing abotu people who have had their identites stolen or bank accounts broken into i have become more aware andmore cautious about who i give my information to.