Week 10: Computer Ethics

1).Do You Agree with all the 10 Commandments on Computer Ethics?
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 Insure Consideration And Respect For Your Fellow Humans.

Yes i strongly agree with all the ten commandments of computer ethics,as`personal privacy needs to be considered. If all of these points were not lawful there would be more crimes taking place.
They did not cover the sending of junk mail/ spam to people without their acknowledgement
"Thou shall not send chain letters or junk mail to those who may not wish to receive them.” I believe that should be added as one of the commandments.

Advise to a visually disable friend to complain on a website they could not access.

The three Possible solutions are:
one of them ,I would advise my visually disabled friend to contact the people in charge of the running of the website,the company or website owners and let them know of the situation at hand,and see what can be done about it to make there website accessible.
Second possible solution will be to contact a company by the name Grouptree. It aims in assisting disabled people with accessibility problems and require assistance. It contacts the web owners and let them know of the complaint that they do not meet the regulations that are required for those with a disability according to Disability Rights Commission on Accessibility.
Thirdly i would advise my friend to visit the website http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/oldreport.htm that allows him/her to submit a complaint to the Web Accessibility Initiative by filling the form.Once the form is submitted it is sent to a professional company ‘Web Accessibility Initiative’ and then the problem will be looked into on behalf of my friend.

Legal Cases
In August 2000 in Australia,Mr.Bruce Maguire who is blind uses a refreshable Braille display to read web pages successfully made a complaint against the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games(SOCOG). Mr.Maguire took action under the provision of Australia's disability discrimination legislation claiming that he was unlawfully discriminated against on several grounds including that the organising committee had failed to provide a web site that he could access.He was eventually awarded a compensation of A$20,000. The SOCOG vs. Maguire case is important because it used both the WAI guidelines and the Australian Disability and Discrimination Act which is very similar to its UK equivalent to arrive at the final decision. Section 21 of the Disability and Discrimination Act in the UK places a duty on service providers to ensure that the information they provide is accessible to visually impaired people. This came into force in October 1999. This includes the information provided on web sites, therefore, it may only be a matter of time before a case is brought against a UK company now that a precedent has been set.

California law may require websites to be accessible to disabled Internet users, according to a ruling in a case against retail giant Target.Target was sued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and one of its blind members, Mr.Bruce "BJ"Sexton, a student at Berkeley, University of California ,under a federal law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and also under two state laws, the California Disabled Persons Act and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.
The NFB and Mr.Sexton argue that Target.com is not accessible to blind Internet users, in breach of these federal and state laws. They complained that images on the site were missing alternative text upon which blind users rely; keyboard controls do not work, meaning users must be able to work a mouse; and headings are missing that are needed for navigation.
Since the case began, Target has made improvements to the site's accessibility.

References:
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).(2007). Web Accessibility Report Form. Web Accessibility Initiative. [Online]. Available from: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/oldreport.htm [Accessed 23/11/07].
OUT-LAW News. (14/02/ 2006). Target sued over web accessibility. [Online].OUT-LAW.COM. Available from:
http://www.out-law.com/page-6634 [Accessed 23/11/07].
Lasa Information System Team. Web Accessibility and the Law.[Online]. ICT Hub Knowledgebase. Available from: http://www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/webaccessibiltyandlaw [Accessed 23/11/07].

Advantages and Disadvantages of 3-Tier Architecture in Web Development

A 3-Tier Architecture (3TA) is traditionally used when building web applications. It makes a logical separation between the presentation layer, the business logic layer, and the database layer.

The main advantage of 3 tier system is that all business logic can be defined once within the business layer and then shared by any number of components within the presentation layer. Any changes to business rules can therefore be made in one place and be instantly available throughout the whole application.
It is possible to change the contents of any one of tiers (layers) without having to make corresponding changes in any of the others
Enables parallel development of the different tiers of the application.
Complex application rules easy to implement in application server. Easy to implement changes
Fewer JavaScript, thus simpler to the client
Superior performance for medium to high volume environments

Some of the disadvantages are;
There is more processing on the web server,
It does not interact with the WMS server directly.
More complex structure
More difficult to setup and maintain The physical separation of application servers containing business logic functions and database servers containing databases may moderately affect performance

References:
Sheriff, D. Paul. (April 2002). Designing a .NET Application. [Online]. Microsoft Developer Network.Available from:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973829.aspx [Accessed 17/11/07].
Chapple, Mike. (2007). Two-Tier or n-Tier? [Online].About.com:Databases. Available from:http://databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/a/architecture.htm [Accessed 17/11/07].

Week 7:Hindsight.Advice About A1W Presentation

Doing presentation is hard,BUT learning how to give presentation is an important part of A1W.A lot of preparation is needed for a presentation to be a success, in order to achieve this, First you need to come together as a group, know the topic in question, and make a list of the sub-topics you need to address and divide them equally and do thorough research on them.
It is also important to let your tutor know your progress towards the presentation;any meetings that you may hold and what you have discussed in the meetings,so that the tutor can know if you are on the right path towards your research for the presentation or not.
It is important that every member of the group attends these meetings.
Presentation should be taken seriously.You need to rehearse to avoid any mistakes, confusion during presentation,this prepares one for the actual day,and makes boosts one's confidence.It is in every ones favour that every member participates fully.

Week 6

Functions of Apache HTTP Web Server
The Three typical functions of Apache HTTP Web Server are:

• Develop and maintain an open source HTTP server for modern operating systems
  
• Provide robust, commercial-grade, featureful and free-available source code implementation of an HTTP Web server
  
• Provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services with the current HTTP standards.

Comparison between Static and Dynamic Website
Static Website have content , images, and documents placed within the page itself, while dynamic website pull the content, text, images and documents from a database based on the location of the web page.
A static site generally means that content is posted and updated as new information becomes available or until next edition. A dynamic website interacts with a database and allows visitors to request information and have it displayed back to the client browser.
Dynamic websites are typically much more complex to write and require the developer to have a sound knowledge of a range of technologies, such as a scripting language (e.g. PHP or ASP), the web server environment (e.g. Apache or IIS) and a web database system (e.g. MySQL or MS Access).While static are simple based website for easy navigation.
The combination of the time and difficulty of development cause the cost of developing a dynamic website to considerably outweigh that of a static website.
Most simple dynamic sites take longer to develop than static sites. When writing pages for a static site, what you see is what you get. When writing pages for dynamic sites, the developer is writing a program that generates web pages based on a set of input values and reliant on a number of external entities, such as a web database and a collection of HTML templates.
Because of the simplicity of static websites, they are far less prone to errors. Dynamic tend to be more error prone due to:

• mistakes in the script used to generate a web page
  
• underlying database systems become unavailable
  
• web server configuration changes

References:

The Apache Software Foundation. Homepage.(2007).[Online]. Available from:http://www.apache.org/ [Accessed 04/11/07].

Hemmings, Tafa.(2005).The Difference between Static and Dynamic Website. [Online]. Insite.Available from:www.inasite.com/resources/article.asp?article-id=2 [Accessed 04/11/07].

Infinitimixedmedia.Homepage.(2007).What is the difference between Static and Dynamic Website. [Online].Available from:http://infinitimixedmedia.com/content/view/127/44/ [Accessed 04/11/07].