ICT Civil Rights

There are certain acts and laws that protect computer users from hackers and fraud.  These acts are called the Data Protection Act of 1998 and the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.  They are specific laws for computers and data stored on computers. 

The Data Protection Act

The data protection act was made to protect personal information.

It only covers personal information about living individuals, not about businesses.

It covers data stored on computer or in a paper-based filing system.

It lets people check what data is being held about them.

It is run by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Data Subjects are the individuals that the information is about and the Data Users are the big companies that collect, store and use the information. 

The companies that store the information have to follow these 8 points.  The information has to be:

1. Fairly and lawfully processed
2. Used for limited purposes
3. Adequate and relevant. Only what is needed may be used
4. Accurate
5. Not kept for longer than is necessary
6. Accessible to the individual and able to be corrected or removed where necessary
7. Secure
8. Not transferred to countries without adequate protection

If these points are not being followed then the company storing the information can get in trouble with the Information Commissioners Office.

Companies need to keep their customer information secure otherwise it could get into the wrong hands and the customers could be victims of fraud or hacking.

Computer Misuse Act

The Computer Misuse Act was passed to stop unauthorized access to computers, often called hacking. There are three offences in the act.

Unauthorized access to computer material is an offence.

Accessing with intent to commit or facilitate committing another offence.

Unauthorized modification to computer material.

The punishments for these are:

Unauthorised access (hacking)

£2k and/or 6 months

Unauthorised access with intent (fraud)

5 years + £50k

Unauthorised Changing of files (viruses)

5 years + £50k per computer affected

Computer software is now covered by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988, which covers a wide range of intellectual property such as music, literature and software. Provisions of the Act make it illegal to, copy software and run pirated software.  

The punishment for these crimes are:

Illegal Copying, not for Profit

£2k and/or 6 months

Mass Copying, not for profit

Same penalty and confiscation and compensation

Any of the above for profit

10 years + £50k + damages

Crime and Crime Prevention

Crime and crime prevention have both advanced over the last few years.  An example of crime advancing is hacking.  Before new laws, hacking was legal and computers were very basic.  When the hacking law was enforced it made it illegal to change the software on computers.  As technology has advanced, there are more things that hackers can use and manipulate on computers, such as peoples accounts, password protected information and documents, fake websites, viruses and phishing.  Technology can also help to prevent crimes, solve crimes and catch criminals. 

Hackers

A hacker is a person that breaks codes and passwords to gain unauthorised entry to computer systems.  Many hackers do not intent to damage data, but enjoy the challenges of breaking into computer systems.  However, in some instances the hackers purpose could be to commit fraud, to steal commercially valuable data and sell it to another company or to damage or delete the data in order to harm the company.

Phishing

Phishing is the act of sending an e-mail to someone, pretending to be an established legitimate company in an attempt to scam the user into giving up private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a fake web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security and bank account numbers. The Web site is set up only to steal the person’s personal information so the fraudsters can steal your money and pretend to be you.

Spyware

Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge.  Spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect.

While the term spyware suggests software that secretly monitors the user's computing, the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information, such as Internet surfing habits and sites that have been visited, but can also interfere with the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software and redirecting Web browser activity. Spyware is known to change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, and/or loss of Internet connection or functionality of other programs.

CCTV and Number Plate Recognition

CCTV stands for closed circuit television and is a crucial element of police work.  If someone commits a crime such as a burglary, and there is CCTV in the local area of the burglary, then the police would be able to use the footage to figure out what had happened.  They might be able to capture the criminals face, what they were wearing and where they went if they escaped.  The police can use the footage in court as evidence to show what happened.  The cameras can be found in police cars, on the sides of buildings and sometimes on the body of a police officer.

Number plate recognition is key for the enforcement of vehicle crimes on the roads.  This includes cases of stolen cars  with flagged number plates.  The police put the number plate on a special list and when the cameras detect the specific number plate, it will notify the police so they can apprehend the criminal and save the picture for future reference and evidence.

Traffic Enforcement Cameras

These cameras are used for many different laws on the road, such as bus lane enforcement, red light enforcement and speed limit enforcement.

Bus lane camera

If someone drives their vehicle down a bus lane illegally, then a camera could use its number plate recognition technology to take a picture of the car and send a ticket to the owner of the car, fining them a specific amount of money. 

Red light camera

If someone drives their vehicle past a traffic light that is red, then a camera will take a picture of the number plate and send a fine to the owner of the recognised car.

Speed limit enforcement

This is an effective way used by the government to stop people speeding in certain areas.  The cameras are placed at the side of the road and if someone drives past it at a speed that is over the legal limit, then it will take a picture of the number plate and send a fine in the post to the owner of the car.

Police National Computer

As the police collect vast amounts of data as evidence with the CCTV, photographs, and DNA, they need to store it all securely.  That is why the Police National Computer was developed.  This computer allows the police to share information throughout the country making it easier for them to work together and put evidence together to catch criminals.  It is available 24 hours a day, and when a police officer makes an enquiry on someone or something, they get the information in a matter of seconds.  It is housed at police headquarters at Hendon.  The mainframe computer is connected to about 10,000 terminals that are located at every police station in the country.  Many patrol cars are also equipped with a terminal.  The computer deals with an average of 65 million transactions a year.

Advantages of technology in crime and crime prevention

It is easier to store information so you can use it later as evidence

You can store many different kinds of evidence

Technology is fast, effective and most of the time, reliable

Disadvantages of technology in crime and crime prevention

Technology is also used for wrong doing such as hacking into personal and classified information

Some technology can break and lose the important data

Overall, technology is extremely useful in crime prevention and crime solving, but it can be used for bad things if it is in the wrong hands.

Entertainment in the Information Age

In this blog I will be talking about entertainment in the information age and how it has changed over the last few years. Entertainment has changed in lots of different areas, such as gaming, cinema, music, Mpegs, TV, Radio, E-books and digital cameras.

Gaming

Gaming has changed a vast amount in the information age.  Many years ago, video games were just some 2d shapes in small screens with a simple moving stick and buttons as a controller.  Some video games were just in big arcade machines that you had to put money into to play it.  Examples of this would be Pac-man, asteroids and space invader.  As gaming evolved, more companies started to create games, their own consoles and with these new developments came new genres such as racing, arcade, sport and sci-fi.  Over time video games got better and better to what we have today, with big consoles such as Xbox, PlayStation, Wii and PC.  It is estimated that in today’s world, the video game industry makes more money than Hollywood.

Video games used to be seen as anti-social because only one person would be able to play by them self, and they still are by some people,  but today they are being more widely developed for multiplayer.  This is so you can connect, play with and talk to your friends over the internet using your console.  Titles such as Call of Duty are mainly a multiplayer game where people all over the world can connect to each other and play.  There are also more multiplayer features that can bring a whole family together, to have fun together.  Some of the big companies, over the last few years, have released motion capture gaming.  This can be for fitness, fun or to play a game more realistically.  Consoles such as the Wii and kinect for xbox are mainly used for motion capture gaming and are more family friendly because the games are so simple to play because all you need is movement and to press a few buttons.  An example of this would be Mario Kart or Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games.  These kind of games bring the family together because the whole family can understand what to do and have fun.

Video games are also spreading to our mobile phones and portable devices.  Games on the mobile are fun to play to pass the time but they are never going to be as good as a console game because it is not the phones primary function.

Advantages of Video Games

• Fun to play
• Keeps people occupied
• For all ages
• Aids towards developing new technology

Disadvantages of video games

• Too much is bad for your health
• Expensive to buy consoles and games
• People can get addicted to games and they play for hours on end without breaks which is bad for their health and mental health

In my opinion, I think video games are really fun.  I have an Xbox where I can play the games I am interested in, but we also have a family Wii where we can all play together and have fun if friends come over.

Music

Music has always played a part in people’s lives for centuries.  Over the years there have been more and more genres that evolve and mix with other genres to create music for everybody’s taste.  Some people like classical, some like electronic and some like heavy metal.  What you like to listen to is down to you.

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and tested it with the first song ever recorded, which was ‘Mary had a little lamb’.  The recordings played on such a device generally consist of wavy lines that are scratched, engraved, or grooved onto a rotating cylinder or disc. As the cylinder or disc rotates, a needle or other similar object on the device traces the wavy lines and vibrates, reproducing sound waves.  For years music was recorded onto large plastic disks called records and they were played on a gramophone.  The records then shrunk down to smaller records and then got replaced by cassette tapes. Compact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetically coated plastic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic case. Four tracks were available on the tape, two on each side.  To change the songs you had to turn the tape over.  The next replacement was the Compact Disk (CD).  The CD is an optical disc used to store digital data. They can hold up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or 700MB of data.  These are still used today to buy from shops, but are becoming less popular because of the invention of the MP3 players and download services such as iTunes or Spotifty.  People download their MP3 songs from the internet or rip songs from their CD onto their computers and then plug in their mp3 players and iPods.  They put the music onto the mp3 player or iPod and then they can take thousands of songs with them anywhere.  This can then be played using headphones or by being plugged into some speakers or a speaker dock.

Advantages of Music

• Technology is changing all the time to make it easier for us to play our music
•  We can take music anywhere
• Everyone can find something they like from the vast selection of artists, albums and genres

Disadvantages of music

• You can go deaf if you play music too loud through ear phones
• Music is shared illegally by giving your friends the CD to put on their computers or sending them the mp3 files

In my experience, music is really useful to have on CD’s, computers and iPods.  It is really easy to transfer music from one to the other and to find the songs you want.  Music for me has only ever been on CD’s and when I was growing up, mp3 players because I was not born when people used records.

Movies

Movies used to only be shown at the cinema where light would be projected through some moving film with pictures on it to create a moving image.  The projector would also play sound through the speakers that it detected on the film.  Today we have digital cinemas where instead of movie film, we have digital movies stored on DVD’s, the internet or hard drives.  The cinema downloads the movie from its source and then shows it on the computer which is connected to the high tech projector which shines it’s beam of light onto the massive screen at the front of the cinema.  Some recent developments over the last couple of years are 3D.  This is when we see the image on the screen with a third dimension to it.  This gives us the impression that things in the movie are jumping out of the screen.  For this to happen, the movie is filmed with 2 cameras and is projected with a special 3d projector.  This projector shows 2 images on the screen that looks blurry without special 3d glasses which we wear during the movie.  These glasses bring the 2 images together to create the 3d effect.  Other developments in movies is the usage of CGI technology.  This means Computer-generated imagery.  This is done on computers by special designers that can create characters, objects and scenes with special software, to create moving animations which later become the movie.  Famous CGI titles include Avatar, Finding Nemo, Monster’s Inc. and Toy Story.

Movies used to be watched at home on something similar to cassette tapes, called HVS.  This is short for Video Home System.  These video tapes could be bought from the shops, and on them would be the movies that people had seen at the cinema.  These tapes were played on VHS Players which were connected to your television.  When the CD was invented, people worked on making a CD for movies.  This was called the DVD.  This stands for Digital Video Disk.  This is played on DVD players which is also connected to the television.  DVD’s give higher definition than video tapes and they store more features like commentaries and deleted scenes.  Another more recent development is the Blu-Ray disk.  This is very similar to a DVD but it provides much higher definition and high definition sound.  It is played by a Blu-ray player.  The Blu-Ray disk is much easier for the player to read because the data is closer to the surface and the Blu-Ray player reads the data more accurately and faster.  This is what creates the higher definition.

Advantages of Movies

• Easy to view in the comfort of your own home
• Technology is making it look even better all the time
• Great entertainment

Disadvantages of Movies

• People can pirate movies and sell them illegally
• 3D glasses can make your eyes hurt after a long time
• DVD and Blu-Ray players are expensive

In my experience, DVD and blu-ray are much better than video tapes and digital cinemas are much better than normal cinemas.  This is because of the higher definition and the greater overall quality.  Also, DVD’s and Blu-Ray disks are much smaller and easier to store than the big chunky cassettes.  

Education in the Information Age

In this blog I will be talking about education and how much technology is involved in it in our every day lives.

Registration and Student databases

In most schools today, the children are registered using special record keeping software.  This would be used at the beginning of every lesson by the teacher.  The teacher has a specific list of names for specific lessons and they mark the child either present or absent with specific symbols, such as a / for present or a N to say they are absent.  This would then be saved to the school database and would go against the students records.  This is a more environmentally friendly way of registering because there is no paper required and it saves the time of the office staff because they don’t have to enter it to their computers.  This software is also a database for the students history and saves their grades, achievements and conducts.  This can be viewed at any time by teachers so they can see how they are getting on with their school work. 

Advantages of registration and student database

• It saves paper which is good for the environment
• It is easily accessible by the teachers and office staff
• It is reliable and easy to use

Disadvantages of registration and student database

• The information is confidential and private so it has to be very secure
• If mistakes are made then it is not easy to rectify it because only certain people have access to change things for security reasons
• It is expensive to have a computer in every classroom to do the register

In my opinion, this is a very good use of technology in education and it makes it much easier to store the information.  In the future this will probably be implemented into every school and it will be improved to be even easier to use.

Interactive whiteboards and computers

In most schools, teachers have stopped using whiteboards and now use interactive whiteboards.  This is a whiteboard that is connected to the classroom computer and what ever is shown on the computer will be projected onto the screen for the whole class to see.  This is extremely useful as it is useful for many different teaching methods.  It can be used to show educational youtube videos or it could be used to show an example of someone’s good work.  Teachers can also teach a whole lesson by going through a PowerPoint on the board instead of reading through a boring text book.  Another feature of the white board is that it is interactive.  This means that the teacher can get some students to come up and work something out, drag something around the board and have fun in the classroom on a big screen for everyone to see.  The big advantage of the whiteboard is that it is connected to the computer so what ever you can show on the computer, you can show to a whole class on the interactive whiteboard.  Sometimes the teachers will want to show the class a DVD and normally they would have had to drag a small television into the classroom and try and get the class to gather around its small screen.  However, with an interactive whiteboard, you can put a DVD into the computer and it will be displayed on the massive whiteboard by the projector.  This means that the whole class can see it from their desks.

Advantages of interactive whiteboards

• Makes it easier to teach
• Children would prefer learning from the interactive whiteboard rather than a book or a normal whiteboard
• They are impressive and parents are more likely to send their children to a school with good teaching technology such as this

Disadvantages of interactive whiteboards

• Some older teachers might not find it easy to use the technology
• It is very expensive technology and some schools might not be able to afford it
• If there is no power then it makes it hard for the teacher to teach without a whiteboard

In my opinion, Interactive whiteboards are the best way to teach.  They are able to display so much content for the students to see and it makes it easier for the teachers to prepare lessons because they can use powerpoints.

Virtual Learning Environment

A virtual learning environment is a set of teaching and learning tools designed to enhance a student's learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process.  An example of a Virtual Learning Environment is something called Frog.  To access from all you need is your usual school login and then you can access lots of useful content.  The virtual learning environment is run on school servers and is accessible through the school computers and also over the internet while you are at home.  One of the things that the VLE is used for is the individual student timetables.  A student can log on and see what lessons they have every day and they can check the times of those lessons.  Another useful feature of the VLE is that students can access their school drives from home so they can finish their work and then re-upload it back to school.  Another feature is that the teachers can set homework or lesson work while they are not there and the students can just log on and find all the information and the work that the teacher has set for them.  The students can also upload it to the teachers to mark and they can notify the teacher of the works completion.  One of the useful features for teachers is that they can book the computer suites in advance for future lessons.  This is all saved on the school servers so everyone will be able to see who has booked which rooms and when.

Advantages of VLE

• Easy to login and use because they are made especially for students.
• Makes homework easier because students are able to download their school work at home in just a few clicks and they can submit it to their teachers easily
• Each student has their own personal login which makes it easier to display their drives and timetables
• You can access it any time, anywhere

Disadvantages of VLE

• People that do not have a computer at home will not be able to use it
• If someone’s internet goes down then they can’t submit their homework or complete school work from home

In my opinion virtual learning environments, such as Frog, are going to be the future of accessing documents anywhere.  It is an extremely useful way to manage your work by uploading and downloading work from your school accounts and then sending it to the teacher to be marked.  It will save on paper which is better for the environment because work is being done more on computers now.  It also makes things more reliable because there cant be any excuses for not handing the work in on time and teachers wont be able to lose the students work and grades by accident.

Life in the Information Age

Technology has changed our lives dramatically over the last couple of decades.  The information age has changed our lives in many different ways.  An example of this would be in the way people work in offices and on the go. 

In the 1980’s, there was not a computer on every desk and only the important people in the office got to have a phone on their desk.  The things people used to use to do their work were adding machines, which we now call calculators, and typewriters for typing up reports and letters.  The offices in the 1980’s used to have lots of filing cabinets that were full of files and reports on paper.  Today we do not use as many filing cabinets because most of the information is stored on the computer hard drives or on servers.  However, some hard copies are still required for some important documents just in case something happens to the digital copy.

Also in today’s offices, you are basically unemployable if you have no knowledge or skills on the computer.  If you don’t have basic skills such as using a word processor, you wouldn’t be able to do the office work as effectively as everyone else.  This is because using the computer is faster, more accurate and what people expect you to use.

Things have also changed for people that are on the go.  Instead of being expected to only work when you get to your work building, you are now expected to do work while you are travelling to your work building.  Years ago people would have just read the paper and had a cup of tea while they were travelling on the train, but now people use their laptops and smart phones to do reports, presentations and make important phone calls.

Before all the technology in the work place, important people like managers would have had a skilled secretary that would write their letters and reports for them because they would not have time to do it themselves.  However, today nearly every manager would have their own computer which makes it easier and faster to write their own letters and reports.  Even though this seems better than before, it means there are fewer jobs.

An example of how a specific job has changed is a sales rep.  Years ago, a sales rep would have carried a diary, a road atlas and other maps, change for pay phones, a calculator, a note pad, lots of forms and CD’s for the numerous car journeys.  This has completely changed thanks to the information age.  All a sales rep used to carry can now be replaced by just a few objects.  The diary that the sales rep would have carried can be replaced by the diary on a smart phone, the road atlas and other maps can be replaced again by a smart phone with internet or a sat nav,  the change for pay phones is no longer needed because of mobile phones, a calculator can also be replaced by a smart phone, the note pad can be replaced by a laptop or net book and the CD’s can be replaced by an ipod, an mp3 player or once again, a smart phone.  All this technology makes the sales reps job much easier.  The sales rep would have also needed to go into the office about 2 times a week to type up the paperwork he had been doing by hand, but now they don’t need to go to the office at all because of laptops or desktop computers that they could have with them all the time or at home.

Because of the Internet and the ability to communicate with the company network from anywhere in the world, many workers now work part time or full time from home.
Telework is not a specific job, it is a method of working which usually means doing work from home. There is no legal definition of teleworking, but the important feature is the use of information technology to enable people to work away from the office.
This could apply to people working full time or part-time at home, those managing their time between home and work, and mainly mobile workers who use their home as an administrative base.
Telework is growing. Over 7 million people in the UK now use IT to help them work away from the traditional office environment, either full time or part time.

On the positive side, ICT has resulted in many new jobs being created created.
Here are a few examples - I'm sure you can think of many more.

Network Technician

• Helps set up office and school networks
• Monitors network performance
• Installs new software
• Sets up and monitors user accounts
• Ensures network security

Computer programmer

• Writes the code for new software
• Adapts or develops existing software

Website Designer

With the explosion of the Internet, there has been a huge demand for people who can design and write websites.
There has also been many jobs created around web advertising, web hosting and e-commerce.

Help Desk Operator

• Answers technical problems from staff
• Provides advice when software/hardware not working
• Resets passwords
• Can remotely control a computer screen to demonstrate how to do something.

Business Analyst

Because businesses need specialist software and hardware to suit their particular needs, most large organisations employ a team of business analysts.
These analysts examine the methods currently used by the company and determine what works and what needs improving.

Technology has not just changed the way we work, it has changed the way we go shopping.  Years ago, if you wanted to buy something you would find what you wanted in the shop, go up to the till, the person on the till would have added up all of the products prices and you would pay by cash.  In today’s world, we would find what we wanted, go up to the till, the person scans the barcodes on the products, the computer tells them what the total amount to pay is and we would pay with our credit or debit card.  This is much easier and safer than carrying cash around with you all the time because if your wallet or purse got stolen, you would lose your money, but today if your card gets stolen then you would deactivate it and the criminal wouldn’t be able to buy anything with it because of your pin code.  This kind of till is called the Electronic Point of Sales.

Online Entertainment

In this blog, I will be talking about different kinds of online entertainment.

Youtube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos.

Youtube displays a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, VEVO, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.

YouTube Statistics

48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day

Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day

Users upload the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week

YouTube is localised in 25 countries across 43 languages

YouTube's demographic is broad: 18-54 years old

YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010

Advantages of You Tube

• There are lots of different channels that upload different things so you can find something that you are interested in.
• You can subscribe to a particular channel so you can be notified when they have made a new video for you to watch.
• There are millions of videos to choose from that can entertain you.
• Some TV companies upload previous episodes of a television series so you can watch it if you missed it the first time round.
• You can watch it on the go on your mobile.

Disadvantages of You Tube

• People can post what ever they want on You Tube so some videos could be found to be offensive.
•  Some videos can take a long time to load before you can view them or they could randomly pause in the middle of the video to load.
•  There are lots of adverts at the beginning on videos that can take up to 30 seconds to stop before you can watch the video.

 In my opinion, YouTube is extremely entertaining as you can find a video about almost anything you can think of.  Any disadvantages are a small price to pay for the large amount of entertaining content all on one website.

Second Life Online Game

In 1999, Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab. He made Second Life, developing computer hardware allowing people to immerse in a virtual world.

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on the 23 June, 2003.  Client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users to interact with each other through their avatars. Residents can explore the world, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another.  In November 2010, 21.3 million accounts were registered and as of 2011 the game has about one million active users that play regularly.

Advantages of Second Life 

• People find it fun to be able to play a game where they can forget about what is going on around them and immerse themselves in their second life online. 
• It is a free game and it is easy to sign up to play. 
• You can connect with and talk to other people. 
• You can make money from the game from the in-game currency called lindens.

  Disadvantages of Second Life

• If someone plays it too much they can get addicted which can lead to health problems. 
• They would be staring at a screen for ages which can lead to eye problems. 
• You need a good computer in order to run the game. 
• You need a good internet connection in order to connect to the game servers. 

 In my opinion, a game like second life could be very entertaining.  You can connect to other people around the world and play it with your friends.  However,  the game needs a good internet connection and computer to be able to run and some people may be playing this role playing game too seriously, which could be a problem if they get addicted to it.

  

Music and Movies

On the internet, there are a number of companies that have programs that enable you to buy music and movies from the internet to your computer or mobile device, for your entertainment.  One of the most well known and most used is Itunes.

iTunes was introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9, 2001.

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing and downloading digital music and video files computers. It can also organise the contents on iPods, iPhones and iPads.  iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store to purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks and podcasts.

As of October 4, 2011, the store served its 16 billionth song.

Advantages of music and movies online 

• Convenient as you can download and listen to it in just a few clicks. 
• It is easy to find the song or movie you want by just searching, buying, downloading and playing it. 
• There are thousands of entertaining movies and songs. 
• Once you buy and download it you can play it anywhere.

  Disadvantages of music and movies 

• They can take up lots of hard drive space on your computer. 
• Long movies can take a long time to download before you can watch them. 
• Some people download music and movies for free from illegal websites.

  

In my opinion, music and movies from the internet are very entertaining and convenient.  They are as entertaining as music and movies that you buy on a disk, but they are much easier to obtain from a website such as Itunes and much easier to watch or listen to on the computer, which I think makes it better. 

Download Services

In this blog we will be looking at a few of the many download services available today on the internet.

Patches

A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance. Though meant to fix problems, poorly designed patches can sometimes introduce new problems.

The size of patches may vary from a few kilobytes to hundreds of megabytes — mostly more significant changes imply a larger size, though this also depends on whether the patch includes entire files or only the changed portion(s) of files. In particular, patches can become quite large when the changes add or replace non-program data, such as graphics and sounds files. Such situations commonly occur in the patching of computer games. Compared with the initial installation of software, patches usually do not take long to install.

Computer games receive patches to fix compatibility problems after their initial release just like any other software, but they can also be applied to change game rules and to fix glitches. Extra features and game play tweaks can often be added. These kinds of patches are common in first-person shooters with multiplayer modes, and in MMORPGs.  MMORPGs, which are normally complex with large amounts of content, always rely heavily on patches following the release.

Advantages of patches

• It is automatically downloaded to our computer which saves us time.
• They fix our software and games if there are problems.
• They can add new features to our software and games.

Disadvantages of patches

• They take up more memory on our computers.
• They could take a long time to download and install if it is a large patch.
• They could create more problems if the patch has not been checked thoroughly for errors.

In my opinion, patches are very good because you can see that the developer cares about its consumers and wants to fix and update the programs that people use.  Patches can fix things quickly and easily with not much involvement from us.

Torrents and BitTorrent

Programmer Bram Cohen designed it in April 2001 and released a first implementation on July 2, 2001. It is now maintained by Cohen's company BitTorrent, Inc.

As of January 2011 BitTorrent has 100 million users and a greater share of network bandwidth than Netflix and Hulu combined.

At any given instant of time BitTorrent has more active users than YouTube and Facebook combined.

A torrent file stores metadata used for BitTorrent. A torrent is data about a target file.  The only data that the torrent holds is information about the location of different pieces of the target file. Torrents work by dividing the target file into small information chunks, found on an unlimited number of different hosts. Through this method, torrents are able to download large files quickly. When a person has started a torrent download, the chunks of target file that are needed can be found easily. Once all the chunks are downloaded the client can assemble them into one usable file.

BitTorrent is peer-to-peer used for distributing large amounts of data over the Internet. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounted for roughly 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic.

Advantages of Torrents

• You can download files and programs much faster.
• It is peer-to-peer so you download from people you could trust.

Disadvantages of Torrents

• People can abuse the service and use it for distributing software illegally.
• There could be a higher risk of viruses.

In my opinion, torrents are a good idea because you get to download what you want much faster.  However, it is easily abused for people to distribute software illegally and there could be a higher risk of viruses because the file is downloaded from lots of different places.

Security

Whenever you download a file, there is always a small risk that the file will contain a virus or a program that can damage your computer or your information. Here are some steps you can take to help protect your computer when you download files:

Only download files from websites that you trust.

Be cautious of certain file types. Some file types are less safe because they can carry viruses. The main file types to avoid are program files with extensions such as .exe, .scr, .bat, .com, or pif. Often a dangerous file is disguised as a less risky file type, because it has two file name extensions such as, filename.txt.exe. This example might look like a text file, but it's actually an executable file.

Install and use an antivirus program. Antivirus programs scan files before opening them and notify you if a file is unsafe.  Antivirus software can also block certain files from being downloaded if they are immediately recognised as a threat, which stops it from getting onto your computer.  Antivirus software can also scan your entire computer to see if there are any other hidden threats that you or the computer had not noticed before.

Advantages of download security

• It protects you from viruses that could ruin your computer.
• It makes us aware of things we should look out for and we will know not to use certain websites again.
• It keeps our computers and files safe.

Disadvantages of download security

• The antivirus software could look at a file wrong and stop you from downloading it because it looks like a virus when you know it is not.
• Some antivirus software is quite expensive because you have to renew a subscription every year to use the software.

In my opinion, download security is something that everyone should have and be aware of.  Antivirus software may seem expensive but it is worth it to not lose everything on your computer because of viruses.