Is cyber bullying an issue among young people?

Cyber bullying is a form of harrassment commonly in young pepole of the school going age using computers. Due to a more stricter educational environments "bullies" have resorted to use computers as a weapon other than guns and other weapons that were used in the 20th century. These bullies may be students or other people with an intention of toturing innocent victims for reasons bets known to them.

Effects of cyber-bullying on the victims:
i-Safe America has conducted a survey to find the effects and causes of cyber-bullying. They came up with the following results:

• 57% of the students said they had something hurtful said to them on line and 13% said it was quite often
• 53% had said something hurtful online,
• 35% have been threatned on line with 5% saying it happens quite often,
• 42% have been bullied on line with 7% quite often,
• 20% have recieved mean e-mails and,
• 58% have not told their parents.(National i-Safe America,2004)

These results prove that cyber-bullying is indeed a pressing issue among young people. It is sad that most schools fail to control cyber-bullying.

Some of the effects of cyber-bullying( common in school children) are:

• Low self esteem
• Low grades average
• stress and fear that can lead to cases like suicide and running away from home.

This is indeed a major issue that has to be dealt with.

Some of the solutions that can make this situation better are:

• Establishing councelling groups that can encourage victims to come out in the open and share their fears. At least this will give them a sense of being cared for.

So much can be done to reduce these cases and help these innocent souls. The bullies can also be helped because they may be sufffering from social problems and aggresion and they take it out on these innocent victims. So it is not only the victims that need help but the bullies also need help.

If anyone has comments or contributions to reduce this creeping disease please feel free to post your contributions on my site and make a difference.

Acknowledgements: Young, S.K.,Bennett,L.L,Yung-Joo,K., Alan,H.(2006)School bullying and Youth violence:Causes of Psychopathologic behavior.2006:63;1035-1041

Is cloud storage a safe way to store data?

Cloud storage is the storing of data using web facilities. Google docs is an example of cloud storage facility used to store documents. However these facilities have drawn questions as to whether they are safe to store data without any manipulation by outside intruders.

Some of the questions are :

• Should Government be allowed to access these storage facilities without permission of the onwer of the data?
• What type of data should be stored using cloud storage?
• Is this data safe from felony computer crimes?

All these questions are in the minds of potential cloud storage users.

I will start with the advantages of cloud storage:

• Workers can access business documents anytime ans anywhere.
• The users can increase or decrease the use of the computing resources and services easily and flexibley.

But are these advantages enough to trust cloud storage? Take a look at these cases that took place in 2008:

In February 2008 Amazon S3 suffered two outages. In August of that same year G-mail was not available twice for two hours, RIM's blackberry service was out for 18 hours. From my point of view cloud storage can not give a perfect service but it is by far better than on site storage.

No storage facility can guarantee 100% perfection because one way or another way computer hackers are going to find a way around.

Let me know what you think by posting you comments on my site.

Acknowledgements:Kim, W.(n.d.).Cloud Computing: Today and Tomorrow. South korea: Sungkyunkwan University.

Application software and students today

Is application sosftware , word processing systems to be specific , is promoting laziness among students. Is it robbing the culture of learning wereby students had to research and write essays correcting errors by themselves. I don't know. This is a topic under discussion.

Well I think word processing systems are indeed helpful in writting essays. For instance you are given a four thoudand word assignment one would probably lose count while writting because it would be very difficult to count four thousand words.

Looking on the other side of the coin it sort of promotes laziness because one person can become too reluctant to correct grammer or spellindg mistakes.

Anyway I am a student and I really think word proccessing systems come in handy when I am tired or having too much work on hand. Seriously imagine having two two thousand word assignments due on the same day in the same week. You can't possibly write the both , count the words and correct the grammer and spelings manually. The lecturers are giving students these long assignments knowing that there is the taechnology that can allow people to write a grammatically correct assignment on time. I seriously don't agree with the fact that application software is encouraging laziness in students.

This is the technological era and students have the right to take advantage of it. The person who thought knew that it would come in handy especially in the world of academia...What do you think?? food for thought..

Computer at risk

Have you ever thought about viruses. I mean everyone knows about viruses but a bit ignorant. But who writes viruses and what do they gain from doing that.

Virus authors also known as "Unscrupulous programmers " take their precious time writing and formulating viruses. Most authors post the viruses on the internet through commercials and eye catching advertisements. The moment you click on it then your computer is exposed to high risk. What do you expect from a virus attack definitely there is some form of "infection". The moment your p.c is infected then you are going to experience abnormal functions like files deleting themselves or freezing of some pro grammes just to mention a few causes...

The saving grace is no matter how the the authors try to produce more viruses then the more we have contradicting minds which have the people's interests at heart. Some of the virus authors also produce anti virus pro grammes too. They produce viruses and they also write anti virus programs and pretend to be the "good guys". But to save yourself from all the trouble just purchase a copyrighted anti virus program.

So what do we do to virus authors????? I don't know..... Save your computer form "crushing" install an anti virus program and make the virus authors jobless..... What do you think of virus authors....... Post your comments and make a difference...

Should there be cyberules

Computers and it's world the cyberworld. What do you think should there be rules governing activities in the cyberworld? I think so.
Rule one: Hack mine I hack yours.
Rule two: Isolate all cyber hackers to an island with no technology
Rule three: Have an Identity or be registered to surf the internet just like you have a Passport and visa to travel around the world.
Rule four: If one is caught hacking should be sent to the moon as an experiment to see if the rocket really works , that way we can't lose valuable people.

But seriously do you think that would work, like seriously? Of cause not cyber geeks will always find a way around. I mean people like breaking rules for reasons known to them.

Have you ever wondered how a Chinese or Vietennese guy ends up with your information? No? Well think about how you subscribe to some posts on the web some of which you don't know what they really are. That's how. Some suspicious websites post adverts or commercials with a really attractive offer and what do you do? Sign up and give in all your personal details. The next thing you know is you are bankrupt.

As we can't really control cyberspace why don't we not post personal information on the web for whatever reason... What do you think?
Stay safe in this dangerous world.........

INTRODUCTION TO MY BLOG PAGE

HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY BLOG SITE..

My name is Danai and I am currenlty researching for an Information Technology(IT) asignment about Ethics and issues concerning computers. I will mainly be blogging about topics like the the benefits of operating systems in the world of academia, the origins and the effects of viruses just to mention but a few.

This assignment is going to help me understand better about computers and be more literate. Blogging is about posting opinions, research results or anything that is on one's mind. My blog posts are going to be based on academic results based on computer results.

I would like the public to post their opinions, views and their comments on my site. This is going to help me improve my research and be more attentive to other issues that I might have overlooked..

I hope you, bloggers , will find it interesting and worth reading... Your comments will help me in doing more research..

As this is my assignment your comments are going to boost my marks. So please visit my site and comment.

Enjoy my posts....