Do you think it is a good thing for people always to be in touch and available? Share your thoughts about this with other TU100 students in your tutor-group forum ( link removed by blog author ) .
Generally having the facility to be in instant contact with a large proportion of your friends, professional contacts, and be available for them, is a good thing. The only time this becomes a hinderance is when it interferes with your privacy.
Often information on security and privacy is hard to find on social networking sites. I would like you now to compare the safety policies of Bebo, Facebook and MySpace as presented to a new user coming to the site for the first time. You do not need to log into any of these sites; just click on the Privacy link (which is usually in very small text at the bottom of the main web page) and take a look at the information on privacy offered by each of the sites to gain an impression of its content. Which site offers the most helpful advice?
Generally the privacy information was long-winded, complicated and confusing, however, facebook and Bebo both have video guides on how to use their privacy settings.
Summarise the following blog post in just a few sentences.
Clarifying SourceForge.net’s denial of site access for certain persons in accordance with US law
Posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 by leeschlesinger
Category: General
If you follow @sourceforge on Twitter, you may have seen some tweets last week from certain users outside the US complaining that they no longer had access to SourceForge.net. Here’s why.
Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited certain persons from receiving services pursuant to U.S. laws, including, without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. The specific list of sanctions that affect our users concern the transfer and export of certain technology to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list. This means users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, may not post content to, or access content available through, SourceForge.net. Last week, SourceForge.net began automatic blocking of certain IP addresses to enforce those conditions of use.
As one of the first companies to promote the adoption and distribution of free and open source software, and one that still puts open source at the center of its corporate ideals, restrictions on the free flow of information rub us the wrong way. However, in addition to participating in the open source community, we also live in the real world, and are governed by the laws of the country in which we are located. Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place.
We regret deeply that these sanctions may impact individuals who have no malicious intent along with those whom the rules are designed to punish. However, until either the designated governments alter the practices that got them on the sanctions list, or the US government’s policies change, the situation must remain as it is.
Schlesinger, 2010
During the process of designing a website for a large company, the designer was asked by the company’s directors to create categories based upon existing departmental boundaries. On this basis, printers were listed on the hardware page, while printer ink was listed on the consumables page.
Try to identify what is wrong with this approach in terms of user-centred design.
Whilst this division of the resources is correct, it is appropriate to separate these items like this from a developers standpoint, it adds complications for the end-user(s) who will be using the website, so in the realm of UCD, this is very wrong as it adds complications for the people the site is being designed for.
