Ethical Evaluation of Spamming

• Kantian evaluation:
– Treating recipients as means to end (my profit) rather than
respecting them as ends in themselves it is wrong

• Act utilitarian evaluation:
– Unhappy people deleting spam
> Happy people buying product/service
> It is wrong

• Rule utilitarian evaluation:
– If spam increase causes use of email to decrease & usefulness
of email system to fail for everyone it is wrong

• Social contract theory evaluation:
– If my right of free speech violates people’s right not to listen & I
disguise my motive (misleading subject line) to get people
attention it is wrong

10 Common Causes of Computer Stress

1. Failing to Anticipate Problems

Many stressful problems computer users experience can be prevented. Yes, power outages do occur, but equipment and software controls are available to keep you from losing data. Theft or damage from children, natural disasters, viruses, intruders, and hard disk failures may not always be avoidable. But adopting a regular backup schedule and keeping a recent backup in a second location can make such losses easier to bear. Software bugs are common in many types of programs, especially new releases such as Windows 95. So if one is uncomfortable dealing with such problems, it may be better to wait before making a purchase.The point is there are many potential computer-related nightmares, but they can be anticipated and steps taken to either prevent a disaster or at the very least to significantly soften its blow.

2. Trying to Get By on the Cheap

Sometimes we invite disasters by trying to do things on the cheap. That less expensive modem or graphics board you could pick up at a computer show may save you a hundred dollars or more, but are the potential headaches worth the risk? Sure you can save some money if you don't upgrade to a Pentium processor, but are the savings really worth all the frustration and anger you may experience when your slower CPU can't keep up with the latest software? Or how about building a system on your own. If you're not really experienced, it's probably better (and less stressful) to pay a little more and get a system assembled by a pro.

3. Failing to Ask for Help

Many novice computer users (and some veterans too), are reluctant to ask other people for help. This can lead to an incredible amount of stress, most of which is totally unnecessary.When you are just starting out learning to use your computer, nothing can beat having one or two experienced computer users in your life whom you can call whenever you run into a problem. It also may help to visit your local bookstore and purchase a supplemental training or tutorial guide. And don't forget the many on-line sources of help for all levels of users. Hardware and software forums can be found on AOL, Compuserve, and other popular services. And there is also a tremendous amount of free (and not so free) technical support available by phone, fax, and on-line that is provided by most product manufacturers.

4. Failing to Relate to Stress as Feedback

Whether you get angry, frustrated, or impatient with your computer from time to time, or whether you worry about some computer disaster befalling you, the very best way to deal with any type of stress in your life is to view it as personal feedback.

Instead of blaming your computer, blaming software developers and manufacturing companies, or blaming life itself, take the viewpoint that any type of stress in your life may have something to do with your own thinking and behavior. Did nefarious forces single you out and send that lightning bolt down your electrical lines that fried your expensive equipment? Or did you fail to anticipate this problem and install an adequate surge protector? Are you frustrated and angry because you can't seem to get your slick new software program to run as advertised? Or did you fail to read the instruction manual or skip the online tutorial?

Whatever type of computer stress you might be experiencing, look for your own hidden thought patterns and behavior patterns lurking in the background. If you're not familiar with how to do this, there are several excellent self-help references available.

5. Trying to Cut Corners

In addition to cutting financial corners, there are many other ways computer users get themselves into trouble by trying to skip important or critical steps. Trying to use hardware or software without reading the manuals or doing the basic tutorials is one very common cause. Unfortunately, the new "Plug and Play" mentality fosters this behavior. Many Plug and Play users, on the other hand, have found out that they still need to understand how their new equipment works (and installs) to get it up and running smoothly.

Attempting to use powerful software programs such as word processors, spread sheets, relational database programs, web page designers, graphics illustrators, and many others right out of the box is another preventable cause of computer related stress. While many of these program are relatively easy to learn and operate at a very basic level, most users could benefit from additional training and tutoring.

The usual excuse for skipping these steps is time. Many people feel that they just don't have the time to sit down and study their manuals, read an additional book, attend a class, or hire a professional trainer. Unfortunately, when you don't put in the time to learn what you are doing on the front end, you usually end up spending much more time (and sometimes money) in the long run.

6. Unrealistic Expectations

Much of our stress in life is caused by our own unrealistic expectations. Many of these expectations are quite silly when examined in the open. But they often lurk in the background of our thinking, causing mischief and stress in ways that we may not always be consciously aware of.

Take the common experience of frustration associated with computers. Much of this frustration comes from expecting ourselves or our computers to function perfectly all the time. While this is a laudable goal, it is not very realistic. From time to time, computer problems will occur. The file we are working on may have appeared to disappear! (Don't worry, it's usually still there--somewhere.) Heavy traffic on our on-line service may preclude us from being able to connect when we want or may cause a system slow down just at the moment we need things to be fast.

Or the new "Plug and Play" mentality sweeping the computer world today may lead us to believe that every installation of every new product we buy will be a pleasurable experience. As many users have already discovered, Plug and Play, in many instances, should be more aptly renamed "Plug and Pray" or "Plug and No-Play."

Another area where expectations play an important role is how we respond to the behavior of others. In the computer world, there are many opportunities to become upset with other people. Some people may not respond in a timely manner (or at all) to your e-mail messages. Others will send you unsollicited e-mail or will flame you repeatedly for making a beginner's mistake. And then there are all the vendors, sales people, repair technicians, receptionists, tech support people and many others who repeatedly fail to live up to our personal standards for how people should behave.

7. Beating Up On Yourself Unnecessarily

Along with the expectations of perfectionism and universally faultless performance comes the very common behavior pattern of beating yourself whenever you do something wrong or make a "dumb" mistake.

Mistakes in the computer world are very common. All it takes is entering one incorrect letter, number, or symbol and your whole operation can grind to a halt. Deleting the wrong file (or a whole directory of important files!) happens to the very best of us. And when it comes to operating complex software applications or coordinating the installation of complex hardware or networking systems, errors are common, and you should not feel too bad or demean yourself when they occur.

Forgiveness and compassion are what you need to deal with the many intracacies and pitfalls computer usage entails. If you find yourself engaging in their opposites, stop this at once. There is nothing to be gained from continuing.

8. Conflicts With Other People

Much of our stress in life comes from conflicts and interpersonal difficulties we encounter with other people. While the computer world may give you the illusion of working alone and isolating yourself from others, this is not really the case.

Both at home and at work, many different types of computer related conflicts and resultant stress can arise. At home, there may be issues of sharing usage between family members, exposure of children to outside influences, increased financial burdens, conflicts over the amount of time spent at the terminal (or not being spent elsewhere) and many others. These types of conflicts require strong communication, relationship building, and negotiation skills.

At work, similar types of issues can surface. Conflicts over access to shared company resources, such as laser printers, network searches, or the availability of expert assistance, are very common.

And both at home or at work, there are vendors, customers, other computer users and their networked virtual communities, and many other people you might interact with, both on-line and in person. Some of these interactions can sometimes be stressful. Because computers expand our capabilities for social interactions, and because such interactions are often beyond our direct personal control, computers tend to increase our stress in this very important and difficult area of living harmoniously with other human beings.

9. Failing to Do Your Homework

Another common cause of computer stress is failing to do your homework. In some ways this is similar to Cause #5 (Trying To Cut Corners). It too is done mainly to save time. But many problems computer users experience could have been prevented had they researched products or companies more thouroughly or had they spoken to experienced experts before making a purchase.

10. Compromising Your Own or Others' Integrity

When you do something you know is wrong, you don't have to get caught to suffer consequences. Your unconscious will take over and make sure you are punished.

Since no one is actually watching, many computer users feel safe about accepting copied software, using shareware without paying registration fees, giving copies of non-free software to others, or using purchased software programs on multiple machines. But these minor transgressions do add up. And they can be subtle causes of later "accidental mishaps."

Ways to Prevent Spam

1.Never, ever reply to a spam message.

This includes buying a product that is for sale or clicking the often-misunderstood "unsubscribe" link, which actually informs your spammer that you exist. If you can tell from the subject line that a message is spam, don't open it — delete it. Spam subject lines usually promise you a better sex life, a more youthful appearance, prescription drugs without a doctor's approval, love, thicker hair, or a better mortgage rate. They also use attention-demanding punctuation, such as exclamation marks or all caps.

2. Don’t click any links in a spam email.

Spammers often have multiple, unique pages on their sites. Often, when you click a URLin a spam message, this tells the spammer that you — and only you — received the message he or she sent.

3. Disguise your email address.

Don't put your email address in plain text on your Web site. An effective way to trick the spiders that traverse the Web to harvest email addresses is to disguise your email address by stripping out periods and "@" symbols. For example, "YOURNAME AT YAHOO DOT COM." You can also make the "@" an image, which will prevent crawlers from identifying it. You make also wish to disguise it in your signature file, in case your recipients forwards your email.

4. Don’t forward an email from someone you don’t know to a list of people.

You remember those "forward this email to 20 of your friends" messages? They are perfect for spammers to harvest email addresses, even if the sender of the original email did not have this intent. These types of sign-and-forward emails often appear in the form of a petition — and they don’t work.

5. Don’t use your home or business email address.

When you register on a Web site or in a group. If you must sign up for services, want to receive more info, register for newspapers or domains; use a free email address from a site like Yahoo or Hotmail to create an address especially for that purpose. This also goes for posting to the Web, in a listserv, newsgroup, on a contact page for a Web site, or on a resume that is posted on the Web.

6. Before you join a list, make sure the list owner or Web master will not sell your address.

Check to see if you can opt out of receiving unsolicited email from the site where you're registering. If you are unsure about this, read the site's privacy statement.

7. Preview your messages before you open them.
Outlook (and many other email clients) let you use a preview mode to peek at the contents of a message before you actually open it. To do this in Outlook, go the View menu and select Preview Pane. Instead of double clicking a message, click it once to select it and you'll see the message displayed in the Preview Pane.

8.Use a complicated email username.

Spammers' software will look for the easy and obvious addresses first, such as those with identifiable names "john1977@hotmail.com," as opposed to “sjk839@msn.com."

9. Use a spam filter.

One to try is SpamBayes for Windows, which you can find in TechSoup's Free Downloads section. Another is Mailshell, which is available on TechSoup Stock. (Visit the Mailshell page for details).

10.If your organization has an IT department, forward any spam that gets through to it.

This way, they can perhaps better tweak the filters.

Catalysts for Change

Who were the computers during the Victorian Era? What were the implications of their work during that time?

There were no computers during victorian era but but there are people who contributed their work. The Victorian Era was also a time of tremendous scientific progress and ideas. Darwin took his Voyage of the Beagle, and posited the Theory of Evolution. The Great Exhibition of 1851 took place in London, lauding the technical and industrial advances of the age, and strides in medicine and the physical sciences continued throughout the century. The radical thought associated with modern psychiatry began with men like Sigmund Feud toward the end of the era, and radical economic theory, developed by Karl Marx and his associates, began a second age of revolution in mid-century. The ideas of Marxism, socialism, feminism churned and bubbled along with all else that happened.

Who was Charles Babbage and what was the significant contribution he made during his time? If his computer was made, what ethical consideration could have been addressed? RE: WWI,Hindenburg,Titanic to have a few?

Charles Babbage was known as the "Father of Computer".In 1821 Babbage invented the Difference Engine to compile mathematical tables. On completing it in 1832, he conceived the idea of a better machine that could perform not just one mathematical task but any kind of calculation. This was the Analytical Engine (1856), which was intended as a general symbol manipulator, and had some of the characteristics of today’s computers. Unfortunately, little remains of Babbage's prototype computing machines. Critical tolerances required by his machines exceeded the level of technology available at the time. And, though Babbage’s work was formally recognized by respected scientific institutions, the British government suspended funding for his Difference Engine in 1832, and after an agonizing waiting period, ended the project in 1842. There remain only fragments of Babbage's prototype Difference Engine, and though he devoted most of his time and large fortune towards construction of his Analytical Engine after 1856, he never succeeded in completing any of his several designs for it. George Scheutz, a Swedish printer, successfully constructed a machine based on the designs for Babbage's Difference Engine in 1854. This machine printed mathematical, astronomical and actuarial tables with unprecedented accuracy, and was used by the British and American governments. Though Babbage's work was continued by his son, Henry Prevost Babbage, after his death in 1871, the Analytical Engine was never successfully completed, and ran only a few "programs" with embarrassingly obvious errors.

Throughout his life Babbage worked in many intellectual fields typical of his day, and made contributions that would have assured his fame irrespective of the Difference and Analytical Engines. Despite his many achievements, the failure to construct his calculating machines, and in particular the failure of the government to support his work, left Babbage in his declining years a disappointed and embittered man. He died at his home in London on October 18, 1871.

What computer was developed during WW II and who made it possible? Name the two major players and how did they contribute to the war effort? What happened to the after the war?

The Lorenz Cipher

Although ENIAC is widely regarded as the first programmable computer, other contenders can make legitimate claims for that title. Perhaps the strongest case can be made for Colossus, a decrypting machine developed by the British during WWII.As war raged, the Allies found themselves confronted with a complex German encryption cipher called Lorenz. Germany believed that the cipher was unbreakable. A computer and a group of dedicated British engineers proved them wrong.

In December 1943, while work on ENIAC was just getting underway in Philadelphia, engineer Tommy Flowers delivered Colossus to British codebreakers working in top-secret conditions in England’s Bletchley Park. Colossus had an electronic memory, was programmable by means of switches and patch cords and could look for matching sequences that might help crack the code.

Output was created by means of an IBM electric typewriter.
Cracking the Lorenz cipher and being able to quickly translate captured orders and military plans helped change the course of the war and helped shorten it. Their near-miraculous secret work prompted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to call the Bletchley Park codebreaker s “the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled.”

The Enigma machine

The German military used the Enigma cipher machine during WW2 to keep their communications secret. The machine was available commercially during the 1920s, but the military potential of the device was quickly realised and the German army, navy and air force all used a more developed model of the machine to encipher their messages believing that it would make these communications impenetrable to the enemy.

The Enigma machine is an electro-mechanical device that relies on a series of rotating 'wheels' or ‘rotors’ to scramble plaintext messages into incoherent ciphertext. The machine's variable elements can be set in many billions of combinations, and each one will generate a completely different ciphertext message. If you know how the machine has been set up, you can type the ciphertext back in and it will unscramble the message. If you don't know the Enigma setting, the message remains indecipherable.

The German authorities believed in the absolute security of the Enigma. However, with the help of Polish mathematicians who had managed to acquire a machine prior to the outbreak of WW2, British code breakers stationed at Bletchley Park managed to exploit weaknesses in the machine and how it was used and were able to crack the Enigma code.Breaking the Enigma ciphers gave the Allies a key advantage, which, according to historians, shortened the war by two years thus saving many lives.

What is AI,Robotics,Cyborgs?What ethical issue call be desired from those inventions?

>> AI (Artificial Intelligence) - is usually defined as the science of making computers do things that require intelligence when done by humans. AI has had some success in limited, or simplified, domains. However, the five decades since the inception of AI have brought only very slow progress, and early optimism concerning the attainment of human-level intelligence has given way to an appreciation of the profound difficulty of the problem.

The ethics of artificial intelligence falls into two separate but dependent issues. The first is whether or not the research in the area of artificial intelligence is ethical and to what extent should the research be limited, if at all? Second, if the research were to be unlimited and to have limited monitoring, what would happen if a true artificial intelligence close to that of a human were to exist? We will be focusing on the first of the two issues.Many different parties would be affected by the existence or nonexistence of artificial intelligence. The most obvious are the AI machines themselves; after all it is their existence or creation that is the issue at hand here. The inventors and researchers have a stake in the technology. Many of the researchers have made making innovating steps in artificial intelligence the purpose of their lives. They spend day in and day out working to improve the technology. Placing limitations on these people's creativity would be disastrous for them.

>> Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application.Robotics requires a working knowledge of electronics, mechanics and software, and is usually accompanied by a large working knowledge of many subjects.

The term robotics was introduced by writer Isaac Asimov. In his science fiction book I, Robot, published in 1950, he presented three laws of robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Robots are now widely used in factories to perform high-precision jobs such as welding and riveting. They are also used in special situations that would be dangerous for humans -- for example, in cleaning toxic wastes or defusing bombs.

Although great advances have been made in the field of robotics during the last decade, robots are still not very useful in everyday life, as they are too clumsy to perform ordinary household chores.

>> Cyborg - a compound word derived from cybernetics and organism, is a term coined by Manfred Clynes in 1960 to describe the need for mankind to artificially enhance biological functions in order to survive in the hostile environment of Space. Originally, a cyborg referred to a human being with bodily functions aided or controlled by technological devices, such as an oxygen tank, artificial heart valve or insulin pump.

The future may include the reality of science fiction's "cyborgs," persons who have developed some intimate and occasionally necessary relationship with a machine. It is likely that computer chips implanted in our brains and acting as sensors or actuators may soon not only assist the blind and those with failing memory, but even bestow fluency in a new language, enable "recognition" of previously unmet individuals and provide instantaneous access to encyclopedic databases. Developments in nanotechnology, bioengineering, computers and neuroscience are converging to facilitate these amazing possibilities.

What is the real treat that IT world would face in the future (its not nuclear).How could this happen and what is its effect to our world?

Information technology is an integral part of all of the problems associated with a pandemic, according to Round table director Bill Darte, CAIT senior technical associate at Washington University in St. Louis. Darte said a key, overlooked impact a pandemic would have on a community is Internet traffic and communications.