Teleworking / Biometrics Assignment

You have been hired to provide analysis on:

• In a corporation, the owners want to protect the room where the most valuable files are stored and they are unsure of whether to use fingerprint access or face recognition. Which of the two methods would you recommend and why?
• Another firm wants to adopt a solution to allow their employees to work collaboratively from their home or whilst they travel. Review existing options and recommend the one you think is best.

In both cases, your recommendations must be based on technical issues as well as affordability. Post your answers as a link to the PowerPoint presentations you develop in your blog. 

Ergonomics / Teleworking / Biometrics

During the next few classes, we will be discussing some general issues related to technology use and access, as well as their implications.
Ergonomics: is the application of scientific information concerning objects, systems and environment for human use (definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 2007). However, the field of Ergonomics is mostly associated with the design of hardware in such a way that it prevents commonly known repetitive stress injuries RSI.

Ergonomics at work illustrates some of these concepts.
Teleworking: Globalization and recent changes and technological advances have made it possible for an increasing number of people to be able to work from home. Advantages and Disadvantages of Teleworking is an article that provides a good summary of the advantages and disadvantages of working from home.
In order to take full advantage of teleworking, users need a platform comprising different tools to share their work online. We will subsequently research the existing online options.
Password Protection – Biometrics: Any organization that possesses valuable information needs to put into effect some sort of validation process that ensures that only authorized users can gain access to relevant information.
Traditionally mostly accessed through fingerprints, now facial recognition is gaining ground. The following video extols the advantages of face recognition:

There are many different authentication methods, from the very simple and straightforward Passwords) to more complex ones based on biometrics. We will watch the following two videos to jumpstart our discussion:

Search Engines Test

Answer all questions with technical details. Once you have finished, submit your answers to itgs.sass@gmail.com

1-      Explain in detail what happens from the moment a user types the URL for our school’s web site until the page appears on the browser.

2-      Can a web page loaded in a browser read the computer’s hard drive? Why?

3-      Summarize concerns regarding users’ privacy when using search engines. Are these concerns well founded?

4-      The owner of a car dealership who sells cars and car parts online wants to increase traffic and consequently sales in his web sites. Explain in details how you would work with him to achieve that objective.

5-      How do you think search engines will evolve in the future? Explain in detail what technical characteristics we might expect them to have in the next few years. What needs to improve for this to happen?

6-      What makes a site rank higher in Google and why?
7-      Can a site not appear within a search engine? How is this done? Are there sites that cannot be accessed through the regular http protocol?

Some technical concepts

During this subsequent unit we will go over some technical topics that we need to cover so as to afterwards be able to discuss and analyze the implications of computer systems on individuals and societies. We will approach this unit by first reading about these issues and then working on a series of assignments that will let us derive and infer their implications based on a sounder technical base.

Analog and digital data: How Analog and Digital Recording Works, from HowStuffWorks, an interesting tutorial on analog and digital recording that covers well the difference between analog and digital data. If you Google “analog and digital data” you will come across many reliable sources that will yield information on the differences between both types of data.

Difference between data and information: Again, a very clear distinction can be made between data, that is, recorded numbers, readings, etc. which in themselves are meaningless as opposed to information which can be derived from the processing and analysis of that data, in our context through computer software in a process known as data processing. There are abundant sources on this topic, a well-summarized and concise reference can be found at Understanding the Difference Between Data and Information.

Operating Systems: We will be watching a couple of videos related to Operating Systems.

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Then, we will once more be referring to HowStuffWorks for a general introduction on How Operating Systems Work. It provides a good and thorough introduction to this very important concept.