Council Elections

President of Students Council Elections

My write up as follows:
"I am interested in the position of President of student’s council. I understand that this is an extremely demanding position but I am confident that I possess the necessary qualities for the role.
Having served as a prefect for four years in secondary school, holding leadership positions is not new to me. I fully understand what is required of me; the trials and tribulations that one would go through. I believe that being President of the student’s council takes much more than leadership capabilities and academic attributes. They must possess morals, intellect, social abilities and a good presentation of oneself, all of which I pride myself in.
Being a sportsman, I have acquired several positive attributes such as discipline and how to deal with failure. Confucius once said, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”. Subscribing to that quote, I firmly believe that we should not be deterred by setbacks or obstacles. Instead, it is important that we take things in our stride and rise to each occasion.
Since I was enrolled between the first and second intake, I have made friends in both senior and junior batches. This would serve to my advantage as I feel that I will be able to serve not only as a bridge between the current two batches, but in promoting cohesion and camaraderie, will be able to lay the groundwork for future intakes.
I have decided to apply for the role of President as I am deeply drawn by challenges and I believe that I will be able to bring about change. In my Poly days, I missed out on several opportunities in taking up leadership positions and found that I missed being involved in school. Being in the council will also help me foster a sense of belonging to the University of Buffalo.
What I hope to achieve in serving my term of Presidency would be to foster a sense of bonding and communication. Gone would be the days when students would just attend lectures and go home. I hope to do this by encouraging more inter-faculty games and other activities they can participate in. The starting of the UB-SIM soccer team was the first step taken by my fellow classmate and from there I hope to give them my full support in fostering greater ties between faculties. Additionally, I would like to get more involved on a more personal level by facilitating communication through feedback. In such a way, I will be able to serve as a conduit between the council and student body.
In conclusion I believe that my attributes would serve to my utmost advantage in taking on the demanding position of President."
“Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.” – Albert Einstein

Voting will be out on www.ubsim.org sometime next week so do show your support and vote for me. Your lives wont be the same.... for real man!!! power to the people!!!

QotW5: Identity Theft

“The worst of all deceptions is self-deceptions.” – Plato, Cratylus, 4th B.C.

“Mikey I am going to shower now you can use my computer I left it on.” Sarah said as she walked into the bathroom. Mike immediately logged onto his girlfriends msn and started snooping around her facebook account. While snooping around one of Sarah’s friend which just happened to be her ex-boyfriend messaged her online.

“Sarah? Are you there.” the words came flashing onto the screen.
Mike being the overprotective and suspicious boyfriend wanted to find out who this guy was. He decided to play along and replied.

“Yeah, I am here, just came out of the shower.”

I bet we all did that once in our lifetime. Our curiosity and suspicious nature tends to get the better of us. So is that considered identity theft? Although an innocent gesture on Mikey part he could be in the long run out to steal or impersonate other people and use their identities for personal gain.
Apparently not as identity theft is the misuse of the identity (such as the name, date of birth, current address or previous addresses) of another person without their knowledge or consent. Obtaining someone’s personal details is not a criminal offence, nor is creating fake utility bills or bank statements that can be used to prove you are that person. An offence is only committed when someone attempts to use the stolen identity to obtain goods or services.

As the world moves into the information age and into the cashless society, where one can pay their groceries with the click of the mouse and transfer funds to a bank located 10,000 miles away. One of the biggest problems we are facing today is online theft. People who misuse of abuse the system and impersonate someone else in order to obtain goods or services. A particularly costly form of identity deception is impersonation. If I can pass as you, I can wreck havoc on your reputation, either on-line or off (Donath, 1996).

E-bay is considered as an online economy where goods and services are being sold and traded online. On this website hackers are able to intercept monetary transactions and goods that are being sold by hacking into the user’s account assuming their identity and reputation, thus enabling them to purchase the goods using the assumed identity. I personally had my e-bay account hacked into and the person used my reputation as a quality and serious buyer to purchase stuff I had not ordered. The stuff was shipped to my address and payment was billed to my card. A person who is invested in a community through a membership system is one less likely to abuse the community (John, 1996)

Apart from online communities and economies like e-bay and amazon, the gamming world also is affected. Unlike online economies where identity assumed is important, the online gamming community assumes reputation as the key. Online games like Warcraft, Diablo, Counter-strike and Poker require not only passwords and user ids to enter but certain servers also require a certain level of reputation before you are able to play on it.

Let us take for example Poker.net, is an online gambling website where users from around the world are allowed to play poker as well as interact with each other. They are each given nicknames which they use at different play rooms. Reputation established from their nicknames or userid then enables the player to enter tournaments without even having met anyone.
How someone else could possibly assume this identity online is rather simple. They either gain access to your userid or passwords and simply just log into your account or a more complex process of hacking into your computer system to steal vital information. Many individual identity deceptions are acts of omission, rather than commission; they involve hiding one's identity (Donath, 1996)

Therefore i conclude that there is really no fullproff method to prevent or stop online identity thefts but there are ways to reduce the people affected. As people will always find the ways and means to beat the system. Be it for fun or monetary gain there always would be someone out there to who will create trouble.

References
Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 20, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

J. Adams and G Jayne. (1998) “Causes and implications of disinhibited behavior on the Internet,” Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal implications, Academic Press, Inc., pp. 43-60.

Oxford Analytica (2007) Hooked on Phishing. Retrieved February 20, 2007, from http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/04/29/cz_0429oxan_identitytheft.html

“Amilgate” (2007, Jan 15). Online Identity. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from Identity and Deception in the Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Online_identity&diff=108207999&oldid=106705378

Grohol, J. M. (1996) "Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters."

Team Buffalo Game 4

Well what can i say... we lost 7-2? i think.... heh so thats 1 win 3 losses now...



Game 5
Tanglin Pitch 2
0830hours
17/02/07

Yes Adriana Lima has lesbian tendancies

QotW4: Sharing is Caring 'e Gift'

“It's free, it's out here, but you're going to have to dig for it. You are going to have to give something away in order to receive something back. You have to participate for it to be real: a gift economy.” (Ed Phillips 1997)

The internet has been reborn and revamped into a sharing and caring community of users that are connected from around the world. This community or economy is called the gift economy, where sometimes it is better to give than to receive. A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement. However, the gift differs fundamentally from the quid pro quo of a market exchange. A market exchange is measured in the sense that the terms of trade are clearly specified and the trade happens in one instance. The good to be exchanged is priced and changes hand in exchange for a certain amount of money or an IOU.
An example of a gift economy would be a car enthusiast website. Specific individuals who own similar car models and interested in tuning their cars would register at a specific website. The one I would be using today would be http://forums.evolutionm.net/index.php?

There owners are able to interact with other owners and share tips and trade tuning secrets online without any costs. Various individuals are able to share their views and also trade car parts from one another without any written black and white agreement. Users trade so called ‘gifts’ with one another online this is what forms the gift economy.
However every economy has its downsides. Certain people tend to be narrow-minded; they feel if someone wants to give me something for free why should they return a favour. This would lead to the downside to the economy as more and more people think the same way the purpose of the ‘gift economy’ would lose its ‘gift’. Can a business be considered a gift to society?
The answer is yes for the case of DuPont, instead of distancing itself from the hazardous waste generated by customers, saw the problem as an opportunity to differentiate its offering in one of the most basic of commodities. The company took back the spent sulfuric acid, purified it, and resold it. This was good business because once DuPont got good at it, recycling turned out to be cheaper than creating from scratch. It also gained the company market share and margins in what had become to others a low-profit, uninteresting commodity. In this case, DuPont does well by doing good, thus winning both the exchange and gift paradigms. The sign of excellence in a new world of the larger self is not vast profit or possessions, but sufficient material success to allow large and thoughtful contributions to society. For some strategies of societal service, huge profits may be needed, for example to build up the capital to purchase forestry land and convert it to sustainable forestry, or to extend a chain of tutoring schools that serve those who otherwise might not read, including the poor.

Thus should be noted that relationships that are sustained by means of gifts have advantages and disadvantages, positive and negative values, compared to the instrumental relationships of the market place. While generating dependence, they allow for the possibility of intimacy and some form of connection. The gift tends to be a more social activity with all pluses and minuses that come with the social. The arts most likely would not survive without it

"Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not expressed in a way which maps onto the abstract information space. In an information space, we can consider the authorship of materials, and their perception; but ... there is a need for the underlying infrastructure to be able to make copies simply for reasons of [technical] efficiency and reliability. The concept of 'copyright' as expressed in terms of copies made makes little sense." (T.B Lee 1996)


References
Tim Berners-Lee, 1996. "The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future," http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html

Pinchot, Gifford (1995). "The Gift Economy" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm

Kollock, Peter (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Maus, Marcel (1960 [1925]), The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, New York: W.W. Norton.

Team Buffalo

Well we kinda lost 6-3 but it was a hard fought match today. So that bring our tally to 1 win and 2 losses...

Leon & Me

Some photos from our previous match which we lost 1-0
http://ubunited.shutterfly.com/action/?a=0AYsmjNk4YtWLiA

Com 125 QotW3: Copyright & Piracy

Copyright is a protection that covers published and unpublished literary, scientific and artistic works, whatever the form of expression, provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form. This means that if you can see it, hear it and/or touch it - it may be protected. Thus a copyright would exclusive rights to that individual to reproduce or collect royalties from the reproduction of the copyrighted material. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works (Copyright Issues in Digital Media, 2004).

As Internet becomes more rampant in our lives as the world goes wireless, sharing files and music would be as easy as stealing candy from a baby. With various software that can be downloadable from the Internet and the lack of hash and stiffer laws to prevent copyright infringement what can be done to stop us? Users of P2P programs, such as Limewire, Kazaa and bittorrent, are able to share files with one another online. Let’s say I recently purchased an album from my friendly music store which cost me $25. When I got home I ripped the music into my hard drive and shared it on Kazza and Limewire, where people from all around the world are able to download it off me for free. People who did not buy the album were able to download the songs and it became their property. This is called file sharing. So it does not matter if you made yourself a copy of a CD for your own use, however giving it to someone else, or worse, selling it, would infringe on Copyright laws (Brady, 2007). On programs like Limewire, which connect on the Gnutella server, a song which is four megabytes large can be transferred in five minutes on a broadband connection. On the other hand, on Bittorrent programs, an entire music album, which, for example, could be 80 megabytes in size, can be transferred in under an hour. With these kinds of download speeds, it is no surprise that large amounts of internet proficient users now rely on such networks to download songs and movies, instead of buying them. Needless to say, the profits of the copyright owners have consequently been heavily compromised. Copyright allows content creators to have some privileges, where no one else other than the content creator is allowed to publish the material. In order to obtain such rights, the content has to be “original, creative and fixed in a tangible medium” (Ovalle, 2005).

Piracy on the other hand infringes copyright laws in many ways. Firstly they illegally make copies of the material then they distribute it without a license. The sharp increase in pirated material could only be due to the high demand in the goods; as if there is no demand for the goods then the production would stop. Think about it logically an average person would want to pay less for something yet receive the same benefits. Pirated material has become so advance that the material is almost or sometimes even equal to the original good itself. So why would an average citizen actually want to pay more for something they can get for less. It all comes down to their morals.

From Mp3s to Dvds, piracy is rampant and unless the industries find a better way of protecting their music or movies or even lowering their prices, piracy will forever be like a virus, spreading and infecting everyone. I for one do not believe in copyright laws and sure I do believe that piracy is a crime but I am practical and would not pay for something when I can get it for less.



References

Copyright Issues in Digital Media. (2004, August). Retrieved February 1, 2007, from Congressional Budget Office Web site: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5738&sequence=0

Ovalle, C. (2005). “What is copyright?”. University of Texas at Austin, Course INF 312. Information in Cyberspace. Retrieved on January 31, 2007, fromhttp://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/3.php

Kevin S. Brady (2007). "Copyright FAQ: 25 Common Myths and Misconceptions". Retrieved 31st January, 2007 from http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/copyright.html
Litman, Jessica, "Sharing and Stealing" (November 23, 2003). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=472141 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.472141

International Journal of Research in Marketing, December 2003 (Volume 20, No. 4), "How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?"