CYBER CONTRACTS

Cyber or Electronic Contract

An electronic contract is an agreement created and "signed" in electronic form -- in other words, no paper or other hard copies are used. For example, you write a contract on your computer and email it to a business associate, and the business associate emails it back with an electronic signature indicating acceptance. An e-contract can also be in the form of a "Click to Agree" contract, commonly used with downloaded software. The user clicks an "I Agree" button on a page containing the terms of the software license before the transaction can be completed.


The contracting parties must stick on to the terms of the contract and must have sufficient redressal in case of breach (violation) of the rules of the contract.

Basic issues invovled in forming the contract are:

1. Intention to enter into a legal agreement
2. Proposal
3. Acceptance
4. Communication
5. Consideration
6. Competence of parties
7. Remedies for breach of contract

An internet contract is one that is entered into using the medium of internet, either by 'clicking' the I AGREE button or through e-mail.

The legal issues arising out of e-contracts have not yet been dealt by in Indian courts and the existing laws such as:
IT Act 2000, Indian Penal Code 1860 and subsequent amendments, The Indian Evidence Act 1872, The Bankers Book Evidence Act 1891 and the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, are applied to deal with issues arising in the process of an e-contract.

There are two major types of e-contracts:

CLICK WRAP and
SHRINK WRAP

A clickwrap agreement  is a common type of agreement (often used in connection with software licenses). Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media.

The content and form of clickwrap agreements vary widely. Most clickwrap agreements require the end user to manifest his or her assent by clicking an "ok" or "agree" button on a dialog box or pop-up window. A user indicates rejection by clicking cancel or closing the window. Upon rejection, the user can no longer use or purchase the product or service.

NEW MEDIA LAB LOGO

For creating a logo, you may visit cooltext.com. Create the logo (it should take less than 15 minute, even for a novice). Take a print out and mail the picture to me:

neelprof@gmail.com

NEW MEDIA LAB 8

Prepare guidelines for writing a crime report.

1. Know your limits

If someone has been charged with an offence or is about to be charged, you are limited in what you can say so that you do not prejudice the chance of a fair trial. That does not mean that you must say nothing about the crime, but it does mean that you should only report those details which will not be contested in court, keeping out personal opinions.



If no-one has been arrested and charged, you can say much more, always bearing in mind that you could be sued for defamation by anyone involved if you do not stick to the truth.

In many crime stories, once you have told the most important details in your first few paragraphs, you will want to tell the story in chronological order (the order in which things happened). You should already have gathered plenty of information, so now lead your reader or listener step-by-step through the event, explaining things in detail where necessary.

2. Features and background stories


Crime reporting can be dull if all you do is record what has happened and when it happened - dull for you and for your readers or listeners. You can add interest for everyone with background reports and features. These can be done when you have some spare time between news stories or while awaiting further developments in continuing cases.



The simplest background stories for crime reporters are general features about crime. By these we mean features (or current affairs programs) on such things as the rise in burglaries; why psychologists think more rapes happen in hot weather; how people can protect their homes from thieves during the holidays; a new course in self-defence for women.

3. Illustrations

Always try to think of ways of illustrating your crime stories. A good picture is worth a thousand words and a simple diagram can save readers struggling through lines of text of description.

4. Language in writing crime stories




There is a lot of need for care and accuracy when reporting anything to do with crime and the courts. Accuracy must extend all the way through the work, including the words you use when writing your stories, whether for news, features or current affairs.



You must select each word in your story carefully then, when you think you have finished, you must go back to the beginning and read it through, checking again.


The police, criminals and the courts use specialist terms, some of them technical in nature, some of them short forms and some of them slang. You should only ever use them for two reasons: (a) for precision if no alternative is available and (b) for added colour.

5. Legal terms

The exact wording of charges causes most problems for starting journalists. You must always use the correct terms. For example, there is a clear legal distinction between murder and manslaughter. The police, the courts and criminals also use jargon words as a short form. Jargon is specialised language concerned with a particular subject, culture or profession. It is not usually found in the everyday speech of your ordinary readers or listeners. Your readers or listeners may not understand jargon or any words which are not in clear and everyday language.
 
Many journalists believe that they add drama and life to a story by adding adjectives and adverbs. They refer to "a brutal slaying", as if another slaying can be gentle. They say that ambulances "rushed" to the scene, as if some ambulance drivers dawdle in an emergency.



Adjectives and adverbs usually get in the way of understanding, unless they add to the accuracy of defining something, such as red car. If you choose the right noun, you will not need many adjectives. For example, all screams are high-pitched, all explosions are loud, all battles are fierce, so you do not need the adjective.

TO SUMMARISE:


Write crime stories about people - the criminals, the police and the victims


Keep your writing simple and straightforward; avoid jargon


Make your reports more interesting with appropriate quotes or actuality; attribute all comments and attribute facts where necessary

NEW MEDIA LAB 9

Report on hardware components of computers with different configurations

Hardware comprises all of the physical part of the computer such as Monitor, CPU, motherboard, ram, CD-Rom, printer, scanner, hard disk, flash drive (AKA pen drive), processor, pci buses, floppy disk, power supply, VGA card, sound card, network interface card, peripherals, joystick, mouse, keyboard, foot pedal, computer fan, camera, headset and others.  




On the other hard software is a logical part of a computer and is used to carry out the instructions, storing, executing and developing other software programs. A typical PC consists of a case or chassis in the desktop or tower case and these components.



Motherboard

• CPU

• Computer Fan

• RAM

• BIOS

• Digital Circuitry

• Computer Fan

• PCI Slots







PC Buses

• PCI

• USB

• Hyper-transport

• AGP

• ISA

• EISA

• VLB





Media

• CD-Rom

• DVD-Rom

• Combo box

• Joystick

• BD-Rom drive



Internal storage

• Hard disk (ATA & SATA)

• Data array controller

• Floppy disk



Other Peripheral Devices

• Mouse

• Modems

• Digital Camera

• Sound, Video Cards

• Printer



Output Devices

• Printer

• Scanner

• Monitor

• Speakers

• Headset

• Video output devices



CPU (Central Processing Unit): CPU or central processing unit relates to a specific or processor. The performance of the computer is determined by the CPU chip (processor speed) and the other computer circuitry. Currently, the Pentium chip (processor) is the most popular even though there are other chips available in the market today such as AMD, Motorola and others. The clocks speed becomes most important factor in determining the performance of a computer. The motherboard contains the hardware circuitry and connections that allow the different hardware components of the PC to interact and communicate with each other. Most computer software is being developed for the latest processors so it would be difficult to use the older systems.



Hard Disk Drives – Disk drive is the mechanism to run the disks. All disks need a drive to get the information, read it and put it back to the disks. Hard disk is used to store the data permanently. Often the terms disk and drive used to describe the same thing but it should be clear that a disk is a storage device.



Modem – A modem is used for the modulation and demodulation of the data that is transferred through the modem and the telephone lines. Modem translates the data from digital to analog from analog to digital. Because on the telephone lines data can travel in the form of the analog signals and in the computer data transmits in the form of digital signals. Modems are measured by the speed which is called baud rate. The typical baud rate is 56Kb.



Keyboard – The keyboard is used to type something or input information to the computer. There are different designs and models of the keyboards in the market. The most common layout of the keyboard is QWERTY layout. A standard keyboard has 101 keys and embedded keys.



Video cards-Video cards allow computer to display video, graphics and animation. Some video cards allow computers to display television. A video card with a digital video camera allows users to produce live video. A high speed broadband internet connection is required to watch the videos on net.



Network cards: Network interface cards allow PCs to connect with each other and communicate. Every network computer is required to have a NIC card. NIC cards are required both in wired and wireless networking.



Cables: There are two broad types of cables internal cables, which are embedded on the mother board circuit that performs the communication between the devices and CPU. The other types of the cables are the network cables like coaxial cable, CAT 5, Ethernet cables. These cables are used for the communication purposes between the devices or computers.



Memory – Memory is the one of the important piece of the hardware. Sometimes memory chip memory is confused with the hard disk memory. Sometimes unallocated space of the hard disk is used as virtual memory also known as page file. This type of memory is a temporary memory and is used actual memory is less and requires some additional memory to perform a specific task.



RAM (Random Access Memory) RAM is a memory that is being used by the computer to store the information temporarily. For example when some work is performed on some applications that work is temporarily stored in the RAM. More RAM in the computer more faster computer works. Today at least requirement of a modern PC is 64 RAM. RAM is in the form of a chip and different vendors have developed the RAM of different capacities.



Mouse – Every modern computer requires a mouse for faster operations. Generally a mouse has two buttons left and right to perform different functions. One type of the mouse has a round ball under the bottom. Another type of the mouse use optical system to track the movement of the mouse.



Monitors – The monitor is used to display the information on the screen. All the activities of a computer, functions and tasks are seen on the computer screen and this is called outputting information. Monitors come in many sizes and shapes, monochrome or full colors. Today most computers use LCD screens. It is light weight and consumes less power as compared to the monitors.



Printers – The printer takes the information from the PC and transfers it to the paper of different sizes, which are placed in the printer device. There are three basic types of a printer such as dot matrix, inkjet and laser.



Scanners- Scanners allow you to transfer pictures and photographs to your computer. A scanner is used to scan the images and pictures. You can then send the image to someone, modify it or take a print out of it. With optical character recognition software you can convert printed documents into the text that you can use in the word processor.

Digital camera- You can take the digital photographs with the digital cameras. The images are stored on the memory chip of the digital cameras and you can transfer them to your computer with the USB drive.

Configurations

A recommended configuration

To meet the minimum requirements of commonly used software and to use the Internet effectively, a computer should meet the following minimum specifications. A recommended configuration  is:



Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Recommended)

Processor: 1 GHz 32 bit, 2 GHz or better duo core 64 bit recommended

Operating system: Windows Vista/Windows 7 Premium or Business

Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 250 GB or more recommended with at least 25 GB available space

Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended

For networking: TCP/IP. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). For modem connections, dial-up adapter installed. (Modem connections are not recommended due to very slow connection speed.)

Support for DirectX 9 Graphics adaptor or better, with WDDM Driver, 256MG of graphics memory or better (non-shared), Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, and 32 bits per pixel capabilities

CD/DVD Read/Write drive, dual layer recommended

Audio Output

Windows XP (Minimum)

Processor: Pentium class or comparable, 1GHz minimum ; 3 GHz or better recommended

Operating system: Windows XP minimum

Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 250 GB or more recommended

Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended


For networking: TCP/IP. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). For modem connections, dial-up adapter installed. (Modem connections are not recommended due to very slow connection speed.)


Vista or Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor


To check your computer to see if it can run vista you can download a program from Microsoft called the Vista Upgrade Advisor or Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It can check your computers hardware and software and advise you on what components will not run under Vista.


Macintosh computer


Processor: G4 minimum; Intel Core(duo) 2 Ghz or better or better recommended


Operating system: Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) minimum, Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6) recommended


Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 200 GB or more recommended


Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended


For networking Open Transport (TCP/IP control panel. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). Modem access not recommended.


Case – Case or casing covers the whole computer’s circuitry. There are two types of casings desktop and tower casing. There is room inside the casing to add or remove components. Cases come in many sizes like desktop, mini, midi and tower. There are some additional empty slots inside the cases such as IDE, USB, ASI, PCI and firewire slots.



Cards – Cards are the hardware components that are added to the computer to increase their functionalities and capabilities.



Sound cards produce the sound like music and voice. The older cars were 8, 16 and then 32 bits.

Color cards allow computers to produce colors. Initially there were 2, 4 and then 16 bits. The main types of the graphic cards are EGA, VGA and SGA. The 32 cards are the standard to display almost billions of the colors on the monitor.

NEW MEDIA LAB 10

2. Create an e - page

An e page is simply any electronic page. You may take a print out of one of the pages of your blog and submit.

NEW MEDIA LAB 11

1. Select 5 news stories and explain the news values

News values determine how much importance a news story is given by the media, and the attention it is given by the audience.

There are several news values:

Impact: If the news has an impact on people directly. For e.g. budget news, increase in fuel prices.
Timeliness: information has timeliness if it happened recently.
Prominence: information has prominence if it involves a well-known person or organization.
Proximity: information has proximity if it involves something happened somewhere nearby.
Conflict: information has conflict if it involves some kind of disagreement between two or more people.
Weirdness: information has weirdness if it involves something unusual or strange.

What you need to do:

Select five news items, paste them on a white paper leaving at least 5 lines below each cut out. Underline the word (s) that you feel meet the news value criteria. Write down the word, and the news value that it represents.