Pirated Entertainment

What are the advantages of paying a supplier such as Apple for a legal music download?
- The quality is usually better than music downloaded from an illegal source
- The artist will recieve money for their work
- Ensured that viruses etc will not be downloaded along with the song

What are the disadvantages of purchasing a pirate DVD from a market song?
- Lesser quality
- Illegal

What are the disadvantages of getting a pirate download of the latest Hollywood blockbuster before its UK release?
- Already seen it by the time everyone else goes to see it - the novelty and excitement of the film will have worn off for you
 - Illegal
- Lesser quality - impression of the film different

What are the disadvantages to you of visiting an illicit download site?
- Viruses

Does widespread illicit downloading discourage the funding of new talent?
- Yes, artist Lily Allen was reported to have said that she would not produce any more records due to the fact that too many people illegally download music;
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/lily-allen-quits-music-after-abuse-over-filesharing-fight-20090925-g5ie.html
- Less money is generated for new artists to further themselves properly e.g. create records etc.
- Illegal downloads of music don't allow the song downloaded to be counted within the charts - this reduces a lot of publicity for up-coming artists.

Access to orginal entertainment

"It has never been easier to publish orginal entertainment"
With the expanding world of technology and internet, many sites have been created such as "YouTube", "Dailymotion" etc. (See links) These websites make it increbily easy for users to post new entertainment on the world wide web. Also, social networking sites such as "Facebook" and "MySpace" allow users to also upload videos, pictures and other media clips on them too - this gives an even wider range of users able to publish entertainment online.

"It has never been harder to see and hear original entertainment"
As it is so easy to access sites that allow users to publish their media, it becomes harder to actually view original entertainment. Repeats of and slight alterations to entertainment is made and therefore, posts stop being orginal. Also, where the access to internet has rapidly increase - more and more have been viewed.

E-mail and when you use it

I use emails in order to send and receive messages from family and friends. I also use emails so that I can transfer work from one computer to another - I attach documents, pictures etc to the email and send it to my own email address and then open it on the computer I wish to save it to. I access my email via an online email client called “hotmail”. There are many benefits of using email. It is a quick and easy method in order to send important information to contacts - also, it makes having discussions with several people much easier as we can all reply to emails and forward it to contacts that need to be involved etc. Also, emails allow the user to attach files etc, which is useful for transporting data and data sharing. However, email delivery is not always guaranteed and can often end up being marked as “spam” and automatically put into a junk folder. This can result in important emails not getting to the contact needed. Email often makes people more productive as they can get more done in a shorter amount of time. However, email can be a huge distraction from important work.

Digital Communications vs Voice Communications

Communicating via digital methods such as SMS, e-mail, instant messaging, etc can have many social downsides. When using these methods, it can be difficult for the receiver of the message to interpret what is being said as facial expressions and tones of voice cannot be seen or heard. This also means that there is a constant lack of emotion and any enthusiasm about a particular subject is withdrawn. In particular, SMS messaging has a very negative effect if using it for social purposes like business - the number of characters are often limited on text messages and therefore people often use shortened versions of words which can be deemed as unprofessional. Emails have an advantage here as they can be properly worded and can also add many contacts/email addresses to the email and add attachments too. This is can also be better than voice communication too - e.g. in a meeting, you would have to print out the correct amount of documents and distribute them. Also, points can be made easily and clearly via email whereas meetings etc take place for a certain amount of time and can often mean some ideas don’t get put forward.

Analysing the "Good Old Days"

SPREADSHEET
Advantages
- Can calculate income/expenditure/stock
- Can easily order information
- Spreadsheets are easier to use than Databases- requires less training, etc
DATABASE
Advantanges
- Easily record, maintain and display customer information
- Link information to other information
- Databases can produce reports based on certain values

The need for typists would dramatically increase in the business and the need for secretaries would dramatically decrease. The information would no longer need to be sorted etc by secretaries, however, more data is needed to be inputted into computers etc. Also, new positions would be opened. They would require a technical support assisantant in order to solve any issues that occur with the programs etc. They would also require someone to design the spreadsheets and database in the first place.

Investigating downloading goods and services

Music is a good that is in great demand to download – it is the only good that I download from the internet. Downloading has many advantages to physically purchasing goods;
• Firstly, downloading music from the internet means that you can choose one specific song – you don’t have to purchase the whole album – you cannot do this in shops.
• Also, the music can be sampled first – you can listen to sections of songs in order to see if you like the CD before purchasing.
• Downloading can be done at any time, making it more accessible than music stores which have certain opening hours.
• Users do not have to travel in order to buy – this saves them time and ultimately more money as they do not have to pay for a means of travelling to the store.
• Music can be retrieved almost instantly – the user only has to wait the downloading time, which is often much faster than travelling to a store, purchasing the CD and returning home.
• Also, downloading music makes importing onto different mediums such as Ipods and MP3 players easier as the music is just downloaded and saved to the computer – CDs have to be uploaded onto the computer, and then transferred to the device.
However, there are also many disadvantages;
• Songs can be lost if you do not back them up on a memory stick, CD etc – if the computer malfunctions, gets a virus or needs rebuilding, this will require songs to be backed up or they will be lost.
• If the music is downloaded from a non-safe source, the user can receive viruses that can greatly affect the computer. Furthermore, the quality of music from such places is usually worse than CD quality.
• Furthermore, extra items received when purchasing CDs are not given – lyrics and pictures in the album booklet, etc.
• Also, if the user buys every song on the album, this might end up saving them little or no money at all.
• Downloading can also be time-consuming – if you have a poor or slow internet connection, it can take several attempts or a lot of time in order to download the required song.

Tool Man

A PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) will benefit John in several ways – he can use this in order to store documents such as customer receipts and receipts from stock purchases. Also, a calendar could be used in order to plan sales and other meetings. Furthermore, the PDA could double-up as a mobile phone if the right one was purchased – this would allow John to make important phone calls and keep contacts with names, numbers and addresses of clients. He would also be able to connect to the internet using a PDA and he could therefore search for products, send emails etc. Calculations would also be easy to make as they could be done using the PDA. This would mean that John would no longer need; the address book, a diary, small coins for phones, bulky sales catalogue(s), or a calculator.


Using GPS could benefit him also, as he could plot routes to clients, speed cameras etc can be located and also, it can calculate the quickest route which would help him in being punctual and would also result in John no longer requiring the large road atlas.

A laptop with certain software and internet installed would also benefit John greatly in improving his working style with the use of I.T. John could install specialised software along with basic software packages such as Microsoft office in order to further his business – he could create and maintain databases that contain customer data, spreadsheets to calculate expenses, use mail merge to create bulk letters etc. This would be of use to John as these can be created once and added to or altered – this means that he would not need to spend an entire day in the office, as all administration and sales would have been carried out more effectively by him after a sale. Furthermore, John can display items etc to customers which means that he no longer needs to carry around the hefty sales book with him every time.

Although all of these factors improve his work life greatly, there are some disadvantages. Using purely IT to store customer details may prove to be ineffective as a computer malfunction could occur and the customers could be lost. Therefore, back-up of information would have to be implemented every night in order to ensure the safety of details – if the data is lost, he could get fined because of the Data Protection Act. Also, John may become to dependent on the internet and use of I.T – if the battery on his phone/PDA or laptop runs out, he could not go to the client without first retrieving his old means of contacting – A-Zs, road atlas etc. This would therefore take more time and effort than taking the existing means with him in the first place. Furthermore, GPS systems can often mistake other areas as roads – for example, pedestrian walkways etc. This could cause some issues when John is travelling to clients and could result in making him later rather than earlier. Although all of these are issues, with the right precautions, John could easily overcome many issues relating to the use of I.T.