Computers are an Essential Item to have in the Household Today :: Essays Papers

Computers are an Essential Item to have in the Household Today In the year 1977 computers went on sale for the national public. Today in the year 2004 computers with connection to the internet are an essential item to have in the household. Accountants and typists are no longer the only ones buying computers. Age does not matter. Everyone needs a computer in the household. Computers help all kinds of people. Meeting different people’s needs, therefore computers are a useful tool for all age groups. Children, teenagers, adults, and senior citizens all can use the same computer, but they all use the computer for a different purpose. Computers have always been useful, but not until recently have computers become useful for children who are twelve and under. Of course these children enjoy playing games and talking to there friends on the computer but due to new innovations coming out everyday children can now do a lot more then just play and socialize. Computers have brought school to the home. When children come home from school it used to mean school was over but today if you have access to the internet school is know longer over but just beginning on the internet. The internet has special educational sites that children can visit and learn from. Besides that children actually can have contact with there personal teacher from school. A new invention called the â€Å"Mobile Author can be used by human instructors either from a computer or a mobile phone to create their own Intelligent Tutoring Systems and to distribute them to their students. Students can also use any computer or mobile phone to have access to theory and tests.† (Source 2, Journal) Homework, notes, review assignments can now be given over the internet by the child’s teacher from there school. â€Å"Instructors can monitor their students; progress and communicate with their students during the course.† (Source 2, Journal) Children can learn new information on the internet and they are able to review and get extra help on things they don’t understand. If a child realizes that they do not understand something when they get home, they know longer have to wait to go in to school for extra help, but they now can communicate with there teacher online or they can go to an internet tutoring system which will give them just as much help as being in a regular classroom.

Fashion and Semiotics Essay -- Sociology Semiology Symbolism

Ever since their invention many centuries ago, clothes have been used as a way of communicating. The message communicated relies on a number of factors including the social background of both the communicator and the receiver, and the context in which the message is communicated. Although at times the exact message or symbolism one is trying to portray may not be clear, it is evident that clothing has long been embraced as one of the best ways to project one’s desired personal image to those around them. For many centuries clothing was used namely as a form of symbolising one’s ascribed class and social honour. A good example of this was evident in Feudal European times when sumptuary laws were created in order to regulate and specify the clothing that could be worn by certain classes. In 1463 Edward IV went so far as to ‘[declare] that purple silk was to be the prerogative of the aristocracy’ (Finkelstein 1991, pg. 137). As purple dye and silk were both very expensive and sought after this declaration demonstrated quite simply that those who were in possession of such materials should command respect and were of high social standing. Eventually these laws were abolished as, instead of ‘confining people to their designated rank, the laws provoked an intense interest in fashion and a desire to transgress the codes, both in the process of prestigious emulation and as an act of rebellion’ (Craik, 1994, pg. 205). This abolition allowed groups and individu als to establish their own chosen style or ‘marker’ in order to indicate their place within society. By allowing such freedom, ascribed social status gave way to that which was achieved. This not only meant that many more people were able to engage in the ever-expanding culture of ‘Haute couture’ but also that honour was no longer perceived as a birth right but rather as something that could to be obtained. Such a shift in symbolism provided a way for those of not so noble a birth to portray themselves as the latter through a variety of means such as renting or stealing clothes and buying counterfeit copies (a common occurrence in today’s society also). In the late 18th century the Industrial Revolution occurred causing a huge shift in the ways in which clothing was produced and subsequently altering the ways in which clothing was perceived. For decades preceding industrialisation men and women of high so... ...o contextual influences and past experiences. Therefore it is almost impossible to pre-empt the ways in which others will perceive you. Over time ideas will change and therefore alter the ways in which we look back on past clothing choices. Whilst symbolism in fashion may no longer be subject to laws as it was in the 14th century or defined by strict social rules in the 17th century, the clothes we wear are still today subject to imposed social ideals. Apart from distinguishing one status group from another, a style of dress may also aid group cohesiveness, provide the individual with an identity and a feeling of belonging, and communicate the wearer’s attitudes and interests. The ways in which we interpret others and present ourselves for interpretation is the only true way that we can be individual. Symbolism in clothing may not seem as obvious or important nowadays as it was in times of extreme social bigotry, but it is still highly prevalent and has remained one of the most effective ways to project our desired image to those around us. ‘The state of a person’s clothes is synonymous with self respect and is a sign of responsibility’ (www. Pemberley.com/janeinfo/vebleis7.html)

Lorraine Hansberry Essay -- essays research papers

Her first play, A Raisin In the Sun, is based on her childhood experiences of desegregating a white neighborhood. It won the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award as Best Play of the Year. She was the youngest American, the fifth woman and the first black to win the award. Her success opened the floodgates for a generation of modern black actors and writers who were influenced and encouraged by her writing. Hansberry was born in 1930, the youngest of four children of Carl and Nannie Hansberry, a respected and successful black family in Chicago, Illinois. Nannie was the college educated daughter of an African Methodist Episcopal minister, and Carl was a successful real estate businessman, an inventor and a politician who ran for congress in 1940. Both parents were activists challenging discriminating Jim Crow Laws. Because of their stature in the black community such important black leaders as Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Langston Hughes frequented the Hansberry home as Lorraine was growing up. Although they could afford good private schools, Lorraine was educated in the segregated public schools as her family worked within the system to change the laws governing segregation. After high school Hansberry briefly attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison before moving to New York for "an education of another kind." She married Robert Nemiroff, a white Jewish intellectual who she met on a picket line protesting the exclusion of black athletes from universi...

An Idiot’s Guide to an Easier College Experience Essay

When people are in high school the only class in which they have to do any significant amount of writing is their English class. Subsequently, the only type of paper that most people are well versed in writing when they get to college is a paper for an English class. This would be fine except for the fact that when one gets to college they are asked to write for a variety of different classes. These could range from your standard English class to a proof for a Math class to a scientific lab report for a Biology class. All of the writings for these different classes require different formats, styles, and languages. If writers do not know these different styles and languages then they will have a much more difficult time being successful in their college career. Knowing these different styles and languages will help the writer to develop a sense of their own rhetorical awareness. If they have a sense of this awareness then they will be better equipped to write to their intended audienc e or discourse community. It is significant for student writers to be aware of and understand both what rhetorical awareness is and what a discourse community is because it will make their college experience easier and help them to attain better grades on papers for classes other than English. The first thing that student writers needs to be able to do in order for them to write for a discipline that they are not entirely familiar with, is to have at least a cursory knowledge of what a discourse community is, and what discourse community that they are writing for. In the hand out â€Å"Discourse Community Map† by Sylvia Morales, English Professor at Sacramento State University, a Discourse Community is defined as â€Å"a group of people who share a particular way of communicating and/or using language that follows certain rules and patterns† (1). In laymen’s terms if two people are part of the same discourse community then they will most likely think relatively alike. They may share many of the same beliefs. They may have similar values. Also they will most assuredly be interested in many of the same things. In academia a discourse community would most often exist among people that belong to different academic  disciplines. So it stands to reason that student writers needs to be able to communicate or write using the same type of language as the discourse community that they are trying to write for. For this reason it is extremely important for student writers to be able to know what a discourse community is and how it differs from the other discourse communities that it might interact with. Being able to identify a discourse community can sometimes be a daunting task. It is not always completely clear-cut. Very often it can be difficult to identify a discourse community because it may be quite similar to other discourse community. There can be small differences that make a big impact on the discourse community. In the article â€Å"Discourse C ommunities† by Gary D. Schmidt and William J. Vande Kopple it says, â€Å"sometimes people from different discourse communities focus on different aspects of the same object or general phenomenon† (1). The two groups are similar in that they are focused on the same object but it is the slight differences on how they focus on the object that makes them part of a different discourse community. One of the easiest ways that a student a writer might help themselves correctly identify a discourse community would be to first ask how do certain discourse communities communicate with each other. Are they only interested in cold hard facts, or do they appreciate discussions about their opinions. Next the writer should ask himself or herself what is the main purpose of the different groups in question. Also it will be helpful to student writers to figure out what claims are these certain groups of people making. Identifying these claims will go a long way in helping the writer determine what are the core values of the different groups. Once a student write has identified what discourse community they are dealing with, then they can begin to decide exactly what would be the best way for them to go about communicating to members of this discourse community. This would lead the writer to the next significant aspect of writing that they need to be aware of in order to have an easier time in college and achieve better scores on their various college writing assignments. Once the writer has correctly identified the discourse community that they are writing for then they need to know the best way to effectively communicate their ideas to the members of this community. This would be where rhetorical awareness comes into play. In their article â€Å"Rhetoric† Gary Schmidt and William J. Vande Kopple define rhetoric as â€Å"the  art of using language to have desired effects on people† (1). For the purpose of their article they were focusing on the written word. They simplify it by saying that it is â€Å"es sentially a matter of choice at all stages of the writing process—from the time when writers decide how to organize an essay to the time when they select individual words† (Schmidt et al. 1). So rhetorical awareness is knowing how to use certain words to get a desired effect, and knowing exactly what effect that the writer is going to solicit from the reader. This is a skill that needs to be developed. It is not something that can be learned overnight. However, it is a skill that if mastered can help student writers have a much easier time in college and earn much better grades on the papers that they write. Different kinds of rhetorical awareness strategies need to be learned and implemented for all of the various types of writing that student writers have to be competent in. For instance, if a student writer were dealing with a scientific discourse community then they would most likely want to choose language and a tone that was more scientific. This would include a fair amount of technical terms and scientific jargon. They would want to discuss only the things that can be proved through research and experimentation. They might choose to insert charts or graphs to illus trate their points. Also they would most likely want to keep their writing succinct. For example, in the article Effects of Unsaturated Free Fatty Acids on Adhesion and on Gene Expression of Extra cellular Matrix Macromolecules in Human Osteoblast-like Cell Cultures by Estella Musacchio, Giovanna Priante, Alessandro Budakovic, and Bruno Baggio, the writers use most if not all of the rhetorical choices that a reader should expect to find in a piece of writing that is extremely scientific in nature. The tone of this writing is extremely scientific, and there is a large amount of jargon. They write things such as â€Å"semi quantitative comparative kinetic RT-PCR with COLI, FN, and TGF-B specific primers was performed using G3PDH as a housekeeping gene† (Musacchio et. al 35). Now most people would not have any clue what this means, but a member of a scientific discourse community would, and they would appreciate this as a well-written sentence. This article also has multiple graphs and charts that help to illustrate the points that the writing is making. A good d eal of this writing has to do with the experiments that the writer did. This is important for people pf the scientific discourse community because it lets  them know that the research was sound and it could be repeated. Also the writing in this article is succinct and to the point. Lastly, it is organized in such a way that it is easy for the reader to know what each section is pertaining to. If a student writer were producing a piece of work for a member of a scientific discourse community and they choose to implement these types of rhetorical strategies, as long as their research was sound, it should go along way in helping to insure that they received a good score on the paper. In contrast, if a student writer were producing a piece of persuasive writing then they would want to take a much different approach. They would want to use more colorful language. They would want to use words that grab the reader’s attention. They might choose to use anecdotes or first hand accounts from people that would help to illustrate the point that the writer i s trying to make. For example, in the article Invalid Corps by COL R. Gregory Lande, MC USA Retired uses many of the rhetorical choices that you often find in a well-written piece of persuasive writing. In the article the writer grabs his readers attention right from the very beginning by quoting a famous Roman statesman and philosopher. The quote that he uses is â€Å"no man can be brave ho thinks pain is the greatest evil† (Lande 525). He also uses a first hand account form a solider that shows how useful members of the Invalid Corp could be. The solider wrote in his journal about how several regiments of the Invalid Corp help to repel a desperate attack on Washington D. C. by the Confederate Army (Lande 527). If a student writer were to use the same types of rhetorical strategies then it should help them to receive a better grade on any pieces of persuasive writing that they might have to produce for any of the their college courses. Student writers should not expect that just because they become adept at being able to identify and communicate with different discourse communities that college will be a breeze. Also they should not expect that just because they might be able to perfect the art of rhetorical awareness that they will pass every class. They should not expect this because doing well in college is about more than this. In fact, in the book Academic Writing: Genres, Samples, and Resources by Mary Kay Mulvaney and David A. Jolliffe the authors talk about how some of the biggest challenges that in coming  college students have to face are learning how to budget their time and how do find an effective way to deal with stress ( ). College is one of the most fun and exciting times in a young persons life. However college can also be one of the most challenging and stressful times in a young person life. The top things that most college students stress about are the papers that they have to write and the grades that they receive. What incoming college students writers need to realize is that there are steps that they can take form the very beginning of their college careers that will go a long way in helping them to get through college with a significantly lower amount of stress and anxiety. If incoming student writers learn to identify what discourse communities they are writing for, and if they are able to learn how to make wise rhetorical choice then they will receive better grades on their writing assignments. If they receive higher grades on their writing assignments then it stands to reason that they will receive high grades in their classes overall. If they receive higher grades in their class then their college career will go by a lot more easily. Works Cited Jolliffe, David A., and Mary K. Mulvaney. Academic Writing : Genres, Samples, and Resources. New York: Longman Group, 2004. Lande, Gregory. â€Å"Invalid Corps.† Military Medicine 173 (2008): 525-28. Morales, Sylvia E. Discourse Community Map. Musacchio, Estella, Giovanna Priante, Alessandro Budakovic, and Bruno Baggio. â€Å"Effects of Unsaturated Free Fatty Acids on Adhesion and on Gene Expression of Extracellular Matrix Macromolecules in Human Osteoblast-like Cell Cultures.† Informa Health 2007: 34-38. Schmidt, Gary D., and William J. Vande Kopple. Communities of Discourse: The Rhetoric of Disciplines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993. 1. Schmidt, Gary D., and William J. Vande Kopple. Communities of Discourse: The Rhetoric of Disciplines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993. 1.

Crane Hand Signals Speech Outline

Speaking Outline Topic:Crane hand signals for directing crane movement and common rigging procedures used with cranes on construction sites. Specific Purpose:To inform my audience of the need for crane hand signals and rigging procedures in order to safely operate a crane. Thesis:Everyone on site around the crane should know proper hand signals and rigging procedures to maintain a safe construction site. Introduction: 1. Cranes dangerous, Kent County Jail 2. Save a life? 3. OSHA Training [ (America, 1992) ]Transition: Who needs to communicate with a crane operator? And how do they do it? Body: 1. Rigger, Hand Signals Transition: What are the hand signals? Are they complicated? 2. Show rigger bring ball to load [ (SS Crane & Rigging, 2012) ]. Transition:How does he attach the load? 3. Show cinch and types of cinches. [ (America, 1992) ]. 4. Adjust cinch and show spreader bar [ (America, 1992) ] 5. Direct crane to operator [ (SS Crane & Rigging, 2012) ] 6. Place the load and direct bac k to rigger [ (BrassMeIn. com, 2012) ]Transition: These are the most common signals used; there is no way I could show you every signal there is. Conclusion: 1. Everyone on site around the crane should know these proper hand signals and rigging procedures to maintain a safe construction site. 2. The rigger should safely direct the operator to his load and then cinch it up. 3. A load should always be tested at a very low height before being transported. 4. The rigger then directs the operator to the laborer. 5. After the load is securely in place, the laborer directs the operator back to the rigger, and starts the process all over again. . Questions? Works Cited America, T. A. (Director). (1992). Controlling The Load: Crane Rigging Safety [Motion Picture]. BrassMeIn. com. (2012). Standard Hand Signals for Crane Operation. Retrieved October 10, 2012, from BrassMeIn. com: http://brassmein. com/tech/signals/hand. htm SS Crane & Rigging. (2012). Crane Hand Signals – Directing Cran e Movement. Retrieved October 10, 2012, from SS Crane & Rigging: http://www. sscrane. com/crane-hand-signals-directing-crane-movements/

Thought and Hi Rachel

Rachel: Good evening Tom. It's nice to meet you. Please call me Rachel. Tom: Hi Rachel†¦ It is good to meet you too. Rachel: To start off why don't you tell me a little bit about why you think you are here today and what has been going on for you in your life. Tom: I think I am here because my friend thinks I am a drunk. Maybe I am, but I have a good reason. Rachel: What is your reason? Tom: Because my wife left me. We were married for 25 years, and she cheated. Rachel: I am very sorry to hear that Tom. I can understand how that would be hard to deal with. Tom: it is horrible!When I am up, I am thinking of her, thinking of her with someone else, and then drinking to make it go away. I am alone! Rachel: So would you say your drinking has increased since this relationship ended? Tom: ummm†¦. I guess it has†¦ probably more than a little. I mean the guys and I always had a few on sunday for football, you know. But sometimes I drink and I don't know why? Rachel: Would you s ay your alcohol use has affected your job at all, or other family or social commitments? Tom: Well I know I am sick and tired of being hungover in the morning and operating the crane.My family was my wife†¦. we ran from family and our love was all we had. It made us strong†¦ but not strong enough apparently. Rachel: Well we definately need to find you some better ways to cope with this. How would you describe your mood and how you have been feeling since this has happened? Tom: My mood has been getting worse. It's like the worst has happened but I have this nagging feeling that something unbelievably horrible will follow it. My body also has these pains and aches and I have no idea where they came from†¦Rachel: Well it is definately normal to feel this way after such a stressful occurence in your life. Although it is hard to remain postive, it is important. Do you have any other support in your life besides your wife? Anyone that you could talk to? Tom: Well Jim. He i s the one who said I needed to see a counsellor. He said I looked dissheveled. I trust him but I feeling like I am letting him down. Rachel: Well that is good that you took Jim's advice to come in and talk to someone. It can be very difficult to deal with something like this on your own.It is good to have social support in your life and someone who can be honest with you. Do you see yourself getting into a new relationship in the future? Tom: I can see that maybe I can move on but I am hurting. I have been too drunk to grieve! Rachel: Why do you think your wife cheated on you? Do you blame this on yourself? Tom: I never could give her brains and a body. I didn't have brains and my body is getting too old. She took off to the carribean with this lawyer. I wasn't good enough. Rachel: Im sure there are plenty of great things about yourself. This is not something you should blame on yourself.I think once you put yourself out there you will see that many people will find you attractive i nside and out. Challenging your negative thoughts in ways such as this is the first step to feeling better. You will prove your own negative thoughts wrong and will begin to build a new more positive self-concept. I know right now it may be too early to start dating but you should focus on other things you are good at or that you once enjoyed. Rachel: I wanted to ask you a little about your family history. Is there anyone in your family that has suffered from depression or alcohol abuse? Tom: My father drank alot.He was an angry drunk. His mother was sad alot of the time. She killed herself when my dad was 11 Rachel: Im sorry to hear about that Tom. I want to make sure you know that it is normal to feel the way you do right now. I would however suggest talking to your family doctor about taking an antidepressant to help you get back on your feet. It is not something you have to take forever but it can really help to get your life back in perspective. Unfortunately we are out of time for today but I would really like to continue talking to you about this another time. Tom: ok, thank you Rachel

Cloud Computing Now and the Future Essay

The use of cloud computing creates a growing interdependence among both public and private sector entities and the individuals served by these entities. This paper provides a snapshot of the advantages of cloud computing and the risk areas specific to cloud services which clients of cloud services should be aware of. The future of cloud computing is certainly exciting, but moving more of our lives online means we will inevitably have to consider the consequences. Cloud computing means dependence on others and that could limit our privacy because of policies to access our information, security could be a big issue and large companies like Amazon and Google could monopolize the market. The cloud is a metaphor for the space on the internet that can store your data, as well as applications to manipulate data. It is not clear when the term cloud computing was first coined. For example, Bartholomew (2009), Bogatin (2006) and several others suggested that ‘cloud computing’ term inology was perhaps first coined by Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in 2006. Kaufman (2009: 61) suggests that cloud computing terminology ‘originates from the telecommunications world of the 1990s, when providers began using virtual private network (VPN) services for data communication’. There is however, agreement on the definition of cloud computing. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction (Mell 2009: 9). A computer’s operating system, data and applications are typically installed and stored in the ‘traditional’ computer environment. In a cloud computing environment, individuals and businesses work with applications and data stored and/or maintained on shared machines in a web-based environment rather than physically located in the home of a user or a corporate environment. Lew Tucker, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Computing at Sun Microsystems, explained that cloud computing is ‘the movement of application services onto the internet and the increased use of the internet to access a wide variety of services traditionally originating from within a company’s data center’ (Creeger 2009: 52). For example, web-based applications such as Google’s Gmailâ„ ¢ can be accessed in real time from an Internet-connected machine anywhere in the world. Cloud computing provides an online environment that is scalable which facilitates the ability to handle an increased volume of work without impacting on the performance of the system. The Cloud also offers significant computing capability and economy of scale that might not otherwise be affordable to businesses, especially small and medium size companies that may not have the financial and human resources to invest in IT infrastructure. Advantages include capital costs and running costs. Companies can leverage the use of large scale resources from cloud service providers and ‘add or remove capacity from their IT infrastructure to meet peak or fluctuating service demands while paying only for the actual capacity used’ (Sotomayor et. Al. 2009: 14) on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ economic model. It can also be significantly cheaper to rent added server space for a few hours at a time rather than maintain your own servers. Rental prices for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), for example, are between US$0.020 and $2.970 per hour in Oregon as an example. Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee. On-Demand Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour with no long-term commitments. As you can see in the above example the selected usage is 100 hours per month of On-Demand Instances, 10 reserved instances and 1000 GB of storage for 50 IOPS and 100 Snapshot storages. The monthly cost for this company would be $1449.41 per month. This could be much more cost affective for a company than buying the hardware and storing the information themselves. The only question is, how safe is this information that is being stored? The risk of cloud computing could be the security of the information being stored by a large company like Amazon. It is still unclear how safe out-sourced data is and when using these services ownership of data is not always clear. In a study done in 2009, a team of computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego and Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the widely-used Amazon EC2 services. They found that ‘it is possible to map the internal cloud infrastructure, identify where a particular target VM is likely to reside, and then instantiate new VMs until one is placed co-resident with the target’ (Ristenpart et al. 2009: 199). This demonstrated that the research team was able to load their eavesdropping software onto the same servers hosting targeted websites (Hardesty 2009). By identifying the target VMs, attackers can potentially monitor the cache (a small allotment of high-speed memory used to store frequently-used information) in order to steal data hosted on the same physical machine (Hardesty 2009). Such an attack is also known as side-channel attack. The findings of this research may only be a proof-of-concept at this stage, but it raises concerns about the possibility of cloud computing servers being a central point of vulnerability that can be criminally exploited. The cloud service providers establish the privacy policies to the companies that do business with them. The businesses are faced with their own privacy and confidentiality being determined by the terms of the cloud service providers. Failure to comply with data protection legislation may lead to administrative, civil and criminal sanctions. Data confidentiality and privacy ‘risks may be magnified when the cloud provider has reserved the right to change its terms at will’ (Gellman 2009: 6). Some cloud service providers argue that such juridical issues may be capable of resolution contractually via SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and the like. Clients using cloud services could include clauses in their SLAs that indicate the law governing the SLA, the choice of the competent court in case of disputes arising from the interpretation and the execution of the contract. The Cloud Security Alliance (2009: 28) also suggested that clients of cloud services should require their providers ‘to deliver a comprehensive list of the regulations and statutes that govern the site and associated services and how compliance with these items is executed’. Businesses should ensure that SLAs and other legally-binding contractual arrangements with cloud service providers comply with the applicable regulatory obligations (eg privacy laws) and industry standards, as the may be liable for breaching these regulations even when the data being breached is held or processed by the cloud service provider. Determining the law of the jurisdiction in which the SLA is held is an important issue. It may not, however, be as simple as examining the contractual laws that govern the operations of cloud service providers to determine which jurisdiction’s laws apply in any particular case. Gellman (2009: 19) pointed out that ‘[t]he user may be unaware of the existence of a second-degree provider or the actual location of the user’s data†¦[and] it may be impossible for a casual user to know in advance or with certainty which jurisdiction’s law actually applies to information entrusted to a cloud provider’. Businesses should continue to conduct due diligence on cloud service providers, have a comprehensive compliance framework and ensure that protocols are in place to continuously monitor and manage cloud service providers, offshore vendors and their associated outsourcing relationships. This would ensure businesses have a detailed understanding of the data storage information to maintain some degree of oversight and ensure that an acceptable authentication and access mechanism is in place to meet their privacy and confidentiality needs. This would also ensure a higher consumer confidence level in the entire cloud computing industry. The future looks bright for cloud computing. Last summer Google made a very large investment in bringing Google Fiber to Kansas City, broadband internet that is 100 times faster than what we currently have today. Faster internet speeds means larger files can be stored and downloaded from the cloud. Netflix says, ‘It’s the most consistently fast ISP in America.’ Analysts from BTIG Research visited Kansas City last month and were â€Å"blown away,† by the service (Jeff Saginor 2012: 1). But at it’s heart, ‘Google’s attempt at being its own ISP is much more about forcing the entrenched service providers –the Verizon’s and Time Warner’s and AT&T’s of this world – to step up their games than it is about making this particular business a raving financial success’. Saginor goes on to say, ‘When I asked the Google spokeswoman what the ultimate goal of all this was, she replied that Google wants â€Å"to make the web better and faster for all users.† The implication is that they don’t want to just do it all themselves’. Cloud computing means dependence on others and that could limit our privacy because of policies to access our information, security could be a big issue an d large companies like Amazon and Google could monopolize the market. The Cloud provides an online environment that is scalable which facilitates the ability to handle an increased volume of work without impacting on the performance of the system. The risk of the cloud could be the security of the information being stored by a large company. It is still unclear how safe out-sourced data is and when using these services ownership of data is not always clear. Businesses should continue to conduct due diligence on cloud service providers, have a comprehensive compliance framework and ensure that protocols are in place to continuously monitor and manage cloud service providers, offshore vendors and their associated outsourcing relationships. The future of cloud computing is certainly exciting, but moving more of our lives online means we will inevitably have to consider privacy, security and ownership of the information. References Amazon Web Services http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ Creeger M 2009. CTO roundtable: Cloud computing. Communications of the ACM 52(8): Bartholomew D 2009. Cloud rains opportunities for software developers. Dice 29 May. http://career-resources.dice.com/articles/content/entry/cloud_rains_opportunities_for_software Bogatin D 2006. Google CEO’s new paradigm: ‘Cloud computing and advertising go hand-inhand’ Zdnet 23 April. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/micro-markets/google-ceos-new-paradigmcloud-computing-and-advertising-go-hand-inhand/ Cloud Security Alliance 2009. Security guidance for critical areas of focus in cloud computing V2.1. http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/csaguide.pdf Gellman R 2009. Privacy in the clouds: Risks to privacy and confidentiality from cloud computing. http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/pdf/WPF_Cloud_Privacy_Report.pdf Hardesty L 2009. Secure computers aren’t so secure MIT press release 30 October. http://www.physorg.com/news176197396.html Jeff Saginor 2012. What does Google get from supercharging Kansas City’s Internet? http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion-wh-google-will-never-take-its-fiber-national/ Kaufman LM 2009. Data security in the world of cloud computing. IEEE Security & Privacy July/August: 61-64 Mell P 2009. Effectively and securely using the cloud computing paradigm. http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/cloudcomputing- Ristenpart T, Tromer E, Shacham H & Savage S 2009. Hey, you, get off my cloud: Exploring information leakage in third-party compute clouds, in proceedings of the 16th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, 07. New Your, NY: ACM Press: 199-212 Sotomayor B, Montero RS, Llorente IM & Foster I 2009. Virtual infrastructure management in private and hybrid clouds. IEEE Internet Computing 13(5): 14-22 Mark D. Bowles (2010). Introduction to Computer Literacy. Retrieved from chapter’s six and seven. (Awl, 2009, p. 52)