The copyright, design and Patents Act were introduced in 1989. It says it is illegal for the users to copy the files without the permission from the owner or the holder of the copyright.
The law is likely to be broken when:
- The user uses the software without a suitable license. For example, you cannot install the software on several computers without the suitable license.
- The user does not say where he or she gets the information (text or images) from after downloading them. It would also be illegal if the user does not receive the permission from the copyright owner after downloading the information.
- If the user did not have the permission from the copyright owner, he or she cannot copy the program from work and install it in his or her own computer at home.
If I copy anyone’s work improperly or give out private information, I will break the law. Because it is not my own work anyway, and moreover I do it without permission of the owner – it would be extremely immoral.
There are some problems which might be occurred when you use a computer. However none of them is caused from the poor design of the equipment or the wrong way of using a computer. Though the risk of them may be small, the effects could be very serious.
- Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is a general term for aches, pains and muscles or tendon damage resulting from overuse of a keyboard or mouse. Some people call it upper limb disorder (ULD).
- Spending too long in front of a VDU can cause eye strain and headaches. The glare from the screen and poor quality images on some old monitors can make it hard for the eyes to focus properly.
- This is more of a long term health problem - sitting all day in front of a computer rather than walking around. People may feel stressful easily when they do their work like this. This may also cause wrist problems and back and neck problems easily.
- Computer systems include many electrical devices and a lot of external wiring to connect the different components of the system together. Poorly maintained hardware or wiring could result in an electric shock or fire.
However those risks could be reduced in a appropriate way.
- Take regular breaks from computer work. Looking away from the screen, walking around and exercising your fingers and hands can also help to reduce the health risks.
- Use the correct equipment. You should have :
a) A proper computer chair with backrest.
b) An ergonomically designed keyboard that makes it easier to touch-type without straining fingers.
c) Good background lighting.
d) A screen filters to reduce VDU glare.
3) Arrange the equipment properly. Adjust the chair and VDU to find the most comfortable position to work.
4) New electrical equipment must comply with legal requirements to ensure that it is safe to use. Installed electrical equipment and wiring must be regularly tested to ensure that it remains safe. Records of these tests must be kept. Employers must be trained in the safe of electrical equipment.
It would be very annoying if your computer catches viruses. Here are some ways that can reduce the risk of catching viruses:
- You can only use the floppy disc or the CD-ROMs which you are sure that there would not be any viruses on it. For example, you can choose the ones from the famous companies.
- Do not put you floppy disc into other computers’ disc drive. If the computer have caught viruses, your computer would catch them too as you put the disc back into your computer.
- You should be careful with the things that you download from the internet. Viruses often hide themselves in those things – the more attractive the appearance the file is, the most dangerous it is.
- You could install a virus checking program on your computer.
- You could also install a special virus checking program on your computer. A virus checker will examine any files that you use. If a file has a virus then the program will delete it and may be able to remove ie. Removing the virus could damage the file that has the virus but it will stop the virus spreading.
However, new viruses are produced all of the time so you must keep virus checker program up to date with details of all the latest viruses. Regularly backing up important data will ensure that it can be recovered if it is attacked by a virus.
Before creating the poster, I used ‘google advance search’ to find different kinds of poster on the internet. This is much quicker than searching information from the books. Because there would be a lot of images stored in different webs shown on the screen after I enter the information about what I would like to search-it just took me less than one minute to do this. However, if I did this work in the library, I would spend a lot of time on finding a suitable book and choosing pictures from them. Therefore, use IT would be much easier.
When I created the poster, I needed to combine two or three pictures together by using special tools in Paint Shop Pro. I could also add some other effects on the poster by using different functions of the computer. But if I created a poster by hand, such as traditional cutting and pasting, it would take quite a long time and it would also be very hard for some kind of people like me – not very good at drawing. So use the technology of computer is more likely a good idea – it can make a poster with a good quality in a short time.
The first poster that I chose is the one with a big image of Harry Potter, a flying car and the castle. The reason for choosing this picture is that I want to show the exciting bits of the film in order to make my poster seem more attractive and not look humdrum. I also like the brow of the image of Harry Potter – it seemed like there would be some great things happened towards him. For the same reason, it does affect the atmosphere. I also chose a poster of Hermione – she is holding a magical stick. I think both of her action and the brow fit the atmosphere which I had brainstormed. And she is also one of the main characters of the film – to put all the images of the main characters on the poster which I am going to create is one of my aim. Therefore, I should find the image of another main character-Ron so that I can carry out the aim. I have found a poster which contains the images of all the main characters – Harry, Hermione and Ron. The brow of Ron on this poster is very suitable for my poster and the image of this poster is easy to be processed. So I decided to use those three images for creating my poster.
However I did find some other images but I am no t going to use them in my poster. Like the one that contains all of the main characters and the image of Harry is really big – neither of the brows of them fit my poster (the atmosphere of my poster). I also found a poster which only contains a image of Ron. The brow of him on this poster is ok but this image is not seemed as easy to be processed as the other one – though it could be processed, the result might not be good. There is a poster which contains the image of Hermione – the brow and the action of her is quite nice but I am not going to use it, because the style of her hair – it is not easy to be processed and it took a lot of space that might not be suitable for the arrangement of my poster. In other words, it would affect the result of the poster. Look another poster of the flying car and the castle, this does show the exciting bits of the film but the images of characters does not look very obvious and the image of the flying car is too big. It seems there would be too crowded if I add some more images on it. Actually I did think about to add of the characters on my poster, however I changed my mind after I saw a poster which is quite similar to my idea – it looks messy.
I also found some text and numerical information. For example, the text information includes the name of the director, the name of the author (the film was directed on the base of the novel, so it would be necessary to add the name of the author) and the name of the main actors and the actress. Actually I did find some other text information about the film, such as: the original music, production design, art apartment, etc. However I am afraid that I cannot add them all on my poster or that would be crowded. If I make the font size smaller, the words would not be seen clearly. So I just chose some of them.
I decided to add the images of Ron and Hermione onto the poster that I had chosen at first. And I would make some change and effects to the surrounding. Then put the text and the numerical information that I had chosen on the proper space of my poster, with different style and colors of letters.
