Health and Safety in ICT Essays

Health and Safety in ICT Essays Health and Safety in ICT Essay Health and Safety in ICT Essay If an employer does not care about the health and safety of his employees, they could be sued up to 10,000 pounds. This includes supervision of inexperienced workers. Employees are entitled to safety equipment if it is needed. Employers have to make sure their employers can work machines properly because so they wont get hurt. Employers are responsible for providing their workers with safe and suitable equipment with which to do their job, training them in how to use it, inspecting and maintaining it, and ensuring that it is used correctly through training and supervision. They also need to set up emergency procedures, provide first aid facilities, taking precaution against electrical equipment, noise, temperature and radiation. And giving safety warnings (signs) For an example if office floors were left wet or cluttered with files or cables, on which employees slipped or tripped up. They would have the right to ask for compensation from their employers. Electrical sockets must not be overloaded. It is also important not to have food or drinks near. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 states that It shall be the duty of every employee to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees. Section 3 of the Act states that It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not exposed to risks to their health or safety. If there were no laws regarding health and safety at work, the number of deaths at work places would be much higher. People can be disabled for life due to lack of safety precautions. Ergonomics means the study of equipment design to make workplace equipment more comfortable and safe for people so that they are more efficient in their work environment. Ergonomists design things carefully such as a chair so people dont get pastoral and back pain People working with computers need to think about: * Position of the computer * Placement of the keyboard and mouse * Furniture and posture * Hand in arm position and movement * Angle of the monitor * Lighting * Their vision * Cables and accessories or peripherals. If the position of the computer is too far away from you. You have to squint at the screen hence damage your eyesight. You need a good distance from the keyboard/mouse to support hands/wrists during pauses. Also so you dont strain your arm. You could get severe back pain if your chair was too upright. . You should also be able to adjust your seat height so you are comfortable with looking at the screen. If your screen isnt level with your head and you need to look up. You will get neck pain. Dim lighting strains your eyes. Looking too closely at your screen makes you vulnerable to harmful radiation. Therefore, you need to make sure you are at a reasonable distance from your computer and make sure you have a screen filter. Cables can harmful because a person could trip from cable and break a bone. An accessory such as a printer can be dangerous because you could twist a muscle while getting a printout. Workers also need to take regular breaks because you can collapse from stress. Advantages of ICT Computers have made life much more easier for us. Before computers were invented it could take more than 6 months to get a simple message to Australia. Now it only takes a couple of seconds. Computers are 99% accurate when make calculations E.g. in Microsoft Excel. It can also make you a variety of different graphs in a mille second in Excel. Doing things on a computer makes the final product look more professional than doing it by hand. Instead of writing something out again and again. You could write it out once and print it how many times you want. This saves a lot of time. When you need to change something around on paper you have to write it all out again. But on Microsoft Word you can just cut and paste. On a computer you can almost completely change an image so it looks the way you want. You can rotate it, enhance, brighten it etc. If you take a picture on a digital camera instead of taking it to a shop and paying money you can upload it on your computer. Work is easy to save and document, rather than someone keeping them in folders where they can get misplaced. You can use scanners to scan in pictures form magazine and books which is easier than taking a photograph. It is much easier to read something on the computer than something that is handwritten (bad handwriting). It is also much more easier to search for information. Disadvantages of ICT. Its is difficult to understand a computer and some software/programs so you can need training. Some graphics are to difficult to achieve if done by a computer . As they are complex. When something is done by a computer people have high expectations. Saving and backing up a file can destroy the work and sometimes the computer also if there is a problem with your hardware. Viruses can get into your system and destroy everything . People rely on computers too much and get lazy . Using a computer damages your eyes. Monitors release harmful radiation. Using a computer too much can leads to strain injury , back problems and eye pain. ICT also contributes to global warming. How to safeguard your work Storage and Backup. It is important that when you are naming a file or a folder that you use an appropriate name. Because if you forget where it is, you can search for it by clicking start and then clicking on search (window xp). If you want to rename a folder: you need to click on file and then rename. You cannot use any punctuation. It is good to make more than 1 folder to make it more easier find a file and its more organized. It is important to regularly backup your files. Because your work can be destroyed by a technical problem or a virus. If you want to make a new folder just click right, new and then folder. Using a floppy to backup is a bad idea because most computers are not designed for floppies, they dont have much space (around 1.46 mega bytes), are slow and they are very unreliable. Using a CD is better as they have more space and are more reliable, they can have up to 700MB, relatively inexpensive and new computers have a built in cd-rw drive. . But you need special software to use them, it is possible to overwrite data and lose important files. You can also store date online , The advantages are : you can access your data anywhere, offers large amount of storage , no other device needed. The bad thing is if the companys server fails you will not be able to access your data, your information can be stolen by a hacker , you often have to pay a monthly fee. A Usb stick is best to use as they are small , can hold up to 2 gigabytes, reliable and also because most new computers are designed for them. The disadvantage is that they are easy to lose and expensive .In my opinion the good side outweigh the disadvantages. Viruses , Worms, Trojans and Spyware. A virus can be a file or a program that replicates itself in your computer. It can cause a lot of damage do your hard drive. E.g. a virus might infect a document, each time you open that document the virus runs and has a chance to cause harm. The Melissa Virus caused so much damage companies like Microsoft had to completely shut off their email systems. Viruses are mostly spread my emails, downloads off the internet (usually music and games) and backup devices (e.g. floppy disks). A virus can make you lose all your data! A worm is a computer program that can copy itself from machine to machine. Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. For example, the Code Red worm replicated itself over 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001. Worms use up computer time and space. The worm also looks for security flaws. When it finds a computer that has a security flaw it copies itself into it. A Trojan horse is a program that looks desirable (like a game , screensaver) but is really dangerous. Hence the name. Trojan horses have the ability to erase files. They do not reproduce, they can be spread my email attachments, running a file from the internet etc. The often let hackers enter your computer who then can gain personal information (passwords). Spyware, which is also known an ad ware, collects information about the computer user without their consent. The usually collect personal information,, credit card details for advertising purposes. Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. Clicking on pop up ad sis a danger too. Spyware is often spread by email. When a computer has a bug is usually crashes a lot , is slow , has corrupted or deleted files , programs no longer work , a lot of error messages , has files that end in exe., ant virus program becomes disabled etc. Protection To protect yourself from these bugs its important that your install firewalls , virus scanners , Spam killers , privacy services and anti ad ware programs. Regularly scan your computer with your anti virus program. You shouldnt download programs off the internet particularly games and music as these are very popular. Also free programs. For an example Limewire is a popular program to download music . But because you are getting files directly from other people ( p2p program) you are prone to viruses . Also because Limewire doesnt scan the file you are downloading for a bug. When you receive an email from someone you dont know , do not open any attachments as they often have viruses. By wary of sharing usb sticks, floppies etc as these can store bugs too . Dealing with Errors and Copyright Laws. If you have a software problem it is best to contact the actual software company. And explain your problem :when it started , if you did anything different on your computer , what is the error message that arises etc. If there is a adware problem you should contact the company that made the computer e.g. Dell , IBM. Using their helpline. You could use your help and support centre that is already on your computer . Which is on the start menu. Or you could ring the help line, which is usually free. There are forums online and help sites that have qualified technicians there to help you to or you could just ring in for a technician and ask them to come in . You always as your teacher or friend to help you. There are often copyright laws on programs and software. These prevent people from making a copying or mimicking the product.(plagiarism). Copyright laws consist in a wide range of things e.g. poems, movies, drawings etc.