Tag Archives: Electronics

The Disadvantages of Electronics

Today, more and more people have access to electronic items such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. These items are available to the young and to the old, to the poor and to the rich, and to the famous and to the infamous. And while these items have many advantages, they certainly have many drawbacks.

Electronics can negatively affect vision. Computers, tablets, and smartphones can stress your eyes. This is not because that they are glowing screens but because they are closer to your eyes. Most people spend hours a day on electronic devices. Before electronics were available on a global scale people used to look at objects closely for a less amount of time. Now, people are constantly staring and close up smart phones without giving their eyes any rest. My school gave every student an iPad, and my vision has declined since then. Electronics are major causes of vision problems.

Furthermore, electronics can hurt your social life. People now do most of their socializing through electronics. They Facebook, iMessage, and Tweet. While this makes communication over long distances much easier and can keep friends together in different states, bad people can also gain from this. Recently someone posted extremely insulting comments about someone through social media and the victim committed suicide. If Facebook, Twitter, and iMessage didn’t exist, the victim would have to be insulted in front of his/her face. That is incredibly harder. Imagine that you were to insult me in person rather than leave a nasty comment on this blog. It would be much harder. Right? This disadvantage of electronics is very serious.

In addition electronics have security issues. Electronics have been known to be hacked. They have also been known to hack. Recently target and other major retailers just had thousands of customers get their credit cards stolen. All the information was stored on a computer–an electronic device. The hackers also used and electronic device. Nowadays, instead of having to pickpocket hundreds of credit cards individually, thieves can get a hacker to type lines of code and push one button to steal thousands of credit cards. These are then put on the black market. Now the federal agents have to find these credit card owners and notify them of the theft. Then the owners can cancel the card. The thing is that they didn’t even know that their credit card was stolen, because they still had the physical card. To extend this thought farther, the hackers just steal more credit cards, so if one person cancels his/her credit card another person gets their credit card stolen. Credit card theft can have seriously negative consequences in someone’s future. This can be caused on a massive scale by electronics.

Another disadvantage is that electronics can compromise your privacy. The United States government has been tapping into phone calls in an attempt to decrease terrorist attacks. Whether this has worked or not is still being studied, but many Americans were enraged that the their government would be secretly listening to private conversations. This was also made possible by electronics.

Overall, electronics can have many disadvantages and harmful effects. The effects can range from benign to serious. So next time you use an electronic device and think about all the things it helps you do, keep mind of the drawbacks it can have.

 

Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Chris Smith via Compfight

Apple vs. Google

I don’t really mind the maker of my PC as long as it is running on Windows 7 and is not a Mac. Simply put, I don’t like Macs. For minimizing, maximizing, and closing windows, Macs don’t label which button does which until you hover over it with your mouse. My judgement on their computers may be biased though, since before sixth grade I had never touched a Mac, but I could do almost anything with a computer running Windows.

My parents got a Google tablet when I was about seven years old. I thought that it was the coolest thing ever! It was even touch screen! Then by the time I was at the end of sixth grade I was issued a school iPad. I had seen from previous experience through the years that iPads were much cooler than our Google tablet. Our Google tablet was also lagging a lot. My dad argued that it was because it was old. I argued that iPads had so many more intuitive features. For example, the iPad has a four finger swipe up multitasking bar and I five finger swipe to exit the app. Many games that weren’t available on the Google Play Store were suddenly available on the iPad’s App Store, such as Light Bike 2. The iPad also has the ability to take screenshots, invert colors, speak what is on the screen, and turn on a restriction that stop little kids from exiting apps and spending your money while they are using your iPad. The only negative point I could find on the iPad, was that it was expensive. My dad also insisted that the iPad as worse, because it was made by Apple, and Apple’s stocks were going down. Apple’s stocks were also worth less than Google’s.

 I got a slide-out phone last year. This was obviously only for communication by text or call. This was neither a Google phone or an iPhone, This year my dad got himself a Google phone. I still prefer iPhones. The only negative about an iPhone is that they are extremely expensive. The iPhone 5s covers for that by  integrating a small fingerprint scanner. The iPhone 5s is also light, thin, and durable. I don’t see any Google phone able to do that.

All in all I prefer Apple when it comes to phones and tablets, but if I want something cheaper Google is the way to go for me. What companies do you prefer for phones and tablets. Feel free to comment below!

BEST Robotics

On Saturday, October 26, 2013 a West Ridge team went and competed in a robotics competition. The program that organizes this is called BEST(Boost Engineering Science and Technology). This is a national project. There are many hubs (smaller regions within the regions of the country). Our hub is called Capitol BEST. We have 42 days to build a robot out of specified raw material. We also have to create a project notebook, a website, a display, fundraise, and show spirit and  sportsmanship during the competition. There is a theme each year and this year the theme was to “build a CPU” for another robot. Of course we didn’t build a real CPU, but we hat to carry game pieces and place them on certain spots. We tried our best and placed fourth in the finals. BEST also judges us based on the other aspects mentioned above and compile them to give the highest award called the BEST award. Last year we got third in that award, but this year we received first. We will be competing at region level (parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and all of Texas) in Dallas on Nov. 8 and 9. Wish us luck!

At the end of each competition at state BEST shows a game teaser, hinting what the theme of the competition will be next year. This video was the game teaser shown last year for this year’s competition. A lot of times the game teaser makes no sense until they reveal the competition on kickoff day.

This is an animation made by BEST of this year’s contest.