User:Ppatward/sandbox

Computer surveillance in the workplace

The Article I have chosen to critique is titled “Computer Surveillance in the Workplace”. The article is approximately two and a half pages long and provides an overview of how companies monitor employees usage of their computers in the workplace as well as what connections they are making on the internet. The article does not go into too much detail in terms of each surveillance method, rather it places a significant emphasis on whether the practice is legal or not. The article splits off into pros and cons of such practices towards the end to display both sides of the issue. There are only 7 referenced articles in this piece, which seems to be fine since the article itself is only two pages long. Out of the 7 references most of them are fairly solid sources that seem to be reliable. One source however is a link to a marketplace for monitoring software which could possibly be a little questionable. Everything in the article is related to the articles topic and is well written. The article presents the facts of the topic without any apparent bias and in the end where it shares people’s opinions of the issue, it presents both sides of the argument fairly. The articles referred to are fairly neutral and focus on an individual’s rights to privacy in the workplace as well as what can and cannot be done. I feel as though the article is fairly balanced as it tries to paint a negative issue in a neutral light. After looking through a few of the citations all the links to the sources referred to work. I noticed that there are not many in-text citations in the article. I also do not see much direct paraphrasing in terms of content. This leads me to believe that the content of this article is mostly original content that simply uses concepts from the sources referenced.  The information seems up to date, but I think there is a lot more content that is relevant and could be included in the article. There are not many examples of employers that use these practices in their workplaces. Furthermore, I think the article is a too general and doesn’t provide too much depth. Moreover, I also think that the author could have also included more methods of surveillance as he only outlines several of the more obvious ones. Overall, I think that a greater depth in the information provided would have made what seems to be a good article into a great one.

Smartphone

The article has several strengths as well as several weaknesses. One of the strength's the article has is that there is a lot of content discussed in it. It lists all the major mobile operating systems. It also goes into detail regarding operating systems that used to exist but failed such as Web OS, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, and Firefox OS. It has information regarding the precursors to modern smartphones such as the Forerunner and the PDA. As a result the article with its depth offers a lot of information regarding smartphones. Furthermore, there are descriptions of a lot of the uses of smartphones and how certain laws have been created to prevent their use in certain situations such as while an individual is driving.

While the article has a lot of strengths it also has some weaknesses. In particular I noticed that there were certain details in the discussion of mobile operating systems that was omitted. It does not consider any of the operating system specific features that each OS has. Furthermore, in the discussion of display technologies, discussion of a few of the smartphone technologies is missing. Moreover, there is also no discussion of the glass that is covering the display panels as well as the various digitizers technologies that are used in these displays.