Sacpug

In making plans for one’s digital life after he is gone, there are no sure answers to questions people ask. This is because it is not that easy.

The social media especially, makes such planning cumbersome and tiring. Even at that, we have outlined some ideas on how to get started in doing such.

Ownership Of Certain Rights And Privileges

Ownership of assets and property in computer software and the internet is often esoteric and hard to understand.

But it would be in your best interest to understand that when you open an online account or download a software from the internet that you do not own the content.

What you get is the right to go through the content and probably make use of it. This right is known as a limited license.

The license belongs to you and you alone and to no one else. This is binding when you tap on the “I agree” button to the terms and conditions which are actually a contract.

A person may spend years and money garnering a song collection. The songs garnered, however, do not belong to him.

What he has been accumulating all those years is just the right to listen to those songs. Which makes us wonder what will happen to those songs when he dies.

This means that transferring songs from your phone to someone else’s is a breach of contract. So what will happen then since it is only the person that has acquired the right to listen to those songs?

The Problem Of Information Dissemination

There is an argument about users getting information and sharing private companies’ access on the one hand, and the companies wanting to keep this information private in order to safeguard their assets and also their customers on the other hand.

There is no easy solution to this problem yet.

The Blessing Of Federal Anti-piracy laws

In addition to blatantly copying all or some of someone else’s article online without proper permission, sharing your password with family, friends and colleagues is a violation of the contract you clicked “I agree” to online.

The Promise Of The Future

Society is running far ahead of the law, with the law wheezing and coughing in turns as it makes efforts to catch up as regards digital information.

 Until pioneer cases are heard and dealt with, I am afraid there is not much one can do.

Should We Be Erased After Death?

According to different platforms on the social media, no. Each platform deals with it their own way according to their terms.

Wikipedia runs a page “Death and the internet”. The terms of service concerning dormant accounts by certain providers are listed here.

Management Of Digital Media

These days, some law firms include Power to Manage Digital Media in their clients' trust. This gives the firms the right to handle their client’s media life in any unforeseen circumstances.

In as much as this still leaves much to be desired, it is an important improvement.

Take Care Of Things Yourself First

You can prepare for your digital afterlife by having a list of your passwords and accounts and letting a few trusted ones know how to get to it without violating your social media contract.

 It is also advisable to add ‘digital assets’ to your will.

Choosing a method for whatever printing method you may have requires careful consideration so you don’t end up choosing a method that does not favour you.

 Each printing method has its strong side, so identifying this part and exploiting it is important if you want a really good result.

In order to achieve this, we will need to take a look at printing methods.

I have outlined three below: digital DVD printing, DVD screen printing, and Lithographic DVD printing also known as offset printing. These three printing methods come with their uniqueness and therein lies their advantage.

Digital DVD Printing

This method makes use of pre-manufactured printable DVDRs. These discs come with a silver or white printable surface receptive to inkjet printers.

A Digital DVD printer works the same way a desktop inkjet printer does.

Ink cartridges—cyan, magenta, yellow and black—are put into the printer. Ink is deposited according to the artwork file when a printer head passes over the disc several times.

The result is an extremely detailed high resolution image with just a few setbacks.

In Comparison With Other Methods, The Digital Printing Method Is Slow

When used for commercial purposes, the digital DVD printers can only print up to 200 DVDs unattended.

This means that each print takes up to a minute or more depending on how complex the artwork is.

Clear Lacquer Has To Be Applied On Each Disc

This prevents damage to the printed surface from moisture when it is handled. Although this looks good and is only a preventive measure, it sure adds to the delay.

That aside, there is no fixed setup cost in using digital DVD printing method which makes it useful in making short runs of less than 100 DVDs.

Digital Screen Printing

Digital Screen Printing is an adaption of screen printing, which has been tested and run in the commercial printing industry for a long time. In digital screen printing, however, you print onto a disc.

This process produces vibrantly coloured inks combined in various proportions from the base colours.

Inks like cyan, magenta, yellow, and black are mixed to dazzling effect. Plus there are also the fluorescent and metallic ink that can be used for this process.

There is a large rotating platform in the screen printing machine known as the screen—from which the screen printing method gets its name— that is divided into 5 printing station.

A UV lamp divides one station from the next. DVDs with any colour can get the print without fuss.

This and the 5 divisions in the platform ensures that the maximum colours in an artwork design is up to 6. The digital screen printing process is fast and as a result up to 3,500 DVDs can be printed in an hour. It is fast, therefore the cost is fixed.

Lithographic DVD Printing

This method is as popular as the digital screen printing method. It is used for producing high resolution images on cards and paper before being fashioned to also print on DVDs.

It produces DVDs with a photographic print or artwork.

These involve a subtle colour gradient which is not fit for producing artwork that has large areas of solid colour.

This process is also as fast as the digital screen printing but with fixed cost just like the digital screen printing method.

In summary, if your project is about a small run of discs, then digital DVD printing is the way to go as it saves cost.

If it involves many discs and bold colours, you would want to go for digital screen printing. For photographic images or subtle colour gradient, lithographic DVD printing has got you covered.

The more you print using lithographic DVD printing or digital screen printing method, the less the cost. So for projects exceeding the run of 100 discs, you know what to do.

Maybe, one day we will wake up and discover that machines have taken over from us humans and are now in the driving seat.

While this may seem a little bit far-fetched ,it is not news that machines are being built everywhere to do the work of man. This is indeed a worthy development, but should we be afraid?

I have often wondered what man would be doing when he has built machines to do everything he should be doing, and with that thought comes a little dread.

Maybe it is extreme, but we can all agree that machines are sometimes annoying and as big a disadvantage as they are an advantage.

For instance, we might have a banking problem we really need to talk to someone over the phone about, but we are answered by an automated voice which will keep pushing us around, ‘entertaining us’ and driving us nuts with music, constantly reminding us that we are in a queue.

That is not the only problem posed by computers. Sometimes they malfunction and each malfunction can be disastrous and costly.

Like failures in a Computer Aided Dispatch system in Austin which brought about unanswered 911 calls.

There was also an instance where a bank couldn’t raise its interest rates for some weeks in 2015. This resulted in losses of about a million dollars each day.

You see, sometimes all we need is a cheerful good morning from the other side of the phone but we get stiff voices greeting us in automated tones. It gets on my nerves at times.

In supermarkets, our goods gets to be scanned by the machines, everything becoming mechanical. And when these machines lose it, there is not correcting them.

A hassle will ensue which will definitely take more time than people are trying to save with the use of these artificial intelligence.

Companies are having smaller and smaller number of workers while machines take over. I will point out the obvious, that people are losing their jobs to machines.

Car park attendants are being relived of their jobs and replaced with machines which you pay with a ticket that opens a barrier while you pray and hope to high heavens that it works, that the exist barrier will open

All over the world, artificial intelligence is stepping up to do the work designated by nature to man.

And while this has its many upsides, it still leaves me wondering what will become of man. One of the most recent inventions are robots that pleasures females.

Of course, artificial intelligence has actually made work easier and faster for man. There is the traffic lamp instead of a traffic warden sweating out in the open.

There is the automated voice which ensures that an organization answers as many calls as possible without breakdown in order.

Still I can’t help wondering if maybe we are losing ourselves with the influx of these emotionless machines and the cost of their malfunction each time they do malfunction.