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38647 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1452 of 1933

  • Appendix A - Electronic Transactions (Victoria) Act 2000

  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 403-417

  • Summary

    No. 20 of 2000

    Version as at 1 January 2015

    Part 1 – Preliminary

    Purposes

    The purposes of this Act are -

    (a) to recognise that transactions effected electronically are not by that reason alone invalid;

    (b) to provide for the meeting of certain legal requirements as to writing and signatures by electronic communication;

    (c) to permit documents to be produced to another person by electronic communication;

    (d) to permit the recording and retention of information and documents in electronic form;

    (e) to provide for the determination of time and place of dispatch and receipt of electronic communications;

    (f) to stipulate when an electronic communication will bind its purported originator.

    Commencement

    This Act comes into operation on 1 September 2000.

    Definitions

    (1) In this Act -

    addressee of an electronic communication means a person who is intended by the originator to receive the electronic communication, but does not include a person acting as an intermediary with respect to the electronic communication;

    automated message system means a computer program or an electronic or other automated means used to initiate an action or respond to data messages in whole or in part, without review or intervention by a natural person each time an action is initiated or a response is generated by the system;

  • V - Expansion history

  • William D. Heacox, University of Hawaii, Hilo
  • Book:
    The Expanding Universe
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 187-188

  • Summary

    All credible cosmological models are governed by decreasing energy densities and temperatures as the Universe expands. The very early Universe almost certainly was hot and dense, and probably nearly uniform as a consequence of the high rate of particle interactions likely to have prevailed in that state; and thus largely without structure. The current Universe is quite different, with matter coarsely distributed and large temperature gradients on many scales, and coherent structures of all sorts – from galaxy clusters and superclusters to individual galaxies of all sizes; to planetary systems and astronomy students. How the Universe changed so greatly in ∼ 13 billion years is the subject of much study amongst cosmologists, who are also interested in what the progress of those changes can tell us about the Universe at large.

    It is useful and customary to break the Universe's history into a series of eras characterized by processes and contents. The selection of eras is largely arbitrary – it constitutes something of a Rorschach test for theoretical cosmologists. For present purposes we choose the following:

  • • a Particle Era, including the earliest times and the Inflation event; the era ends rather arbitrarily with primordial nucleosynthesis of helium and other light elements;

  • • a Plasma Era from the end of the nucleosynthesis epoch until recombination, when free electrons combined onto positive nuclei and photons decoupled from matter; followed by

  • • the Galaxy Era during which galaxies formed and evolved, up to the current time.

    • Our knowledge of the events in these eras varies considerably. We are particularly ignorant of the details in the early parts of the Particle Era when energies greatly exceed those achievable in particle accelerators, rendering the physics uncertain; and in much of the Galaxy Era where the physics are relatively complicated and observations can be quite difficult. Despite these difficulties, cosmologists have assembled a coherent and apparently reasonable, if certainly incomplete, picture of the Universe's evolution up to the current time.

  • 2 - The rule of cyberspace

  • from Part 1 - Introduction
  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 16-34

  • Summary

    This chapter examines and contemplates law and culture in cyberspace. The role of law and indeed the rule of law have different dynamics in cyberspace as a consequence of the architecture of cyberspace and its anonymous, pseudonymous and borderless features. The resultant structural balance among technology, law and culture may be expressed as the ‘rule of cyberspace’. This spatial dimension, economic influence on human culture and the role of law and regulation together form a subculture which both impacts on and moulds electronic commerce.

    First, the nature of cyberspace is examined. This is followed by consideration of theoretical bases for law and order in cyberspace. The rule of cyberspace emerges, by processes known as ‘spontaneous order’, from the environmental factors fashioning cyberspace. It is spontaneous order which best describes – and to a limited extent predicts – regulation for electronic commerce.

    This chapter examines the juxtaposition of culture and cyberspace, a modern application of spontaneous order, and then uses a discussion of libertarian and classical approaches to predict the future of cyberspace.

    Cultural and environmental juxtaposition with cyberspace

    Human interaction tends towards order and has an aversion to chaos. Culture brings about communities, law, order and stability. And so it is for cyberspace and the rule of cyberspace.

    Cyberspace is infused with a kind of spontaneous order , and has thus evolved protocols through public participation. No one controls cyberspace. There are many stakeholders and users, all with their own agendas, impacts and influences. Customs, usages and structure have emerged from human action and interaction, but not human command. Organising bodies do not know the diverse predilections and demands of the participants. The size, direction, extent and use of cyberspace have challenged forecasters. By incalculable actions and inputs - spontaneous order - cyberspace has gained structure and presence.

  • 2 - General Relativity

  • from I - Conceptual foundations
  • William D. Heacox, University of Hawaii, Hilo
  • Book:
    The Expanding Universe
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 9-16

  • Summary

    Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (GR) was motivated principally by his desire to expand his very successful theory of Special Relativity (SR) to non-inertial reference frames. SR served to reconcile the invariance of the speed of light for all observers – as predicted by Maxwell's Equations of electromagnetism, and verified by the Michelson–Morley experiment – with Einstein's Principle of Special Relativity: that the laws of physics were the same in all non-accelerating reference frames. General Relativity, as Einstein envisioned it, would require the laws of physics to be identical in all reference frames, including accelerating ones. That this extension of the relativity principle leads to a theory of gravitation – which is what GR has become – was a consequence of the observed equality of gravitational and inertial mass: since all objects fell with the same acceleration in a given gravitational field, acceleration and gravitation are, in some sense, equivalent. Note that this singling out of gravitation distinguishes it from other fundamental forces, such as electromagnetism: acceleration and gravitation are connected in a unique manner.

    But the details of that connection were totally non-obvious when Einstein set out to discover them; in particular, it did not seem possible at first to write laws of mechanics in a manner that is independent of the acceleration of the reference frame. In fact, Einstein never successfully united all forms of non-inertial motion into a single theory, but he did manage to do so with gravitation so that his General Relativity theory has effectively become one of gravitation, relegating Newton's theory of gravity to that of an approximation to the full relativistic theory. In particular, it is Einstein's theory of gravity that must be employed on the scales encountered in cosmology for a successful theory of the Universe's large-scale structure and evolution to be constructed.

    The fundamental concepts underlying Einstein's theory of gravitation are these three: General Covariance, which expresses the relativity principle, that the laws of physics take the same form in all reference frames; Equivalence, which embodies the equality of gravitational and inertial mass; and Space-Time Curvature, which provides the means by which gravitation controls dynamics. These are conceptually summarized in this chapter and are each the detailed subject of a separate chapter in Part II of this text.

  • 13 - Electronic signatures

  • from Part 3 - Electronic Commerce
  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 230-248

  • Summary

    The first electronic contracts were entered into with the use of the telegraph in the 1830s; in the 1880s they could be entered into by the use of the telephone. The earliest reported case validating electronic signatures comes from the New Hampshire Supreme Court in Howley v Whipple in 1869, where the court stated:

    It makes no difference whether [the telegraph] operator writes the offer or the acceptance in the presence of his principal and by his express direction, with a steel pen an inch long attached to an ordinary penholder, or whether his pen be a copper wire a thousand miles long. In either case the thought is communicated to the paper by the use of the finger resting upon the pen; nor does it make any difference that in one case common record ink is used, while in the other case a more subtle fluid, known as electricity, performs the same office.

    The traditional signature has been the prime method a person uses as a proof of identity, and as a material expression of intent and execution of documents. A signature on a document indicates the provenance of the document and the intention of the signatory with regard to that document. With the advent of the electronic era, a form of signature is adopted for electronic documents. This chapter examines the regulation, use and security of electronic signatures and the types of electronic signatures, such as digital signatures, biometric signatures and Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology, being used in social media and electronic commerce.

  • 5 - Cloud computing

  • from Part 2 - Social Media
  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 51-58

  • Summary

    Knowledge, information and electronic data of all forms are stored by the majority of the world’s population on complex range of devices and storage facilities. From large computer servers to personal tablets and mobile devices, storage has expanded in direct proportion to the advances in the capability and capacity in computing. In 2014 the number of mobile devices exceeded the number of desktop and laptop computers worldwide. Users are relying less and less on fixed storage devices and individual computer capacity. Entrepreneurs have quickly recognised the individual’s proclivity for gadgets, communications, photographic and video devices, as well as text and internet connections and communications, and have taken advantage of the spontaneous order which can arise from the chaotic juxtaposition of new technology, social media and the human spirit. The inevitable next step has been the creation of central storage facilities and computer resources to provide a reliable rapid use facility for all individuals.

    Cloud computing promises fast, efficient and convenient storage and access networks and resources that are permanently at the fingertips of users. The promise may be premature as users evaluate the security and privacy risks. A reasonable and considered definition of cloud computing is:

    Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

    The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) lists five essential characteristics of cloud computing:

  • on-demand self-service

  • broad network access

  • resource pooling

  • rapid elasticity or expansion, and

  • measured service.

    • The uptake of these centralised facilities has been described as a:

    sea change – a deep and permanent shift in how computing power is generated and consumed. It’s as inevitable and irreversible as the shift from steam to electric power in manufacturing.

  • 16 - Domain names

  • from Part 3 - Electronic Commerce
  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 285-326

  • Summary

    The internet manages to deal with more than 100 trillion hits per month on websites using 300 million domain names. For most, this process runs smoothly, with ingenious search engines, catalogues, structures, notices, gateways and myriad other methods developed to fashion a semblance of order and structure. This endogenous order reflects and parallels the emergence of principles of custom, trade and usage. With limited government input, and a willingness by altruistic individuals and organisations, a global web, in a literal sense, has materialised, impacting commerce and our social lives, entertaining us and informing us. One such participant in the process, Tim Berners-Lee, comments: ‘Happily, the Web is so huge that there’s no was any one company can dominate.’ It is a product of its users in a time of global communications technology. The development and implementation of domain names is a living testament to the way in which order emerges from a chaos of disconnected and unchoreographed minds and data.

    This chapter is in three parts. The first part examines the mapping of cyberspace and the nature of domain names. Parts two and three deal with domain name disputes, with the former dealing with remedies using the courts, and the latter dealing with the compulsory Uniform Dispute Resolution policies and procedures of the domain name administrators.

  • 18 - Cybercrime

  • from Part 3 - Electronic Commerce
  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 350-378

  • Summary

    In the online era, both law-abiding and nefarious kinds of order have emerged. Society has demanded that steps be taken in response to criminal behaviour that involves the internet and other modern tools: steps that are technological, practical and legal.

    The advance of information technology and computer technology has led to a corresponding increase in computer crime. There is no accepted definition of computer crime. Computers may be the subject of a crime, such as theft, or a computer may be used to commit a crime. Often, a computer is used, or misused, to elicit or manipulate data or processing. Simple unlawful access to a computer system can be regarded as an offence. Telecommunications may be involved. The result may be a transfer of funds or of confidential information. Sending an email to place a virus can be unlawful. The free flow of information has generated undesirable and abhorrent material. The public has expressed concern about pornography, information on how to make bombs and information about ways to commit suicide. New offences have been created in response to these concerns. Persons gaining unlawful access to computers for these purposes are typically referred to as ‘crackers’: hackers with malicious intent. Many crimes that are not specifically related to computers can be substantially facilitated by the use of computers. Crimes involving electronic commerce typically involve the use of computers and telecommunications. This area is often referred to as ‘cybercrime’.

  • 19 - Afterword: the new modern cosmology

  • from V - Expansion history
  • William D. Heacox, University of Hawaii, Hilo
  • Book:
    The Expanding Universe
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 234-238

  • Summary

    To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

    William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

    Consider now the current state of our understanding of the expanding Universe. We appear to have a good understanding of the fundamental physics underlying its expansion, of the origin of structure in the current Universe, and of its detailed history and likely future. Our current cosmological world-view is remarkable not only for its scope but also for its coherence: everything seems to hang together in a nearly seamless picture that purports to explain nearly all of the Universe's largescale structure and evolution, from shortly after the moment of creation to the current time, and on scales dwarfing anything else in our experience or intellectual musings.

    Consider, for instance:

  • • the dark matter originally proposed to explain intracluster galaxy velocities and individual galaxy rotation rates is just what is needed to explain details of the CMB anisotropy spectrum; the formation of baryonic galaxies embedded in massive, dark halos; and the large-scale structure of the Universe in the form of galaxy clusters and super-clusters;

  • • the dark energy originally inferred from SN Ia Hubble relations also accounts for the flatness of the Universe, its current age, details of the CMB anisotropy spectrum, and the Universe's large-scale structure;

  • • universal Inflation connects theories of quantum fields to gravitation in ways that help explain the large-scale features of the Universe (flatness, homogeneity), and provides the seeds for eventual structure formation;

  • • the universal abundance of helium is understood to be a fossil remnant of Baryogenesis in the very early Universe, leading to the large photon/baryon ratio and large entropy in the current Universe.

    • All in all, modern theoretical cosmology is a remarkable intellectual achievement, especially so when compared with the state of our knowledge as recently as 50 years ago – within the lifetime of many cosmologists working today – when the nature of quasars was unknown, the CMB had yet to be observed (let alone its structure), the Steady State model was a viable alternative to the Big Bang, and such things as universal acceleration and Inflation were not dreamed of. Cosmologists can justifiably be proud of the advances made in their science in the past several decades.

  • 6 - Space-time curvature

  • from II - General Relativity
  • William D. Heacox, University of Hawaii, Hilo
  • Book:
    The Expanding Universe
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 48-54

  • Summary

    The conceptual basis of GR is that matter and energy cause space-time to be curved, and that curvature determines the paths of freely falling objects. From the previous chapter we expect that the curvature will be reflected in the affine connection or, more generally, in the metric tensor. It is thus necessary to define appropriate measures of curvature in terms of the metric tensor components.

    Now, it is pretty easy to mathematically describe the curvature of, say, the two-dimensional surface of a sphere embedded in our three-dimensional space. But it's not at all obvious how to describe the curvature of the three-dimensional space in which we presumably live, nor even to understand what curvature means in that context. The trick is to use the concept of distance or, more precisely, the metric of the space. Then curvature will reveal itself by, e.g., the circumference of a circle in terms of its radius, the sum of the three angles in a triangle, etc. To be useful in application to GR we require that the curvature be revealed without moving outside the surface or space in question. Going back to our sphere embedded in 3-space, imagine a two-dimensional bug wandering around on the surface of the sphere, taking measurements. We need to develop the tools by which those measurements can be used to quantify the curvature of the surface, then generalize to four-dimensional space-time.

    Simple curvature

    Descriptions of curvature of plane curves and of two-dimensional surfaces are based on circles and spheres. The curvature K of a circle is defined to be the inverse of its radius R, which is called the radius of curvature: K ≡ 1/R. For any other plane curve the curvature at a point on the curve is defined to be that of the best-fitting circle to the curve at that point. In Cartesian coordinates, the curvature of a plane curve y(x) at any chosen point is given by

    where the sign is chosen according to the chosen orientation. Note the presence of the second derivative, a characteristic of measures of curvature.

    Extension of these ideas to a curved, two-dimensional surface in 3-space is fairly straightforward. At any point on a surface one can define principal curvatures R1 and R2 corresponding to curves resulting from intersections with tangent and normal planes and computed by Equation (6.1).

  • Appendix B - Australian Privacy Principles

  • Alan Davidson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 418-435

  • Summary

    The Australian Privacy Principles are to be found in Schedule 1 of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

    Part 1 sets out principles that require APP entities to consider the privacy of personal information, including ensuring that APP entities manage personal information in an open and transparent way.

    Part 2 sets out principles that deal with the collection of personal information including unsolicited personal information.

    Part 3 sets out principles about how APP entities deal with personal information and government related identifi ers. The Part includes principles about the use and disclosure of personal information and those identifiers.

    Part 4 sets out principles about the integrity of personal information. The Part includesprinciples about the quality and security of personal information.

    Part 5 sets out principles that deal with requests for access to, and the correction of, personal information.

    The Australian Privacy Principles are:

    Australian Privacy Principle 1 – open and transparent management of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 2 – anonymity and pseudonymity

    Australian Privacy Principle 3 – collection of solicited personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 4 – dealing with unsolicited personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 5 – notification of the collection of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 6 – use or disclosure of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 7 – direct marketing

    Australian Privacy Principle 8 – cross-border disclosure of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 9 – adoption, use or disclosure of government related identifiers

    Australian Privacy Principle 10 – quality of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 11 – security of personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 12 – access to personal information

    Australian Privacy Principle 13 – correction of personal information

Page 1452 of 1933