FREE ESSAY ON CASE STUDY SNAP ON TOOLS INTRANET

CASE STUDY SNAP ON TOOLS INTRANET

Case Study: The Snap-On Intranet
Snap-On is one of many companies that have embraced the Internet as a tool for
management. Snap-On runs its own intranet for the exclusive use of Snap-On franchises and
dealers. (Senn, 1998)
Snap-On's intranet provides reams of valuable information that would be inconvenient to
deliver any other way. The speed of change in today's market has forced printed material
into partial obsolescence. Before Snap-On developed its own intranet, merchandise
catalogs and part listings would have to be in printed, bound matter. Anyone who has been
to an auto parts store can vouch that each of those catalogs is huge, to say the least. A
franchisee would have to carry several catalogs in his vehicle for reference purposes.
These catalogs occupied space in the truck that could have been used for inventory, and
searching through them would eat into valuable time. Additionally, Snap-On would have to
reissue the catalogs or send appendices when there was a change in any of the
information. With an intranet, Snap-On merely changes the information on their websites,
and the new information is there when the franchisees access it. This means no more
expensive mailing of heavy catalogs and no more wasted time spent flipping through the
pages of a book, trying to find the entry he wants, only to find out after fifteen
agonizing minutes that the page he needs has been ripped out. (Senn, 1998)
Were I a Snap-On franchisee, I would be enthused about the use of a company intranet for
the delivery of sales- and product-related information. Timely information is vital to
survival in business today. Snap-On's intranet allows for speedy updates of information.
This means I would not have to wait the six to eight weeks for an updated merchandise
list, nor would I have to pay exorbitant sums to get the package express-mailed to me.
All my questions could be answered almost immediately via research on the different
pages, or through email. (Senn, 1998)
Snap-On was motivated by the many benefits of the Internet to use the intranet as a tool
in developing a communications link to each dealer. Franchisees in far-flung places could
easily be contacted and organized. Orders and inventories can be monitored from one
location, decreasing the number of personnel and middle management. This flatter
organizational structure provides for clearer communication between the field and office
personnel. The Internet allows easy access for everyone with a PC, Internet connection,
and the right passwords. The intranet keeps costs low. All modifications and developments
to the websites are handled internally because Snap-On already owned the hardware and
software to create the pages. Having an intranet as opposed to information on the public
web allows for increased security. Developments and data Snap-On wants to keep secret
from competitors can be hidden behind a "firewall," that keeps unauthorized users from
entering Snap-On's corporate cyberspace, while Snap-On users can search anywhere on the
Net that is not protected by a firewall. (Senn, 1998)


  
    
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Censorship
The Internet is a wonderful place of entertainment and education but like all places used
by millions of people, it has some murky corners people would prefer children not to
explore. In the physical world society as a whole conspires to protect children, but
there are no social or physical constraints to Internet surfing. The Internet Censorship
Bill of 1995, also known as the Exon/Coats Communications Decency Act, has been
introduced in the U.S. Congress. It would make it a criminal offense to make available to
children anything that is indecent, or to send anything indecent with intent to annoy,
abuse, threaten, or harass (Stop the Communications ... n.p.). The goal of this bill as
written(though not as stated by its proponents) is to try to make all public discourse on
the Internet suitable for young children. The issue of whether is it necessary to have
censorship on the Internet is being argued all over the world. There are numerous
homepages on the World Wide Web discussing this issue, or asking people to sign the
petition to stop government censorship. The Internet was originally a place for people to
freely express their ideas worldwide. It is also one of America's most valuable types of
technology; scientists use email for quick and easy communication. They post their
current scientific discoveries on the Usenet newsgroups so other scientists in the same
field of study all over the world can know in minutes. Ordinary people use the Net for
communication, expressing their opinions in the newsgroups, obtaining up-to-date
information from the WWW, acquiring files by using FTP, etc. Censorship would damage the
atmosphere of the freedom to express ideas on the Internet; therefore, government should
not encourage censorship. In the Internet community, there is a large volume of technical
terms. For this reason, it is first necessary to examine the terminology specific to
Internet. The Internet is a world wide computer network. The Net is frequently used in
place of Internet. In the words of Allison and Baxter, two experts on Internet Censorship
at the Monash University, the Internet is comprised of various digital media subsuming
many of the distinct roles of traditional media (Allison and Baxter 3). Electronic mail
(email), which is one component of the Internet, approximates person to person letters,
memoranda, notes and even phone calls. Sound and pictures are sometimes sent along with
text. Email is mainly for private communication. Electronic mailing lists are rather like
club newsletters and readers have to contract-in or subscribe to a list. Another term
that is often used is electronic news (enews/Usenet), enews is a broadcast, free to the
Internet medium. It has some properties of radio or television, particularly talk-back
radio or television, in that the destination is indiscriminate. The term FTP is also
frequently used. File transfer protocol (FTP) started as an Internet archival and
retrieval medium, somewhat analogous to traditional libraries. Files can be retrieved
from distant computers using a traditional text-based interface. The world-wide web
(WWW), which is another component of the Net, can be used to publish material that would
traditionally appear in journals, magazines, posters, books, television and even on film.
The term UNIX, a widely heard computer term, is a multi-user, multitasking operating
system originally developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, at AT&T Bell
Laboratories, in 1969 for use on minicomputers (UNIX n.p.). To understand the background
of the controversy, it is also necessary to give a brief history on the Internet. The
Internet was created about twenty years ago in an attempt to connect a U.S. Defense
Department network called the ARPAnet and various other radio and satellite networks. The
ARPAnet was an experimental network designed to support military research; in particular,
research about how to build networks that could withstand partial outages (such as bomb
attacks) and still function. At about the same time the Internet was coming into being,
Ethernet local area networks (LANs) were developed. Most of these workstations came with
Berkeley UNIX, which included IP (Internet Protocol) networking software. This created a
new demand: rather than connecting to a single large timesharing computer per site,
organizations wanted to connect the ARPAnet to their entire local network. The demand
keeps growing today. Now that most four-year colleges are connected to the Net, people
are trying to get secondary and primary schools connected. People who have graduated from
college where they have used the resources of the Net in classes, know what the Internet
is good for, and talk their employers into connecting different corporations. All this
activity points to continued growth, networking problems to solve, evolving technologies,
and job security for net-workers (Willmott 107). The Internet can also be compared to a
church. In many ways the Internet is like a church: it has its council of elders, every
member has an opinion about how things should work, and they can either take part or not.
It's the choice of the user. The Internet has no president, chief operating officer, or
Pope. The constituent networks may have presidents and CEO's, but that's a different
issue; there is no single authority figure for the Internet as a whole. As stated by
Frances Hentoff, the staff writer for The Village Voice and the author of First Freedoms,
on an info superhighway driven by individuals, there are no cops preventing users from
downloading (Hentoff 1). Internet users can broadcast or express anything they want. The
fact that the Net has no single authority figure sets forth a problem about what kind of
materials could be available on the Net. The U.S. government is now trying to pass bills
to prevent misuse of the Net. The Internet Censorship Bill of 1995, which has already
been discussed earlier, was introduced to the U.S. Congress. Under the Censorship Bill, a
person breaks the law if he/she puts a purity test on a web page without making sure
children cannot access the page. Also, if a person verbally assaults someone on IRC,
he/she breaks the law. If a university, where some students may be under 18 years old,
carries the alt.sex.* newsgroups, which contains adult material, it breaks the law.
According to George Melloan from the Wall Street Journal, a censorship bill was passed by
the Senate 84-16 in July, and an anticensorship bill was passed by the House 420-4 in
August. There are now four different sets of censorship and anticensorship language in
the House and Senate versions of the Telecomm reform bill, which contradict each other
and will have to be reconciled (Melloan, n.p.). In order to understand the need for the
ever-growing body of legislation, it is important to explore the controversy, and the
current problems involved with the Net as it exists must be introduced. The problem that
concerns most people is offensive material such as pornography. As pointed out by Allison
and Baxter, Possible (offensive) topics are behavior (drugs, ... ), nudity,
political/economic/social opinion, violence, racial/ethnic, religious, coarse language,
sexual/gender orientation, [and] sexuality (Allison and Baxter 3). Since the Internet is
open to everyone, children are very easily exposed to such material. According to Allison
and Baxter, the information provided on the Internet, particularly through the WWW,
ranges across train time-tables, university lecture notes, books, art exhibits, film
promotions, the wisdom and ravings of individuals and, yes, pornographic pictures
(Allison and Baxter 3). Moreover, many high schools in the United States provide Internet
access to students, which is very useful for looking up information, but if a student
intends to look for inappropriate material, he/she is very likely to find such material
simply by doing an Internet search. Another crucial Internet crime is the theft of credit
card numbers. Companies do business on the Net, and credit card numbers are stored on
their servers; everyone with the necessary computer knowledge could hack in and obtain
such databases for illegal purposes. To cite an instance, the most infamous computer
terrorist, Kevin Mitnick, waived extradition and is now in jail in California, charged
with computer fraud and illegal use of a telephone access device. The list of allegations
against him include theft of many files and documents, including twenty-thousand credit
card numbers from Netcom On-Line Services, which provides thousands with access to the
Internet (Warren 52). Americans have to come up with a solution in order to keep children
away from inappropriate material and to prevent misuses of the Net. One reaction to this
inapplicability has been the Censor the Net approach (the censorship bill), which is
being debated worldwide. First, the meaning of Censoring the Net must be explained.
Simply, it is the banning of offensive material. To see if the government should censor
the Net, it is imperative to list the advantages and disadvantages of the censor the Net
approach. The advantage of government censorship is that ideally, children and teenagers
could be kept away from unsuitable material. However, many experts have pointed out that
government censorship is not possible. Howard Rheingold, the editor of the Whole World
Review, observes that, the 'censor the Net' approach is not just morally misguided. It's
becoming technically and politically impossible (Rheingold n.p.). First, it is not fair
to exclude the freedom and damage the atmosphere of freely expressing ideas just for the
safety of children. Corn-Revere, an expert on Internet censorship at the Howgan & Harson
Law Firm, points out that the purpose of indecency regulation is to keep adult material
from falling into the hands of kids. When he first introduced a similar bill last year,
Senator Exon said he was concerned that the Information Superhighway was in danger of
becoming an electronic 'red light district' and that he wanted to bar his granddaughter's
access to unsuitable information (Corn-Revere 24). It is clear that Senator Exon
introduced the bill to prevent minors from viewing unsuitable material on the Net. In
addition, Meleedy, a computer science graduate student at Harvard University, questions
that if the Internet makes democracy this accessible to the average citizen, is it any
wonder Congress wants to censor it? (Meleedy 1) Allison and Baxter assert that, the most
significant new properties of the Internet media are the diversity of information sources
and their ability to reach almost anywhere in the world. Authors range from major
corporations such as IBM and Disney to school children (Allison and Baxter 3). As
predicted by Corn-Revere, At the very least, the law will force content providers to make
access more difficult, which will affect all users, not just the young (Corn-Revere 70).
Censoring the Net is technically and politically impossible; it will damage the
atmosphere of freedom and free idea expression on the Net; therefore, government should
not encourage censorship. Most Internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the
Net, which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment of the United States.
According to Corn-Reverse, it has been suggested that, 'on-line systems give people far
more genuinely free speech and free press than ever before in human history'
(Corn-Reverse 71). Rheingold predicts that Heavy-handed attempts to impose restrictions
on the unruly but incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit of
cooperative knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to millions (Rheingold n.p.).
The freedom of idea expression is what makes the Internet important and enjoyable, and it
should not be waived for any reason. Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net
contains offensive material, most people do not use the Net for pornography. Caragata
from Maclean's magazine observes that, it is pornography that stirs the most controversy.
But while there is no doubt that pornography is popular, it amounts to a trickle compared
with everything else available on the Net (Caragata 51). The Net is mostly being used for
communication and information exchange, and only a tiny portion of the Net contains
pornography and other offensive material. It must be understood that censoring the Net is
technically impossible. According to Allison and Baxter, in principle, it is impossible
to monitor all material being transmitted on the Internet. Considering the difficulties
with international boundaries, a licensing system faces many obvious practical hurdles
(Allison and Baxter 6). As described by Allison and Baxter, Any good Computer Science
graduate can create a completely secure encryption system for concealment purposes. The
material can even be disguised, for example hidden 'inside' a perfectly innocuous picture
(Allison and Baxter 6). Therefore, if a person wants to publish offensive material,
he/she can design a formula to change the material with respect to a key, and secretly
tell other users what the key is. In this way, they can retrieve the same material and
pass through the government censorship. While people are concerned about Internet
pornography, it should be recognized that pornography is sometimes legal; for example,
pornography is legal in video and magazines. Therefore, it is inconsistent to ban the
Internet equivalents. According to Rheingold, Citizens should have the right to restrict
the information-flow into their homes. They should be able to exclude from their home any
subject matter that they do not want their children to see. But sooner or later, their
children will be exposed to everything from which they have shielded them , and then they
will have left to deal with these shocking sights and sound in the moral fiber they
helped them cultivate (Rheingold n.p.). The Internet is definitely not the only medium
for teenagers to find inappropriate material. Even if the Net does not have any,
teenagers could also be exposed to indecorous material in many other places. For example,
Allison and Baxter say that, most authors using electronic media do not produce material
that is any 'worse' than that available from news agents, video shops, or mail-order
sources (Allison and Baxter 8). On that account, if the purpose of censoring is to
prevent minors from being exposed to indecorous material, not only the Net has to be
censored. Censoring the Net will only eliminate one single medium for minors to find
irrelevant material. Government censorship is not the solution to the problem, and
alternatives measures that have same effects as censorship can be practiced. There are
many alternative measures to government censorship which would prevent misuse of the Net
and would have the same effects as censorship. According to Hentoff, there are ways to
protect children without the Act's intervention: blockage of certain areas, passwords,
parental supervision. And adults--under protection of the First Amendment--can remain
protected from government thought control. However, if the censorship bill is passed, the
First Amendment may effectively be excluded from cyberspace (Hentoff 1). It is very
important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parents should
have this responsibility. Moral guidance is the foremost long-term solution to the
problem. Rheingold believes that, this technological shock (pornography on the Net) to
Americans' moral codes means that in the future, Americans are going to have to teach
their children well. The only protection that has a chance of working is to give their
sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense (Rheingold n.p.). In America,
minors can be exposed to sexual material in many media. Providing children with moral
guidance is the foremost solution to the problem. However, at the same time that parents
carry out moral guidance, Americans have to come out with some short term approaches to
solve the problem in a more efficient way as well. An alternative to government
censorship is the technological fix, which would prevent misuse of the Net and would have
the same effects as government censorship. This involves the design of intelligent
software to filter information. There is a rush to develop information filtering software
and get it to market. One example of technological fix is the SurfWatch software, as
described by Allison and Baxter, SurfWatch is a breakthrough software product which helps
parents deal with the flood of sexual material on the Internet. By allowing parents to be
responsible for blocking what is being received at any individual computer, children and
others have less chance of accidentally or deliberately being exposed to unwanted
material. SurfWatch is the first major advance in providing a technical solution to a
difficult issue created by the explosion of technology. SurfWatch strives to preserve
Internet freedom by letting individuals choose what they see (Allison, Baxter 6). The
SurfWatch vendor intends to provide monthly updates to cope with the fast changing
Internet. Also, commercial Internet service providers, such as America Online, allow
parents to control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to their
children (Cidley 59). Parental Control is a feature in many commercial Internetservice
providers, users can turn on the Parental Control function, and they will automatically
be kept away from offensive words in IRC. In this way, children can be kept away from
offensive material and adults can continue to enjoy their Internet freedom. Another
technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate proxy server for their
children's web browser. A proxy server is a program that disallows uses of some specified
Internet sites or Usenet newsgroups. The parents need to actively select sites their
proxy server can access. Parental control tools is a very possible solution to the
problem, as stated in the Communications Decency Act Issues Page by the Center for
Democracy and Technology, what will help parents control their children's access to the
Internet is Parental Control tools and features, such as those provided by several major
online services and available as over-the-counter software (Stop the Communications ...
n.p.). Tools for controlling Internet access by children are widely available, and
parents can already control their children's access to the material on the Net. There are
no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material; only people can do
it. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of the contents
of the material when posting is very important. Nowadays, most Internet users classify
their postings with standard categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings.
According to Allison and Baxter, items are signed with a secure digital signature that
can be traced to a real person, company or organization (Allison, Baxter 4). The
strengths of the material are often classified as strong or weak, and attitudes of a
given document towards a topic are often classified as advocates, discusses, deplores, or
does not discuss. Additionally, in order to reduce the effort of classifying many
individual items, particularly in the case of FTP and WWW, classifications are often
attached to directories and inherited by subdirectories and documents. In this way,
readers can make informed decisions regarding access of Internet material, and the
programming of intelligent software will be much easier: just by recognizing a small
number of terms of classification. As a matter of fact, the classification of material
has already been done on the Net for a period of time. Most Internet materials are well
classified, and people will have an idea of what they are going to see beforehand. For
instance, the articles in a particular Usenet newsgroup can be accurately predicted by
the name of the group. For example, soc.culture.hongkong.entertainment contains
discussion of the entertainment industry of Hong Kong; alt.binaries.sex.pictures contains
encoded binary files of dirty pictures. Internet users know what they are approaching
beforehand, and minors know that they are not supposed to browse those alt.sex.*
newsgroups. The combination of the installation of censoring software and the
classification of material is a much better solution than government censorship. Hentoff
mentions that flexibility of interactive media...enables parents to control what content
their kids have access to, and leaves the flow of information free for those adults who
want it (Hentoff 1). This prevents unwanted material from reaching children and allows
adults to continue enjoying their Internet freedom. The problem of the Net is that it is
easy for minors to obtain inappropriate materials. The American government came up with a
proposal to censor the Net, but as proved earlier, the Censor the Net approach is both
technically and politically impossible. The foremost solution to the problem is for
parents to provide moral guidance for their children. At the same time they are providing
moral guidance for their children, Americans also need short term technical solution.
Intelligent censoring software and proxy servers can let parents disallow their children
access to certain sites. In this way, parents can keep their children from the offensive
materials on the Net. Like other dilemmas and unanswered questions of the digital age,
traditional approaches (government censorship) simply won't work. Americans are going to
have to accept less intrusive, probably more exotic solutions, such as providing
intelligent software filters to those who want a version of Internet Lite [sic] (Baker
65). For intelligent software and proxy servers to operate successfully, it is necessary
to classify the information available on the Net, and the classification of materials has
already been done by Internet users for years. Parents can then censor the Net for their
children, and adults can continue to enjoy their Internet freedom. This will provide the
same effect as government censorship, but will not damage the atmosphere of free idea
expression and freedom on the Net. Moreover, indecorous materials are not only on the
Net, minors can obtain such materials without accessing the Internet at all. Internet
censorship is not the solution to keeping minors away from sexual material. The real and
foremost solution to preventing minors from viewing sexual material is for parents to
take a stronger role in their children's viewing. This technological shock (pornography
on the Net) to Americans' moral codes means that in the future, Americans are going to
have to teach their children well. The only protection that has a chance of working is to
give their sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense (Rheingold n.p.).