My Comments

Somethings wrong with my UB e mail account so I figured this was my next best option. Hope you enjoy my comments have a great break!


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Fiber Optics

According to Wikipedia, fiber optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. Next, the pulses of light form electromagnetic carrier waves that are modulated to carry information.

The inventition of fiber optics came about in the 70s and led to a revolution in the telecommunications industry, contributing highly to the dawning of the Information Age.

Here in the United States we have been promised by phone companies that fiber optic connections would be replacing our current internet connection mechinizims, but that has yet to occur. However, other parts of the world have access to fiber optic networks, enableing them to use the internet at speeds we here cant even imagine, while still paying to same amount of money for internet access. Many Americans are not happy with these facts.

I understand why people would obviously want access to a faster network, but I dont think the situation is that serious. As far as accessing information on the Internet, web sites pop up in seconds and search engines that supply users with millions of links concerning a certain topic only take seconds to generate. People continue to want to get things faster, cheaper and more efficently. I'm not sure that we will ever be able to satisfy this constant desire for more.

One of the main points brought up in class about fiber optic networks was there ability to allow video conferences that would enable people to be more invovled in things like community meetings. This confused me a bit because cant we already do this utilizing the system we have in play now? I have a mac powerbook and I i chat with my parents at home, over 400 miles away, without any problem.

I feel like the fact that the internet now inables anyone with a video camera on there computer to compunicate with others to be quite amazing. I remember when I was little going to Elicote in Disney World and going on the planet earth ride that looks like a giant golf ball from the outside. While on the ride you see a little boy or girl (I dont really remember) saying goodnight to their parent through a video chat technology. I remember thinking, wow wouldnt that be cool. Never actually thinking that this would be possible anytime soon I am shoted and amazed by how easy it has become to do.

Maybe our Internet isnt as fast as others, but we are taking picg strides in new communication technologies and Im fine with that. We don't always need to be the best at everything and I'm sure eventually we will be hooked up to the fiber optic network, but I think right now our country has other things to worry about like our economy, a new president, the job market, a war.... unfortunately the list goes on and on.

Government 2.0

               I was very surprised when I read UltraAyla's post discussing President-Elect Obama's plans of recording his weekly address as a YouTube video that will be posed on his web site Change.gov. This has never been done before and is a great example of how video blogs and the internet in general has become such a big part of our lives. Also, I think this is a great demonstration of how Obama is very connected to the younger generation. One of his main point throughout his campaign for presidency was change and clearly his is changing a few things already

               As I continued to read the responding post to the question posed by UltraAyla, I noticed a lot of people felt that it was unnecessary to do this because most wont even bother watching the videos. However, it is my argument that although most probably wont watch it, some will, even if its only one person. Also, people are much more interested in what is going on with government and the news these days, so maybe people will watch. President Bush's candidacy left a lot of Americans upset with their government and questioning its authenticity. I think having a very open government is exactly what we need in order for Americans to gain back trust in their government. 

              I think the younger generations will be effected the most by this change. Older people don't utilize the internet very much because they didn't grow up with it the way that we did, so it's not an ordinary part of everyday life for them like it is for us. I think this is a great strategy to get younger people more involved in their government. Our generation gets a lot of slack for not being involved and not taking action towards what goes on in this country. By making governmental issues more accessible to us by putting them on a medium that is most used by young people, maybe we will be more involved. Young people don't know what's going on because they would rather watch a dumb reality show about a bunch of idiots then tune into the news. 

            Another advantage to broadcasting his addresses on his web site, is that his words will not be manipulated by a news forums. Channels like Fox are known to be very right winged conservative and often report news from their point of view. In this case, people can watch the videos and make their own judgements and reach their own conclusions about what is going on. 

           In conclusion, I think that what Obama is doing is great. He is continuing to hold true to his words and speeches about change. He truly is taking steps towards a new America, where things are open and transparent. His openness give me great confidence that he will be a good president that will do good things for our country, because he clearly has nothing to hide. GO BARACK! 

     

Net Neutrality A MUST!

According to Wikipedia, network neutrality is when a neutral broadband network is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached and on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonable degraded by other communication streams. Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor, defines network neutrality as, “A network design principle that allows maximally useful public information network that aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.”
Network neutrality is an issue causing a lot of debate. On one side of the debate is the broadband companies who feel that have the right to control what applications and content their subscribers are utilizing on the Internet. By doing this, they can make sure that users are obtaining data from their own sponsors or media interests. On the other side, are people that believe broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.
As we all know money makes the world go round, and certain companies are willing to pay phone and cable companies an extra fee in return for filtering content and favoring certain Web sites and applications. What it means to filter and favor certain web pages means that the content on those cites will load faster work more efficiently and overall work a lot better. While other web pages not favored by these companies will load very slowly or not at all. However, those on the side of non-neutrality argue that with Web sites like Google, the Internet is already bias against smaller competitors because popular cites like Google have a performance advantages.
I can see where both side are coming from in this debate. Broadband providers are right that big companies like Google do have great advantages over their smaller competitors, but at the same time the smaller competitors are not the ones that are going to be able to afford to pay off the phone and cable companies, therefore allowing non-neutrality definitely would not make the internet more equal in any way. It is my opinion that the Internet was created to allow anyone who has access to it to obtain information on whatever they want from wherever they want, and I think that principle should remain. The only reason why companies would be against neutrality when it comes to the Internet are greedy CEO’s looking for more money because apparently they aren’t already rich enough.
More than anything, I think network neutrality should 100% be mandatory in the United States. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia that are not democratic filter out news content on the Internet in order to prevent their citizens from obtaining information in order to suppress them. The US on the other hand is a democracy and although I know that the reason why companies here want to prevent their users from accessing certain information is to lower their competition with other websites that provide the same things and not to suppress us, we still should have the choice to go to do whatever we want.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality November 14th

Gaming.. get your moneys worth!

According to Wikipedia, virtual economies are an emergent economy existing in a virtual persistent world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an Internet game. Linden dollars is the official currency used by gamers exchanging things over the web. There are five different characteristics of virtual properties; rivalry, persistence, interconnectivity, secondary markets and value added by users (Wikipedia). When these qualities exist, virtual economies closely mirror contemporary economies.
When you first think of any of the aspects of virtual world, at least for me, they are viewed as fake, only existing for entertainment purposes. However, virtual economies are very real. The existence of economies in online games makes them more like the “real” world, because it makes them actually effect your real life since one uses “real” money to pay for virtual items. This is made very clear in the virtual game Second Life, because it provides users with Linden dollars to real dollars conversion. By providing users with different aspects of real life in the virtual world, these games are no longer seen as virtual reality, for many people virtual communities are their reality.
Second Life actively encourages players to buy and sell virtual property. According to Robert D. Hof, Second Life told users that if they paid them for virtual land, they could build whatever they wanted on the land and then charges others users Linden dollars in order to do things on the land, and then convert the Linden dollars into real money. This way both the owners of Second Life and its users are profiting from the existence of virtual economies in the game.
Every month, millions of Linden dollars are exchanged for goods and services created my Second Life users. One example of a virtual business a user could create is a bar. The person buys land, builds a bar, and then when different avatars come to the bar in order to socialize and meet others the creator of the bar and owner of the land can charge them for entering the bar and if two users are making good conversation one can possible buy the other a virtual drink in order to indicate that they are interested in the other person.
According to Wikipedia, this presented a problem for Second Life developers when Marc Bragg sued them in 2007. Bragg was kicked out of second life and turned around and filed a law suit against the developers because he had purchased virtual land from them when an active user and when he was banned from the game he no longer had access to property that belonged to him. In the end, Bragg was allowed back into the virtual world of Second Life and developers on longer advertised that purchasing virtual land meant that users owned that property.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, does not utilize the existences of a virtual economy. They actively discourage players to buy and sell virtual property using “real” money. Robert D. Hof thinks this is a result of the games long and interesting story lines, users spend all of their time going from one quest to the next. Adding in the element of a virtual economy would just be too much for this game. It isn't neccassary for this game and users enjoy it just as much without it.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982010.htm November 7, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy November 7, 2008

One web site that I found which enables Buffalo residents to blog about politics is BuffaloPundit. The web site is affiliated with WNYmedia.net. According to their website, the Western New York Media Network is an online micro news outlet which enables regional, political and cultural progress. They do this by providing the people of Western New York with a platform that enables them to advocate for causes they believe in, entertain readers with fun and viral content, inform people about news, events and organizations that are shaping the region in which they live, opinionate on the news and issues of the day, and to unite people with a common cause.

This web site is a great example of how the Internet enables communication between different people that normally probably would not have contact with each other. By broadening communication capabilities, more ideas and knowledge are shared, more relationships are created and more people can benefit from others experiences. I liked the way Brandis Griffin put it, “Weblogs, or blogs, began as online personal journals but have evolved to include editorials and information from journalists and political analysts. Readers and other bloggers can make comments on the posted topic or start a new "thread" of discussion.”

With the 2008 presidential election right around the corner, a very hot topic in the world of blogging is politics. Here is the information for the blog I chose.

Blog’s Title: Be the Change/We are the Change

Blog’s URL: http://wearethechange.wordpress.com/what-is-this-all-about/

Blogger’s Name: Diana

Blogger’s Occupation: Community Organizer at a progressive political and social organization called Citizen Action of NY

Blog’s Date of Birth: The first entry I found was on September 27^th

I tried looking up the website on technorati but didn’t really get any results back, but I’m not sure that I was doing it correctly.

I enjoyed Diana’s blog very much. She is an avid Obama supporter who organized Obama campaign activities as a volunteer in Buffalo. Her blog includes lots of links to other websites with more information about the topics she is discussing, as well as YouTube clips. She seems to be very down to earth and a bit of a comedian. She makes sarcastic remarks about McCain’s camp claiming that the NY Times is not a legitimate news source but how they fully endorse Fox News.

In 2004, Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell conducted a study to try and find out how blogs were effecting politics. Their main question was, “why do blogs sometimes have real political consequences, given the relatively low number of blog readers in the overall population?”(Drezner and Farrell 22). What they found, was that “blogs may frame political debates and create focal points for the media as a whole. Because certain opinion makers within the media take blogs seriously, they can have a much wider impact on politics” (Drezner and Farrell 22).

Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrel July 2004
http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/blogpaperfinal.pdf October 22nd 2008

Brandis Griffin November 2006
http://www.oread.ku.edu/2006/november/20/blogs.shtml October 22nd 2008

Diana
http://wearethechange.wordpress.com/ October 22nd 2008

Web Application Review

The interactive and productive Web site I choose to write my blog about was Google Maps. I had never used this application nor did I know it existed until class on Wednesday when the Internet privacy group did their presentation on it.

The sites URL is http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Google maps is a very user friendly functional internet application. You access it through Googles main homepage, in the left hand corner there are different search options including, Web, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail and more. When you click on maps, it takes you to an image of the United States. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page

Instead of other applications used to get directions like MapQuest for example, Google Maps provides users with 360 degrees of real life images of locations they are planning on visiting. They were able to accomplish this my deploying Google cars to drive all around different parts of the world recording images to store onto the Web sites data base.

I think this site is a great demonstration in how far we have come technologically. For people like me who have no clue how to read a map, this application is very useful and accommodating. However, not everyone is happy about this new development.

The Government believes that Google Maps is like a welcome sign for terrorists. Enabling anyone, possibly terrorists, to see monumental buildings, airports, cities, or marinas for example, from a variety of different points of view, can help them in planning different strategies for an attack against the US. However, it is Google’s response that they are taking pictures of public property and technically I guess there is no law that tells them they can’t do this.

Other people that have a problem with this new site, are the innocent bystanders who just so happen to end up in the pictures that the Google cars take. This might not be such a big deal, unless you leaving your mistresses house, picking your nose, picking a weggy, falling down or doing any other type of embarrassing thing. Google’s response to this was that they would blur the faces of those who sent complaints.

All in all, I think this is a great new way people can benefit from the internet. The way I look at it is, if terrorists are going to attack, shutting down Google Maps is not going to stop whatever horrible plan they are stirring up. And if you get caught in a compromising position, changes are you will probably never even know it’s up there and if you do find out about it and that’s the worst thing going on in your life, consider yourself lucky. I looked up my address and it just so happens that my dad is outside mowing the lawn and my sister is rollerblading , neither one of them know this and even if they did I doubt they would care. The images are so blurry that if I didn’t know them I wouldn’t be able to tell it was them or even know what that person really looked like based on the photo.

According to Cowen & Co., Google Maps is the de facto leader in the space, while its rivals, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, and Live Search Maps have slipped well behind Google. I’m pretty sure that means it’s here to stay.

Citation:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps October 16, 2008
2. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/29/analyst-google-maps-reigns-supreme/ October 16, 2008

Community

A community that I identify myself with that is mediated by the Internet is the social networking site Facebook. Facebook is completely mediated by the Internet. Every interaction that takes place through this social networking cite takes place on the web. However, interactions that take place through using Facebook as the medium, may lead to interaction between people face to face.

Facebook can be used in order to maintain relationships with people you currently don’t see as much as you used to as a result of distance or a busy lifestyle, or in order to develop new relationships.

Prior to going to college, I was never into the whole online social networking ordeal. I never made a MySpace account and laughed at those who did. I found it to be so irrelevant. In my opinion, sites like MySpace only purpose was to give people a confidence boost. It was a competition, who had the most friends, who had the most random people telling them how beautiful they were and who could create the most elaborate homepage. I didn’t see any real benefits to having an account.

When I first created my Facebook account, I did so in order to meet people that would be going to the same college as myself. I’m from Long Island and taking the big step of moving 8 hrs away from home was very scary for me, I figured if I could recognize a few familiar faces from Facebook I would be a little more comfortable.

Facebook allows users to communicate through a multitude of different applications. Facebook has a number of features for users to interact with. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see, Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification that tells a user that they have been poked),Photos, where users can upload albums and photos, and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. A user's Wall is visible to anyone who is able to see that user's profile, which depends on their privacy settings. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only. When I first created my account and was using it primarily as a way of meeting new people, I would often receive messages like “ hey I see we’re both going to Buffalo next year, where are you leaving on campus?” The ability to write on others walls and introduce yourself without the fears of face-to-face interactions enabled users to meet lots of people and create a lot of acquaintance-like relationships.

Now, I used my Facebook account for different purposes. Mainly I use the account to keep in touch with my home friends while I’m at school; the complete opposite reason of why I created the account. Facebook allows me to see what my friends are up to while I’m at school, through photo albums and posts written on their wall. This allows me to remain close to friends that I am separated from by distance, because it gives me the sense of still knowing what’s going on in their lives and enables me to make comments about what their doing or just to say hi so that I am still involved in their life.

Another major aspect of Facebook when creating or maintaining relationships is how quickly and easily it is used. It only takes a few minutes to write on someone’s wall or look at someone’s pictures and comment on them. Also, you can do this while doing a multitude of other things, in contrast sitting down and calling someone and listening to what’s going on in their life, this can be very time consuming. Also, when interacting with someone through a social networking site there is little to no fear of damaging your face. The aspect of rejection is greatly decreased when communicating over the Internet. As a result its easier to meet new people or say things you would normally feel weird saying in person.

Popular social networking sites, including MySpace and Facebook, are changing the human fabric of the Internet.

Citations:
1. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1463 October 16, 2008
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook October 16, 2008

Different Identites on the Internet

According to Judith S. Donath, identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In order to understand an evaluate an interaction one must know the identity of the person they are communicating with. However, the virtual world of internet communities, it is very easy for one to manipulate or lie about who they really are in the physical world.
I have two online identities. One is portrayed through my Facebook profile and account and the other is portrayed through my screen name that I use when communicating with others via instant messaging.

My Facebook account establishes much more of an internet identity then my screen name. My Facebook profile reveals a lot of personally identifiable information. For example, the more basic things it lists are my home town, birthday, and whether or not I’m in a relationship. More specific personal characteristics of my profile are lists of my favorite movies and TV shows, groups I’m involved in, and where I live while at school. There are also visual representations of myself provided by the hundreds of pictures of me that are attached to my profile page. This is not an avatar because it is an actual photograph instead of an icon-sized graphic image. Therefore, it depicts more personal information.

I think people establish their reputations on Facebook by who they have in their “friends”. Just because your Facebook friends with someone doesn’t mean you have ever even met the person or had an type of interaction with them. However, the friends you accept or request on Facebook usually have similar likes or interests as you and portray they type of people you normally do hang out with. Your friend list would not make you identifiable as worthy of trust or not, but it might influence someone when deciding whether or not they want to be your friend. Once you accept someone’s friend request, they can see your Wall. This enables them to see who you are talking to on this forum and who is talking to you. This is another tool that can be used to make judgments about peoples personal identity through their virtual identity.

Having so many pictures of yourself on the internet, free to the hundreds of people you are “friends” with, can be dangerous. I have a friend whose identity was assumed on MySpace. Someone took some of the pictures she had posted in this forum and established a different profile under a different name using her pictures. This was a very annoying and frustrating ordeal for my friend, because the person put the profile on a private, so since my friend was not friends with her alias she had no way of contacting the person to tell them to delete the profile they had created.

I myself don’t have an e-bay account but my dad does. He uses his screen name as his pseudonyms. This does reveal some personal indentify because it includes part of his name. e-bay, unlike Facebook, is a forum that allows users to establish a reputation, which allows others to decide whether or not they consider you to be trust worthy. After you sell something or buy something the person who you interacted with in the exchange is given the opportunity to provide feedback on how the exchange went. A person who has a lot of negative feedback, for example, they did not send a product on time, they mis-advertised the product they were selling, or did not respond to bids made on the product, will likely be marked as untrustworthy and people will not do business with that person. On the other hand, a person with a lot of positive feedback, who sends things quickly and easily, uses pay-pal, and correctly advertises their products, will be marked as a trustworthy person and people will use them without worrying that they have just fallen victim to a scam.

All in all, virtual identities can establish great forums to meet new people, and in the case of e-bay obtain products at a discounted price. However, you must be very careful. Chat rooms and other internet forums can be very dangerous. It is so easy to create a false identity on the internet.. ever see To Catch a Predator?, there are some sick people out there. Internet identities have become so extreme that there are now psychiatric help centers for people who have lost their sense of reality because they are so raped up in their internet identities. BE CAREFUL!

is it possible to get a job after college if you have a Facebook account??!!!

We’ve all heard the horror story about someone not getting a job because of their employer looking up their social networking account and finding pictures or information about them that lead the employer to decide not to hire them despite all of their great credentials. Many people feel that this is a violation of their privacy. Everyone has a different face that they display to others when at work or out with friends, and I don’t think it’s an employer’s business to explore that alternate face. In the case of social networking, I would define internet privacy as the right to express a social identity that is kept separate from your professional identity and does not affect or hinder your hire ability.

According to Danah Boyd, mediated publics have four properties that are unique to them. Two properties that are effecting those looking for jobs are persistence and searchability. Boyd identifies persistence within mediated publics through the idea that what you say sticks around. This means that something I say or do now while utilizing Facebook is still going to be their when I’m 40. This can be very detrimental because an employer may see something that you said or did and decide not to hire you because of it, even if you have grown out of that stage of your life. For example, say I am looking for a job an my employer looks up my Facebook account and comes across a picture of me wasted at a bar and then makes the assumption that I am a drunk who goes out all the time and is going to come to work late and hung over. This isn’t fare because I am a young college student now. Everyone goes out and has a bit too much to drink every now and then, but we are young this is our time to be crazy and make mistakes. This shouldn’t be a reflection of my work ethics when I’m 22 and entering the work force.

Searchability on the hand, is explained by Boyd by the fact that someone can look up your account and find out where your hanging out and other information about you. With the click of the mouse a potential boss can find out where you go when you are not at work, who your friends are, your sexual orientation, and a multitude of other things that are displayed on your profile. If an employer deems this information necessary to know before hiring you, I feel they are greatly violating your privacy. None of this information should be relevant to an employer. That’s what resumes and interviews are for, to demonstrate to employers what they need to know about you when making the decision of whether or not to hire you.

Since I have yet to enter the professions work force I don't have any specific scenario involving myself where an employer looked up information about me on the internet via a social networking site. However, last year after a bunch of girls in my sorority graduated they deleted their Facebook accounts in order to stop employers from using their accounts as references when reviewing their applications. I found this to be pretty ridiculous. Not only because I find this to be an invasion of privacy, but also because social networking sites enable people to stay in touch when divided by distance and without an account the termination of a friendship is much more likely.

According to news feed researcher, in New York written references could become a thing of the past for managers with one in five saying they use social networking sites to research job candidates, resulting in one in three candidates being dismissed after what they discover. This can be very scary because so many people have social networking accounts that they utilize for social and entertainment purposes without taking them too seriously, and now they are resulting in serious repercussions.

Here are some very alarming statistics provided by news feed researcher that I will leave you with:

According to a survey by online job site CareerBuilder.com of 3,169 hiring managers

。 22 % of hiring managers screen potential candidates via social networking profiles, up from 11 % in 2006.

。34% of the managers who do screen candidates on the internet found content that made them drop the candidate.

。41% of hiring managers sited posting information about drinking and drugs as the reason for dropping a candidate.

。40% of concerns were candidates posting provocative or inappropriate photographs or information.

Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”
Knowledge Tree 13, May. http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28

Music Revolution

The first thing that comes to mind for me when referrying to copyrighting infringements on the Internet is Napster and music downloading. When Napster came on it experienced great sucess. Like many new revolutions in the Internet it started from the brilliant ideas of a college student and soon became a huge business. According to Wikipedia, this technology enable people to share MP3 format song files quickly and easily. Unfortunately people in the music industry were not happy and they accused Napster of massive copyright violation. 

The music industry was so upset because Napster enable people to download song for free eliminating the need for people to actually buy their albums and singles. Their argument was that artists and the recording industry owned the music and Napster was giving away their property for free.  When I herd about this I honestly felt like musicians were being very greedy. Most artists make more moeny then doctors and layaers and they were having a tantrum over a 99-cent music download. Meanwhile, most of the users of Nebster were college students who you use and thing to save a buck and their idols were trying to take this away from them. The American heavy metal band Metallica brought the situation to the next level by bring Napster to court. According to FreeAdvice, the Ninth Circuit Court reviewed and uphealth the Norther Disrick Court of California ruling on the injunction, which shut down Napster. The courts ruling stated that Napster was guilty of contributory infringement because the company knew that infinging activities were taking place and the system comtributed to the infinging activities by enabling them. Napster was forced to shut down but it still operates, not with nearly as much popularity and success as before, under a different title that charges its users for the downloads. 

In 1998 the Digital Millenium Copyright Act became a law. Copyright Infringement Lyability Limitation is the one of five titles that make up this law which applies to file-sharing dowloading. The act creates limitations on a liablility of online service providers for copyright infringement when engaging in certain types of activity, such as downloading music. 

Since then, many more different providers have been established to perfrom that same task. Two of the more popular of all the providers are Limewire and DC++ which still enable users to download music and movies, which is the new big thing, for free. However, everyone knows a friend or a friend of a friend that has ben arrested or gotten into some kind of trouble for excessively downloading materal from these serivce providers. If you are one of the unlucky few, you are contacted and sued for an astronomical amount of money. This is the music industry's way of using fear in the hopes of prevending others from accessing their music without paying for it. 

However, I dont think the reason why people use these providers is out of fear of being cought by the goverment, no one think this would actualy happen to them. I download music every day without the feeling that I'm doing some sort of crime. These programs slow down your computer and sometimes give you computer a virus. That is why most stay away from these programs. However, new providers liek YouTube have provided users with the ability to listen pretty much any music track or music video for free without having to the worry of downloading something onto your computer abd without the fear of being prosecuted for it. YouTube accomlishes this through their Copyright Infringement policy. The policy requires all users to confirm that they own the copyright or have permission form the copyright holder to upload content. If a user violates these regulatons the content they upload is immediately removed, and repeated violater are bared from accessing YouTube. 

Com125 Assignment2: You've Got Mail!

I believe one of the biggest revolutions in the Internet is the invention of e-mail. E-mail enabled people to share and exchange information quicker then ever imagined. No longer does one have to rely on the postal system or have to make individual phone calls in order to contact people or to share information. Today, e-mail is the most widely used application on the Internet. 

According to Dave Crocker, in 1971, Tomlinson developed the first ARPANET e-mail application when he updated SNDMSG by adding a program called CPYNET which was capable of copying files over the network. Tomlinson put together the user and host names, "user@host" for example, in order to extend the addressing to the network. he was able to establish the basic transactional model that still defines what e-mail is today. 

However, at the time that these breakthroughs in innovation were taking place, not many people even knew anything about the Internet let alone how to send e-mails. The Internet was strictly a medium used by those scientifically inclined to know about it. In order for e-mail to become more mainstream, like the Internet, it needed to become more user friendly. According to Richard T. Griffiths of Leiden University, the following innovations were developed in order to establish e-mail as the commonly used application that it is today. First, there was a listing of messages, indexed according to subject and date. Next, came the ability to selectively delete messages. Followed by, the ability to receive and send mail from the same program. Previously, there were two different programs needed in order to send and receive e-mails . Next game the ability to forward messages, which automatically included the senders address in the message. Finally, came the ability to file and save messages and  a standard protocol to allow the exchange of messages between programs. 

A single e-mail with important information could now be sent throughout an entire company in seconds. I think e-mail has had both positive and negative effects on the work environment. on one hand e-mail enables everyone within a company to receive and share information very efficiently. This is good because it enables everyone within an organization to have a voice, expressing his or her ideas, inputs and goals for an organization. This generates new innovative ideas and collaborations within a company. If everyone has the ability to make suggestions the company has a better chance of success. On the other hand, e-mail eliminates the need to communicate face-to-face. This medium makes the workplace less personal. One becomes simply a number or an e-mail address instead of an identity with a personality, a face and a name. No longer do you have to actually know your fellow co-workers in order to share ideas with them. I find this to be one negative aspect of the e-mail revolution. I feel that it is important to establish relationships with your co-workers. This enables work to be more enjoyable, and I think it is important for one to look forward to going to work each day. 

Aside from the business environment, e-mail has enabled people to keep in touch that normally might have drifted apart. In the very fast passed lifestyle of the U.S. today, not many people have the time to cal someone to see how life is going for them. However, shooting someone a quick e-mail just so say hello is something one can do while at work and it only takes a few minutes.  

Opps!

I forgot the add the two links in the last post. Like I said I'm very knew at this. Here is the link back to Derek Lackaff's blog. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs. 

A little bit about myself

Hello everyone! I'll start off by introducing myself; my name is Shana. I'm currently a junior majoring in Communication with a minor in Sociology. With a degree in these areas I'm planning on working in the public relations industry. From what I understand, blogging is a big part of what I will be doing when working with clients in the future. I'll have to know what the public is saying about them or their product, and the internet is a fast and easy way to find out. However, I am embarrassed to admit that besides checking my e-mail, UBleanrs, and occasionally my Facebook acount, I rarely utilize the internet. Im hoping this class with aid me in understanding how to better use the web. 

Something that I am currently very interested in is the upcoming presidential election. This will be the first time that I am eligible to vote and I have strong opinions about the issues. I am a strong supporter of Barack Obama. Free health care and getting out of this war are what matter most to me. I'm a total liberal. Also, like most people attending UB I'm a member of the middle class and with the current economy the way it is, I think it's about time we put a Democrat back in office. 

I recently saw Step Brothers, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder. I had high hopes for all of these movies, and only one left me with tears in my eyes while exiting the theater. First off, Tropic Thunder was horrible. I spent half of the movie just wishing someone would pull the fire alarm or something so I didn't have to sit there any longer. The stupid humor they used in the movie was just that, stupid. I enjoyed parts of Pineapple Express but all in all I think the movie was too long. It's a stoner movie, and after three hours everyone was passing out in the theater, which I'm pretty sure is the step where you loose your high. I thought Step Brothers was hilarious. Will Farell finally made up for the embarrassment of that figure skating movie. 

I hope everyone was able to pick up a little understanding of myself. Welcome back to UB I look forward to getting to know a little bit about everyone else. Bye.