MOBILE PHONES

I have a few scattered thoughts about phones and their growing technology:

• I don't like this built-in GPS stuff on phones...it's kind of creepy!
• Remember everyone's first phone was probably a Nokia? And how horribly ancient they are now? And the only game was SNAKE!
• Now we can access the internet via our phone. That kind of blows my mind.
  
• We can also store I think up to 2 GB of stuff on our phones?! They're mini-computers. This is crazy! I have a 1GB card in my phone...and I find it very hard to fill up. Makes me wonder if having so much space on a phone is really necessary, when you could just carry around your iPod as well...
• I don't really know what else they could do to cell phones, but I'm sure it's right around the corner. I am always apprehensive about buying a new cell phone, because it's always the case that a week later, they release another phone twice as good for the same price.
  

And that's what I think about cell phones.


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In light of recent events, my post on P2P was drastically edited. My final paper in this class has been inspired by the events of this past week. RIP OiNK.

OiNK

http://torrentfreak.com/oinkcd-servers-raided-admin-arrested/

;_;

E-Commerce

I remember the day I found out about eBay. Well, not the exact date and time, but you know. It was so small and easy to use and navigate. There were only real sellers and real buyers, and real junk. I like real junk.

Now it's full of companies and stores and crap that I don't want to look at. It's also hard to navigate (harder than it was, at least).

So, I haven't been a fan of the rise of E-Commerce. The only things I buy online are things that I can't get in stores, or are hard to come by - band merchandise, novelty shirts (I'm very particular about these), and music equipment.

I suppose it's good in some ways, but these are things I care not to think about. My initial opinion is that I don't like it. And I bet if I thought more thoroughly, I would still not like it!

On a related note, I did quite enjoy the picture on the Slate article about iTunes:




and since I spend probably at least an hour a day saving funny internet pictures, I feel I must share:




Not the best, but the first one I came across. See you tomorrow!

Good Article

This relates to our talk about Intellectual Property, copyrights, file-sharing, and all that.

But here’s the kicker: Even if the RIAA settles or wins a court judgement, even if the lawsuit isn’t thrown out of court for the frivolous piece of litigation it is, the artists who actually make the music that is being stolen don’t receive one thin dime back from the RIAA. That’s right, the artists who slave for years to make records, pour out their souls into their CDs, and enrich our lives in a myriad of ways don’t actually get any of the money recovered through these ridiculous lawsuits. Not one red cent.

This is why the RIAA = FAIL.

Mark-Up and Encoding, Pt. II

Now I feel a little silly for not understanding such a basic idea. I suppose working kind of backwards - from narrow to broad, XHTML and CSS to Mark-Up - messed me up a bit. I made it harder to understand than it actually was. I do that a lot!

I feel like I would be much better making my own Mark-Up and Encoding than finding it, though. I am still a little uncertain about the physicality of this subject, even after today's exercise. It seems like we talked about half of the subject, and didn't get a chance to go into it further. Or maybe we did get to both parts (now I recall what we were looking at on the screen from that Camilla something-or-other, which I think is the part I thought I was missing), but didn't get a chance to bridge the gap between them. What I'm trying to say is I don't grasp yet how our exercise today would translate into text on a computer.


(In other news...I MET GUSTER)

Mark-Up??

This seems to display my emotions on this topic best:



----------------------------------------------------------

It seems I will be echoing many sentiments if I were to say that the articles we had to read for tomorrow were extremely hard to get through, and I found myself many times glazing over what I was reading without comprehending. Perhaps that's where my confusion about the topic lies, but I would bet that had I been paying full attention, I still wouldn't have been able to wrap my brain around the topics.

So I'll post about this again after we talk about it in class, because then maybe I'll have something remotely intelligent to say.

Intellectual Property

Copyrights are a pain in the butt. They make everything complicated and more difficult to any party involved in a copyright dispute.

This issue has come up many times for me, being a musician. It's always been an issue as to whether or not an ensemble I play with should make more copies of music they've already purchased (most pieces of music actually say that even if you've bought it, you still can't make copies of it), or whether or not we can record our ensemble performing whatever it is we play because many times you aren't really allowed to do that, either. In both of these cases, we do both with only a little bit of guilt. No one really consciously thinks of the harsh consequences. How is the ASCAP going to know?

This problem bleeds into copying music, and also movies or data. CDs and DVDs now are safeguarded with copyright protections (which are easily evaded if you have the right programs). Still, people - myself included - make copies of music and video without really even caring about the consequences. It's so rare to hear of someone being reprimanded for doing this, even though the punishments are pretty well-known.

I can understand the opposite point of view: the creator. Making whatever it is they make is probably how they make their living. But seriously, I really don't take pity on people who can choose whether they should fly to Paris or Rome today, or which car they should buy next.

In Response, Pt. II

Courtesy of Toothpaste for Dinner

P2P IS MY FRIEND AND YOURS

Peer-to-Peer file sharing has come a long way since the 2001 article we were assigned to read. It shows its age by mentioning over and over Napster, a file-sharing client that raised the beginning controversies of Intellectual Property (via the internet) and illegal downloading.

Post edited 10/24/07

Social Networking: Privacy

I've been a member of both MySpace and Facebook for around two years now, and I've never really had an issue with privacy. I've never felt the need to delete things from either profile because of potential employers, and I don't really understand when people do (this is an entirely different post, so I won't get into my opinion on that here).

As far as unwanted friend requests, MySpace makes it fairly easy to discern whether or not the person requesting your "friendship" is actually your friend or not - just go to their profile. In some cases, it's even easier: if their name is SeXyKiTty and their picture is that of a retarded-looking half-clothed girl, odds are they aren't real, and you don't know them. Same with Facebook, only the people who ask to be your friend are real people...and you can just as easily decline their request.

It seems so simple to me to protect your privacy on these kinds of sites. Don't post information on them that you wouldn't want a stranger to see. Edit the options to make your profile friends-only. Ignore people you don't know. Find and use common sense. Etc.