UMW Mashup and Remix

Should we stop the sale of used video games?

2008-12-04T18:35:00.000-08:00

Being able to buy used games is a huge advantage to the middle class every day gamer. Instead of spending 60$ for a new game we could spend 30$ and get that same game used. Or we could buy the game new and sell it back when we are done in order to get some money back to buy another game. The developers aspect of the used game market is however not so positive. They see is as loosing revenues for them in new game sales. Now the Game Industry is trying to use such tactics as post game content and other bonuses that come along with buying the game new instead of buying it used. The question we have to ask ourselves is wether this post realease game content is enough to convince the gaming world to stop buying used games. The one thing the gaming industry overlooks is the hidden revenue they receive from used game sales. Buy making games avaliable for a more affordable price, the game industry gets their titles into the hands of people who might not buy it in the first place. If they like the game then they will be the first ones in line to buy the next one new. These discounted games are also attracting new gamers. This overall benifits the gaming industry.

Harvard team: Let consumers hack abandonware

2008-12-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

As we all know when Digital Rights-based music or any other DRM products shut down, we no longer have access to these products. If we pay for it we should be able to use it as long as we live. This is now becoming a serious problem now that MSN music, Walmart music, Google's video store, and Yahoo music have all shut down and anyone who purchased music from these sources can only play them on one device, if they can play them at all. What if the consumers had the right to bypass these DRM protections once they expire? The team and Harvard is proposing just that! As we all know the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal for us to circumvent DRM, but every three years the Copyright office asks for requests to make exemptions to these laws. This team from Harvard submitted a request that, in the event of DRM failure, users be able to circumvent the DRM protections on the failed software, so they could still use what they payed for. Without this users with any works that have failed DRM would not be able to transfer any of these works to other devices or even re-authenticate them for use on that same device. Say for instance Electronic Arts were to go bankrupt, millions of people would lose the ability to re-install or repair any software purchased from them. If this plan passes then researchers will be able to study the authentication messages flowing back and forth between the software and the DRM systems. This will allow them to learn how DRM works and how we could eventually lawfully circumvent it in the case of a DRM system failure or shutdown. This exemption for researchers has also been added into the plan sent to the Copyright Office for review. Lets hope it works, for our sake and for the sake of our DRM software, music, and games that we payed for.

Remixers, Unlockers, Jailbreakers, Oh My!

2008-12-04T07:17:00.000-08:00

I thought this was an interesting development. EFF submitted two petitions to the copyright office. They are after DMCA exemption of a few specific technology related activities, remixing, unlocking cell phones, and jailbreaking phones such as the iPhone.

The exemption for remixing covers ripping DVDs for remixing purposes. Fair use. Currently, once someone rips a DVD, the DMCA gets angry and jumps the gun by saying that that person broke the law without determining if the use was fair or illegal. The petition is to protect these people and actions so that the creators on websites such as youtube and vidders are still free to create.

Unlocking cell phones is a different subject. Cell phone companies lock their phones so they can only be used with their service and to protect their copyrighted material. So a phone that you got from AT&T won't work if you want to switch to Verizon or Alltel. They do this to discourage people from switching networks and it slows competition between carriers. Thousands of phones, because of this, end up in dumps and landfills because they can't be used with a different carrier. Unlocking these phones would allow for easier recycling.

Jailbreaking is like unlocking, but it applies to phones with applications, like the iPhone. Many iPone owners have already 'jailbroken' their phones so they can recieve apps from places other than the app store that Apple provides. I think I read somewhere that Amazon has made one or a few apps for the iPone..

The cell phone exemption petition would allow people to play with the stuff they bought, 'tinkering' is used in the article. The locks on the devices limit freedom with something you rightfully own because you paid for it.

The Copyright Office is supposed to announce the determinations in October of 2009..

Bye Bye Bratz?

2008-12-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

Bye Bye Bratz?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/shopping_blog/2008/12/mattel-wins-bra.html

U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson ordered for all Bratz products to be removed from warehouses and stores because of copyright infringement. This battle has been going on for a long time between the maker of Barbie, Mattel Inc. and MGA Entertainment Inc. MGA Entertainment Inc. has been growing more and more popular with the Bratz dolls and products, controlling the dolls on market. The final hearing isn’t until February to find out the verdict on those Bratz. The jury in Larson’s courtroom believed that the Bratz dolls were made by a designer who had worked with Mattel Inc. in the past. The designer had worked with Mattel under an exclusivity agreement, not allowing the Barbie/Mattel Inc. designs to leave Mattel Inc. The jury awarded Mattel Inc. $100 million for copyright infringement as well as for breaking the exclusivity contract with Mattel Inc. MGA believes that losing the revenue from the Bratz dolls and products will be very costly for the Van Nuys Company.

Mashups: No SOA required, but keep IT in the loop

2008-12-03T22:47:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1228

The writer of this blog talked about how everybody is doing mashups for their own purposes. He states that it doesn’t take a lot and believes that users should “just do it.” He believes that mashups should be a part of the SOA evolution, moving the SOA forward. Jackbe’s Chris Warner, writing in Fast Company, agreed with the author of this blog. Chris outlined “the five common mistakes to avoid” with mashups. 1) True mashups don’t have anything to do with vendors, so don’t believe it when vendors say they offer mashups. 2) IT needs to establish a strong and secure infrastructure. 3) Mashups can be done without SOA. 4) Mashup reuse should be encouraged. 5) Security issues- secure your mashup files.

Woman sues Tyler Perry for copyright infringement

2008-12-03T22:26:00.001-08:00

Woman sues Tyler Perry for copyright infringement

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/03/AR2008120300676.html

Donna West filed a lawsuit against Tyler Perry for stolen material used for the film, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” She is suing Tyler Perry for copyright infringement in U.S. District Court. She has asked for a jury because she is asking for all profits made from the film for her family. Donna West testified that she developed a script based on her life experiences titled, “Fantasy of a Black Woman.” She starred in the play. It was performed at the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters at the Dallas Convention Center in 1991. Donna West believed that Tyler Perry (or anyone apart from that production) could have seen the play since it was open to the public and replicated it. Tyler Perry’s movie earned about $50 million when it came out in 2005. Jurors watched Tyler Perry’s movie and also listened to a part of the script from West’s play. Tyler Perry’s attorney, Veronica Lewis, told the jury that Perry had prior success to the film and that he was a talented individual who did not need the help from another person. The case will be completed in about a week.

Live, From Carnegie Hall: It's the YouTube Symphony Orchestra

2008-12-03T22:18:00.001-08:00

Live, From Carnegie Hall: It's the YouTube Symphony Orchestra

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/01/AR2008120102921.html

YouTube announced that they will be generating content by launching a symphony orchestra. The YouTube Symphony Orchestra has two main goals. 1) The creation of mash-up performance will come from video submissions. 2) There will be a live performance written by composer Tan Duan at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009 with 150 players selected based on their YouTube submissions. The idea was first brainstormed by two YouTube employees about a year ago. The other people who are contributing to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra will be Michael Tilson Thomas who will conduct the Carnegie Hall performance, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Lang Lang the pianist. Participants who are interested must be older than 14 and cannot be bound by any contracts that wouldn’t allow them to participate in the project. Participants can download the music for “Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica” fromYouTube.com, selecting one of the 26 instruments. Participants who want to participate online can upload their videos of the symphony onto YouTube.com. Participants who want to audition for the live performance can submit their videos following the specified standards by January 28, 2009.

Nokia Comes With (Illegal) Music In Vietnam?

2008-12-03T22:04:00.001-08:00

Nokia Comes With (Illegal) Music In Vietnam?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111201040.html

Recording Association of Vietnam (RIAV) filed a $3 million lawsuit against FPT Telecom and Nokia Vietnam for breaking intellectual property rights from copyright infringement of recorded music. RIAV represents 60 music production companies in Vietnam. It is stated that RIAV was going to file a lawsuit against FPT Telecom for allowing users to share music over the internet through its website, Nhac So, and FPT Telecom’s internet television service. RIAV also filed a lawsuit against Nokia Vietnam for letting the public download 1,000 copyrighted songs from Nhac So. Nokia blamed FPT Telecom when they wrote a letter to RIAV. According to Nokia, FPT admitted that they may not have all the proper rights for the recorded music on their website even though they had told Nokia in the past that they had all the legal rights, allowing them to use the music on their website. RIAV is still filing a lawsuit against Nokia because RIAV believes that Nokia isn’t taking responsibility for their poor actions.

Ravens, NFL did not violate copyright law

2008-12-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

Ravens, NFL did not violate copyright law

http://www.mddailyrecord.com/article.cfm?id=9147&type=UTTM

The artist filed a federal lawsuit over the Baltimore Raven’s original logo, but it has now been dismissed stating that the NFL and other businesses did not violate any copyright laws. Frederick E. Bouchat’s most recent lawsuit against the Raven’s logo for commercial uses for Raven’s home games, highlight films, and online photographs. Judge Marvin J. Garbis stated that a settlement had been reached between Bouchat and The Sun. Bouchat’s lawyer dismissed the lawsuits against the remaining defendants. Bouchat has now sought a “final, permanent injuction” to stop future copyright infringement, wanting to destroy offending materials. The judge agreed with the defendants. The defendants gave a 24 page opinion that displayed the dispute of the logo as well as the history of pro football in Baltimore. The visibility of the Raven’s logo was incidental and not a major component. Bouchat’s lawyer disagreed, believing the Ravens’ actions were the equivalent to “stealing a painting, making a copy of it, and hanging it in a museum as his own work.”

Australian firewall trials start

2008-12-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

In Australia plans are being made to set up a internet filtering program for children. The Program will start out blacklisting certain sites which seems pretty ridiculous because of how many sites could be deemed as a blacklist site but its a start. The 'cyber safety plan' will cost up to $126 million dollars and will take atleast four years to place in to action. People all over are skepticle of how this plan will work. Stephen Conroy will be leading the way and has some doubts of his own, which even increases the amount of skepticism I have for this plan. The only other countries that have similar plans are ones that have free speech as a major issue, for example: China and Saudi Arabia. Does Australia really want to be placed in a group with these countries in terms of civil rights? I doubt it. It seems like theyre willing to do so though. The internet industry says that this plan could slow down internet as well as limit what its users can view. Another issue is if Australia has the technology to create a program or some type of system to filter out these sites with out having to look through the thousands of different sites that could contain some sort of explicit material. We'll see what happens though, nobody besides this teacher in the article seems to be very enthusiastic about this new plan. It would be nice to see australia succeed and create something that the whole world could use.

Google Settles Publishers’ Lawsuit Over Book Offerings

2008-12-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

Google Settles Publishers’ Lawsuit Over Book Offerings

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803611.html

Google, recently, had to settle a couple of lawsuits, accusing Google for copyright infringement. Google said that they would pay $125 million to those who filed the lawsuits, Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. Google was going to spend $34.5 million of the $125 million on establishing a “Book Rights Registry” so that each author was compensated for their works being used. The “Book Rights Registry” would oversee payments to songwriters and musicians for the use of their works. In addition, the registry would give payments to the authors of works who are already in the Google Book Search system. Google argued in the beginning that Google Book Search did not break any copyright infringement laws. Google added that the public wasn’t allowed to read a work from the beginning to the end from the works’ original implementation. The new agreement allows the public to buy books that are out of print but keep their copyrights. Google would pay the registry 63% of any revenue from an author’s works, even advertising on the internet next to the pages of the online book. The settlement still needs to be approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. As of right now, the proposal looks like it’s suppose to be approved by the court. Publishers state that the settlement should be a huge benefit to authors and readers. Under the new terms, colleges and university can pay for access to the titles in Google’s catalog, the public library could access Google’s catalog for free, and people searching from their homes would get limited excerpts.

Analyst: Use Lasers on Pirates (and Everyone Else)

2008-12-03T20:38:00.000-08:00

Doctor James Jay Carafano believes that lasers are the answer to all of our military and piracy problems. This article explains his point of you by showing us different ways lasers could be the easy way out. Any hostile missiles from other countries could be easily shot down by a laser defence system. Carafano thinks that it is necessary for our major government institution buildings to have laser defence systems to protect against the danger of these hostile missiles. He then connects the use of lasers in a military circumstance to a piracy solution. I was a little confused with how this would work...but he said lasers could do the trick! Probably just by shutting down the computer or something, I really wasnt sure. It is interesting though, how much lasers could begin to play a role in our way of life, especially in a foreign relations point of view. Lasers could be the answer to terrorism. Satellites could pick out people or buildings from space and they would disappear...pretty crazy right? Pretty scary right?

Just think about if we were the first country to develop a laser defence system and a laser offense system. The possibilities could be endless, and we would definitely be more of a world power than we are today. The opposite would be true if someone else got hold of that technology...:(

Cue "Barracuda"

2008-12-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

Cue ‘Barracuda’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/12/AR2008101201630.html

Once Sarah Palin finished her speech at the Republican National Convention, “Barracuda” by the band Heart blasted over the loud speakers in honor of Palin’s nickname in high school, “Sarah Barracuda.” It was a big hit with the crowd, but the Heart’s songwriters, Ann and Nancy Wilson, did not agree. The sisters stated that they didn’t believe “Sarah Palin’s views and values in no way represented us as American women” and demanded that the McCain-Palin campaign not play their song. Their publisher and label sent a letter to the campaign to have them stop advertising the McCain-Palin campaign with their song. It is obvious that the main reason why Ann and Nancy Wilson disagree with Palin using their song is because they disagree with Palin’s political views. However, not all artists are like the Wilson sisters. Some artists just don’t want their songs being used at all politically by any candidate or campaign. The author of the article believed that even though all and any artist has the right to their song and the way it is used, they believe that filing a copyright lawsuit to stop the song being used politically is a little too much. The author of the article proposed the question of “Why would we support limiting artists’ legal powers in this way?” The author proposes two reasons. The first reason is because artists make their songs available for from firms via “blanket license.” The blanket licensing system gives artists revenue they would not otherwise obtain by lowering the cost of licensing. This also allows bars, clubs, and restaurants to play artists’ music without fear of costs. By allowing artists to choose which song is allowed to be used for a blanket license, the system has no function. The McCain-Palin campaign continued to use the song, “Barracuda” because they cleared the license with the ASCAP firm. The second reason is because politicians use songs as a way to portray their views of what they stand for to the public. The ability to communicate their political message through the usage of music is a form of speech that should be protected by the First Amendment. In this case, the First Amendment wins because political speech is protected even with the copyright laws. All copyright laws should be respected nevertheless, but artists shouldn’t abuse the laws, like in this case with the campaign. Copyright laws exist so that artists get paid. As long as politicians pay for a blanket license for the use of a song, then there is nothing illegal about that.

U.N. Investigates Electromagnetic Terrorism

2008-12-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

What if your cell phone could give you cancer? We would all be screwed!! Almost everyone has a cell phone nowadays. This article attempts to answer whether cell phones could have negative side affects because of a radiation of some sort. It's conclusion is one of uncertainty. Tests have been conducted but no real mind boggling data has surfaced. Another question the article poses is what if people could use this radiation or supposed raditation as terrorism? When I think of terrorism, the last thing that comes to mind is a cell phone or a microwave. In 1953 the russian government was caught emitting low level radio and micro waves in to the U.S. embassy in moscow. Nobody knew of any health affects that this might have posed, so they suspected that the russians were trying to disrupt communications. This was known as Project Bizarre.

Amanda and Will's project

2008-12-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

Amanda and I made picture photo story about her trip to the Phillipines. A lot of her pictures were pretty cool. Amanda is Philipino so it was pretty cool to see some pictures that expressed her heritage. The music was added to draw the viewer in to the material shown. I thought it worked well with the settings displayed in the story. A lot of her pictures made me want to visit the Phillipines and hopefully the people watching felt the same way. I had fun making it with her.

My video project that I did a week ago

2008-12-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

The video project I did a week ago was a slideshow of airplane photos taken during my journey from Washinton's Reagan National airport to Honolulu via Chicago O'Hare. I love airplanes, and I love taking pictures of them. At the end of the video, to take up space, I included some pics from when my dad took me plane-watching. The background music is "Raiders March", the Indiana Jones theme, which was performed by the wind ensemble at Colonial Forge High School in May of 2008. I played the snare drum part in that piece, which closed my last high school concert. I hope you enjoyed it.

Austrailians protest ISP filerting

2008-12-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Link Here.

This was a very short little blurb about a topic that has appeared on this blog, the Australian Government's plan to filter internet content nation wide. According to this article the Aussies did not like the idea and have decided to stage simultaneous protests across Australia. The filtering of the internet content will slow down speeds across the nation. The filter will also statistically block 10,000 out of 1 million websites incorrectly. Finally the Australians believe that the filtering is a block of free speech.

I'm rooting for the Australian protesters, I could not imagine suddenly having all the content that I go to have to go through a filter first and maybe be blocked due to some mistake.

YouTube comes down hard on porn ads, suggestive content

2008-12-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

As the title states, youtube is determined to decrease the amount of nudity or sexually suggestive content on its site, to preserve the sites integrity. The site will not only delete certain movies with nudity, but also movies with inappropriate clothing that wouldnt normally be worn in public. The site has employed viewers to analyze the material and judge whether it is appropriate. I think it would be a pretty great job to have haha.

The "new guidelines" have yet to be put in place but they will very soon. Most sexually suggestive movies will only demoted and taken off the lists, such as the most viewed or most popular lists that many people look at to see funny or interesting material. Only a few videos a day will be demoted though...This quote optimistically explains what youtube is attempting to do. "Let's work together to ensure that the YouTube community continues to thrive as a positive place for all of us." Good luck with that

Crime and Punishment 2.0: fighting criminals with the 'Net

2008-12-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

This article is about the new crime software that is being created around the world. Its showing the growing importance and recognition of the internet today and how it can help the F.B.I. and the police. Obviously the internet can't catch the perps but it sure can help take information from others who may have witnessed the crime or know people who were involved. The FBI has been taking information from the internet instead of phone calls or conversations for many years. Which brings about the question: Why haven't the police used this so called NEW information? The article says that one commenter of the Boston Globe asked the same thing. "Its comforting to see that the police are discovering the newfangled technology thing called the 'COMPUTER' at last. have they been using pencils and paper all this time? That they are just NOW doing this is PITIFUL." The man has a point.

Other examples justices new found accomplice are all over the world. In london, the police created a google map of crime, so to speak. It basically maps out past crimes and shows certain hotspots for criminal behavior. The Toronto Police have put all their criminal information online where the public can view and actually comment on certain crimes taken place. Whether or not the publics opinion matters to them remains to be seen but it seems like an idea that couldn't hurt.

Sought: Wal-Mart shoppers who trampled NY worker

2008-12-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure everyone has heard, there was a man, Jdimytai Damour, who was trampled to death on black friday at a mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. Now, police are reviewing a surveillance video to try and identify who trampled Damour to death. While criminal charges were possible, it is proving to be difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Flemming, a Nassau County police spokesman. Other workers, and a pregnant woman were trampled when the doors were open as well.

Perhaps the most amazing thing, and what really pisses me off is that when Walmart made an announcement that people had to leave because an employee got killed, people were screaming that they have been in line since the previous morning, and people actually kept stepping over the dead employee in order to keep shopping.

While stores have great deals that are definitely worth lining up for and getting in line early for, there has to be a better system for this to happen. Whether this system is selling tickets, and specific amount of customers that can shop at a time, or something else, there has to be something done to avoid another situation like this.

Symantec releases antivirus just for gamers, but why?

2008-12-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

On November 25, Symantec released Norton antivirus 2009, Gaming Edition. This antivirus is specifically designed to not bother gamers while they are playing a game on their computer. This gamer mode suspends alerts, updates, and other background activities while you are playing your game. When a player goes into full screen mode, the antivirus is automatically enabled, and can also be manually enabled. The vice president of consumer products at Symantec gave the following reason for releasing the game edition: "Gamers are an extremely demanding audience that simply won’t tolerate anything on their system that detracts from gameplay. Norton AntiVirus Gaming Edition keeps gamers protected online and runs perfectly undetected in the background, meaning no interruptions, no pop-ups, and with the same award winning zero-impact performance of our 2009 products."

This release has a lot of people asking for a non-gamer edition. Even non-gamers would like to have updates and background activities suspended when they are in full-screen mode. I personally think that this should be released for more than just gamers, and i don't see why they wouldn't release it, because they would make more of a profit if they did.

Whoops: UK senior citizens targeted for downloading gay porn

2008-12-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

While it is bad, and a little bit embarrassing to be informed that you have been caught downloading music, it is another thing to be told that you have been caught illegally downloading hardcore gay porn. This is exactly what the UK based law firm of Davenport Lyons does. Users are now anxious to get attention for the nature of these letters.

Davenport Lyons acts on behalf of content owners, and are going after copyright infringers, and has recently been in the news for sending letters to users who are operating open Wifi networks, because he says that they are responsible for the illegal actions of the others who are using their open wireless networks.

A 60 year old couple was accused of downloading the film "Army F**kers", which is a film about officers, however the couple claims to have never downloaded it. The couple said "We were offended by the title of the film. We dont do porn-straight or gay- and we cant do downloads. We have to ask our son even to do an iTunes purchase" Many other people have come out too, claiming that they have not downloaded this movie either. With its pre-settlement tactic, it is very similar to a currently used tactic used by the RIAA, attempting to ferret out college students that they believe are guilty of illegally downloading.

While these cases have yet to be closed, it appears that Davenport Lyons is just hoping that some people will feel intimidated, and pay up the fine (roughly $774).

UMW History Remix

2008-11-27T13:32:00.001-08:00

I researched our roots here at Mary Wash dating back to 1908 when the college was first founded, I found some interesting facts and figures. Taking the information from the data I was able to access, I remixed images and facts by using medias like pictures, voice-over recordings, and background music. Our university has come a long way since its first beginnings. If you watch my video, a clear sense of UMW culture is extremely prevalent, even today. Hope you enjoy.

History of Linux

2008-11-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

Link Here.

Any comments?

A Tribute to Michael Jordan

2008-11-25T08:18:00.000-08:00

For my project I did a video tribute to the greatest basketball player that ever lived, Michael Jordan. I used the song Remember the Name by Fort Minor. I wanted to add other songs but all of my slide transitions worked so well with my original song I just let it be. This video covers all of Jordan's life and highlights some of his greatest achievements. Hope you like it!

A Half-Hearted Tribute to OK Go

2008-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

For direct link to video, click entry title.

OK Go is one of those bands I refer to as a "guilty pleasure." I'm slightly embarrassed whenever I'm caught listening to them, but I can't help myself; they're too much fun to listen to. The band's line-up hasn't changed since they came together in 1998 - Damian Kulash (so hot), Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, and Andy Ross.
"Invincible" is the song I chose to use as it is one of my favorites by the band (and Damian Kulash is so hot in this one). What I did in my video was dedicate the first 0:22 to pictures of the band. I tried changing the pictures on beat, and didn't fail too badly. Then I spliced some of their music video into mine, and ended it with my credits. It's half-hearted because I could've been ambitious and done a picture slideshow on beat for the entire song, but that would've taken an eternity.. and I cut off the song halfway through it.
The end! Happy Thanksgiving :)

Dice and Math

2008-11-25T08:06:00.000-08:00

This is my YouTube video project (click the title).

It consists of me rambling on about why we don't convert boring, tedious games into computer games. Or rather that when we do, the simplified games don't have the appeal of the "boring" ones. I recorded myself blabbing, and then covered the audio with pictures and text.

My Video Project

2008-11-25T08:04:00.003-08:00

I made this video as a tribute to the original lineup of my favorite band, Black Sabbath. The original lineup consisted of Tony Iommi doing guitar, Geezer Butler doing bass, Bill Ward doing percussion and finally Ozzy Osbourne doing vocals. In this video I play a few songs samples from the 8 albums that the original lineup did together.

I used "Adobe Flash Professional CS3" to create the video, and "Audacity" to cut songs into 20 second clips. I then exported the video into AVI formate and added the sound via "Windows Movie Maker". I finally exported the video into WMV format (took around 2.5 hours) and uploaded it on to Youtube.

I added the video from Black Sabbath's "Never Say Die Live 1978" DVD, and the photos from Google.

InterVarsity at UMW

2008-11-25T08:04:00.002-08:00

This is a video created by Jordan Morsberger and myself about InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. This is only about the chapter here at UMW (InterVarsity is a nationwide club that has chapters in most universities). We created it to give a brief overview of what we do as a group and what are goals are. The music we used ranges from an old classic Christian song (Jesus Freak by dc Talk) to more modern songs like Ragged Wood by the Fleet Foxes and You are my Joy by the David Crowder band.

JumpStyle Video

2008-11-25T08:04:00.001-08:00

My video project has changed for the second time. Instead of my original 2 ideas, decided to make my video about Jumpstyle dancing, something that arose in 1997 in Belgium. It quickly spread around Europe to Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Americans picked up Jumpstyle rather recently, one guy known as Gold Inferno(on the internet) actually doing a Jumpstyle routine for the show 'So You Think You Can Dance'.

Will edit into a longer post..

UMW Boxing!

2008-11-25T08:03:00.001-08:00

I created this video as a promotional device for the University of Mary Washington Boxing Team. I included an upbeat audio file and used videos from our practices to show the Boxing Team in action! The program used was Windows Movie Maker.

Red Sox History Video

2008-11-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

In my youtube video project, i described the history of the Boston Red Sox. The video is less than 5 minutes, and goes all the way back to the beginning of the Red Sox, and an over view of the events leading up to 2007.

Apple "upgrades" the new Mac Book

2008-11-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

It seems as though Apple is going down the path of DRM more and more these days. According to news reports, the next generation of Mac Books will "feature" more digital rights management, this time in the form of the HDTV screen adaptor. The new port on the computer will require an authentication from any screen the computer is being hooked up to.

Basically any video media file that has been flagged by a movie studio, that has been purchased on an online store such as iTunes, will prevent the viewing of the material on the connected screen. Never mind that with DRM content the provider reserves the right to rescind the rights to the customer at ay time, and never mind that, this punishes those users who have gone through the legal vectors to purchase movies and music. This is simply another example of the scared established media trying to lockdown what it already has in fear of up and comming technologies that will inevitably overtake them.

Are we the dumbest generation of them all?

2008-11-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

After watching the video of “The Dumbest Generation” I became a little upset. Our generation has been degraded based on our internet use and its impact on our society. In support of our generation the MacArthur Foundation has finally completed their research. The foundation conducted over 5,000 observation hours, nearly 700 interviews (both individual and focus groups), diary studies, 10,000 social networking profiles, and more. Overall, their conclusion was that, “at worst, the Internet generally enables the same old social interactions in a new medium; at its best, however, it enables them to participate in something close to a meritocracy, where their age isn't a concern.”

The study was broken down into two different categories: normal social interactions and focused internet socializing.

Over the year’s texting, emailing, and chatting have become the online norms. Our generation has grown up and has been very fluent in using the internet. To elaborate on the author’s first point, kids today use the internet as an additional feature to stay in contact. It has also been shown that the majority of kids are using these social networking sites as a means of continuing their existing relationships. Thanks to the technology boom, you are always able to be in contact with your friends.

The internet has also been used to narrow a child’s interest into a specific niche. "Online groups enable youth to connect to peers who share specialized and niche interests of various kinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing, video editing, or other artistic endeavors," the report notes. This goes along with the long tail theory we learned a couple weeks ago. If you are not looking for a mainstream interest, then the internet is the place to find a specific topic not discussed on the front page of a website. These specialized sites also allow the child to distribute their work online and gain experience and reputation.

In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social behavior. Though someone may just be messing around it is said that they are learning new forms of technical and media literacy. Children are even able to sharpen their typing skills just by writing an email.

With these new forms of online socializing parents have no need to worry, but in the same sense they should also attempt to monitor their young ones. Parents can aide their children finding their specialized interests and make sure that they are age appropriate.

Growing up in the digital age has been a blessing. You are able to attain information at much quicker rates than having to go to the library and rent countless numbers of books. I feel that as long as the parents play a role in helping to balance their child’s “online time” with other forms of recreational learning there should not be a problem. It will be interesting to see what forms of communication the next generation will use.

Link to the MacArthur Foundation report http://www.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7BB0386CE3-8B29-4162-8098-E466FB856794%7D/DML_ETHNOG_WHITEPAPER.PDF

Judge Awards $873M Fine for Spamming Facebook

2008-11-24T16:28:00.000-08:00

Just recently an $873 million fine was given to a Canadian who sent approximately four million spam messages to Facebook users. The man guilty, Adam Guerbez, obtained login information via phising and other third parties and spammed users' walls and inboxes with a plethora of advertisements (everything from male enhancement drugs and advertisements for marijuana). Adam Guerbez owns a company called "Atlantic Blue Capital", which was involved in the spamming, and is also facing charges. Bots (which were created and controlled by Guerbez) signed into the hacked accounts and sent the spam messages to the hacked users' friends. Regarding the nature of the crime, Facebook stated: "The voluminous and illicit nature of defendants' advertisements has tainted the Facebook experience for affected Facebook users". Many of the messages were decieving at first sight and were written in a manner that friends would write to eachother.

Facebook sued Guerbez under the CAN-SPAM act of Canada (the CAN-SPAM act has been active since 2004) for a grand total of $837M. In the CAN-SPAM system, one can be sued for a total of $11,000 per each individual violation (but in this case, the fines were doubled due to "aggravated circumstances"). Guerbez has been oficially banend from Facebook, forbidden to access the page or even ask people to acess the page on his behalf. According to the CAN-SPAM act, businesses that send unsolicited emails must identify the messages as advertisements, followed by a link that users can click to unsuscribe from receiving messages (similarly to when you unsuscribe to a mailing list). I personally believe that $873 million is way overboard for spamming, but it sure will make people think twice before they decide to mess with Facebook. Facebook should learn from the mistake and find ways to minimize phishing, perhaps creating a personalized security code that appears on your computer when you sign in (similarly to what Yahoo mail uses).

Top apps for desktop customization

2008-11-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

Link Here

Just a little blog I found of a top 5 for custom desktop applications.

The post has a top five list and description of applications that are used to enhance or customize your desktop. And when your mashing up and remixing stuff you like to have your interface to your liking and the way to do that might be through one of these applications.

The first application is: Samurize
This application lets you have text files displayed on your desktop in many different customizable ways

The second application is: RocketDock
RocketDock basically brings a Mac OS x view to windows with a lower tray that looks just like Mac.

The third application is: Rainmeter
Rainmeter is very similar to Samurize, each application can do just about the same thing. However each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

The fourth application is: Emerge Desktop
Emerge is a way of completely replacing your windows taks bar, start bar, and right click menu's.
It allows for you to customize those features to however you like. It allows such things as live thumbnails of windows when they are minimized.

The fifth and final application is: AutoHotKey
AutoHotKey is a somewhat complicated hot key assigner for windows. It lets you set up different key combinations to do different things such as open applicaitons. This particular program probably has the highest learning curve of this list because of it is completely command line based, there is no graphic interface for point and click configuring.

Coupon Hacker

2008-11-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a copyright infringement which we don't hear about much: coupons. It just goes to show how many things are out there we don't even think of as holding potential for illegal copyright acts. In late 2007, John Stottlemire posted instructions on the website, tenbucks.com, describing the process of hacking the digital coupon system. By doing this, he enabled thousands of viewers to illegally print off more than the intended "one per customer" digital coupon. Suddenly, consumers were able to print off a number of coupons with no limitations. By offering these limitless coupons found on couponsinc.com, the company filed a lawsuit against Stottlemire upon their knowledge of Stottlemire's illegal actions. The company claimed that Stottlemire's actions violated the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). However, Stottlemire argued that it wasn't his fault that there were flaws in coupon's software.

The case went back and forth for nearly a year. Eventually, as of November, 2008, the lawsuit was dropped, the case was going nowhere. A proud Stottlemire claimed, "Without being represented by an attorney, I defended myself in federal court against a company who solicited the services of two separate law firms." Later he also added, and in my opinion, I kicked their ass. By refusing to succumb to their bullying tactics, I continued to assert my innocence and fought the claims Coupons Inc. filed against me."

As an outside opinion, what Stottlemire did was technically wrong. In honesty, it's interesting how he got away so easily disregarding the fact that the case dragged on throughout an entire year. If companies and internet websites really care that much about their products and available resources to the public, they should be well aware of the capabilities of others to hack before they're so upset and amazed when they find out somebody has found the achilles heel. We all know, and in fact it has been brought up before, that it's a fact that there will always be somebody out there to break the codes and hack all there is, but the most importance lies in the ability for companies to keep up with its consumers. Instead of trying to change the hackers, change your software.

Cooking Mama Repsonds to PETA

2008-11-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

Personally, I think its stupid for PETA to attack a video game, especially something as harmless as Cooking Mama. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and have had tendencies to cause a lot of trouble. As an equestrian rider, I've heard everything from them, how the equipment such as bits, spurs, and crops/whips are cruel and inhumane. I see why it isn't completely unreasonable for them to say that kind of stuff. I'm sure most of the PETA members have never sat on a horse in their life, let alone really know how the equipment functions. Regardless, it seems a little more acceptable for them to attack the sport of equestrian riding than a cooking game.

Cooking Mama is a simple little game for the Nintendo Wii, and a version has been released on the Nintendo DS. Its about Mama, who really just wants to bring people together and make them happy by feeding them. You cook the recipes the game gives you and earn points. For heaven's sake, its rated E.

This article irritated me when I read it, actually. PETA released a flash game that essentially attacks Cooking Mama and how she cooks with meat because they must all be vegetarian activists or something. The game on the PETA website:

http://www.peta.org/cooking-mama/index.asp?c=pcmgb08 "Mama Kills Animals"

is centered around making a Thanksgiving dinner. I actually played it for the sake of research and it was sort of fun, if a little twisted. The game has you pluck and gut a dead turkey, then prepare it in a pretty grotesque manner for dinner. The object is to get the 'Meaner Than Mama' score after each segment of the game. PETA presents facts throughout and once you complete the 'Meaner than Mama' phase, you unlock an animal friendly phase where you make a turkey out of tofu.

The new Cooking Mama game should make PETA pretty happy. It shipped this week and is called Cooking Mama: World Kitchen. At least half of the 51 recipes featured on the game are vegetarian dishes so PETA can't complain. They even threw in a dog as a companion to represent that Mama is against the inhumane and cruel treatment of animals. Of course its obvious Mama isn't a vegetarian, and there's no reason that she should be.

I think its silly that they are going to attack a harmless cooking game for using meat in their recipes, when I haven't heard of them complaining too much about movies or even more graphic games where you actually slaughter the animals. There's PLENTY of games out there where you kill animals. Anyone out there played Tomb Raider?

PETA was just out of line on this one, I think.

Review -- "French court green lights lawsuits against P2P vendors"

2008-11-18T19:48:00.000-08:00

For direct link to article, click entry title.

All I've written about so far concerning P2P is its current events in the United States. This article takes a look into what's happening on the other side of the pond, namely France. Here in the 'States, the RIAA randomly seeks and finds P2P pirates, and more-or-less makes an "example" of said defendant by charging him/her an obscene amount of money. Le Societe civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), the French RIAA equivalent, chose to prosecute the 4 big names in P2P software (Limewire, Morpheus, Shareaza, Vuze) rather than their individual users, with the permission of the Parisian Tribunal de Grande Instance (which I assume is their judicial system). The article says this is because the SPPF can't target most of their P2P-software users directly, which makes me wonder if that's also the case with the RIAA except they don't mind going a little out of their way to be sadistic (I wouldn't be surprised?).
Apparently, French fair use laws regarding private copying are a lot more liberal than the ones in the United States. Such is life (or c'est la vie). However, as a means of balance, blank media (e.g.: CD-Rs, DVD-Rs) in France are much more expensive. As I've mentioned in my previous entry, the DMCA and its anti-circumvention and take down notice components provides intermediaries with some degree of immunity if they follow the 2 said guidelines. There is an almost parallel provision in the DRM called the DADVSI that which is what the SPPF hopes to utilize as grounds for prosecuting the mentioned P2P-software creators.
The case was brought forth by the SPPF to the French judicial system in 2007, and originally filed suit only against 3 out of the current 4 software creators; Limewire was added to the unhappy bunch later in the year. The reason why it took so long for the hearing to proceed was that the French courts were unsure of their precedence and their authoritative powers in this matter; as the French SPPF was taking to court software makers of foreign nations. Obviously, in the end, the court concluded they had the proper jurisdiction to stand over this legal proceeding. If the SPPF wins its case against the 4 P2P-software programs, the general parameters of the criminals' sentence is up to €300,000 and up to 3 years of community soap. Honestly, I don't think the potential penalties are nearly as bad in relation to the ones individuals recieve by the courts/RIAA in the US.
Apparently, there was a famous 2005 Supreme Court decision for a similar case in our fine country, which they failed to mention until the very end of the article, and now I am slightly embarrassed. If you want to read more about it ...

I wish my opinion about all of this wouldn't change on a weekly basis -- AKA whenever I write a new blog entry. I don't even know what to think about P2P or the DMCA or the RIAA anymore. It's just a mess. What a disaster. I hate being wishy-washy.

A link to your profile....on your clothes

2008-11-18T08:26:00.000-08:00

A clothing company based online in the Netherlands has clothing and apparel you can buy with a car code of sorts in a logo on the clothing. Taking a picture of this barcode with a phone equiped with the correct application software will immediately take the picture taker to the facebook, myspace, or other online profile. This type of activity was also recently featured in a new episode of CSI Miami. This goes to show you that what some people view as futuristic and new, is most likely being developed somewhere in the world. Back to the main point. I think this technology is pretty sad. it proves the point of peoples laziness and want of instant information. I dont know about you but i do not want to live in a socity where a majority of people would rather meet over the internet, when the person you want to meet is in close enough of a distance to take a picture of them with a cell phone. I dont want to live in a place where it becomes awkward to meet new people and get to know them in person. that is a essential part of living life and growing as a person

Why Apple wont allow adobe flash on iphone

2008-11-18T07:41:00.001-08:00

I just found this article on Wired and it seems to make alot of scence. It is stated that allowing adobe flash on the iphone would violate the terms of service. If it were to happen, it would be the only application for the iphone not spesificaly made by apple, and that couldnt happen beacuse apple has to control everything, despite the fact that over 98 percent of desktops support adobe flash. Also, customers of the iphone have supported the idea of putting flash on the iphone. On the otherhand, Flash is capable of running its own applictations, so it could be back door for other companies to get their software on the iphone. I agree with the consumers on this one. i think adobe falsh should be allowed on the iphone. Doing this would completely open up the iphone to the full extent of the internet, including streaming videos and flash games. Apple is being greedy and selfish by not giving its coustomers what it wants. Apple also refused to comment on the situation

RIAA Wins, Campuses Lose as Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Network Filtering Law

2008-11-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

I hope I understood this article correctly. A new law in Tenessee states:

Each public and private institution of higher education in the state that has student residential computer networks shall:
[...]
[R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources, if such institution receives fifty (50) or more legally valid notices of infringement as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 within the preceding year.

Its a ridiculous law that basically says if enough valid copywrite infringements are found on campus internet networks then the school is required to take measures to attempt to elimiate it. Schools are being forced to spend nearly 10 million dollars on equipment, staff, and software, and then recurring costs around 1.5 million dollars. The money is going directly to the RIAA and not to any of the artists or record labels that the RIAA claims to represent.

The money is being wasted on systems that aren't going to work instead of being put towards perhaps legalizing file sharing and other acts that for some unknown reason to us, are illegal. These systems won't work because it is just as easy for students to swap CDs or flash drives hand-to-hand as it is to share files on the internet. And as always, there is always someone who finds a way to beat the system.

Instead of giving in to the RIAAs silly law proposals, other schools that are being targeted should really just ignore it instead of giving up and filtering the network. Network filtering hinders progress and because of the concetration and focus spent on that, there is less wiggle room for learning and teaching and in general, academic freedom. This article also urges universities to band together and create a collective licencing proposal in order to protect campus communities.

Chinese Pirates Crack Blu-Ray DRM

2008-11-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

((The title is the link))

Piracy of movies isn't anything new. Its been happening globally for years. However, China has a reputation for pirating movies and exporting them internationally. They did it with DVDs, and now Chinese pirates have taken up selling Blu-Ray 'Mini-mes'.

The pirates have cracked the DRM encryption in the Blu-ray disks, then re-encode the files in an HD format which has a lower quality than actual Blu-Ray, but is still looming somewhere above a DVD format. However, because the file type has been re-encoded after being ripped off the Blu-ray disk, its smaller and can fit on a traditional DVD disk, making them much cheaper to mass produce. These disks have been outfitted with fake cases and holograms to appear legit and are sold to unsuspecting customers. Although the people who buy these movies are aware that they are pirated copies, and therefore illegal, what they don't know is that they aren't getting the Blu-ray quality they think they're paying a whopping $7 for. Real Blu-rays are sold at prices of $30 upwards.

Blu-ray has already faced serious problems with a failing economy and the extremely pricey movies and equipment in which to play them. Blu-ray players and PS3s are all very expensive machines, and the media that they play is equally as expensive. These machines are so pricey because they cost a lot of money to make, and it costs a lot of money to make Blu-ray disks because of the vaster memory space than a simple DVD. Because of these factors, most movie customers are sticking with the old school DVDs and DVDplayers because they aren't so taxing on customers' bank accounts.

The movie industry is very worried at this point, especially with most of the people buying these pirated movies being fooled by the lower quality of the movie. More people would spring at the chance to buy a pirated film that is less than half the store price, but again, are completely oblivious that they aren't getting everything that they thought they were buying.

This threat to the movie industry is most likely growing, especially from prior knowledge based on what we've seen from China in the past. Chinese pirates will jump at the chance to enterprise, no matter what the product is.

Actually, there was a raid on a warehouse involved in the fake Blu-ray movies. There were over 800 disks dressed to look real. This was the first seizure of those types of disks in China, but I'm sure that its only a small part of the industry that is making them.

Five Gadgets That Were Killed by the Cellphone

2008-11-17T16:16:00.000-08:00

I found an article on Wired discussing the gadgets that the cellphone has incorporated as one of it's features - thus eliminating demand for that gadget. The first gadget that the cellphone has 'killed' is the PDA. The PDA (an acronym for "Personal Digital Assistant") was originally used to store contact information and act as a calender. Many modern cellphones now have features which give the users the ability to set reminders (you can send messages to yourself at a certain time of a certain day), which eliminated the need for a completely seperate device containing a calender - and in practically every cellphone you can add additional information to each contact (such as alternate numbers, emails, photos, fax numbers, adress, and so on) - Thus eliminating the need for a seperate contact list. The incorporation of these two features into the cellphone made PDAs completely obsolete.

The second gadget that was 'killed' by the cellphone is the camera. It is stated that cellphones do not eliminate the demand for digital cameras, but simply replaces the lower end models. Cell phone cameras can get a good amount of Megapixels (I've personally seen 5 MP at best). The best aspect of having a digital camera built in to your phone is convenience. A phone camera is something you always have with you, and 'Wired' quotes the famous saying: "The best camera is the one you have with you." - you really never know when your going to need your camera handy! So, the cellphone hasn't quite killed digital cameras yet - and I am guessing will never truly be able to completely do. Even when camera phones get as high as 10 MP (at the rate they are advancing - im guessing in the very near future), there will always be something bigger and better on the market for professional use. I do think that in the future, cell phones will be able to replace cameras for common use - but the market will always exist for professional and upper scale use.

The third device killed by the cellphone is the UMPC (The Ultra Mobile PC). Before reading this article, I had never heard of a UMPC - and 'Wired' calls it a failed project. The UMPC was pretty much just a tiny mobile computer that looks somewhat like a portable video game console - in the following link is a photo: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/wibrain-umpc-b1.jpg. The reason why it failed was due to it's unreasonable prices, terrible battery life and tiny *practically unusable* keyboard. The price is almost triple that of a regular laptop. The cellphone practically is a UMPC these days - if you look at the Blackberry and Iphone - you are able to surf the web, add applications, store files, and so on. Phones are already becoming mini computers and are continuing to advance at a fast rate. This can be tied in to what 'Wired' thinks the cellphone's next victim is - the Laptop.

The third gadget that was killed by the cellphone is the old fashioned wired phones. Land line phones are becoming much less popular - the main reason for that being is the cellphone is always with you - in the house or outside. Another huge plus is due to the fact that your contacts are all stored in one place - 'Wired' makes the point that when you do dial a number with your land line, theres a big chance that you will be typing it in from a number that is already stored in your contact. The main reason why people do keep normal telephones around are for emergencies (just in case an emergency occours and your cell phone is out of battery). Another reason why it is nice to keep an old fashioned telephone around is so that you always have an alternate number - there are some people you don't want to hear at while out of the house working. The telephone has been criticized as not keeping up with technology.

The last gadget that has been replaced by the cellphone is: Mp3 players. Today's cellphones almost always include an mp3 player. It is predicted by 'Wired' that in the near future, Mp3 players will become obsolete. I disagree - many times it is nice to simply upgrade your mp3 player and having to change and get used to a new phone each time you want an upgraded mp3 player would be a huge inconvenience. Until a phone comes along with an mp3 with at160 gigs, I don't think the mp3 player will die out. It would be great if you could just get a phone with the ability to simply change memory cards - so you could transition from 80 gigs to 160 gigs without actually changing phones. I think that the cellphone will be able to kill the mp3 player - but its going to take a while. I used a Sony Ericsson mp3 phone and didn't have a good experience with it at all (took way too much time to transfer files from the computer to the phone - literally consumed about an hour each time, I was also unsatisfied with the memory - I could only get up to 2 gigs on it, and finally major issues with freezing. It will take alot of improvement and convincing before I ever invest in a specialized mp3 cell phone again.

Cory Doctorow on "Culture"

2008-11-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Patrick’s previous post pertaining to this article led me to this one by Cory Doctorow.

In that last article, Cory makes an interesting statement. He says that copyright was never a big deal (or at least it was much less of a deal) before the internet came into being. People copied, edited, and recreated literature, arts and music without any fear of retribution, or indeed any knowledge that they were doing something wrong. That’s not copyright infringement, says Doctorow; it’s culture. He says that with the birth of the internet, two things happened: one, law enforcement starting cracking down on copyright; two, copying flourished.

Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant.

It’s easy and straightforward to track, because everything is recorded, and yet there is simply so much of it going on that it’s impossible to classify some of it as illegal and the rest as not. What of it is “culture” and what is piracy? Is there really a difference? Cory Doctorow’s view of “culture” is an interesting one, and one that I at least partially share. He is smart in using the word “culture”, because it’s a very positive-sounding one, and culture is something that sets us apart as humans; everyone agrees that culture is good, that we need it to thrive.

The only point of disagreement is on the definition of culture. What defines that good stuff that gives quality to life? Music. Art. Literature. More generally, it is the Arts. We need to use our creative minds, or we are no more than animals, quarreling amongst ourselves for territory and food. Cory Doctorow says that the only way to keep our minds stimulated in this digital age is through copying; sharing our creative works with others. He might just be right.

Unlicensed Stories reel in Internet Readers

2008-11-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

Have you ever read a New York Times article neither from their website nor from their actual newspaper? On average, browsing of ”unauthorized online copies” of articles is nearly 1.5 times larger than the readership of their own web sites, according to a study released. It’s estimated that the average web publisher could make more than $150,000 in additional revenue by selling ads alongside their unlicensed material. What is all comes down to is do you get in trouble for reading an online copyrighted article on a website not approved by the author?

Attributor Corp, the online copyright cop, was the first to flag the problem. Attributor is known for creating software and patrolling the internet for copyright violations. Attributor conducted the study over two months and reviewed over 30 billion web pages. The company currently is employed by the Associated Press, Reuters, and The Financial Times.

It’s estimated that for every 1,000 pages of unauthorized material advertisers will pay $1 to those sites who publish articles not owned by the copyright owner. The problem that these newspapers are facing is the fact that internet ads cost a fraction of what print ads cost.

No action has been taken by the newspaper companies yet. However this problem has cause double digit percentage losses in their revenue and has lead to thousands of employees losing their jobs. The idea of taking other peoples work, calling it your own, and making money off of it, is just not fair.

Attributor believes that if swift action is taken then they would be able to put about 1 million dollars in revenue back into the pockets of companies that deserve the money. Attributor has not yet released what the punishment will be for those who have violated the law. I personally think it is just plain wrong to profit from somebody else’s work. To know that because of your greedy instincts you put somebody else out of work is just not right.

New spin on Copyright and Culture

2008-11-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

Link: here.

This article adds a new idea to the whole copyright affecting culture concept.
Sanchez talks about how Corey Doctorow says that people want more culture, like books, music, and movies just for the shared experience with other people, or "something to talk about around the water cooler". But Sanchez then adds that culture might be a bit deeper than that.

He says that the demand for culture is a result of the culture from the past. In other words, people want new things because of things that they already know they like having been exposed to it already. For example, someone who likes rock music and wants to buy more knows that they like the music because they have already heard it and they know that they like it.

Sanchez goes on further to say that if this kind of trend in culture is true then it is impossible to predict what the market / culture would look like in a future free-culture. He says that if everything became free with no consequences of pirating then blockbuster hits would decease because there would be now profit in making them. Then other mash-ups , remixes, and homebrews could emerge as the new popular thing.

The idea is interesting. If all piracy laws on copyrights were to vanish then in a few generations (after the people that remembered the blockbuster and expensive content have gone) people will want content that they are exposed to which will be homebrews and remixes. But maybe some form of homebrew may be more popular than another and that one will start to get more attention than the rest and someone may find a way to make money off of it thus starting the cycle all over again; with the the most popular type of content being the one that is most readily pushed upon consumers. So maybe the long tail effect is a never ending one.

Video game sales support long tail theory

2008-11-13T11:13:00.001-08:00

Link: Here.

This article was relatively short but exposed an interesting trend in video game sales around the world compared to the US. Any game in the top five list is on the top five because of US sales. In other words, the top games sold are on top because of their US sales and not because they are well like by the world.

So if Americans like a game (a lot) then that game will be a top seller around the world, whether or not the rest of the world find the game to be as highly rated as we do.

What great, not so main-stream, games is the US missing by only supporting the most popular? There are thousands of games created and put on shelves yearly but only a handful reach the entire market and the rest of them are never discovered by the people that might just like them.

There are companies out there though that allow their customers to play old or not so popular games whenever they want. Companies like GameTap.com or GameFly.com; both allow you to choose any game from a very large database of games and play them (by either streaming them with GameTap or having them mailed to you with GameFly).

Social Video Viewing

2008-11-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wanted to comment on a television show while watching it in real time? If you feel that talking to your friends the next day about a show is not enough, then there is finally a solution for you. The idea is “social networking video viewing” sites. I don’t even know if there is a proper name for these sites yet. What these sites allow you do is basically what the title states, which is to comment on the current, show that you are watching. To add a little flavor to the game, these website award points for comical or even crude comments. One of these games, called Backchannel, allows its viewers to even throw animated tomatoes onto the screen.

In today’s society “social viewing” has a lot of potential. “With increasing broadband penetration, online video is in the midst of a boom: According to a May report, Americans watched 12 billion videos across sites like Hulu and YouTube even as TV's numbers continue to decline. Meanwhile, online communities like Flickr and Facebook continue to snowball in size and popularity.”

Even though “social video viewing” is free, I am sure over time the companies who run these sites will find a way to charge their customers. They could possibly make the customers pay if they wanted to leave an audio or video response.

Some example of these video viewing sites include: CBS Social Viewing Rooms, Fan Pages, The Watercooler, and Lycos Cinema. Fan Pages, which is offered by Comcast, allows its fans to assemble and debate upon upcoming plots or who their favorite characters are. The Watercooler brings together fans of sports and entertainment communities. The Watercooler currently has 25 million subscribers. Lycos Cinema allows viewers to chat with friends while watching their desired movie.

Although “social video viewing” has not taken off, it has the potential to become very popular. Over the years television ratings have declined while the public has begun to watch their favorite TV shows online. Instead of going out to the theatre, you can just go to your computer to see your favorite movie. For those who are lazy and social (hard to imagine you can be both) social video networking just made your life a whole lot better. This idea combines AIM with watching online television. You also receive imaginary points based on your comments toward the show.

As someone who is not an avid social networker I find “social video networking” kind of useless in the sense that I would rather leave the two ideas separate. I would rather watch my favorite show and then have an intellectual discussion in real life with my real friends. I am not trying to bash “social video networking” because I am sure that when I get bored enough, I could see myself giving these sites a try. Although I like the idea behind these sites, it seems like there was not that much creativity put into the idea before the final product came out. The creator simply put two popular ideas together (social networking and online video viewing) to make “social video viewing,”

I also linked here some of the sites mentioned in my article:
CBS Social Viewing Rooms: http://www.cbs.com/socialroom/
Fan Pages: https://www.plaxo.com/signin?t=corp&r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plaxo.com%2Ffanpages
The Watercooler: http://www.watercooler-inc.com/
The Lycos Cinema: http://cinema.lycos.com/

Review -- "10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web"

2008-11-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

For direct link to article, click entry title.

This article was a complete 180-degree turnaround from all the smack-talk that usually revolves around the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). What was most surprising was that I found myself not disagreeing with most of the article's points regarding the fact that I first approached it with more than a few grains of salt. Anyway, I think it was written almost as a celebration of its 10-year anniversary since its passing into legislation.

The explosion of numerous e-commerce websites (e.g.: eBay), media and file share sources (e.g.: YouTube, purevolume), online social networks (e.g.: MySpace, Facebook), and blogs (e.g.: Blogger, Xanga, Wordpress, LiveJournal, Blogspot.. you get the idea) can be widely attributed to the enaction of the DMCA. It's pointed out in the article that before the DMCA and all it's strings concerning the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and DRM (Digital Rights Management), they wasn't really any need for these free, open-source, file-sharing, copyright-infringement-sidestepping innovations. In 1998, ten years ago, even the idea of YouTube or Facebook had yet to have been conceived. Apparently, we are to thank the DMCA for the success of today's most popular websites, as they technically are the ones in charge of pushing web-users into thinking outside of the box. Another likeable aspect of the DMCA was is that, although one of its main components is to protect those who have copyrighted property, it also protects online forums/blogs such as Wordpress and Digg from being sued to oblivion.. is the general idea for why we should be grateful the DMCA exists.

There are two major components of the DMCA that helped the boom of these sites that provide users with a copyright-entangled free environment: (1) the anti-circumvention rules, and (2) takedown notices.
(1) Anti-circumvention
The rule pretty much speaks for itself. This section of the DMCA bill was added so that the intellectual, and very copyrighted, property of the movie/music industry (Hollywood in general) wouldn't be infringed on a massive scale online. Examples of infringing would be uploading movies and music online, and downloading movies and music online. I read over the actual section of the legislation concerning the anti-circumvention rule, but it's really tedious and chalk full of all this legal vocabulary, so I'll sum it up for you like this: the purpose of the anti-circumvention rule was made to prevent consumers from side-stepping around copy protection and copyright rules to do things like upload copyrighted material onto the web, and then download them for free from other users. Makes sense, right?
Another component of the anti-circumvention rule is that it provides ISPs (Internet Service Providers) with an almost complete immunity for the property violations committed by their users. This means that even if you're being a huge pirate under your YouTube account, you are the only person who is responsible for your actions; not Youtube. What does that entail? ISPs not caring at all about what their users do with the service they are being provided, and that consequently opened up infinite speech and business opportunities for users, both recognized by the web and unrecognized.

(2) Takedown notice
The article goes on to say that the takedown notice component of the DMCA was even more essential to the exponential growth of the internet. Again, this component provides immunity to ISPs such as YouTube for any copyright violations committed by their users. The catch: they are only granted immunity if they promptly remove or "take down" material uploaded to their site if the claimed copyright holder sends the company a "takedown notice". Simple. Now when you search for a certain YouTube video, and your search says it's been "removed due to infringement", you'll know why. However, it can restore the took.. down(?) content if the user proves that it's not infringing anyone's copyrighted property, and the person who claims to have been violated fails/does not sue.

Fred von Lohmann, an internet attorney, says this about the two components of the DMCA:
"These two protections for intermediaries have been absolutely crucial for giving us the internet today. [...] You could not run a blog without these. You couldn't run MySpace, AOL without these two things."

Bottom lines:
1) Intermediaries totally depend on these immunities
2) Their immunities allowed for the burst of most of the websites we use everyday.

Fair Use in the Classroom

2008-11-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

In an era so sensitive to fair use and copyright infringements, there are bound to be thousands of cases like this, where groups get together and figure out what our limitations are, why they exist, and judge fairness based upon set legalities. The article, "Fair use group comes up with copyright primer", basically introduces "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education". This code was recently developed on November 11th, 2008. Media literacy organizations banded together over a course of an entire year to explore what their members thought of as "fair". Meetings took place in cities around the country including Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, Columbia, and Ithaca.

As we all know already fair use allows the public domain to use copyrighted material without permission or any sort of payment under the conditions that the benefits of its use to society outweighs the cost of the copyright owner. Because of the flexibility and dynamic characteristics of fair use, it favors "transformative uses". These transformative uses add content to already copyrighted material. The article was basically written into five different categories. The five categories consist of, Classroom teaching With Copyrighted Materials, Copyrighted Material Within Curriculum, Sharing Teaching Materials, Student Work, and Sharing Student Work.

The right of fair use not only helps exercise the freedom of expression, but is essential in developing communication and critical thinking skills required for our future generations to be successful in the 21st century.

To conclude, the whole point of the creation of The Code of Best Practices was to make rights more clear and create awareness of teachers and students in an academic climate. Instead of strangling educational practices by fuzzy/unsure lines of fair use, the code justifies the rights of legalities in a way that documentary filmmakers, broadcasters, and journalists understand fair use and copyright laws today.

Last.fm

2008-11-11T08:05:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered a website called last.fm in which you set up a profile and download a software that monitors your itunes (or any other media player you choose) activity. A small red icon appears at the bottom right of your screen while you listen to music. After listening to a track, it is 'scrobbled' (basically posted on your profile) and after a while, your profile gets statistics such as 'Top artists' and 'Top songs'. All activitiy of music listening is recorded - and artists are reccomended based on what you listen to. You are also given reccomended videos to watch and free personalized podcasts. Like Facebook and Myspace, you are also able to join specialized user created groups and add friends (giving you the ability to write on eachothers page and see what they are listen to) If you click it while listening to muisc, a variety of information will be displayed, such as a: biography of the artist you are currently listening to, "Tags" given to the artist (e.g. classic rock, blues, pop, 80s, ect...), and also similar artists. I find that the tags and similar artists tend be extremely accurate and helpful in finding new music. Anyone can tag a song/artist - but the ones that show up first are the ones that the artist/song is most tagged with. If you click on the artist name in the biography - you will be given a much more in depth information and also a discography, tour dates and a comment box at the bottom of each page. A few songs can also be listened to on their page. An example of a band page (they all follow the same formula): http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles. If you want a taste of what Last.fm is like, explore this page. Unlike myspace, each individual page is not clunked up with fancy backgrounds that take forever to load and glittery animations.

The best part 0f Last.fm is the free radio station. You have two options for the radio station - inputting an artist or a tag. If you input an artist, songs from that artist and similar artists are played, and if you put in tags (even very specific tags!), songs that are tagged with it are played. And its not just a few songs, it has a huge variety of music to play in the station. You can listen as long as you want - for free, with no lag - even with the slow connection here. The songs you listen to on the radio station are also scrobbled on to your profile. In general I think that last.fm is an awesome website, and I believe that it is FAR superior to (and will eventually surpass and become much more popular than) Myspace's music system.

Talking about radio stations - most people dont know that UMW has a radio station - you can stream it from wmwc.umw.edu - and be sure to tune in to my radio show on wedensdays from 6-7 pm.

**EDIT** I just recently discovered that when you plug your ipod into your computer, it automatically scrobbles the tracks you listen to on your ipod.

Pakistan Declares Death Penalty for 'Cyber Terror'

2008-11-09T13:45:00.000-08:00

The president of Pakistan: Asif Ali Zardari, recently signed a law that states that 'Cyber-Terrorism' could potentially lead to the death penalty (as opposed to the relatively gentle punishment of up to 20 years in prison in America). This new law will obviously only apply to extreme cases, as stated in the law: only if the cyber terrorism "causes [the] death of any person," - The guidelines that are stated in the law are narrowed down to five aspects that could describe 'Cyber-Terrorism':

1.) A person/group with 'terroristic intent' that accesses an electronic device (e.g. computer, computer network, other device) and engages/attempts to engage in an act of terror. Im guessing this could activating a device such as a bomb via an electronic device such as a cellphone, or hacking into a government network to launch a missle.

2.) Altering information (adding/deleting, ect..) that may result in injury, sickness or death. (I'm guessing this could apply to something like deleting government records, hospital records, ect...)

3.) Transmitting/attempting to transmit a harmful program with the intent to disrupt/disable a computer network operated by the government. I think that harmful program would probaly apply to sending viruses to disrupt a government network.

4.) Helping/attempting to help in the commission of an act of violence against the sovereignity of Pakistan.

5.) Stealing/attempting to steal or copy classified documents necessary to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction (e.g. Chemical, Biological, Nuclear) - This is pretty self explanitory.

This law will apply to everyone in Pakistan (Foreigners are not exempted). When I first read the title of the article, I was shocked - but I would imagine that alot of the same would apply in the states (for example - if you use access an electronic device to engage in an act of terror, lets say: use a cellphone to activate a bomb, you could still get the death penalty here in the States).

The Long Tale of the Tail

2008-11-05T22:45:00.000-08:00

Supply and Demand seems to be the running them of the article. Actually, lack of supply and lack of demand sounds more appropriate. First off, for a company to sell their product they need an audience. Without an audience there is no profit. Not only do the customers buy the products but they also advertise.

One problem we have today is that we live in a world of scarcity. A world where there is not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced. Not enough screens to show all the available movies. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, and not enough radio waves to play all the music created. Now however with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. What we have to learn is that our society is not just driven for the most popular product. Everyone has their own little niche of movies or music. Also an important point from the article is that the entertainment business looks to make hits, and not sales. We assume that hits are the only types of music that should exist.

Now this is where the tale of the tail comes into play. Rhapsody (a company owned by Real Networks) is a subscription based streaming music service that offers more than 735,000 tracks. As a subscriber to Rhapsody they have their entire hit songs located on their main page, but they also have a wide variety once you go looking. This is known as the tail effect, with the hit songs making up the bigger and furrier part of the tail, and the lesser known songs making up the end of the tail. Other companies using this long tail method include Google and eBay.

There are three rules/ lessons that Anderson proposes for the entertainment industry. The first rule is to make everything available. If the public are not able to find what they are looking for on your site then they will move on to the next site. Netflix is an example of a company who constantly adds to their library of movies.

Anderson’s next rule of thumb is to cut the price in half and then lower it. When looking at the price of individual songs online the average song should only cost around 65 cents. Yet, when you log into the iTunes server, the price of an individual song costs 99 cents. He also poses the question that if a song has stopped making revenue, do you lower the price of the song.

His last rule of survival is titled “help me find it.” Websites need to help reroute their customers so there is minimal confusion.

The long tail method is a great way to explain the trends of the web over time. It helps put in perspective how companies react to customer likes and dislikes.

Review -- "RIAA defendant enlists Harvard Law prof, students"

2008-11-05T20:35:00.001-08:00

For direct link to article, click entry title.

Here's an interesting one concerning a man named Joel Tenenbaum sticking it to the RIAA. Indicted last year of exchanging a handful of songs over KaZaA, and outraged about how far the RIAA is taking his act of "thievery", Tenenbaum called to aid a team consisting of law professor and a class of cyberlaw students - such as ourselves!, except that they're all from Harvard University - to represent him in the trial. The grounds on which Tenenbaum's legal team makes their case is that the RIAA's legal crusade against piracy is getting out of hand to the point of un-constitionality, and therefore a federal decision should be made placing strict boundaries on what the RIAA can and cannot do. When I read this, all that came to mind was an image of a criminal telling off the police for doing their job too well. I mean, as dislikeable as the RIAA is, I think Tenenbaum is getting a little ahead of himself.. That's just me, I guess.

The Harvard team is not only taking this case on to represent Tenenbaum, but also for an exponentially more ambitious reason: they want to challenge the entirety of the piracy lawsuit campaign against what they call the "born-digital generation". The concept of today's generation as the "born-digital" generation has been introduced in a few readings we've gone over and discussed in class. One that resonates particularly well with that theme is the ever-visited "Pirate's Dilemma" by Matt Mason. I think it's true that the copyright regulations of the past are undeniably dated and inapplicable to today's technology-centered, file-sharing, open-source, P2P culture, and I suppose Harvard agrees with me! I'm blushing, really. I feel like it is an overwhelming task for this university group to tackle the foundations of current copyright laws, but their attempt is laudatory in the sense that this case might get the ball rolling to revamp the whole of property laws fit for this generation and those to come.

Apparently, how the defense presented themselves was nothing short of what is expected of Harvard minds. The 3 essential components of their argument were as follows:
1) The damage costs the RIAA chargesunds of the Constitution (by which all lines of legality are supposed to follow). each defendant are "simply excessive", and therefore in violation of the 14h Amendment of the Constitution. (For all you shmucks, it outlines the details of due process and equal protection under the law)
2) The trying of the theft of music or any other copyrighted property is ultimately a criminal case, and Congress, basically gave prosecutorial authority to a private law force, AKA the music industry, an action not within the bo
3) Since the cases are criminal, they should not be tried under the standards of civil law.

The Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson draws attention to another point: RIAA's legal campaign seems to focus on sending a message through punishing those who are caught pirating music (to deter others from doing the same), rather than punishing the actual criminal for his actual crime. Get it? I think that this is the most powerful argument Tenenbaum's team has. The campaign really can be made analagous to the Crusades, both in the RIAA's method of enforcing itself upon the populace and the reaction of said peoples. It's not like making a demonstration out of Tenenbaum is going to stop the average person from downloading Razorlight's 3rd album (that came out Nov. 3!!!) from LimeWire or BearShare or BitTorrent or whatever other P2P program they use to obtain music without paying for it.

In any case, good luck to Tenenbaum and Harvard team. The trail is scheduled for December.

GM's Volt

2008-11-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

Link: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/11/the-chevy-volt.html

I'll start off by saying that this doesn't have much to do about remixing or anything, but it is very interesting.

If you didn't know, GM is in big trouble since the severe fall in stocks, it is practically bankrupt. However, it may have one glimmer of hope that could save the company from certain doom. That glimmer is called the Volt. The Volt is the next step in hybrid vehicles (it is both electric and gasoline powered). The Volt , according to GM, will be good for up to 100 mpg, which is amazing.

What GM did with the Volt is that it made the electric motor the only thing that moves the car, and the gasoline motor is only used to charge the battery of the electric motor when the battery is low. GM says that you could travel 40 miles on a single charge before the gasoline motor would need to kick in to charge the battery. So the average commuter would be able to go back and forth to work without ever having to use any gas, and just recharging the battery from their home's electricity every night.

And on top of the huge money saved from gas prices, its looks pretty cool too.

If GM survives its crash and releases the Volt and it turns out to be everything they promised, then this may be the new car to have.

A black box for your internet shananigans

2008-11-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3384743/Internet-black-boxes-to-record-every-email-and-website-visit.html

This article reports on a possible new technology to be put out in the UK some time next year. The black box will be some sort of program that keeps track of all online activities and sends the information to a central government database.

This idea brings to mind the whole 'big brother is watching you' mentality. The English government would essentially know everything that everyone did online. I'm not a big expert in British law making so I have no idea how likely this sort of bill is to be passed, but I do know I hope our government doesn't get any ideas (or have they already?).

The really bad thing about this kind of forced surveillance would be an excellent way of stopping all kinds of p2p and file sharing sites and services. As soon as something is put up that people can trade over, the government would know about it and be able to take it down. The government would also be able to block certain content from being accessed. A world-wide internet black box could essentially halt any progression of the digital age becoming a read-write culture and make it a read-only culture.

I can't see people choosing (voting) to have this technology on their computers monitoring their activities. So I don't think that this idea will catch on, unless of course the government does it without permission, but I wont go into the subject of what the government does and does not tell us.

Lets hear it for Free!

2008-11-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

This article was an interesting read, that I completely agree with. Everything digital is becoming cheaper and cheaper and eventually, or already, free. I was most drawn towards Aderson's categories for this free economy. 5 of the categories offered up something free and eventually some person (or party) is getting paid form this free service. There was one category that no money is exchanged at all, the 'Gift Economy'. I think that this will be the prevailing form that any free economy turns into, because it is the one that makes the most sense.

The best example of this 'Gift Economy' is OSS (Open Source Software). The whole idea behind OSS is that if you find something wrong with the source (code) of a program (software) then you fix it and share that fix with the community. That is the most efficient way of debugging any program, have everyone using it (assuming they can)fix any errors as they see fit and share those fixes with other users.

One major drawback that keeps people from sharing or evern trying to fix an open source program is that they might not get anything in return for their services (i.e. recognition, or payment) but that is not a free economy way of thinking (other than recognition for what you have done, it does make sense to want to have your name on your work) the 'payment' that an editor of any open source program gets is the program itself and many others.

Someone might say, "But a lot of people dont know how to write code to fix or modify programs, are they just freeloaders?" Not at all. These 'freeloaders' act as advertising for this free software; they try out some open source software and then tell their friends about it and how its completely free! Those friends may then try and and spread it even further. Eventually that software is discovered by more and more people some of whom are programmers who can change the program for the better.

OSS is only one example though, Wikipedia is another great Gift Economy way of thinking. Put up information that anyone can change or add onto to make it more accurate or informative. Wikipedia is free to all and open for all to change.

Wikipedia does have its own drawbacks. Some pretty big ones too.
If everyone can get onto Wikipedia then can't anyone go and change information to whatever they like? The answer is yes and no. People can get onto Wikipedia and change the contents of a whole article to whatever they like, however Wikipedia staff is constantly checking the entirety of any changes made to check for errors or just plain wrong content; other users are also doing the same, if they see that something is wrong they can take it into their own hands to change the information to be correct.

A Gift Economy with the other 5 categories present in a Free Economy would a very good thing to look forward to.

It's Free

2008-11-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

After reading the article “Free Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” you have to agree that going free is the only way to go. The idea of “free-economics” is where companies give away their products in order to sell their name. Wouldn’t life be great if everything were free? These days’ companies are starting to give away more and more products in order to get out their name. Companies such as Gillette got their big break by giving away free razors. Cell phone companies now give away free cell phones and sell the monthly plan; video game producers make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games.

We have even seen this trend of free-economics in our presidential election. In order to get out the vote anyone who can prove they voted was offered free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cones, Starbuck coffee, and a free Dunkin Donuts donut.
It seems like over time items and commodities that used to cost an arm and a leg are now on their way to costing little to nothing. For example digital information and storage has become free and universally available to everyone (Yahoo and Google mail). The web has become the land of the free.

Anderson then goes on to talking about the evolution of the transistor in the computer. First off, a transistor is commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals in the computer. Over time the price of a transistor dropped from tens of dollars to .0000001 cents. Although the computer has not dropped in its value, in order to compete companies are forced to add new features for little to nothing. “The psychology of "free" is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.” There is a difference between the zero free market and the any other price market.

Over time companies started using advertising as a means to make money. On the web Yahoo created pay per page view banners and Google created pay per click text ads. Next those companies expanded with paid inclusion in search results. The example the article used was if Wal-Mart were to advertise a $15 DVD. They hope to lure you into the store so that you would not only buy the DVD but also buy a brand new washing machine while you were there.

The article also makes a key point: it’s not a free lunch because you will eventually pay for it. The way I see it is there is nothing in life that is free. You have to work for your success. I agree that whenever I am presented with something that is free I will likely accept the item. What we need to worry about is our global economy and market. Will the stock market crash because everything has become free? How will global trading be affected by the free market? I guess all these questions will be answered with time.

Tech companies win FCC battle for "White spaces"

2008-11-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

It turns out that even things we can't see or hear also need to be licensed. Or at least they did. Several large technology companies including Google and Microsoft have recently won the ote of the FCC in the matter of white spaces.

White spaces are the areas of bandwidth that will be freed up for used once digital technologies replace the use of the previous method (bunny ears on top of the tv set). While the tech companies wanted these spaces to be free for the picking several communications companies including T-mobile and Sprint objected under the excuse that the use of these spaces will interfere with their products. The FCC ruled that while these spaces will be free, it will require rigorous testing on digital technologies to ensure minimum interference.

This situation is interesting, because while most rights and licensing conflicts involve a giant versus the little guy, such as the RIAA vs. most of its defendants, this conflict is between two groups of giants. It is not a case of a up and coming technology threatening the established way. It appears as if the communications companies have a legitimate fear of an already developed technology causing an unfair obstruction to another established technology. Thoughts?

Free Is The New Business Model

2008-11-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

After viewing Chris Anderson's lecture on "The Long Tail" and free business models, it all seems to make an incredible amount of sense as to how and why our economy is acting more and more as a free business model today. In the beginning of the video, Anderson directly contrasts the idea behind limited resources versus abundance. As an example, he uses Wal-Mart stores in comparison to online stores. His ideas all circle around the fact of how Wal-Mart seem "have everything" but it is in fact only a mile long and an inch deep with available product in comparison to the products available to consumers online. Second, he compares Blockbuster to Netflix, only making the argument even more convincing. "Choice. Variety. More...", Anderson preaches. Available digital files like GMail all operate on the basis of abundance. And, when abundance is being utilized rather than focusing on an economy built around scarcity, it allows the audience to decide what is popular and what is not.

Anderson challenges our economy into being something more like what the people choose for themselves, not chosen by authority. When consumers choose what is popular, it leaves less room for wasted money and failure. Let the people choose what they want to buy, read about, and support. Not only is this good from a consumers point of view, but for the standpoint in which many businesses hold as well. If we take this idea of consumer popularity in context of today's society, we can look at Digg.com. As most of us have already used/read this blog at some point, this is what we consider "post-filtering". Instead of the website managing what blogs can be posted, viewers rate the blogs and decide for themselves what they consider to be interesting and worth posting. Nobody is guessing here. Choice is freedom. Let people choose for themselves, and then make the rules. Don't make rules and then force the people to follow. More things will work out in our economy/technologically if we can understand this today.

With deal, Beatles songs may enter Digital Age

2008-10-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

Songs that span throughout 'The Beatles' career may soon be put into the "Rock Band" game (by MTV/Harmonix)some time in 2009. MTV recently had a conference with Apple Corps, regarding the specifics of the game. Supposedly, this game will not follow the 'Rock Band' name, and instead will be called a 'Beatles Game', specifically and exclusively made for Beatles music. New visuals will have to be made to accomidate for the new Beatles game. A direct quote is: "a visual exploration of the Beatles imagery is a big part of the creative direction of the project" - I only imagine the psychadelic visuals that they would use for songs off of the "Yellow Submarine" album.

The two surviving Beatle members, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will help participate in the creation of this game. George Harrison's wife, Olivia Harrison - and John Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, are also helping in the creation of this game (aspects such as the visuals and also design). Regarding the game, Paul McCartney said: " "a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music,". As everyone (at least everyone who has played - or seen the game being played) knows, when you make a mistake, the instrument is muted in the game (which I personally think is pretty awesome). I don't play the game, so I can't say I'm excited about it at all, but I still think it would be neat (especially the visuals) to see how it all plays out. The original producer of the Beatles music, George Martin - and his son: Giles Martin are making last minute touches and adapting the game to be able to be used in Rock Band. The father and son team are trying their hardest to keep true to the original mixes.

Darpa Preps Son of Robotic Mule

2008-10-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

Alright - Before anything, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww&eurl=http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/bigdog-20.html. I remember seeing it a long time ago and actually thinking it was pretty scary. Especially later on in the video when it starts running and jumping over obstacles. Imagine that chasing you with a gun mounted on it's back. This robot is made by the pentagon and called "BigDog quadruped machine". Whats even scarier is they want to modify it to make it a war machine - make it more durable, stronger, bigger, quieter and more intelligent. The main objective would be to help soldiers carry their baggage. Currently it can carry 300 pounds over a distance of 13 miles, but their final objective is to give it the capacity to carry 400 pounds over the distance of 20 miles on any terrain. As you can see in the video, the current version seems to work flawlessly in the snowy terrain, rocky terrain and even does a great job on the ice. I was shocked that it regained balance after slipping on the ice and being kicked.

The name of this machine (once upgraded) will be called "Legged Squad Support System" (L3). It doesn't seem to me that there is too much to upgrade. Seeing how well the "BigDog" handles tought terrains, I can't imagine they would have to do much more besides make it bigger - and find a way to make it less noisy. One issue to consider would be lugging around enough gas to last. The L3 is estimated to weigh 1250 pounds, but the weight of the extra gas would also have to be factored in. Other improvements they are seeking to add: the ability to sprint at 10 miles per hour, climb stairs (which it did an already good job of in the video), navigate via GPS waypoints, speech recognition and laser sensors.

Randall Munroe on Criminals

2008-10-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

Randall Munroe, the writer of XKCD (from which this comic was borrowed – it’s under creative commons, of course), makes an interesting point. DRM, and all these other silly techniques of preventing us from sharing the things we buy, simply make us more and more inclined to pirate. Instead of driving us away from piracy with threats of fines and court, the people in charge of upholding copyright are simply creating an impassable labyrinth of twisted, crisscrossing traps. Sure, I suppose it makes sense, if you don’t try to apply it to people. But who’s going to want to buy a product that’s laced with all that junk? It’s not the same product, and it’s not really yours. Or at least, if it is yours, it’s only yours until your number of downloads runs out or you get a new computer. Most people will want to take the easier and more permanent products: the pirated ones. The legal companies suddenly get less service, and the pirating sites get more. That’s the very opposite of what all this protection is trying to do, but that’s really all it’s managing to achieve. I’m not sure if there’s anything the copyright protectors can do, without simply digging themselves into a deeper hole, but the tactic they’re going with right now just isn’t doing the trick.

Fruity Loops

2008-10-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

Fruity loops, along with any other software that allows users to create and edit sound files, is a great way to open the musical world to those of us who would not normally be able to involve ourselves in it. It allows anyone to create music (or at least to try), and is not limited to actual musicians. Of course, this means that much of the material created with these programs is not actually good music, but it also provides the means for creative or musically inclined people to create music without actually having to write it on a staff or know anything about key signatures.I think this is a great way to avoid copyright infringement. If an aspiring screenwriter wants background music, he doesn’t need to pay for rights to preexisting songs, and he doesn’t need to pay musicians to create music for him. For 50 bucks, he can get a studio that makes all the music he wants, and it’s all copyrighted as his own work. Programs like these are of course extremely limited, but they are a good segue into more professional means, since they require very little effort or money on the part of the creator. The downside is that it’s easy for pirates to copy and edit the work of others, but I believe in this case the benefits of the program outweigh its faults.

Sir Ken Robinson: Society Today

2008-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Throughout all the recent videos we've watched in class, there seems to be a common trend with most. Between Cory Doctorow's lecture on the future, and Sir Ken Robinson's thoughts on kids and creativity, their common agreement on human intelligence and abilities to advances particularly stand out.

During the Ted Talk, we see Sir Ken Robinson pick apart and examine how art and creativity in schools today are being brushed away and overshadowed by a more intense, "academic" path. He points out exactly how much we value education, for the wrong reasons. Originality isn't determined by college professors, how many facts you know, or even the most impressive credentials. Instead, Robinson agrees that the most original and creative people are the ones who embrace failure the most. During the lecture he stated that those who are created, are those who are prepared to be wrong. However, he mentions that as soon as we grow up and begin to be educated from the waist up (half jokingly), we lose our capacity to be creative and branch out past what we know. Sir Ken Robinson also brought up a good point, if we don't know the future now, how can we raise the children of today for something we don't know? Today's kids will grow up for the 2065 age, something we're far from predicting. As far as education in academic fields, learning the value of art is just as important; the national education system just seems to be missing that.

A couple weeks earlier, we also viewed Cory Doctorow's lecture in Helsinki. Although Doctorow focused more on the power of self-determination and our technological world, it shadows what Sir Ken Robinson was getting through in his speech. Doctorow's thoughts embraced our power of self-determination and controlling our futures and technology. Without self-determination he notes it leaves us feeling helpless and unsatisfied with life. In fact, through self-determination we got the enlightenment, world progress, and commerce. Things like cell phones and computers allow us to do things for our own sake and at the same time, contribute to our economy.

These two great thoughts by Doctorow and Robinson collectively point out what builds intelligence; creativity. The power of controlling our future and setting out for a world outside of the normal 'prestige' serves as the ultimate setup for success today. Look at successful people today, most of which have cultured and different backgrounds from most. It's self acknowledgement/acceptance and empowerment which fuel the most creative minds today.

DMCA - The Law That Saved the Web

2008-10-27T21:10:00.001-07:00

It was 10 years ago that a law was passed by Congress that was single handedly responsible for the explosion of the web. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA stated in the title) “criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as Digital Rights Management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works and it also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself” according to Wikipedia.

The DMCA was also an important step in the development of the DVD.

The DMCA created the separate notice-and-takedown provision which also aided the growth of the internet. The provision grants immunity to so-called "intermediaries" or ISP’s. What this means if for example the company YouTube receives a notice from the copyright holder to take down a video, YouTube must comply. Instead of just suing a company for stealing intellectual property, those companies now have a fair warning before that company is prosecuted.

The article then goes to talk about a couple of examples of the new takedown procedure. In one court case, Universal Music issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a Pennsylvania woman's 29-second video of her toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." After YouTube had taken down the video, the mother of the toddler sued the company for misuse of the DMCA. The judge in the case stated that Universal Music should have reviewed the facts before acting up. The McCain campaign even took notice to the case. McCain, a supporter of the DMCA act, has been “called out” for reusing snippets of broadcast news footage in his online campaign videos, which have been taken down off of YouTube.

The next part of the act is aimed to prevent the circumvention of intellectual property. The law dictates that "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” Over the years there have been exceptions added to the act. One of those exceptions allowed customers to switch phone carriers without buying a new phone.

Without the DMCA we would not be able to blog in our class. Everyone who has made a post on our blog (that includes myself) could be prosecuted. The DMCA allowed for the growth of creativity on the internet. It created popular sites such as Google, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. If the DMCA act had not been created, I am sure that we would still be living a Big Brother society where we not be able to express ourselves over the internet.

Sir Ken Robinson

2008-10-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

Sir Ken Robinson's presentation of how our educational systems squander our creativity as children is of course very interesting to someone like me who has just popped out of the k-12 series of grade levels and in to a new, but similar kind of educational establishment. I believe that all of what was said in Sir Robinson's presentation was true, and it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth to think of all that could've been if my learning experience for the past decade had been the way he had dreamed it.

His reference to Pablo Picasso was very interesting. He said, "All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." which makes perfect sense. All the imagination we had as kids, where the hell did it go? Think back to what your parents or your teachers told you when you did something maybe a little too creative, or made a mistake.

Everytime I try to think of a Sir Ken Robinson educational system I get a little too...optimistic...it sounds too good to be true. His educational system would be a lot different from our current one. It would probably be close to the opposite of what we have today, and I wonder how much it would differ from an educational system thats purpose would be to ready a child for the harsh, outside world. Would an educational system with the arts as the main, or one of the main curriculums help prepare a child for what is known as the real world. I think Sir Ken Robinson would say so but I'm not sure....It's just a thought though.

This presentation really opened my eyes a bit more about our misguiding our educational system is. I think every parent in the world should be forced to watch that video or something like it to reevaluate what they think parenting is about. Maybe in turn that will make the parents put their children in to schools with a broader curriculum. Its a start...

Tit-for-Tat extreme

2008-10-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

Prof. Z has talked a bit about how eBay has changed the feedback system on their site. Before, both sellers and buyers could leave positive or negative feeback on buyers and sellers, respectively. While this system was still in place, the sellers were likely to get angry after recieving negative feedback, therefore giving their buyers bad feedback in retaliation.

Now, however, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for their buyers. This is something that has caused the eBay sellers to file lawsuits on the buyers who leave bad comments.

Joel Jones filed a lawsuit against Chris Read after Read left less than desireable comments after buying something from Jones. Read bought a phone and was told that it was in good conditions. The product that came was in miserable condition and not even the model that Read thought he was buying. He sent it back to Jones and asked for a refund, and leaving negative feedback on eBay about the phone that was sent to him.

Jones gave Read his money back, but beforehand he claimed that the feedback left by Read was hurting his business and his sales were down. He threatened to take Read to court if he didn't delete the comments, but Read responded telling him that if court was the next step, he was willing to go there. Jones believes that giving Read the refund should have merited positive feedback, telling reporters that Read's comments were uncalled for.

Court was what Read got. Lawsuits as a result of sellers not being able to give their buyers feedback may have an effect on how many people actually buy on eBay. This would be disastrous for the people who's business is to sell online. If sellers attacking buyers through legal action continues, then who knows what will happen to eBay!

Review -- "Flat World Knowledge: an open-source textbook revolution?"

2008-10-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

For direct link to original article, click title.

I know I'm not the only person who felt totally robbed by the school bookstore right before fall semester started. I'm actually looking at my receipt right now, and the total for all of my textbooks came out to $647.50. What a scam. I'm just not going to buy any books next semester. Kidding.. kind of.. This article made me slightly bitter (if you couldn't tell by my introduction). It discusses the launch of a website called Flat World Knowledge, which provides "high-quality" textbooks free of charge. It's really too bad it started up only this past September; had it been established a couple months earlier, maybe I wouldn't have had to spend SO MUCH MONEY on textbooks (and as a side note: of the 5 textbooks I've bought, I only use 1).
Prentice Hall Business Publishing is one of the top publishers of textbooks in the country. Their Director of Marketing Eric Frank quit the company he had been working under for 11 years to found Flat World Knowledge. Not surprisingly, his idea of providing textbooks for free online confounded many of his colleagues. Frank's line of reasoning that led him to founding Flat World Knowledge was simple: the current college textbook system is, frankly, hated by everyone. Students hate the fact that textbooks run, on average, $100 a pop. What makes them even more miserable is that as soon as they buy a textbook, a new edition for said book is already in the making, and any shred of hope they had for buy-back is lost. It only makes sense that students think that this process of constantly updating books as a way of keeping textbooks unreasonably expensive. There is a correlation between how upset the students are over the price of their outdated textbooks and how upset their professors become when students try to get away with not purchasing the material for their classes. No one is happy. Furthermore, the less number of students purchase textbooks, the less faculty authors are compensated for their work, and the whole education system turns into a disaster simply because textbooks are always expensive and usually in the process of becoming outdated (so I may have exaggerated for the sake of making a point, but at least we're all on the same page?).
Why exactly did Eric Frank leave Prentice Hall to start Flat World Knowledge as an entirely new and different company? If he was one of the top guys at PH, why didn't he just propose to launch Flat World Knowledge as a branch of the already existing, already successful company? The answer is simple: the "dead-tree" traditional publishing world is too fixed in it's system to revamp any of itself in order to even consider the idea of free textbooks provided over the web.
Not only does Flat World Knowledge license the books and send it through editing and peer review, and give all this work away at no cost online, it also provides study guides/aids and services (at some fee, but can anyone really complain about that at this point?). However, here's where all this of relates to our FSEM: Eric Frank and partner Jeff Shelstad are designing Flat World Knowledge as an open source software publisher. "In addition, teachers could edit, delete, and remix textbooks so that the books precisely match the teacher's approach to a course." I can't help but admire the ingenuity of Frank and Shelstad's idea here. This is an actual application of Matt Mason's "Pirate's Dilemma" without.. any dilemma, and it's totally respectable and completely practical.
Frank and Shelstad hope that Flat World Knowledge will serve to satisfy every level of the educational heirarchy. Professors have immediate access and a great degree of control over the material they want to cover in their classes, students pay less to learn the same material, and revenues for faculty authors increase.
As a new company with an unheard of innovative mission statement, Flat World Knowledge is undoubtedly going to run into a lot of problems. Current online textbooks are thought to be "expensive and impractical for a large portion of the student population", so to convince everyone that Flat World Knowledge will be otherwise is one task Frank and Shelstad will need to overcome. They'll also have to persuade authors the benefits of providing their work for free online (if I were an author, I would not buy into the idea even with all this knowledge..). Flat World Knowledge's main pitch is that they're all about the authors, rather than the brand name.
All I can say is: Good luck, guys. I hope Mary Washington starts using this website.. sometime in the next 2 months.. ugh.

sir ken robinson

2008-10-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Sir Ken Robinson's video about creativity and the arts and how they should be taught in schools. I thought all of his points about the arts being an essential part of education were very valid. Speaking from my life, the arts have had a big role in my development as a person and education. Having the arts being a part of education creates a more well rounded society and can spark more creative interest. The arts are an invaluable part of our lives, weather it be music, dance, or visual art. Again, speaking from a personal standpoint, the arts have taught me to be confident speaking in front of a crowd and how to express my viewpoints. This is why i completly agree with Sir Ken Robinson that the arts should be a necessicary part of everyones education.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

2008-10-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

In this video, Sir Ken Robinson spoke about human creativity in general, and how it is being destroyed by schools. He initially mentioned the ingrained innovation and creativity that children have which are seen as unessential by the education system - but Sir Ken Robinson thinks it should be seen as important as literacy. He brought up the point that children are not afraid of being wrong, and they are fine with taking chances if they do not know exactly what to do. Sir Ken Robinson then said "If your not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original", and says that as we grow up, we become more afraid of being wrong. Tying this in with education, he said in our current education system, making mistakes are deemed unacceptable - thus taking away our creativity from the time we enter school.

I always have loved doing all forms of art as a hobby, but i hated art in school (along with every other subject). It was very easy to be wrong in art, at least with the teacher I had. I never did feel really comfortable with doing what I wanted and having fun in class, I always worried about meeting the teachers unclear expectations and tight deadlines. Art is probaly my favorite thing to do, but was my least favorite class in high school. Sir Ken Robinson then followed with a quote from Picasso, saying "All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up". I personally think this is a great quote

Sir Ken Robinson describes this process as being 'educated out of it'. A large reason for this happens to be due to the hierarchy of subjects in all education systems, with the arts always being on the bottom (there is also a hierarchy within the arts: art and music is higher than drama and dance). Sir Ken Robinson’s opinion regarding this is that the arts should be equal to other academic subjects in the hierarchy. Many people don’t pursue their interests in fear that they cannot make a living with it. Sir Ken Robinson states that we know three things about intelligence: (1) It is diverse (2) it is dynamic (3) it is distinct. Composer John Phillip Sousa similarly shared the idea that our creativity is being destroyed - in the case of Sousa, he believed that new technology (at the time - 'talking machines') were destroying our creativity.

Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

2008-10-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Ken Robinson begins his speech by addressing human creativity. He identifies the mystery of creativity for the future. Robinson continues to state how much creativity is limited due to work in education. Even if a child has a talent, schools have learned to hide and hinder their talent. Robinson believes creativity is just as important in school as academics. I really enjoyed all the stories about the little kids, especially the story of the little girl drawing a picture of God. It showed that the creativity in some kids have not been completely limited be education from schools. I like that Robinson touched upon the fact that like kids (and almost all humans) make mistakes and that people should take chances. Robinson states that one should always be prepared to be wrong, try things out, and be ready to make mistakes. One cannot learn from mistakes if they don’t keep trying. Robinson tells his audience not to associate creativity with mistakes, but he does state that if one isn’t prepared to be wrong than one cannot be creative and come up with anything original. I really like the Picasso quote Robinson used in his speech that “all children are born artists,” but “to remain an artist as we grow up.” Robinson states that people are “educated out of it.” A person’s artist is than lost, and thus, their creativity. Robinson addresses that every education system around the world as the same hierarchy that begins with mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and then the arts. Within the arts, drama and dance is usually the bottom. Education focuses mainly on one’s head and their brain. Robinson states education system is developed by academic ability because of one’s ability to get a job. One would take a subject to help them get a valuable job for the future. Robinson states that now with academic inflation, students are required to have much more than just a degree in order to get a job. There are many new requirements that disable students from getting jobs. Robinson defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. I think Robinson used the right amount of personal experiences in order to display his thought process and verbalize his stream of consciousness. I really liked the story about Gillian Lynne. The story was about how Gillian was fidgety as a child; one might consider her to be ADHD. Gillian went to see a specialist with her mother. The specialist spoke to Gillian’s mother about how she was always disturbing people and not turning in her homework on time and just a very hyper energetic girl. When the specialist took Gillian’s mother out of the room to talk to her privately, the specialist turned on the radio while leaving. Gillian started moving to the music as soon as they left the room. The specialist concluded that she’s a dancer and that she must be taken to a dance school. So her mother did take her to a dance school. In order to think, she had to think in the way she knew, which was to dance. Some teacher could have told her to calm down by giving her medication or by hindering her spirits, but instead this teacher told her to explore her talents. Gillian Lynne became very successful with her career in dance and later discovered the Gillian Lynne dance school, amongst other accomplishments. Robinson concludes his speech by stating that parent’s duty is to educate their children in order for them to face the future without them, and to make something out of their future.

Sir Ken Robinson

2008-10-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

This is for the videos we watched in class. I believe Ken Robinson has a point, and its something I've thought about for years. Its not the simple excuse,"When am I ever going to use this?" That was an excuse coined by students when they weren't doing well in math or science. Its more than that.

The subjects taught in schools these days are very similar to what was taught a long time ago, when if you didn't go to school, you didn't have a job. The bar has been raised since then. It became you had to go to college to get a job, then get a masters, or a doctrine. But, once everyone has those, who gets the jobs? There has to be something else other than being 'well trained'.

It seems to me that the school systems now are very outdated. We've been trained to think that we can't make a living being an artist, a sports player, a performer, or anything involving some kind of creativity or natural talent. Yes, there are people who are naturally talented at math, science, and english, but what about the other 'subjects' in school that are being thrown out because they 'aren't beneficial to the studen't?' Why isn't art class beneficial? Why is it that students can't learn something in gym class or drama? The truth is, WE CAN. Its old people from an era thats long past who say we can't, and therefore these areas are ignored and deemed unnecessary.

Also, every student is different, and schools are hypocritical when they say that they cater to each students individual needs. What about the student who's an artist but sucks at math? Or the one who can write songs but has trouble in science? And the soccer player that struggles in english? Not everyone can be good at everything, but everyone can be good at something. Why not 'train' them to excel in their strongest area rather than to be book-smart? Its not that the other subjects aren't important, but some people do lack any kind of affinity for science or english.

I agree with Sir Ken Robinson whole-heartedly. Younger generations are growing out of their creativity, and its not their fault. Parents and whoever run the school programs are taking the focus off of creative arts and placing it on generic subjects to prepare students for so called jobs, or college.

Its just like read-only culture vs read-write culture. The ability and freedom to express creativity is being taken away, and eventually, we won't be able to do anything, no matter how innovative.

That's all, folks!

Virtual theft can have real life consequences

2008-10-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Link to original blog: here

We've talked a lot about pirating content from the web. Pirates that are caught are harshly punished (way too harshly). The concept of punishing pirates for stealing songs or music or other such content makes sense, however what about items that are purely virtual? Such as items in an online game. If someone were to steal something from you in a game, should that person be punished (in the real world)?

One Dutch court said yes. The case was that two boys threatened a third to give them his virtual items in the on-line game Runescape. The third boy did end up giving them his items and then ended up suing them for the theft. The dutch court ruled in favor of the third boy and sentenced the other two (thieves) to about 200 hours of community service each.

The idea of punishment for theft of intangible things on the web brings an interesting idea to mind. If the law starts to branch out to cover things that are intangible then online thieves would start to be punished more often and maybe more harshly.

This mindset would support the way that record companies have been pursuing pirates. If a pirates downloads an entire CD then that is the same as if that pirate had gone to a music store and stole a copy of that same CD.

I completely disagree with this concept. If you 'steal' something on the web you are taking a copy of it. So the copy you have would not exist if you had not gotten it, so no loss has been made from the seller of that CD. However the pirate should still be punished, but on a much smaller scale. Like in the example of the Runescape case, the administrators of that game could have merely given the third boy his items back and deleted the items from the first two boys and then given them some sort of suspension or ban from the game. The threatening that the two boys did is something that is deserving of a harsh punishment like community service, but the punishment from the Dutch court was merely for the theft of the virtual items not the threatening.

Has Creativity Been Transformed?

2008-10-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

Has creativity declined over the past couple of years? As we as a human race get older do we lose our creative edge? John Phillip Sousa was one of the first to preach his worries for the new technology wave. He preached that the invention of the voice box would keep everyone from expressing themselves in public. Lawrence Lessig was the next to preach of the change from read-write to read-only culture. What he meant was how our society started off looking listening to a song and then just adding to it. Nowadays there are many laws that prohibit you from adding just the smallest beat to a song without you getting sued. Over time I wouldn’t say that creativity has been discouraged but transformed. For instance, Bunnie Huang was able to reverse engineer an Xbox just for fun. However if he had made his knowledge public in a way that it would cripple Microsoft (the makers of the Xbox) he would have been prosecuted.

Our most recent videos are two more examples of how creativity has transformed through the ages. The first video we watched was of a beat boxer. It primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more (Wikipedia dictionary). Even though these sounds have been around for awhile, it wasn’t until recent years that artists have been able to add all these elements and turn them into a performance.

The next video presented the question: do schools kill creativity? Through our schooling we have been taught to be well trained and book smart, but will these skills help us out in the real world. When we were younger our creative “wingspan” was endless. We would have the tendency to create make believe games and to guess when we didn’t know the answer. Over time people have become quieter and when asked a question that they didn’t know, they simply would not reply. Sir Ken Robinson then gets into his idea of “education inflation.” In the early days you only went to college if you were at the top of your class. Now it seems like there a school after High School for everyone. Robinson states that there will be more students graduating from college this year more than any other year in history. Has a college degree lost its meaning? Nowadays it seems like the elite are found at graduate, medical, law, or other professional school. If this metaphorical inflation continues will those professional schools end up becoming the norm? Will there a system of schooling after graduate school? Will having your PhD be not enough in the future? How can schools teach for the future if they don’t even know how life will be then?

Has creativity been transformed through the years? Has this new wave of technology been for the good of our society? I believe that any creativity is good for us.

Robinson Video

2008-10-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

Link: http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/

Robinson's main topic for this video was creativity and its role, or lack there of, in modern day education. He starts out by saying that all children are born with a lot of creativity and, due to society and the way the education systems around the world are built, grow out of it over time. Robinson says that around the world school systems concentrate mainly on the 'non-creative' subjects such as: math, science, history, etc... and all arts, such as: dance, theatre, music, etc... are seen as secondary skills. Robinson proposes that the "secondary" skills should be given just as much attention as the "primary" skills, and that all children should be educated in them as well.

He goes on to say that the reason the system was built the way it is was to facilitate the Industrial revolution, to get literate people able to do tasks to further Industry. But now working for a big company (or industry) is not the only choice for career opportunities, people can be whatever they want to be, but the way they were educated makes them afraid to do so. One of the more interesting points he made about education and its apparent goals (to an outsider who has no idea what the education system is for) is that public education seems to exist to produce university proffessors; they seem to be the highest goal to attain in the education system.

Finally Robinson closes with a case of modern day creativity crushing. He talks about a women who is very successful at being a dancer and coriagrapher, and how she first found out that she wanted to dance. When she was a little girl she couldn't sit still and pay attention to anything so her mom took her to a doctor who deduced that she was a natural born dancer. Now a days if the same scenario had occured the doctor would put her on medication and, as Robinson put it, "tell her to calm down". So, who knows how many creative geniuses are being told to "calm down" instead of doing what they want to do.

Apple on the offensive

2008-10-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

Anyone who watches television will have seen the Apple commercials, you know the ones starring Justin Long (i believe?) and "Windows man", In which Long represents a Mac and Windows man represents, well, Windows. The commercials used to focus mainly on positive features of the Apple platform, portraying Windows man as absent minded and lacking. However, a recent commercial takes on a more offensive overtone. We see the Windows man at a table sorting through stacks of bills. On one side is a massive stack, on the other side is a diminutive stack, and in the middle is the remaining stacks to be sorted. The larger stack represents money Windows spends on advertising, whereas the smaller stack represents money spent on improving Window's technology. I find this commercial to be similar to a campaign ad: Negative and most likely false. We all know Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He's the wealthiest man in the world. Windows could purchase every available commercial slot on every network and still have billions to devote to improving technology. Sure they have started advertising alot (and I loved the Gates/Seinfeld commercials), but to attempt to portray them as a company spending more on advertising than their products is ludicrous. And what are the problems associate with Vista? As a Vista user, I am more than satisfied with its capabilities and ease of use, and these commercials aren't going to change my mind. And that sommercial didn't help. If Apple really wants to compete with Windows, they should ditch the old commercials and head down a more progressive pathway, like Windows did.
Topic for comment- discussion: What do you like/dislike about your OS?

TED Talks: Ken Robinson

2008-10-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

For direct link to video, click entry title.

This was the best video I've seen in our class thus far.
Ken Robinson is an amazing speaker.
Sir Robinson's talk delves into what he views as the critical shortcoming of every education system in the world: creativity is grossly depreciated while uniformity and correctness are overvalued. This point is brilliantly underlined when he correlates this problem to the problem of "intelligence inflation"; that degrees no longer guarantee jobs, and kids who obtain degrees end up going home to continue playing videogames. It could not be truer - there are so many students out there who graduate college with good grades, and are without a job. The combination of cut-throat academic programs now offered at every college and the tightness of the job market results in a surplus of people with the same socioeconomic backgrounds and the same knowledge. The universal, conventional form of educating people through grammar school, high school, and college has become obsolete. This method no longer automatically warrants success.
How could it be otherwise? In a system where each student it educated through the same lectures and the same exams, the outcome can be none other than the same people with varying skill levels for the same jobs. Ken Robinson notes that intelligence today is being squandered through this dated mode of producing successful individuals. Schools need to focus on the diversity and the distinction of each and every student. If being creative were as prioritized as being literate, the world would have a sudden influx of people who are specialized in doing something both different and useful. I think one of the big points Sir Robinson was trying to make is that no one standard can exist to critique everyone. Each person needs to be diagnosed to his or her own (e.g.: Gillian Lynne).
My favorite quote from the video was, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original". The fear of making mistakes or breaking a rule has led schools to teach straight out of test books, give standardized exams, and suppress artistic and creative endeavors (this is a sweeping generalization, but bear with me for the sake of making a point). There is just entirely too much uniformity among the candidates for different jobs.
The above quote seems pertinent to what we've been studying in class this semester. In regard to mashups and remixes, there's are certain lines of legality that one has to cross in order to produce something creative and original (if you consider re-writes of original pieces original). Topics we've discussed such as free culture (Matt Mason's "Pirate Dilemma") and reverse engineering are all huge benefactors in promoting creativity and originality. In a sense, copyright laws and Microsoft making XBox modding illegal can be made analogous to the education systems that Sir Robinson discusses: they all suppress our culture's ability to further our creative potential, and have become obsolete. Today, it is imperative that our generation steps up to the bar in correcting recreating and restructuring both how we receive knowledge and by what means it can be legally applied to further advance ourselves in every aspect of our lives.
I'm sorry this entry had so much cheese. Let's chalk it up to that undeniable moment of inspiration I had after watching TED Talks with Ken Robinson.

YouTube; A Good Intermediary

2008-10-22T15:58:00.001-07:00

All too often, we are constantly subjected to the powers of internet intermediaries, leaving us confused and frustrated. So many copyright laws, fair use controversies, and ethical controversy frequently blur and smear the lines of creativity/usefulness and legalities on the web. However, when these intermediaries act in ways of sharing, like wikis, and useful platforms don't abuse their authority and monitor what exactly is free to post and what is not, we find these sites all entirely useful in ways of spreading knowledge and creativity throughout the world.

On a recent YouTube video post, Students for A Free Tibet posted a video portraying one of their protests at the Chinese consulate in New York. The video included content relating to the Beijing Olympics and opinion against China's human rights record. Obviously upset, the International Olympic Committee filed a takedown of the video, and soon enough it was ultimately removed.

Later, after reviewing more about why the content was removed, YouTube questioned the Olympic Committee, asking them if they actually planned on pursuing the claim behind this video. If the Committee wasn't planning on further investigations, YouTube requested that they take down the notice/request of the takedown. Soon enough, the video was reposted.

Incidences like this show that sharing platforms not only exercise their rights to take down unwanted videos/information but also are doing things to help promote the better things for the people. In this case, YouTube used the the power of free speech and fair use in defense of the public, which was pretty cool. However, it should be taken into consideration the exact motives of YouTube to keep videos like this up on the internet. It may be because of some advertising or video count, who knows... Hopefully, YouTube did something to support internet sharing databases.

Sir Ken Robinson review blog

2008-10-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

Sir Ken Robinson starts off by talking about how important creativity is, and how much of any appreciation he has in education. The reason in which he thinks education is so important is because it is education that is meant to take us into the future that we cannot grasp. Even though he views education as extremely important, he also thinks that schools are killing creativity. Kids have such brilliant minds, and are capable of so many things, however, he thinks that schools are not doing enough to help in ways that they should be.

I agree with Robinson when he says that creativity is as important in education as literacy is. A great point that he makes is that if we are not prepared to be wrong, we will never be creative. What this means is that if we only follow what we know to be true, then how are we going to ever be creative? Every child is born creative, however we are educated out of it. This is because we grow up in a society where the worst thing you can do is make a mistake. With everyone being frightened of making a mistake, everyone will only be following what they know to be true, thus, no one will be creative by the time that they are an adult.

The kids that grow up thinking that they are bad at school, are just bad at the things that are so profoundly professed and may actually be good that the things that are over looked and that are just as important. And Robinson thinks that we cannot afford to go on that way.

We need to radically re-think our view of intelligence. We know three things about intelligence, and they are: intelligence is diverse, intelligence is dynamic, and intelligence is distinct. Just because someone isn't great at a particular part of learning doesn't mean that they cant be good at another. A perfect example that he gives is of the girl who was thought to have a learning disorder, because she couldn't sit still in class. The teacher even talked to her parents saying that she needs to see a specialist. So her parents took her to see a specialist and they observed her. What the specialist said was that there was nothing wrong with her, just that she was a dancer. People now are so easy to say someone has a learning disorder, instead of looking for what they are really good at within another type of learning.

Overall i agree with Robinson that learning is very important, however, a different type of learning may need to be observed. Not just the mathematics and sciences and things of that nature, but also the arts because they are just as important. The only way in which we can change our future is to change the ecology of human nature, and to re-think the way we are fundamentally educating our kids.

Netflix 3rd quarter profits

2008-10-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Mkay so this ones real.

According to Yahoo! news, the online movie rental site Netflix profit rose 30 percent over the past three months, even with the economy in its current state. The article explains that people are "cutting corners" in my opinion this means instead of paying upwards of 7 $ a person to go to the movies lets say once a week, instead they spend significantly less to view a netflix movie where they can also save on snacks, and watch as many times as they want with as many people as they want. The article also explains Netflix's busniess plan for the upcoming quarters. they want to rent many more blu ray dicks, and charge a 1$ surcharge for people to rent the HD blu ray disks. They belive that because of the economy, the blu ray player will continue to cheapen in price and therefore more people will buy them. From my personal expeicnce, the only people with blu ray players are the owners of PS3's, which are able to play blu ray disks. Netflix would make much more money if they slow the development of their blu ray rental program and stick to dvd's. Also, Netflix is investing more in the online streaming portion of their website. This is helpful and easy because it provides over 12000 movies and tv shows at NO extra cost to subscribers. ( they could make more money if the coustomer gained permant acess to the movie, like itunes). anyway, this proves that people are spending less and will seek to cut costs in entertainment, which provides more revenue for media viewing stuff.

kraytracker.com

2008-10-21T07:58:00.002-07:00

I would like to talk about a website that I use, called Kraytracker.com. As you can probably tell from the name, Kraytracker.com is a torrent tracker community, such as the Pirate Bay, Torrentportal, and others. While these types of sites are seen as internet dens of inequity, Kraytracker.com offers the music enthusiast something different. Kraytracker is a tight, secretive community. Users must be invited by another user, and invites are only open for a small period each year. I would post a link, but you would only be able to see the login page. Nonusers can’t even explore the site. This in itself is a safeguard for its users, because the registration simply cannot be obtained. Kraytracker.com also has this important tool called the “Kraydar”. Kraydar is a database of albums flagged as unsafe for upload, and includes, but certainly is not limited to, any artist represented by the RIAA. Users cannot upload such albums, or they will receive a permanent ban (and becoming re-instated could take months). The result is a tracker community consisting of independent artists, and unconventional music that could never be found on a large, open community such as The Pirate Bay. Kraytracker.com is a safe community in which punk, ska, reggae, rap, emo, and even things such as techno and dance enthusiasts can find music they like. I have downloaded hundreds of albums from this site, and several have led to purchases from bands I particularly enjoy. Kraytracker.com is a website that provides many of these artists something they could almost never achieve: exposure.

late complaints

2008-10-21T07:58:00.001-07:00

Now this may be a bit late, but I would like to discuss my thoughts on the Obama/Biden rally. Two words come to my mind when I reflect on this event: Logistical…………..nightmare. I, and I’m sure many of you, were very surprised to wake up and find that your campus looked more like D.C. than Fredericksburg, with street vendors and throngs of people everywhere, as well as campaign merchandise everywhere the eye can see. But that wasn’t part of the nightmare, that was expected. I’m sure many of us attempted to attend the rally, but were hindered by the line starting at Virginia Hall. Mind you, this line was not the short distance from Virginia to Ball Circle, but it proceeded down Sunken (I believe), up William, and from College avenue into the Campus. My friends and I cut into the line on campus, to jeers and confrontation from those around us, and after explaining that we were students and had the right to get into our own grounds, left voluntarily to wait with our other friends. Did the moderators of this event actually think a line of this magnitude, which never seemed to shrink, would fit into Ball Circle? I hope not. Now I never got in to the rally, as well as many of you I’m sure. You would think the moderators could have started telling people not to get in line before waiting two or three hours for nothing. And let’s not forget the trash issue. Could UMW really not think to place extra trash cans for the 30,000 people that showed up? I had a picture of a trash can completely engulfed by garbage, with a 3 foot wide circle of garbage piled around it. Two extra trash cans in this area would have solved the problem. The event, in its aftermath, left Ball Circle much like the operations of D-day left the beaches of Normandy. Enough said. My final complaint is that, in hosting an event that created so much hassle for its students, and ravaged the campus, UMW could have at least seen to it that its students GOT IN to the event.

Microsoft gets patent for real-time f-bomb bleeping

2008-10-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

In 2004, Microsoft applied for a patent for real-time censoring of audio streams, and now, they have been granted that patent by the USPTO. What does this mean for Microsoft users? Everyone knows that beating other players online is much more satisfying than beating a computer in a video game, and know a days, you can talk to people, as if they were in the same room as you. This has caused a huge audience of users to compete online against other players. With the anonymous nature of the internet and of online Xbox communication, this means that you are going to play against people who will not be filtering what they say. Cuss words are a very common thing to encounter while playing Xbox Live. The gamer who is cussing however is most likely a young kid, who still thinks its funny to cuss at and insult people, but in the future, you may not have to worry about this any more.

This patent involves a real-time analysis of the audio stream, which will be able to recognize inappropriate language based on phonemes (the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning), and then it will overwrite these inappropriate words with bleeps, noises, or a silence.

With this new technology, is it possible to create other uses for it? I think in the future, live television shows will actually be live, but still be protected from the FCC, but also it could possibly reach cell phones. Cell phones are great for talking to people about how you really feel about something, but if this new technology were to be incorporated into future devices, it could put a damper on the realness of cell phone conversations.

Big Brother is listening (and grabbing): Sony's new PS3 ToS

2008-10-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Playstation 3 gamers received an e-mail from Sony, informing them that the terms of service on their console has been changed. It states "If you do not agree with the revised Terms of Service and User Agreement, please contact Customer Service to terminate your account(s). Otherwise, your or your Sub Accounts continued use of your Playstation(R)Network accounts means you agree to the changes". Basically what this is saying that either you agree to their rules or you terminate your account.

There are so many new restrictions and rules on these new policies, that it is just ridiculous how little freedom its users have now. The terms go on to state that you should be of legal age to hold the main account on the system, and if you are under the age of 15, you should be kept to a sub-account. Sony is so concerned about being sued because of children possibly seeing or hearing inappropriate things while they are playing games online, it is trying to act like your mother or father, by suggesting an age limit. Sony goes on to say that they have the right to keep records of anything you say or do online, and that they now have the right to listen in. Any data, such as your online ID, and your IP address, may be used to protect the interest of SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America), its users, or licensors. Now, while playing online, it is no longer safe to discuss with other players ways in which they have modded their games, or about their custom firmware.

Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the new agreement, however, is the inability to re-download your video content. Sony protects itself again by saying once you download something, it has no responsibility for the data. Sony says "You bear all risk of loss for completing the downlaod of any content and for any loss of content you have downloaded, including any loss due to a file corruption or hard drive crash. You are solely responsible for the storage and safekeeping of your content." This now makes video purchases a bad idea, because you cannot re-download your content if anything happens to it, and also Sony does not have to help you if their hardware goes bad. This is just stupid, they are basically saying that its alright if you have problems, because they are not Sony's problems. "No warranty is given about the quality, functionality, availability or performance of PSN, or any content offered on or through PSN...SCEA assumes no liability for any inability to purchase access to or use any content."

The last section of the user agreement that was heavily changed has to do with user created content. With new games such as LittleBigPlanet, which will be released soon, and Guitar Hero: World Tour, which allow you to create your own levels or songs, Sony now has the right to take whatever you have created, and cannot be caught in a legal battles. According to the user agreement, you make it, they own it.

Overall, this updated user agreement, is crazy, ridiculous and over the top. This user agreement exists for one specific reason, which is to cover Sony's butt in avery was possible. While they may be covered in the ways stated earlier, they will probably see declines in video sales, and any other download sales. I personally hope that they lose a serious amount of money, and have to re-write this agreement because what they have done is extremely unfair to its users.

McCain seeks special 'fair use' copyright rules for VIPs

2008-10-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

Just recently some of John McCain's videos were pulled off of youtube, due to copyright infringements. McCain has just discovered the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Which forces remixers to prove their work as a "fair use". McCain is now calling for VIP treatment instead of reforming the much hated law. He feels that there should be special treatment for the remixes made for political campaigns. He wants all campaign videos to be manually viewed by a human youtube employee before removing the remix. McCain sent a formal letter to youtube asking them to consider this new review policy. Larry Lessig made a comment on the letter saying that it was a "fantastic letter", adding " bravo to the campaign" which he stated in his blog. Since the sending of the letter, the tech press has been pretty supportive of McCain's idea. Now the question here is wether McCain realizes that fair use claims are an uphill battle or is McCain wanting special treatment for his campaign? Should congressmen and other politicians get special treatment in the area of copyright? They already receive special treatment by being able to bypass TSA security. Maybe McCain should call for the reform of the entire copyright world instead of just insisting on special treatment for politicians. This would benefit the entire remix culture.

'Net filters "required" for all Australians, no opt-out

2008-10-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier in 2007 the Australian government announced that there would be a continent-wide network filter that would keep citizens from accessing illegal content such as pornographic material inappropriate for children and content that is potentially hazardous. Just recently it was released that Australians were not going to be able to completely opt out entirely from the Australian cyber safety plan as they were originally led to believe. The specific filtering requirement implementations, the government says, is going to cost AUS$189 million. These filtering requirements on ISP's would have to use the Australian Communication and Media Authorities Blacklist, which is a list of the restricted websites. They first began testing the system at the beginning of this year contrary contrary to the public outcry. At first the government stated that if the user wished they could obtain unfiltered connectivity by requesting it thus bypassing the filtering system in its entirety. It turns out now that the users will no matter what be able to bypass the internet blacklist which in addition to the basic filter, filters the content not safe for children as well as content deemed illegal. The public finds "illegal" to be a very broad definition and wonders how the government will classify its "illegal content". The government had run tests in 2006 which concluded that the ISP filtering was not cost not effective and very expensive. The government is ignoring their own test results and going through with it.

Selling Used CDs

2008-10-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Last spring, the record industry lost a battle of legality over the issue of reselling used CDs. The result was groundbreaking. To be fair however, if we look back on the industry's history, fairness wasn't always portrayed as their best quality either. In July of 2000, 28 states filed suit against the five largest record companies and two music retailers for the conspiracy of fixed CD prices. Capitol Records, Sony Music, BMG Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music were all charged with these allegations. Not only did the record industries once try to manipulate the consumer's right to fair and free competition, remember when Sony went so far as to invade privacy by embedding software in CDs? The point is, music hasn't always been fair in the past.

Going back to the case of the record industry protesting the reselling of used/promotional CDs, the case was ultimately lost, and the court deemed the reselling of CDs to be legal. More specifically, the final decision stated that those who receive used/promotional CDs are free to dispose of them how they want. It was ruled that, "that the purported EULA included by UMG did not create a “license,” nor does it allow UMG to retain any control over the promotional CD. UMG gave away these CDs, and those who receive them are free to dispose of them as they see fit." CDs are CDs, no matter if their promotional ones or not. If distributors were that upset at people reselling them, they should figure out a way around those issues. Simply circulating free CDs and banning people from selling them isn't going to work so well.

As I see it, music isn't any different than items being sold in a pawn shop. You know that many items ending up in pawn shops are sometimes stolen or at least don't have the most clear history. It's the same with resold CDs. And how about CDs that aren't being sold any longer? Consumers are forced to buy off of somebody else in order to discover music. And it all too often happens to be the best kind of music, the rediscovered by newer generations. If these rules apply to resold CDs, then why shouldn't the reselling of records be challenged as well? The fact is, music is meant to be shared and big record companies looking for money shouldn't be able to tell consumers what they can and cannot sell for their own good. It's understandable that there are still kinks which need to be straightened out as far as money made by the orignal artist goes, but not being able to resell old CDs is just crazy.

FCC Opens Free Wireless Internet Access

2008-10-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

Even though this article wasn’t very entertaining, it was very informative. Just recently the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) announced that they have given the “green light” to allocate a chunk of “wireless spectrum” for free internet services across the nation. For those of us that take for granted free “Wi-Fi” this may not seem like big news. However the new service provided by the FCC would benefit the lower income Americans who may not have access to the internet. Not all of us can be so fortunate to attend UMW.

Here is where things start to get interesting. “Adopting a national policy to stimulate the deployment of broadband in underserved areas of the nation could have dramatic and far-reaching economic impacts,” say the authors of a recent study by the nonprofit Connected Nation. By implementing the FCC’s program it would help alleviate the economic strain by providing more jobs for the lower class. This article estimates that this plan would make around $100 billion dollars a year, and would create or save 2.4 million jobs.

With the internet you can search for jobs easier, post your resume, and talk to employers easier. You could also take classes online either for educational purposes or for a trade skill. This saves on-the-site training time, and could give the individual a “leg up” when applying for a job.

The only flaw in the proposal so far is how the FCC will transmit the Wi-Fi. T-Mobile warned that the service would interfere with their 3G wireless services. However the FCC tested the service and determined that their servers would not present a “significant risk of harmful interference.” The wording of that statement sounds like the FCC would actually interfere with T-Mobiles service, but not enough to harm them. From an outside perspective this looks like the government (FCC) will just bypass T-Mobile to insure that their program will work.
I really don’t see any flaws in this program so far. It will offer more jobs for Americans. It will help online revenue. It will increase global interaction over the internet. It will only help the economy. Not only will the lower class have access to more job opportunities, they will also be able to read the headlines in the news. This looks like a win-win situation, except if you work for T-Mobile.

Wal-Mart joins MSN and Yahoo, leaves DRM servers online

2008-10-13T15:08:00.001-07:00

When I first heard that you could download music off of Wal-Mart’s website I was a bit surprised. I figured that Wal-Mart was just in the business of selling CD’s, but I guess with the boom of iTunes, Wal-Mart wanted to make a little more money. When I was browsing around Wal-Marts music store I found out that their music per song costs 94 cents and it downloads to an MP3 format. It also notes that certain songs are able to play on the iPod.

In the article written by Jacqui Cheng Wal-Mart reportedly announced that they were going to turn off their servers and discontinue their service. With the growth of iTunes and other online music providers Wal-Mart has not been able to turn out a profit. After listening to customer complaints Wal-Mart now plans to “keep the DRM servers online a bit longer, allowing people to continue transferring their purchased music to other computers as usual.” Wal-Mart did not indicate, however, that the servers would remain online forever, and it continued to advise customers to burn their music to CDs.

Both Yahoo and MSN music have also gone in the same direction as Wal-Mart. Both companies were ready close their service, but later decided to stay open after listening to customer complaints. Through the process these three companies have shown that they actually do have a heart when it comes to customer service. When they could have left their customers behind and went on to “greener pastures,” they stuck with their loyal fans to keep providing them with the latest music.

If Yahoo, MSN, and Wal-Mart decide to shut down their servers then all of the music that the customers had purchased would no longer play on their computers. That is why Wal-Mart is recommending everyone who has purchased their music to burn it to CD’s. You may have to pay for a blank CD but at least you would not lose all of your music.

Currently I use two music services: iTunes and Rhapsody. When downloading music from Rhapsody it automatically directs you to burn your music onto a blank CD. With iTunes, I will have to take time to burn all of my music onto CD’s so that I will not lose all of my music.

I am glad these music services are allotting more time for their customers to copy all of their music. It can be very frustrating once you have grown accustomed to a particular music provider and suddenly they have discontinued their services. If the providers had discontinued their service it may lead to piracy.

Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy

2008-10-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

The 20 year old Tennessee student, David Kernell - was recently indicted for illegally hacking into Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account. He is being indicted for violating the "Computer Fraud Act", contrary to the previous thought that he would only be charged with a misdemeanor. David Kernell first reset Palin's password and then changed it to "popcorn", then posted it on several forums. Kernell could end up spending 5 years in prison and face a 250,000 dollar fine (but it is suspected that, in the end, he will end up with close to no jail time, if any at all).

David Kernell allegedly posted instructions on how he hacked Palin's account on the website "4chan". The technique which the hacker used to hack into Palin's account was extremely easy (I have even been capable of easily doing this, and was close to it -- all it required was asking someone his pet's name -- His secret question). What the hacker did was input Palin's zip code (he stated that this was easy because there were only two in the certain area she was in), and the secret question asked where she met her spouse, which the hacker was able to easily discover with a quick google search. He changed the password to "Popcorn", and posted this on online forums. Even though this is so simple to do, it doesn't make it any less legal if he had used a complicated method to find her password. I personally think the punishments are too high for the crime he commited. If he had changed her password, thats one thing, but giving everyone and anyone access to her personal email is a huge violation of privacy, and is wrong no matter how much you may hate Palin. David Kernell claims to have read through every one of her emails before posting the password on 4chan, just to make sure there is nothing too incriminating, and Kernell describes the messages as "anticlimatic". I think this is a valuable lesson showing how easy it is for someone to hack your email if you have an obvious Secret Question that someone could ask you and find out when your off guard.

Apple Teases New Notebook, Rumored Under $1,000

2008-10-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

Apple computers have always had a reputation for their pricetags, but just recently, Apple announced the upcoming release of a laptop that will be under $1000. Rumors of it's name have even leaked, and is supposedly going to be called the "Apple Brick". Several analysists were certain, well before this announcement, that Apple would be releasing a MacBook under the 1000 dollar mark, due to the fact that that they earlier said that they would release "state-of-the-art new products that our competitors aren't going to be able to match." - Which ultimately lead them to believe that meant lower pricing. There have even been leaks from the Apple company, including alleged authentic photos of the laptop's frame, and it has also been leaked that the laptop may be as low as $800. This may be just what Apple needs to finally gain over Microsoft in the market, and stay there.

Alot of hype is going into this upcoming apple, and many are hoping something big, due to the fact that they haven't redesigned a Mac Laptop in over two years. It is speculated that it will have an optical drive and ethernet capabilities (two capabilities that were not included in the previous MacBook Air model). Rumors have even gone as far as to say that the new manufacturing process of the Apple Brick, will involve carving a notebook out of a solid brick of metal (which I personally think seems quite unlikely) -- the process of carving it would include the use of lasers and jets of water. This would be a very durable model with no screws, but in my eyes doesn't seem at all realistic. One more rumor has come up about the Apple Brick, and that is that it would be a foldable, dual screen laptop. In this rumor, the keyboard would simply be a touchpad. I think this would be an awesome idea, giving the the user the ability to use it as a book (pages would come up on both screens, and could be folded like a book), a laptop with a touchpad keyboard, and finally, the ability to lay both screens flat on a desk (allowing two people to use it at once) -- If the rumor is true, it would be an awesome innovation.

Serious Games

2008-10-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/serious-games-issues.ars

This article takes a deep road in to the subject matter behind different video games. What happens when people take a controversial topic and turn it in to a video game? How could that affect an individual psychologically? This type of game is something that needs to be considered for the future of gaming.

With the RPG Maker 2000, Danny Ledonne created one of the most controversial, yet thought provoking, games of all time. The game was called Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Now i know this may sound like an extremely sick and twisted thing to do, but a lot of people didn't look at it that way. Before that there were films and books made about the tragedy but not a video game. Something that could force the viewer to play the role of the shooters on that tragic day. "The media tried to play the shooters off as inhuman monsters after the shooting, but the game proves one thing better than anything else: they were human." Why hasn't an idea like this been explored before? The article states that most people play video games just for the guts and the glory, not the experience of a true story that wasn't even close to fun. For example: every single WW1 or WW2 game ever made. It makes you think...how could something be so fun, when it wasn't fun at all.

This brings up the topic of war and its future in the gaming world as well as our own. The article brings up two games, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Army of Two, both being examples of games showing the growth of PMC's, or Private Military Companies, in our world. In Metal Gear Solid 4, these PMC's are the enemy, and a threat to the United States. In Army of Two, the main characters are contractors associated with the PMC's, who go about their lives killing for money. These two games attempt to foreshadow into a world where war rules all.

I thought this article did a great job of showing the possibilities of the future of video games. An industry that is exponentially growing, and one that I think is very important to our world. We'll see what happens.

Chinese Skype Client Hands Confidential Communications to Eavesdroppers

2008-10-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

Original Link: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/chinese-skype-client-hands-confidential-communicat

People all over the world use Skype. It’s one of the most popular chat engines on the internet. But what would you do if you found out that some of your instant messages are being blocked? The Chinese Skype client, called TOM Skype, does just that. Not only blocking specific keywords in your chat conversations, it watches private text conversations and reports them. Imagine how people who use TOM Skype, or the people who chat with those on the TOM client, feel after Skype already boasted absolute privacy for its users and complete security.
Eight remote servers exist in China, and any of the blocked keywords that may come up in the “private” messaging conversations are sent to one of these servers. These servers have relatively low security, so it was discovered that from around 44,000 users, over 166,000 messages had been censored.
Skype claims to have nothing to do with the breach in the TOM Skype client, and that at the time they were being assured that the users’ privacy was safe. However, this did not turn out to be the case. Skype is no longer reliable in the claims of secure privacy.
Again, this isn’t limited to TOM Skype client users only. If someone in the United States is chatting with someone in China using the TOM client, their end of the conversation is being monitored, and very possibly censored, as well.
eBay, a business partner with Skype, is very concerned about this compromised client on the Skype engine. They are warning their users to be cautious of what Skype client someone else is using, and not to communicate with those using the TOM client. eBay also no longer associates itself with TOM and required that TOM remove any of eBay’s trademarked images and links. eBay has created a “Chinese-localized version of Skype.” It is programmed to give users information on TOM, as well.
This article also gives a few links to alternative open source online chat engines that are much more secure than the TOM client.

Reading Online Privacy Policies

2008-10-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Did you know the average web privacy policy is 2,514 words? Of course you didn't. In fact, you don't even read them. According to research done by Carnegie Mellon's Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, it was concluded that if users did in fact read the issued privacy policies for each website they visited just once a year, the time spent reading the lengthy descriptions would actually cost revenue. During the study on web privacy, the longest privacy note was a whopping 7,669 words, quite a mouthful. I bet we could all imagine the strenuous technicalities hidden and twisted behind the mini novel. McDonald and Cranor estimated that the average person would spend at least 200 hours or more sheerly reading these privacy notes. These hours spent reading, directly impacts the net value lost to the economy. Along with the average 200 hours, an average of at least $3,000 is lost with each person. Now imagine $3,000 times the number of users on the web? That is a lot of money.

In reality though, nobody reads these notices, so these predictions do not have any real influence in real time. The correlation between these estimates cannot be applied to today's economic wealth. To conclude, the point of the article was not to influence people's decision to actually read the privacy policies of web applications, but was to try and create a better connection between privacy and the consumer more applicable. In other words, companies need to find an easier way for the consumer to read these policies in a manner which wouldn't cost the economy or hundreds of hours of one's annual life. In my opinion, these long technicalities actually just scare away consumers from reading them, almost as if they are discouraging the right of understanding between the law and consumer. Something should be done in this day and age where society is supposedly getting technologically more innovated.

HALO 3 RECON!!!

2008-10-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

Bungie announced the other day that it will be adding on another campaign to Halo 3. There will be a different Hero, and a whole new campaign. Halo, being the trilogy that became one of Microsofts best sellers, and a product of Bungie. The prologue will excite gamers all over the world!! The trailer can be seen on any xbox marketplace or xbox homepage. This new prologue is expected to be release sometime in 2009.

Corey Doctorow

2008-10-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

-Companies just want to Sell people STUFF'

-Fight about control over life- and what you can do

Privacy, liberty, etc

-IT companies aren't necessarily on our side

-Who gets to copy their stuff?

-Bits designed to be copied

**-Open Source Stuff**

-Alchemy before science

-They didn't share their stuff - so not much science really happened

-Then they started publishing findings

-Called Enlightenment

-DRM restricting copying

-made secret and not supposed too be modifiable or comprehensible to users

-licensing restrictions

-DRM non-science

-Doesn't stand up to rigorous examination

-give everything you need - but you still can't do anything with it

-Exceptions to copyright

"keep honest user honest" - oh lol

-DRM is NOT copyright

-DRM is about expanding the copyrighted monopolies

-"Authorized domain" digital TV-copy restrictions - flag content so it can only be used by a households worth of devices

-Haven't considered all cases of family setups

-family spread out, or child of separated parents going back and forth - called corner cases- not important, etc

- DRM is not a contract

- even after clicking the I agree button on a Eula, the manufacturer can change the terms

- TiVo update

Why do people make products that mimic other products?

- If your apple you can sue people. They will put a price tag on their music if you want to move your music to another supplier. Apple know that people have invested so much money into their music on ITunes.

- Other music suppliers are trying to compete with apple

- Doctorow talks about how he no longer works for the company EFF. They work to keep DRM out of our computer

- There is no future in which bits will be harder to copy than they are today. This moment in time has the most copy proof bits

- Talks about how he writes books, and puts them on a website for people to view for free

- Believes artists should share music and ask their fans to buy their music, not force them to.

- Blu-ray vs HD

- region coding (Blu-ray)

- industry tries to squeeze as much money as possible out of the honest customers

-compares this strategy to a urinary tract infection

- claims that if the industry wants to survive it must abandon its doomed business model.

- Finally, the biggest problem for an artist is obscurity not piracy.

Anti-piracy tune rules at three-day music industry meet

2008-10-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/music/news/article_1435687.php/Anti-piracy_tune_rules_at_three-day_music_industry_meet
Popkomm, an annual festival in Berlin, allowed the music industry to convey their frustrations and anger to the public about illegal copying. Robin Gibb, from the Bee Gees, was one of the artists who were upset about illegal copying. Gibb is now suing the European Commission; he criticized the European Union for making unfair rules on the music industry’s operations. The music industry accused the pirates who caused this spiral downfall of digital music. The revenues from the music industry have dropped close to 40% from illegal copying. However, Ali Riza Binboga of Turkey, which is the partner country for the annual Popkomm, believes that even though the revenues have dropped, the government has come up with new solutions to protect copyright laws. Binboga from the agency MESAM thinks that even though there has been a deficit in revenues from the music industry, at least copyright laws are reassured. During the three-day festival, nearly 400 acts will perform in different Berlin clubs both big and small names. The festival has pulled in several “recording companies, music publishers, online distributors, and technology companies.”

Wipeout Is Sued For Copyright Infringement

2008-10-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) has accused ABC for copyright infringement. TBS believes that ABC’s show “Wipeout” is exactly like several Japanese competition series. However, this has happened before. Success of a series usually results in lawsuits from other parties claiming to have stolen their TV show. TBS owns the Japanese copyright of several obstacle course series like “Takeshi’s Castle” or “Sasauke.” TBS’s lawsuit against ABC states that the show “Wipeout” has unlawfully copied the same type of “premise, format, sequence of events, introductory segment, tone, scene setups, narration, and dialogue” as several of other Japanese competition series. TBS has filed their lawsuit against ABC with the help of Larry Stein, a litigation attorney who has experience with “high-profile profit participation cases.” This is not Stein’s first lawsuit against ABC. Twice in the past Stein has filed lawsuits, one for “Home Improvement” and the other for “Who wants to be a Millionaire.”