Week 11EOC: The Future of the Internet

The future of the internet can be many things some think that it will be good with the inventions that many creative minds will have in store for them and how they will make it a better place, and there are others how think it is the root of many evils and that it should be stopped.  I think the reason why there are these ideas in many people’s head is the fact that some people are afraid to change, while others are not.

The Internet is a medium that is evolving at breakneck speed. It’s a wild organism of sweeping cultural change — one that leaves the carcasses of dead media forms in its sizeable wake. It’s transformative: it has transformed the vast globe into a ‘global village’ and it has drawn human communication away from print-based media and into a post-Gutenberg digital era.

 

There are a lot of people out there who use the internet to communicate with others, an example is all the social media sites that are out there for people to use as well as the news, sports, all of these places have websites so they communicate with their target audience quickly and accurately.

It is still too early to say that theinternet has fragmented into “internets”, but there is a danger that it maysplinter along geographical and commercial boundaries.

No one really knows what the future is going to bring us we can only predict and hope that we are right when the events actually unfold.  Is anyone here really more wrong than others it is hard to say, but the fact that technology changes so fast it is very hard for some people to keep up with what is going on in the world today

In Future Shock, Toffler arguesthat, since the eighteenth century, technological developments have advanced sorapidly that most people experience disorientation in trying to adjust to thesechanges. Toffler cites as evidence of massive “future shock” such phenomena asrising divorce rates, increased drug use, and rising crime rates.

Week 10 EOC: The Dark Trade

When I watched the movie “Illicit,” I was actually found it to be very interesting on things were in the world today.  What I liked the most about it was the fact that it didn’t sugar coat what a lot of people did to make products on the black market.  The movie gave you specific and realistic examples of what some people have done and how far they can go to make money in this world.  Now what I did find rather humorous but yet I could see being very true is the in the movie was stating how most of the people who were behind the black market had lots of money the problem was they didn’t how to spend it without raising questions from others.  This was due to the fact that when you’re that rich you want to do what most people do with that kind of money, you want to show it off.  The problem arises when how to show off that money when you don’t have a job, you didn’t win the lottery, you didn’t come from a rich family, so the question comes up “Where did you get all this money?”  If you think about a smart person can easily make an income off the internet if they know how to do it, there are a lot of people out there who use the internet to help with their addiction whether it be drugs, pornography, etc. and most of the addicts if they get cheated out of their money aren’t going to run to their authorities due to the fact that if they did they would incriminating themselves as well, one thing many of the villains are very well aware of at this point in time.   I also found it to be very interesting but also very true when the movie stated that the bad guy almost always wins in this war against the black market, which is for the most part true.  Now to be realistic I’m sure that the governments and normal businesses have had their share of victories in this, but there is no doubt in my mind they are a lot fewer than the many the villains have obtained.  Now the reason for this is actually very simple it falls back to one statement, “We are our worst enemy.”  What that statement basically means is that we can’t really win due to the fact that there is always someone out there who will buy these products that are built on the black market, because they don’t want to the normal prices from the regular businesses who make these.  Not to mention the fact that the villains are well aware of this and use this to their advantage, and if they were to ever want to stop them from profiting from this, it’s not just going to take our governments involvement in this, it’s going to take all of us to do it.

Week 9: EOC My Domain Website

At first when I started working on this project I felt very lost and didn’t know where to begin, but after I was pointed in the right direction, I found that using Weebly.com to make a website to be very easy to use.  The interface was structured very well and I didn’t have a lot of trouble trying to find the things that I was looking for to make the website.  I did like how they had things like the contact box already made so all one had to do was drag it into place on the webpage and it worked which made it extremely easy on the users part.  Another thing that I liked was how you could put a button which would prompt a call to action and that could be placed anywhere that you wanted in the columns of text if you chose to do so, this was one space saving feature that was helpful to users.  The only thing I wish I had figured out sooner was how to edit the image on the header, but once I had that figured out it was really easy to change to something that you wanted to fit more appropriately to your website.  One thing that I didn’t like was the fact that when you put up a contact form it would span the entire width of the website and I couldn’t figure out a way to trim it down so that makes a lot of wasted space on a website.  Also I was hoping that you fill up the text boxes with filler text like what you can use in Adobe InDesign but that didn’t seem to be the case unless I was doing it wrong.  I did notice that they had several themes to pick from to make your website to be more fitting for what you are trying to use it for as well 

Week 8 EOC: Privacy Issues on the Web, Two Companies that can Spy on You

I had to think for a while so I could find two companies that would spy on you through your computer and this is what I came up with.  First company, would be Google, now their intentions may be legal but the fact is that they are using keylogger software to track what your web history is, this is used in order for them to deliver advertising they feel would be best for that individual.  The more advertising they can deliver to people and get products sold the better it is for Google and the companies that hire Google to deliver these ads.  The software can track users in the following aspects:

All keystrokes including username/password of various programs and websites, incoming/outgoing emails, and online chat conversations, etc.

Websites people visited recently, including URL, site name, page title and time stamp.

Programs executed on the computer, including the user name, program title and time stamp.

File/Folder operations, including create/delete/move/rename actions.

Capture entire screen snapshots periodically andautomatically in the background just like a secret camera directly point at thecomputer monitor.

Keylogger software is not always used by criminals and hackers there are legal reasons that companies can use this software to protect themselves and their products.  Some company's use keyloggers to track their employee's activity and to monitor the use of the company's computers and Internet by the employees.

One of the advantage of a keylogger such as Spector Pro or eBlaster is that they can be used for back-up purposes in case of system crash, it is useful to know that you are always have a back-up of whatever you type.

Keyloggers can monitor all the keystrokes made on acomputer, and some even have the ability to take screenshots, record both sidesof IM conversations, and record audio. When most people think of keyloggersthey think of hackers and malicious usage, but there can be some good reasonswhy people wish to install keyloggers on their own PCs or MAC.

Another company if you can refer to them that way is the United States Armed Forces, I can personally speak from experience that all the branches of the United States military use keylogger software to track to their employees as well as to monitor things that can concern our safety.   This is not just so people can say that big brother is watching, there are some very real threats out there can potentially harm many people that are not just limited to Americans, the programs are in place not just for security but safety as well. I did manage to find a possible that they may use to keep their systems in order

Safebit

Week 7 BOC: Garageband

When I was using Garageband on the computer at first I found the program very frustrating due to the fact that I have no music experience what so ever.  So a lot of the information on the tutorials was completely going over my head.  This is a problem I could see for anyone who is not musically inclined or has no experience with music, so they would most likely have the same beginning with program as  I had at the start.  However, once I figured out the program I found it to be very easy to use and I can see someone who has an interest in music or possibly that is what they enjoy the most, they would find great use out of the program itself.  I like the fact that they did have a quite a lot of choices when it came to background music, someone could choose if they were trying to make their own music with a guitar or piano but were lacking the other instruments in the background to make the additions to make a normal song for themselves or for others.  Another thing that was nice was that you could take those loops and place them anywhere in the time of your song with ease to make the final song you were making a working piece.  Another nice feature about Garageband was the fact that if you wanted to learn how to play an instrument or a particular song with an instrument, there were tutorials with both audio and video to show you how to do it as well as, the ability to slow it down during difficult portions of that song.  When someone got comfortable with that portion, they could then play it back at normal speed with the artist hosting the tutorial making it feel like an even better accomplishment to the person using it.

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Week 7 BOC: Obsession

Week 6 BOC: Video Challenge

Here's a video that I made of my friends and myself killing a notorious monster on a MMO that I currently play called Final Fantasy XI