tarynjensen's journal

Extra Credit- Final Response Blog

2005-06-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Illegal downloading is a very mainstream crime in today’s society. Few people even think twice about signing onto a peer-to-peer network to download their favorite song onto their MP3 player. It seems like a very petty crime, and one that lacks the backbone of a strict punishment. However, as the issue becomes more mainstream, so does the punishment.
The topic definitely has two strong sides to it, and in many cases society is split over what the appropriate (if any) stipulations should be given out. There are many people who feel that the music industry charges individuals too much for music, and free downloading should be allowed for everyone to be able to have access to art. Supporters also argue that free music downloading gives artists more popularity and more public recognition. Also, it allows those without record labels a chance to have their music available to the public. However, on the other side, artists argue that it hurts their craft, and that they loose money because of downloading. In actuality, CD sales are down as well. It is difficult to make any decisions about which side is correct. The only concrete thing about illegal downloading is that organizations like the RIAA are cracking down on individuals who are participating.
There are extremely harsh punishments for those who decide to take place in illegal downloading. The industry has gone as far as to charge a twelve year old girl with a $3,000 fine, and have targeted numerous college students. The fines are stiff, and the chances that an individual will beat the industry are slim to none. If someone gets caught- they will pay the fine. In addition, an individual can be charged for downloading even one song. The fines can reach exorbitant amounts of money, and could even result in jail time. It really isn’t worth the risk anymore.
Surprisingly, international copyright situations are following the same pattern as the United States. Many countries are changing their stance on illegal downloading, and are also taking the zero toleration stance. People are being made examples of on every corner of the globe. Everyone, especially college students, are making themselves very vulnerable by taking part in illegal pirating of files.
In actuality, it really is just safer to be legal. There are numerous sites available now to anyone that allow you to download cheap files for a small monthly fee, or a small fee per song. While it may not be ideal, it isn’t risking a steep fine, and the file is guaranteed to be clean. The RIAA prosecutes randomly, so there is no way to hide. While the odds are typically in the consumers favor, there is still great risk, and legal downloading is the only way to truly avoid it completely. Also, because of the crack down, legal sites will probably gain popularity, and in turn become more and more attractive for the consumer.

Extra Credit- 9A

2005-05-23T02:54:00.000-07:00

Extra Credit

VoIP seems in many ways to be the most cost effective and efficient mode of communication for many businesses. However, there are also some large drawbacks, before it virtually makes phones obsolete. For example, every member of the party needs the means of communication (both parties must have the software). In addition, there is a slight delay. In addition, not all VoIP software is as notable as other forms. A lot of the software needs some forms of improvement.

Reading Week 9A

2005-05-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

How do you expect VoIP to impact cable and telephone networks?

While VoIP might not be as popular as telephone usage is now, it definitely has the potential to be a very influential mode of communication. VoIP allows users to have long distance interaction with more advanced technology. In addition, it allows the user to have the same benefits as telephone communication, but at more advanced rates. Also, it is much more efficient. I think that this advancement could eventually rule out some telephone use. Cell phones have really hurt the long distance industry on land lines, and VoIP could potentially do the same thing. Just as e-mail has done to snail mail, the telephone industry needs to look into the future, and find some new means of marketing.

Extra Credit- Week 8 B

2005-05-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Extra Credit

This article was really surprising to me. During election time, I had logged on to the John Kerry website, and I had never realized how many critiques there were for the website. It seems to me that these websites are extremely important in the race for presidency, and because of this, they should be relatively perfect. In addition, I was very surprised at the accessibility of both sites. Professor Gill pointed out that the Bush website was designed for a more advanced computer. This makes sense because the GOP is typically a more wealth-based party. However, as was also pointed out, this type doesn’t benefit the less wealthy southern-based republicans, that really helped Bush win the election. Overall, I think that it is interesting how much more work should probably be done on the websites. Who knows, maybe it really can be the difference of those essential votes.

Reading Week 8B

2005-05-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

What is the relationship between cyberspace as a public space and accessibility standards?

After reading the articles, I have realized that the Internet is, in many ways, another forum for discrimination against those with disabilities. I never realized that those with visual impairment have the ability to have sites read to them out load. It is slightly concerning that I had never even heard of this. I have made my own websites numerous times, and it surprises me that nobody has ever cautioned me against the fact that someone with a disability might not be able to view the sight because of my coding. We have made much more of our world disability friendly, why not make our supreme mode of communication the same way?

Week 8a

2005-05-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

The Internet has greatly changed the entire industry of politics. For example, politicians are really using the Internet’s medium to not only communicate their message, but to also help create more awareness. People have a much easier possibility of communicating to the masses with Internet technology. It also forces the politicians to capitalize on another form of communicating with the public. It gives them a new audience, and a new for of communication.
Negatively, I would say that I am still rather weary of electric voting. The more that I read about the process, the more I really question the infiltration of electronic voting into the system. I am nervous there is a lack of honesty embedded in the industry, that real problems like security and effectiveness can get overlooked.
In addition, it is hard to not think of voter privacy. There is way more money spent on keeping privacy, and on the paper trail. In addition, it seems like the problems are never going to be fixed. I think there is a lot of potential, but the problems over weigh the solutions.

assignment one- fixed citations

2005-05-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Veiga, A. (2003, September 8). Recording Industry Sues Hundreds of Individual Music Swappers. The Seattle Times. Retrieved April 22, 2005, from http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=webmusiclawsuit08&date=20030908&query=copyright+laws+%2B+illegal+downloading

Hamilton, M. (2003, August 7). Why suing college students for illegal music downloading is right. CNN.com. Retrieved April 22, 2005, from http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/07/findlaw.analysis.hamilton.music/

Madden, M, Rainie, L. (2005, March 23) Music and Video Downloading Moves Beyond P2P. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved April 22, 2005, from http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/153/report_display.asp.

Kneser, G. (2003, September). Illegal Downloading and File Sharing Letter. St. Olaf- Dean of Students. Retrieved April 22, 2005, from http://www.stolaf.edu/stulife/deanofstudents/studentcommunications/downloading.html.

Carr, D. (2005, April 9). Exploring the Right to Share, Mix, and Burn. The New York Times. Retrieved April 22,

Reading 6A

2005-05-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

“From Tom Paine…”

I think this article really explains how software in general, not just blogging, has truly facilitated community. As the article mentions, technology has allowed people to instantly share knowledge and communicate thoughts and opinions. We have information available to us at our fingertips at any time; either from a manufacturer/ news website/ another person who can share their insight. In addition, we have more of an opportunity to find other people like us who we can share our information with. As the article mentioned, new technology helped the spread of more extremist political groups. It is much easier for people to communicate a non-mainstream political opinion away from more conventional means of communication.

“shirky…”

This article allows the reader to see why the forming of groups has changed so much in accordance with blogging/ new technologies. As the article mentions, it has created a whole new set of social norms. Technological grouping allows you to be connected with MANY more people than was previously possible, and with much more ease. In addition, you don’t have to follow the restrictions normal society places on you (ie the social norms).

Reading 5B

2005-04-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

Wifi technology has the chance to greatly affect the entire world. In my opinion, it could be the source of a vast new type of communication strategy. It has the possibility to virtually connect the whole world through a new form of networking. This opens up amazing possibilities never before seen to our world’s population. It also allows more people to be better connected and at a lower cost. This in turn can lead to more community networks, and a more world-wide technologically based community. While the software may be tricky, and the regulations difficult, the positive benefits seem strongly outweigh the potential complications.

Extra Credit- Week 4B

2005-04-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

This reading was very enlightening. I found it very surprising how far the election and voting process has changed since its first arrival. I had always heard of black-balling, but I would never have placed it in our actual voting history. Also, the written history of the voting process has really quite advanced. I never really thought that a voting ballot would really be that hard to complete. However, after looking at the history and the way they have advanced- I know that there is much room for error, and much room for potential disaster that could very negatively effect the voting process. I think the optical scanning is probably the most effective means- with our many problems with chads, counting, etc. Optical scanning really does seem to be the most effective.

Reading Week 4B

2005-04-20T04:11:00.000-07:00

While reading the article “Voting and Usability” I simply felt like all my fears about voting in general were increased. The article mentioned that one of the main problems with voting stems from the simple problems. When I look back at the first time I voted, I can easily understand someone’s confusion. It is a little tricky at first, and as the article pointed out- there is a lot of room for problems. For example, and increase in font messed-up an entire ballot. After hearing all room for problems, I began to think that electronic voting might be the best idea.

The Second Article “Wanted…” also made me question the voting accuracy problem. This article mentioned the problem with listing candidates alphabetically, or the usability problems that seem to happen when candidates are listed out of order. This problem can really surface when you have races like the California Governor debate that had over 100 candidates. In my opinion, electronic voting could curb this issue.

“The Bombay Ballot” also made me think that the US should switch to more of India’s current electronic voting. India seems to have a very successful voting system that far surpasses the United States. I was hesitant about electronic voting because of all the errors you always hear of. However, this system seems to correct the problems present with the current U.S. system. I think it would be a good idea for the US to update to a similar strategy to that of India.

Reading Week 4A

2005-04-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

Reading the article “Being Analog” made me really examine the relationship between machines and my personal life. There is one point in the beginning that the author mentions computers have only been around for less than a century. I think this is fairly staggering, because it is hard to visualize a world without computers. It is also impressive to look at the technological advancement in the past century from room-sized computers to small personal pcs. Technology on many levels escapes me. I was rather confused by much of the explanations about how computers are run with math style formulas, but it was also very interesting. I am very comfortable using a computer, and many people are… but, how many people can even explain how they work? It made me think- as humans we run many machines, and use them everyday. But, in reality, are they running us? If we can’t even fully understand how they work, how much control do we really have?

Extra Credit Week 3B

2005-04-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

I found it somewhat startling that in the extra credit reading for today, there was a mention that political candidates are among the top consumers in the advertising industry. I think this leads to somewhat of an information overload during election time. It is changing the face of politics today. I think it is making the election more based on who can market the politician more in the most popular way versus who is actually the best politician/ candidate.

Reading Week 3B

2005-04-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

I found the article “The role of the internet…” to be very interesting. This article made me think about my own political practices and how media, specifically computer media has effected my perception. Prior to Internet information and TV mediated political advertisements, I think that people were forced to be more informed politically. However, now the information is simply fed to them and we must decide which information to filter through as accurate or as false. In many ways this can lead to misconceived notions, in my opinion.

Reading Week 3A

2005-04-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

After reading “We have the information you want…” it made me realize how much information does indeed affect my life on a daily basis. Technology has allowed for us to have much more information at our fingertips and much faster than in the past. However, now we have to worry about things like false information. When one person was getting information from a library, the odds were fairly strong that all the information would be accurate. However, in today’s society you must worry about false websites, and overall false information. This is something you must deal with everyday. We have so much information being fed to us, we must learn how to filter through and decide which information is worthwhile.

The second article highlighted the idea of pre-filtering. Because of technology, this process has become something we deal with on a daily basis. We must look at all of the information we are given and try to filter through what we need and what is useless. Before the invention of things like the Internet this process was much more simple. Now, we must know what we are searching for, and more importantly, what we aren’t searching for.

Extra Credit Three

2005-04-06T08:41:00.001-07:00

Media is the message…

I found the point the article was making about a product not being as emphasized until it is given “content.” The article uses the electric light as the example. I found this very interesting, and in some senses surprising. It is true that an invention or a technology needs a marketing content, a message that it is trying to apparently convey before it is a medium. I think you can see this with early computers; until they were given a “content” they were not the medium. Our society looks at things with different perceptions, and this article just helped to emphasize how important the “content” really is.

Assignment Three

2005-04-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

Networks…
I found it very interesting what the article mentioned about new forms of medium. It mentions that new forms of media will be made, and will re-define what we look at as real or authentic… essentially trying to prove that it is more real or more authentic. I found this intriguing, because I think you see this happen every day. We have more and more new forms of media and communication being invented every day, and it is fairly easy to see that with each device, they are trying to gain “medium” status. For example, look at our computers now. Technology has long exceeded what was in the past, and now it is our reality that current computers are the medium; again, essentially, our expectations were changed.

Principles…
As the article explained, all technology is based and broken-up by numbers. This is something I had never realized before, but seemingly makes sense. I had never thought of computers with algorithms, but I do realize how looping would be made, and how the computers would be connected now. It makes entire sense that they would be based upon numbers. Computers now are much more discrete… which also was seemingly surprising. The language of programming and computer language is really complex and complicated, and this article just reassured to me the average person will never be able to fully grasp it.

Extra Credit

2005-04-04T08:10:00.002-07:00

AHA’s from Extra Credit Reading:

I was fairly surprised by the amount of technology this article highlighted. There are so many new improvements being made to old inventions everyday, and I thought the introduction had a rather informative point. It mentioned that new inventions can be thought of, but unless they are efficient economically, they will never be implemented. This makes me think of the classic example of the first computer that was made and was the size of a room. The market and money must be there for something to be implemented, which makes me wonder what inventions we would have if this wasn’t as much of a factor.

I was also surprised by the complexity of the machines that type when you talk into them. I didn’t realize that it combined two complex units like the vocoder and the stenotype. It was impressive to me that the same type of technology that was used with arithmetic functioning tools was also combined for voice technology. It is amazing how inventions are able to build off each other in this way.

Extra Credit

2005-04-04T08:10:00.001-07:00

Wednesday's AHA's Extra Credit

2005-04-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

testing

2005-03-31T16:05:00.000-08:00

testing testing new blog