Journal #15, Aug 10

Text Benefits

Text messaging is probably my favorite thing about cell phones and this article tells about some of the great things benefits of using text messaging but it forgot a few. I’m not one for staying with my face pressed up against the phone for hours upon hours. I’m a say what you’ve got to say type of girl. I hate it when people call and have absolutely nothing to say. I also use text messaging when talking on the phone just won’t work. Like when my mom needs my account number to put money in my account but I’m in class. I just shoot her a quick text and call it a day or when I’m at work and need a friend to drop off my lunch.

Text messaging is also great for keep track of your life. I get my bank account updates text messaged to me. When I get a message on MySpace or Facebook it comes right to my phone. When there’s an emergency announcement on campus it comes straight to my phone. If there is bad weather heading in my direction I get a text giving me the heads up.

Text messaging is also great for socially situations. You need to tell someone something but don’t actually want to talk to them or be lured into a conversation, you send them a text message and keep it short a simple. If you don’t want to talk to someone you simply don’t answer their text. Maybe you have something you need to tell a friend but don’t need everyone else around to hear it ( i.e. I can see your underwear through your dress), you just send them a text and no one knows what it says but you and her. Sure text messaging just may be the death of correct spelling and grammar in America but man do I love it!

http://luludates.blogspot.com/2006/06/text-messaging-necessary-convenience.html

Journal #14, Aug 10

Mobile Junkies

When I saw the title of this article I thought it was going to be about how the demands of the public have changed the way people do things such as market items. The article was actually about a man, Howard Rheingold the author of Virtual Reality believes that the rise of cell phone use and text messaging has created these “underground” and “secret” communities. Well, please excuse my language, but his theory seems like a bunch of bull to me. Before people used cell phones to signal each other that the cops were coming they were using secret calls, gestures, and signals. Yes cell phones have made it easier to bring people together but people are going to find ways to communicate with each other with or without cell phones. As far as cell phones making teens believe its okay to be late, that’s a bunch of bull. I, an admitted cell phone addict, know it’s not okay to be late. Yes, it does make the situation a little better if you can call in advance and say you are going to be late but it does not make tardiness acceptable. Time is precious and not something you can replace or get back. Once time is gone, it’s gone and until a time machine is invented no amount of technology can make wasting or disregarding someone’s time acceptable and this is coming from a teenager.

Cell phone also, as stated in this article, contain a lot of tracking devices and can give away a lot of information so as far as cell phones aiding criminals….I think not. Only a stupid criminal would use a cell phone. Most cell phones have G.P.S technology and can be used to pinpoint your location where landlines have to be traced and can only tell where you were when you made the call not where you are at currently. Cell phones are all about connivance not crime rings!

http://www.wired.com/culture/education/news/2002/09/54771

Journal #13, Aug 10

Technology and Connecting

This article was, once again, another article about how technology is hindering society socially. We all know we are social creatures but we are letting society keep us from our nature. First it was, as the article mentioned, phones and now its email, instant messaging and text messaging. We don’t talk in person or write letters anymore. We send e-mails and message each other and even those messages are short, direct, and to the point. We have lost touch with the beautiful and romantic art of communication. This art that strings words together to make dreamy sentences using expressive language. Even the author of the article does so. His first few sentences were all choppy and short; five words or less sentences.

Now, it all bothers me, instant messaging, e-mails, and text messaging because I am a lover of words and a hopeless romantic when it comes to letter writing (I wish it was something people still did.). But text and instant messaging get to me the most because people let it flow over to other parts of their life. I absolutely, positively hate it when people use i.m. and text messaging slang in every day conversation. (i.e. Did you really just say LOL?) Or when they’re writing notes and they spell later, L8r. Why? So not only are people using as few words as possible but they’re also using acronyms and “creative” spelling.

Now as far as cell phones and being hooked to the internet goes: I’m guilty as charged. I keep my cell phone with me at all times and if I don’t have it with me I feel lost, like a part of me is missing. I even sleep with my phone in bed with me. I also get on the internet when I wake up and before I go to sleep. I even use my cell phone to keep me up to date on my Facebook and e-mail and to go to websites if/when need be. It’s horrible I know, but hey at least I know of my addiction and at least when I text I spell everything out and use correct grammar (or at least try to).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/10/newmedia.research

Journal #12, Aug 3

Reboot Society

This article was about a number of things. In actuality in jumped for topic to topic, many of which had nothing to do with each other, but what caught my interest most was about the United Kingdom using blood sensing cameras to catch those who use dummies to fool police in order to use the carpool lanes. Now while I do believe that is wrong and shouldn’t be done I think there are better thing to use technology and money on. I believe that people, governments, especially should use technological advance that do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Why not put the gps technology that is available on cell phones into use when emergency calls are placed but the person calling is not aware of their location. Let’s use these blood sensing cameras to find lost children and the bodies of those missing. IN the grand scheme of things is riding in the carpool lane when you are the only passenger in the car the worse crime a person can commit? And is using government money to install blood sensing cameras the best use of the technology we have available? I don’t think so and I’m sure there are many people out there who’d agree with me. Why don’t we focus on simple things first like getting more electronic highway signs out there to warn drivers of upcoming bad weather or Amber alerts? Why don’t we use all this new found technology to create jobs for the millions of people who are out of work or develop plans for feeding the billions of starving people in the world? Maybe I’m living in a fairy tale world and think that the answers to my questions are easy but I’m darn sure that blood sensing cameras in carpool lanes aren’t the answers.

http://www.greenforall.org/

Journal #11, Aug 3

EULA!!!

When I was looking up the iTunes EULA for the number four discussion topic I found a couple of articles on EULAs in general and after reading about some of my classmates discussions on the EULAs they chose to look up I decided to read up on EULAs. I didn’t think that EULA for iTunes was shady or deceitful but I did think that it was a bit excessive. This article asked the exact question I was asking, but for a specific product. Are EULAs that bad? The author of this article seems to agree with me: they aren’t. I think that EULAs are a necessity for the companies that make and sell software. A company can’t possible know what some insane, sick, maniac is going to use their software for and has to protect itself from lawsuit. The lawsuit is the American way. Americans are quick to sue and want to get as much money as possible. So if a crazed man uses iTunes to interfere with a plane’s navigation system and the plane flies into the side of a mountain then the families of the victims will not only sue the man who caused this horrible accident but will also sue the company, which in my opinion, is not truly at fault. Plus the federal and state government always overrules the “contract” of the EULA.

Also a company has to be able to make a profit off its product. If a person is making copies of the software and giving it out to all of his buddies then how is the company expected to make money. Sure your own the copy of the software on your computer but not the concept behind the product or the product itself. To say you own the product is to say that just because you drive a Chevrolet Cavalier you own the rights to the blueprints of the car and can then start making and selling/ giving away Chevrolet Cavaliers. It just doesn’t work that way and the EULA is just letting you know that.

EULA= Protection

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/faq/a/eula.htm
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/eula.html

Journal #10, Aug 3

Data Deluge

Once again I’m writing another journal about what I’m calling the word/ invention/ tool of the year if not the century: Google. When the author of this article goes into the different eras and how first computers changed the way we use and look at data, and then the internet, and then internet search engines, I just couldn’t relate. I’ve grown up using computers, the internet, and google. I’ve never really had to do any type of research without the use of the internet and the ideal of it scares me. And as far as those cards people used to use in the library to find books….I still can’t quite grasp how they worked. I mean how could use possible be able to search for books using genres or keywords with cards? But I digress, in the article they speak very much so of models and how they are now, in my words not the author’s, passé. Even growing up in this information age I can’t possible understand how models, what I’ve been taught is the basis of most of what we know to be true in science, can be put to bed and a thing of the past. Yes data lies what you already see out, but models are what make them make sense and shows you what the data means. Data by itself is not information but the basis for information. I can look at a table of data on anything for hours and hours but it takes a model, a theory, to make it make sense to me, to explain to me what this data is saying. Without a model I can take what I want to take out of data, not what is meant to take out of data. I understand the way we view and use data has changed, and for the most part for the better, but to absolutely wipe out the model to me is absurd to say the least.

http://amundblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/rebirth-of-confounding-and-theory-in.html