Xenomorph

The rip mix burn $ue video was one of the most detailed presentations I’ve seen on the topic of various legal issues that come up with new entertainment technologies. Most of us are familiar with the dilemmas regarding downloading copyrighted material, an issue which began with the emergence of Napster and still continues today. However, the presentation goes into detail with previous legal issues that have many similarities with the current ones. Sony’s battle to defend the first VCR went all the way to the Supreme Court and won in 1984. Later, the whole idea that VCRs might ruin TV and movies became absurd. Interestingly enough, other much older technologies such as the radio and phonograph have also come under heavy criticism upon their introduction to society. But despite many of the negative predictions which never came true, there were many new laws created along with each of these technologies. The problem that a lot of these laws encounter when it comes to personal computers and the internet is that they are mostly unenforceable. The presentation mentions the idea the movie industry had with DVD encryptions, which have proven to be a very weak protection.

So how are companies and copyright owners going to compensate for these difficulties? The presentation mentions the implementation of a type of digital traffic cop know as the Fritz chip. But even with a highly developed protection tool, I don’t believe it will be able to prevent all (or even any) types of illegal downloading. As long as there is an internet, file sharing will be possible. Programmers have even managed to come up with p2p software by using just 15 lines of code (TinyP2P). With a program as simple as TinyP2P, there is virtually no risk of being “caught” sharing files. Because of this, I believe regulations need to be approached from different angels. In fact, changes are even being made now with programs like Rhapsody: By paying a monthly fee, one can download an extensive amount of songs legally. I would consider this much more efficient than paying a price for each song. Perhaps in time, fees for downloading music and other media will be included with the price of using the internet. Of course, this does mean that the price of using the internet could increase significantly, but this is not a new development. NetZero was a company that used to make the internet available to users for free in 1999, but now they charge $6.95. At the same time, companies that provided high speed connections lowered their prices as more and more users began using their services, and as they started converging with other services (Yahoo DSL). An internet with media download perks may follow in the same path.

The internet meant a lot to numerous people seeking information about the condition of New Orleans and its people during the Katrina hurricane disaster. Not only were many people able to view photos and read articles from news websites, they were able to just as easily find numerous blogs on the subject; blogs where ordinary citizens, directly affected by the disaster, could tell their stories to millions of curious and very distant readers. In his article “Bloggers record Katrina destruction”, Gilbert mentions several examples of these blogs and what kind of support they provided for many. Some were based on very personal stories; others were eye-witness accounts including photos; many provided for the exchange of questions and information between contributors and readers….

While reading this article, I was reminded of a similar story. Recently, I was writing a history paper about the telegraph and its introduction to Chicago, and one of my sources made the strong point on how disaster changed the way many ordinary citizens viewed the technology. At first, the telegraph was mainly being used by railroad stations to keep track of trains coming and going out of town. However, during the Chicago fire in 1871, these stations served a very different purpose for many. Not knowing whether or not the fire could be stopped in time, the mayor of Chicago at the time decided it would be wise to use the telegraph to inform the nearby cities that Chicago might be in need of some extra fire-fighting equipment. Later, when the immediate danger was over, citizens of Chicago lined up in front of their nearest train stations to use to the telegraph system. Their main intentions were to inform relatives in other cities that they have survived. But, at the same time, these citizens were providing the first (and most direct) news reports on the Chicago Fire. The story is really not so different from the people mentioned in Gilbert’s article who rushed to computer labs in Louisiana State University to post on blogs. Like the internet, the telegraph has changed how many people observed communication in times of crisis. However, it’s important to know that the Chicago fire wasn’t the only thing to spark telegraph communication among ordinary people. But it certainly showed many more people what was capable and how communication is evolving. The same applies to the hurricane. Katrina didn’t revolutionize the whole internet, but it showed many people some important aspects of it that were not as known before. Blogs did exist before Katrina, but I don’t remember them being mentioned as extensively on the news and among people as much as at that point. Just like the lines formed in front of the telegraph offices in 1871, in 2005 the blogs were lined with posts and comments for the same purpose.

Starr’s article deals with the topic of simulations in different forms and how their application changed over time. Simulations are a product of 60s computer technology designed for many purposes, but were not widely successful or applicable in many areas. There were attempts to use it as a tool for education and for social policies, but it eventually retracted into small scale specialized circles. However, advancements in technology and the rise of home computers lead to widely popular simulations such as the game Simcity. Now that simulations can be represented more visually and accessed more easily (without complicated training), simulations became a more playable activity. However, as the article describes some later sim games were not so successful since they brought up the problem of esoteric concepts again. The article gives Simhealth a bad review because it is too complex for the average player (requiring extensive knowledge of health policies), but is redundant and boring to experts on health issues.

The article also mentions that games like Simcity can be considered flawed if one attempts to take the concepts too seriously. Many aspects of the game cannot be directly related to real life city planning because the game is too simplistic in some areas. But this objection led me to think of a possible solution. Almost every popular game has a strong web community, some of which are very technically savvy. If a game can be fun to people, it can be modified to provide even more opportunities. If you know how to install a game on a computer and download files, you will not need much more skill to utilize most game mods. Many of them come with instructions. To apply this idea to the article, there could be (and I’m almost sure there already is) a mod that adds on the different variables of urban development excluded from the original version of SimCity. The article also mentions that there might be an underlying political bias when it comes to issues like what happens in the city as tax rates are changed. Well, there can be a mod for that too (Liberal versus Conservative Simcity, heheh). There are people out there that care enough for the games they play that will offer ideas for improvements.

The article mainly focuses on simcity and simhealth, but there were so many other games throughout the years that also provided an educational value in addition to fun. A few years ago when I first started studying macroeconomics, I was so glad that I had a past experience which helped me understand some basic economic concepts: the 1993 game Settlers 2. In this real-time strategy game, set during the times of the Roman Empire, the player acts as an explorer and colonizer of new lands. The primary role of the player is to build up different industries such as farming, mining, manufacturing…. The player creates buildings like sawmills, iron smelters, mines, bakeries, and wells, each producing one specific object (a bucket of water, a piece bread, a plank of wood). Now the player must decide which industry is more important to further advance the colony, that is, which building needs a specific object more. For example: planks of wood are needed to build ships but they are also needed as building material. The player needs to decide can he/she afford to lose more planks of wood on ships or is it better to perhaps use it to build another sawmill to increase the production of planks of wood. At other stages of the game, different problems will come up: The armories are overflowing with coal but there is no processed iron to make the weapons. The reason is that the iron smelters don’t have any iron ore. And why is that? Well, for some reason the food industry is providing food for the coal miners but not so much for the iron miners. Suddenly the food priority levels need to be changed to provide more to the iron miners. Of course, not many of the simple features in the game can be applied to the whole world of macroeconomics, but when it came to reading very dull chapters on supply and demand and price index fluctuations, it was easier and more fun for me to think of examples from a game like Settlers 2. Hmm, that reminds me, where did I put that Settlers 2 CD? I suddenly have the urge to colonize some islands.

I think i discovered the benefits of this exercise through a differnt way. A couple of years ago I started having trouble concentrating on schoolwork. I would start writing an essay and would very soon become tired of it. Or I would study for 30 min. and then feel like taking a break, which would take a lot longer than necessary. So I noticed that things weren’t working out as they should and that I needed to change something. So one time, instead of staying up into the late hours to finish an essay, I decided to go to bed a little earlier and then wake up earlier. I set my alarm for 5am (had about 6 hours of sleep), forced myself to get up, washed my face with cold water, and immediately started writing. To my surprise, I finished the essay earlier than I estimated and felt very much concentrated on the task at hand for the whole time. If I decided to write that essay the evening or day earlier, I would have thought about watching TV, closing MS Word and start playing a game, calling someone on the phone…. But in the morning, these things never crossed my mind. I really felt like I woke up for a specific reason, and because I rested I was able to complete this task successfully. I used this method many times, and I have to admit I didn’t always work as well. But in those situations, if I notice my thoughts wondering too much away from my task, I would try to relax, step away from the computer, and not think of anything for a couple of minutes. This also worked for me, and after I took a little time to meditate, my focus was clearer.

So because of my past experiences, I knew that the best time for me to do this assignment would be in the early morning hours. I woke myself up, and sat down leaning against the wall of my room. My phone, TV, computer, stereo were all off, and I knew there was no chance of anyone knocking on the door. I opened a window and let the cold morning air in and closed my eyes. As usual, I took a little time to completely clear my thoughts, but like I did before, I tried to only focus on the darkness and soon my mind was clear. It’s hard to describe how fast the 5 minutes past. In a way I did feel like not much time has past from when I started the exercise until its end, but it also felt like the time was slowed down in between. It was much slower than the 5 minutes during my regular daily activities.

Overall, there’s not much to say about what happened during the 5 minutes (since there really was nothing), but I definitely felt different afterwards. My thoughts were clearer and I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish this morning, and later on during the day. I know that if I do this exercise from time to time, I’ll be able to organize my thoughts better and be able to focus more clearly…in fact, it’s pretty much the same as defraging a hard-drive, which also needs to be done from time to time.

A little googling for “Jason Gallo” gave me several results. There were a couple of Jason Gallos that i’m pretty sure are not the one i’m loking for (like detective Jason Gallo). But one of the top most results were about Jason Gallo from Northwestern University. To narrow the results down, i searched for “Jason Gallo” northwestern.

To start off here’s some general info on Jason I found on this page:

“Jason Gallo is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society Program in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. His academic interests include surveillance, subcultures, the history of technology, and the increasing role of computer-mediated-communication in the political process. Jason is currently engaged in dissertation research on the U.S. government‚s role in promoting the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. A native of Washington D.C., Jason received a B.A. from the Colorado College and a M.A. from Georgetown University and has worked for both the U.S. and German postal services.”

So currently at Northwestern. Northwestern’s directory search provided me with his full name (Jason Anthony Gallo), and his school e-mail address (jgallo at northwestern dot edu).

Doing a search for “Jason” on Eszter’s Webuse blog lead me to some more info, like that Jason has been working on a project this past year with EH and Sean Zehnder on empirically testing Sunstein’s thesis (the one we read about for class). The best thing about this search is this neat little picture.

So one of these guys is Jason, but how do we know who? Well if you look on the right side of the Webuse page, you can see the names of the blog’s authors along with mini photos. And Jason is there too:

Google images didn’t provide any good results and no luck on Facebook either. There are like 2 or 3 Jason Gallos in some far off Universities, but none of them match up with the photo.

I was really hoping to find his home address and phone number through Switchboard (because it would have been pretty cool to post a map and satellite view of his house), but there were 15 Jason Gallos nationwide listed, none of whom are in Illinois. One of them might be “our” Jason Gallo, but I’m not sure how to narrow it down.

Some further googling lead me to some of his essays:
Online Oppositional Communities As Discursive Counterpublics
Weblog Journalism

There’s an interesting comment from Jason at the bottom of the last page. Apparently, Jason was in Croatia for a period of time and returned at the end of September.

Ok, that’s enough searching, I’m done. kthxbye.

Since I have no experience in filing taxes I was not aware that online tax filing has been growing so quickly. West’s article describes many details on how this electronic service developed over time and includes a large amount of figures showing how the service was organized and accepted in different states. Over the years, more and more online services have been offered. There have been numerous commercials on TV for paying bills and purchasing insurance. As the article states, online services can be considered superior to alternative methods since they offer faster and more reliable results. Another advantage of online services is that they are available 24 hours a day. I have to admit that this feature is one of my favorites when it comes to the internet.

In addition to being helpful to the users, the article states that online services can help the government save money by limiting the amount of staff, office space, and other resources. However, I personally don’t think that government agencies should rush into cutting these assets, especially when I consider how much trouble I had while I was obtaining my green card (2 years ago). It’s true that online resources helped me get answers to some very basic questions but when it comes to more complex issues, it is important to communicate with an actual human being. As with many government offices, it takes a long time to get in touch with someone by phone, but oftentimes it is the only choice. Increasing online services shouldn’t automatically cause the reduction of staff. Instead, it should help the already exiting staff fulfill its duties more efficiently. This is something government offices really need to focus on since, as West mentions, online services will mainly aid the more affluent and educated members of society. Online services should help the government enough to pass on the improvements in service quality to other class groups that might not be able to use the internet.

The article also mentions that the government proposed a goal that by 2007, 80% of people will file their taxes online. For now, I would say that the number is too high for such a small time frame. Also, I don’t believe that usage percent in small time frames should be the primary goal for online services. It would be better to slowly establish alternative tax filing methods and make sure they are effective. If a person has a bad experience with online tax filing, it’s probably more likely that they will not use it again in the near future. After all, tax filing is a serious issue. But if there’s a high satisfaction rate, like with South Carolina’s online tax service (SCnetFile.com), the chances are most likely higher that those users will be willing to use future online government services too. Organizing training sessions and offering rebates for first time users are also important to encourage more people to begin using online services.

In her article, Healy describes various examples of Internet capabilities and how they do not always satisfy legal policies or commercial interests. The issue of copyrights and what privileges authors have when it comes to internet distribution is one that has been brought up numerous times in recent years, and is principally covered in this article. To an extent, I can understand why some organizations are trying to figure out ways to preserve copyrights on products or content, but there are some examples mentioned in the article that I don’t support. For example, once internet archival services, such as Proquest, became widespread, some authors objected. Several authors who wrote for the New York Times wanted to be paid every time a person accessed their article online. Even though the writers won their case in the Supreme Court I believe their rights were fulfilled enough when the New York Times paid them for their work. The newspaper distributed and published their writing, and I believe they have the right to reprint it (or provide it online) for people to access in the future.

Another example that was mentioned in the article had to do with software developers that wanted to make it illegal for anyone to criticize their products without their permission. I can’t believe how ridiculous this is. What is the point of criticizing something if you need permission? If there was a law like this, that means that these software developers could potentially allow only positive criticisms on their products. I’m sure it’s a nice thought…for the developers, but not really beneficial to the users.

While reading examples from the article I remembered another trend that has been growing lately. Many PC games have music files that can be easily extracted from the game CD. Many of them are already in an easily readable format such Mp3 or WAV, and creating Audio CDs from these is not that difficult. Then there are other games that include music files that can only be read by the game itself. But after doing a little searching through the game’s fan sites, it’s usually possible to find a program that will convert the files to more popular formats. But more and more, I’ve been noticing game companies that are making this process more and more difficult. Not only are there no readable files but all the game files are usually archived in some obscure file format. Plus, companies are threatening the game sites more and more that they cannot provide software that can extract their files. But what is also happening at the same time? The companies are releasing soundtracks to the games. So it’s not sufficient that someone spends around $50 for a new game, they also need to spend extra if they wish to have the music on a separate medium. To me, this move is just saying that these regulations are more about figuring out how to make profits bigger than protecting copyrights.

Greenstein’s article discusses the different strategies companies/online services may use to become a “sticky” (or a favorite) to a potential user. Among these strategies, companies must make sure that they offer users the option to send recommendations and that these recommendations are easy to follow. The article describes Hotmail’s example, in which there is a link to their free e-mail set up as a footer in every e-mail. Another, more recent example I remember is the strategy G-mail used. When it first came out, it wasn’t just available to everyone. You needed to be on a waiting list or you had to receive an invitation from a G-mail user to have your own account. This was a pretty interesting strategy and it paid off in the end. Basically, when a person obtains an account, he/she has a certain number of recommendations they can give out. As more and more people signed up, more recommendations circulated. These recommendations become very popular eventually and so did G-mail.

However, as the article states in its conclusion, online marketing changes depending on how the web and its users evolve over time. What might have worked before, might not work now. I believe that some strategies that seem like a good idea can ultimately backfire. My whole issue with Yahoo Messenger I blogged about last week is a good example of this, I think. Yahoo obviously wanted to be the “sticky” site for my browser in this case, but because of their forcefulness, their intentions backfired. I might not have noticed this a couple of years ago, but now I really look down upon sites forcing their services on user’s computers. Now, I feel I am much less likely to use anything from Yahoo than before.

Boyd’s article explores the characteristics of Social Network sites (like Friendster) and issues with them that have come up over time. While the article describes a lot of negative aspects, I know many people that have really socially benefited from these services. But despite this, I wouldn’t be too eager to start up a profile of my own, at least not a too active one. Like many other students, I have a Facebook account but i don’t use it too often. Like the article mentioned, I first began using it to find people I knew in the past. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find a lot of my high school friends there. At the same time, I was glad that a lot of other people I knew in the past managed to find me. But I can’t say I feel the same when it comes to people separated from my by several degrees of friends.

Another issue that came up in the article was profiles and how truthful people are with them. While the article mostly talks about people being too dishonest, I actually found that some Facebook profile’s have a little too much information on them. Even though it is a more “isolated” community than Facebook (being restricted to .edu emails and therefore no just anyone can join), I can’t say that I would post too much personal info. Just like I wouldn’t come up to a complete stranger and tell them everything about myself, I wouldn’t do it on online communities either, and especially not in places with my real name. Like our professor said, you’d be surprised how easy how your online “voice” can be heard, remembered, and even tracked down in the future. Even though sites like Facebook have an acknowledged level of security, I would still be careful with personal info. They are always watching, you know.

So my dad did me a big favor last weekend. He decided he wanted to chat with some of our family members who use yahoo messenger. OK, that’s all great, but the problems started when it prompted him to update the software to the newest version. And of course my trustworthy dad (who was a big fan of the yahoo stock back in the day) decides to go for it. What kind of hassle could that be, right?

Well, a couple of hours later I went on firefox and noticed that there were a few changes made. A yahoo toolbar, a yahoo menu bar, yahoo as the home page, yahoo as the default search engine, hundreds of yahoo bookmarks, and some more fun yahoo software on my PC. So is this how it is Yahoo? You’re telling firefox users what their preferences should be? Um, if someone decides that they are going to be using firefox as their browser that means that the person probably knows what he/she wants out of their Internet surfing experience. They are obviously not prone to just using whatever is served to them (like Explorer).

So I had a little cleaning to do. Most of the process was easy. Removed the toolbar by uninstalling the firefox extension, deleted the bookmarks, used add/remove programs from control panel to take out anything that says yahoo, removed the search engine by deleting yahoo.src and yahoo.gif from the “searchplugins” folder (in the Mozilla Firefox directory), and changed the home page to about:blank, of course. Since my dad insisted on still having yahoo messenger, I found a “safer” old version, and set my firewall to block the yahoo updater application.

So I thought I was pretty much done. But then I noticed another difference in my firefox. Usually if I want to go to, for example, the CNN website, I would just type in “cnn” in the address bar. It would then take me to www.cnn.com. This happens because Firefox is actually by default set to search google for the keyword and pick the first result it finds (the I’m feeling lucky command). However, this time I didn’t get to cnn.com; instead I was directing to a yahoo search page. What’s worse is that it didn’t even do a search for “cnn”. It just took me to the advanced search page of yahoo. So I didn’t even get any results. Great service yahoo; a service that you obviously recommend since you set it up for me.

Luckily, I spoke to EH about this and she suggested that I look through my firefox configuration by typing in about:config in the address bar. I was not aware of this feature before. It looked a little complex, but it’s nice to know that all those settings can be changed by going to this one location. After a little digging I found what I was looking for.

Gotcha you little b@$tard. Wow yahoo, you really went deep there. Now it’s time to change it back. After doing a little digging around the internet, I found out the value for google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&btnI=&q=

The next step is to right click on the value, select modify, and just paste the google value instead. And now I can get back to not typing all those www-s and .com-s…for most sites.

So in conclusion, don’t trust yahoo. Stay away from their evil software and don’t chat on yahoo messenger. If you have to, better grab an old version.

Introna & Nissenbaum’s article explores the understated imperfections of internet search engines and why they are virtually unknown to most users. On some occasions in the article, the authors compare the internet to libraries, encyclopedias, and telephone networks to support their reasoning behind why they consider the search engines inadequate and unfair. Because of this, I was not convinced in many of the article’s ideas since I don’t believe those comparisons can be so easily made.

The article claims that the search engines don’t do a good job in searching all of the web’s content. Around 80% is usually left out. This figure might be astonishing to me if I was looking for something in a library, but I consider it differently for the internet. I really don’t want to get more results than I usually do when doing an internet search. Since I know how easy it is to make a website, I’m aware that most of the content out there doesn’t need to be thrown at me. There are millions of pages out there that are so irrelevant to the majority of users, it would be a huge disadvantage to them if search engines displayed them. For this reason, I have no problem if the strict rules of the search engines weed them out. At the same time, this doesn’t mean I believe that the internet content should be harder to publish as books. People need to be aware of the difference and understand why and how the internet is not the same as an encyclopedia or a library.

A second reason why I don’t think the article is too convincing is mentioned in Lessig’s article about internet “codes”. Lessig mentions several examples on why internet regulation is difficult, one of them being the issue on categorizing content (28). How can you label web content with certainty? I don’t believe it is possible. As the article suggests, what one person considers being art, another might consider it pornography. And since internet content can be viewed and analyzed by people from almost anywhere in the world, the judgments will vary significantly. So how can search engines index and archive content that will satisfy everyone? Where do you even start to regulate something like this? Introna &Nissenbaum’s article would describe this as an imperfection but, as Lessig’s article claims, it can also be viewed as just another feature. It cannot be easily perfected and it’s something people need to be aware of when searching out there.

There is one aspect of Introna &Nissenbaum’s article I agree with: “Informing users is better than the status quo”. Like the article says, there are too many internet users who don’t have a clue about what search engines actually do. From personal experiences, I was surprised how many people get frustrated from bad search results, without even realizing that the fault is not in the search engine but in their searching technique. They were not even aware that if they only did a little research on how to use the search function, they would be more satisfied with their results. This trend exists because there isn’t enough emphasis on people investing time in their internet (and computer) skills. Instead there is too much emphasis on how easy everything is. Well I have a suggestion: Stop making everything too user friendly and encourage people to actually invest some time to understand what they want out of their internet needs. You can’t expect to drive a car successfully without training, and the same goes for using the internet. To me, this would be the first step toward improving internet features like search engines – educate the user about what lies beneath the surface.