Steal This File Sharing Book : What They Won't Tell You About File Sharing

In my TINST 207 class, a group of six people presented on the book Steal This File Sharing Book : What They Won't Tell You About File Sharing by Wallace Wang. The overall summary about the book was it tells you how to go about downloading music, movies, and anything that is software online illegally.

They began by talking about Napster and that is was released in 1999, had over 26 million users in 2001, and had crashed in 2001 due to having a centralized network server, which every users on the software had to go through in order to download content from another user. They also talked about the pros and cons of Burning CDs. A pro is that you pretty much won't get in trouble for doing it because everyone practically does it. They then got into the pros and cons of File Sharing Networks. A pro is that it's easy to use; it takes a click of a button for you to get what you want. A con would be that the download speed on the network varies; so you might have to wait a LONG time before you get the content you want.

Against The Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

So in my TINST 207 class, a group of four Seniors at the UW Tacoma presented on a book called Against The Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob By Lee Siegel. They began by telling a little bit about the author's background. He is known as a person who is pretty much against the Internet and the World Wide Web.

They then continue to introduce summaries on the chapters in the book. One chapter was titled 'Bait & Switch' which talked about profits and idealism. He felt that the Internet was being sold as a convenience and people would neglect outside resources for information. A big point I got from the presentation was that the author 'believed information on the Internet is meaningless because it is constantly updated.' While this may be true in some sense, not every piece of information on the Internet is updated.

Group Presentation Synopsis

In my Living and Working in a Virtual World class taught by Andrew Fry , I'll be in the process of doing a group presentation on the book World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Richard Hunter. This book has fourteen chapter and since my group consists of seven people, we decided to each discuss two chapters in the book. The chapters I'll be discussing are Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.

Chapter 12 is titled 'War Without Secrets,' which pretty much discusses how communication in the military and in networks aren't as secure as they should be. It covers a lot more which you'll have to wait until presentation time. Also, Chapter 13, titled 'Digital Pearl Harbor,' talks about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attack on the World Trade Center and what a 'Digital' Pearl Harbor could do to America.

For more information on this presentation, come and check out my group mate Rebecca's Blog.

Scavenger Hunt Progression

In my TINST 207 class, we have to do an online scavenger hunt with a classmate. So far, we've done all the questions up to this question.

Virtual World

There isn't many places I'd want to go virtually. But one place I can think of is outer space. Journeying to outer space will most likely be an opportunity I won't be able to experience in the real world (unless they happen to invent a plane or jet in the future that can go to any place in the Solar System and come back in a reasonable time).

The feeling of going to another planet in the Solar System would be unforgettable and the trip of a lifetime.

Kevin Freitas & FeedTacoma

So last Monday in my Living in a Virtual World class, we had a guest speaker named Kevin Freitas, who is the creator of a website called FeedTacoma.com which pretty much pulls content around the web relating to Tacoma. His website is pretty innovative in the sense that the website updates constantly looking for sites with Tacoma in its [tags].

The features on this site are amazing. First off, there is a page on the site called 'Shop' which side-shops in Tacoma post items that they have for sale. If you choose to purchase any of the items, you can pick them up in-shop at that particular shop. Secondly, the 'Photo' and 'Video' page are cool as well. As stated in the previous paragraph, the site picks up photos and videos around the web with 'Tacoma' in its [tags] and sorts them into the appropriate page. With all of these cool features this site has, you'd think this site would have raked in so much money. Unfortunately, when Kevin created this site, he had no intention of making it a profitable website and has decided to keep it that way.

Financing Online

Over the years, online banking has gotten so easy that people can do loans, withdrawals, deposits, and transfers on their bank's website. Some might question why people would embrace this idea with the types of risks over the Internet such as phishing and hacking. Here is why I think so:

Security - Honestly, if you are going to allow people to do their banking online, it's a given for banking companies to have security on their websites to prevent such risks as phishing and hacking. Without security, online banking wouldn't be very safe to do.

Convenience - You can access the Internet from pretty anyplace that has a computer. People could just wake up in the morning, get on their computer, and get on their bank's website and do their banking without even leaving their house.

I'm one of those people that does their banking online because of the security and convenience it provides.

Not Purchasing Online

The Internet has many Sites that offer online shopping for virtually everything. However, the thing I would never purchase online would be a vehicle such as a car, boat, or plane.

It may seem obvious to some why you wouldn't purchase a vehicle online. But I'll go ahead and explain. For one, the shipping cost would be EXPENSIVE!! Not to mention that if you wanted to purchase a vehicle from Europe, the shipping cost would definitely be in the hundreds of dollars. Another reason would be the condition of the vehicle. Just because it may say that it is in Brand New Condition may not necessarily mean it's in that kind of condition. Lastly, I'd have to say the return policy. Let's say when you got the vehicle and decided that the insurance for it would be too expensive to handle or you decided that the interior wasn't like what you expected to see, chances are if you want to ask for a refund, it's going to cost you more than the shipping return fee.

Purchasing a vehicle online is a no brainer for me because of all the risks/cons stated above. Even if I considered wanting to purchase a vehicle online, I'd only go to Craiglists since I could see this vehicle in person and make my decision even better.

Vanity Search

This ought to be fun!! What possible search sites and search engines could possibly have any background information on me? Let's find out.

I began my search on Google and boy, what a feast. The first few results that came up were a wiki page on Wikipedia about a guy with my first and last name who was an Australian former rugby league player, another guy with my first and last name's blog, and another guy with my first and last name's website dedicated to showing off his different styles of art. Even when you go through the first few pages brought up by my name, you won't anything about me on Google.

I continue on to another popular search engine known as Yahoo! Search and pretty similar results that I got on Google showed up: The Australian former rugby league player with my name, another guy with my name's blog, and another guy with my name's website dedicated to showing off his different styles of art. So pretty much, two busts on finding myself online so far.

As I moved my search to a search site called Intelius, which is said to have a lot of background information, I was really counting on this site to having some type of information on me. Surprisely, NO!! However, when I typed in my dad's name in the search, I was able to find some pretty detailed information Intelius says they have on him. Scary!!

I decided to finish my search on this other search site my College instructor happened to tell us about called peekyou.com, which is supposely said to find SOMETHING about you. I figured it was only a matter of time before some kind of search site would find me and show me on the first page of there search. This site happened to pick up on my MySpace account, which has a picture of me. However, it was wrong about my age being 19 as I turned 20 around a month ago.

Wow. I'd say it is pretty difficult nowadays in today's technological world to not have associated yourself somehow on the Internet be it MySpace, Facebook, a Blog, or a Forum Post. Unless you totally avoid the Internet. That'd be crazy!!

The Future Of Newspapers

Wow. What a topic this was in class today. With the growing number of web pages out there dedicated in hosting and finding news articles of any kind in the world, it's not hard to imagine what the future of newspapers will become. Imagine now that by 2015, nearly all of today's newspapers in the world will have converted to the Internet side of things. Let's not forget about the other kinds of publications out there: Books, Magazines, Journals. Some of these are available right now on the Internet, but don't count on all of them to completely convert. People still enjoy getting reading material in the paper form.

E-mail vs. Postal Service

What can I say...During the discussion of this topic in class, a lot of similarities and differences were brought up. Here were some of the key topics discussed:

• Addresses - There are obvious differences between an e-mail address and a postal service address. But I'll go ahead and type it out. e-mail addresses consist of a username at (@) a domain name (ex. johndoe@msn.com) while a postal service address consists of a name, the person's address, city, state, and zip code.

• Weight - Weight was an interesting topic to be had in class that brought up some good points. First, e-mail is weighed in based on a bytes scale whereas postal mail is weighed in on a metric scale. Second, in the postal service world, the heavier the mail, the higher the cost is for mailing it out while through e-mail, it doesn't cost a penny to send an e-mail regardless of content size (The only cost I can think of is the cost of your e-mail space).

• Packages - Lastly, packages also was a rather interesting topic to bring up between the two types of mail. In terms of e-mail, a package would pretty much be what you would call an attachment on an e-mail, in which the attachment could be anything from a text document to a music file. I suppose in a postal service environment, a package could be anything from a Music CD or a book.