Week 5

I am falling behind on these posts and feeling the pressure to get myself updated before I'm drowning in blogs to post.

All of the photos I have were taken with a digital camera. However, they're from a multitude of different people with different digital cameras so I can't say for certain the type of model of the camera for any of the photos in this blog.



Friends
I chose this as my photo for friends because these were the first friends I made when I came to Australia. The first week when I arrived I didn't know a single person. These people went out of their way to invite me to their party knowing that I didn't know anyone and hoping that I would soon meet people and feel more comfortable in this country. I consider these people my first Australian friends.



High Tech
This is an image of a ghoul at the Jekyll and Hyde club in NYC. The whole set up at Jekyll and Hyde is pretty high tech. The basic theme is that everything is alive. All the dummy's randomly talk to you, the eyes in the pictures move, and figures, like this guy, will randomly come to life during the meal and start conversing with members of the audience.




News
Hurricane Katrina, the category 5 hurricane that flooded New Orleans, first hit Miami as a category 1 hurricane. The eye went directly through Coral Gables where my university is located. They estimated that 4 tornadoes touched down on the university and about 70 percent of the trees and wildlife was destroyed around campus. This picture shows the Iron Arrow tree that was planted when the university 1st opened. This massive tree was taken down by one of the tornadoes.



Summer
Before arriving in Australia I had a layover in Fiji. On this layover I took a 5 hr boat ride out to they Yasawa Islands. This is one of the pictures I took from outside my tent. It epitomizes the tropical island feeling. Crystal blue water, amazing snorkeling, and some of the friendliest islanders in the world. Whenever I look at this picture I'm instantly brought back to one of the most relaxing times of my life.




Unconventional
Hookers and Deviates Party from last year. Yeah umm......I think this one explains itself ; )



University Life
Pop Quiz "What do you do when your best friend stumbles into your room at 3am and passes out on the floor besides your bed"
Answer: Grab the camera and take as many embarrassing photos as you can.
This here is my best friend Casey who lives by the saying "Work hard, play hard"
P.S As this is a on-campus dorm room she had to sneak pass security less they give her a sobriety test and she gets busted for underage drinking

This weeks lecture was totally awesome and really made me think. The concept of virtual reality was turned into a sort of philosophical debate and made me think about the connection of the mind, body and the world in which we live. I remember the first time I experienced VR. I was pretty young and in a computer store where they were promoting this virtual reality headset. My father tried it on and was totally amazed with it. However, when I had a go I didn't really understand what was happening. There were objects coming at me that I was supposed to dodge, which one would think would make me really active in the game. However, I just let the objects hit me not understanding that I had to use my body to navigate in this world. While my father was completely impressed I was just confused. It didn't feel like reality to me so I didn't act the same way I would if I was actually dodging objects thrown at me.

This led me to think during the discussion of whether or not VR was the next reality. As a child who was still forming their view of the world it was very clear to me that this was not real. It was very simple to me. These objects weren't real so why bother trying to avoid them? Even today when I go to the arcade and do the simulation games, I don't really enjoy it. Not only does it seem fake, but I get really motion sick. I think that even the most realistic VR will never really appeal to me. My mind is too critical, to analytical, and I tend to see all the faults and inconsistencies instead of becoming enchanted in the virtual world. I also think that most of the population would react as such. It would be scary to loose yourself in an alternate world and I think most people would start feeling as if they were losing their identity and retreat back into reality.

Week 4

1. My topic for my research essay is going to be about how the internet has become a useful tool for pedophiles.

The first journal article I researched is called "Child Pornography Online: Myth, Fact and Social Control". It was written by Robert Bauserman for the Journal of Sex Research in May 2003. This article is mainly a review of another book called "Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online" written by Philip Jenkins. In this report we learn that Jenkins went undercover online to find out how the mind of a pedophile works. Jenkins spent most of his time on web based bulletin boards were pedophiles would meet to discuss their "hobby" as they call it. We learn that these pedophiles have little fear of the police, because of limited laws dealing with internet child pornography. Instead they are more frightened of private groups and hackers who infiltrate their programs and destroy their images and videos.

The second journal article I researched is called "Child Pornography and the Internet" written by Robert S Mueller III. Mueller is an F.B.I agent. Mueller talks about F.B.I programs such as the Innocent Images National Initiative which has been around for 10 years targeting sexual predators on the Internet. Most of their operations are undercover and currently more then 250 agents who investigate these cases. He also discuses how these pictures of children are not just photographs but live acts of molestation. As these predators become desensitized they might be encouraged to go out and find children of their own to molest.

The third journal article I found is called "Regulating the Internet: The new battle against child pornography" written by Lesil C Esposito in 1998 in the Case Western Reserve Journa of International Law. Esposito discusses how the internet is now the primary medium for pornography and how pedophiles use the internet because it is virtually unregulated by law enforcement. He also discusses how national boundaries do not exist in cyberspace. I've learned that in many countries such as Spain and Sweden possession of child pornography is not a crime. Esposito discusses a specific convention called The Convention of the Rights of the Child which was ratified in 1990. While it attacks the problem on internet child pornography at an international level it has not been effective because of a lack of effort at national levels.

These three journal articles have given me a lot to think about for my essay. I'm starting to see that some of the problems with child pornography over the internet is due to problems both nationally and internationally. I'm surprised and disgusted that many modern western countries do not have laws against the possession of child pornography. I'm also interested to learn that hackers, who I thought were criminals themselves, actually pose a great threat to pedophiles and their community.


2a.) Here are my answers to the scavenger hunt

1. What is the weight of the world’s biggest pumpkin? 1,502 pounds, grown by Ron Wallace of, Rhode Island; weighed on October 7, 2006.
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/giants/record.htm

2. What is the best way to contact Grant Hackett? I would go through the Australian Institute of Sport and ask for the contact details of his manager, Brian Taylor.
http://www.ausport.gov.au/contacts.asp

3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue? A giraffe’s tongue is approximately 18 inches in length.
www.on-the-matrix.com/africa/giraffe.asp

4. Define the word ontology in your own words. Ontology is basically the study of existence. http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/

5. What was David Croenenberg’s first feature film? David Croenenberg’s first film was a 7 min long Independent film called Transfer (1966). He then had two full length independent films Stereo(1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). However, his first major film was Shivers (1975) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000343/

6. When was the original 'Hacker's Manifesto' written? Janurary 8, 1986 http://linuxreviews.org/dictionary/Hacker_Manifesto/

7. Why do all phone numbers in Hollywood films start with 555? For many years, 555 was unassigned as a dialling code in the US and could thus be used to prefix fictional numbers with impunity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2357,00.html

8. What is the cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes? The cheapest way to travel from Crete to Rhodes is the overnight ferry, this saves you money because you don’t’ have to pay for a hotel for the night on the island. http://www.greektravel.com/faq/index.html

9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts, this week of March 1965? I’ll Never Find Another You by The Seekers.
www.onmc.iinet.net.au/topspot/1965.htm

10. Which Brisbane band includes Stephen Stockwell on keyboards and vocals? He played keyboards for the Brisbane punk band Black Assassins
www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm

Here are the answers to section 2b

1. What is a search engine?
A searcg engine is a program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user.

Reference www.netsetgo.com/glossary.php

2. How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
Search engines give each document they find some measure of the quality of the match to your search query, a relevance score. Relevance scores reflect the number of times a search term appears, if it appears in the title, if it appears at the beginning of the document, and if all the search terms are near each other; some details are given in engine help pages. Some engines allow the user to control the relevance score by giving different weights to each search word. One thing that all engines do, however, is to use alphabetical order at some point in their display algorithm. If relevance scores are not very different for various matches, then you end up with this sorry default.

Reference http://www.webreference.com/content/search/how.html

3. What are some of your favorite search engines? Why do you like one more then the others?
Some of my favorite search engines are Google, AOL and msn. I like Google the best because the results are usually what I'm looking for. It ranking system is very good so I get the results that I want. It's good because you can also search specifically for images too if you want. Google is also one of the best known search engines and when I think of looking for a search engine it's just the first one that pops into my head.

4.Can you find some current news stories about search engines?
This is a pretty good article http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2615
The article is basically examining whether or not Google is stealing content. Google has recently settled some law suites over infringement rights with pictures and texts. Google compiles lots of news stories in one section and it seems unfair to some of the newspapers. Google might provide the link to the story but the viewer doesn't stay around and browse other stories, instead returning back to Google to look for more stories. This seems a bit unfair to the companies that Google links it too. In my opinion Google really isn't doing anything wrong. If it wasn't for Google then no one would go these newspaper article websites in the first place.

Even though I now know the difference between the Internet and Web I'll......oh who am I kidding, I'll still use the words interchangeably. In fact I usually don't even say the Web, I almost exclusively say the Internet which means I'm just straight out using the wrong lingo.

Netiquette. Now here's something that really upsets me. I hate flamers. They are the most annoying little mongrels on the Web. They especially like to enter political discussion boards. This can be especially annoying when your on the verge of actually make progress on an issue and then a flamer writes something and suddenly you've got a battle of words again and all progress made is lost. Then you have the other sort of flamer that has a valid point to their argument, but are just so damn rude in their reply that you want to smack them. I actually am happy that a lot of the discussion boards and chat rooms are now banning flamers if they leave nasty comments. It teaches people to try and respond to things that they might disagree with calmly and in a civilized manner.

Week 3

As an international student I have found that communication technologies have been essential in communicating with my friends and family back home. With the 14hr time difference between here and NY it’s very hard to find a time to call home that is at a reasonable hour for my parents, and at a time where I have access to a payphone. Email has become a consistent source of communication between my parents and me. It’s extremely convenient because I can let them know what is happening in my life and relay any information that they might need from me, without actually having to be awake and online at the same time they are. Email is also easy enough for my technologically inept parents to understand. Instant messaging is another way I keep in touch with my friends and family back home. I also use Myspace and Facebook to let talk with my friends back home and post pictures of the awesome Australian beaches :)

However, I think one of the best communication technologies that I have found is Skype. It’s an internet phone system that lets you make free phone calls over the internet. There is also a feature that allows you to make phone calls from your computer to any land line phone for a small fee. I only found out about this new feature recently but have found it to be enormously convenient.

Knowing very little about the advent of computers I found this week lecture interesting. I really enjoyed the fact that Lord Byron's daughter was a metaphysician. However, considering that Ada's mother left Lord Byron when she was very young, he probably did not have a lot of influence on her. We rarely hear much about educated women in history and I enjoyed knowing that history did not write her out simply because she was a woman.

I knew that Bill Gates had developed Microsoft, and that he screwed some people over in building his empire, but I didn't realize he was such a jerk. I have a lot more respect now for Apple, who I had always thought developed in reaction to Microsoft in order to create competition.

Week 2

Hey my name is Marlena Mitrik. I am a Biology/Chemistry major at the University of Miami. I've been studying for the past year at Griffith University and I'm really enjoying my time here in Australia. Most of my interests have to do with sports. I'm a HUGE baseball fan, Yankees of course cause there the only team worth talking about, and I've been playing on a state softball team which travels around the country since I was 11. I also love football, which Australians apparently call grit iron. I used to keep the team stats in high school and I play on a club flag football team for my Uni. There are many little differences between Australia and the States but I find that the differences in sports is what I miss most about home.

As for the class, I'm not quite sure what to think about it so far. I'm taking this class purely as an elective, mostly because it sounds interesting and I wouldn't get the opportunity to take a class like this at home. I know it's important to learn about the history of a subject first, but I never really enjoyed history and I'm finding the class to be dragging a bit. Looking at the outline I'm really looking forward to week 5 and beyond where we get into specific topics of interest to do with communication technology. While the lecture might be a bit dry, I really enjoyed the screening of Alphaville. I had no idea that the movie 12 Monkeys came from a pre-existing idea. 12 Monkeys is one of my favorite movies of all time and watching La Jeete was really enlightening.

Communication studies and technology is an essential subject to learn about. I am planning on going into the medical profession and communication will be an important part of my duties. Back in the States there is a campaign to stop smoking which uses shock tactics to show people the effects of smoking. The medical community has taken to using commercials and the media to help relay these important messages. Technology has advanced the medical community in leaps and bounds. However, as important as I know communication technology to be for my career, my aim for this class is to learn about communication technology on a more personal level to use in everyday life.