Tonga

WWW, the World Wide Web. This acronym could not be more true. I just returned from the island kingdom of Tonga a few hours ago. In my seven days there, I saw some truly amazing things. The one thing that struck me more than anything, was the internet.

Tonga is what most consider a developing nation. Well over the majority of the people live in poverty. More than half of the money the government spans comes from foreign powers. They are not a third world country, but things are not as comfortable as many are accustomed to. Flicking a light switch does not always equal illumination. The power grid is ify at best. You can forget about hot water. The shower is colder than an ice box, that is if the water is running. Airconditioning is a luxury and for most Tongans so is money.

The picture I have painted here shows a underdeveloped backward society, right? Wrong. The world is at their finger tips. How? The internet. Even in this poor secluded nation the world wide web has reached its shores.

gabeman133

While I was there I learned of the disaster in New Orleans, I checked my email and was able to pay my credit card on line. The power of the internet and its reach is enormous. Even in the least likely place in the world, it has made its mark.

Although Tonga is a quiet kingdom, fairly secluded from the world around it, it is still reachable. Through the internet, this island can touch anywhere.

Accessibility of Music

I was just thinking about the quote that Nabeel brought up in his lecture by Timothy Taylor, that "digitaization is the most fundamental change in the history of western music since the invention of notation in the 9th century," and while I just wrote it down as just some guys opinion, I didn't necessarily see it as true at the time. But I think he's right to an extent. Maybe he was just talking about digitization in producing music but I think it's true aswell for digital consumerism.

Case in point: I was watching the Glastonbury festival the other night on C4, happened to jot down a few bands I liked, went online to the Glastonbury festival homepage, checked out the bands, went to Amazon.com and found their cd's, wrote down a few songs, fired up bearshare and downloaded them. From those few bands I wrote down while watching TV (I think they were The Bravery, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight) I learnt of similar bands through reading reviews on online music magazines and checked them out too (Kings of Leon, Kasabian, The Libertines, The Ordinary Boys, Bloc Party) and now I have this massive library of music from this one genre that I probably would not have had if it wasn't for digitization. Had the instant accessibility at the touch of a mouse button not existed, I probably would have just watched Glastonbury, thought they were good bands, then went to sleep dreaming I won lotto and could buy all their cd's.

I think Timothy Taylor is right, that digitization is a major change in music today- especially prevalent in consumerism, through the availibility of all this information online it has opened me up to all kinds of music. The genre specific categories are pretty specific now, looking at allmusic.com genres under rock there are 6 sub-genres, and taking alternative/indie-rock sub-genre under that there is industrial, alternative pop, goth rock, lo-fi, grunge, shoegaze, britpop, post rock/experimental, funk metal, indie rock, paisley underground, jangle pop, alternative country-rock, punk revival, post grunge, third wave ska revival, neo-psychedelia, riot grrrl, space rock, adult alternative, alternative dance, cocktail, dream pop, punk pop, british trad rock, industrial dance and madchester!

I don't think I'd EVER hear of 95% of these sub-genres to a sub-genre of rock genres had it not been for the instant accessibility and availibility of it online and I think we're pretty lucky that we have the choice of what music we like instead of getting our tastes fed down our throat through the limiting playlists on top 40 radio stations who are bankrolled (payola style) by commercial label interests.

Gibbs technologies - Aquada

Recently a friend did a study on the Aquada, and i found it kinda interesting. For those of you who dont know what this is, it is the first High Speed Amphibious (HSA) vehicle and it can reach speeds of over 160kmph on land and about 40k's on water. As this is my second time round writing this (computer froze the first time) im going to make it brief!

The Aquada website goes into heaps more detail about Gibbs Technologies designs and a few of their other projects and achievements - such as Sir Richard Branson's record crossing of the English Channel.

I found the 'Humdinga' particularly interesting - a newly created four-wheel drive amphibious vehicle, which they're hoping to put into production soon. Check out the site if your curious.
Its kinda scary how fast times are changing.

New Orleans Blog

Just thought i would share an interesting blog that i found, some guy who is in the middle of the New Orleans disaster is reporting live from his blog.. sounds like some serious chaos.. think lord of the flies..

The Interdictor

Responding to weird weird weird...

This is in response to Mags' "weird weird weird" post. I totally agree with you about how sick the ideology is behind war mongering, which leads to the inevitable recruiting of young men and woman to sign their lives over to war.
Mags' post refering to the games that Jo presented in her lecture about recruiting soldiers and warfare simmulation, reminded me of a particular scene in Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11/. Whereby a soldier's mother was fully pro the army and her son's participation in the war in Iraq, that is up until her son was killed. Then she was absloutely distraught and began trying to educate other people about the real toll of war.

I think that 2 Dimensional and 3 Dimensional games can glorify the reality of war, the abject poverty and disease is not shown on PS games such as Medal of Honor and although gamers can "lose themselves" within the game, this hardly equates to mothers and fathers losing sons and daughters for real. As a pacifist I would rather there not be any wars, but as a realist and understand that history is prone to repition. It just saddens me to think of the lives that are lost and then maddens me that some people attempt to justify such senseless loss. (Needless to say, I have only played first person shooter games once: shot one bullet and freaked out!)

Peace out - Char*

After watching The Island

According to the recent popular film The Island, it makes me associate it with Ann Balsamo's article On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic surgery and the technological production of the gendered body. Rather than talking about how people make cosmetic surgery on their bodies, this film talks about later in this century, people use clone to insure their lives and make the American dream "Live Forever" to come true. The human clones are human-like "products" which are used to provide "spare parts" to their original human counterparts. Unlike human, the clones have no love, no lust and absolutely simple. The producer of the clone in the film says that the human-like products have no soul--the biggest distinction between these high technology products and human. They try to make them as simple as they can. However, the scientists will not believe that their creation will have their own mind and loss control then escape at last.

In Balsamo's article, she mentions that people are more and more unsatisfied about their body and want to use cosmetic surgery as a technology to bring them artificial beauty and "perfect look". People just can not stop from getting more and more from the technology. Technology now can change people’s live and develops fast enough to let people get what they want. But when people are taken control over by the things they create, the whole world will change. Like the storytelling in the film, it is such a satire of the current society that people are too confident with the things they do and never think about the outcome. More seriously, people can be destroyed from the technology creation they make.

Hence, should people like us think about not to rely on too much of the convenience that are given by the current technology so that we will not loss our instincts with lives all comes.

Google

I have just been reading an interesting article from the NY Times about Google so thought i would post it up, basically the article is split into two parts, the first part a discussion of a story which was run on cnet where a reporter had tried to find out as much about Google's C.E.O as possible through it's own search engine.. what is interesting is the way that Google responded to it by complaining to the editor of Cnet about disclosure of information and then went on to say that they would refuse to speak to anyone from Cnet for a year.. Hmm i can't quite get my head around that one, especially considering what Google's services are for..

And the rest of the article was talking about what Luke mentioned (i think) in lectures a few weeks ago about google trying to get digital copies of all the books from Harvard, Stanford and University of Michigan for its digital library and the implications this digitisation was going to have on books in general and the role of the publisher:

"The Association of American University Presses is less concerned about the bits from books that would appear in Google's search results than about digital copies of each work, infinitely reproducible, whose use and safekeeping would not be governed by an agreement with the copyright holder." (From the article)

And what i found most interesting about the article is the implications for university presses who rely on sales to university libraries and if this whole digital library takes off then only one copy would be enough for a university, or even a whole network of universities.. the head of the association of American University Presses reckons that this will lead to university presses charging $40,000 for one copy of the book.

Any thoughts?

Link to NY Times article

Original Cnet article

Blog entry by Luke on Lulu.com (which goes into similar issues associated with the digitisation of books)

P.S - When i read the article the first time it worked fine but when i went back to it it said i had to register to view which was a bit of a pain but it's free and is a pretty interesting read.

Downloading...

I found myself thinking about the lecture a few weeks ago on music and downloading. I still seem however, to be in two minds.

On the one hand I think that the downloading of music for use with iPods, mp3 players and the like, as well as for burning onto a CD is a negative aspect and shouldnt be done. Maybe because eventually there will be no need for CD stores if this carries on, but maybe because of the piracy issue. I think that it is something that is hard to monitor too, because there are so many people that do infact download music for their personal use. It does detract from the whole CD idea if all you do is download songs or even whole albums, but then there are people who download the music and buy then CD. So it can work both ways.

On the other hand though, I dont think the downloading of songs is that much of a problem. Some would argue that it is infact not such a big deal after all, because there are some CD's that have a copyright aspect to them and cannot be put onto the computer. If downloading wasnt ment to occur then wouldnt more CD's have this feature?! Downloading them seems an easy way to get the songs you want. I know that for me, as i have an iPod, its a fast way of getting the more recent and up-to-date new release songs. It is also more convenient in the fact that you dont have to buy a CD with some other songs that u may not have heard, or infact may not like. Downloading them, you can get the songs you want and the versions you want (like the radio mix, remix and so on).

What are people's thoughts on the downloading of movies and music videos etc - or even tv programmes for that matter? I dont have any major objection to it, but alot of people do find it more unacceptable than just downloading songs!!

Careful with your credit-card

Watch out for hackers. The other day a friend of mine received an email and a link to Amazon.com. He opened the link and it asked him to verify his credit card details (because there had been some problems with hackers!!). He checked that the page linked up to Amazon (which it did), the page looked just like all of their links and linked in and out of their site. The web link also stated it was a secure page to give credit-card details. But to his surprise he later received another email stating that the hackers had designed the webpage and had stolen credit-card details of several people. Moral of the story ….be careful the hackers are getting smarter.

Mobile TV and kids

Helsinki, Finland announce today the result from one of the world's first commercial mobile TV pilots. The pilot was conduct by Digita, Elisa, MTV, channel Four Finland (Nelonen), Mokia, TeliaSonera Finland and YLE during the period of March till June 2005. It included users of 500, in which they access their mobile TV using either Nokia 7710 smartphone and DVB-H technology. The programe offered include CNN, BBC World, and Euronews.

It was found that those mobile TV users spent around 20 minutes a day watching their mobile TV, and more active users watched between 30 to 40 minutes per session. Some of the frequent users include people who travel frequently on pubilc transport. Although this might not seems like a problem, because, watching tv on bus can't seen as time consuming when there's nothing to do there in the first place. But when you think about it, how would it effect children of today? Many children nowaday might be allow to view afternoon cartoon from 3pm to 5pm (since that seems to be the time the children afterschool programme end). Then automatically, they'll be send to their room to do their homework and so on by their mum. With this new technology of mobile TV, children who (like many of us) prefer to just want to turn our brain into a useless slum of mush in front of the TV, will have the privilage of watching mobile tv in their room out of the watchful eyes of their mum. In my opinions, these new technology seems to bring more problems to today's youth in terms of new found freedom and new method to break out of authoritative controls.

Patents to the left, patents to the right

A truly daft patent appeared on Slashdot today from Nintendo who have “protected” their rights over portraying insanity in a game. In effect this is a (mental) health bar in a game. Yes, they have taken a completely standard gaming concept and managed to find a way of patenting it with a small change in emphasis. Write a game where you play a character who hallucinates; for instance seeing blood on the walls that is not really there – urm ... now I think I'm losing touch with reality – they are talking about a fantasy inside a fantasy with a visible device so know you're going over the edge – well we all need one of those.

So what, you say. Well it's all about the corporate mind. If it moves then patent it. It probably won't ever get infringed. They probably don't care if it does. It's all about protection and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). If they get sued for something else, then with enough patents they may be able to counter sue. Talk about silly games.

Harking back to a comment of Kevin's (I think) about the psychotic corporation (probably based on the movie/book “The Corporation” where typical corporate behaviour was checked off against a list for psychotic behaviour; they got near to 100%) what does this tell us. Corporates cannot create and they cannot innovate but they can keep hurling mud until something sticks somewhere. The paranoid need to have ridiculous amounts of ammunition in case a war happens along and vague possibility that they will miss the next big thing lead to unbelievable budgets for the legal and billing department while the core of the company may well get outsourced or never insourced in the first place like Enron who (potty enough to be called “who” rather than “what”) were only a billing and contract creation company. OK so Nintendo do actually make stuff but how long might it be before they start to think that only the patents matter?

As an aside on patents I see that Apple has lost to Creative as to who made the first MP3 players. Mine is a 6GB Creative hard disk mp3 player, bulky, weighs a ton, depletes batteries till they glow, but it still works; funnily the only modern software that lets you load it seems to be iTunes. It also lost to a Microsoft employee for first thinking of the thumb wheel. Is there a chance these companies will all sue themselves into oblivion?

Marry me, please!

We live in a world of technology, a world in which we are constantly trying to find happiness through all the loneliness. A major part of the internet is matchmaking. Of course in places like India, the done thing for many families is an arranged marriage. Traditionally the idea of an arranged marriage is the match, and well, then the marriage takes place. The more lenient families allow the two people to meet and see if they hit it off. Of course a major part in the search is finding out what religion they are, what job the person has, and well, how much money they make.

The internet has made the searching much easier. Now there are thousands of websites which function as matrimony websites. Of course the sites don't only focus on arranged marriages, but allow people to put up profiles of themselves in order to find their 'true love'. I just checked out a few sites for fun. If you try type it up in a google search you'll see a countless amount of matchmaking matrimony sites. Here's just a few ouf of the many, www.shaadi.com (shaadi means wedding in hindi), www.bharatmatrimony.com . People give out all kinds of personal information about themselves on these sites such as their fears, hopes, and what they're looking for. While it may sound just like a normal site like Friendster and hi5, it goes deeper than that as well, its marriage, looking for a life long commitment.

Of course you can find many amusing profiles through which its fun to sit and laugh at them (as it was to laugh at that family in that lecture a while ago), but all in all these people have taken the idea rather seriously. Many arranged marriages were arranged with matchmakers in the past (if you see Mulan, you can get an example of that). Today's matchmaker is the internet. You just type in what age you would like the person to be, what religion, what language they should speak, and well, you get photos and everything about them.

Of course being a person who is totally against the ideas of arranged marriages, I don't really understand how two people can just see each other's profile and decide that they are going to get married. In a way the speed of the internet has made matchmaking easier, but at the same time has kept the traditionality of the Indian home. But at the same time one has to imagine that a person could misuse these sites and put in pictures of other people, after all how many sites on the internet are really that reliable. After all registration is free (though I'm not really sure what you have to put in as I refused to register; after all I have no interest in getting married to a random stranger).

Try it, the love of your life may just be a click away (please note that's sarcasm there!!!).

Lonesome tonight?

A great story (forwarded by Adam White) about loneliness and cyberspace:

The Guardian, 30 August, 05

Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar
I have found a toolbar to be a wonderfull addition to my browser and since I use google for searching I decided to install the google toolbar awhile back. Now I've never used any other toolbars before installing google but I have found it to be a nifty device. Although In the past I may have had spam toolbars which promote casinos and other junk Google was the first toolbar I've installed myself. It has offerd me spam blocking and a quick to access search engine. It also has autofilling features but I've never used it. However the best feature I have found it the 'blog this' button which I have used to write this, by surfing to the page about installing the toolbar and then hitting the blog button it has opened a neat new window and started with the link. This could be a very handy feature for our class blog. Now although google is the only toobar I've ever tried I'm always offerd to install others and advertised many, and i'm sure there are many that would try to install themselves if given a chance. It doesn't seem like something you would want to have more than one of, eventually you'd have more toolbars than browser, but I can't help but wonder if there were any better features on other toolbars, but I suppose it depends what you want the toolbar for. I decided to install it for quick acess to Google search but have found one neat feature I can use in addition.

weird weird weird

I watched an American talk show today, called Howard Nelson or John Nelson or something like that. Just a really cheesy standard talk show, but the content reminded me of the war game we looked at in the lecture Jo gave us on computer games. The subject of the talk show that day was kind of 'lets convince yo mumma that going to war is the right career choice'. The whole thing was basically about pressuring mothers to surrender to their sons and daughters who wanted to go into the military. They had officers on hand who would swear in the new recruit on the spot on live television, and the host, the Howard guy, would just repeat over and over 'you have given your son the biggest gift a mother can give' - to the women who would just stand their trying not to ball their eyes out. It just reminded me of the grotesque glamour that is being associated with warfare, how lost amongst all the levels of media the realitys of real war have become. Im sure thats what people realise once they get there. that all the hype and all the ways that one has been filled with an ideal that they are doing something 'for god' or 'for their nation' becomes a bit of a lie.

Photography - Digital or the 'old-fashioned' way??

I've been thinking about digital cameras and camera phones. The thing that's good about digital cameras is that you can really take as many photos as you want because you won't run out of film. It kind of takes away from the moment however, because you can just do heaps of takes and view the photo until you get it right. With 'old-fashioned' photography you only get one shot and you can't check the photo until it is printed to see if it's right. I can't really decide if this is a good or a bad thing. I guess it's cool to capture the moment as it is, without staging it and redoing it if it's not perfect, because that way it is more of a reflection of reality - unrehearsed and 'uncut'. On the other hand though, it's always a real bummer when you finally get your holiday shots printed and you've got your eyes closed in every shot or someone wasn't looking, and then you can't re-do them because the holiday's over. Photos really are meant to store memories, and who wants to put up photos of people with their eyes closed or looking stupid, no matter how 'real' it is?

Which brings me to another point - the use of photos after they are taken. I used to take photos to have them printed and put in an album and frames, to have them in my immediate everyday environment. Now I am finding that with digital cameras, photos are not really being printed to put in a photo album, but rather uploaded to blogs and websites instead. There are benefits to this, like many more people can view them and comment etc. But I also quite like having an album to look through, to physically hold. Also, 'old-fashioned' photos need to be developed and printed otherwise you cannot view them, whereas with digital photography you may only print the good ones.

So I am really in two minds about the whole thing... what do you guys think??

Music links from Nabeel

I'm not sure why I'm blogging on Nabeel's behalf (must remember to ask him why he couldn't do it himself). Anyway, here's what he's got...

Many documents (texts, scores, audio and video files) relating to music
copyright infringement can be found at:

http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/entrance.html

Columbia Law School
Arthur W. Diamond Law Library
Music Plagiarism Project


The British Library's Sound Archive has just posted more sounds of nature:

http://www.bl.uk/listentonature


Museum of Bad Album Covers:

http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/

Hi all,
Has anyone experienced much debt with their library books? I am personally so frustrated and annoyed that the university library still charges me even though i'm either (and get this) one minute late or even ONE SECOND late. Why do they not have a heart? It was ONE second, how am I suppose to know the my watch time does not exactly match up to thier computer time by ONE SECOND! I can understand rules are rules but sometimes rules can be bent a little. After taking one management paper, business do much better if some rules are bent than other businesses in competition. I will finish this post a little later, lab is closing.

The mania that is...MOBILE MEDIA

The mania that is…Mobile Media: (BLOG 29th August)

Last weeks lecture on Mobile Media raised some interesting points about the human connection (and possibly slight obsession) with techno gadgets, and how they are like prosthetics to us. My cell phone could well easily become a part of my hand or ear from texting or calling, but its not until you actually sit down and think about it, that you realise it is pretty much with you 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week. If the battery starts to run low, we panic, because the thought of not having it there to keep us company is beyond anything imaginable (speaking sarcastically, although some people do actually panic when their phones die). Just like all other commodities in our culture, the old one is replaced with a new one, because it can do even more to entertain us, and make us feel important.

When I got my very first cell phone in 5th form (it was one of those Alcatel ‘Clubs’, I think there was another model called ‘Max’, they were some of the very first ‘cool’ ones to come out for the teenage niche) I took it with me everywhere. To school, to the toilet, while I was showering (because I thought I was that important!), it was a serious obsession. Although I still take my phone with me most places, I’ve learnt it’s not a necessity to have 24/7, but more a want, and probably more a want to feel wanted, and for someone to contact me.

There will forever be debate on whether mobile media are the curse to our anti-socialism. This is true in a way, but as Luke mentioned, mobile media are not necessarily to blame for our anti-socialism. Most days when I’m walking to Uni, I will look at people coming towards me, but as soon as they come within a 10-foot distance of me, I will automatically pull out my phone, in order to avoid making any contact with them whatsoever. Even though they probably pose no threat to me at all, I don’t know them in the end, so the romanticised notion of everyone being friendly and talking to each other gets blown out the window. This is just how our society works, and at the end of the day, it’s each to their own. If someone doesn’t want to talk to someone else, then they don’t have to. They can simply kick back and rely on the comforts of their… mobile media.

New Mode of Information

Last weeks lecture was really interesting because I have quite often pondered the idea about what would I do if I didn’t have my mobile phone. If you are at a concert with friends and you get separated, it’s not really a big deal because you can either text or call them and meet up with them later. Yet I remember when there was a time that I went to a concert with friends or to a gathering of large people and I didn’t have my cell phone. Yet getting separated from my friends was never a big deal because somehow we always managed to meet up later. Today’s society and largely younger members of society are way too dependent on technology and in particular the mobile phone. I plead guilty to that as I always have large text conversations when I am sitting at home, instead of picking up the phone and having a normal conversation, I will spend 20 cents having a text conversation.
It is summed up nicely with a theorist named Mark Poster, who believes that there is an emergence of new mode of information (email, text messaging and even television) and because of this new mode of information we have entered into a new linguistic stage. Meaning that a new form of language has emerged. This is so true when you look at how a text message and quite often an informal email are written. Words are shortened; the number two is used instead of to. And the interesting thing is that this new mode of language is understood and accepted as normal by today’s society. I think someone posed the idea in a lecture a few weeks back, that before we know it this type of language is going to be taught in the classroom and this will be all that children learn when it comes to the English language. It’s a scary thought!!

Cyborgs: there a'comin.

While watching the news last night, a piece came up on how the computer system used in the Sci-Fi Tom Cruise film, "Minority Report" was now a reality. It really solidfies what Jo and Luke have been saying in lectures about the increasing possibilities of merging humans with technology. Summarily, you put gloves on which transmit the movements you make with your hands to the screen in front of you. So far it is being used in military type situations in the US (suprise suprise), to enhance maps and other kinds of surveillance. As the user, you can pretty much point at the block of apartments you want to see closer and just keep magnifying in, while discarding any of the other inforamtion contained in the same piece of data. In my severely technologically incapable mind, I find it akin to those new PS2 games that you have to dodge balls and things using the gloves and they are trying to promote it as some kind of exercise regime. Anyway, I think that it is interesting that it is no longer enough that we interact with such interfaces using a mouse or console/joystick, we now seem to need a more personalised, hands on approach to how we use technology. So what is our fasination with getting closer and closer amalgamated to technology so much so that becomes a part of the human body? And does the problem of human err become bigger when we try to fuse the two together? I mean in terms of mapping out war territory, are we lessening the degree of accuracy we can obtain due to the overwhelming desire to put the human rather than mechanical stamp on it?

Char*

Dude, you got pix'd!

After reading this I thought that I should share this remarkable story of a New York woman who was the victim of a flasher in the subway. This man exposed himself to her and started masturbating. She stayed calm, took out her cellphone and took a picture of him. He immediately zipped up and left the subway and this during the day. Although this is a sad story on one hand, on the other its a prime example that advanced mobile technology and the internet empowered this woman to take matters into her own hand to catch a pervert and by doing so most likely helped a lot of other women from this low-life.

Her story and the photo to be viewed here. (WARNING: this link takes you directly to an image which some people may find offensive.)

The newspaper story as it broke here.

I'm sure that this story is in the same mould as the young asian man in London who got abused by a racist London police officer and recorded the conversation on his cellphone thus proving his innocence.

Go mobile media go!!

Singing Karaoke online

The traditional Karaoke was based on the digital technologies of television and the laser disc. In order to sing a song, people have to buy the laser disc and play it in the VCD/DVD player. Comparing with this, the online Karaoke makes our entertainment life much easier. You don’t have to buy a VCD/DVD player, you don’t have to buy dozens of laser discs, all you have to do is that have a computer, buy a microphone and connect it to your computer.

I would like to recommend this cool Karaoke online website, www.kSolo.com, it contains a song library with 16 genres. You can find almost all the popular songs here with both instrumental version and vocal version, but remember, kSolo is only compatible with windows XP/2000. On the other hand, in order to sing the song fluently online, the computer must have a broad band internet connection.

The online Karaoke is an example of the rapid development of the digital media. It makes our life more and more convenient.

Accuracy of online tests

I recently just to find out how much I had changed since leaving school took another career test as most of us would have done in 7th form. This was at http://www.futureproofyourcareer.com/?hop=rjells and this made me question how accurate online tests truly are. I have always been skeptical of the internet and how accurate the information being presented to people online was but this had a particularly strong resonance in this case. This was promarily because after I received the results it said that i was most suited to a job in Mathematics or Engineering, previously I had taken around 3 -5 of these tests and they had all concluded taht i was more suited to jobs in social sciences. This also made me question the ability that online tests because i have never been particularly good at maths or sciences, particularly physics. Maybe I am simply placing too much empahasis on how accurate the information that we are receiving through sources like these and how potentially this could alter someones decisions in life, but i believe that although I know the internet will never produce truly accurate information in all cases, or even any cases tests that have implications like this must be as close to accurate as possible because of the impact they can have on people.

Make yourself at home as you travel the world

Here is an interesting essay that I retrieved from NZherald website. Internet can make yourself at home as you travel the world, can't it?

Reference:
The website address:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10342817
author:Esther Shaw
date:26.08.05

Essay:
Make yourself at home as you travel the world
28.08.05 1.00pm
By Esther Shaw

It's yours for nothing: a week in an Italian villa, complete with pool and car. Too good to be true? Not if you're one of the burgeoning number of people prepared to swap homes as a cheap way of taking a foreign holiday. The quid pro quo is simple: stay for free in a stranger's home while they do the same in yours, so freeing up your budget for travel and expenses. House swapping has been around for 50 years, but now the web has raised the roof. "The internet lets members swiftly search home types and engage in correspondence," says Caroline Connolly of the HomeLink internet home-exchange agency, which has over 14,000 members in 50 countries - including 1,600 in the UK. Last year, its business rose by 25 per cent. With most agencies - other established companies include Intervac and Home Base - you simply register your details and pay a membership fee, usually around ?00 a year. Post pictures and details of your own home and location on the site, and then you can browse the list of potential swappers. The information available should help you find a good match. If you have a large family, for example, you'll probably want a house with plenty of rooms and toys. And don't worry if you only have a small London flat, compared to their Florida condo; location is just as important. But before you agree a swap, it's vital to get to know your future house guests - via email first, then by telephone. You'll have to agree a written contract together - a fixed sum for phone and utility bills, say - and feel relaxed about who's coming to stay. Agencies don't take references but monitor members and follow up negative feedback. HomeLink has an "exchange evaluation form" where swappers rate experiences, and a complaints procedure for unhappy partici- pants. It operates on a "two strikes and you're out" basis. "There are the occasional accidents [such as breakages], but those would happen even if you were in your own home," says Ms Connolly. People who choose to trust others, she adds, tend to be trustworthy themselves - leaving their host's home exactly as they found it. To be on the safe side, inform your home insurer of your swapping plans. The people staying in your property should be classified as guests, so any outside theft will be covered by your existing policy. Some insurers may even look favour- ably on your home being occupied while you're away. Accidental breakages, however, are not usually covered. To include car use in the exchange, add the other family to your licence as temporary additional drivers. Check that your insurer accepts a driving licence from their country of origin; if not, an international permit is needed, says Frances Browning of Churchill. Travel cover can also be useful against cancellation if you or the swapper falls ill. Again, check with your insurer: not all treat staying in private accommodation as a holiday, and in that case won't pay for a claim. Finally, lock up valuables, compile a guide to your home and its appliances, and leave a list of emergency numbers. Margaret and Ron Fox, a retired couple from Kent, used three consecutive house swaps as a way of seeing Australia on a recent trip. "This took a lot of organising," says Mrs Fox, "especially trying to find people wanting to exchange at the same time. "But home swapping means you can stay in the community and enjoy far more flexibility than you get in a hotel."

What is F.E.A.R?

What is F.E.A.R? Well apparently it’s not just an emotion but also the latest computer game. Just like your standard computer game it involves you mortally wounding an opposition member in order to succeed. F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) was developed to defend America’s national security agaisnt any paranormal behaviour. Although this game will not be out until October 2005, FEAR’S official website allows you to download a sample version of the game.According to the websites overview of the game (http://www.whatisfear.com/us/)

“F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is an intense combat experience with rich atmosphere and a deeply intense paranormal storyline presented entirely in first person. Be the hero in your own spine-tingling epic of action, tension, and terror... and discover the true meaning of fear. Hyper-stylized combat for breathtaking cinematic quality action
Gripping supernatural storyline for spine-tingling intensity of play
Multi-player action with multiple game play modes and all single player capabilities.
Advanced graphics and physics for visceral movie-like experience
Enemies with special abilities and A.I. so intuitive it's like battling living, breathing players”
Although I’m not an avid computer gamer, for me this game looks to combine the worlds of both cinema more specifically a thriller based movie and the sophisticated world of gaming technology to create a game that is so intense and terrifying it would test any gamers nerves of “steel”.

African's turn to cell phones

I visited happynews.com and considering the lecture on mobility, the first news article that attracted my attention was 'Africans turn to cell phones'.

The article stated that more people in Africa had cell phones than people that had access to landlines. This bought to my attention the way in which cell phones as a communication device has come to dominate over landline phones. Many people do not have landline phones anymore and instead only have cell phones . When asked for a phone number most people give out there cell phone number as away in which they can be contacted. Cell phones have allowed people to be contacted instantly no matter where they wether that be work, home, in the public sphere or even in another country.

The way in which the cell phone have become more popular than the landline phones shows the way in which society expects everyone to be mobile.

Install windows 95 on Sony PSP

Last time i introduced the Sony PSP hope you people still remember. Heres some recent news on Sony PSP.

Earlier reported on the Bochs x86 emulator being ported to the PSP by Matan (His website is http://www.hacker.co.il/psp/bochs/.) This is indeed true and has opened the door for a wide range of options that the PSP can now do, not limited to but including the running of: FreeDOS, Linux, DLX Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PicoBSD, Pragma Linux, Debian 3.0r0 and 2.2r5, and any other disk images with pre-installed systems on them.

As PSP become more and more popular worldwide, hackers from all over the world are working on PSP and trying to hax the little machine and put more function on it. as most of the UMD game can be played on Merory Stick on PSP now, people trying to do something different on it, now it comes windows on PSP, hope more things can be added to it. I will bring you people some news next time.

Video Games Proven to increase aggression

Going back a few weeks to Video games...
A 20 year research project aimed at finding the effects of video games on individuals was released yesterday, and the results somewhat challange what most of us believe in terms of video games triggering aggression.The results claim that interactive media of a violent nature will infact increase aggression in children and adolescents. The american study concluded also that this is most likely to occur in boys, rather than girls. Mood assesment tests were used to anaylse children playing a violent game for less than 10 minutes, results showing that agressive traits were more common in these children than the children who had not been playing. The children were also more likley to be more hostile than others and argue with figures holding authority.

The results have prompted the American Psychological Association to adopt a resolution, recommending that violence generally be reduced in all interactive media marketed at youth.

I think its would be fair to say that if this resolution is actually implemented, it would spark a much greater global debate which already exists on the impacts of violence in interactive media. Thought it was interesting to share as im sure some of us have conflicting views with the results of this study!

Air Card thought

Going up to the Symonds Street, I saw a big red billboard hanging on the landscape shows about Vodafone’s new Air Card connection service. This causes me memorize my experience of using Air Card. Air Card, to put it simply, takes the place of the telephone line. That is, by inserting a small card into the laptop, or probably some home computers, we are able to go to achieve GPRS or CDMA connection. Therefore, it makes our experiences with Cyberspace more movable. However, I would not prefer using Air Card, and sometimes I found it really annoying. To me, Air Card does not have strong ability to receive signal, and it is interfereable. Two years ago, I bought an Air Card, and I tried to use it when I was in the airport lounge, waiting for the plane in South Korea. My Internet connection was always broke off when I was excited about computer games. I thought probably it is because of the signal disturbance in airport. However, when I came to New Zealand, could not connect to Internet at all. This is because the geographical place I lived was not ideal for receiving signal from Sky Tower. I was upset about this and I suggest people consider carefully before using Air Card service.

Video game emulators

For those of you old enough to remember playing Streetfighter II, Bubble Bobble, Pang, Snow Bros and countless other video games in arcades and fish and chip shops, then the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) is an essential piece of software.
MAME, simply put, emulates arcade games in a format compatible for use at home on your personal computer. Being a Mac user, I use MacMAME, which is free to download from http://www.emulation.net/ or http://www.mame.net/ for PC users. Once you have this piece of software, you can then set about downloading ‘roms’ which are the actual game files. File sizes vary from about 100kb through to much larger files depending on the complexity of the game graphics and things of that nature.
http://www.rom-world.com/ is the most complete rom database I’ve encountered and at this site you’ll find all the classics from the games I mentioned at the beginning of this blog to World Heroes, Metal Slug and King of Fighters.
The games feature the same graphics and music as their original arcade versions, ensuring you get that real feel of the arcade and not some watered down imitation - It even goes as far as making you ‘insert coins’ by pressing the number 5 key on your keyboard. The only noticeable difference from the arcade is in the game controller department. Trying to use a keyboard to do a fireball or dragon (real arcade heads will know what I mean) is way too difficult, but it is possible to buy USB joypads that look and play much like a PS2 controller.
Arcade games are not the only games to be emulated in computer software, there are also those that allow the user to play console games right from the original like Nintendo NES, Sega Megadrive and Gameboy. These act in the same way as MAME, where the console software (eg. Genesis Plus, Boycott Advance - search these on Google) is needed in order to play the roms (games).
So no more saving up 20 cent coins, no more visits to dairies out in west or south Auckland, and no more dusting off your old Sega Master System just to play Alex The Kidd. All you need is the software and then the roms and you’ve got hours of entertainment all at the click of a mouse.

Technology takes the blame again.

The lecture on Wednesday raised some interesting points about technology being blamed for the downfall in society of face to face communication and the decline of a public sphere; technology it seems is also now being blamed for a newly discovered epidemic called loneliness. An article in Sunday (the Sunday Star Times magazine) blames the pace of modern living coupled with mobile devices such as mobile phones and email for the increasing alienation and isolation large numbers of individuals apparently suffer from. Apparently people never suffered from loneliness before the advent of the mobile phone. The article argues the "Modern life isolates you. Technology allows us to put off proper interaction with people, and we've been taught that it is okay to push the human side of things further and further down the list of priorities." The argument goes on to claim that even though people are now more widely connected they are not genuinely connected. I am sure that I am not the only person that regards my family and friends as top of the list of my priorities, with a family that lives in the South Island and friends all over the world, email and text messaging helps me feel more connected and involved in the lives of the people I love than without mobile technologies.