Group Presentation Theme

My group had a very difficult time deciding on what theme to do. We have so many different interests and backrounds that influenced our ideas but in the end we settle on RFID technologies. We found that there are so many instances and products that use this technology that we felt it was worth sharing with our class some of the things that use RFID that maybe they don't know about. We split it up into three general areas including; RFID used in transponders for toll collecting, RFID and security in workplaces and safety, and RFID in the everyday shopping including clothing, groceries, and electronics. There is also a very uncertain future of where RFID could still go since there have been ideas of implementing a completely checkout free grocery store where all the products are tagged with a chip that stores pricing information and when the person walks out the store, they walk through a device much like they do today that catalogs everything in their shopping cart as well as their identity so that all the items can be charged. There would be no stopping at a checkout clerk and no waiting in line. This is ideal for every American who hates hastling with the lines at the grocery store.

Entertainment in 10 years?

Well, considering all the pirating of entertainment such as movies and music downloads done online illegally, I think the entertainment industry will flop within the next 10 years. There will be so many people downloading things for "free" online that the entertainment industry will suffer until it hits bankruptcy. Especially since the government no longer pursues lawsuits against individuals who engage in uploading copy written material online, there will be no stopping the illegal online downloading of copy written content. Artists and actors will be the biggest ones to lose out in all of this. Movie theaters, if they are still around, will be charging hundreds of dollars to view the movies since that will be the only way to generate revenue. If they want to survive, they are going to have to figure out a way to encode the data so that not just anyone can download a copy and it work. They are going to have to do something even more advanced than what video games do today with activation keys to protect their content and to be able to make money from it. Otherwise, I think entertainment will be nonexistent and only peoples little personal video clips will be the only entertainment available on Utube. Yuck!

What Makes A Community?

There are just so many right answers to this question, but I'll try to break it down to the five that I think are the most crucial for a community to exist. I think that in order for a community to exist, there needs to be communication so that members of the community can interact and discuss things/interests. But in order for communication to happen, there must be people that make up the group that communicate. I think people are the most important piece of a community. In order for the group to form a community and exist in an orderly environment there has to be some sort of rules established. There also needs to be security for a community to interact so that the members can feel that they are safe. Also, reproduction is important for a community because there needs to be a way for the community to grow and not just disappear after the first generation. These five properties are the best foundation for a group that comes together to create a community.

Net Worth...Am I Worth Anything?

I found it somewhat challenging to calculate my net worth. It's difficult to track down every single credit card whether its a visa/mastercard or just a credit card for shopping stores like Macy's and JCPenny's. The first place I started was my wallet, and from there I could gather a list of all cards I physically have. But then I went online to try and log in to these different credit cards and found it a pain to try and remember what login I had set up for each. Also, not everything I have credit for has an actual credit card that I keep in my wallet. The next place I looked was my back account to see what things I had auto payments set up for. I found a few lines of credit there that I went to their websites and logged in to check my balance. Probably my biggest debt would be the mortgage I have out on my house but that was pretty easy to figure out. I just logged into the website for the bank that gave me the mortgage. Overall though, I would say its pretty easy to gain access to all my information because it was all available online. But its kind of hard to get all the log in information correct. So if I have trouble getting logged in, wouldn't someone whose trying to steal or hack my account have a hard time?

Presentations in front of a class

Doing presentations in front of a class is always a challenge for most people including myself. Although I can usually pull it off without any problems, but picking a topic to talk about is the most challenging part. I tried to think of something that I am familiar with and I came up with torrent downloading. Now torrent downloading of copy written material is illegal, I usually only download things to see if they are something I would like when it comes to movies. If the artist turns out to be good, I usually go out and purchase their CD. After all, they are not going to make any more music unless people purchase their album. Torrent downloading can also be used for videos as well however I don't even bother with it. Especially since half the movies are some person sitting inside a movie theater with a little hand held camera trying to get a copy of the newest movies and the quality ends up being poor. I would rather pay the $10 to go to the movies or wait for them to come out on Redbox and rent it for $1. Especially since I have a sound system and big enough television at home to get the whole "theater" experience with my own popcorn that doesn't cost $8!

Shopping Online versus In Store

So with today's numerous websites that are involved in e-commerce it's very hard to say which ones I could trust with my credit card information. However, I do feel comfortable with shopping at certain websites such as newegg.com or amazon.com and even bestbuy.com. These websites I feel comfortable purchasing electronics such as computer parts, cameras, and computer accessories like keyboards or headphones. I also feel safe shopping at Amazon since they have a respectable reputation with little history of fraud and I can find certain textbooks I need at a decent price.
Things I feel most comfortable shopping for at a real store would be food, clothing, and showering products. I think that food is a bad idea to shop for online since the condition of the food may not be guaranteed, and who knows how long it will last. However, if I go to the store, I can check produce myself to make sure there are no rotted parts to them. Clothing is something that I don't think I will ever be able to shop for online since sizes differ per designer, and something that looks good on a model may not look good on me. I like to physically try on the clothing to make sure its comfortable and looks good before purchasing it. Showering products are best shopped for at the store since you can smell the different fragrances of shampoo and conditioner and deodorant. Otherwise, if you buy it online, you may end up with some smelly products that make you want to puke. And no one wants that.

HTML

So this was my first attempt at HTML. I have never done any web page designing, although my dad used to do it all the time. However he used a webpage editor and never had to write the basic HTML code from scratch. It looked kinda boring when he would put together different pages of his website. I think the basic HTML code would be hard to master since there seems to be so much different things that can be coded. My HTML code looked like this
<html>

<head>

<title>Best Web Page Ever!!!</title>
<body><body style="background-color:#00FF00">This is a test page to see how <br> many people will actually read this.<br> All of your IP's are being tracked!!! <br><br><br><br><br> <marquee>WARNING! WARNING! Virus or Spybot detected!!!</marquee>


</html>
Feel free to copy this text and save it to see what the webpage looks like. It's pretty basic, so I could understand if you didn't want to waste your time. But what can I say, it's my first time doing HTML!

Scanvenger Hunts Are Sooo Fun... Aren't They?!

Today in class we were able to have fun on the World Wide Web looking for certain things on the list given to us by the brilliant and awesome instructor! I was able to find three different match makeing websites that were www.pof.com and www.okcupid.com and www.match.com and I also found a website with information about the panelists for Digital Hollywood at http://www.digitalhollywood.com/LAWednesdaySixteen.html and I was also able to find a number of houses for sale that were between $200k and $300k with at least 3 bedrooms in the University Place, WA area. I also found other search engines that are not as familiar as google is. they are www.excite.com
www.lycos.com
www.altavista.com
There was plenty of financial information available on RealNetworks website but most of them were in PDF format. Since the scavanger hunt specified it can't be PDF, i did find one that was not PDF at the url http://investor.realnetworks.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=595122

I also found a blog posting http://andrewfry.blogspot.com/ about the scavanger hunt he was doing today in class. The message was posted during the time of 1020am and 11:08am

How hard could it be to compare Email to USPS?

The United States Postal Service is one of the most reliable services our nation has to offer. It's sad to hear of financial trouble they have been getting into but I still can rely at least 6 days a week to have mail in my mailbox. It's amazing to think that I actually have more than one mailbox that I receive notifications at, but its really nice that I don't have to get off the couch to check my email inbox. Unfortunately I'm sure its that same mentality that is why companies change to paperless, online bills which in turn takes away from postage fees that the USPS could have been collecting. For me, the consumer, it's nice to get a free place to receive mail as opposed to having to pay to send things out. It's also alot easier to send notifications to more than one person via email, otherwise for birthday parties I have to send out 20+ letters. Email is the future as more and more places become technological. The outlook for the USPS... not so good. I've read news articles saying that the USPS is looking at possibly reducing the number of days that they will deliver mail to save costs. I hope that things don't get too bad for the USPS, since I do enjoy the exercise once in a while of going out to the mailbox and back.

IPhone 4, is it really worth it?

So I was hanging out in the University District in Seattle and saw this line of people wrapping around the building almost all the way to the back of the building right outside the Apple Store. I couldn't figure out what could be so important to be waiting for. When I got home and watched the news, I saw a news reporter standing outside the same store reporting about the first person in line who had been waiting since 4pm the previous day just to be one of the first people to get this new Iphone4. The news reporter asked what he looked forward to on the new phone, and the guy only said two or three features that didn't make much sense to me. I can't figure out how the guy justified waiting in line all night for this new phone. He then said he had class at 11am so he wasn't even going to have much time to play around on the new phone. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation. Obviously he wasn't alone in wanting to be the first to get this new gadget, but how can it really be worth it when most of these same individuals will be waiting in line in a couple of months for the next new gadget to come out.

What can I get from my class?

I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s in Engineering and Science and took this course to start my knowledge on how some of the basic components of the internet work such as email and webservers. I don’t expect to get too much technical information but more of an overview throughout the quarter. But I plan to use any information from this course to see what areas could be improved and hope to get insight on what areas need refining on the World Wide Web. Last spring I took the course Tinst 100 to get a more basic introduction to computers and our world of technology. I’m hoping to get a little more in-depth this quarter in email services and how they work since it’s always been an area that has been so vague to me. My main goal this quarter is to learn something about the internet that I can use in my future career as a Computer Engineer.

                I have a little bit of back-round with computers but most of it is with computer games. However, I am also taking Java I this quarter. This class is not required for my degree but since my degree has no real elective/fun classes I thought this one might be. J