CLT

I had been down to the CLT before to watch movies for my Spanish classes but I did not know the extent of the services available down there. I do find it a bit difficult to navigate down there. For some reason I get really turned around as soon as I step off those stairs. Interestingly though in my wandering around trying to get out the other day I stumbled upon a rather extensive collection of Jazz and Classical albums that were pretty cool. Anyway the computing capability down there is rather impressive. I like that they not only have several very nice PCs but also a fleet of cool Macs as well. The number of scanners is nice too. I have a scanner on my printer in my room but 1) I never hook up my printer and 2) that scanner is hard to use. Its difficult to center the thing your trying to scan and to get it to scan exactly what you want it to at the proper size. The scanners down in the CLT were very easy to use and produced exaclty what I wanted them to without any hassel. On top of all this I thought that the video conference room was quite cool as well. All those HD tvs and cameras in there would produce a fine video conferencing experience im sure. Its cool that we have access to those services should we ever need to have a video conference job interview. Im not sure I quite understood the whole Trinity network video chat system, something about it being like skype, but it sounded cool. It would be really cool if Trinity could provide lectures over this system. Not so much like classes over the internet but lectures from distinguished proffesors at other schools that we could watch instead of just the few that come to speak here on campus.

Image Manipulation

I chose this image that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 2003 because it really frustrates me when news organizations spin news and images to make them more profitable or interesting.  To be fair The LA times did not know this photo was doctored when they published it and subsequently fired the photographer but the idea is still there.  The photographer compiled an image of a British soldier and some Iraqi civilians to create this one image.  This manipulation was of course harmful.  These organizations have a job to report the truth and this image is not the truth.  All too often these days news organizations create substance to make their product more marketable.  They all do it but I can think of instances in which Fox news in particular has used stock footage of a rally to depict something that was supposed to have happened that day.

I chose this video because it describes how two images can be combined into something that looks like originally one image. This example of putting Natalie Portman's face into a painting is innocent of course.  This video is just informative in nature, not any kind of commentary on the good and bad of image manipulation.  It is valuable though to see just how easy image manipulation can be and that we should be wary when looking at images that seem implausible or just a bit off.

Excel

I had to use Excel alot this summer at my job at an insurance company.  they kept track of all of their data on spreadsheets and honestly I had some trouble manipulating the data at times due to the formatting they used.  Now that I know the controls to the program better I feel more confident that I could manipulate formulas and formats more adequately.  I used to have trouble making absolute cell references and I would spend way more time than was needed formating a formula for each cell.  Knowing what I know now I would have been ten times more efficient this summer.  Overall Excel is a wonderful program to know how to use as it organizes and provides avenue to analyze data that might otherwise be convoluted and confusing.

Copyright Laws

I, like really anyone our age, knew about copyright laws generally.  I knew that pirating music and what not was illegal.  It’s called pirating after all.  I did not know all the specifics of the law that we learned though.  I found it particularly interesting that the Disney Corporation had such sway with the system.  As the law used to stand copyright extended for the authors life plus fifty years.  When fifty years after Walt Disney’s death was nearing the corporation lobbied successfully to extend copyright to author’s life plus 70 years.  I find it unsettling that such a thing can happen.  Copyright ought to expire at some point so that things move into the public domain.  Of course the author and his or her immediate decedents deserve the rights and profits of the work but for 70 years? And how long will Disney extend this?

Also as a college age person I find that the issue of illegal downloading affects me greatly.  Of course we all know of such things happening but rarely do we consider the consequences of these actions.  There are of course the possible legal repercussions of being taken to court by a record label or something which cannot be ignored but are these actions justifiable? I personally believe the answer is a very qualified yes.  These record labels certainly have the rights to the music and they certainly should.  They provide the capital to produce and market their product thus they deserve profits from it but suing a college age student for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a dozen songs is beyond extortion.  A couple times the value of the album plus some sort of reasonable damages such as a processing fee for the trouble of filing the claim or something I think would be reasonable.  Threatening to take such a small time offense to court is not only ridiculous but also inefficient.  These companies have to pay the legal fees for this process thus making it more expensive for the defendant.  Of course if someone has thousands of dollars worth of illegal downloads and is selling them to make personal profit the record labels should go after them with all they’ve got.  That’s a legitimate challenge to they’re due profits but a college kid with a couple dozen songs? Give them a slap on the wrist and tell them next time they will come after them for real. 

Copyright Laws by Zach Sickmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2175526267235034191.

TUnetwork

The Trinity network seems to be a fairly complex and complicated thing. I suppose it would have to be to support the data needs of an entire university. I can only imagine what a school like The University of Texas would have. I learned quite a few new things whilst studying the network. First of all I had never seen an actual server room before. It was very cool to actually see a kind of physical embodiment of this abstract thing. Also I had no idea how the Ethernet jack in my room connected me to the internet. I didn’t know that those Ethernet cables run to the data closets and must be switched to fiber optic cable before running to the hub in Ruth Taylor.

Mystery Spot

I chose this spot because I walk through those doors multiple times every day going to and from classes. I used two different effects to diguise this photo in picnik. the first I believe is called HDR-ish that affects the color and the sharpness of the image. I then used the Posterize effect and limited it to three or four colors. This effect also changed the detail to give the photo that slightly blury look so that it looks like it was printed on a poster. Finally I added the "Where Is This," at the bottom using the text feature and a font called bandana made to look like the pattern on a bandana. I didn't exactly set out to make it black and white but in messing around with that posterize effect I decided I liked that look.

Joe Hatch

I found Joe Hatch's talk very interesting. I always knew that Macs had generally less problems with viruses than PCs but I was never quite sure why. It makes perfect sense that hackers and the like would want to target the computers most frequently used both by businesses and individuals. I had never really considered the security of the macbook I own but now i think it might be time to be more concious of that. Using secure networks and anti virus software wasn't something I had before been particularly worried over. Its always better to be safe than sorry in these matters I suppose.