Nathan's Weblog

SUMMERizing the semester

nch6286 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:43:17 +0000

The is the last blog that I have to write for my library class. I am choosing to use this blog to write about the class as a whole, rather than just one of the class sessions. Throughout the semester we did many things. We started by learning about the library and the different sections that are within our (UNCW) library. The day that we took the tour of our library was one of my favorite for many reasons. One is obviously because that meant that we didn’t have to sit in a classroom and do work, but another that I enjoyed this day so much is because I entered parts of the library that I had either just overlooked, or was completely oblivious to the fact that these sections even existed. It was kind of like walking into the opposite sex’s bathroom for the first time. Your not really surprised by anything, but its still just cool to be there.

Our library class took a turn about halfway through the semester, and we began talking about things that were a bit more in depth and serious than just where certain books were located. We began to talk about databases and how to do good searches for materials. After that, we continued to talk about research, and how to know if the materials that we had were good for our topics. After that, we got into plagiarism, which surprised me to find out that you cannot be sued for (although schools still kick you out). And now we are finishing up the semester by talking in depth about copyright laws.

The Problem with the Mouse

nch6286 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:43:38 +0000

In class lately we have been talking a lot about copyright laws. We learned about how copyrights used to last for a total of 14 years, and then were doubled to 28. Later they were doubled again to be 56 years. Then the time limits were again extended to the length of the creators life plus 50 years. Then Mrs Radom told us that around the time that Mickey Mouse was about to enter the public domain, Disney paid millions of dollars to lobbyists to extend the length of copyrights by 20 years to a total of the creators life plus 70 years.

I think that this is a load of crap. Copyrights should last the length of the creators life, but no longer. The person who creates the original work should be able to make money off of that work until the day that they die, however, when they die, they can no longer earn money because they are dead, and therefor their creation should enter the public domain. However, something as tied to a company such as Mickey mouse is to Disney, should be labeled as a company logo, which as we learned, the rights for a logo continue indefinitely.

National Emergency Texting System

nch6286 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:06:21 +0000

What if an emergency happens? How will we know what is going on? These are questions that every American should be asking. Our campus has a revolutionary idea about how to get the word out. UNCW has implemented a text alert system where the officials will send a campus wide text message to those people who have registered their cell phone numbers with the school. This is a great idea, seeing as how most students wouldn’t be caught dead without their cell phones, because its too much like being out of touch. What if someone were to try and call within that hour that you don’t have your cell phone? But all in all, this is the generation that relies heavily on small mobile devices to stay in touch and up to date.

According to an article at BBC.com, the FCC has decided to implement its own nationwide text message alert system. The article said that certain cell phone providers are willing to opt in to the plan once they read and approve the final details. And cell users would have the option of not receiving such text messages with their plans. These emergency texts would only be used in certain situations such as a terrorist attack, or when an amber alert was issued. The text would also be sent out for dangers such as extreme weather conditions like a tornado or a hurricane.

Basically, the government can see that this is a generation that people keep in touch using mobile devices, and the government is just trying to stay as up-to-date as its people

Google search: Right to Privacy

nch6286 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:05 +0000

Today in class we talked in depth about google. I started off by googling my mom and dad’s home phone number, and then using that to map where they lived. This wasn’t a big surprise to me because I already knew that you could search phone numbers to get addresses and names. But I’ve never really been able to use this to my benefit because every time I have a phone number without a name, its usually because I was too drunk to remember her name, but not drunk enough to forget to ask for her number. Well, the interesting part of this story is that cell phone numbers don’t work as part of this “reverse search.” This is probably why I’ve never really considered how dangerous this could be. Most people my age have cell phones, and they use their cells as their main phone, without even owning a land-line.

We also discussed how the maps that google provide offers a “street view” in some of the larger metropolitan areas. This has bothered many people because they could see their cat in their windows when they looked their own address up online, or they had a picture of themselves walking around a corner on a random street. I don’t think that this is as big of a problem as people are trying to make it out to be, but if someone can see a picture of themselves or something that belongs to them, and they want it to be taken off the web, I do believe that they have that right.

Ultimately, I believe that people should fight for their rights to privacy, but at the same time, they need to try not to become too paranoid.

The “Truth”

nch6286 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:39:12 +0000

The other day in class we discussed how the wordings that we use could change how that information is accepted. For example, a headline in an article could say “20,000 people died in war so far” or it could say “5 American soldiers died killed today.” Both titles are sad news, but one seems much more dismaying than the other. The first title says that 20,000 people have died in the war, it doesn’t say if the people were Americans or not, and it doesn’t say how long the war has been carrying on. The second title is a little more specific, we know that 5 people died, that they were America, and that it was recent, not five years ago.

Now everyone knows that you can change how information is accepted by “playing” with the words that you use. It is something that little kids do naturally to try and get out of trouble. You ask little Tommy if he took the cookie and he says, “no.” He ate the cookie, but he didn’t take it, little Susie took the cookie from the jar and gave it to him. If you think of it like this, you automatically think of it as a form of lying, but when you think of the media doing it, you just think of it as something that the news does to get its ratings up.

This is just a simple reminder that you can’t believe everything that you read or here, the news channels don’t always tell you the whole truth. Don’t be gullible, accept news with caution.

China’s Great Firewall

nch6286 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:19:40 +0000

I just read this article at BBC.com about how china actually keeps it’s citizens from freely surfing the world wide web. This surprised me because I had never really considered the fact that governments can censor the internet. I was always under the impression that once you connect to the world wide web, you were connected to everything that the world had to offer on the web.

China has evidently come up with a filtering system that allows it to control what web sites and content are accessed by the citizens. Some countries reroute the citizens to different web sites when they try to access “forbidden sites,” but not China. This technology super-power has a firewall at all of the nations “internet ports” which completely shuts down the transfer of data to and from the sites that it deems unnecessary.

However, not all of China’s citizens have accepted this censorship, many have found a way to bypass the nations ports. They connect their computers to computers outside the country, and “piggy-back” on these other computers to connect to the internet in its entirety. Some people have even come up with software, such as psiphon, to help the Chinese citizens connect to the World wide web, and not just the China Wide Web.

R U 4 REAL or J/K?

nch6286 — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:09:07 +0000

I recently read an article at BBC.com about the technology age, and the affect that it is having on young children in regards to their writing skills. In this new era of gadgets and gizmos, people are losing touch with the basic skills of writing. The article stated that “four out of 10 boys and 25% of girls, aged 11, fail to meet the required standards for writing in their national tests” (BBC.com). The article continued to discuss how when young people did decide to actually write with pen and paper, they would often times struggle and slip into “text mode.” Lacking the proper skills to write correctly, these students would write slowly because their minds would be having to focus more than necessary on how to form the proper text, which; in turn, seems to affect their grades.

But all is not lost, and the world will not fall into a dark abyss of “lol’s” and “wat R U ^ 2′s.” The article went on to talk about how kids are also being under-stimulated because they are spending their time inside playing computer games when they are young rather than going outside and playing all the kid games like “cops and robbers” or having “wheel-barrel races.” The article went on to explain that while you are playing these games, you are actually fine tuning the skills, such as eye-hand coordination, that help when it comes to writing. So, to help save the world from a future of strange abbreviations, and get us back to a world where signatures count for something, do like my parents did: When the sun is shining, make the kids play outside.

Different Databases

nch6286 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:41:17 +0000

In Class on Monday, March 10^th, we discussed how to use the library databases more in depth. We learned that choosing the right database is essential when it comes to the types of materials that you are wanting to find. Every time that I have used the databases to search for articles, I have used the Criminal Justice Abstracts database or the Sociological Abstracts database. I have done this, simply because I was usually doing research for a class that was either in my major (Criminal Justice), or my minor (Sociology). While this worked, and I always found the materials that I needed, I now know that I could have found more material that pertained to my topics in other databases, that may have looked at the topic from a different point of view.

To show us exactly how this worked, Mrs. Radom used the search topic of Legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. She searched in two separate databases (Criminal Justice Abstracts and Public Affairs Information Services (PAIS) International), using the same keywords in both searches. The two separate databases pulled up completely different articles on the topic. The CJA articles were mostly based on how it would affect the Criminal Justice system, while the PAIS articles were focused mainly on the affect that is would have on public affairs in general.

So no matter what you are researching, you need to make sure that you use the appropriate databases to search for the articles. The different databases will affect the results that you get back on your topic. You want to be sure that the articles you receive are accurate and discuss the topic that you are really looking for. And as always, if your just not sure what database you need to use, ask someone. Who knows, they might be able to help you out, or show you a database that you normally wouldn’t have used that views your topic from a different angle, and opens your mind to a whole new perspective.

The Boolean Effect

nch6286 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:21:20 +0000

Boolean words are used to make your search findings more relevant to what you are looking for. They can be used to broaden or narrow your search results. I have always used them, but never really understood why, and never really gave much consideration to it. But now that I understand what the boolean words are, and what they do, I understand why I get the results that I do when I use a search engine. I am also usually more careful in how I arrange my keywords when doing a keyword search.

The Boolean words are AND, OR, and (AND) NOT. These simple words can be used to adjust your search so that you can be sure that your results include what you are looking for. The words can completely change what your search results pull up depending on where you place them, and how you group them with your keywords. You just have to learn how to properly place these words with your keywords, and learn how the search engines read them. It is a lot like the order of operations in for math problems. You simply have to group your words together with parenthesis, and it will change how the search engine reads your keywords.

Examples:

Law Enforcement AND Mace OR Tasers = Law Enforcement + Mace / Tasers

Law Enforcement AND (Mace OR Tasers) = Law Enforcement + Mace / Law Enforcement + Tasers

Plagiarism

nch6286 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:36:36 +0000

Recently in class, we discussed the crime of plagiarism. It is an interesting concept that can be defined as taking the works or thoughts of someone else, and passing it off as your own. The reason I say that this is an interesting concept is because it is not the same thing as copyright infringement. I had always thought that copyright infringement and plagiarism were the same thing. I thought that they were just two different terms for the same concept. Now this is not to say that plagiarism is never copyright infringement, because in some cases it is, but in other cases, it isn’t.

It is a very amoral thought to take someone else’s original works or ideas, and say that you were the original thinker. It’s like stealing from them. Many people think that its ok to take the original idea and not give the proper sources credit if you “tweak” it a little; Change a word here, omit a word there. This is still plagiarism, if the thought originated somewhere else, you need to cite that source so that credit is given where credit is due.

None of us like it when other people get credit for work that we do, and while in some circumstances, some people might be alright without receiving the credit that is due to them, none of us want to have our thoughts and ideas stolen. This is all plagiarism is, stealing another persons thoughts, stealing their ideas. We are told from kindergarten that we shouldn’t steal, and from the point we start writing papers, we are taught not to plagiarize, it’s a simple concept. Plagiarizing is stealing, and stealing is against the law. Don’t do it.