Fakers and Doctors...

I chose this picture because war, as you know, can be a very sensitive situation and pictures/visuals of war have profoundly impacted public opinion of a war in the past and in the present. This picture originated supposedly from Basra and was featured on the from cover of the Los Angeles times in 2003 during the early stages of the Iraqi invasion. This picture is actually two separate pictures that were doctored to create the appearance of this British soldier signaling this Iraqi civilian and his child to sit down and take cover. Now had I not known that bit of information then I probably would have thought that the Iraqi was carrying his dead child for burial or something to that nature and the soldier was telling the father that he could proceed no further. Apparently a journalist from the Los Angeles times thought that combining these to pics of the soldier and the Iraqi civilians would make a picture of "improved composition." I believe that doctoring pictures is a big journalistic crime that should be punishable by firing or at least a severe pay cut because, as I said in the beginning, pictures like these can have a profound impact on peoples opinion of a war. I believe that photo doctoring, in the sense of altering a picture enough to change its true nature, is a form of visual and journalistic lying and therefor I believe that it is wrong!

Chris Nolan - Search Engine Guru...

Even though I discovered today that I was the one lone Yahoo user I still have the resolve to stick to my old and trusty web surfing "board." Chris Nolan did lecture about a lot of cool Google features that seem very useful and before this lecture I didn't even know they existed. I thought that the feature of how you could type in Definition: and then whatever word you wanted to give you its dictionary meaning was useful, however, I'm still a loyal user of Dictionary.com which does the the exact same thing but gives you a more descriptive definition. The ability of a searcher to use the and's, or's, .edu's, .com's, and .gov's to narrow their search makes google very user friendly and increases the ease at which people may find information. There were two features Chris Nolan went over today that were new and surprising to me. Firstly, I did not know that google had a search feature that allowed you to search for academic articles, journals, and books relevant to whatever you were searching for. Lastly, I thought that the teacher/librarian sponsored web site Infomine seemed incredibly useful and reputable, which can be invaluable when your typing a research paper or any long essay that needs several credible source. Ultimately Chris Nolan's lecture was very useful and enlightening and even though I am not a Google convert yet he restored my faith in the search engine.



Thank you, Chris Nolan.

Enforcer Associations and File Sharing...

I believe that the policing of Peer to Peer file sharing networks by associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), and the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) is ineffective and pointless. When one thinks about it why do these companies police the Peer to Peer networks anyways? Well one reason is money, there is a lot of revenue lost every year to the file sharing networks such as Limewire, Bit Torrent, and others. As a result of this many artists, writers, actors, directors, and musicians lose part of their livelihood because people don’t pay for their product. The RIAA, MPAA, and ESA or enforcer associations as I call them tend to focus their policing efforts at the students of colleges and universities which makes sense to some degree, practically everyone I know (including my self), has shared music or other data over the Internet but I believe that the enforcer associations are missing the point. It is not just college kids that are doing the sharing but individuals outside of the school domain that are the main culprits. I believe that it is rather pointless for the enforcer associations to try to police peer to peer file sharing because people will always find a way to circumvent or outsmart the watchful eyes of the enforcers. I believe that the enforcers irrelevancy will increase this year due to the economic crisis because when people are crunched for money they often times look to the Internet to provide them with free entertainment versus paying $5.67 to rent a movie at Blockbuster, 99 Cents for a song off of Itunes, or $50 dollars for a video game at Best Buy. The bottom line is policing the Internet is close to impossible because there will always be the few people that circumvent enforcing and continue to make profits off of file swapping and until the consumers, artists, and corporations reach a fair compromise on online file sharing people will continue to use peer to peer networks and continue to get their music, movies, and games for free.

Meet Mr. Enforcer, he will eat your lunch and then vaporize you with his laser eyes if he catches you file sharing!