My name is Justin Grimes and I reside in southern Maine, in the small town of Ogunquit. It's bizarre going to a university that is nearly 18x the size of my town...do the math (or "wikipedia" it if you're so inclined…shout out to Maren for that reference). I worked at a small Inn this past summer in Maine located 2 minutes from the Bush compound (love it or hate it). It was a fairly dull experience except for when G.W. Bush and Vlad Putin (and 800 protestors) came to meet for peace talks in the end of June/beginning of July. During that time I got to meet the Russian Foreign Minister (his name is Sergei, and he likes white water rafting…go figure). I am currently a junior in the Hotel School where I am a Hotel School Ambassador; basically meaning I give tours to your younger brothers and sisters. I'd like to eventually own and operate my own restaurant, or spa, or restaurant spa…I’m still figuring it out. I’m very interested in European Team Handball and if anyone is down to play it as a club sport let me know, I’d really like to start it up here at Cornell.
An area of interest for me in the online world is deceptive “junk mail”. While email is undoubtedly one of the most useful and popular methods of communication, spam and junk mail has tainted it with frustration and fraud. Over the summer I was responding to online reservation requests via email and received one from a man claiming he was from a foreign country, needed 10 rooms and wanted to know what the total bill would be. It looked fishy, so I “googled” the man’s name and found out it was a scam that would have wasted 10 perishable rooms and involved us in illegal money transfer. Had I been in a rush, or less observant I would have proceeded with the reservation and put my employer (and myself) in a tough spot. What causes people to use deception as a means to become profitable on the Internet? What type of punishment and legislature is put in place to protect us from these predators, if any?
Deceptive junk mail exists in the electronic mail environment; junk mail is a form of the mail received in this environment. To quote Wallace, “it (email) is widespread in colleges and universities, government agencies, corporations, and homes”. And while she likely did not foresee it, deceptive junk mail will exist and unfortunately plague the places previously listed as a result of its widespread use.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Hello (Assignment 1)
Hi, my name is JJ Davis. I am a freshman who is majoring in Hotel Administration. I hope to have a concentration in food and beverage management. I am originally from Delaware, home of nothing important except tax-free shopping, which makes NY sales tax pretty hard to get used to. I love cooking and occaisionally I play tennis or golf. If you haven't figured it out yet, you will come to see that I like using big words to make me seem more intelligent. I am not dumb, but i am, by no stretch of the imagination, a genius. I am excited to be in college and live the whole experience. The Hotel School has innumerable opportunities for me to embrace.
The phenomenon with which I am concerned is the role of the private companies, like e-harmony, of television's ad-(nauseum)-vertisements, in fostering true lifelong relationships. Are the 24 billion levels of compatibility really that important, or does luck and repitition play a role? Hell, if i went on 4,000 e-dates, I am sure I could find someone with some remotely similar interests. Isn't this just a high-tech mix of speed dating and the weekly classifieds? How can clients be sure they have found the love of their life with an "authentic" picture and "veritable" biography tidbit?
The online space(s) of this "phenomenon", in my most humble opinion, is that of not only asynchronous message boards, primarily, but also secondarily email, and tertiarily the World Wide Web as a whole. Granted, I must say, I have personally neither seen nor used these sites, so my confusion is waranted and slightly unserstandable. Has anyone else used, either successfully or unsuccessfully?
The phenomenon with which I am concerned is the role of the private companies, like e-harmony, of television's ad-(nauseum)-vertisements, in fostering true lifelong relationships. Are the 24 billion levels of compatibility really that important, or does luck and repitition play a role? Hell, if i went on 4,000 e-dates, I am sure I could find someone with some remotely similar interests. Isn't this just a high-tech mix of speed dating and the weekly classifieds? How can clients be sure they have found the love of their life with an "authentic" picture and "veritable" biography tidbit?
The online space(s) of this "phenomenon", in my most humble opinion, is that of not only asynchronous message boards, primarily, but also secondarily email, and tertiarily the World Wide Web as a whole. Granted, I must say, I have personally neither seen nor used these sites, so my confusion is waranted and slightly unserstandable. Has anyone else used, either successfully or unsuccessfully?
Friday, August 24, 2007
Hello (Assignment 1)
Hello, my name is Will Hui and I'm a junior from Livingston, New Jersey. I'm studying computer science because I'm interested in all things about computing. This summer I had an internship at VMware, where I worked on system-level networking. It was my first time in Silicon Valley (or CA for that matter), and I was quite impressed. The people working at VMware were extremely sharp, and CA weather is basically perfect (Ithaca weather simply cannot compare :P) Back at Cornell, I'm a member of ACSU and a consultant for CS 211 -- come visit for help if you're enrolled in the course! :) In my spare time, I enjoy activities like bowling, video games, and tennis (or any racket-based sport for that matter). My future plan is to obtain an MEng and eventually roll out a software startup. Kind of ambitious, but hopefully not out of reach!
An interesting development in modern computing has been the rise of blogging. Blogs provide a convenient medium for anyone to show the world what they write, bypassing the need for a publisher. Consequently, everyone writes. Each individual basically has their own "column" as it would be called if published in a magazine. This has led to a peculiar phenomenon: a lot of people maintain blogs focused entirely on their own lives. This would never happen in a traditional publication. If you picked up a magazine and saw a column that featured the author writing about the mundane details of their daily lives, it certainly would be odd. So why would it be different in a blog? There is reason to believe that few people, if any, would care to read up on day-to-day tidbids of someone else, particularly if it were a total stranger. Moreover, what drives the blog author to willingly give up a huge portion of his privacy? This information is shared not only among friends, but also the world at large. Are we just ignorant of the far-reaching consequences of "publishing" to this online space?
Blogs can be classified under the World Wide Web online space, because they are made available to others through normal web browsers. This online space is characterized as a huge library or magazine rack that is navigable through URL queries or text searches. Wallace notes that "the Web offers everyone vanity press services at very cheap rates," a feature that certainly plays a role in the blogging phenomenon described above.
An interesting development in modern computing has been the rise of blogging. Blogs provide a convenient medium for anyone to show the world what they write, bypassing the need for a publisher. Consequently, everyone writes. Each individual basically has their own "column" as it would be called if published in a magazine. This has led to a peculiar phenomenon: a lot of people maintain blogs focused entirely on their own lives. This would never happen in a traditional publication. If you picked up a magazine and saw a column that featured the author writing about the mundane details of their daily lives, it certainly would be odd. So why would it be different in a blog? There is reason to believe that few people, if any, would care to read up on day-to-day tidbids of someone else, particularly if it were a total stranger. Moreover, what drives the blog author to willingly give up a huge portion of his privacy? This information is shared not only among friends, but also the world at large. Are we just ignorant of the far-reaching consequences of "publishing" to this online space?
Blogs can be classified under the World Wide Web online space, because they are made available to others through normal web browsers. This online space is characterized as a huge library or magazine rack that is navigable through URL queries or text searches. Wallace notes that "the Web offers everyone vanity press services at very cheap rates," a feature that certainly plays a role in the blogging phenomenon described above.
1st Assignment
Hello World!
My name is Steven Joseph Erik Matthews. I go by Steve, am 19 years old from Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, and enjoy long walks on the beach. I am a member of the Cornell Concert Commission, the student assembly (hey anyone in CALS, let me know if you have any questions/comments/concerns, as I am the CALS rep), and Llenroc. I love being outside and on the water and spent virtually every hour I wasn't working or sleeping this summer on my boat or at Robert Moses (my favorite LI beach). My job was pretty miserable because I had to commute to NYC everyday and I learned very little. I can now photocopy like a pro. I love music of all varieties and listen to it constantly. I consider myself a man of leisure and enjoy being laid back at a school that generally isn't. I'm double majoring in AEM and Communication but have a fascination with computers and technology. A long time Mac-hater, I took the plunge into the white side at the beginning of my freshman year and have concluded they are indeed far shinier than most PCs, and thus far superior. I'm fascinated by the self imposed segregation that exists in the digital community. It seems that for just about every online space, there is an equal but more hated online space. Whether the Mac fan-boys knock their windows loving brethren for the infinite similarities between Vista and OSX or when MySpace hates on facebook for being too haughty (what ever that means), it seems that there is a lot of self-created animosity among the tech savvy. This seems to exist in all online spaces, whether its social networking, corporate loyalty, or search engine preference, even email (Yahoo vs Google), people like to find their niche, and than express unnecessary price and ultimate hatred for the opposing niche. I find myself caught in the crossfire between the Mac and Windows world, as I use and enjoy both. My friends, who rank on both sides of this divide, are convinced I'm a poser, and that only their respective operating system can be considered useful. Perhaps I should just switch to Linux (I hear its great for super villains), or perhaps we should just learn to put our differences aside and all get along.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Hi (Assignment 1)
Hi, I am Sophia Ng and I am a sophomore majoring in Biology with a minor in Communications. Over the summer I actually spent my time here at Cornell, doing research in the Vet Towers on bovine sperm. My research is somewhat hard to explain and I have found it may be uninteresting for those of you who are not interested in Biology. You can only imagine the expression on my friends' parents faces back home when they asked me what I was doing for the summer. Anyhow, besides that I am also a member of CSA, Cornell Tradition, Red Carpet Society, Project Hope and CALS Ambassador. My jobs in the past have included being a projectionist/manager/secretary/ticket master/janitor at a local theater back home as well as a pharmacy technician in a hospital. On campus I can be found at the Office of Undergraduate Biology. My future career goal is to get my Pharm. D. and become a pharmacist in a hospital. As you can see, I like to talk about myself a lot. That's why I'm minoring in Comm because talking/socializing is easy and fun to do.
I think one of the most annoying technologies that I have a love/hate relationship with is text messaging, the sending of messages through cell phone text. It kills me how all social manners go out the door when people start texting. They ignore you, interrupt you and make you feel like you're being rude for standing around while they text. More irritating is the fact that people send me text messages to have full conversations when they could have easily called me to relay the same information. People's social skills and manners are continually declining as they rely more heavily on communicating simple messages via text. I guess the positive is that you'll develop really strong thumbs. I admit that I occasionally use the text message and therefore may seem like a hypocrite, but I only use it when I cannot talk because of one reason or another. I guess my message to all you "txtrs" out there is use your phone for it's original intended purpose a little more often, be considerate and thoughtful about where and when you text, and give your thumbs a break.
The closest online space that text messaging could be considered under would be synchronous chats, which enables the real-time conversation. Although since texting is only sometimes a conversation and other times a message, I guess it calls for it's own dimension of "online space." This space encompasses the idea of relaying thoughts and ideas in an informal manner via cell phone. Proper grammar is not required and all involved in receiving the message is more than likely an acquaintance.
I think one of the most annoying technologies that I have a love/hate relationship with is text messaging, the sending of messages through cell phone text. It kills me how all social manners go out the door when people start texting. They ignore you, interrupt you and make you feel like you're being rude for standing around while they text. More irritating is the fact that people send me text messages to have full conversations when they could have easily called me to relay the same information. People's social skills and manners are continually declining as they rely more heavily on communicating simple messages via text. I guess the positive is that you'll develop really strong thumbs. I admit that I occasionally use the text message and therefore may seem like a hypocrite, but I only use it when I cannot talk because of one reason or another. I guess my message to all you "txtrs" out there is use your phone for it's original intended purpose a little more often, be considerate and thoughtful about where and when you text, and give your thumbs a break.
The closest online space that text messaging could be considered under would be synchronous chats, which enables the real-time conversation. Although since texting is only sometimes a conversation and other times a message, I guess it calls for it's own dimension of "online space." This space encompasses the idea of relaying thoughts and ideas in an informal manner via cell phone. Proper grammar is not required and all involved in receiving the message is more than likely an acquaintance.
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