My- Moods

Using Microsoft Excel

2006-06-02T12:00:00.000+10:00

I'm acostumed of using Microsoft Excel, of course I don't use it as much as Word but this week task was easy. I've learnt how to use it in high school during the maths courses but I have to admit that I don't use it at all. It could be usefull for people in their work or even in their everyday life but I never had the utility to use it.

Chatting on the Internet

2006-06-02T11:53:00.000+10:00

Chatting on internet isn't new to me. I use msn everyday to keep in touch with my family and friends overseas. It has the advantages to be cheaper than a phone call but also to see the persons you are talking to through the webcam. Moreover msn has several options like a group talk...I also chat with my friends through skype, it has the same functions has msn but it also allows you to search for new people...so You can find people that you didn't keep in touch with or make new friends...

Using Microsoft PowerPoint

2006-06-02T11:49:00.000+10:00

This week task was simply confusing for me, I'm not familliar with this software. In fact I never had to use it till this week task. It took me a while to get throught the process of Microsoft powerpoint and I have to admit that I asked the help of a friend to explain me clearly how to use it.

Using Microsoft Word

2006-06-02T11:42:00.000+10:00

Microsoft Word is a software that I comonly use in my everyday life. It's very usefull and actually I didn't had any problem with this week task. This software is the one I use the most and for a long time now because all the work I do at school and that I have to submit can't be hand writing but typed.

Mobile Phone Cameras, and a beginner's guide to Adobe Photoshop CS2

2006-06-02T10:34:00.000+10:00

I don't have any camera on my mobile phone so I took all the pictures with a real camera.
Kodak EasyShare cx7530 5.0 mega pixels.

Unconventional

2006-06-02T10:30:00.000+10:00

I simply have no idea for this theme....

Friends

2006-06-02T10:24:00.000+10:00

My life wouldn't be the same without them...guys thanks for everything...I miss you! But see you soon!

Summer

2006-06-02T10:18:00.000+10:00

Summer= holiday...paradise is not that far.

News

2006-06-02T10:12:00.000+10:00

News on the internet...the easiest way to get informed.

High tech

2006-06-02T10:03:00.000+10:00

What a pity but I just can't live without it...laptop, mobile phone, mp3, webcam, microphone are the links between my people in new caledonia and me here!

University life

2006-05-20T01:57:00.000+10:00

The big school, woa, they give you everything you need and more....The keys to succeed but also the keys to fail! Study less, party hard.

Lectures' notes

2006-05-15T14:57:00.000+10:00

Lecture 2 Notes: Media Theory

_1990 semistics - Ferdinand De Saussure
_Studies the role of signs
_Semantic: The realtionship of signs to what they stand for
_Syntactics: The formal or structual realtions between signs
_Pragmatics: The formal or structual realtions between signs
_1920's, Bullet (inoculation) Theory = maximum affect
_People believed media and opinions and moulded accordingly

USA media History

_1930's: Application of statistic method
_1940's: Minimum effects, media has less affect (WW2 Nazi propaganda)
_1950's: Looking for effects, Connection phychology, Looking for what affects the media did have
_1960's: Marshall Mcluhan, extention of the individual. "The medium is the Message".
_1970's: Mixed effects, 'cultavation hypothesis', opinions cultivated by which the media portrayed the issue, spiral of science
_1980's: Return of maximum effect

UK Media History

_Raymond Willams wrote about culture being anything not just upper class life
_Stanley Cohem: Moral panics, experimenting with creating moral panic through media
_Glasgow School: Revealed news ideological content
_Stuart Hall, Audience would create own stance due to society conditions, sometimes completely different to producers intentions
_Active Audiences

Cultural Studies (Europe Media History)

_1930's: Walter Benjamin
_1940's: Frankfurt School: Film forces victims to equate it directly to real life
_1950's: Situationists, society of the spectale, 'people living in the moves'
_1960's: Habermas, 'Publics fear of debate and discussion'
_1970's: Louis Athusser
_1980's: Baudrillard, simulcra: Hyper reality
_1990's: Fraser, subaltern counter publics

Lecture 3 Notes: The Birth of the Computer

_Charles Babbage, creator of thr first cpu, 1936 first reference
_Industrial revoultion era
_Ada Byron and Lady Lovelace helped Babbage
_Alan Turing english mathamatician, the use of complex calcualtions
_WW2 trying to comprehand code's, using for info/strategies
_Computer first thought of to use to break codes
_Turing thought of mathematical way of calculating (Breaking) codes
_Machine logic, not methodic but take out impossible outcomes
_Moore's Law: Cpu capability doubles every two years
_Xeroc Parc, develop cpu into more userfriendly device, including mouse keyboard, graphical interface (Menu)
_1975: personal computer called 'zero' by altare
_Gates invents Basic
_The computer company Apple develops
_The 'Apple 2' user product breakthrough
_IBM makes move on market, simpler machines into personal cpu's
_IBM knocked back by Kindal, Microsoft creates DOS
_Cpu's start to make money on the market
_Microsoft takes ideas and creates windows
_Apple hits back with the IMAC

Lecture 4 notes: A Short Story of the Internet

_USed/Created for quick communication for defensive purposes for USA, UK

1960's:
_Nuclear warning ststem - U.S
_Concept of email
_Using the phone system, transfer of information
_Packet information
_Laws passed for stablishment of freedom of transfer of information
_Bulletin Board system
_Questions/disscussion on virtual/ real life experiences

1990's:
_Email develops, simple form
_Develop of interet browser (Netscape)
_Netscape V.S windows explorer

Lecture 5 Notes: Virtual Reality, Virtual Philosophy and the Screen Age

_The Matrix relating toward virtual reality
_Plato's cave
_Guy Bebord "Society of speticle"
_Hyper Reality
_Simularacum : Umberto Eco - always lived in the fake world
_Cyberspace as consencual Hallucination: Willam Gibson
_Becoming media : Giles Deleuze
_Mass media creates the line between real and hyper reality
_Plato challenges, "Prove it to me"
_Tele/graph/phone pre cursor to VR
_Music, SFX, sound effect, framing, compostion, shot sizes are all elements of virtual reality
_Window on the world - Desktop
_David Cronenburg director of Exitenz

Lecture 6 Notes: Digital Narrative

_What your watching is real
_Prior witnesses needed
_Film into pixels
_Online narrative alows reader intereaction on how they got their in the story
_Reflection has large element of creativity (Narrative)
_Language procedes visual plan
_Narration moves the plot foward
_Technology vison of heaven
_The frame, window, mirror
_Freud re introduced the mind
_QTVR: quick time reality scene
_Navagation V.S. Narration

Lecture 7 Notes: Current and Emerging Applications

_ Instant Messaging (IM)
_Portable Audio and Podcasting
_Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Filesharing
_Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice Chat
_Video Games including
Consoles, Computer, Games, MUDs, MMOGs, Arcade games.

Lecture 8 notes: Utopia or Dystopia

_Utopia, from greek background. It was thought utopia was a mythical place where everything was perfect
_Utopia being perfect was also not real as it only existed in peoples mind
_Technology is often thought of as being linked with the utopian society.
_Therefore Dystpoia is the idea of Technlogy is used to dominate people.
_ARPANET: Advanced resarch projects Agency of Us Dept of Defence
_Gibson thought of the MUD (Multi user Domain) as a 'consensual hallucination' of cyberspace
_Adam and Eve thought of as being a Utopia in the Garden

Essay week 9

2006-05-05T14:12:00.000+10:00

DiVx had been develoDiVx had been developed during summer 1999 by German Max Morice and French Jerome Mota. Digital Video Express and commonly called DiVx is a video coded based on MPEG-4. It has the ability to compress lengthy video segments into small size and maintains relatively high visual quality. It permits to burn personal avi movies lasting more than an hour, on a simple CD-R with an audio quality higher than a VHS tape. It also permits to burn a DVD video contain into a CD-R. Moreover it gives the opportunity to download movies via the Net.

DiVx had become a World phenomenon. Thanks to the ADSL world’s deployment, more than six million people use high speed Net. In 2000 more than one million DiVx had been download, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and BeOS. On New Group Forum we only talk about DiVx movies’ exchanges. Cinema’s Napster equivalences are put in. Thus Hollywood starts to be scared for the reason that high speed internet access are only in their prehistory period. Not only will the high speed internet access concern the majority of internet users from developed countries but those accesses will explode thanks to the satellite band. 10 Mbit per second access for private users are becoming a reality, in few minutes a movie is exported from the Earth’s other side.

The movies’ quality obtained is extremely satisfying, upper than mpeg 1 or VHS tape. However the sound is not Dolby Digital 5 but stereo. This format compresses sound and picture for less than 6 Mo per minute, so an hour and forty minutes on a CD-R.

Why DiVx is illegal?
The DiVx format is completely legal. When we talk about illegality and DiVx it is a matter of internet downloading. Indeed there is a lack of earning for movies producers, music CD producers and DVD makers. There are numerous applications peer to peer allowing downloading everything on the web from high speed connexion, that goes from summer holiday’s movies to the last Spielberg. Hackers are not afraid of anything. The peer to peer consists on an exchange of files from a computer to an other trough a software, the access of peer to peer network needs the use of a specific software. The most well-known of such softwares are Kazaa, Morpheus, eDonkey or eMule. A peer to peer network allows the division of any kind of files but also multimedia content tosteaming such as videos. That is the reason we can find a film on internet before that it is on screen. That had been the case for movies such as Catwoman or Mission Impossible III. A lately opinion poll had revealed that more than 41% of internet users have already used copied movies, that 31% had used downloaded movies, that 19% had downloaded free movies and that only 4 % had downloaded paying films. The free DiVx is so deeply well-known by people that some internet users do not even know the existence of paying and legal downloading. On the contrary they are thousand to frequently use web sites such as betTorent, eMule, Overnet etc…However Microsoft had launched the 10 version of his Windows media Player. Besides few ameliorations had been made this software includes numeric shops allowing any users accessing to a media catalogue online. It is completely possible to download films and music totally legal and paying.

Motion Picture Association of America had decided to make a research on the illegal downloading habits of internet user subscribing to a high speed connection. According to the research through 3600 users from eight different countries ( Australia, Usa, Uk, France, Italie, Germany, Japon and South Corea) one user out of four had ever downloaded at lest one movies by an illegal way. Still according to this research South Corea has the biggest population of hackers with 58%. A third of those people declare going less often to the cinema and buying less DVD. South Corea is followed by France with a percentage of 27.
Consequently those people go less often to cinema and by much less DVD. It has a negative impact on the legal movie’s market. The MPAA says that the general frequent of cinema had decreased of 4% since 2003, while the sales and rents of DVD had increased of 50%.

The web police keep on hunting down hackers who put all those movies online because downloading films illegally is a crime punishable by the Law.
Movies are generally distributed in network files exchanges such as Kazaa and Morpheus. Some American senators had decided with the support of Hollywoodians movies’ studio, to present a project of law that would impose sever penalties to contraveners, till 5 years imprisonment and high fines. The new project would criminalise reproductions in cinemas with cameras, an act that was completely legal in most of American states, but also the distribution of illegal films copies by people from the film’s industry before the movie has a chance to appear on screen.

In France if you don’t respect the law you are considered as a counterfeiter. The French law distributes 150.000 euros of fines and 2 years of imprisonment as a penalty for that kind of people, and hackers are regularly caught and damned by the Court. In the French system even if hacking is against the law it is possible to duplicate your own movie as a personal use, that means that you are against the law if your goal is different than this one. On the contrary it is a matter of illegal files whose reproduction on the hard disk of your computer constitutes an illegal copy. In this case a penalty of 5 years of imprisonment and more than 380.000 euro of fines are dispensable.

Examples of penalties all over the world are numerous. The first case in Hong-Kong occurred in November 2005. A 38 years old man had been convicted of three months off for having downloaded illegally 3 Hollywoodians movies through the software BitTorent, a month per film It was the first time in the history that Hong-Kong court gave such a penalty. Peer to peer is no longer welcomed in this country in matter of downloading illegal films.
In France if internet users let their e-mail address on a site of films exchange in peer to peer Law does not forget to wive an example by punishments. Thus a retired man had been caught. His crime was having download between 2001 and 2003 hundreds movies, but not only that; he offered the movies on his own web site. Court convicted him for 3 months of imprisonment plus 4000 euros to pay even if civil part had asked for 25.000 euros. Five others people had been caught by French police. They were exchanging movies, 15 companies such as Walt Disney, Warner Bross, 20th Century Fox suited them.

References

http://www.journaldunet.com/0407/040712mpaa.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DivX
http://www2.unil.ch/gybn/Dossiers/piratage.html
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22104704
http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2005/08/top_illegal_mov.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040709-3976.html
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/07/copyright_updat.html
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=336570

Spam

2006-03-29T08:47:00.000+10:00

Definition

A spam is an "Unsolicited Bulk Email". It means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. A spam is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content. Many guidelines and acts have been set up to fight against spam, such as the anti-spam legislation “The Spam Act” introduced in 2003 in Australia.

Articles regarding spam in Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/Govt-lagging-on-email-security/2005/04/18/1113676689076.html?oneclick=true

My experience of spam is limited. I’ve received spam once but I didn't pay attention on it probably because using internet as a way of communication is new for me.

Alphaville Review

2006-03-28T21:22:00.000+10:00

Summary

Secret agent Lemmy Caution arrives in Alphaville in search of Professor von Braun. He soon discovers that he has entered a bizarre world, totally alien to his own, where love has been abolished and emotion is punishable by death. At the heart of this seemingly totalitarian state is a computer developed by von Braun, Alpha-60, which seems to control the thoughts and actions of everyone in the city. With the assistance of Natasha, Mr Caution gains access to Alpha-60’s headquarters, only to discover that von Braun has decided that the time has arrived to declare war on the world outside Alphaville.

Alphaville is a bite eccentric movie. Suggesting interesting future theories, regarding the continual advancement and development of computers and technology in our world and their effects on humanity. The film presents an eventuality of the effects of the growing technology. This eventuality is a world stripped of all individuality, love and communication. This can be seen through the prohibited use of selected vocabulary and artistic expression in daily life.
It suggests that future populations may be ultimately controlled by a computer.
References to World War II are made throughout the film, using symbols like ‘SS’ (Refers to the Nazi’s) in the elevator. In reference to the way Nazi’s had control over much of Germany and Europe in World War II. It suggests that the human future could be a back to the past as a future scenario.

Search engines

2006-03-28T21:02:00.000+10:00

Definition

A Search Engine is a computer program that electronically searches the contents of a database to locate specific information.

How do Search Engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

There is a set of rules, search engines follow when ranking web pages.
The most important rule is the Location:
This is where the Search Engine uses keywords from your search and ranks them by their location and frequency in the text on the different webpages.

What are some of my favourite Search Engines?

www.google.com - Google has the largest database of webpages.

Search Engines in the News:
'Google Feature Logs Users' Histories' - http://www.pcworld.com/news" title="http://www.pcworld.com/news" target="_blank"http://www.pcworld.com/news

Scavenger Hunt

2006-03-22T22:31:00.000+10:00

1. What is the weight of the world's biggest pumpkin?

http://www.pumpkinnook.com/giants/record.htm
The largest pumpkin ever grown stands at 1,469 pounds.

2. What is the best way (quickest, most reliable) to contact Grant Hackett?

Good question!

3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue?

18-inch (46-centimeter)
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giraffe.html

4. How would you define the word "ontology"? In your own words, what does it really mean ?

No specific idea

5. What was David Cronenberg's first feature film?

6. When was the original "Hacker's Manifesto" written?
The Conscience of a Hacker (a.k.a. The Hacker Manifesto) is a small essay written January 8, 1986.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto

7. Why do all phone numbers in Hollywood films start with "555"?
http://www.blue-hardware.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/style_emo%20%3C/t10187.html

The prefix was reserved for TV and movies use so the viewing public wouldn't harass real phone customers when they were looking to speak with their favorite stars.

8. What is the cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes?

Trip not including ticket taxes and applicable charges* USD 177.00
http://www.onlinetravel.com.au/flights/flightreturnsearch.asp

9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts this week in 1965?

I'll Never Find Another You by The Seekers 20 march
http://www.onmc.iinet.net.au/top/1965.htm

10. Which Brisbane band was (still is?) Stephen Stockwell a member of?

Stephen played keyboard for Brisbane punk band, the Black Assassins,

http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm