Scratch

After reading the article about Scratch and exploring the Scratch website, what are some observable benefits in creating a space to share student work?

Our generation as well as generations after us rely heavily on the internet for finding information upon other endless possibilities that the internet provides.  Scratch is a great new website that allows individuals minds to flourish, by working on various projects and showing the world or at least the internet world what they are capable of.  Also Scratch allows individuals to learn, learn various knowledge that might now be achieved anywhere else.  For these reasons Scratch is nothing short of a success , the website allows people to express themselves through things that interest them in a place where they do not feel so vulnerable.  This allows others to see thee projects and learn from them, which ultimately allows are society as a whole to grow and flourish.

power law distribution

The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?


A JMU only wikipedia site in my opinion would not be very successful.  I feel as though a JMU only site though would allow for many individuals to provide and share their knowledge the site would also lead to a lot of misinformation.  Though college students can be very knowledgeable there are those individuals that will ruin it for others, by making the website nothing more then a joke providing wrong information just to get a laugh.  Furthermore I feel as though a JMU only website would also lead to biased information on certain subjects, and the lack of wide diversity would also impact the information on the website.  The lack of age and experiences would hinder the website.

wiki-wiki

I really enjoyed the wiki presentation and learned a number of things that I never knew before. 

1. Wiki for me has always been associated with wikipedia and nothing else, a way to search and gather information on a certain subject.  I never knew the various uses of wiki's such as meeting agendas, collaborative spaces, internal blogs, compact focus groups, documentation, a collection of action items, and they can be focused on an existing group.

2.  I found it very interesting that Wikipedia is 7 times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica

3. Wiki's seek to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration

4.  Wiki's promote topic associations between different pages by making links available to that page or showing whether that page exists or not. (blue words indicate a page that exists where as red words indicate a page that does not exist yet, but can be created.)

 5. Wiki-Wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki website using only a plain-vanilla web browser.

6.  I've always known wikipedia as a site that can be altered by anyone, but I was unaware of the "locks" that wikipedia has for certain pages.  Different types of locks allow only certain individuals to edit the respected page.

7.  Prior to the development of wiki's was hypercard which was developed on macs, but not used through a network it was oriented for a single computer.  Though it used hyper text and linked together pages much like wikipedia does now.

Patriot Act

Some news reports have suggested that the Bush administration used the USA Patriot Act to look at the e-mails of American citizens without a warrant. What’s your position if this was indeed the case? Should citizens be willing to give up their privacy? Does it bother you to know that your online communications are very potentially semi-private instead


My initial reaction to the Patriot Act was that I was totally opposed to it, I did not agree with what the Bush administration was doing and what the Patriot Act imposed on the citizens of the United States.  However as I have grown up and matured my opposition to the Patriot Act has diminished, The Patriot Act seeks to protect the citizens of the United States my retrieving "private" information.  The Patriot Act does not infringe on any sort of rights that we have for it does not hinder the first amendment or any other it simply seeks to protect the citizens of the United States.  For these reasons I think that citizens should be willing to give up a small part of their privacy for their overall well being.  If an individual has nothing to hide then why worry about others seeing their emails?

Protecting your wifi internet

If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?


Protecting your internet is a major priority in this day and age.  Unfortunately not every internet user is a nice considerate individual some people are seeking to gather information from various  individuals and exploit that information.  First off some emails can contain valuable information from mother to son or from one individual to another, though providing such valuable information is not the best choice it is used to communicate information.  Secondly individuals looking to exploit others could begin to hack into someone's email and from there can gather information about them or can begin to send viruses to them as well as their contacts.  Therefore I believe it is a necessity to protect your own internet, because protecting your internet is protecting all of your personal information.  

Drug companies coming clean

The official website for the drug Olanzapine probably didn’t mention the fact it might cause diabetic symptoms in patients. Another website obviously did. Commercials on TV now are required to mention possible side effects. Should drug companies be required to come clean about situations like the one with Eli Lilly’s Olanzapine in their commercial websites? Why or why not?



 I think drug companies need to come clean and should be required to inform consumers of possible side effects and known problems with a specific drug.  Though this may not be appealing for a drug company to do because it essentially can limit the amount of consumers of your product because they are afraid of the side effects.  However it seems only ethical to inform consumers of such conditions.  Though a side effect may not seem life threatening, every individual is different and what might not harm one individual can and will harm another.  Overall these drug companies are playing with the lives of individuals by not providing information regarding side effects to their consumers.  No one is asking these companies to a big flashing presentation stating all the side effects there drugs is known to produce, but by simply adding a section to their website that provides this sort of information is essential.  By doing this lives can be saved even if that means a few less dollars for the company.  Overall the companies need to ask themselves is someone's life really worth a few extra dollars?

propriety software

Currently computer and internet users have access to a wide variety of software, which allows them to achieve their desired result, whether its reading an article online or finding a location on the earth.  Currently there are both open source software as well as propriety software.  Both types of software carry there own sorts of advantages, though I believe that propriety software is superior to the open source software.  Propriety software provides individuals with the software they desire, but does not allow the individual to change the make up of the software.  The best example is that of wikipedia, any individual has the ability to log onto wikipedia and change a certain form of information at their will.  This hinders the original make up of the software as well as makes the software less reliable.  However propriety software is not like this as the individual using the software cannot make changes t the internal structure of the software.  In my opinion this make propriety software much more reliable, like such examples of adobe reader or google earth.  The software programs allow an individual to gain access to an online document or the ability to pin point a spot anywhere on the earth, though the internal structure of the software cannot be changed and therefore I believe propriety software is much more advantageous then open source software.