Assignment #6 - Identity... Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

In the online community you can never really be sure who you are talking to. Anyone can say they are who ever they want. Just last night I was watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, in the movie Jim Carey, Ace, is on the case to find the missing Miami Dolphin's mascot, Snowflake. Along the was he finds out that the old punter for the Dolphins, Ray Finkle, has taken on the identity as the detective for the local police department, Lois Einhorn.



This started to make me think, if a man could pose as a woman in front of officers and not get discovered, then doing it online to a total stranger, behind their back must be a cake walk. (And yes I do realize its just a movie.) Wikipedia defines online identity as a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Now more than ever people are coming up with aliases to either conceal or reveal themselves in the online world. For many people their online reputation is as important or in extreme cases more important than their real life reputation.

People identify themselves online either through AIM or MSN with a screen name, just as I do. The name they chose can consist of numbers, letters or a combination of the both. When picking a screen name it is important to think about the people who are going to be talking, not just today but in the future. Your screen name is your first impression made on the Internet. Most people tend to choose a nick name they have had all their life or perhaps a hobby that they have, followed by some numbers, either their birth date or maybe their lucky number. Choosing the wrong name though can give predators the wrong idea, and really, who wants to be known of as SeXXXyMama69 or PimpDaDDyLuVa when their 30?

Keeping your identity safe can be tough when it is so easy for someone to create an account just like that. Say for instance you have a screen name in it with the letter "l" or the number one, with out any trouble a thief can make a name that emulates yours exactly. Take the name GoalieGirl, by replacing the number one for the letter l's the screen name is now being run by someone else but looks exactly that same as yours. Another thing thieves do is copy your font and the color or pick the same avatar as you. An avatar is a small icon-sized graphic image (Source). Just like that your reputation could be ruined and this person can say and whatever they want while posing as you.

As I mentioned an online identity that I am familiar with are screen names. I don't go on AIM much anymore so when people IM me they usually say "is that really you?", checking that I am who I say I am because they rarely see me online. If out of the blue they started seeing my screen name online 24/7 they would probably be a little suspicious and call me to see if it really was me online all day. Your reputation is based on the fact that you give out accurate information, and in return you expect the same from others. After a while of interaction has occurred and a feeling of reliability is placed on that person the trust can grow and so can that persons' reputation. Although it can take days, weeks, or even months to build to that level of trust, once it has been broken or damaged, it is almost impossible to gain that trust back again, no matter what length of time. "As users, our burden is one of trust, and there's little precedent for awarding it" (Source).

As I mentioned in my last blog I like using Firefox and would recommend other people use it above Internet Explorer or Netscape because when you are on a secure web site the address box turns yellow. That little option can save you a lot of hassle and help to further protect you identity online. People tend to trust web sites and to believe everything they read. If a web page looks good people may believe it is okay to give out a credit card number or their social security number, but in most cases this isn't a good idea. Fancy writing and animation can influence a persons better judgment into thinking it is a secure web site. "Three primary trust factors surfaced...good content, simple design and few grammatical errors. ...trusted web sites are content driven... (Source).

In the end you never really can tell who you are talking to, you can never be to safe when if comes to protecting your identity online. There's a good chance that you have or will have an encounter with some shady people online, and no I don't mean Slim Shady, I mean people who are out there for monetary gains, and they could care less who they hurt in the process.

Assignment #5 - Privacy... What Privacy?

For me personally the definition of privacy would be the ability to be hidden from the presence of others, and to be free from the unwanted intrusion of others. At times I do tend to worry about my presence online. Even thought I know TAP and FAFSA are secure websites I am always a little hesitant to put my social security number online because it could possibly end up in the wrong hands for them to do who knows what with it.

Now a days you know there is a big problem when a guy named Chris Hansen dedicates a whole show on prime time television to computer hackers called To Catch An I.D. Thief. According to the Federal Trade Commissions Identity Theft Report, approximately 10 million American consumers discovered that their personal information had been used to open fraudulent bank, credit card, or utility accounts, or used to commit other crimes.





But you don't have to go to the other side of the globe to do something about it. Unfortunately I know all about having your privacy taken away and your identity stolen. Just recently I received a statement from my bank as I do every month. This time though a purchase was on there that i hadn't made. It had said that there was a purchase made in Washington for $10.99 at some place called 3 guppies inc. and of course I had not made this purchase. I rarely use my checking account because I have a tenancy to spend more money then I actually have in there, and since I was sick of paying the $38.00 over draft fee I decided to only use it to pay for my car insurance online. So after calling the bank they informed me that a detective would be assigned to my case and in the mean time I would be sent a new card and to cut up the old one. Lucky for me it didn't take forever to get this mess cleared up and the stolen money was returned to my account. If I use my credit card online for two purchases a year and get my identity stolen I can only imagine how much more at risk other people are that use it for every single bill they have.



Remember a while ago when hackers stole data from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards of shoppers at off-price retailers T.J. Maxx and Marshalls in a case said to be the largest such breach of consumer information. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America. The average victim spends 175 hours and $1000.000 repairing the damage.

After going through what I did I couldn't imagine someone that had a lot of money in their account or if it had happening to them for a long period of time. I believe that I reacted to this situation the only way I could, although I would have liked to have kicked this person in the shins, since that was not a viable option, I informed HSBC immediately and they took proper actions quickly. I cut up my old card and was sent a new one with a new pin number in a separate envelope.

To sum it up, you just have to be smart about what you do these days because nothing is safe anymore. You have to keep an eye out at the ATM to make sure no on is looking over your shoulder, make your online passwords a little more difficult to guess than the ever popular "qwerty" (the first six letter of the keyboard) and maybe even have to lock up your car over night even if its sitting right in your driveway.

Assignment #4 - A True Gift

Google defines a gift economy as an economic system in which goods an services are given, rather then traded. A gift is usually something given to a friend or loved one to show they are appreciated. Whether it is a holiday, a birthday or just to say thank you, a gift is usually given from the heart with nothing expected in return other than the look of joy on that persons face. Theres just something special about watching someone else tear into a perfectly wrapped present that money just can't buy. An economy that I am familiar with would be my community. At any given time you can walk around town and see a number of kind things being done others with no compensation of any sort needed.

Buffalo is called the City of Good Neighbors for a reason.

Just recently a story on the local news caught my eye. Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity were renovating a house in Buffalo's Fruit Belt neighborhood when they were robbed at gunpoint while on their lunch break at about 12:30 p.m. The two robbers, wearing hoodies and bandannas, jumping out from behind a security bunker where the tools are stored, on 227 Peach Street, demanded their money as the four men sat outside. This was the first time in Habitat Buffalo's 22-year history this type of crime has happened. This is so shocking and saddening to me that people from their own community would do this to their fellow neighbors who are actually doing some good and trying to improve the city. Many of the volunteers are retirees. One of the victims was an 84-year old Clarence man, and this was only his first day on the job. In total the robbers only made off with a little over two hundred dollars, luckily no one was hurt in the incident.

After all these man had been through they still vowed to finish what they had started. They were not going to let what had happened to them deter them from their ultimate goal, to give what they can to their community and help a family that is in need. To me, this is the ultimate definition of a gift economy. The men and women that devote their time and money to help another, asking for nothing in return is truly a gift in itself. If you are able, and have the resources to help others, why wouldn't you? The old adage is true, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You can check out this story from Channel 2 News here.

Most forms of volunteer work can be considered a gift. Weather you are helping out at your local hospital or devoting your time at an animal shelter, there are endless possibilities on how you can give back. The thing that makes a gift economy so special is that no matter how small you think what you are doing is, it can be huge in someone else's eyes, like you cleaning up the dishes for your mom without her having to nag at you, or keeping your side of the room clean because you know your roommate is a little bit of a neat freak. Sometimes the little things really are the best.

Assignment #3 - Pirating...Ahoy ye Matey!

Amid all of the controversy surrounding music file-sharing on the Internet, nearly half of online youth around the world have downloaded music off the Internet, according to a new study from the global research firm, Ipsos–Reid. Among teens and young adults between the ages of 12 and 24 who have used the Internet in the past 30 days, 47% report having downloaded a music or MP3 file (Source). Now a days it is commonplace to download music online. You can get it anywhere from Napster, to Limewire to iTunes, to DC++ used on many college campuses, including ours.

Piracy is not all that bad for musicians. In fact, research has shown that less popular artists actually profit from piracy. This can be concluded from, and is supported by several studies. Frustrated as they are, the music industry claims that they lose millions a year due to piracy, but is this really the case?

Two facts:
-Album sales are declining.
-75% of all artists profit from filesharing.

We will try to explain these two seemingly contradicting facts, and list three factors that may help us understand what’s going on…
1. Artists sell more albums thanks to piracy

Several studies have shown that most artists actually profit from unauthorized sharing of files. They sell more albums because people have the opportunity to download songs and entire albums for free. A study by Blackburn (2004), a PhD student from Harvard, found that the 75% of the artist actually profit from piracy. Blackburn reports that the most popular artist (top 25%) sell less records. However, the remaining 75% of all artists actually profit from filesharing (Source).

2. But why do these artists sell more? Well, there are a couple of possible explanations.
-Music from highly popular artists is widely available on filesharing networks. If pirates mainly download albums from these artists, they will have more money left to buy albums of less popular artists.
-People have the opportunity to discover new music for free. It is thus easier to find new, and less popular artists. It is likely that people will buy albums from these artists as well if they like what they hear.
-It is not only piracy that makes it easier to discover new artists, social music services like Last.fm and Pandora also contribute to this phenomenon. The rise in income from concerts shows that the interest in music is increasing instead of declining.

3. Wait a minute… the music industry and the RIAA always say that they are losing huge amounts of money because of filesharing. Isn’t this true?

Well, the fact is that there are less albums sold in total compared to some of the years when album sales were booming. However, it is hard to attribute this decline in sales to piracy (alone). From the research that has been done on this topic we can conclude that the effect of piracy on the music industry’s lost income lies somewhere between 0 and 30% (of the decline in sales, not of the sales in total). Pollock (2006) gives a comprehensive overview of these studies and concludes:

The basic result is that online illegal file-sharing probably has some negative impact on traditional sales but the effect is appears to be quite small. The size of this effect is debated, and ranges from 0 to 100% of the sales decline in recent years, but a figure of between 0 and 30% would be a reasonable consensus value (i.e. that file-sharing accounted for 0-30% of the decline in sales not a 0-30% decline in sales). At the same time there is still substantial disagreement in the literature with the most impressive paper to date (Oberholzer and Strumpf 2005) estimating no impact from file-sharing.

One of the things we can be pretty sure of is that the music industry is starting to lose control over their customers. A great deal of their income was generated by overly promoted albums and artists. It is those artists and albums that suffer the most from piracy. It gets harder and harder for the music industry to market artists to the top position of the charts now the customers have all kinds of alternative ways to discover new music.

So back when we were sharing CD's with our friends were we doing something illegal? How is that different from borrowing a CD or MP3 today and burning a copy for yourself? Were we basically stealing? The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) thinks so.

Because of the impact that downloading has had on the music industry, the trade group that represents the biggest record companies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has begun to bring lawsuits against people who illegally download and swap music files on the Internet. They argue, and the courts agree, that downloading and swapping music illegally is just like stealing a CD from a store, and they want to encourage music lovers to acquire and enjoy their music without breaking the copyright laws (Source).

So what do the artists who are making this music think about it?

For the most part the jury is still out. Some hate the fact that people are getting their albums for free, and sometimes even getting a hold of it earlier then the intended release date and leaking it out to the public, while others think it is a great way to get new and different music out there into the mainstream.

Whatever you view, the odds are that you have downloaded music or that you will download music for free, and it doesn't look like there is any end to it in sight. We could say that music is more alive than ever before, that piracy is a tool to build a fanbase, and that the times when the music industry could dictate what we were listening to are over.

COM125 Assignment 2 - Hypertext 101

Trying to do research online without hypertext would be a long, daunting, and tedious task. Fortunately for us we have Ted Nelson to thank for that, in 1965 he coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in a paper to the ACM 20th national conference (Source). Hypertext most often refers to text on a computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand. Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to user interfaces, which overcomes some of the limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static like traditional text, hypertext makes possible a dynamic organization of information through links and connections (called hyperlinks). Hypertext can be designed to perform various tasks; for instance when a user "clicks" on it or "hovers" over it, a bubble with a word definition may appear, or a web page on a related subject may load, or a video clip may run, or an application may open (Source).

In laymans terms " hypertext is text which contains links to other texts" (Source).

The first hypertext-based system was developed in 1967 by a team of researchers led by Dr. Andries van dam at Brown University, not to get him confused with the ever popular Jean Claude Van Dammae.

The research was funded by IBM and the first hypertext implementation, Hypertext Editing System, ran on an IBM/360 mainframe. IBM later sold the system to the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center which reportedly used it for the Apollo space program documentation. A year later, in 1968, van Dam developed FRESS, a File Retrieval and Editing System which was an improvement of his original Hypertext Editing System and was used commercially by Philips (Source).

Hypertext has completely changed the was we use the internet. Today not only does clicking on a link connect you to other articles but also pictures and videos. There isn't a web site that you go to that doesn't have a hypertext in some form or another. Without it citing articles would be almost impossible.

First Timer

My name is Stephanie and im pretty new to this whole blogging thing. I dont have a myspace or anything like that so this is something new to me. Well a little bit about me is that I am from Lewiston NY about a 25 minuite commute from UB so I pretty much waste all of my money on gas which sucks. I graduated from Niagara County Community College with an accociates degree in Business Administration then transfered to UB, where I am currently taking comm 125.

I am a proud Western New Yorker through and through. Im a huge fan of the Sabres and the Bills, I can just feel it, this year were going to the play offs I just know it. The Buffalo curse has to end some time... dosent it? I know people are trying to get out of here as fast as humanly possible, but I dont see the rush, theres just so much to do and see. I think its beautiful here, we have all four season, even though for about 7 of them were usually buried under snow, but hey if you can drive here in the winter you can consider yourself an excellent driver, other cities get an inch or two of snow and the entire city completely shuts down, but not us. I think we have it pretty good here, no floods, earthquakes, tornadoes...just the occasional blizzard or two, but hey its true about Buffalo weather if you dont like it just wait 5 minuites, we never know what lake erie is gonna throw at us next.

I guess you can see that I like living here and proud to represent Buffalo, UB, and all of western New York, enought of that for now. If you want to learn more about whats going on around town you can check this out.

GO BILLS!