Copyright

Does Copyright Matter?? I understand that it does, yet i do everything that organisations are trying to prevent. I download music from limewire and have it in itunes in a matter of minutes and uploaded onto my ipod seconds after that. I download movies or get them off someone else who has already downloaded it. Haha, while writing this im feeling guilty because it seems so bad!! However, im a poor student living in a cold flat where I would rather pay for heating then buying a movie or cd at a store.

One question I do have is: If most people around the world are downloading music from systems like limewire, winamp, kazaar etc, how do musicians get money from their songs? I mean they used to rely on people buying the albums so what happens now....?

Just going to write a short post on this because im doing this topic for my assignment so thought I would save my ideas for the essay!! :)

I like my virtual life better than my real life!!!

Real life is better than any kind of virtual reality!!!

I admit that some games are fun and interesting....back in the day our family had sega - this was amazing to every child back in the 90s - a game where you were another identity fighting to save the world!! As technology advanced at a fast rate! it was playstation, playstation 2, playstation 3, xbox! (does it ever end!) each system trying to make the player feel as though they are in the screen....

The reason why virtual reality scares me is a particular scene from the movie "Minority Report", Tom Cruise enters an "area" , where people are in rooms living their ultimate fantasies and desires - this sounds great, however these "ultimate fantasies" can be people fantasising about murder, crime, etc. Obviously not real, but scary to think that in future this kind of stuff could be happening........it may be appealing to some - living in a world where you have everything right in the palm of your hand....but some virtual technology is not going to take away the fact that you are living in the real world!!! So we just have to deal with it.

Blogging

So just catching up on all my blogs now which i havent done in awhile with holidays playing a big part haha.

Blogs have become a huge part in todays society. Not only do we do this as part of assignments, people do it to interact, develop relationships, even celebrities have used this as a way to express their own opinion and set alot of rumours straight!!

Ive never been the person that has usually posted comments over the internet until i was introduced to Bebo which really took to me a new level with the internet and i started to understand and become more interested in blogs.

One inparticular - which im a little ashamed to say i have become slightly addicted to is perezhilton.com ( a guy who posts blogs on the latest gossip around celebrities) He has really become a celebrity in his own right- he has fans all around the world logging on to see what he has blogged - around 1 milllion views a day!!!

Advantages of a blog like this is that it is cheap, fast:scoop the larger institutional media.

When people can blog about a type of movie, music, or sport they may be interested in and target small niche audiences, Perez has got a topic that millions of people around the world are interested in - celeb gossip!!!

Perez Hilton, blogging sites, utube are becoming part of everyday lives. I recently say the movie "Across the Universe" ( a movie must see) I enjoyed it so much, i knew that i could go on utube and see a scene that I liked. Before the movie i went onto metacritic - a site where movies are rated by top papers and critics.

So ive realised that pretty much anything im interested in will have already been blogged/discussed and videoed on the internet haha so now all i have to do is type what it is in google and there we go.....................

Wikipedia......

So the past week has been kind of hectic with assignments building up and all seem to be due around the same time...argh! And my computer would not let me sign in to blogger for a few days...but finally it let me today so thought i better take the chance to write my blog now before anything else goes wrong....

So, in class we learnt about Web 2.0 and Web 1.0, authority on the internet and Erikas example of wikipedia. Just went over Thomas Chesneys reading about the credibility of Wikipedia which really gave me an insight about it. So wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia where anyone can add content or existing content...(now i know why lecturers don't let us use this as a reference.. haha). I still, however, use and find information on the internet, and me probably being naieve, but I always expected it to be correct...hmm, now i will make sure where this information is coming from.

Wikipedia gets 60 million hits per day. Its popularity has never been questioned but its authority has. Proponents of wikipedia have hit back by claiming that the more people contribute to it, the content will become more reliable as time passes.
This may be true, but for doing assiignments or essays, I tend to use this encyclopedia as a starting point rather than rely on it as my only source.
I mean I think its great that technology has let people and myself become their own author on the internet, posting and swapping information.
However, by doing this, I could deliberatly add erroneous information into it, and someone else doing an assigment may use this information thinking it is a relaible source.

So overall, Wikipedia has its advantages and disadvantages. Its a good way to find basic information but more detail, ill move on to a different source...lets just hope the other websites are accurate though.......