Peace And Tranquility

now assuming we all have read this very intriguing story, im just going to jump right in into the story of Immigrant, by Clifford Simak. Bishop starts asking questions to Maxine. the nature of these questions is to show the power that she “learned” just by spending time on Kimon. She is scared out of her mind when she shows her power to Bishop, because she has probably settled comfortably into the puppy dog theory of Bishops, and partially due to her pride in the knowledge she had gained on earth was absolute, and there was nothing more that she could learn about it. some how Maxine had convinced herself that some Kimonians were just playing some tricks with her when she was “showing” her power to Bishop. She had thought this, because in her eyes, if a Kimonian was doing this to her, then to the alien the scene would have probably been comical. instead of taking on the initiative that was hidden by the kimonians to advance herself, she kept herself back because of the pride she had in her knowledge.
Bishop was the first to change his way of thinking, he had sucked up his pride and admitted that all that he knew on earth was practically useless here on Kimon, and he had to somehow learn the ways of the planet. and then he comes to the realization that we learn by going to school, and through a few connections he realizes that on Kimon what Bishop needs to do is go back to school and start over fresh as practically a kinder-gardener..

i wouldve put some direct quotes from the story, but for some odd reason, i cant find it in my email…hmmmmmmmmmmm….could it be that the Kimonians are also capable of hacking into our current level of technology to play tricks on me???

sorry this is kinda late, i completely forgot to write it up.

well yea, the NMC Symposium that was held on SecondLife was really fun. there were speakers from all over the world with really interesting presentations. some speakers that are well known to us include national geographic, and our very own DR. C!!!

I unfortunately missed Dr. Cs presentation becaause i had class, but i went to the end of the presentation before national geographics, which was about using technology such as secondlife and possibly other virtual worlds, as a medium to teach young students through. but many people in the audience were talking among themselves saying that it wouldn’t work in reality even though it seemed flawless on paper.

what was really unfortunate was that since the actual symposium was during the week, i often had class during the times the presentations were held. if the event was held on a weekend, it would have been much better because then students who attend the event on SL would have a chance to actually be active participants with the presentations and the side conversations that were always oging on..

i remember one presentation that i walked in on, they were talking about how back in the 60s and what not, kids would go out to play and have fun. out as in outside. but now what most to all of the younger kids do is sit down in their living room, turn on the game console, and play a game online with some friends that live down the street from them. this presentation was for trying to find a way to keep the technology but increase kids going outside to play. what most people were saying in the audience were that they were agreeing, and trying to find out a way to make it work, but when i got in and stated the facts that this would never happen again, couple of people agreed with me and the conversation ended. it made me happy that my points were the end of an arguement.

okay, so secondlife, often shortened to SL, is a pretty awesome place. it allows people to come together from across the globe in a virtual environment where almost anything is possible. when first signing up, you get to pick an avatar which is supposed to represent yourself, but can be anything. for example look at what i have for the most part of the adventure:

Me as Ironman in SL

but as soon as someone can get used to me being Ironman, i can be like wa-bam! and change into the famous Darth Vadar attempting to use the lightsaber to “kill” a fellow classmate as a practical joke. (of course we cant die in this virtual world)

Me in as Darth Vadar

as this is a virtual world, the seating of your avatar is limitless. meaning, my avatar can fly through the air, hover in the air, and use this to sit down on objects in a sim that one would usually not sit on. during class, i had the privelage to sit down on a speaker at the top of the stage, and after class in the africa region, i got to sit down on a bird as it flew in circles over the land.

Me sitting on a speaker during class

Sitting on a bird flying above the land

earlier i had mentioned something going from class to an africa sim, meaning, as a class we teleported from the stage area where we had originally gathered, to a virtual sim of africa, where you can hear the different animals in africa, and even take an automated hot air balloon ride across the entire simulation while a recording tells you what everything is. check it out, the first picture is when we had gathered at the NMC stage to learn the basics of SL, and the second is when we instantaneously teleported away from that region to a virtual africa.

Class

Class in africa

more about SL, it has its many advantages, like stated earlier, this virtual world allows people from all over the world come together at any time of the day to take a virtual vacation, or a virtual class. but this does have its disadvantages as well. in all the public places, you have the random chance, of someone you dont know speaking some language other than your native tongue, and then communication is halted between the two people. it can get frustrating. i believe there is a function on SL, if you own the land, then you have complete rights over who visits and who cant. this way it is possible to have a secure class online, without the chance of random people who dont belong walking in. or as it happened in our class, flying in and sitting down.

in the actual SL programming, i can tell there is still plenty of work to do. clothing that an avatar can be wearing, would not follow the avatar that was wearing the clothing all the time, as seen in the following picture. the following picture depicts one of my classmates sitting down at the NMC stage thing, but the skirt she was wearing decides not to follow the avatar, and go straight through the seat on which the avatar was sitting.

broken skirt?

and then there are some objects within SL that we found while we were exploring. one such object was a crocodile that was able to “eat” your avatar, if you sat down on top of it. but then the scripts had a problem because while the crocodile was busy eating the avatar, somehow the avatars behind would go through the crocodile to appear on top of its head.

crocodile + avatar behind

And now for the grand finale, a barrage of pictures taken from SL during my time there. some of the picture depict our class, and some pretty silly, as someone bobs for apples and milks a cow. for space reasons, they will be all linked via tinypic (and ease of putting them onto the blog)

http://tinypic.com/r/2rnk6lk/4

http://tinypic.com/r/3523yxi/4

http://tinypic.com/r/azihph/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2uhu6c3/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2gvmslx/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2zf05dc/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2wgszlc/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2upu2id/4

http://tinypic.com/r/i43hub/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2z87slz/4

http://tinypic.com/r/2ciic89/4

http://tinypic.com/r/nf5ons/4

http://tinypic.com/r/24awwfl/4

http://tinypic.com/r/11imj6b/4

This article that is talked about here is found on the wall street journal online. At the following web address: WSJ Online

Basically Windows 7 has advanced so far, it is actually in league now with the new Mac Snow Leopard OS released in August. Something that will not have such a big impact right now though on Windows 7, is the built in touch screen interface. To able to use this feature, you will need to buy a special screen that is not being manufactured now. Which kind of sucks, but it’s nice to know what will be happening in the future.

The author of this article said himself that in the past he was a fan of the Mac OS being better than Windows, but now he says that between the new Macs and this new Windows, it is much of a tossup between the two. Meaning, Windows will probably be back to the number one spot really soon!!

The features that are available on Windows 7 are just exceeding expectations, when compared to Vista. Microsoft took the “Dock” idea from Macs, and evolved it to make it better for Windows. And the other features are just overwhelming to talk about. Desktop Organization, Speed, Networking, Etc. This new OS is going to bury the disaster known as Vista, and reborn the immortal phoenix in the form of Windows 7!

yay!

This is easiest to do using Mozilla Firefox. I am not sure if it will work on Macs (because they suck) but i know for sure that on PCs it will work.

Step 1: Download Mozilla Firefox if you have not have it on your OS already.

Step 2: Go to Tools, Add-o’ns,  Get Add-ons, Search.

Step 3: Search for “Sothink”

Step 4: If you cannot download it due to some random error that says the add-on is not compatible with the newer version of firefox.  Go to the Sothink website which is found in the details of the Add-on and download it directly from there. It will automatically add on as an add-on in Firefox.

Step 5: You’re done.

What this add-on does is that any video you watch on facebook, youtube, etc. It will “capture” the video automatically in the add-on, which at that point it will give you the option to download the video to your hard drive, or ignore the download and just watch the video online. I am not sure of the video format it downloads as, you might have to download a separate video converter (max 20ish MB, I think) to convert the video into more conventional formats, such .avi or .mpeg

I used the Sothink  Web Video Downloader for Firefox 5.5 to download the video that lauren wanted to share, and uploaded it to Youtube. Thankfully, the file I downloaded was downloaded as an .mp4 file, and was easy to view with any viewer.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2SVDxRUlYCAOTRhODZmNjQtNjhjOS00YWM2LWI5MmMtMzk2YTMxMDQ5MTU4&hl=en

^is the actual power point^

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWSVDxRUlYCAZGQ4eHdnZHNfMWN6NnFwMmQ4&hl=en

^is some notes^

i had forgotten this when i mentioned i did this presentation. the format of the presentation was that the power point was just an aid for me to use to keep me on track. i used the movie “I-Robot” as another visual aid. the second link gives the places for the three of the clips i had used. if this all makes sense, then it was a pretty good presentation i had given, but like i said, just viewing the powerpoint wont actually be as indepth as the actual presentation was…

Personal thoughts on this article published by Licklider from the very beginning were that the analogy used to compare symbiosis was completely wrong. the relationship between the fig tree and insect Blastophaga grossorun is a mutual relationship. meaning the for the insect to live, it has to eat the food produced by the fig tree, and for the tree to live and make more trees, the insect has to pollinate the tree. that kind of relationship can never be found between a man and computer. i think the relationship between man and computer is completely different. a true man and computer symbiosis as Licklider wants will never be able to occur. the relationship between man and computer is that man needs computer to process information at a speed unknown to the past generations, but there is nothing that says that the computer needs a man, because computers are just machines with programming that will do what the man tells them to do. for man-computer symbiosis to occur, mankind would have to invent robots similar to the robot named “sonny” in the movie I-Robot. that entire movie is a perfect example to true AI and man-computer symbiosis.

on a side note, i think i did an actual presentation about something similar to this during my senior year in high school in a philosophy class. if i can find it, ill try to post it online somehow…it was a powerpoint presentation. if anyone knows how to do that, could you please tell me? thanks!

i totally forgot todo this last night, but here is real brief synopsis of my thoughts on the contents.

my thoughts on this article by bush are that i am amazed that this kind of thinking about the future was around back in the 1940s. and how accurate this thinking was. the personal computer with hyperlinks and word processing. and compared to today, almost everyone has one of these things to use, connected with the internet to pull up vast amounts of information with just a few keystrokes. if this kind of advancement in technology keeps up, then i cannot wait to see what the world will be like in another 40-60 years.

my thoughts on the numbered sections are kind of jumbled up right now, and as soon as i get those straightened out, ill edit this post to include the rest of my thoughts. thats a promise professor!

the two introductions, are very confusing to me (well atleast the first one is compared to the second on which was a little more understandable)…i get what they are trying to say, but it seems as if there are alot of extra words that are not necessary…oh well..

but

the preface, is quiet easy to understand. and very simple…

i just thought that was pretty wierd…(side note, is that how you spell wierd? or is it weird?…im confused…)

Welcome to Dr. C. CourseBlogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!