Current Events #3

The article "Mozilla and NSF Hand Out $1.6 Million to Wireless Challenge Winners" by  Tekla S. Perry from https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/wireless/mozilla-and-nsf-hand-out-16-million-to-wireless-challenge-winners was published in September 26, 2018. The article communicates to the reader about how Mozilla and NSF did a challenge to people to answer questions/take action about how to get communication/internet in rural and devastated areas. The author Tekla S. Perry in his/her article "Mozilla and NSF Hand Out $1.6 Million to Wireless Challenge Winners" illuminates this by writing, "To encourage developers to get serious about finding answers, they offered US $2 million in prize money in what they tagged the Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society challenge." Now with prize money, developers and inventors are persuaded to think of solutions to solve how to bring communication to rural areas. Another piece of writing from "Mozilla and NSF Hand Out $1.6 Million to Wireless Challenge Winners" by  Tekla S. Perry is, "HERMES enables local calling, SMS texting, and the use of messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The innovation won in the Off-the-Grid Internet category." This achievement was a exceptional indeed with rural areas being able to access messaging services from their place.
I think that this challenge was a great one where innovation was achieved for the greater good. It is awesome that one company got first place that their technology can be implemented for greater use. A win-win situation really. Companies get some money and people get useful technology. I however think the prize should have been higher to encourage more innovation.

WBL Workshop 1 Introduction/ Overview) RJ

On September 25, 2018 I came to the library of my school to do a WBL Workshop. I sat down and listened to the speeches the speakers gave the audience as a whole. The most important points of the workshop was to get ready to do and/or now do job interviews, jobs/internships, the WBL requirements and what is required for us to do, and the reminders of getting our CTE diploma. These skills like knowing how to do job interviews are important for a web designer because it help web designers secure a job and make a living off what they are doing.

What do FileZilla, CoreFTP & CyberDuck have in common?

There is at least one thing that FileZilla, CoreFTP, and CyberDuck have in common. The answer to that question is that they all have a connection to the use of FTP and the transference of data between them. I have some information to prove it or support this answer. CyberDuck is an open source client for cloud storage, SFTP, WebDAV, and FTP. CyberDuck also has FTP. FileZilla is a cross-platform FTP application which has FTP. Finally, CoreFTP which literally has FTP in the name and is a secure FTP client for Windows has FTP just like the others. All in all, the programs have FTP relating to them.

Picture of FileZilla program

Blown to Bits Apendix Answers

The foresight that caused initial digital designers to choose a packet-switched network was because they created, pondered, and tested it to make a network system that would allow multiple users to connect to each other. Now instead of one to one connections that would be inefficient and possibly slow.
I think the internet would be non-existent or be very slow today if companies’ network protocols were still competing for adoption for the internet, instead of TCP being the de facto standard. Companies could buy out other companies to destroy their version of the internet. Companies could make you pay a price for their internet and slow it down for you to pay a premium for them. It would also be difficult to connect with other people because your internet might not be compatible with the other network your trying to connect.

Current Events CE#2

The article "Beyond Deep Fakes" by Byron Spice from https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/beyond-deep-fakes was published in September 10, 2018.  The article shows the reader about video transformation technology and how it can create deep fakes. An example of this is in the article "Beyond Deep Fakes" which states, "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have devised a way to automatically transform the content of one video into the style of another, making it possible to transfer the facial expressions of comedian John Oliver to those of a cartoon character, or to make a daffodil bloom in much the same way a hibiscus would." This means that you could actually make realistic characters with another character to make it look like the character is talking of what the other character said. This technology can be useful because it could make video production more efficient because the technology can copy the facial features of one person and fill the face with another person instead of hiring an actor to do it with dress-up cost and salaries. It is prevalent in the article "Beyond Deep Fakes" which states, "Film production was his primary motivation in helping devise the method, he explained, enabling movies to be produced more quickly and cheaply. 'It's a tool for the artist that gives them an initial model that they can then improve,' he added." This is useful because it can cut down on production costs. Although, it can give rise to deep fakes which can be detrimental. The article "Beyond Deep Fakes" says, "The technology also has the potential to be used for so-called "deep fakes," videos in which a person's image is inserted without permission, making it appear that the person has done or said things that are out of character, Bansal acknowledged." This technology can create a world where you can't distinguish real and fake media which is troubling indeed.

I think that the technology is a bad thing. I think this way because deep fakes can propose potentially damaging consequences to people and intellectual property in way we may or may not have imagined. The idea of deep fakes can spread lies to the world around us and propaganda would be amplified as well. People's reputation could be hurt because of this technology saying offensively probable stuff that they actually didn't say. It could also cause chaos into the world if the technology was public which a lot of trolls will use it to effectively troll the masses!

By Medium

Current Events CE#1

There is an article that was written during September 11, 2018. The article "Developers, despair: Half your time is wasted on bad code" by Liam Tung from https://www.zdnet.com/article/developers-despair-half-your-time-is-wasted-on-bad-code/ talks about how developers spend half of their time fixing code that they have built. The article cites that, "But according to Stripe's survey of 1,000 developers and 1,000 C-level execs, on average about half of the developer's working week is spent on maintenance, such as debugging, modifying code, and fixing bad code."  Now with all these time consuming tasks, it is understandable why there is a problem in efficiency. Efficiency was a key goal in the company because they want to cut down costs of maintenance. In the article "Developers, despair: Half your time is wasted on bad code" it says, "Conversely, the company argues that if developer time was used more efficiently, developers could raise global GDP by $3 trillion over the next decade." Cutting down on developer time could make more profits by spending less money on maintenance and the same amount of money on other projects which is an increase in profit.
I think that it is necessary to spend time on maintenance, modifying code, and debugging because programs need to be fixed for the users. Cutting down on developer time on maintenance and ect. could negatively impact the program that has been built and increase the chances of losing consumer trust in the product. A better way that might be it could be to hire more developers, have a team dedicated to fixing code, and have the rest of developers do other stuff for the project(s). That way you can develop and fix code at the same time making it more efficient for the company. Also, I think that it could cut down developer increase revenue just a bit by higher productivity which leads into higher quality that turns into more buyers for the program that in turn leads to more profit.

From DerickBailey.com

 

Blown to Bits chapter 1 Koan 2

In Blown to Bits chapter 1 Koan 2 it talks about how networks and technology can make every copy perfect and alike to each other. I agree with this truth because technology today with all these programs can replicate any digital art almost or exactly identically to the original. Photos can be copied and pasted to somewhere else and have it look like the original. Texts can be copied and  pasted too with a few clicks on the mouse. Sound/music files can also be replicated through programs and the copy and paste method. Now since technology is currently advancing and will continue to advance, I'd say that this truth will most likely stay being a truth. As the years go by, programs will continue to update to create more digital forms like art or music that will be better and better at replicating each other. This koan intersects with my life as a student by making it easier for me to complete tasks assigned by the teachers or no one on time and cutting down on time. I do this by the copy and paste method which helps me copy objects and paste them down for tedious tasks that I rather not do all over again.