Week 9 Tutorial Task

ESSAY TOPIC

I have decided to do my essay on; ‘Does the extensive use of computer/ video games have an adverse impact on the health of young people. What are the most recent papers? Clarify what both sides of the argument claim and only then offer your reasoned opinion based on facts.’

I chose this topic because I did an response to content on this earlier in the semester. The small amount of research I underwent to write the response interested me and I would like to further my knowledge the gaming world, as I have no personal insight into gaming at all.

I plan to first research a range of published material on the subject and from there devise my own opinion of the health effects associated with gaming. I plan to address the benefits of gaming as well as the down falls associated with it. I also plan to link the health effects gamers to that of gamblers, as the two are similar. I will also address the government’s response to the gaming industry and the negative/positive health effects occurring in young people as result of gaming.   

Although I have no background knowledge on the gaming industry and the health effects associated with it, I am interested to learn, as the industry is growing at an accelerating pace.  

SIGN AN E PETITION

I Signed an e petition in support of protection for rural residence and small communities.

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/e-petitions

RESPOND TO A PROFESSIONAL BLOG

http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-new-business-traveler/index.php?success=1#comment-26662

WHAT IS BARACK OBAMA DOING TODAY?

Today, the 21^st of September, Barack Obama “hosted the first white house LGBT reception”. I found this information by following him on twitter.

http://twitter.com/#%21/BarackObama

THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT PLANS FOR “CLEAN FEED”

“The Australian government is seeking to make the internet a safer place, especially for children.  Cyber-safety was an electoral promise of the newly-appointed Labor government.^[i] A key aspect of the Rudd government’s cyber-safety program, unofficially known as Clean Feed, is a national internet filter.^[ii]  This means legally mandating Internet Service Providers (‘ISPs’) such as Optus, Telstra and iiNet to implement technical means to filter out a prescribed list of websites.  Sites containing images of child abuse, in particular child pornography, will be the initial focus of the list.”

Maurushat A & Watt R, ‘Clean Feed: Australia’s internet Filtering Proposal’, Internet Law Bulletin March 2009

WHEN WILL THE NBN GET TO MY PLACE AND WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS

The benefits of the NBN for me personally will be to be able to communicate with my family more clearly. My family live on a farm in the center of New South Wales and they don’t get very good internet reception or phone reception. The NBN will reach me in Southport and my parents in central NSW around the second release date.

  http://www.nbnco.com.au/our-network/maps/nsw_act.html

This video explains more clearly the benefits of the NBN

FIND OUT WHO YOUR LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES ARE

Local
Ron Clarke is the local representative for the Gold Coast City Council.

http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/t_standard2.aspx?pid=346

State
The State MP for Southport is Peter Lawlor

Federal
The Local Federal Government member Is Mr Steven Ciobo, Electoral division of Moncreiff

http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/t_standard2.aspx?pid=4351

Week 9 Response to Content

Censorship in Democracy

Does censorship have a place in democracy? The word democracy derived from the ancient Greeks and means to rule by the people. In ancient Greece all city affairs were subject to an assembly where all male members belonged and all decisions were made by a majority vote (Kilcullen, 2000). Therefore if the majority vote for censorship, then yes, censorship does have a place in democracy. Furthermore, if the majority do not vote for censorship, should the censorship still be put in place. This essay outlines Australia’s censorship as well as the public’s view on censorship in democratic Australia.     

Not all censorship is evil. The current system of censorship ‘classifies material into appropriate categories rather than looking for reasons for it to be banned’ (Williams, 1997).  For example, the classification on movies and video games is a form of censorship that prevents young children witnessing images that would be offensive to them. This, however, is not what the public have a problem with.

Technology in recent decades has advanced to the point where ‘government agencies have unlimited capabilities for surveillance, command and control that challenge the authority of national representative democracy’ (Stockwell, 2008). This is where Australia’s public becomes angry. The government has the power to filter through our computers and telephone conversations to gain information that they feel is needed for ‘government protection’. Although this might be for the better of the country, it is still an invasion of privacy and does not reflect a democratic nation.

Obviously there are upsides and down sides to censorship within democratic Australia. The overall product needs to be a line drawn as to where the censorship should stop to keep privacy and democracy intact.   

References 

Kilcullen. J, ‘Democracy in Australia’, Macquarie University, accessed on 29^th September 2011 http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y67xa.html

Williams. D, ‘From censorship to classification’ Press release database, 1997, accessed on 29 September 2011 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=(Id:media/pressrel/plm30);rec=0;

Stockwell, S, ‘Where all Hackers Now, Doing Global Democracy’, 2008, accessed on 29^th Setpember 2011 https://learning.secure.griffith.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_101249_1&frame=top

Week 8 Tutorial Task

The Publishing of the Masterpiece 

We have gathered many images using Wikimedia commons and creative commons over the past week with only some rights reserved that suited the purpose of the film. A lot of the pictures we wanted to use had all rights reserved copy write, therefore we were unable to use them. Filtering through all the images was very time consuming. The first batch of images that we found we had not sourced correctly resulting in having to find the images a second time to gain the correct source information.

We have also made a short film using iTimelaps on Bridget's iPhone to show the changing between classes at university and students walking past on their mobiles or with computer cases, reiterating the statistics that have been used throughout the short clip. Our plan of filming people answering questions fell through as most people were reluctant to fill out the surveys, we assumed they would not be keen to take precious time away from their Facebook stalking to be filmed. 

We encountered a few problems transferring the iTimelaps film onto windows movie maker because of the wrong format, although we were able to change the format using an internet conversion program.
This is the film we have come up with

The Film has been uploaded under a creative commons licence so others can use the work that we have made in the same way that we have used others work to create our masterpiece. 

Week 8 Response to Content

How does open source software create revenue?

Open source software is the 'free redistribution, source code, derived works, integrity of the author's source code, no discrimination against persons or groups, no discrimination against fields of endeavour, distribution of license, licenses must not be specific to a product, license must not restrict other software and license must be technology-neutral' (McNamara, 2010). So how do the companies that produce these free software alternatives create revenue to function?

The down side to open source software is that if a problem occurs with the software and the user does not have the technological knowledge to fix it, there is no support package to assist with the problem. One way that companies make money from open source software is by selling support packages with the free software so a university student for example, does not lose their whole university assignment (Heffner, 2005).

Another way that these companies create revenue is by attaching a dual licence to their product. For example, the open source database company MySQL offers its open source software package under a general public licence for open source developers. When creating your own software package the distributer then has to release the software package under the same general public licence. If the creator of the new software package wants to sell their software, they need to purchase a traditional paid licence from MySQL, therefore creating revenue for MySQL (Heffner, 2005).

There are many other ways that companies can create revenue from open source software. Although this does not make the software ‘free’ in respect to price anymore, it is cheaper than purchasing proprietary software and is still free to use.  

References

Heffner. B, ‘How do you make money from open source software’, 2005, accessed 29^th September 2011, http://clarklane.blogspot.com/2005/01/how-do-you-make-money-from-open-source.html

McNamara. K, ‘Open Source Software’, 2010, PreQuest  Central Database, Accessed 29^th September 2011 http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/756008530

Week 7 Tutorial Task

The Makings of the Masterpiece 

This week Bridget and I printed out the surveys and got 15 people to answer them. This is an image of the survey.

From these surveys we generated some statistics about university student’s use of communication technology to create impact within the film. Getting people to fill out the survey proved more difficult than expected. People, ironically, were too busy looking at Facebook on the library computers.  

For the sound track for the movie we decided instead of chopping and changing already existing sound tracks and filtering through soundtracks without copy write restrictions we would use our creative talents and built out own track to fit the mood of the film. We used the program Magix Music Maker to create the track. This was very time consuming, although much more rewarding than filtering through copious non-copy write web pages to find a track that someone else had made.

Next week we will assemble the film using windows movie maker. 

Week 7 Response to Content

The Positives and Negatives of Citizen Journalism.

Citizen journalism is the reporting of news to the public without being employed to do so and is said to flourish under governments of ‘soft authority’ (indymedia.org, 2009). Is citizen journalism a good or bad phenomenon to come out of increased communication technologies such as blogging and camera phones?

A case of positive citizen journalism occurred during the London Bombings on the 7^th of July 2005. On this day, news teams carried a huge weight with intense pressure to get the news out to the public quickly and accurately as possible. When the bombings occurred many citizen journalists sent images and emails containing information to the news rooms, this becoming an integral part of the investigations and broadcasting for the crisis. The new technology at the time, the phone camera, allowed images to be sent into these news rooms allowing instant editing enabling news to reach the public quicker. The quantity and quality of the London bombing events could not have been reported so successfully without the help of citizen journalism (Sambrook, 2005).

The negative aspects of citizen journalism lay mainly in the content published. Journalists have certain ethics and editing rules to abide by before being able to publish their work. Citizen journalists however, don’t have these gatekeeping constraints. Using the example of the 2005 London bombings, journalists that received information from the citizens still had their news reports edited and refined with a fine tooth comb making sure the material published was accurate. However, citizen journalists are able to post what they feel is newsworthy and accurate onto website, such as a blog, without the accuracy being assessed (Lewis, S, C, Kaufhold, K & Larsorsa, D, L, 2010)

Citizen Journalism does have its positives and negatives. These journalists can both hinder and help the reporting of news to target publics. However there are no current measures in places to stop citizen journalists publishing their view on a news story, it is up to the readers of the news to filter through the copious news items published by all journalists and decide for themselves what they want to believe.
    

References

·         ‘Citizen journalism flourishes in dark corners’, Independent Media Centre Australia, August, 2009 viewed 10/09/2011 http://indymedia.org.au/2009/08/05/citizen-journalism-flourishes-in-dark-corners

·         Lewis, s, C, Kaufhold, K & Larsorsa, D, L, ‘Thinking about citizen journalism, the philosophical and practical challenges of user-generated  content for community newspapers’, 3^rd March 2010, viewed 10/09/2011 http://sethlewis.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/915813980.pdf

Sambrook, R, ‘Citizen Journalism and the BBC’, Nieman reports 2011, 2005, viewed 10/09/2011  http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100542

Week 6 Tutorial Task

The Beginnings of a Masterpiece

This week Bridget Wagland and I formed a group to make a short video with the theme of New Communication technologies. We had a few ideas, one being the evolution of communication through our generation and using an actor to act out the progression of technology through primary school, to high school to university eventuating in communicating telepathically.After discussing this idea we decided that there would be may difficulties with editing, time, gaining the copyright to put for the background music as well as finding a willing participant to act. 


We looked at a few home made films on YouTube and in the end we decided on a documentary type film. We decided to accumulate information on peoples view on new communications technologies by asking questions on a survey, such as how many times you use social media sites per day and what are they, which social media sites etc. We plan on filming their answers. We will make sure that these people are aware that the film will be posted on the internet. We plan on having a statistics throughout the clip to show what our sample of interviewees feel about new communication technologies.We plan on filming the footage with an iPhone and assembling the presentation together with prezi or a similar program.  

Week 6 Response to Content

Movie Piracy

Piracy of movies and music has become an increasing issue in the past decade (Jacobs, 2010). Until recently downloading movies as been a rarity, people in the past were more likely to download music files due to their small size averaging 3 megabytes. Comparing this to downloading an average size 700 megabyte feature film (Jacobs, 2010), there is no wonder why the trend was swinging towards music downloads. Although, due to recent technology of high speed internet and unlimited downloads home viewers are able to download movies or television shows for free in the time it takes to drive to the video store and back, less the cost of fuel. This, although convenient and seemingly harmless is highly illegal. “Copyright law protects the value of creative work” (R.I.A.A, 2011). “Penalties for first time offenders of the crime can be as a high as 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fines” (R.I.A.A, 2011), while “the minimum fine equates to $75,000 per song downloaded” (R.I.A.A, 2011). There are many clips that have been put together to deter people from illegal downloading such as this;   

 

In contrast to this, a recent trend of independent film makers is to post their films on the internet to be downloaded. The idea of crowdsourcing is becoming a popular means of gaining creative material and free marketing for independent film makers through the internet medium (Mascioni, 2010).  Through this medium independent film makers are now laying their own path to success with websites such as busika.com, which pays independent film makers for content, or Azureus, where aspiring film producers can post their films for free and be discovered by big time movie makers.

Although these two ideas are at different ends of the downloading spectrum, it highlights the highs and lows of “piracy”, and how it can be both beneficial and hindering to film and music makers.

References:


Jacobs. R. S, ‘Digital Movie Piracy; A Perspective on Downloading Behaviour through Social Cognitive Theory,’ University of Twente, 2010 sourced from  http://essay.utwente.nl/59875/ on 04/09/2011

Mascioni. M, ‘Film making through crowdsourcing’, Internet Evolution, 2010, sourced from

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=709&doc_id=190970 on 4/09/2011

Recording Industry Association of America, ‘The Law’, 2011, sourced from http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law  on 4/09/2011

http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Interviews/azureus.html

http://www.bukisa.com