Photo - Summer

chose this one as it reminds me of the seemingly never ending beaches on moreton island

on which i spent a lot of my summers as a kid.

Photo - Australian

i think this one is pretty self explanatory, whats more australian than VB or xxxx?

Photo - Games

well i chose this particular image for the games topic as it brings back memories of the old 386, back when the 2d shooters were taking off with wolfenstien 3d, only the oldies in the course will know what im talking about..haha. rock on

week 6

in todays lecture we had a real quick rundown on a few topics, the history of the internet, and vitual reality and the screen age. now i already knew that it all began with ARPANET. and i knew the basics with ports, firewalls, etc... but funny enough, that little cartoon really helped piece it together, and it did it so simply.

the part which really caught my attention though was the virtual reality. the whole where do we draw the line between 'virtual' and 'reality' for now, true enough, there are no senses of touch or smell within a virtual world, but who's to say in the near future that won't be the case? true enough, interest in the public eye has seen virtual reality decline over the last few years, but i've no doubt that soon enough, it will rise again, it can have so many applications, military training, in fact....any training at all. i mean flight simulator is already a standerd for pilot training. there could be recreational uses also, what if you wanted to see what it was like to be on a beach in the bahamas, without having the time to fly there and take a holiday? virtual reality could give the user a quick escape. the main issue which surrounds this is that users may get addicted to their 'virtual' world, and not be quite so productive in the real world. though if we could figure out a way to take it in moderation, i think it would be great.

who knows, maybe in many years to come, we may be living in a world where being 'plugged in' like in the matrix, may be a completely normal thing to do lol

week 5 tute

ahh, well this week was the intro to photoshop, tho i'd never used photoshop before, i have briefly used paint shop pro, which is pretty similar, but has a few things i really like about it, tho now, going through one of the most basic tutorials on photoshop, i find it has some pretty handy features also, for example, the magnetic lasso is great, it makes selecting things within the image SO much easier than in PSP. im still having a little bit of trouble blending layers together in an image, say if i copy something from one image, and want to paste it onto another and blend it in so it looks natural, but i'm sure it'll come to me. All the basics are the same, zooming etc, selecting objects, moving them, editing colours and contrasts, and some of the different selection tools, and brush tools.

looking through some of the online tutorials, it looks like there is some amazing stuff out there, some crazy stuff you can do with it. if it's anything like PSP there should be plenty of plug-ins out there that do some cool stuff also. I guess i just didnt like photoshop to begin with because it was a little more complicated at first, and PSP did most of the stuff i wanted, but after actually playing around with it, its not too difficult, and it's basically the industry standerd for graphic design etc.. so i might as well get to know it.

on the other hand, how can you distinguish whats real and isnt? being able to manipulate an image and basically do ANYTHING to it. sometime's it's hard to tell the difference with the digital editing being so good. poses an interesting question...

essay ideas

Start off with a brief history of the internet, and the hacker, and why they hack.

Manifesto. Ethics etc.

2 types of hackers, ones that hack for good purposes, and the others which hack and create malicious virus’s etc. they basically want to stop one MAJOR company having all the info, having all the programs ie; Microsoft. the want for more open source stuff

History of hacking? From the 80’s to now

Who was the first hacker?

What drives a person to hack?The thirst for knowledge, or the need for power, or are they sadists who like to destroy things?People who hack for profit?Jobs gained thru hacking, information security?

Hackers in today’s society, who are they? Are they your neighbours?

hacker culture

Some famous hackers

Consequences of hacking in different countries.

How hacking has evolved from the 80’s to now.

Week 4 tute

ok, first up we'll start with ye olde scavenger hunt

1. The nation's largest pumpkin weighed in this weekend. It was all part of the 13th annual Giant Pumpkin Growers Championship in Rhode Island. Ron Wallace broke the record for the world's largest pumpkin, weighing in at 1,502 lbs. 1.
   http://www.49abcnews.com/news/2006/oct/09/worlds_heaviest_pumpkin_weighed/
2. Miami Olympic heated pool, 80 pacific ave, Miami, qld, 4220 http://www.geocities/collesseum/court/5449/from_Creator.htm
3. A giraffe’s tongue is 18-20inches long. http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giraffe.html
4. The area of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ontology
5. David Cronenberg's first film was Transfer made in 19661. http://www.empirezine.com/spotlight/cronenberg/cronenberg1.htm
6. the hackers manifesto was written in 19861. http://www.technozen.com/manifesto.htm
7. 555 is used as a prefix to avoid actual phone numbers being phoned after people watch a certain film.. http://www.omegarobot.com/article/555.html
8. take a flight from crete to rhodes which is only a short distance away, once greek island to another. http://www.anemos.net/tour13.htm/
9. Rock and roll music by the beatles http://www.onmc.iinet.net.au/
10. Brisbane punk band, the Black Assassins 10. http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm

Now, what is a search engine? a search engine is a yellow pages in essence. its comprised of a coordinated set of programs that includes:

• a SPIDER that goes to every page or representative pages on every Web site that wants to be searchable and reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages
• A program that creates a huge index
• A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you

each search engine ranks differently, some exclude links if they detect spam etc etc, but most major search engines analyse how pages link to each other,they determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. My favorite has to be altavista.com, i've been using it for the last 10 years, i like the results i get, and the layout of the page.

Mailing lists.

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk is a great site, which is linked to thousands of mailing lists, 2 of which are related to this subject are :

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/EBAY-STUDIES.html: this is the discussion of a variety of eBay themes including identity, community, social capital, collecting in an e-society, consumption, consumer lifestyles, employment effects, website design, usability, the 'real' economy, the 'perfect market' and representations of eBay.

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/EVOLUTIONARY-COMPUTING.html : EC covers all approaches to computing based on analogues of natural selection: eg genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary strategies and artificial life. Related fields include complex systems theory, chaos and cellular automata

as far as my essay topic goes, im leaning towards hackers, and hacker ethics....need to choose a more direct issue still.