Group items tagged

I picked slashdot.org because...well...slashdot is for NERDS! GEEKS!!! Someone who might be in the Computer Information Technology learning community! LIKE ME! On a more serious note though, I picked slashdot because it involves people like the CIT learning community. We are nerds/geeks we know it, and love it. Slashdot is composed of authors that are IT gurus and love to talk about as what there title says, 'news that matters' which is straight and to the point.\n\nLike any good nerd we like to put in our two cents. Slashdot added a message board to reply to any post the authors make. The articles composed by Slashdot will always involve technology in someway. Whether it's a post on the internet's birthday or a post about how red hat enterprise linux 5.4 has been released. Slashdot has posts to the point for people like "us". Its not filled with clutter or garbage about stupid news about Jon and Kate + 43000, its news that MATTERS. Simple as that.\n

It seems like everything is turning to the Internet. Disney unleashed a new digital service saying it will "transform how children read its storybooks." For $79.95 per month, families can access their favorite Disney books. The website is geared towards children ages 3-12 years old. Disney reports that the website is arranged by reading level. Disney realized children are reading less and less, and this is their attempt to reverse that trend. I think this is a great idea for families. I think it could easily reverse the trend; like Disney thinks it will. But, I remember growing up listening to my parents reading me Disney storybooks before I went to bed. Would it be the same if they were reading you the same story from a laptop? That is the main concern I have. Reading Disney storybooks to young children is a tradition, in my opinion. It is a very tough decision for me to make; whether I like the idea or not. -Alan

This story amused me. It hits on grammar, speech, and technology. The story reads that the average teen sends 2000 messages a month and 60 2-way messages a day. The story goes on to tell a story of a mothers struggle to understand why her son would rather text then call friends or family, this is hard to grasp for any parent or elder. They really just do not understand today's society. "But does texting make today's kids stupid, as Mark Bauerlein writes in his book ' The Dumbest Generation". This leads me to my point. Texting is like muscle memory. You practice and practice for that one good stance in baseball, that great soccer kick, or doing hundreds of pushups. That same concept of muscle memory is taking place within our very fingers! Kids are use to texting short words, and or incorrect spelling to make longer words shorter. Then like the mom said this is happening 2000 times a month! So what is happening is teenagers are so use to typing out short incorrect words to slim down their texts so they can send fast responses or questions, and are forgetting to use correct grammar within their own school papers! I for one can agree to this, because I have done so on occasion. \n

Once just a fad, Twitter is developing into a powerful form of communication. What its growth says about us - and the future of American innovation.

I think the first part of this articles explains my feelings for twitter very well. It describes how silly twitter seems to be for a large majority of people. It then leaks into how it can be used to create deep conversations. They like to mention a couple of times how insignificant the choice of someone's breakfast cereal can actually be more interesting than you'd like to believe.

I found this website while doing research for my CIT IS project. This is a government website that can provide people with the option to use an Occupational Outlook Handbook to look up a job or field he/she is interested in. It seems like it has every job I can think of. This is a great source I found. You can look up statistics of jobs and whether they are growing or not. I found it to be a big help with my project when I was searching for Network Administrators. It gave me a lot of insight into that career field. This is a great article for our class because we have all been working on our CIT IS projects. Most of us have been researching different jobs within the CIT field. This website will have what you are looking for. This Occupational Outlook Handbook can give us a good idea where each job is now and where that job will be down the road. This goes perfectly with our project. I think this site would be useful for any of us. It is a great way to research what you think you are interested in, and maybe decide whether you like that job or not. The amount of detail on this website for each job is incredible. This website was useful for me. It helped me out with my CIT IS project, and I think I will be using it in the future.

It seems like everything in the medical field is trying to go towards technology that requires less human interaction. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are working with a product called "CellScope." CellScope is a microscope that attaches to a camera-equipped cell phone and produces two kinds of imaging, called brightfield and fluorescence microscopy. This device can take images of disease samples and transmit them to medical labs throughout the world. Their goal is to use mobile communications networks as a cost-effective way for medical staff to screen hematologic and infectious diseases in parts of the world that lack access to advanced microscopic equipment. This is just another example of how technology is taking over the medical field. It seems like doctors are required to do less and less work as time goes on and technology becomes more advanced. This was very interesting to me because last week my uncle was emailing me about this. My uncle is a surgeon in Owensboro, Kentucky. He was telling me how he does still perform surgeries, but he can tell that in the future he won't be performing as many. It is obvious the medical industry relies on technology to assist them, and they will only rely on them more in the future.

This site is a funny one to show the reader ways in which English just does not make sense. We have all theses rules but all of them can be broken. There are more rules in English than in most other languages but most of them have limits, exceptions or can be broken.Why can't English just follow the rules like other languages do? I have personally seen how other languages follow their rules and to me, it just seems much easier. If there are rules, they should always be rules and not just be there but not followed. This is why it is so hard for people with a different native language to learn the English language.

This is a Wikipedia article that tell us that there is no longest sentence. It gives some very good examples of how sentences can go on infinitely and still be grammatically correct. This article also gives some examples at the bottom and some of these sentences stretch out to millions of words. In conclusion to posting this article i would like to say that you should not make your sentences that long. Short and precise will keep your readers interested and Hemingway said.

I chose to share this link after reading an article that our class was assigned as homework. The article, Ernest Hemingway's Top 5 Tips for Writing Well ( found at http://www.copyblogger.com/ernest-hemingway-top-5-tips-for-writing-well/ ), quotes an extremely short story by Hemingway that I thought might confuse most of our class. This story is simply, "For sale: baby shoes, never used." This new link introduces another of Hemingway's short stories with a similar theme and a lot more detail. I hope that by linking this story I'll be able to give the class a little bit on insight on Hemingway, Hemingway's great writing style, and the previous short-short-story. However, because Hemingway is the author your going to have to read into what the characters are talking about to truly discern the emotional depth of the conversation. Consider this a further introduction to Ernest Hemingway if you haven't read any of his work already, I hope you enjoy.

Time magazine is a great display of how multimedia and advertising has taken over writing. Just on the main page alone you'll find videos and podcasts, which are completely different from Time Magazine's old periodicals. In addition articles are rated and views can be counted giving readers instantaneous information about the popularity of an article, which wouldn't be feasible with a printed magazine. In addition, there are also polls, apps, facebook pages, and RSS feeds displaying the degree in which technology has become a part of Time's product. Time is a perfect example of how new technology can be implemented to improve a user base.\n\nI think this site relates to our course work because it is such a fine example of how multimedia can be used in almost any situation. Formerly, Time focused completely on its magazine and viewed any form of internet news sites as competition. This is because they offered Time's product for free. But, by adopting multimedia and the internet Time has been able to stay mainstream and maintain respect instead of slowly wasting away like many other news papers and magazines are in this new internet age.

Oddly enough, this article is about another article that will be displayed in entertainment weekly. This article is unique because it is going to contain "embedded" video ads. What this boils down to is an awesome video recording in the middle of your magazine displaying what otherwise would have to be read. This is a bold leap in technology and media displays. I know that I am personally waiting for the day when magazines are just a collage of floating images. This use of technology gets me psyched because it means that people are still trying to be innovative in this form of media. I hope everyone likes the idea as much as I do... maybe then it will become more widespread!

This is about computer and education together.A computer can expand a person's knowledge but over all it may not help in teaching you like a real professor.

I chose this article because I think it can connect to literally almost everyone in the computer world and beyond. This article talks about how Facebook almost has as many users as the entire US population. According to their statistics, they gain 800,000 new accounts per day which is pretty insane. It seems like this is the first truly successful social networking site because it finally gained a profit and it hoping to keep that trend going through 2010. Facebook is here to stay for a while I think, and that's just fine with me.

This article is a very interesting one for the computer geeks of the world and maybe even for government. Google is wanting to map out the inside of businesses and large buildings so that you can no only find your way to the building but the nearest door and which stair case to take and which hallway to turn down. Google is starting a new generation of maps online.   Government on the other hand might not like this. If you map out the inside of the building isn't that making it more accessible to terrorists to plan an attack or for thieves to plan and escape after a jewelry heist? Where will google go from there? Could this turn into and invasion of privacy?   What this means to the CIT majors is that almost anything is possible. If google can map out the indoors what is to stop us from doing anything? The sky.... The basement is our limit.

This article details a new type of anti virus software currently being developed at Wake Forest University. The software uses small crawler programs called ants to identify worms so administrators can tackle the problem. This is relevant to CIT in that when we graduate we may be using this type of software as network admins. i like the fact that the programs are smaller than your normal antivirus software, and dont have to be loaded onto every computer. a single program can take care of an entire network.

This seems like a very good comparison between windows 7 and snow leopard. It has different pages comparing different element. Some include the main UI, task bar, and navigation. It's a great visual article because it gives you screen shots to see exactly what they are talking about, instead of just picturing it in your head.

This article discusses a popular opinion poll discussing the possible repercussions of texting while driving. Although this article doesn't contain much scientific backing, its still extremely surprising to see what people think about texting while driving. I was incredibelly shocked when I read that 97% of those polled thought that texting while driving should be illegal. This number is so surprising to me because the act seems to be so prevalent these days. It feels like whenever your walking down the street, on a bus, or driving everyone around you has there eyes down as the stare at and type on the cell phone. I understand that some people are confident in their abilities to multitask, but lets face it some of the same confident people are just being delusional. I don't think everyone can handle this multitasking, as is evident by the amount of time I spend dodging around people that don't even notice me walking towards them. Beyond that statistic there are also several others that are worth taking a look at. Especially that 50 percent of those polled believe that texting while driving should have similar repercussions to drunk driving. To me this seems to be going a bit to far, but I do agree that there should probably be some punishment. But then again, I almost never use my cell phone, what do all of you think about this poll?

"A Verizon Wireless ad shows a beefy Verizon 3G map next to a less impressive AT&T 3G map. AT&T is suing, saying it leads people to believe AT&T has no phone service outside of its (admittedly skimpier) 3G areas." This makes me sad to be an AT&T user. First off, its all fair game when "brainwashing" the local media. I mean come on, politicians have been doing this for years! When viewing the map you see that there is a lot of white space for AT&T's 3G map. I guarantee you that someone who made a complaint was in that white space, and I bet you that they did it on their phone. "Why is my area not not covered." "It is, you are just stupid sir... you're calling from a 'no signal' spot now." What should Verizon do? Put a huge disclaimer saying THIS IS ONLY 3G AT&T still has coverage nearly EVERYWHERE." That is ridiculous! If anything, AT&T should just 1 either upgrade their 3G area, YEAH for me, or 2 make a comeback commercial. Just like Subway, BugerKing, Pizza Hut, President Bush, they all have negative ads that bounce back and fourth. People really just need to read, any person can see it says, "AT&T 3G Coverage".

This article details how America as a whole has gotten larger, and that the everage body weight has naturally increased according to researchers. An interesting point I found was that luxury stores are scaling back their sizes. So if the tag says size 1o, you may in fact be wearing a size 14 so people still think they are skinny. This sounds like a gimmick just to keep people buying a certain brand because it says they are a size they really aren't. The opposite side of this is the thought now of "if people say this is now the new normal, then I don't need to lose weight." This isn't all a bad thing though because the article states that some elderly people who are overweight may have increased bone density, thereby making them less likely to break bones.....one of the few perks to being overweight.

It seems like one of the big deals with technology anymore is how energy efficient it is. This is why I chose to bookmark this site. This site fills you in on all of the current news about green technology's. This can be useful to anyone because anything that uses electricity can be made to be more energy efficient. This also includes computers which we all love so dearly.