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Home/ IT100_50/2010 Reader Group/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Mike Sanders

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Mike Sanders

Mike Sanders

Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “Who owns the words?” Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.”
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Many things are available for use or download on the internet, copyrighting is almost completely pointless.
  • At the same time it’s clear that technology and the mechanisms of the Web have been accelerating certain trends already percolating through our culture — including the blurring of news and entertainment, a growing polarization in national politics, a deconstructionist view of literature (which emphasizes a critic’s or reader’s interpretation of a text, rather than the text’s actual content),
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Technology and new internet sites are now used by many companies. Twitter is common for people to follow what a certain company, television station, politician, etc. are doing at the current time. Twitter and other websites also allow people to see what the stated people will be doing in the coming future.
  • TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY has bestowed miracles of access and convenience upon millions of people, and it’s also proven to be a vital new means of communication. Twitter has been used by Iranian dissidents; text messaging and social networking Web sites have been used to help coordinate humanitarian aid in Haiti; YouTube has been used by professors to teach math and chemistry.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Technology of today is being used in many ways not used before. People of all kinds can use Twitter, YouTube and other websites to teach, plan events, and do other things.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • As reading shifts “from the private page to the communal screen,”
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Readings are now not just in front of one person, but available to any person in front of a computer screen.
  • It’s no longer just hip-hop sampling that rules in youth culture, but also jukebox musicals like “Jersey Boys” and “Rock of Ages,” and works like “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” which features characters drawn from a host of classic adventures. Fan fiction and fan edits are thriving, as are karaoke contests, video games like Guitar Hero, and YouTube mash-ups of music and movie, television and visual images. These recyclings and post-modern experiments run the gamut in quality. Some, like Zachary Mason’s “Lost Books of the Odyssey,” are beautifully rendered works of art in their own right. Some, like J. J. Abram’s 2009 “Star Trek” film and Amy Heckerling’s 1995 “Clueless” (based on Jane Austen’s “Emma”) are inspired reinventions of classics. Some fan-made videos are extremely clever and inventive, and some, like a 3-D video version of Picasso’s “Guernica” posted on YouTube, are intriguing works that raise important and unsettling questions about art and appropriation.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      The internet is now allowing for people to get involved in past popular things, and many people now do remakes of classic pop culture items.
Mike Sanders

Scan This Book! - New York Times - 0 views

  • Indeed, the explosive rise of the Web, going from nothing to everything in one decade, has encouraged us to believe in the impossible again. Might the long-heralded great library of all knowledge really be within our grasp?
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Using the internet, Google hopes to make a huge library with much knowledge available.
  • The idea is to seed the bookless developing world with easily available texts.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Books would be rendered essential useless, as everything one would ever need to look up or know would be available online.
  • When books are digitized, reading becomes a community activity. Bookmarks can be shared with fellow readers. Marginalia can be broadcast. Bibliographies swapped. You might get an alert that your friend Carl has annotated a favorite book of yours.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Knowledge about the books would now be available to everyone. People could communicate and notify one another about the books.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • There are dozens of excellent reasons that books should quickly be made part of the emerging Web. But so far they have not been, at least not in great numbers. And there is only one reason: the hegemony of the copy.
  • A luckier 10 percent are still in print.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Only 10% of remaining books are still being printed. The compaines who publish the books do not find it profitable anymore to bother physically publishing.
  • Two points outraged them: the virtual copy of the book that sat on Google's indexing server and Google's assumption that it could scan first and ask questions later. On both counts the authors and publishers accused Google of blatant copyright infringement.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Many people believed that Google was committing copyright infringement. With the internet now though, many movies, TV shows and other things are available for download. Copyright infringement has almost become a thing of the past.
  • The Chinese scanning factories, which operate under their own, looser intellectual-property assumptions, will keep churning out digital books. And as scanning technology becomes faster, better and cheaper, fans may do what they did to music and simply digitize their own libraries.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Scanning technology will continue to get faster, and any legal lawsuit against Google might not be resolved before all books and anything in print are scanned to the internet.
  • In the clash between the conventions of the book and the protocols of the screen, the screen will prevail. On this screen, now visible to one billion people on earth, the technology of search will transform isolated books into the universal library of all human knowledge.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      The strength and rapid, constant growth of the internet will be too much in the end for anyone to fight to keep books around. All printed items will end up on the internet sooner or later.
Mike Sanders

Skydiver Aims to Jump From 120,000 Feet, Break the Sound Barrier | Wired Science | Wire... - 0 views

  • Baumgartner, the Red Bull star who has done everything from crossing the English Channel during free fall using a carbon fiber wing, to BASE jumping off the tallest buildings in the world, is planning to ascend to the stratosphere in a pressurized capsule carried by a massive helium balloon. Once reaching 120,000 feet, the plan is to depressurize the capsule, open the door and step off.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Baumgartner is attempting to set the world record for highest skydive. He also aims to break the sound barrier while descending.
  • The new suit being used by Baumgartner is made by David Clark, the same company that made Kittinger’s suit as well as full pressure suits for astronauts and military pilots flying at the edge of the atmosphere in aircraft such as the SR-71 Blackbird, the U-2 and the X-15. The suits provide an artificial atmosphere that allows pilots to survive in what would otherwise be a a deadly environment.
  • ...7 more annotations...
    • Mike Sanders
       
      The height Baumgartner will be at is normally uninhabitable without proper equipment. The suit he is going to wear is going to be similar to that of an astronaut's.
  • Another potential problem is maneuvering during free fall. In order to achieve Mach 1, Baumgartner will have to adjust his position during free fall and a normal suit is too restrictive to allow sufficient freedom of movement. One of the worries is what would happen if a person were to begin tumbling.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      There are several things that can go wrong with the jump, many of which being potentially lethal. One is that Baumgartner wants to break the sound barrier, to do so he must be able to maneuver properly; an average suit would not allow him this ability to make any change if needed.
  • So far the Red Bull Stratos team has tested the new suit in wind tunnels, low pressure chambers and several jumps from 25,000 feet. Baumgartner has been fine tuning his “delta” position that he will use to achieve the supersonic jump.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Baumgartner has been successful in his first few practices with the suit. The team working with him is taking everything slow, trying to make sure that everything goes right.
  • Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner has been working with a company that makes space suits for astronauts in an effort to pull off a record-setting jump with the Red Bull Stratos project that he hopes will also lead to safer flight suits for future astronauts.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Baumgartner not only wants to achieve success for himself, but for future space exploration.
  • Ebullism can strike at 19,000 feet, but at 120,000 feet, the outside air pressure is less than one pound per square inch, so vapor bubbles in the blood expand causing the blood to basically boil.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Ebullism is one of several potential problems with the jump. If the suit malfunctions mid-jump, Baumgartner will be in danger and there is a high chance of him losing his life.
  • No person has ever broken the sound barrier during free fall, though it is thought if a person were forced to bail out of a spacecraft at altitudes much higher than 120,000 feet, they would achieve supersonic speeds involuntarily. Baumgartner wants to help researchers better understand the possible affects of supersonic speeds on a person falling through the atmosphere as well as the affects on the suit.
    • Mike Sanders
       
      Baumgartner wants to be the first individual to break the sound barrier in free fall and hopes to give researchers some new evidence of affects on the suit and person themselves.
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