Opportunities to Experiment and "Fail"

Question: Think back to your experiences in middle and high school. How many opportunities were you given to experiment and “fail” in solving a problem? How could a school work today where students were regularly offered such opportunities?

I am having trouble recounting specific examples of when this happened in middle school and high school, but I do remember that there was a good amount of times throughout that we were given a problem where we were set up to try it a certain way and ultimately fail by design. I think that it would do one’s education great things if this were employed by schools more often. Much like Shirky’s point that “Success is 99% failure,” I believe that much success comes from trial and error or getting close to success and then finding where you erred to perfect it. I know for instance that in my COB 202 course, the teacher often put us in groups and set us up to negotiate with one another that would ultimately leave us all unhappy with the result, but we would do our best to ensure that we still reached our goals as much as possible in the process.

I believe that a school could work where students are regularly offered such opportunities. I think that in order for this to work however, grading will need to be adjusted. I like this idea regardless. Grading should be less-focused on the end result, but the process by which you got there. This would work if students were given opportunities to experiment and fail in solving a problem. In this process, students would be able to focus more on the process of solving a problem, would not be pressured to cheat, and would be able to learn how to correct mistakes and follow the process of trial and error – something that they will continue to see in the real world.

FOAF-style Networking

Question: What professional benefits do you see by investing time into a FOAF-style network?

From a personal standpoint, investing time into a Friend of a Friend network can do great things as far as networking goes in the professional world. In recent years, I have been told time and time again that in order to get a job, you truly need to know someone. This is where FOAF comes in. By expressing yourself on an FOAF-style network, you can spread yourself and who are you are to people all over the world, create relationships, and ultimately aid in the process of “selling yourself” for job purposes.

From a corporate standpoint, investing time for research purposes can provide monumentally valuable information to a company in aiding in their marketing strategy. One of every company’s toughest tasks is to identify accurate market segments of different populations of people to whom they will market and sell their products too. An FOAF-style network allows businesses to not only research the product desires and suggestions of many different people, but social aspect allows for firms to more accurately identify the number of potential customers in different target areas. Any information like this enhances a firm’s ability to earn profits and cut costs by not wasting marketing time, money, and energy on people that this type of social network can tell them to disregard.

Online vs. Print Media

I don’t truly make a distinction between online and print media because I expect the same exact information to be on both. If I look at the Pilot Online (Norfolk, VA) or the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I expect it to have the same, but more updated, news stories as is printed on the newspaper at my doorstep in the morning. I think that there has to be an advantage for online media because it is more time-sensitive. Online sites are updated by IT people all day, everday. This is something that you can not do with print media. I do however still respect print media and enjoy its ability to be transported, unlike a computer.

Is eBay safe?

I used to argue to my peers that eBay was completely safe and reliable – until this semester. I had ordered textbooks, video games, clothes and more from eBay for years and likely will take more precaution in the future. Why? Because I ordered textbooks this semester that never came and as a result my grades suffered. Overall, as I do have to admit that these books were from the same eBay user and I have had large successes from eBay in the past, eBay ought to work for most people for many items. I believe that as long as you follow the user’s rating, take note of their posted location and watch for potentially risky items, you should be fine. Most people are scared to order a car on eBay because it is such a big purchase, but I think that I likely will in the future because of great prices and PayPal protection. There is risk, but I believe that sites like this do work and should continue to work with the insurance of PayPal.

What is the Value of a Bit?

Question: What’s the value of a bit? It seems that going after folks who have traded songs or movies online is a huge expenditure of effort and money. Is DRM-protected content the way to go? If you don’t agree, propose another method for the distribution of digital multimedia so that content creators can still be compensated.

Answer: I believe that DRM is not the way to go, not because of the apparent controversy involved that has probably been stirred up by the thieves themselves, but because it is much like the algorithm-type software that encrypts DVDS - it is useless in the large scheme of things and will only continue to be hacked. Additionally, the excessive, costly, and intense law suits that pretty much everyone in the world has a terribly negative attitude about need to be gotten rid of. They often attack the wrong people - the people that steal hardly anything compared to the big guns - and make the content providers who are trying to recover damages look foolish. The RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, a coalition of these content providers that takes care of the industries in an attempt to curb this problem, will end these lawsuits and has begun to work with ISPs to fix this detrimental problem. This new step will hopefully lead to the RIAA attacking the right people - the huge, costly offenders - and get compensated for this stealing more often and efficiently and allow them to take adequate steps in the correct direction by working with those who have the best ability to help them and take control of this current situation (the ISPs).

DVD Copy Protection

Question: The copy protection originally designed to protect content on DVDs has been overcome some years ago. What other methods can you find today that movie studios are using to protect their content on DVDs or other optical media?

Answer: The first big one I found is CSS, which uses keys to allow DVD information to be translated and therefore copied. This was cracked however back in 1999 by people who use reverse engineering of the algorithm. The DVD Copy Association created this as well as the RPC, regional playback control, which the movie studios use to control the geographical and overall distribution of the products that they create. This one has been controversial though as there is likely some obvious profiling of different geographic areas involved. The current most popular, widely-used, and useful form of protecting against DVD copying is AACS, Advanced Access Content System, which protects against DVD copying and now, as of 2005, against HD DVD and Blu-Ray copying as well. Of course, just as always, people are certainly working hard to crack this and enable the continued piracy of Hollywood movies and studios will have to perpetually fight to earn and preserve what they deserve.

WEP/WPA

Question: If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?

Answer: Both of these forms of security are proven to not substantially defend a wireless network from external hacking, which could lead to the compromising of perhaps valuable information within e-mails. Professional, intentional hackers can still hack into your information even if you use these protocols. However, it is clear that she ought to continue to use it/them, as many people still do today years after proof that they not completely effective, because it beats not having them. These protocols can not defend against pros, but they do still protect information against accidental hacking. As most people are not hackers, especially the people near you that are able to pick up your Wi-Fi, most of the time your information should continue to travel peacefully with the use of these two protocols.