Facebook 101

In 2001, I had a GE class that was conducted both in the classroom and in a virtual learning environment that was the UP UVLe(pronounced oble after the oblation). It was fun attending class and simultaneously surfing the net (the downside was internet connection in 2001 was at 50 kbps).

Today, or rather the other day, I saw a professor post a note announcing that he’ll be conducting classes via facebook and has invited others to “sit in” and observe. I have been sitting in as I am curious how his class will turn out. So far a few students have already recited (posted comments). Good thing for them the professor gives class recitation grades because there seems to be little participation from the class. I’m having fun“sitting in” their class while playing poker on facebook. I bet the class members are having loads of fun attending their facebook class from while taking care of cows at Farmtown and shopping at Yoville or while betting the farm at a table here at Texas HoldEm Poker .
This innovation in learning and teaching surely breaks boundaries, both time and distance( and stage fright of students).

I wonder if they can superpoke their professor. lol

2M dollar FINE for sharing MUSIC online!

OUCH! Something to think about: will our courts ever rule against a local like this? Scary thought right?

"MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (KABC) -- A Minnesota mother of four is facing a nearly $2 million fine for illegally sharing music she downloaded on her computer.

A jury ruled that 32-year-old Jammie Thomas-Rasset owes $1.92 million to four major music labels after she downloaded and shared 24 songs by artists such as Green Day, Janet Jackson, Godsmack and Richard Marx.

The jury decision amounts to $80,000 per song.

Thomas was found guilty of similar charges in 2007 and fined $220,000 in damages. But that verdict was thrown out because an error in jury instructions, paving the way for a retrial and Thursday's ruling."

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=6875021&rss=rss-kabc-article-6875021

Censors-Schmensors

One of the most-watched videos on YouTube of late is the one of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death. I don’t subscribe to YouTube. I mean, sure, I watch videos on it, but I never signed up. Not until today, that is, when I tried to watch this particular video because YouTube wanted to make sure I am 18 years old or older to watch the disturbing clip taken from a phone cam.

I don’t know her or her politics but I cried. Neda was shot in the chest during a rally protesting the results of the recent elections in Iran. During that time, there was close surveillance on internet activities. The person who took the video couldn’t post it directly on YouTube without endangering his family. So he emailed it to a friend, who forwarded it to other friends, until it found its way to YouTube. CNN picked it up from there.

If the Iranian government wanted total internet silence, it should have completely shut-off the internet. Fortunately for the protest movement and for free speech, the government could not unplug itself from cyberspace. Whatever its reasons, it allowed limited access to the internet.

The internet has been a powerful tool for protest movements. But it takes but little imagination to say that if protesters can use the internet, so can the government.

The email message said, “Please let the world know.” The world knows. Censor that!

Google Me

A few weeks ago, a cousin from the States advised me to Google myself and start acting with common sense on what I find. I thought it was a prank, until she told me that if I wanted a good reputation, I should do it.

This advice took root somewhere. She was nixed by two potential employers, and is now paying a private company good money to clean up, mainly because of her pages in Facebook.

Let’s just say her account had several photos and comments that showed lack of judgment. Let’s add that she and her co-workers from her previous job exchanged posts that cast her former employer in a bad light. Throw in a line from her profile that says she usually sleeps in late and prefers the afternoon as her optimal time of day.

Maybe she thought the photos were funny, or that the posts were harmless, as she was no longer with the company anyway. But then again, maybe the two bosses that considered her application had concerns, so they decided to do a background check. How convenient it is that those two bosses had internet access. Google is, after all, user friendly.

Here we were thinking the internet could help us build social networks, and so we put almost every aspect of our lives in public display. Little do we recognize it could also pull us down. In most cases, all it takes is a Google page, our name, and a click.

Virtual Death

"It is only stalking when the person pursuing you is not cute, otherwise it is love" said a female professor who was "stalked" by a foreign professor in one of the moot competitions. The actus reus of stalking being that he booked a room beside hers on more than one occasion.

Six years ago I reluctantly joined friendster with the primary goal of gathering intelligence on women friends and guy enemies. Through friendster I managed to gather a lot of information on potential enemies and potential dates. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

I realized then that I now had a "virtual life" through which I kept connected with friends adrift at sea or just bumming around in the states. I valued comments and testimonials of friends like a permanent yearbook that I could readily show to anyone who checks out my profile.

Checking out profiles became a hobby until friendster decided to incorporate the "who's viewed me" feature in which case I just decided that it is more important to know people who are viewing me that to view profiles anonymously.

Until last summer. An unknown person emailed me threats and whatnot, sending me messages on friendster, and even showed me my pictures which I later realized came from friendster and facebook. I realized the potentiality of this happening long ago so I set my profile parameters as secure as I can, but apparently kung gusto may paraan.

So I decided to kill my virtual self by deleting my friendster and facebook accounts. Although I could always reactivate my facebook account and play mafia wars again, I lost my friendster profile along with all the testimonials and the far-away-friend-connections I had. Fortunately friendster did not delete my blog there, although I could never update that blog again.

The unknown person turned out to be a woman scorned of which hell knew not such fury. Although presently a peace has been declared, I am still jogged by the thought that a virtual fight or war can now be fought and that my virtual life was a willing casualty.

Hello. I’m Joey, but you can call me Crazy.

I used to blog anonymously and often write in cryptic. But since I have to edit my Blogger profile and put my real name on display for this one, I deleted all the entries in my other Blogspot, uhm, blog.

Why? Because I don’t want to own the words I published. I don’t want random people or mere acquaintances to think that they know me so well just because they’ve read my blog. I don’t want to open myself up to liability, for defamation or otherwise. At the end of the day, I’m just a private person, who only turned to blogs because she lost the key to her desk drawer and has nowhere to keep her old-school journal.

Now won’t you just let me stay veiled and comfortable behind my computer screen?

No, really. I think the internet is wonderful for allowing me and countless others to just put things out there—to have a voice (even when I don’t want others to recognize it), and an audience (who probably don’t find any sense in my writing anyway). And I am actually thinking of putting up a blog with my name on display after this and write about things that matter, things I want to discuss with everyone else. Nothing too personal though. The vastness of the world wide web still scares me.

Look Me Up In The World Wide Web

Yesterday, I may have violated Privacy Laws of several jurisdictions when I tried to "Geo-Locate" my torrent peers. Oh, I wasn't stalking. I was just fueled by a healthy curiosity as to who were also downloading the movie "Perfume: The Story of A Murderer," and as to WHERE these people are. Bwahahaha. Fade evil laugh. Enter Twilight Zone theme song.

Naturally, what I did was to Google several websites using “IP address” and “find people” as my search parameters. For my agenda, I have chosen this user-friendly website, http://whatismyipaddress.com (which happens to be the first one on the list - yes, computers make us lazy.)

I tried it out first with my own IP address.
I typed it in.
I hit enter.
My eyes became as large as saucers.

Forget the site's caveat: “Geolocation technology can never be 100% accurate in providing the location of an IP address.” Pfft. Really now, it was only off by few miles. Thanks to this Geo-Location map (powered by Google, of course), a satellite view of my village (and our house) can be seen. Zoom in closer and you’d see our dog licking its balls.

*Shudder*