Oh, Well, This is Still a Thing...

Didn't even remember I had made this, looks like I'll have to find my old images or something. If you can't tell, the post on this were for a class at University of Washington (Tacoma branch). I just noticed that googling my name brings this up as the first page, classy...

Well, maybe I'll use it, nothing like not posting in 5 years to bring the crowds!

Break out the 1337!
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Scavenger hunt!

This was awesome, the hardest part was printing the cookie file because I had to find a stupid printer, we should do this more, because we rule at it, and want more points! Bwahaha! But now he just said they're supposed to be longer, so I guess this has become the hardest part. Lets see, what to say... Well, I think the last time i did a scavenger hunt was at the begging of the year when the school made us do one, it was cool, we had to find things about the school and do math and random stuff. My team won, because they had me, and I'm awesome, pretty much. Alright then, that seems like a fair bit, I'm just going to have to hope this is long enough to appease his desire on the blog requirements, maybe I should make my font bigger, nah, he'd notice that. Ok then, wish me luck....
Oh, and thanks to Justin for helping me, you can find his blog on http://andrewfry.blogspot.com/ near the bottom right in the list of student blogs.

An Island, the size of Gibraltar.

The biggest purchase I'd make online would probably be anything shy of a house or car. When you buy things online, the point is that it's convenient, cheaper, faster, or a combination of things. The problems with buying things like houses or cars, is that these are things you generally want to see in real life to get a feel for what they're like. To buy a house entirely online would be kind of a bad idea, because there's a lot of things you could miss. Now, I might use the Internet to direct me to houses I'm interested in, like, certain locations or sizes, but to do the entire procedure online would be difficult. So all in all, my limit for an online purchase probably is... anything, that I feel comfortable with buying based entirely off pictures and description alone. This also is affected by the reputation of the seller and other people's experiences, but if I go online, and I know I want a certain car, that I've drove before and liked, and I can go online to trusted site and get that exact car, I'd do it.

How to serve communities (get it? like man, in the twilight zone? aw, never mind)

So, what does is take to make a community? Well, first and for most, people. Without people, a community is, well, probably a lot of left over food or a really boring website. As defined by google:

• A community is a set of people (or agents in a more abstract sense) with some shared element — in particular a group of people who live in the same area is a community. The substance of shared element varies widely, from a situation to interest to lives and values. The term is widely used to evoke sense of collectivism.

Well, there you have it, that's pretty much all you could say if you were being brief about what a community is. I'd say one thing though, this puts emphasis on where someone lives, but, in the case of Internet communities, people could be living anywhere, so in a sense, you live on the Internet too if you use it, and to be more direct, you live on websites that you contribute to in a sense. Think about it, you spend time there, you talk to people there, you complain about small pointless stuff, sounds like a community to me. I'd say a community can be taken as a loose term for any group of people who interact with each other on a regular basis. And what easier way to interact with someone else than the Internet? See? They were made for each other, that definition should include " See: Internet ". Yep...

Heh, oh yeah, I was supposed to do that wasn't I?

Since this blog is part me, and part class topics being put on the blog for grades, this post is to be all about my topic for presentation for class coming up soon. Lets start with the basics, my topic is (insert title here) which is about (insert description about technical topic) and I'm going to have to do a presentation on it for (insert amount of time here). Good thing I chose (Insert topic here) it sounds pretty interesting, I'm hoping to finish the book entirely by the time I have to present, since I'm looking forward to my presentation on (insert date here). I'm sure the main character, (insert name here), will make it out ok by the time I'm done, most books like this one have good endings.

Alright, in seriousness though, I lack a book, which is bad, so, right now, I'm going to google and see what I can find online, be right back.
Well, after a few minutes of searching, possibly I might have to go with 1984, as cool as it sounds, the downside to doing a book everyone knows well is that any mistakes you make are enlarged ten fold. Oh well, it might change, I'm going to look more tomorrow when I have some time to check things out.

Internet Services, like room services, except, your room is your computer.

The internet can be used for many things, such as buying useless stuff (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYokLWfqbaU) or selling useless stuff (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYokLWfqbaU) but of the many services that the Internet provides, I'd say the most used, and most useful, is the ability to share information anywhere everywhere. I mean, think of this service in real life, lets say I wanna share my video, so, I go to a tv company, and tell them, "Hey I wanna share my video, will you guys run it for me?" and they say "sure! 500k please, in cash" and then I'll say "ha, yeah, good luck with that" and after a few days of trying to find places to share it, I end up carrying a battery powered tv around on my shoulder to the park and showing random people till the cops take me in for believing I'm crazy.

Now, do you really want the cops to think you're crazy? Didn't think so.

Or, you could go online and post a video on youtube, share it with thousands of unsuspecting victims, I mean, viewers, and now only the general public thinks you're crazy! Much better.

What I'm really trying to say here is, the Internet provides a service more powerful than anything you could do in real life, the ability to share! (Kindergarten power go!) heh, but you get the picture. How else am I supposed to watch hodepodged parodies of old tv shows? (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LittleKuriboh)

Did I really just buy something?

That's pretty much what I'm thinking right now, I bought a few domain names I've been thinking about for awhile, but it makes me think "what did I really just buy?" probably less than a floppy disk worth of information on some random server I'll never see. Was it easy? oh yeah, way too easy, they make sure buying nothing is as easy as it's gonna get. I suppose I feel that what I payed was a little bit much for just random data off somewhere, but it's the idea of owning it that makes it valuable I suppose. At least with paypal I feel a little more comfortable buying things online, like theses few domains or the DVD of the animated CAD series I got a few days ago, dunno why I feel more comfortable, maybe because they make a bunch of claims of "security" heh. Anyways, for anyone out there buying stuff online, here's some tips:
1. If the computer has ever been used to surf the web with Internet explorer, DO NOT use it for purchases, Internet explorer is like shopping at a shady convenient store with a crazy guy in the back while you're buying your energy drink, you have a high chance of being robed, and once Internet explorer has been used, that guy can stay back there and rob you every time. This also applies to a computer that's used for email with people who open attachments with "exe" in their name (yes, there's people who still believe paper.doc.exe is a word file) and computers where people use heavy p2p and other untrusted things.
2. Don't be stupid. Get firefox.
3. Did I mention not being stupid yet?
4. Please, for love of anything, look at the site, don't be stupid.
K, now that that's done.
5. Under no circumstance will a website HAVE to use money transfers and other BS. Here's how it goes, if the website is selling something you want, unless it's pornographic, the website is eligible for being able to use paypal, thus, it should be using paypal, if it doesn't, LEAVE. (Paypal does not support pornographic sites, thus, if you want to pay for one of those, you're stupid, it's the internet, try harder)
6. K, here's the last one, only buy something online if : It can't be bought in stores, it saves you a considerable amount of money (remember, there's shipping, but, in most cases you don't have to pay tax), it's easier to have it shipped than picked up, or if you're just so lazy you can wait a few days to have it handed to you rather than go out and risk an encounter with the UV ball in the sky.

Buying things online is useful, but you gotta be smart, just like anything else, if you can buy it in person, and it's not a big deal, then do it, take as little risk as possible.
-Lukas