Article 2: Google Buys Youtube

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t/google-buys-youtube-billion/#.TsQqYsOAq0t


In October 2006,  Google Inc. announced its decision to purchase YouTube, the popular video-sharing site, for $1.65 billion. Under the terms of the deal, YouTube would remain independently operated at the outset, keeping a separate brand and keeping its headquarters in San Bruno along with Youtubes co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen as employees, and all YouTube's other employees will remain with the company. Google will keep also keep running Google Video, a less profitable site.


The deal had put pressure on Yahoo to buy facebook.com in order to stay in the market. The history of youtube is quite simple. It started in Hurley's garage in 2005, he made the site to be able to share videos with family online. Since then the website has blossomed and now  shows more than 100 million video clips per day along with it's worldwide audience of 72.1 million in august 2006.


I think that $1.65 bn is a nice price for a simple concept. The dealmaking reflects how the growth of online, user-created video has emerged as a potential source of revenue for the sagging recording industry. There have been and still are many copyright infringement lawsuits against Youtube (usually by Sony or other companies) for the use of music on this site, I think this is ridiculous as Youtube is an easy way to advertise music before you download it. In 2011, Google now owns Youtube, Blogger, Gmail, FeedBurner, Picnik and all the other assorted Google apps. I wonder whether it's a good or bad thing that Google owns a huge chunk of the internet.

Article 1: The Rise of Boxxy: An Internet Meme

* http://boxxystory.blogspot.com/2009/01/rise-of-boxxy.html



For those of you don't know who boxxy is she's a character created by Catie Wayne. In early 2006, this young sixteen year old girl who liked to hang around the anime social networking website, Gaia Online, made a few videos for her friends and put them up on youtube (video 1 and video 2). Like most of the thousands of videos uploaded everyday it was lost amongst the crowd and forgotten. That was until sometime in late December when someone stumbled across her videos and started posting them on the big image board sites like 4chan (4chan, if you don’t know is the birthplace of many of the internet’s more endearing fads). The presence of the videos created a dispute on 4chan, leading to various flame wars and hacking incidents among factions that claimed to either support or oppose Boxxy.


The subsequent reaction to Boxxy seemed to surprise even the internet, (which is used to the unusual). There was an explosion of controversy, splitting the male residents of 4chan into two groups: the lovers of Boxxy and the haters. Some wanted to name her queen of the internet. Some just madly wanted her to go away and stop clogging up their forums. (The female forum residents, the nerd girls, were just perplexed)  In a matter of days, Boxxy went from being nowhere to being everywhere. 



Reprisal


Many of the most virulent haters, who saw the Boxxy meme spreading across the internet like a plague, the ones who found the situation intolerable, formed a coalition called the Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction (CBRC).


They declared war on the Boxxy meme and vowed to expose her identity and use it as blackmail to get her to leave the internet forever. Boxxy posted a reply to this in a video (video 3). Through some tough detective work, they managed to find an older youtube account of Boxxy and later to get an email and to hack into her video accounts. With control over her youtube, they sent Boxxy a video telling her never to post again or they’d release her contact info to the world. Boxxy subsequently disappeared from the internet. The Boxxy lovers were defeated.


That was seemingly the end of the Boxxy meme. It lasted roughly twenty days, but in that brief time, Boxxy scored almost a million google searches.The internet is full of thousands of cases like this, they come and go and disappear and most people are completely unaware that they ever happened.


This is a story of the underside of the Internet. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a huge deal about a meme, or any memes for that matter, on the internet. It shows how a lot of people just jump on the bandwagon for anything that's 'popular' and easily loved or hated on. I also didn't understand why so many people hated this girl and they didn't even know her. It is odd to think things like this happen, it just goes to show what sheep people are. It's interesting as a quirk but this mass mentality causes things to spread wildly out of control in the blink of an eye.




* this is an old article written in 2009 during the rise of Boxxy and since then Boxxy has returned to internet uploading new videos in 2011.


Boxxy's youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Boxxybabee

Factors to Consider When Purchasing a PC/Laptop For Your Course

1. How much can I afford to pay for a computer? The first thing that most of us are constrained to is budget so this is the first thing you should consider. We always want the best but we need to be grounded on what we can afford. So get a budget and stick to it. For a  course a basic computer is all that is needed, one that can run applications such as Microsoft word and photoshop and search the web. This is important because it means you will not overspend on a hi-tech PC/laptop that is not needed.

2. The next thing you should be looking at is your requirements. What is the machine going to be used for? Make a list of applications for which you plan to use your PC/Laptop. For example, will you use your PC to prepare letters and reports? Prepare visual presentations? Access the Internet? Listen to music? Create and work with graphics? This is an important factor to consider because it means you will get the right PC/Laptop for your course and be able to complete assignments correctly.

3. How long will I keep this computer? Try to estimate the length of time you will use your computer before buying the next one. If you expect use your PC for several years or if you think you may later want to add new applications, consider one that is expandable, so you can add new components, such as a modem, printer, or add-on boards. Make sure the PC has expansion slots so you can connect these devices to your PC. Buying a PC/laptop that will last is essential.

4. Check out the manufacturer’s and seller’s reputations and warranties and become familiar with various brands and models. Talk with friends, classmates, lecturers, and others about their PCs. Ask about the performance of their PCs and get recommendations from people you trust. This is important because it means you will get honest recommendations. Be careful about what a salesman might say in a shop, they only want to see you something that may not be right for you.

5. Next it is on to RAM. Ram is a primary type of memory. Memory is important because it allows instructions and data to be stored and modified. This best thing to do is buy a PC/laptop with as much as possible and remember if you go above 4 GB of ram then you must make sure you get Windows 7 64bit as your operating system.

6. Processor. The central processing unit (CPU) is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer programme, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The best CPU I can recommend is Intel. I currently have Intel® Core™ i3 Processor which I find efficient for my course and any computer games I play such as Portal 2. As the processor is the brain of your computer so it is important that you get a fast processor, this means your computer will perform task faster.

7. The last thing to do with the actual computer is a good virus and spy ware package. This is possibly the most important part of protecting your computer. It might get attacked at some point so be prepared if it does. There are many companies that sell antiviruses such as Norton and Mcafee but there are also free programmes on the internet such as AVG and microsoft. Protecting your PC/laptop is important because it means your desktop will be protected against any viruses that may infect your PC/laptop.

Intro to Elena.

I think it's funny that my fifth post happens to be my "introduction". Heh.

Anyway hello, My name is Elena. I'm one of those true 90s kids who grew up with class shows like Hey Arnold etc etc. Those were the days. I like in one of those small towns in Wicklow where nothing ever happens but when something does, everybody knows about. I love to listen to music.  The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bon Iver and Ellie Goulding would be my favourite artists. I'm not that into modern music like Gaga, The Wanted and other generic trash just get on my nerves.

I'm currently studying Applied Psychology in IADT in Dun Laoghaire. I love the course. I like the mixture of multimedia and psychology, it will be interesting to see how they both combine with one another. I'm still undecided about which path I should follow in my second year here. My favourite lecture so far has been Perception and Ergonomics. We've been reading some case studies by Oliver Sacks which I'm really enjoying.

Well I think that's all for my introduction. If you follow me you can look forward to random posts about stuff I like. Yay for you.

Useful Psychology Websites

http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/introduction-to-psychology/content/class-sessions
Here is a site from Yale with Intro to Psych lectures. They're interesting to listen to and can help give a better understanding of some aspects of the course.

http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/index.php
This site contains great case studies concerning cyberpsych.

http://www.ottobib.com/
A useful site to help with referencing as I'm terrible at it myself. (test with Olivia today. sigh.)

Mr. Nobody Review

Gorgeous, experimental, mind-boggling, disorienting, fiercely complex, incredibly high-concept, and truly original, Jaco Van Dormael’s “Mr. Nobody” is the most fascinating science fiction film I have ever seen. And it’s beautifully shot to boot. It has a huge relation to psychology. The first scene of the film being based on Skinner's pigeon superstition theory (conditioning).

Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) wakes up one day to find himself the oldest mortal alive in 2092. Humanity has conquered mortality through an endless renewal of cells, and the world now watches in fascination as Mr. Nobody, the last mortal alive, edges towards death. Everyone wants to know the life that he has lived. Nemo, memory fading, spits out contradictory pieces as he is prodded, and no one is sure what happened and what didn’t. Did he fall in love or become a bum? Did he take care of his ailing father or became a successful businessman? Did he die after being rejected by the love of his life or married the first girl he saw at the school dance? Did he drown in a car in the lake or at the bottom of his own swimming pool? Did he drown at all? Or was it a car accident? Wait, how can he be dead and alive at the same time?

These are just a few, I repeat, a few, of the possibilities posed in “Mr. Nobody”. The film is simply sumptuous, a feast for your senses. It references the big bang theory, the nature of time, superstring theory, and memory – the thought that the universes splits whenever you make a decision, and allows countless versions of yourself to exist simultaneously, in parallel universes, living out every possible version of your life. What an idea. What a concept. Haven’t we all thought of this at one time or another, if only for a fleeting second? What it would be like to be able to find out what would have happened when you took the other path. We’ve all been torn at a fork in the road, and free will means that we weight the possibilities as best as we can, with the information available to us at the time, and make a choice. We go on living our lives none the wiser, because time is only linear and proceeds in one direction. That old saying “You can’t turn back time” – imagine if that was not true.

In the end, however, we discover that this is a human story. It all boils down to a little boy and the impossible choice that he faces. It’s a choice that should not be thrusted upon any child, and it was thrusted upon Nemo. Just like that adorable little clownfish who set off on the journey of a lifetime, Nemo set off on his, all of his, actually. The weight of the decision ungluing him at that very moment from the temporal dimension of linear time as we know it, and saw him pursuing all possible lives in parallel. What girl does he end up falling for, what life he ends up living, remains a mystery until the very end. It doesn’t really matter though, because this is a case where the journey actually does matter more.

Even though Nemo supposely only has three main lives in the film, Leto revealed in an interview that he actually plays 12 different versions of one character, and that some we only see in background, one only in one scene. It is an amazing performance. I thought he was great ever since “Requiem for a Dream” and then in “Lord of War.” This role cements him as a solid character actor. His face is somehow suitable for science fiction – it sounds weird, but there is something futuristic about his eyes, you can almost see right through them. He also seems to have a penchant for strange, non-linear characters. I hope he does more of them.

Agreed. This is a film like no other, and one that will be talked about in years to come. There is no right or wrong choice here. The interesting choice, however, would be to watch it.

Random blog 10/10/11: Some Songs I Like At The Moment

Costume Party by Two Door Cinema Club.

Pink Radio by HARES

The Saboteur by The Kooks