Wiki so far...

I will create a new category named Culture. On this section, I will introduce one traditional opera called Glove Puppet, played by a media company called Epili from Taiwan, China. 

The company gets rid of the traditional way of playing puppets. They re-create a new way of performing the show like TV show series. So far, the company has published over 50 TV series, in total about 1850 episodes. ( most episodes can be found on YouTube by typing the world 'epili', or 'The Wulin Warriors' as it's teh recent series.)

One attractive point of these shows is the characters, which are completely approach to real. The backgrounds are also made from real objects--trees, sands, water, even the houses. 

More importantly, the story lines of these shows come from reality, which means they reflect real real life. They take a certain proportion in Taiwanese culture.

Also, I believe there are English translation for the shows; and by any chance if you would be interested, pay more attention to its background music(mostly are instrumental).

Below are some pictures about the characters:

  

P2P

File sharing is a practice of providing access to stored information. File sharing can be done on many ways; for example, the P2P networks and other hosted website service on internet. A common known file hosting service website, RapidShare, allows users to upload documents through email, so that others can easily download from the webpage.

Peer-to-Peer(P2P) network on the other hand, is another way of sharing information. Users can share their files without the need of a central server under P2P. Example of a P2P software would be BitTorrent, where provide users the access to the P2P network once the program is installed. 

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Pfanner, Eric. Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?" The New York Times, April 13, 2009, p. B4. From

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/internet/13iht-piracy13.html

Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy and Confidentiality are big issues for all internet services. While we are creating online user accounts, usually private information are either required to fill out, or as an optional.However, if a user's PC is not well protected, these information can be stolen easily. In addition to that, if a service provider did not have strong security over their clients' privacy, information can also be disclosure when facing hackers attack.

Generally, privacy protection is the duty for both online users and service providers. Users are strongly unrecommended to post their personal information online. For service providers, if they are not confident about their security, they should not provide users a chance to fill out their personal information. Since confidentiality depends on high secure of client information, there's no need to take such risk. 

Advice

One suggestion that I have for Baruch is to open more online course section. In this case, Baruch or professors should improve the way of communication. Email is not efficient enough for sending courses tasks. Professors could create a Facebook group and schedule in a certain hours for which students could have direct communication.

Another opinion is that Baruch should encourage students to join the Facebook group and Blog, as well as to follow the Twitter(far from my knowledge, I don't know Baruch has a Twitter), so that students can learn what events are taking place on our campus, not just they will learn only from email about these events. Therefore I do believe the Freshmen seminar is absolutely important, and should be acted actively. 

Creativity and New Media

Well, I tried to build a avatar in Second Life but I believe my system is not good enough to meet the requirement for the application, so many lags while I run the program. So I used a new virtual world apps called Twinity. Here is my avatar(actually not built base on my own identity but just for fun).

There's a character modification function in the game just like Second life.(ex. the tag [ME])I randomly made adjustment on the character, which you can see the result from the image. You can also change outfit on this menu. Then I chose a emotion of sadness[blue] from the bottom right corner. I think the game is fun though, may be I will rebuild my character in the future.  

Creativity

Creativity is a form of abstract ideas that differentiate from the standards. Once the idea is tested and approved, it will become a design for many matters such as buildings. Yet many creativities we saw today are in the form of new media tools such as virtual worlds and online games.

One way to foster creativity is to allow all people around to work with the tool. For example, Twitter watches and learns from other users modifying their services by outsourcing their product. Then the Twitter programmers can add features from these people's ideas into the application, and thus improving it. 

Virtual worlds, on the other hand, provides more features while creating objects. Everyone is an engineer in the virtual space. People can build a house that need not to follow the rules in reality:the heights, width,shapes for example.

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Miller, Claire C.. Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers. New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html>

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds are online communities that enable users to interact with each other through the web, as well as to create objects. 

There are two common ways of uses for virtual worlds. One is to provide a community for online communication only; and the other one is game based. Yet the virtual worlds we mostly seen today are online games based, which have some business purposes on it. "In most virtual worlds, memberships are free, but players trade real money for virtual currencies, used to buy products, save up in an account or eventually redeem for real money. " stated on a article No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You.

Depends on the background for the virtual worlds creation,they can bring many positive effects such as recreate a world in the past days for memorial purpose.According to Mr.Bard,a user of Second Life, says “The old mailboxes are still here...firmly installed behind his desk.” Also, they serve as some places for relaxation and entertainment. However, virtual worlds are not real after all. We can see how many teenagers has found online games as way to escape the various pressure, not to mention there's is a possibility that ones' privacy may be violated.

Instead of saying foster creativity, it would be better to use the term interest while using virtual worlds. Virtual world can help people gain interests on computer technology, so that they have the motion to learn more.

It's not hard to predict how virtual worlds will look like in the future. Some movies and cartoon shows are already give us a sense of how it might be. Soon people can enter the virtual world and touch everything inside with their own hands, and maybe fighting monsters also.   

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--Laferla, Rufh.No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You. NewYork Times.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Avatar.html>

--Knafo, Saki. In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again. The New York Times.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03virt.html>