Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Yesterday and today.....


Yesterday, my sis' bf went back to Melbourne to study.. We sent him off and my sis cried.. My bf went with mi to the air port too.. However, upon seeing my sis cryin in tt state, I felt down too.. After i got home, I begin to miss my bf very much.. I called him and met him near our neighbourhood.. I hugged him when I saw him.. People used to say laughter is the best cure, but I guess hugs are also one of the best ones.. It comforts me alot and makes me feel so safe.. I guess I really need him very much.. more than I expected.. I used to tink tt he needs me more than I do.. but now I tink its the other way round..


Anyway, today my bf did something tt surprised me.. I was very touched.. but 1st, I have to admit im someone who is easily contented.. haha.. Usually, I will walk to the bus stop further from my house to go to school.. however, i was running late today and decided to take another bus nearer to my and his house (we stay quite close to each other).. I told my bf i was walkin to tt bus stop when I called him.. I was tinkin to myself dunno will he come down and meet me or not.. hopin but not expectin, i sat at the bus stop quite sometime while waiting for the bus.. suddenly, a familiar face appeared in front of me!! i was so happy and quite surprised.. haha.. he brightened up my day.. i thanked him for giving me tt little surprised (so heart warming for me) and he said, as long as it is within his capability, he will try to make me happy.. I was touched again.. words cant expressed my feelings..


After being with him, I now realised and know y ppl wld wana cohabit.. coz i simply miss him no matter when n he is always on my mind.. just keep thinkin bout him.. he fills every part of my life.. long for his hug tt is always so comforting.....


Thank you my qin ai de boyfriend..Please be always by my side..

Friday, February 23, 2007

QotW5: Online Identity --> Blogs


“An online identity is a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Although some people prefer to use their real names online, most Internet users prefer to identify themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information” (“Online Identity”, 2007).



After being enrolled into COM 125 course, I now belong to an online community. I am in the blogosphere. Blogs have allowed me to write down my thoughts, be it for academic purpose or personal interest. Blogging not only helps my friends understand me better, it also enabled the public to view me. Through my blog, I interact with people (even strangers) by replying to the comments they added in my postings. In a way, this chosen identity establishes reputation. From my research, “Reputation is the general opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organization. It is an important factor in many fields, such as business, online communities or social status” (“Reputation”, 2007)

As stated in the first paragraph, though some people may use their real identity, there are still others who prefer to appear as anonymous. However, “Knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction” (“Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community”, 1996). Hence, identity is important in the virtual world. Identity theft can threaten a person’s credibility and reputation. Personally, I dislike people who use fake identity. This causes online communities to be lack of trust.

"Identity theft/fraud is used to describe cases when means of identification has been exploited for an unlawful purpose. It is believed the thief does deprive the owner of his identity by replacing his reputation with the thief's. This term focus on the act of acquiring the legally attributed personal identifiers and other personal information necessary to perpetrate the personation” (“Online Identity Theft”, 2007). Since I am still a “beginner” in the blogosphere, I only have little and insignificant personal experience of identity theft.

I have friends who are bloggers too. I do view their blogs and leave comments using my “personalized” username. There was once when I was reading my friend’s blog’s comments section and saw a similar username as I do. I was surprised by the rude and insulting content of the comment. I was furious and at the same time quite lost as I could not imagine how many such comments had this “thief” commented (using my username) on others blogs too. This thief definitely tarnished my reputation and caused much misunderstanding between my friend and I, that we nearly ended our friendship because of it. Also, I felt lost as I am afraid that this thief had used my username to purchase things online. I am aware that people do sell things via their blogs as it is free and is convenient. These simple transactions may sometimes be too easy till it is hazardous. However, I was lucky enough for my identity to be only stolen for criticizing others. If not, I could not imagine how much I have to pay when the bills come. (Till now, I am still unsure whether one could assume my identity and shop online while I have to pay for what I have not purchased via blogs.) I guess this is one major disadvantage when I am so unfamiliar with how the net works.


Donath, J.S. (1996, November 12). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 23, 2007 from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, February 15). Online Identity. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity

Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, February 22). Online Identity Theft. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity_theft

Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, February 10). Reputation. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation

Saturday, February 10, 2007

QotW4: Online Gift Economies

A gift economy is known as sharing economy or also gift culture. So then what exactly is a gift economy? A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo (the Latin term for the concept of “a favor for a favor”). Typically, this occurs in a cultural context where there is an expectation either of reciprocation—in the form of goods or services of comparable value, or of political support, general loyalty, honor to the giver, etc.—or of the gift being passed on in some other manner. This can be considered a form of reciprocal altruism. In other cases, gifting is done without implicit expectation of reciprocation (”Gift Economy”, 2007).

In the real world, I am in the gift economy of blood donation. Blood donations give no significant explicit reciprocation. People donate blood on their own will, expecting nothing in return. In the visual world, I consider Taekwondo Yahoo! Groups and NTR 108 (nutrition course offered in SIM/UB) discussion board gift economies.


Internet is filled with junk and jerks. Online interaction is relatively anonymous, there is no central authority and is difficult to impose monetary or physical sanctions on someone. However, the Internet facilitates collaboration. People can meet, plan, and discuss issues without regard to physical location or time. It is easy and very cheap to distribute information across the Internet (“The economies of online cooperation,” 1999). Information is a public good in the strict economic sense, and is also put into its own production process (“Political economy of commons,” 2003). On the Net, the same piece of information could exist both as a commodity and a gift (“The high-tech gift economy,” 2005).


Property is a cluster of background rules that determine what resources each of us has when we come into relationships with others (“Political economy of commons,” 2003). Gift is defined as the obligatory transfer of inalienable objects or services between related and mutually obligated transactors. In gift-giving, people pass on free advice where the recipient is often unknown and the giver may never encounter the recipient again (“The economies of online cooperation,” 1999). Within the scientific community, the gift economy has long been the primary method of socializing labor (“The high-tech gift economy,” 2005).


Motivations for contributing include anticipated reciprocity, one’s reputation, sense of efficacy, need, and the attachment one have to the group. Successful online community carries the features of ongoing interaction, identity persistence, knowledge of previous interactions, visible contributions and recognition, and well-defined and defended group boundaries (“The economies of online cooperation,” 1999).



Last semester, I was enrolled in NTR 108 (nutrition) course. It was an online course where a discussion board was set up in the forum. It was a channel for students to ask and answer questions posted. We, as students, share information that we found, without expecting anything in return, meaning we pass on free advice. Whenever we encounter problems in certain topics, we can post a question in the discussion board and those who have the knowledge could answer us by sending back a reply. Lecturers also visit the discussion board to supervise us and make sure the information we were sharing was correct. This is to me a gift economy because we actually communicate with the UB students who we did not meet before through the discussion board. We help each other by providing relevant information and clearing each other’s doubts. This sharing of information between people we know and “strangers”, does make learning more fun and comprehensive. Also, students work would be recognized and this motivates us to contribute and share what we can offer. This semester, I am also enrolled in NTR 109/110 course. There is still discussion board in the home page and so I consider myself to be still in this gift economy.


In conclusion, digital networks offer us the opportunity to enhance our productivity and growth while simultaneously improving our democracy and increasing individual freedom (“Political economy of commons,” 2003). Personally, I feel that online gift economy is beneficial as we are helping each other without any expectation of reciprocation. This can cultivate good social values and also mould us into un-selfish individuals.


References:

Barbrook, R. (2005). The Hi-Tech Gift Economy. First Monday. Retrieved February 5, 2007 from
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/

Bentler, Y. (2003). The Political Economy of Commons. The European Journal for the Informatics Professional, Vol. IV, No. 3. Retrieved 5 February from
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org

Kollock, P. (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace". Retrieved February 5, 2007, from
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.html


Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, February 4). Gift economies. Retrieved February 8, 2007, from
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Saturday, February 3, 2007

QotW3: Sharing Vs Stealing

“The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and mass dissemination of a wide variety of works” (“Sharing and Stealing,” 2003, pg 1). I guess it is human nature that we like to communicate with each other and share things. Through sharing, we are actually promoting learning and gaining knowledge. “The public benefits because the authors and inventors continue creating original works that these creators may not have otherwise developed and because these creations are freely usable by the public once the limited time has passed” (“Why copyright,” 2005). Copyright gives credit to the authors and also forces them to be more creative.

To me, I feel that copyright is most important in the music industry. Hence, I will focus mainly on it. Through P2P (peer-to-peer) networks, people are able to share files, and this makes copyright a serious problem. I have learnt from my previous semester that scarcity is one of the weapons of influence. When something is new, it is scarce and few people will have access to it. Hence people would want it more. Let us take downloading of new songs from the net for example. In my social circle, many of my friends actually share files through the net. They download new songs from certain websites and transfer to each other via MSN messenger. Many people know this act is illegal but it is still going on. The main reason is because they could get it for free!

Due to this, research have shown that “between 2000 and 2003, the number of CD’s shipped in the U.S. fell by 20% to 750million units (RIAA, 2004); claiming that file sharing is the culprit” (“Effect of file sharing on record sales,” June 2005). This caused the music industry to suffer great loss. Creators are most upset by this because their effort had very much gone to waste. They work hard in producing good music (where much resource is invested into it); however, what they get in return is nothing. Piracy is certainly a very significant problem in today’s music industry. I read the articles and had to agree with this statement: “Collecting information on the internet is “learning”. Posting information on the net is “sharing.” Try exactly the same thing with recorded music and it’s “stealing.” The law treats the two acts differently because facts are in the public domain, while music is someone’s property” (“Sharing and Stealing,” 2003, pg 23).

To counter “stealing” through the net, there are solutions which can be adopted to curb or improve the current situation. Firstly, as many scholars have suggested, the net should have systems that “permit P2P file sharing, charge money to the people who enjoy it and use funds to compensate creators and copyright owners” (“Sharing and Stealing,” 2003, pg 31). Many others like Netanel, Professor Raymond Ku and Professor Glynn Lunny proposed that a levy imposed on devices and blank storage media is the best available solution. Professor Terry Fisher on the other hand has a slightly different solution. He would encourage copyright owners of music recordings and films to register their works with the Copyright Office, where they will be responsible for administering tax. Professor Daniel and Larry suggest modifying existing collective licensing to extend to P2P file trading. Lastly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation proposed that the best solution would be for the music industry simply to agree to offer music fans a license to engage in file sharing for a monthly fee. (“Sharing and Stealing,” 2003, pg 31-33).

Personally, I feel that the suggestion by the Electronic Frontier Foundation is the best. I dislike buying certain albums as they only contain few songs that I like. I prefer to choose the songs that I like and “buy” (meaning downloading) it through the net. In this way, I can create my own song album and enjoy listening to it without the fear of being caught for “stealing”. Being a technology idiot, I don’t know if there is already a system that allows people to “buy” their own music online but even if it has, the cost will be quite high I guess. Lastly, other than these technical structures, I feel that education is equally as important to let the public know the issue of copyright and effects of piracy.

References:

Litman, J. (2003, November 23). "Sharing and Stealing". University of Michigan. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved on January 18, 2007, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141

Ovalle, C. (2005). “Why copyright?”. University of Texas at Austin, Course INF 312. Information in Cyberspace. Retrieved on January 18, 2007, from http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/2.php

Felix, O.G., Strumpf, K. (2005, June). “Effects of file sharing on record sales”. Retrieved on Jan 18, 2007, from
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_June2005_final.pdf

Friday, February 2, 2007

02.02.07, Friday, a day to remember.....


02.02.07, Friday, a special day to me and another person.. And that other person is, guess who?? my boyfriend.. hehe.. Ya, after 4 yrs of being single, I am now with someone, 我的他。。 I chose this colour for the font is also because of him.. He likes blue, so since dis is about him, I used blue (thou i dun really like it..) =p Actually I enjoyed being single.. It was fun to me.. Do all sorts of things that I like.. However, that doesnt mean that I dislike the situation Im in now.. Because I noe that there is now this someone in my life who will be able to share my happiness and tears, care for me, provide a shoulder to lean on, give me a hug when I need one, comfort my fears, make me laugh, give me support, be a good listener, tolerate all my nonsense..... I hope to stand by each other, have trust in each other, have lots of patience, be understanding, shower lots of tender loving care..... I wish "us" all the best and look forward to our "couple-hood".. 一起建立美好的r/s and 用很多爱来灌溉,让它茁壮成长。。从此刻起,我的生命将会不一样,它将会是多姿多彩的!!