wikipedia

Good morning all,
I have finally gotten around to starting my blog after sitting on wikipedia for nearly an hour just searching random topics and reading about them. who knew I would ever resort to wikipedia as a form of procrastination :

Personally, the extent of wikipedia's knowledge never ceases to amaze me. I searched weebl and bob (some weird internet flash animation) paperclips, yoshi, diddy kong racing, mashed potato, komodo dragons, playdoh, cheeseburgers, pillows, nailpolish, sandpaper and teddy bears. All of these topics had a detailed description of what they were and a large amount of information provided about them. Who on earth sits around and writes and writes about mashed potatoes??? Although I did learn that when making them i should use warm milk as opposed to cold, because the cold milk will set the start and makes the potatoes 'gluey'.

The actual articles I searched were about sculpey and futsal. I use sculpey a lot in my artworks and I played futsal in high school, and was a qualified referee at one point. The wikipedia articles were quite thourough and seemed accurate as far as i know. It would appear the editors are doing a bang up job :) Both articles had correct spelling and grammar, appropriately placed paragraphs and headings, and correct referencing :) The articles were fair and balanced, although i don't know if sculpey and futsal have 'sides' to take. the sculpey article could have been longer but besides that it was good :)

Anyway, that's all folks :)
(until next week)

Lecture 6

A Short History of the Computer and the Internet

- Charles Babbage
- Alan Turing
- Commercially produced by IBM in 1950’s
- Xerox PARC
- Apple (Steve jobs and Steve Wozniak)
- IBM and Microsoft

The Internet:
“(i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons;
(ii)is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and
(iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.” (sourced from www.learning@griffith.edu.au)

- Send information in packets
- ARPANET
- WWW= World Wide Web
Cyberspace
- World 1 - the objective material world of natural things and their physical properties
- World 2 - subjective consciousness: intentions, calculations, feelings, thoughts, dreams, memories, etc in individual minds
- World 3 - the public structures produced by living minds interacting with each other and the real world.

Email:
-virtual mail system
-susceptible to spam
-FTP (file transfer protocol)
-direct downloads
-quicker than web browser
IRC (internet relay chat):
- Real time chat system
- Popular in 1990’s
- Risk of hackers
- Chat rooms

MUDs, MOOs, MUSHs, etc.
-dungeons and dragons, world of warcraft, everquest
-typed commands