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JournalsWhat is the journal?The journal is a written record of the non-textbook work you do in this course. You will turn in the journal with your submissions for lessons 3 and 6. The journal should be kept in a single word processor file. As you learn about more features of your word processor, you can update the journal to take advantage of these features. This is a great place to show off how much you have learned! Why are we doing them?In a traditional classroom course, the student and the teacher have many opportunities for discussion. The journal serves as a substitute for this discussion in a correspondence course. It also gives you a chance to explore more current material since the Learning Guide cannot be rewritten every time an advance is made in the world of computing. How long should they be?This varies from student to student, but generally each entry should be around one paragraph in length. Some entries require more in-depth discussion and should be several paragraphs. I don't mind reading longer entries, but an entry that is over one page in length is much more than is required. The first three lessons have a total of 12 required journal entries. You should add some entries on your own thoughts, or do some of the optional entries. Your journal grade is based on approximately 14 thoughtful entries. Notice that I have used the word "thoughtful"; generally a longer entry will count as more than one thoughtful entry, while several shorter ones may count as a single entry. Feel free to substitute entries based on your own interests in place of either required or optional entries in the Learning Guide. The second journal submission (from lessons 5 and 6) will be somewhat shorter, and the grading for this portion is based on 10 thoughtful entries. Ryan's thoughts on some issuesA few of the issues suggested for journal entries are very controversial, and/or could use further explanation.... Size of your favorite author's worksThis entry will take a bit of math. You can ignore the size of any pictures, since their size depends greatly on the desired picture quality and the number of colors used. Here are some facts to remember:
NapsterThe Napster issue is often poorly explained in the media. In fact, I'm still not sure if the judge in the case understood the real issues. Certainly Lars Ulrich of Metallica had problems sticking to the legal issues. He spent much of his time saying "It's wrong to steal my music!" Ethically, this may be true, but the legal issues are a bit more tricky. Copying this sort of music is illegal, with a few important exceptions. For example, if I own a CD, it is perfectly legal for me to create copies of the songs on that CD as a backup copy. I can legally use these copied songs in my car or at work while the original CD sits at home. This is where things get tricky. I believe that Napster can claim that they are only providing access to the music for these legal purposes. In this case, Napster itself is not breaking any laws, but the people using Napster are breaking the law (unless they own a copy of everything they download). Should the recording industry go after Napster just because it is an easier target than the individual users? Or should they work to get the laws changed? These same issues have already been addressed with books, magazines, and other printed materials. How is Napster different from a library that provides a copy machine to its users? Should the publishing industry try to shut down libraries? Once we settle the issue of what is legal and what is not, we have to determine whether it is possible to enforce the law. If people truly want to trade copyrighted music, there is no way the government can stop them. All the government can do is make it more difficult, and hope to minimize the number of people who do it. See the next section. Internet prohibitionsSince the Internet is a world wide network, no one government can make laws prohibiting any content/activity. The United States government could prohibit pornography, for example, but sites around the world would still be able to provide access to this material. The only way the U.S. government could keep Americans from accessing this material would be to shut down all communication lines out of the country. It is currently impossible to build filtering software that can monitor and shut out all "objectionable" material, whether this material is pornography, copyrighted music, or connections to gambling systems. In fact, it may never be possible to filter these types of material. How will this change our society? The visionary Gregory Rawlins has written a lengthy article on electronic publishing that discusses these issues, as well as the future of books. EbooksMost students answer the question on electronic books by discussing how inconvenient it would be to carry a laptop around and use it as a book. Recently, some electronic book machines have appeared. These machines are much smaller than a laptop, and are designed to be as much a "book" as current technology will allow. They enable you to store one or more books, view and page through them the same way you would a "normal" book. These books are not quite as easy on the eyes as a regular book, but future technology will improve that. In fact, the development of "smart paper" is just around the corner. This would allow an object that looked just like a piece of paper to display images the same way a monitor does today. One of the most frequent arguments against electronic books is that you cannot take a computer everywhere (in the bathtub, to the beach, etc.) What if we create a device that you can take everywhere? A waterproof, solar-powered, bracelet computer that can project images onto a wall, or directly into your eyes. Would this change your thoughts on ebooks?
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