Ugh...I just wrote this big long post about Microsoft vs Mozilla and it was fun and made sense, but with a click of a button poof! it was gone! I'm sick and tired...this is not a good day! grrrrrr....

OKay...I tried to look at this assignment as objectively as i could. It would be the obvious answer to say that Microsoft does not encourage you to leave their site and lpocks you in and tries to get you to love only them, but in this case i have to stay with the obvious. Mozilla from the get-go, right on the main page there is a link to an outside webpage. Of course its a link to an article on how Mozilla is better than IE, but the link dumps you out onto an outside site trusting that you will hit your Back button to return. That's a little trusty don't you think? As a web developer, we build alot of car dealership websites in which we link to the national car ocmpany's website for info, but we always do so as a pop-up window with no navigation so taht you are forced to merely close the window when you are done and return to the dealer website. Why do we do this? Because we don't want the dealership to lose their customer. Mozilla runs the risk of losing you to their competitors by doing this.

It is difficult to find a link to an outside source on Microsoft's webpage. In fact, most of the links are geared toward selling their products and their product support. Mozilla's website seems geared toward community. They have Blogger areas (tho most is about Firefox and other Mozilla related things), newsgroups etc. Microsoft does not have these things.

Mozilla seems to encourage feedback and suggestions with areas where you can become one of the coders and write to the developers with suggestions and whatnot. Microsoft is Microsoft...a bill gates conglomerate and don't seem to need anyone because they have programmers they pay big bucks for (that was the head medicine talking...i'm a grump).

From a developer's standpoint, i prefer IE. IE supports pretty much every form of software and has most of the bugs worked out. Firefox can be a nightmare when working with java, javascript and other programming languages. More often than not we have problems with people who use Firefox. But, I like Firefox for the fact that people developed it, and it is a work in progress. Plus it has a cute little fox icon...and thunderbird is cute too. This last sentence problably made little sense. Getting fuzzy...I think what i'm trying to say is that i think Microsoft is a little self-importnat, but they seem to have a better product.

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----- Wikipedia vs. Heim and Woolley ---

Aside from the obvious such as Wikipedia being an online source whereas Heim and Woolley were both essays in a book, all three were trying to acheieve the same goal at least where it came to defining Cyberspace. Each tried to define it, but Wikipedia went straight for the definition while Heim and Woolley were more intent on the writing involved with defining Cyberspace, which is understandable (hey, they wanna get published right?). But one of the advantages that Wikipedia has over H&W is that it doesn't need to be dumbed down because it can be linked to different sources and the reader merely had to click a link to read further about a particular term. With H&W, one would have to go to an outside source and by then who wants to bother? (Especially in Heim's case...holy long batman!).

While Heim made an attempt at catagorizing his ideas, Wikipedia's were more easy to jump to (good ol' cntrl f), whereas with Heim there was a whole lot flipping, scanning, cussing, and flipping. But this is coming from someone who prefers to read their news and most other things online. So for me, hands down Wikipedia was alot more interesting, to the point as well as informative.

And now...meet my kitty!

I never really thought of the games I play such as Unreal and Guild Wars (he mentioned Wolfenstein rofl...how old is that?) As virtual reality but according to Heim’s definition I have to agree. You really feel like you’re in the game. Of course it’s not crazy believing like you forget who you are and you feel like you are Duke Nuke’em and feel the need to go gun crazy, but you do have a level of immersion. Unreal is great because it’s a first person shoot em’up, but they’ve gotten so good with creating the environments that you feel like you’re part of the action. A group of friends and I often have weekends where we’ll get together and network our computers together and play (we call it geeking out). Other times, we meet my roomate’s 75-year old father online and play against him. You kinda of forget everything around you and its like you’re physically meeting in the virtual space. (I wonder if they’ll ever get around to having those fiber optic gloves for stuff like that...of course that would hurt especially with Doom’s BFG ;)
Back in the 90's when Virtual Reality was fresh and new all the arcades were getting these clunky VR machines. They were like little stages that you would stand on, and there was a helmet and a gun and you would get immersed in the VR world. I never actual played it, but now I wish I had. It was like $5 or something rediculous like that. I was too cool for that, I would play the game across the way which was a mach spaceship and you’d fly around and the whole vehicle would move (which is also a form of VR). But it isn’t everywhere as Heim predicted it would be.
By now you would think every school would have a VR machine that would allow the students a trip to the moon, or everyone would be able to experience a shuttle launch, but most of the VR is still in scientist and video game land. Is it because computers just aren’t capable of it yet? Are we getting there? Interesting concept. Imagine the legal wars with video game companies when kids are acting out Grand Theft Auto instead of playing it on their screen, or when the real immersion technology kicks in. Perhaps that’s why they haven’t gotten too far ahead with it. Who knows...still it was a fun (but long) essay.
Look...it’s virtual Demonic sue...

Web CT is still down...it's driving me crazy...ugh!

Cyberspace is what???

For our first assignment, we were to read Woolley's Cyberspace and then discuss it in three different ways. First we discussed it in class where Dr. Chandler asked us to bring up some topics and see what stuck out from the passage as well as where that conversation would lead. Mostly, we were able to stay on topic because we had the professor to guide the conversation and when we did get off topic, which we did a little but, she would bring us back on subject. The conversation went really as fast as she could write it down, discuss it briefly and move on.

The summary, by its nature was very focused on the passage because I was writing it for the purpose of completing the assignment and i was the dominant voice. There was no interaction because it was just me writing, nothing special at all.

It got a little fun when we were in the chatroom because i think we were adjusting to the idea of being in a chatroom in class (definitely a first for me). There really was no dominent voice mainly who could type faster (although Josh, being the fastest was inhibited by the computer unable to process his comments, cheeky school computers). The topic was a little difficult to actually stay on, and we did tend to stray but the conversation remained interesting. At first we were conscious of the topic and trying to dicuss it, and then Josh pointed out as to how it reminded him of a book he read, and i asked about it and before long we were talking about computers becoming too intelligent, Nicole mentioned computer chips in our skin and i mentioned wanting to get a computer chip in my kitty. So it was definitely more fun and as Dr Chandler put it, alot more playful which i think chat tends to be. In the classroom i think everyone is in academic mode, or maybe they don't want to speak up in class, but in the chat everyone can be themselves so it is a bit freer.

HOnestly speaking, when it comes down to which way was easier to get to the actual definition of Cyberspace...i think that the summary was the best but by far the least exciting. I have to say that if i could choose i would prefer either the chat or the classroom discussion because its simply not as drab as writing a paragraph.