The tempreal class went ok. We were missing a bunch of students for the first meeting, but apparantly Jesse told them it was optional (er ist verrueckt). It really annoys me because then I will end up having to explain stuff to them individually, as he is not really sure how to do anything in Second Life.

On another note, I met one of the students inside the Second Life world itself and he was quite sucessful in terms of designing his avatar and clothing it.

Another student tried but was having trouble with his graphics card (~32MB) and decided to buy a new one. I hope that it works out well for him. He is a 3D modeler, as well, so it should save him time with Maya too. I find that having a new, fast graphics card, pays for itself in time.

As Jesse likes to point out, there are an extreme number of barriers for the students to get in the world. It is really true, here are some skill based, socially based, and economically based barriers in no particular order.

1. Hear about the class.
2. Own a computer with a fast enough processor.
3. Speak English
4. Own a high speed, full of RAM graphics card (my personal suggestion is NVidia)
5. Have a broadband internet connection.
6. Understand the instructions.
7. Understand modeling.
8. Understand Texturing.
9. Possess social skills.
10. Own a credit card.
11. Can type.
12. Have an email address.

Its really quite extreme. I hope that it works out.

This is just a glimpse into the future. Please record your feelings about it.

If the link does not work, it just means the server running it is not on and that you should try again later. It is usually on from 11AM-1AM.

Today, I was in class and by chance met the guy who does the women in black website. I hope some of them start journals. Soon more people will arrive, all with their own causes to share. These will be exciting times on elmwood.

I am walking to the car freezing trying to think about ways that databases could make me warm.

I am really upset that people hold television so dear. It is time that we all throw our televsions out the window in order to liberate ourselves from the puppet like control of business and our government. Television is the opiate of America.

How much televison that you watch really applies to you, your family, your field of work, or your local community? Maybe some of the histroical information provides us with a basis for where we came from but so could a book and its not worth the tradoff of having to hear it from Exxon-Mobile.

I cannot tell you how sick I am of people telling me about some sort of obscure scientific discovery that has no particular relevance to any of are lives, and worse yet that they, literally, spent hours learning about. Who cares about the six footed underwater sea chicken of lappland! Was it really worth three hours of your life not to mention the 35 hours of re-telling the story to eveyrone else.

People can't just write these type of facts off as an interesting fact that didn't know about, what about the other stuff you could have learned during that time. See terry's journal about knowledge/space limitations.

Propaganda is not just in the overt America's Amry commercials. We are seeing propaganda like never before, more subtle, more glamorous, and with more beautiful woman and robot video game warriors.

Goebbels used film and print to promote the Nazi campaign in world war two. According to ,"The (nazi) party's vast propaganda and publishing empire includes 120 daily or weekly newspapers regularly read by about a million people across Germany."

Look what they were able to do with that and consider the fact that we have thousands more media outlets. Many of which are directly or indirectly controlled by the government or big business.

Televsion kills people, literally. I believe that without televsion we couldn't have had the Iraq war. It was the millions of images that juxtaposed the world trade centers falling in combination with Osama bin Laden and Sadam Hussein united behind one muslim force. That was obviously not true. The government has even admitted it now but its too late thanks to media hype. Same with the weapons of mass detruction. The reall weapon of mass destruction was fox news and there is no UN search team needed to find them. I hearby hold television directly responsible for the war, lets try Fox news for inciting mass detstruction. How come an American citizen can be arrested for yelling fire in a movie theatre and a news station cannot be "arrested" for yelling false accustation and causing a war.

There is no way to pretend that propaganda is not build into even the most innocent looking television commercial. In fact television commercial are popoular culture propaganda. So let's just call them by their real name. And now we have commercials for the army - in high tech 3D.

I believe there is even a link between military propaganda on TV and the rise in SUV purchases. They propably have little flashed of tanks rolling across battle fields during the commercials. The beginning of the suburban commando force to keep the "other" out of their neighborhood with intimidation tactics.

I have to go back to school now so I am not going to finish this yet. In the mean time just throw your TV out before its too late.

Thankfully, I am getting closer to the end of the semester everyday. It is really sad that I feel this way because I love media art and would argue that I am quite talented in that field. However, I feel no connection with any specific faculty memeber and at this point have learned only 10% compared to the 90% I taught myself. The irony is that teaching myself was relatively free while school cost me about $20,000. What I really want for $20,000 is a some sort of individual attention.

I guess I was spoiled by the other universities I attended. I am so glad I did not go to UB for my undergraduate degree.

No this is not my teaching journal. I am not the master of meat hook based corsets. Theresa came over the other day to alert me about a new online journal community. Warning, it contains nudity and theoretical violence. It is called suicidegirls.com

It is some sort of journal site that uses really attractive gothic girls bodies and their written journals to attract people to the site and raise money. This is a perfect example of globalized "blogs gone wild."

If you are looking for me I will be at UB in the CFA from 2:00-6:00PM.

One of my former students sent me the link to this site iStockPhoto.com

It is a php based database site that allows artists to upload images which then become royalty free. In return the artists receive $.10 per image that is downloaded while the site receives $.40 per image.

You cannot cash out till you make at least $100 dollars which means you have to have your images downloaded 1000 times to get $100 dollars.

I think it would be great if it was a swap place or if the precentage was higher but $.10 out of $.50 is really highway robbery. At least thats how I see it. Anyone want to start a competing site that does the opposite $.40 to the artist and $.10 to us. That is way more reasonable.

Rachel just forwarded an email fromher friend Sara, in which I saw these smiley's that I had been seeing in other places for a while. Seeing as I am a web programmer and also have some experience coding email, I noticed that the smiley images in the email were not simply links, but also carried some information on them in the form of a URL variable.

Th variable information was definitely used to identify the person whose email it was send from. The original person who signed up for the smiley service. I thought to myself, ok - so is she paying for this. What kind of service is it. So I went to the site.

In order to use the service, you simply install an explorer extension that provides a "convenient" search bar for your internet browser. This search bar, allows you to easily search. Here is the catch. Everything you search for through the search bar, is sent to their servers. Not only what you search for but information such as your IP address.

Here are some excerpts from their terrifying privacy policy:

"we may place a small text file -- called a "cookie" -- on your computer that allows us to identify your Web browser. . . a cookie does not allow us to obtain any personally identifiable information (such as your real name and address) unless you have specifically provided such information when using the Web Sites or any service of software distributed from the Web Sites.

This basically means that anything you type in is collected. Which could include information such as your name, address, credit card data, date of birth, social security number, etc.

What's even worse is that although they do not sell or rent you personal data according to their privacy policy ( I highly doubt this, wy would they collect it then) is that they do not consider your IP to be private data. I can tell you that by knowing your IP address and other sensitive data you can easily locate a person or possibly ue that information to break into their computer.

This whole privacy issue is really becomming a problem, especially on windows. My theory is never install any web browser search bars, from anyone, especially N-case or gator and thoroughly read the privacy policies that are found on the sites where these products come from.