Steve Jobs

The late Steve Jobs was one of the major forces behind Apple. The article about Apple has talks about copyright, patents, and mobile technology. Copyright is ownership of a product. If another company steals some content from Apple, they could get sued for it. Patents are the rights a company or organization has. The mobile market is always changing and growing. The mobile market large enough for more than one company to exist inside. Is it right that Apple can sue for the shape of a phone just because they were quicker to apply for a patent? Apple can sue another company if they feel like they have stolen their somehow. If the competition showed that they were able to apply for the patent quicker, then it's wrong to sue them. It shows that they came up with the idea first and got the rights for that particular idea.

Superbowl Commercial

One of the most exciting times of the year is the annual Superbowl. Many people watch and cheer for their favorite teams to win the biggest football game of the year. The Superbowl is scheduled to take place on February 3, 2013 this year. During the Superbowl, there are some new commercials for different products. They are usually funny commercials that often get alot of attention from Superbowl fans. One of the commercials I recently watched was for the 2013 Volkswagon. In the commerical, they start off by showing a sad girl thinking about cats, an screaming pollitican, two bickering people on a baseball field, a fat guy beating his video game system with a guitar, a fustrated golfer, am angry baseball player throwing the plate, a man calling someone a jackass, and two fighting mascot. Jimmy Cliff, a famous Jamaican singer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, brings all of these people and more out into a beautiful meadow to sing. Jimmy Cliff is best known for singing songs like "The Harder They Come", "Sitting In Limbo", "You Can Get It If You Want To Come", and "Many Rivers To Cross". Everyone in the meadow claps their hands and sings "Will Make You Happy". Superbowl gameday is supposed to be one of the happiest times of the year. Everyone can forget about their fustrations to give their full attention to the upcoming football game. The people of the 2013 Volkswagon didn't look like they were trying to sell their cars in the making of this commercial. People selling cars often show people giving their products a testdrive on commericals to show how they run. Nothing about the Volkswagon wasn't even mentioned except at the end where they showed that they made the commercial. A volkswagon wasn't seen anywhere in the commercial They were just trying to help promote the Superbowl and to show how happy a time the Superbowl really is.

Hermaneutics

Hermaneutics is the art and science of text interpretation. It was a practice used for interpretating the bible, but it's used in communications as well. There are 4 types of hermaneutics that deal with the bible. There is literal, moral, allegorical , and anagogical or mystical. Natural, Normative, Scientific, Philosophical, and Depth Hermaneutics deal with communications. Natural Hermaneutics is the spontaneous, everyday, usually unreflective interpreting we do when intersubjective understanding breaks down. The local news tells us about the events of everyday. We get an understanding about what happens around us by the news. Normative Hermaneutics is the art of text interpretation as a deliberate discipline by a specialist caste. Judge Judy is an example of this. Lawyers, Judges, and Priests are part of this type of hermaneutics. Scientific Hermaneutics is the foundational discipline of the human or historical sciences. The History and Discovery Channels often explain these concepts. They talk about the history of the world. Philisophical Hermaneutics is a general philosophy of existence. Interpreting is less what we do and more what we are interpreters. Joel Osteen is an example of this. He preaches about the meaning of life. It's really hard to tell what the meaning of life really is. It takes a great deal of thought to know the meaning of life for each person. Depth Hermaneutic is suspicion. It's looking for the deeper meaning behind something. A crime investigation show is an example of this. They go over some of most shocking murders done by people like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgeway, Charles Manson and other deadly killers. They discuss how these killers caused suspicion to authorities and their motive for their crimes

The Tragic Demise of Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz, an Internet freedom activist, was found dead in his apartment on Friday January 11, 2013. His body was discovered by his girlfriend. The cause of his death was suicide by hanging. He was only 26 years old. Aaron Swartz was born on November 8th, 1986 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Susan and Robert Swartz. His father founded a software company and Aaron took interest in the internet at a young age. Swartz was the winner of the ArsDigital Prize at the age of 13. He was also a volunteer editor for Wikipedia. Swartz was known as one of the co-founders of Reditt.com. In 2009, Swartz was acussed of downloading 20% of PACER's database to the public. The FBI investigated him but no charges were filed against him. JSTOR pressed charges of their own against Swartz in July 2011. He was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer. Before the death of Aaron Swartz, JSTOR announced that they would make "more than 4.5 million articles" available to the public for free, but capped at three articles every two weeks. He was still going to be prosecuted in spite of this announcement. If convicted, Swartz would have had to pay 1 million dollars in fine and serve 35 years in prison. Due to him being an activist, Swartz fought for internet freedom. He wanted information on the internet to be free to the general public. The thoughts of prison and the fine caused him to take his own life. With net neutrality, Everything on the Internet should be open to the public. The pulic has the right to know what's going on. If people don't want the public to see certain things, they should not put them on the internet where hackers might get them. Efforts made to make any information pulic should still happen. It might get rid of hacking problems. The inequality between current laws and abilities with technology is something to be concerned about. Technology changes over the years and people develop new abilities with them. If people are able to do certain things with technology, they could get into trouble without knowing it. The laws and technical abilities should be equal to one another

The Persuaders

For my Adverstising class, our first video we watched was The Persuaders. The section of the video we watched was on advertising, how it works, how much of it they show to the public, and the success behind them. What I found interesting about the advertising is how fast advertisments can spread across to many different parts of the country. They talk about this at the beginning of the video. Advertising is compared to an infestation of roaches. They clutter up and take up so much space. Big cities have some sort of advertisment on any available space companies can find. Like roaches, advertisments are hard to get rid of because they keep on coming. You can spray them as much as you want, but they grow immune to any kind of harm because there is more of them. Charles Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, in Death Wish compared criminals to roaches as well. There is too many of them in the world too. Ads cannot just stop their operations or else they can go out of business. Part of the success of a company and their product is how much advertising they use to promote it. The companies that make them want the public to remember their product by bombarding them with their ads. Examples of the advertisments used in the video are Song Airlines and Sex and the City. The people that created these things want the public to know about them and to get into them. Companies often have to compete with other companies when they're selling the same thing. Like most rivals, they want to out do each other. They often try to get more advertisement spaces than the other one. Some companies have more money to spend than their rivals. They can advertise their product more so they can can make more money. The companies' need to make money and outdo rivals is the main reasons why the publie is bombarded with ads, which spread like roaches.

COMM 403 Blog 1: What's In It for Me?

This post talks about the syllabus of Dr. Kevin Williams' Comm 403 Media Studies class. This class offers students a further understanding of our media. Chapter 1 of the syllabus explains the ropes of the course. It tells us what we need to do to succeed in class. One example of this would be not missing more than 5 days of class. The Syllabus tells what's needed for an A or a passing grade. It also tells you how to get in touch with the teacher if questions need to be answered or if anything should come up. I personally plan to use the syllabus to help me pass this course. Chapter 3 talks about Critical Thinking and New Technology. The article was done by Jason McKahan, one of the communications professors and composer of the critical thinking plan for the Communications Department. Critical thinking is mainly defined as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” The Communications Department holds this concept with high regards. Learning about critical thinking is highly encouraged. I took a Critical Thinking class at Blue Ridge CTC and found it very useful. Chapter 4 deals with Vision, Mission, and Values. Everyone has different kinds of vision, missions, and values. The Communications Department has a vision of preparing students for employment at all levels of media. It's main mission is to help educate students for employment in media. Their values are to educate students, creating a professional college enviroment, be responsive to stake-holders, and enhance department's reputation. My vision is success and achieving it is my mission. My values are to take my work seriously. I believe taking my work seriously will eventually pay off. Chapter 5 talks about LEAP. There are four principles on LEAP. (1) Creative thinking is the capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking. (2) Critical thinking is a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events. (3)Oral communication is a presentation designed to increase knowledge., to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners' attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors. (4) Written communication is the development and expression of ideas in writing. I believe LEAP is a way of increasing our knowledge for the real world.

Geico Commercials

One of my favorite advertising campaigns would be the commericals for Geico. Geico is one of the largest car insurance companies in the country. Their main slogan is "Geico, 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance". The reason why I like these commercials is because they are funny and they make their product look an easy thing to sign up for. Over the years, Geico had the talking gecko as the mascot for the company. Mascots help make a company stand out from their competition They also used celebrities, cavemen, a pig, a stack of money with google eyes, and that guy that asks "Can switching to Geico really save you 15% or more on car insurance?". Car insurance is not the most the exciting thing in the world to advertise. The company makes the commercials funny to get people interested. If the commercials were as boring as the product itself, the public wouldn't be interested in the deals they might have. Geico show funny commercials of how their car insurance deals work and how easy it can happen. That why I personally enjoy watching these commercials for Geico.