Post contributed by Brandon Pribbernow When talking about net neutrality, most people don’t have a full understanding on what it means. I am in this specific group of people. When I first heard about net neutrality, I was not exactly sure what it was, and how it would affect me. After doing a little bit of research, I found the main idea of net neutrality is making sure that internet providers do not favor or block content from specific sources. Looking at net neutrality in this way makes me agree that internet providers should not be able to favor or block content of specific sites because they want to, or because they are getting paid more. While doing some research on the topic of net neutrality, I found an article published by The Washington Post about when the new net neutrality law passed. This article does a great job of talking about what exactly net neutrality is, and how it may affect you personally. One section of this article really stuck out to me, and it helped me better understand what net neutrality is, and what they are trying to do with it. “There are a few parts to them (the government rules). First are what the agency calls its three ‘bright-line’ rules: No blocking. No throttling. No paid prioritization. No blocking means Internet providers are banned from blocking legitimate traffic on their networks -- they can't stop you from visiting crazy tentacle porn sites, if you so wished. No throttling means Internet providers can't degrade your Web experience by slowing down your sites. And no paid prioritization means Internet providers aren't allowed to selectively speed up content in exchange for payments from Web site operators such as Netflix.” This is the paragraph that helped me understand what net neutrality is trying to do and how it is about being fair to all the people on the internet. The rest of the article can be found here. Now that I am more educated on net neutrality, I am completely for it. It isn’t fair for big corporations or websites to be able to pay a premium to internet providers so their site seems to load faster. If this were to happen, it would slowly start to eliminate competition, and it would make it impossible for smaller websites to grow. Net neutrality really just helps protect the market, and keeps it open so everyone has a chance to voice their opinions on the internet. The internet was created to help people communicate, and we have to protect that right. Net neutrality is one of the best ways to protect that.
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Post contributed by Willie Franke A new app released just over two weeks ago from five University of Michigan students that makes walking home alone safer for everyone. The new app, called “Companion,” was created over a year ago, but was just released to the public this past month to help students or people in general walk home alone at night and feel safe doing so. All that needs to be done is download the app, link your number with a friend’s phone who also has the app, and start walking. So how does this exactly work? After the connection between the two phones or electronic devices is made, the GPS Tracking system on your phone sets up a map of where you are now, and where your determined destination is. As you walk home, your friend can see your icon walking along your path home. If a situation happens while you’re walking home, for example if you speed up, your friend’s phone will get an alert that you’ve began to walk faster, and he or she can send you a message confirming if you’re okay. If you don’t respond with “I’m ok” in 15 seconds, the app notifies your companion with an option to call the police. Another feature for the walker is at any time he or she is feeling nervous, he or she can hit the “I feel nervous” button which pins on a map areas where people feel nervous. I think this app is a great invention that will be highly successful. I have already downloaded the app, and I highly encourage others to do it as well. I think this will stop violence on college campuses, and catch predators preying on people walking alone. This app will help people walking alone notify a partner as soon as a situation happens where there is an emergency. As you can see by the picture, the app is extremely simple to use, and will be highly effective in society. Post contributed by Brandon Pribbernow On September 9, 2015, the Apple Corporation released a new line of products which includes the Apple iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. Apple is a great company that produces great but high-priced products that people continue to buy. The iPad Pro is the newest version of the Apple iPad products. The Apple Pencil is something completely new to the company, and is something that they have never done before. I personally do not feel the Apple Pencil will be a very successful product. When I first heard of the Apple Pencil, I was very interested to see exactly what its purpose was and how it would be used. After looking into the product, I do not see it going very far or being very popular. The Apple Pencil is an overpriced, over-glorified stylus, which will only work on the Apple iPad Pro. This means if you have any other touchscreen Apple product that came out prior to fall of 2015, the Apple Pencil is completely useless to you. The features on the Apple Pencil are also very limited, and buying this product would be a great way to waste $100. What I find most entertaining about the idea of the new Apple Pencil is how one of the founders and creators of the Apple Corporation felt about styluses. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone back in 2007, he hated the idea of a stylus, as you can hear from this short video clip. I completely agree with him in this video, a stylus is just another material item that a customer will most likely lose or misplace. My final thoughts about the Apple Pencil is that it is a bad idea and goes against what Apple wants. I personally am an Android user, so I do have a bias towards Apple products, but looking at what this product does and the features it has, I don’t think it will be as useful as some people hope it will be. The product does not do anything outstanding or special that a person could not do before this product came out. The first group of people to try this product I feel will be disappointed. Post contributed by J'Clef
As we know, Apple Inc. is one of the best, most efficient technology sources in the world. Throughout my life, I have encountered devices such as the iPhone, iPod, iPad and even their new brand of headphones: Beats. I remember in middle school, purchasing my first-ever iPod. It was so exciting, from being able to FaceTime, to going to the app store, to downloading Angry Birds. Apple has been an company that has had new updates or some type of new feature to the product every year. If you have never had the experience of owning an Apple product, I believe it is worth the try. One thing about these Apple products is that they are very secure. The software is very hard to break into, there’s hardly no limitations, and very easy to work with. Now that we are in the year of 2015, Apple has done it again, creating the iPhone 6s. The iPhone has come a long way, from only being able to make calls and texts, to having apps, to now using your fingerprints to lock and allow access to your phones. As of last week, Apple has come out with features of the new iPhone 6s, shown in Figure.1. The new iPhone has a 5.5-inch (diagonal) massive screen. Also, the camera has been enhanced that you may be able to take pictures while also recording a short active video at the same time. In my opinion, Apple is the real definition of technology enhancement and growth. What do you think about this new iPhone? Is it as great as the world makes it out to be? Do you believe Apple is worth buying? What is your experience? |
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