Chris Nolan Presentation

Something new I learned in Chris Nolan's presentation was the criteria which organizes your search results after searching for something on Google. The websites that come up first have the most exact phrase you typed in, Google also uses how often this phrase appears in the source, whether it’s it in the name of the source, how popular the source is, or the quality of the site. Something that surprised me about Google was how advanced you could make your searches to make the search results appear even by website type.

Copyright Laws

Before our librarian spoke about copyright laws, I had no idea that everything that you’ve ever written or documented in a fixed tangible medium (including even computer files, programs, saved digitally, or papers) is automatically protected under copyright laws. I had always been curious about when you were allowed to use the ‘©’ symbol, but now I realize that it is for any work which you create in a fixed tangible medium. I also didn’t realize that a copyright lasts for seventy years after the author’s death. I found it very interesting that it started as a bill encouraged by Disney and became the Sonny Bono Act. But, even this extended copyright will soon expire in twenty years, leaving the Disney characters, music, and the basic income for the Disney company left up to the public domain. On the other hand, law is law, and the Disney company should be no exception, seeing as many other cartoon characters or other copyrighted materials have expired and aused a loss of income for their owners. I, however, think that Disney, instead of sponsoring another extension of the copyright laws, should sponsor a law to protect all companies whose livelihood depends solely on copyright laws, or something of that nature. It would be really sad to see Disney World go!

The use of Facebook in college

I use Facebook all the time, mostly to stay in contact with friends since we all went our seperate ways to college. But, it has been especially useful for knowing whats going on within Trinity as well. After joining clubs at school, you are often also invited to join the facebook group which keeps you updated with new things going on and allows you to respond as to whether you will attend those events. As far as academic usefulness, I often responded to invitations for study groups and used facebook to contact classmates to understand assignments last semester. It is a very useful and convenient resource for a college student to have.

Here is a link to an article about facebook:http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1213/p13s01-legn.html