It's Only Rick N Roll But We Like It?

Oh Rick Roll'n how we have come to love and loath you in equal measures. Over the last few days the original video used for Rick Roll'n was removed from Youtube. Thankfully this was seen as a mistake as the Youtube team suspended the user for spam, realising this mistake they lifted the ban and the video has been reinstated.

Rick Roll'n, I'm sure everyone here has been duped once? It involves the mischievous act of linking an innocent unsuspecting friend with a link, this link is usually masked in a different URL. The URL is usually one of curious standards and piques the friends interest, however after they click the link they will be quite peeved to see they have been Rick Roll'D. Rick Roll'n is basically the video to 1987 music video "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

Rick Roll'n began as most internet viral phenomenons such as lolcats for example, on the infamous geeky anagogic internet image-board 4chan. It began with "Duck rolling" which involved linking a picture or thread to a trolling thread containing the picture of a duck with wheels. The user was then "Duckrolled".

The first known case however of Rick Rolled was again from 4chan when the supposed link for the first Grand Theft Auto IV trailer was a link to the Rick Roll video. Since 2008 however it has been a widespread internet phenomenon which has simply malevolently spread across the internet inflicting many of millions of people to the abominable sounds of Rick Astley.

DO NOT CLICK THIS!

Happy Birthday Photoshop

This upcoming week represents the 20th anniversary of the advent of Adobe's Photoshop. For centuries photos have often been manipulated but with the birth of Photoshop a whole new world was opened to allow anyone to manipulate and edit photos both for personal use or as is often the case online mischief!

The Photoshop phenomenon all started when a man called Thomas Knoll designed a miniature program called Display during the PHd year of his Computer Vision course in 1987. His brother John was working with George Lucas's Industrial and Light company. They were responsible for the visual effects in the Star Wars films at the time ( not a fan by the way ! but thats another story), noticed the potential and collaborated with his brother to eventually create Photoshop.

After wisely signing up with royalty deals ($$$) the Knoll brothers struck a deal with Adobe to distribute Photoshop, which made the Knoll brothers quite a fortune. In February 1990, Photoshop 1.0 was released and history was made.

Nowadays of course it is on the iteration named Adobe Photoshop CS4 which is a huge significant leap in its potential use and has many people around the world competing in Photoshop competitions often known as Photoshop Tennis, you will see this on the majority of large forum websites such as Boards.ie and the likes!

As mentioned in a previous blog however, Photoshop is apparently second only to Windows itself for piracy, the hefty price tag of around £560 is a major factor in this, the ease of hacking the Photoshop software is quite well known, and with a lack of competitors apart from the likes of GIMP ( link in one of my other blogs :) ), Photoshop can afford to price itself so highly and yet afford the huge % of pirated copies floating about.

To finish off this blog I'll leave you a link to some of the most famous Photoshop gaffs.

Exam Results

Got my exam results today, and after stressing out for a good number of weeks I'm delighted to say I got 75% in Object Oriented Programming and 67% in Object Oriented Systems Analysis :)

This brought my scores last semester to :

81% - Professional Issues
73% - Object Oriented Systems Analysis
66% - Informatics Entrepreneurship

65% - Object Oriented Systems Analysis.

Thrilled with these results and hope to achieve the same this semester!

Linkage!

Thought I would help out all my blog readers with some essential free software links.

Security

Spybot Search and Destroy

Ad Aware

AVG

Avast

CCleaner - clears cookies and browsing history from all browsers.

Eraser - Wipes space and files securely and properly from hard drive.

Dban - Wipes harddrive completely for a fresh start!

Audio

Winamp - Itunes/WMP alternative.

FLAC - Excellent quality audio, information how to rip/convert etc, for any sound enthusiasts!

Browser

Google Chrome - Everything else is inferior! Go Chrome, Now Go Go!

Misc

Fraps - Software to take screenshots, good for gaming.

DeviantArt - Excellent fan art/photography, great for desktop backgrounds.

The Gimp - Free alternative to Photoshop.

Daemon Tools - For mounting iso images to replace cd's.

Best Viral Ever! - Brilliantly funny link to amuse your friends :)

Placement Secured!

After a great deal of application forms filled out, a CV intensely edited and a great number of emails sent I finally started to get invited to interviews, which was great as showed that I might be wanted in the world of IT :)

Having had a phone interview with Eircom in Belfast, a interview in Asidua also in Belfast and a interview day in Sita in Letterkenny, I was thankfully offered a internship in Sita Letterkenny.

Of course I was delighted to accept this and have began the process of filling out the contract!

Greatly looking forward to this opportunity and also the presence of a few of my classmates as interns will only help the settling in period. Also looking forward to moving out away from home!

Here is the Sita website if anyones interested. :)

Why Piracy Is Unstoppable

Piracy has always been a huge problem instigated from the rise of the Internet. Of course some people download their music legally through places such as iTunes, but many of course illegally download music/films/software etc through software such as Limewire, or torrent programs such as Bitlord.

For years the music/film industry have being trying to desperately to curtail this phenomenon but as shown by this blog it is proven to be impossible.

One of the better known torrent sites Pirate Bay was bought out by the Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X for the pricey sum of around £4.7m last summer. Along with the arrest of the sites owners and a shocking fine of £2.4m, this seemed to be a big coop.

However, I am not whatsoever condoning this action I will soon describe, but was quite comical in its delivery in sticking it to the man!

One user decided to upload the entire Pirate Bay database including all the torrents, this I thought was quite genius no matter how naughty. It is surely the most illegal download of all time and will stem into the birth of new torrent sites.

Piracy eh?

The Social Media Phenomenon

Firstly I have to say I'm glad to be back this week, the prospect of three new modules is enticing and having skimmed through the module specifications it should prove to be a very interesting semester.

This is my very first blog I've ever written, although I have read numerous blogs in the past; I've never had a moments thought of writing my own but here I am now. My first day back straight into the creaky lecture room of MD007 for the opening lecture of Computer Networks and Operating Systems. From the very beginning the lecture proved to be highly interesting with this opening video. This was the video which piqued my interest and provoked the idea for this very blog.

After watching this video again once I got home, I also watched this similar video which I found equally as intriguing, the prospect of the rapid progression of the area of social media is astounding and the potential and possibilities it offers is tantalising. The instantaneous access to any information you require is absolutely amazing and helps me personally on a daily basis, whether its checking up on a area of lecture notes I wasn't entirely sure of or delving deeper into an area.

The social aspect of this networking is also tremendous, the sharing of opinions on such sites as Facebook or Twitter can enlighten you with newfound facts or can cause a debate which is always good fun lol. No longer do you need to have the news on the tv to hear breaking news, the social media aspect brings the news to you quicker and covers more personal opinions and possible news than a daily newspaper can ever aspire to provide, it even surpasses the Daily Mail for gossiping purposes.

However along with the emergence and growth of this sector, there brings distinct possibilities for negative repercussions. The sheer availability and easy of access to your personal information is of great concern. As talked about in the lecture you're never fully secure when you're browsing. Anyone could now search for you, and find out information about you whether from your Facebook profile or what you search for on Youtube. This of course could lead you into an extreme pitfall, say for example in two years when I'm applying for Graduate jobs, the companies offering posts could easily search for my activities, interests and personal information online, and automatically judge me as a person from this. This is a concern in my opinion and I will be very wary of anything I publish online. As seen by higher profile footballers for example getting into trouble from their ill advised tweet outbursts, step forth Darren Bent and Ryan Babel.

I for one are genuinely excited by the social media development and hope it prospers in future years, our lives could be changed by this and as I will be working with technology everyday I think this is rather relevant. However as with anything I hope the potential downfalls don't outweight the positives.