My Online Footprint

 My Online Footprint

    The online footprint I have is largely in videogames and less on social media. I have a few forms of it including Instagram and Snapchat but I rarely use them so I personally don't count them because I just rarely use them. But as for video games, I have a multitude of accounts and profiles that I play on as well as other accounts that link to those profiles. Ive taken a break off of social media entirely for possibly almost a year now and when I do return to it, I plan on redoing all of my accounts from scratch and creating a more streamlined and clearer image of myself. Social media in it of itself is a place where people put themselves at a higher standing point than where they really are. That's why we have all these Social Media "influencers" who show them living these incredible lives but that's only what they show us. I've given out personal information to my accounts that require them but nothing more than that. 

    

Social Media most certainly makes people depressed and lonely. It stimulates an unhealthy culture to care about likes and other trival things when people need to value more important things such as the in the moment stuff or the substance of the photos or videos being taken. 

 

EOTO: The Sherman Act

What Is The Sherman Antitrust Act.

The Sherman Antitrust Act is a law passed by the United States Congress in 1890. The primary purpose of this law is to allow the federal government to intervene in markets for the purpose of maintaining competition. In the act, there are two brief sections. Section one states “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.” This section forbiade companies from deciding to coordinate their prices instead of competing with one another. In section two of the Antitrust act, “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony” Section two of the act prohibits a company from monopolizing a market.

Examples of Sections 1&2:

• 1: A few grocery stores collude to make the price of bananas and other fruits more expensive and they are the only suppliers in the area.  

• 2: When Microsoft tried to monopolize the internet browser market via legal and technical restrictions it put on PC manufacturers and its users. 

The implications of if the Sherman Antitrust Act are great for our society, though companies like Apple have tried to circumvent it via certain business practices. And by doing so it has led to many of its customers complaining and bringing more and more attention to their shady practices.

This act affects me and everyone around because it should prevent mega-corporations from forming. Hopefully we don't end up in a situation like all of those dystopian movies where mega companies dominate whatever market they are in. 

New Innovations In The Gaming World

 New Innovations In The Gaming World

    In the world of gaming, games and content for those games have been shifting towards digital mediums in which no disk is needed in order to play the game. You could buy digital add ons for the game but not the game itself, so an example is you could have bought Call Of Duty Black Ops at let's say Gamestop or Target but when Treyarch released DLC (downloadable content) you could buy it from the online store without leaving the comfort of your home. That was the current trend for many years but until around November of 2013, all that changed. 

    With Microsoft's release of the Xbox One, players were enabled to buy the games they love to play from the Microsoft store, bypassing third-party retailers such as, GameStop, Target, Walmart, and any brick and mortar store that sold video games. Though there were some limitations, limitations we are just starting to feel now with our current technology but the gaming consoles will be shortly out and will swiftly fix those issues. Anyways the trend of getting games online slowly progressed to the norm once it was seen as a much easier way to store and keep track of games. No longer were you needed to maintain and care for a disk, make sure there were to scratches or that you lost it. You bought a license to play the game so to speak from the marketplace. Almost everyone I know does this in 2020, the only times I hear of people going to a brick and mortar place is when they get the super-duper edition of a game that the gey physical bonuses like statues or bags or other merchandise. 

    The stragglers to this trend and well rather shift in the norm would be those who hold onto the deep and fond memories of midnight releases. I still hold onto those memories of my dad and I staying up late at the local GameStop and waiting to get my pre-ordered copy, and being too excited to go home and then be told I have to play it tomorrow and then stay up all night being excited to play my new game. Anyway, its those people who keep buying the physical editions that or they just like having the disk but in today's age disks are outdated. 

My Privacy And Why I Just Don't Care Anymore

 My Privacy And Why I Just Don't Care Anymore.

    Personally, I've made my mind up a long time ago in regards to privacy and technology. No one. not me, not you, not jeff down in I.T. can stop the marching onslaught of progress that is modern technology. I'd like to quote a special someone here who puts my thoughts into a concise phrase Thanos: "Dread it, Run from it. Destiny still arrives." Privacy is something that is rapidly becoming a thing of the past with how much information companies and websites sap out of everything you do online. Reiterating my stance on the whole "oh wow we don't really have privacy do we" my answer is short and sweet because I just accept the fact that you can't fight back against the march of time and technology as just one person. Excuse my brevity on the topic but there just is not that much that shocks me.

Internet Creation For Military Purposes

 The Internet Originally Was Made For The United States Military.

    The first person to conceptualize such an idea was J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his “Galactic Network” concept. He had a vision in which a globally interconnected set of computers that could quickly access data and programs from any site. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA. While at DARPA he convinced his successors, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept. Roberts then took that idea to DARPA to develop the computer network concept, named ARPAnet(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

    

    ARPAnet was the first workable prototype of the internet. On October 29, 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first communication from one computer to another. The message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters. Though this wouldn't have been possible without computer scientists developing the concept of “packet switching,” a method for effectively transmitting electronic data that would later become one of the major building blocks of the internet. (packet loss, DDOS)

    

    Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf worked on, researched, and formulated the Transmission Control Program. A protocol that enabled multiple separate networks to be joined into a network of networks. Version 4 of TCP was installed in the ARPAnet for production use in January 1983 after the DoD made it standard for all military computer networking.

    ARPAnet was formally decommissioned in 1990 after the decommission partnerships were made with Telecom industries and computer industries to commercialize a new worldwide network, the internet as we know it today. Without the work and research from DARPA, we would not be anywhere near where we are today in regards to the internet, those who worked on ARPAnet made massive headway in terms of human communication and access to information. Many of what we have today in terms of technology and social media would be non-existent if not for the internet, it's mind-boggling to think of a timeline/society in which the internet was never created. So much of our lives take place with aid of the internet in modern society, and technology is only getting more and more advanced.

https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet

AntiWar Voices

Searching For Antiwar Voices

    War is one of those topics nowadays that I would say are in the same realm of topics such as religion and politics. You don't start out on that topic when talking to someone you've never met. War is a sticky subject because there are different views on war not only the moral side but the side of the people actually fighting in the war, the people benefitting off of it, and those who are losing from it. But it seems that finding pro-war material is much easier than finding antiwar material. I mean one could even argue that the History channel is propagating war material via is breakdowns and depictions of any of its material based on prior and current wars. 

No, I've never heard of those websites, ANTIWAR.com and AmericanConservative.com. I'm not surprised that I didn't know them prior to looking up information for this blog post. I'm not actively looking for information on what America is doing outside of its borders in regards to conflicts. And even if I was looking, I would expect it to be hard to find information that goes against what we are doing. Many people I feel might have an antiwar voice but don't want to speak up about it fearing what others will think about them amongst other things.

 

Protection Of the First Amendment

The First Amendment

    This amendment enables Americans to have the right to freedom of speech, peaceful assemblies, and the freedom to practice religion without congress infringing on those said rights set forth by the amendment. The times we are in as an American society are troubling. We are caught amidst a racial divide alongside a divide of beliefs, it feels as if many Americans have lost their way of thinking and understanding other people's points of view. And once people begin to shut the door on the "opposition" they become frustrated when they don't acknowledge them. Frustration leads to anger and anger turns to violence.    

    Many assemblies of peaceful Americans protesting the BLM movement, are starting out in a peaceful manner, but over the course of the assembly, it has seen that they slowly become violent. Not due to the people who wish to see proper change, but from those who want anarchy, those who don't care for the movement itself but see it as an opportunity to gain something, mainly financial. With the rampant looting of storefronts and businesses, it's not a good look for the BLM movement, but it's really not their fault. Back to what the first amendment condones and what it doesn't. It would condone the peaceful assembly of BLM members, though that protection would be quickly ripped away from anyone if the protest/assembly turned violent. Therefore violating its peaceful status.

    I believe that the ability to have our citizens freely express themselves in non-violent ways are imperative to our society and the ability to recognize and reevaluate things whether that be racial, societal, economic.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment#:~:text=Amendment%20I,for%20a%20redress%20of%20grievances.

 

U.S. Supreme Court

https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/supreme-court-facts

    The Supreme Court is the highest federal court in the United States and the head of the judicial branch. The Supreme Court has ultimate jurisdiction over all laws in the United States. The nine justices of the Supreme Court have the power to check the actions of the other two branches of government. 

    Established in 1789 by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, that act also granted Congress the ability to create inferior federal courts. The Judiciary Act of 1789 specified that the Supreme Court would be made up of six justices that would serve until death or retirement. 

The first decision the Supreme Court made was but a single day after they heard the arguments for the case, West v. Barnes on August 3rd, 1791. The West v. Barnes case involved a farmer with debt owed to a family. 

The Supreme Court has taken cases that have become pivotal points in our society in terms of rights. Such cases are listed below from the article above, extremely notable ones would be Roe v. Wade and Mapp v. Ohio.

Notable Cases From Supreme Court Facts:

Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which held that evidence obtained illegally cannot be used in criminal cases

Texas v. Johnson (1989), which found that flag burning and other potentially offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment

Roe v. Wade (1973), which ruled that women have a right to an abortion during the first two trimesters

U.S. v. Nixon (1974), which found that the President cannot use his or her power to withhold evidence in criminal trials

Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which struck down state anti-sodomy laws

United States v. Windsor (2013), which revoked the U.S. government’s ability to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states

Eight Values Of Free Expression

Individual Self-Fulfillment 

    I believe the freedoms that give the people the most power in having their own thoughts whether those be right or wrong are the most important in today's society. We live in a time in which people are condemned for some actions and when those same actions are reciprocated the individual who propagated them isn't held accountable. 

    The biggest issue that comes to mind is that of people with large platforms in social media, Cardi B. She has a platform that enables her to talk to a large majority of American society, and with that, I believe you have a responsibility and one of those responsibilities is to uphold good morals and examples for people. 

    
Cardi B does not exhibit such things with her platform and instead has stated that she has drugged men and robbed them in her past, and her reasoning for doing such? "I made the choices I did at the time because I had very limited options" That reasoning frankly is a load of ******** to me because many other people and even celebrities have done heinous things and have had their careers and livelihoods smashed to smithereens meanwhile Cardi B stands tall despite her having done horrible things to men. My gripe with this is the fact that she has yet to receive the same treatment as her cohorts despite undertaking such horrific acts in her youth. How this relates back to Freedoms of expression, I think everyone should be able to weigh in on such events, people can regulate people. Though the sad part to me is that with that in mind, many will have a bias in doing so, leaving some to become easier to 'target'/ weigh in on. The fact is for me, some people have the wrong opinion, but there's a crucial way of thinking. Just because I believe that they are wrong doesn't mean that I have should bash or go after them just on that fact alone.

Where Do I get My News?

News in the 21st Century

        News and how we receive it has changed massively in the past two decades. I believe two deciding factors facilitated this, the first being technology, and second being more and more outlets. I used to only get news from one place television primarily NBC news in the mornings and nights of school nights. Though getting older and having more access to technology has made it possible for me to now get news updates from a multitude of sources, which isn't necessarily the best. I say this because a quote from someone opened up my eyes, Denzel Washington. "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed, In our society, now it's just first — who cares, get it out there. We don't care who it hurts. We don't care who we destroy. We don't care if it's true. Just say it, sell it. Anything you practice you'll get good at — including BS." - Denzel Washington (USA Today). Sadly I believe that's how it is today, people just want to be first so now I pay closer attention to where and how new/old the information is regarding a topic. To list five sources where I get my news from would be NBC, IGN, GameInformer, Instagram, and YouTube. Now you might say some of those are a bit unreliable, and yes i'd agree with that but here's the thing, I take all news now with a grain of salt and with a close attention to word choice because it makes a huge difference in stories. 

        Why I choose to go to these cites is because some of them have fast in delivering news, not neccasrily being correct but its brought to my attention and to be aware of. And other cites I go to because I validate them more than others, Instagram is a prime example of a great source of whats going on, not a great source of knowing if its true or not though. On the other hand NBC is great to me for information and knowledge, not so much sometimes for speed. 

        Overall people have to start realizing that just because someone might have the story first doesn't mean they got it right, everyone and everything has an agenda is life, whether its good or bad is subjective to those but there is always an agenda to be had. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/latest-stories

https://www.youtube.com/

https://www.ign.com/

https://www.gameinformer.com/