I've been thinking lately about the journey I've made since graduation last July. In this short time I have realized many things that were not completely clear to me while I was a candidate in the program.
]]> I might blog on some of those topics later on, but for now I'll leave it to one of the most important. While I was a student at the Center, I had a hard time letting the whole thing sink in. The values, the professionalism, the curriculum, etc. I had spoken to numerous alums about their reflections on CICS from their career perspective when I was a student. I heard the same answer over and over again. "You'll appreciate some things more after you graduate." Now I am seeing this phenomenon from their perspective and I totally agree. It can be difficult to see the benefits of things you learn at the Center. But when you enter a career and notice the differences between you and your new graduate peers you will understand.In the 7-8 months that I've been working I've noticed a dramatic difference between my professionalism and that of my peers. I've found that the work ethic instilled in me from the laborious projects and studying from 601, 602, 620, 642, 691, from being Kovac's GA, etc is greatly different from my peers.
I could go on for some time on the things that CICS has done for me in my short time in the career world, but I am of the opinion that blogs are supposed to be short and sweet. So to sum it up... you might not appreciate what you are going through now, but you will later.
]]> expensive versus cost effective
cheap versus inexpensive
solution versus answer or response
afforded versus made possible
a mechanism versus a way
Whenever possible, a master should contemplate the connotation he or she may desire, and use the appropriate substitution instead of a common term to achieve it. In the business setting, connotation can be the difference between achieving and failing.
A company can only gain when it creates a unique strategy that changes the rules of the game towards the company’s favor. This leads to the statement “If you are not the leader, don’t play the game according to the rules set by the leader” (Robert, 1997). The company will only lose because the leader obviously knows those rules better, since they created them. If a company can change the rules of the game, it will neutralize or paralyze the leader of the industry. The object of competition is not to have an even playing field, but to have a field that is tilted to your advantage (Robert, 1997).
Robert, M. (1997). Strategy Pure and Simple II. New York: McGraw-Hill.
The productive might of China’s workers along with their consumer hunger for more is considered to be a huge natural resource. The reason for this huge growth is because of the number of peasants that are leaving the countryside and moving to the urban areas for low wage manufacturing jobs. American companies cannot compete with wages that are as low as 25 cents per hour for producing the same products. Fishman offers a few solutions to the United States to help mitigate losing so much economic development to China. These include revitalizing education in the US, as well as close the world trading gaps
During Pinochet's rule from 1973 to 1988 there were many violations of human rights. There were an estimated 3,000 people who died during his rule. Many more were detained and tortured, raped, and beaten. The current president of Chile, Michel Bachelet, is one of the living survivors of being detained and tortured.
Part of the reason Pinochet came into power was to oust the socialist movement in Chile because many feared it would succumb to Communist movements. Communism, if it even took place, was defeated but a dictatorship replaced it. The angering part of the story is that Pinochet never paid the price for the lives he took. Upon leaving office he made certain provisions so that he could never be tried in Chilean courts, nor would he lose his lifetime seat as a member of the Chilean military and government. There were a few attempts from other countries to take Pinochet to trial but he was found to be too weak in his medical condition to defend himself.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/10/pinochet/index.html
]]>Chrysoloras was believed to have authored the very first textbook designed specifically for teaching a language, called Erotemata Civas Questiones.
In the year1400 at the University of Bologna, Chrysoloras and his followers created a society for mutual protection against the tyranny of Baldassarre Cossa, the governor of Bologna.
This idea along with the ideas of teaching would later create the foundations of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Chrysoloras
Bononia Docet. 1992. Charlottesville, VA. Kappa Sigma Fraternity
Don't get me wrong, grades are important. But what good are grades if the only technologies you have ever worked on were in a lab. What good are grades when the only knowledge you have came out of a text book or some junk you found on wikipedia. There is a BIG difference in technology fields between lab experience and REAL WORLD experience.
Go out there and get your hands dirty. Employers are looking for well-rounded individuals who have some education, but also know how to do a thing or two. Maybe someone could join my projects so I can delegate some work...
]]>Well Senator McCain, it's really not that simple...
]]> A current proposal in Congress could reverse all the differentiation and large packaging of channels in the pay TV industry. The proposal, called “A la carte” or “Tier-themed” programming will offer consumers the opportunity to choose exactly what cable channels they will receive. Consumers will then only pay for those channels they have chosen.A la carte television service was first proposed in the 90s and has gained very little momentum since then. Senator John McCain has been a big supporter of the proposed legislation since it was mentioned in Congress. The service is actually used in Canada and has some mixed reviews (MacArthur, 2006). A la carte service in Canada can be attributed to a lesser quantity of programming available in comparison to the hundreds of American channels available. In order to purchase individual channels via a la carte service in Canada, a consumer must first purchase a basic cable package. The basic package consists of about a dozen channels including all local and regional stations in both English and French, along with educational programming and a Canadian version of C-SPAN (Hennessy, 2004).
The Parent’s Television Council has praised the proposal because it allows parents to only pay for programming they feel their children can watch (Eggerton, 2006). Some of the more desirable children’s networks include Nickelodeon and Discovery Kids. In the majority of cable systems, the parents must buy an expanded service set in order to receive those channels. But those expanded service tiers come with a lot of potentially objectionable networks like MTV (Goldfarb, 2005). Another complain of parents is that they must go through the hassle of programming their set-top-boxes to block out objectionable programming, when they do not even want that programming to begin with (Goldfarb, 2005).
A la carte service has many opponents with their own lists of disadvantages. Even some cable networks who formerly offered their programming as a la carte offerings are now disapproving it. Disney experienced minimal success when it was offered as an a la carte option in the early 90s. The channel was sold at $12-14 per month. Disney did not achieve more than 30 percent penetration in pay TV households. Preston Padden, an executive vice president at Disney stated “We’ve been through a la cart. We know it doesn’t work” (Donohue, 2006).
If every consumer has a unique combination of channels, this will require much more work on the programmers end. This extra work raises costs for programmers and that cost is passed on to consumers (Goldfarb, 2005). Because of the complications of efficiency, only subscribers who select very few channels will notice a decrease in their cable bill. The average household watches 17 channels. The average household would then see up to a 30 percent increase in their cable bill (Goldfarb, 2005).
Another big problem with A la Carte is that many smaller networks will lose the audiences they enjoyed from being associated with a package. Lesser known networks with smaller target demographics like Oxygen and Hallmark channel will lose considerable revenues.
The future of a la carte service appears to be uncertain. There is a much larger opposing force coming from the cable industry than there is a supporting force from legislators. Until both sides can come to an agreement on whether the economics of a la carte service will actually benefit consumers, the proposed strategy will like remain at bay. The FCC will have to come to a unified conclusion now that its credibility on the issue is tarnished because of changing is position various times.
Donohue, S. (2006). 'Carte’ Foes Fight Back. Retrieved April 2, 2006, from http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6317032.html?display=Search+Results&text=a+la+carte
Goldfarb, C. B. (2005). Cable and satellite network tiering and a la carte options for consumers (No. RL32398): Library of Congress.
Hennessy, M. (2004). Remarks by Michael Hennessy President and CEO Canadian Cable Television Association Washington Metropolitan Cable Club. Retrieved April 11, 2006, from http://www.ncta.com/press/press.cfm?PRid=510&showArticles=ok
MacArthur, P. (2006). Cable and broadband communications. In J. Gentry (Ed.). Bloomington.
]]>Telecommunications services would be defined as either a Title II common carrier telecommunications service, or a non Title II information service. According to the court case of NCTA vs. Brand X, a telecommunications service is "the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information … of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received ("NCTA vs. Brand X", 2005).”
An information service is defined as “’the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications . . .("NCTA vs. Brand X", 2005)’” The overlapping characteristics of these services cause the biggest controversy of the issue.
Brand X Internet Services is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that sought to interconnect with cable broadband internet providers by purchasing access at low rates regulated by the government. Brand X is a proponent of the keeping broadband cable providers classified as common carriers in order to benefit from the low rates and high quality facilities. Brand X filed suit in 2003 against the FCC’s 2002 ruling to deregulate cable modem service. The case took place in an appellate court and received a favorable decision for petitioner; the FCC’s decision was overturned (Hearn, 2005a).
In April of 2004, the NCTA filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, based on this case, and received backing from the Justice Department and the FCC. The appeal was granted, and on June 27, 2005 the Supreme Court decided in favor of the original ruling by the FCC, declaring cable internet service an information service and not subject to title II regulations("NCTA vs. Brand X", 2005).
One of the main ramifications of this court case is that broadband cable providers are no longer required to share their facilities with their competitors which would have allowed more competition. Another outcome of this ruling is a precedent of deregulation set for other broadband internet service providers. Companies like Verizon and AT&T provide broadband internet service through digital subscriber lines (DSL).
Hearn, T. (2005a). Access Denied. Multichannel News Retrieved February 7, 2006, from http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA623062.html?display=Search+Results&text=brand+X
NCTA vs. Brand X (Supreme Court of the United States 2005).
]]>VoIP is no different when it comes to data security and theft. In June of 2006, an owner of a VoIP company in Miami was arrested for a theft of service scam that allowed him to gain nearly $1 million. Edwin Pena hacked into a competitor’s VoIP system and routed his customers’ calls through the hacked network. This allowed Pena to collect subscription fees without having to pay for overhead costs . In January of 2003 it was reported that some companies fell victim to the Slammer worm. The worm infected data networks and quickly spread to wreak havoc on VoIP systems.
Spam is a huge problem for consumers and in the corporate environment today. Corporations spend millions of dollars on appliances that prevent spam from flooding the inboxes of their employees. In the telephony world a similar problem is telemarketing. Thousands of call centers worldwide dial consumers and sometimes businesses asking the called party to buy something. This annoyance has yielded many legislation bills to stop these unwanted calls. VoIP unfortunately experiences the marriage of these two annoyances, called spam over Internet telephony (SPIT). SPIT allows spammers to create audio files and send them to millions of voicemail boxes at a time.
While phishing is still a big problem that plagues consumers, a new type of phishing has emerged that uses VoIP technology instead of URLs and the web, called vishing for “voice phishing”. Vishing attacks can take many forms but in the most common case a person receives an e-mail stating that their credit card or financial information has been compromised. The victim is given a fake 800 number to call in order to regain access to their account. When the victim dials the number, an Interactive Voice Response system asks the victim to verify his or her bank account or credit card numbers by pressing the appropriate numbers on the keypad . The phone system on the other end records this information and relays it to the vishing thieves.
Porter, T. (2006). Practical VoIP Security. Rockland, MA: Syngress Publishing.
Kuhn, R. (2006). Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) Security [Power Point Presentation].
Kay, R. (2004). Phishing [Electronic Version]. ComputerWorld. Retrieved November 5, 2006 from http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,89096,00.html.
]]>Human communications can be defined as the process of passing, receiving, or exchanging information from at least one person to one or more person by means of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques. The information to be communicated comes from the source, which is the sending person. The sending person must then encode the information. The code is just a set of symbols or characters that represent the information. The code can include writing, voice, or the use of signs and symbols. A simple example of this could be two colleagues discussing the weather verbally.
The information to be communicated must use some sort of code. The coding is usually a language that the two communications have in common. Language itself is a type of code. Ferdinand de Saussure believed that all a person knows of the world is determined by language (Littlejohn, 2005, p. 103). There are many different languages throughout the world that are capable of communicating similar yet different concepts.
Once the information is encoded, it must pass through a medium in order to reach the intended destination. The medium can include air waves to receive voice signals, a type of paper to receive written signals, and electronic media can have a multitude of forms. The receiving person can receive the encoded information and decode it in order to find meaning. Meaning is our response to symbols and a metal recognition of what is described or represented (Williams, 1984, p. 6).
In the business world is it important to be effective communicators. Peters relates human communication to the business world by noting that listening must become everyone’s business. The race between competitors will be decided by those who listen and respond most intently (Peters, 1987, p. 177).
Human communication has slowly evolved into what it is today, yet the methods of transmitting it have evolved quite rapidly because of technology. The human voice can now be encoded in electrical impulses, a series of binary numbers, pulses of light, or radio frequencies.
Human communication is a complicated process, whose definition can never be fully completed. The process itself has a multitude of interpretations, yet most follow the basic path of a sender and a receiver trying to gain understanding through verbal and non-verbal communication techniques. Understanding of this vast concept can however be achieved by the use of models and theories.
Littlejohn, S. W. (2005). Theories of Human Communication (8 ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Peters, T. (1987). Thriving on Chaos. New York: Harper and Row.
Williams, F. (1984). The New Communications. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Inc.
]]>It was during this historical movement that Spain had conquered Grenada and the Jews were expelled from the country. It was during this time that the Spanish Inquisition took place. Those who were not Christian, or who did not pretend to be Christian were expelled from the country. Since this was a period of "rebirth" for Christians and converts, poets like Garcilaso de la Vega flourished. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcilaso_de_la_Vega
The renaissance period experienced new movements not only in literature, but also in math, science, religion, and architecture. One of the first examples of this architecture was the Palace of Dukes. http://www.arteguias.com/arquitecturarenacimiento.htm
]]>I don’t even know what I just typed, I just found a bunch of internet slang terms on some website.
As generation X, we are known as the kids who were born with computers. We send e-mails, text messages, or instant messages to everyone. I remember the first time I used instant messenger and chat rooms back in 199? I thought to myself, “Wow, I can talk to people all over the world, and I have no clue who they are. And they have no clue who I am”. That is really impersonal.
]]> The fact of the matter is our generation has been given the stigma of the people who don’t care about communication. When someone tells us to get in contact with someone, we shoot them an e-mail in 3 seconds. You sit down, pound on those keys as fast as you can, don’t check the spelling and hit the send button. Whew, a new record for shortest amount of time spent on communicating with someone. What is the status of the problem you sent in the e-mail? It doesn’t matter, it’s no longer our problem because we sent them an e-mail. We’re still waiting for a response. It is now someone else’s problem because the e-mail is in their box. Who knows if they got it, whether they read it, or if they’ll even respond to it.But is communication really important to us? I would surely hope so since we are candidates for the Master of Science in Information and Communication Sciences degree. I think its fair to say that the amount of time you put into something tells how much you care about it. If you spend 5 or 10 seconds on an e-mail, you must not care about the person who gets it, or whether they respond. The message probably has no significance either. If what you have to say is important, the last resort of communication should be e-mail. I received 21 pieces of e-mail yesterday. I think I read half of them. Some of it was junk, some of it I didn’t feel like reading, and some of it I eagerly read.
E-mails have little or no means for expressing importance. Just because you clicked the little urgent button doesn’t mean that it’s urgent to me or someone else. E-mail has made an attempt to personify the sender by adding the little “signature” at the end. But most people use that to include their title and e-mail address.
A handwritten note or even a type written letter in the mail can have a huge impact. A simple phone call can do the same. This shows that you took the time to think about what you are communicating. This shows that you actually care. Why would someone spend money on postage and spend time on handwriting a note if it wasn’t important? The way you choose to communicate says a lot about how you value the other person and their time. Don’t send the wrong idea by taking the quickest way out. I know that e-mail is easy, but people are tired of staring at their computer monitors in order to read millions of e-mails each day. Do the right thing. Pick up the phone, or start licking envelopes.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Didn’t you get my e-mail?”…