Jordan Hornbaker

It is official, AT&T has upgraded their entire backbone to 40 Gbps Ethernet technology over the long haul network. AT&T currently has the biggest backbone in the world and this could be why it took them from the summer of 2006 to now to upgrade.

Did they do the right thing though? Why is it they spent so much to upgrade to 40 Gbps when newer technology can handle 100 Gbps. Verizon is planning on going for 100 Gbps next year. This is where business comes into play. Is it viable to spend billions more on a network when the last mile is run by copper anyways? No, of course not. It would be smarter to invest in the last mile as fiber over copper. Then the end consumer will have the faster speeds in the future. Right now consumers are bottlenecked by the last mile.
AT&T was smart to upgrade their long haul network and is now setup for future upgrades. They in fact have already started on those future upgrades with a smaller portion of their backbone already at 100 Gbps. They are taking advantage of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing to take advantage of the fiber they already have laid. One day it will need to be upgraded again to let's say 500 Gbps, but until that time it is smart to upgrade what is economically viable and get the most use of fiber already laid.

Posted by jlhornbaker at 04:42 PM | Permalink

There are plenty of famous people that emerged during the European Renaissance. One of these is Leonardo Da Vinci who is well known for painting the Mona Lisa. He should not only be recognized for a single painting. He left blueprints that could be the inspiration for future concepts and ideas. Among these were blueprints for a battleship, printing press, parachute, flying machines, bridge canal and a spring-driven car. This doesn't sound like just a painter but a inventor and architect.

This comes to show that you have to learn more about a person before you can see all that they may encompass. It is very interesting to learn this about Leonardo Da Vinci. We still have not seen the spring driven car but the rest have come to us in one way or another. This also shows how someone can have an impact after their death.

I feel that there were a lot of bright and intuitive thinkers during the European Renaissance and that is why the world came so far during that period. Without these type of people we would be on a slower path to get where we are today. It takes people learning and thinking of how to do new things to bring about change. For this reason I would like to say he was one of the top influential people of the period. He not only brought about ideas and concepts, he was known for spreading the Renaissance from Italy to France. From there it was spread to the rest of Northern Europe.

Posted by jlhornbaker at 09:02 PM | Permalink

Trying to define Human Communication can make someone come up with numerous definitions. Some of these definitions will be broad and some more narrow. There is not one exact definition that can be used for every situation, and therefore many accepted definitions. This is summed up well when you go to textbooks to get the definition.

In research by Littlejohn and Foss (2008),
“The continuing problem in defining communication for scholarly or scientific purposes stems from the fact the verb ‘to communicate’ is well established in the common lexicon and therefore is not easily captured for scientific use. Indeed, it is one of the most overworked terms in the English Language” (Littlejohn & Foss, 2008, p.3).
This shows that if there is not an exact definition for scientific use of communication we should look what definitions we can find for human. When looking for the definition of human there are multiple definitions that are to be found. The most common definitions are: a human being, of or pertaining to the social aspect of people, or having the nature of people (human, 2008). So we now have a formal definition for human but not one for communication. This is where the variations of definitions come in when trying to define human communication.
My own personal definition is the interaction of one or more human beings in order to convey a message. This is a short and simple definition. There are numerous questions that come up about what is left out of that simplified definition. These questions could deal with how the message is sent, how the message is received, and many more questions involving the intended message. The first thing that needs to be accomplished is a common language that communication can take place. This can be a common language or common hand gestures that both the sender and receiver understand. Once there is a common medium for the message to take place there has to be an idea or message that is sent along this medium. The conveyance of the message can have problems where the intended message is misinterpreted by the receiver.
Successful human communication would be when the interpreted message is the same as the intended message. With this in mind the original simple definition can be expanded. Human Communication is the interaction of one or more human beings in order to convey a message that has successfully been interpreted the same as the intended message. This is still a simple definition of Human Communication that could be expanded. It, however, does a good job of getting across the point of what Human Communication is in a brief statement.
The main part of the definition was the message being interpreted the same as the intended message. There are many parts of Human Communication that can get in the way in this part of the definition. It is mainly how the message is transported from the sender to the receiver. This can be the volume of the sender, the distance between the sender and receiver, body language, the intent of the sender, the mood of the sender, and many more. These all need to be accounted for when thinking about how the intended message will be interpreted right. This means that the sender of the message in Human Communication must realize these factors can come into account when sending their message to the receiver.
After looking at the formal definitions and personal definitions of Human Communication you can have mixed feelings about the meaning. The reason for this is that there is no correct answer and everyone will have their own personal view on what Human Communication is. After doing basic research I have come to found that the definition of Human Communication is not the most important part. The most important part is how do people effectively communicate and what they can do to understand each other better. This will come in the studies of human communication and not on a simple definition of two words.

References
human. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v1.1). Retrieved September 12, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/human
Littlejohn, S., & Foss, K. (2008). Theories of Human Communication. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

Posted by jlhornbaker at 04:40 PM | Permalink

When looking into the European Renaissance there are lots of events that shaped the history. It was a time of change and invention. One of the biggest inventions of this time was the adoption of the printing press. When doing some research on the printing press it was interesting to learn that it was originally made in China. Today it is very common to see things stamped with Made in China. In the European Renaissance it was probably unheard of to have products Made in China and I find that somewhat ironic.

The printing press can not be argued as one of the greatest inventions of the time. It was a way to communicate with others that were not from your town. It was a way of people to express their thoughts and opinions. Information could be passed to others in a way that made sense for the time. This is all thanks to Johannes Gutenberg who adapted the Chinese printing press model for Western Languages. This was roughly 600 years ago and look at how far we have come since then. Instead of us trying to express our thoughts through a book that would have to be published and distributed, we are instead sitting on our computer entering a quick blog entry to express our views and opinions.

I think the printing press is without a doubt one of the most important inventions of the European Renaissance time. It did for their time what the computer has done for ours. It's all about communicating with others and expressing the ways we think. Without it we would not be connected with parts of the world that we wouldn't have access to otherwise.

Posted by jlhornbaker at 11:03 AM | Permalink