What will your college degree be worth?

Making your choices about college majors and potential careers can be tough. The idea that classes you select now in high school will somehow determine the rest of your life seems impossible. Browsing through the news today I came across a great article by a counselor at Solano Community College.

She writes with some real heartfelt wisdom about the choices she has made and how she was led to them. Her focus on career placement tests is very timely. We have been discussing implementing some school wide testing next year which could include a skills and career component.

You never know where you will wind up. When I was in high school I couldn't find Bahrain on a map. Now I have been living here for thirteen years and I am committing myself to a few more.

Read what she has to say, much wisdom there is.

There is no such thing as piracy

There are only companies that charge too much and don't have a clue.

This article at Techdirt shows that the pirates are not the problem, the companies are. If they would change their models of distribution they would end piracy and make more money at the same time.

One good point to note is that

digital content is best viewed as a service, not a product. As a service, you focus on providing continual value -- and people are paying for that future value (which is a scarce good prior to delivery), rather than an infinite good already created. There's value in paying for that future (scarce) service, and it trumps paying for an abundantly available good.

This is true. Digital products cannot be distributed and controlled like physical products. Corporations don't get this. They would rather shut down the entire Internet than make any changes to the way they do business. The article goes on to say that

the reason "piracy" is doing so well is that the "pirates are ahead not just on price, but on service." In fact, he noted that since DRM decreases the service value for customers, it also tends to increase piracy, rather than decrease it.

The data in the article goes on to show that when prices are reduced drastically, by as much as 75%, sales can increase by as much as 3000%! That's not a mistype. People copy digital content because the price is too high. If the price were reasonable, people would pay to get good copies. That has been shown in many studies.

The copyright industry won't acknowledge this because it means some loss of control for them, even though it could mean more money. The copyright industry is about power and control. Marketing music and movies is a means to attain that control. The war against so-called piracy is a war to protect profits, nothing more.

Where is our security?

Since we are on the topic of security in grade 12 I thought that this article would be a good example of what could go wrong. Is it even possible that the same system was hit twice? Someone should be getting fired.

What might be worse is that Visa and Mastercard know who the processor is, but won't name names. I guess everyone is trying to cover themselves. They should have been that cautious about the data.

You know I had to write about this

As some of you know I am following the PirateBay trial on Twitter (also many thanks to Sofia)and reading about it in the news. I am sure that many of you know about the PirateBay from personal experience and those of you who have been taking ITGS also know about the issues involved here.

This trial is just one in a long string of attempts by corporate media to control the distribution of their product. Under the law, in most countries, they have a right to do that. But this trial is also about how we will be able to access information.

One great quote comes from Christian Engstrom, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party

“Should the Internet be a place where everyone can communicate or
should it not? That’s the question of this trial, and no court can
answer that question. Even if The Pirate Bay would be freed all the way
through the court system, the problem isn’t solved. The Copyright Lobby
will demand more restrictions and tougher laws and the only way to
protect social media culture in the long run is to work politically.”

Corporations want to protect their profits and they will do what they have to in order to keep the money flowing. In order for that to happen they have to control both production and distribution. If either of those is lost, the money stops flowing in. For the past century they have had this control, but now they are losing it. People with power always want the same thing, more power. But now that power is being taken away from them, by their own customers.

The people have spoken, and voted, we want our media our way. We want a variety of formats in a variety of easily accessible media. More and more creators of content are dumping the traditional format for creation and delivery and going their own way. Music, especially music, and other entertainment can be produced locally and distributed globally. This has made the old business models obsolete.

I am not saying the process won't be painful for the established companies (gatekeepers) in the entertainment industry. They have had control for a long time and have been able to decide who is worthy and who isn't. They have also been able to have it all their own way. But now the pirates are in the harbor and barbarians are storming the gates, and we have the newest technology on our side.

There is money to be made in digital distribution, MP3Fiesta among others proves that. As long as the media companies use legal force to try and halt the advance of technology they will be fighting a losing battle. It may take awhile, but you cannot resist the technology. The question is how much misery are they willing to cause on their way down?

The ACT and you

It is official: Modern Knowledge Schools is offering the ACT exam here in Bahrain.

What have we been talking about?

I love it when I find something in the media that we have covered in class first. When I saw this article at InformationWeek about microsoft offering bounties on worm writers I had to point it out.

So this is what it has come to, open warfare between the corporations and the hackers. Armies being assembled, monies being paid and combat out in the open. Cyberwarfare on a corporate scale.

What also stuck me was the numbers quoted

Symantec said in the past five days it has seen an average of almost 500,000 infections per day with W32.Downadup.A and more than 1.7 million infections per day with W32.Downadup.B.

Those numbers are per day, that means each day and every day. What is happening? I have heard some people compare the Web to the wild west, but this is far beyond that. It sounds more like a territorial war

According to Symantec, researchers have reverse-engineered the algorithm used to generate a daily list of 250 domains that the worm depends on to download updates. Armed with that knowledge, the coalition is taking control of the domains registered through coalition partners and using them to log and track infected systems. The group also is investigating domains overseen by registrars that aren't part of the coalition, though it's not clear how much leverage can be applied in such cases.

Seizing domains, collecting secrets, gathering intelligence, cutting off supplies and putting pressure on registrars sounds like a lot of military terminology to me. Are we surfing the Net or invading another country?

Watch yourself out there boys and girls. The Web can be a very dangerous place.

Business Students Rejoice

I have posted the Business & Management sample papers on the MKSBahrain page at Google Groups. It would not allow me to post a folder, the files had to be listed separately so they are HL_1, HL_2, SL_1 and SL_2. Be sure to get both the papers and the moderator comments.

Also remember that these are very good samples. Not everyone gets a 25 out of 25.

To download follow the link to MKSBahrain on this page.

Senioritis, the real facts

I found a good article at Kansas City dot com. You can see the print version as well.

It gives some good info on commonly held beliefs about the senior year. Especially after you get accepted to the college of your choice. Some good advice within.

It is also up on my Twitter page.

For those doing the ITGS HL Portfolio

I thought this article at the BBC Click page was great. Tradition and technology converging.

Finding the right college just got easier

If you are a senior and you are still looking or if you are a junior who has just begun looking you may want to consider using a college matchmaker. This article from a local news channel in Wisconsin gives a lot of details about the new matchmaker services making their way onto the net.

This isn't just about looking at college web pages. On some of these matchmaker sites you can view videos, read blogs and chat with current students. You can find a lot of useful tools at these sites and ge some help from people who know. You might also be able to find a school you have never heard of that fits you just right.

The article also includes a list of some of the more popular services.

Deutschland uber alles

I just had a meeting with two very nice reps sent over by the German embassy. We had a good discussion about university programs in Germany and German language classes here in Bahrain. I took German in high school and loved every minute of it, well almost. My Grandmother is German, although today her hometown is actually part of the Czech Republic, WWII and all that.

The Goethe-Institut Golf-Region is going to begin offering German language classes here through the embassy. If you are interested you can contact the embassy and check it out. You might see me there.

Thomas Bohm who represents the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst gave me a lot of good info on programs in Germany. If you have been thinking about Europe as a college destination you don't have to focus only on the UK. One interesting tidbit is that 95% of universities in Germany are government owned, which keeps the tuition low. In fact he told me that, depending on the program, it is possible to go to school in Germany for between 0 to 1000 Euros a year. That's it for a year of undergraduate study.

Some programs are offered in English only, other begin in English and finish in German for those who want to learn the language really well. He also told me that the visa process is pretty easy and can usually be handled through the embassy here. Of course there is always the travel, but isn't getting away from Bahrain part of the reason for going to college on the first place?

I have some information here in the office but you should go online and check out what is offered.

Do you use Facebook?

This is a very good article at Techradar about Facebook and its expected growth. It covers social networks in general as well as looking at some specific examples.

One very good point

Eventually, though, the growth stops. It has to.
You know those pyramid scams where you pay to join the scheme, and
people you recruit pay you, and you're told you'll end up a
millionaire? They all run out of steam, leaving almost everybody out of
pocket, because to sustain the level of growth you soon need to recruit
10 times the population of the planet.

It's the
same with social networks. Once you've added everybody you can think
of, including people you'll later regret adding, you tend to stop
sending invites. The fun wears off, you update your status less
frequently, you get fed up fending off stupid requests to use stupid
applications, and you start looking for a new playground.

It goes on to say that the new playground is Twitter. I use Twitter! It also mentions Stephen Fry who I follow. I always liked him as an actor, but he is a good microblogger as well.

So what is the relevance of all this? One thing it shows is the transience of our attractions. The future of the Net, and thereby all communications and entertainment, may be one of transitory sensations which increasingly fail to excite us. Facebook is already in decline just a couple of years after it broke big, can it be true? MySpace is already a dinosaur in the social networking realm and several others have already gone bust last year.

How long will I have with Twitter, and what will replace it? My family is following me on Twitter so that they can see my day to day stuff rather than waiting for one of those occasional emails I send home. In an increasingly ad driven Net, I think we will we be perpetually bombarded by the latest trends only to be followed by the heartbreak of loss when it fades into the background.

Read the article. IT would make a good Portfolio paper.

While I'm in Twitter mode

If any of you are US bound, you might want to check to see if your potential alma mater has a Twitter feed. This list is for US universities, but I'm sure that other schools in other countries have theirs as well.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The President of the United States

uses Twitter!

Every day I find another reason to like our new President.