Political Possiblities Answers

Sign an e-petition.
http://animbuse.epetitions.net/?
http://ohohaca.epetitions.net/

I signed two e-petitions. One to stop animal cruelty and the other to stop child abuse.

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
I went to The Australian website and looked at the professional opinion blogs...
Responded to Janet Albrechtensen's Feminists screwing it up for sisters 23rd September blog.

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/feminists_screwing_it_up_for_sisters/P150/

What is Barak Obama up to today?
www.twitter.com/whitehouse

"Remarks and a new photo gallery from Obama and the First Lady pitching Chicago for the Olympics
http://bit.ly/zxUh9"
-about two hours ago from web.

The White House's twitter update from today, the 16th August.

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
This question confused the hell out of me for soooo long! Many websites listed the "local member" as John Paul Langbroek or Paul Bell. After lots of reasearch I found the best two websites were...
http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/
AND
the PFD file from www.surfersparadise.com/pdfs/2008/sun_wrap.pdf

Local- Susie Douglas District 7
"I am proud to be the Surfers Paradise Councillor as the precinct reaches
this very important milestone."- Susie Douglas

State- State Member for Surfers Paradise, John Paul Langbroek.
Mr Langbroek is the Liberal National Party Shadow Minister
for Education, Skills and The Arts.

"I am proud to be the fifth Member for Surfers Paradise in the
Queensland Parliament. With its playful history, Surfers Paradise
has long been considered the heart and soul of the Gold Coast." - John Paul Langbroek

Federal- Federal Member for Moncrieff (The main suburbs include Ashmore, Benowa, Broadbeach, Broadbeach Waters, Bundall, Carrara, Main Beach, Mermaid Beach, Mermaid Waters, Surfers Paradise, Worongary and parts of Miami, Nerang, Southport and Tallai) is Steven Ciobo. Mr Ciobo is the Coalition Shadow Minister for Small Business,
Independent Contractors, Tourism and The Arts.

“You know you’ve truly mastered something when word
spreads so far that people from all over the world are talking
about it – and that’s Surfers Paradise" - Steven Ciobo

Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
Hansard Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Speech by
John-Paul Langbroek
MEMBER FOR SURFERS PARADISE
CONSTITUTION (FIXED-TERM PARLIAMENT) AMENDMENT BILL

Found Via http://parlinfo.parliament.qld.gov.au/isysquery/51a712e2-39df-4176-b71d-f6007adce39a/41-50/list/

Political Possiblities Questions

This week's tasks:

What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet. How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

• Sign an e-petition.
• Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
• What is Barak Obama up to today?
• Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
• Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
• Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
• Read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics that you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.

Adam asks:

What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???

What place does censorship have in a democracy?

OpenOffice Experience Week9

Ok. One of week 9 task's is to download a program from portableapps.com... Now, this would be fine, however my PC has serious issues... in fact I have a feeling that it may not return after the blue screen of death incident... Thus we just purchased a beautiful new Mac.... ohhhhhh its gorgeous... never thought i would feel this way about a computer! Hahaha But I am serious it is so quick and cooperative! And it isn't just a blue screen!!!!

In Love I tell you!

Anyway now I have my beautiful Mac I can't download programs off portableapps.com... Or more specifically I can but they wont do anything on my computer! (Yes I did try...)

Sooooo.... to overcome this problem I downloaded a Mac version of OpenOffice off the OpenOffice website! I'm hoping this still counts!!!!!

So Today I'm blogging about my experience with OpenOffice...
I have just completed my News and Politics Media Industry assessment which I wrote on OpenOffice's version of a Word document.

This is how it went...
Type-ity type-ity type type type....
Coffee...
Insert Quote..
Coffee
Type some more...
Coffee.
Now its getting late...
Coffee.
Now its really late. I'm even watching David Letterman. *Sigh* I hate American comedy! Its just NOT funny!!!
Ok. Now its really late, Ive had too much caffeine and my brain has gone to bed...
Its Synonyms Button time!!!
Oh no. Oh my. May God have mercy on our souls...
(In case you haven't guessed, I couldn't find the synonyms button.)
Trust me... its completely devastating at 2 o'clock in the morning when the only words you can think of are sleep and coffee. And they didn't really make any sense in my assessment...

Other than that i found that OpenOffice was the same as Word... The fact that i couldn't find the synonyms button probably has a lot to do with me being new to Mac's and not understanding the crazy mouse pad. (HOW THE HELL DO YOU RIGHT CLICK ON SOMETHING!) I haven't used its version of powerpoint yet, but i opened it before and it looked very similar.

Also I wanted to note that OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft Word. Despite what i was told before hand, i checked it out and i had no problems opening an openoffice document in Word...

P.s Im loving that i didn't need to pay $200 for a program I brought (not even) six months ago before my computer decided to BlueScreenOf Death me! Not happy that you can only add it to two computers! Dumb! I paid good money for that!

Also loving that I'm about to download Gimp instead of paying millions of dollars for photoshop! (I'll let you know how my Gimp experience goes!)

Lecture Week 8

Just got out of Stephen Stockwell's lecture.
Was good but I need to read the notes on Learning at Griffith to benefit fully... all the computer stuff kinda goes over my head. It was about Cyber Politics and eDemocracy. However he is a good lecturer he manages to keep me entertained even if i get a bit lost with computer terms. Today wasn't too bad he wasn't talking about gigamefabites or anything toooo crazy! Hahaha

My to do list from the lecture is as follows:
- Read over Stephen's lecture notes because they were a bit too small for me to read in there!
- Read the suggested readings if not all of them at least the Allegory of Platos Cave and the one by William Gibson.
- Look up William Gibson via the links he provided.
- Look up the movie he mentioned "The Conversation".

Not to bad except I have to work all weekend! RRrrrr I wish I was rich so I didn't need to work!

P.S Highlight of Lecture?? Guy getting kicked out for talking on his phone during the lecture!!! Scary! Definatley wont be answering my phone in class any time soon!!!

Week 12 Assignment

Esssay Topics for your 1000 word essay due end of week 12 in your blog.

1. Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World" both presentdifferent views of contemporary internet users. In light of your own experiences with new technologies do you think they are accurate portrayals? Discuss why or why not with specific examples.

2. The idea of the internet as cyberspace has been a part of our contemporary culture for some time, particularly in the popular medium of film. But is the concept of cyberspace still relevant to our contemporary society? Discuss with reference to your own experience of contemporary media.

3. Digital media put the tools of production into the hands of the everyday computer user making it incredibly easy to produce content. These creative skills used to be something that people worked to develop. Now it appears that amateurs can produce content of a fair standard within a relatively short period of time. Where does this leave 'professionals' and highly-skilled artists? Choose one area of creativity and discuss some of the challenges facing practitioners vs amateurs in producing digitalcontent.

4. What are the uses/limits of the internet in terms of politics and/or democracy? Should we rethink the nature of the political? What happens to the nation/state in the age of networks that have the potential to span thewhole planet? What has happened to the idea of "community" in the age of networked digital media? Discuss with an example.

5. Creative Commons is both a solution and yet another failure to deal with authorship and copyright on the internet. Discuss and give examples.

6. Any other challenging topic related to the lectures that is approved by your tutor. To be approved, your topic should be unique and be based in your own interests in the online world and the theory that relates to it.

Not sure what Im going to choose but I like the sound of 4 and 5... I'll have to start thinking and perhaps I'll make my own up...

Tutorial

No Tute for this week! University Strike! Going to the beach!! But I promise I'll do homework on the beach!!! :D Im guessing that we'll continue our video task in week 9...
Just emailed Kaya asking if we will...
Very frustrating. Stupid Samsung phone won't bluetooth to my computer!!! That would make things much easier!!

STRESS!

Completely stressing out!
Only just realised I have a 300word media industry news story due on friday!!!
300word? Easy!! I hear you say...
The word limit I can handle...
Its the interviews and quotes (that I can't make up) that I can't handle!!!
ARG!
4Days to write something interesting and hopefully decent! Its worth 20% too!!! RRrrrr
I hate my News and Politics class.
Not really but I hate assignments! :(