Are you a Pirate?

Piracy is a crime in the U.S., and most of us do it at one point or another.  Many people do it and never think twice about it. What most people don’t know is that 50.4 billon dollars has been lost since 2009 form piracy.  For those of who don’t know, anyone who sells, acquires, copies or distributes copyrighted materials without permission is called a pirate. The most prolific pirating nations are Brazil, India, and China. The average piracy rate in the Asia-Pacific area is 59%. Yahoo News reports that the 59% number means that 900 million computers in the area run pirated software.
(http://www.dailytech.com/Report+501B+Lost+Globally+to+Software+Piracy/article18350.htm)

With this being said, do you think that piracy is something that should become banned altogether?  There are many groups, policies, acts, and etc…. that work day and night on preventing and punishing piracy. On Jan. 20, 2012, U.S. Representative Lamar Smith withdrew the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from consideration on the House floor. The proposed legislation drew fire from numerous critics while massive organizations like the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) defended it. With this much support behind an act like this, it is hard to just ignore and keep everything the same. 

Let's get this out of the way right at the start: Stealing is wrong. It's unethical and usually illegal to take something that doesn't belong to you without permission or some form of compensation. It's easy to illustrate this point with physical objects -- if you steal apples from a store, that store has fewer apples to sell to other customers. But things get a bit tricky when it comes to digital property. When somebody steals an app from apple through jail breaking, apple does not lose any stock or items. They simply lose out on a chance to make money. This is why people have such a hard time accepting that piracy is wrong.

So ask yourself how you feel about piracy.

Imagine how the companies feel about losing billions of dollars every year. Also think about the people who pirate the material and imagine how they feel about all the strict new laws and policies.

Is My House Alive?

As many of you know, when we go to the movies to see a sci-fi movie based in the future. There is commonly a scene with a house that reacts to commands of the owner.  Many people think that this is not something that will be available in the near future.  The technology that supports an interactive home is actually available right now. The only problem is applying the technology.  You ask yourself, how exactly would an interactive house work? 

Well, anything in your home that uses electricity can be put on the home network and at your command. Whether you give that command by voice, remote control or computer, the home reacts. Most applications relate to lighting, home security, home theater and entertainment and thermostat regulation (http://home.howstuffworks.com/smart-home.htm).

The idea of an interactive house has already been applied to many people’s homes already.                             Bill gates (saw that coming )  built a smart home for a total of 100 million dollars.  The idea of having an interactive house was thought to only be popular with wealthy people with a background in technology. Interactive houses are actually more popular than most people assume. In 2005,  About 14 million dollars was spent on making homes interactive, by 2011 it grew to almost 85 billion. 

Could you imagine having a house that responded to your commands? How about a thermostat that could change without you lifting a finger, or a coffee machine that would brew on your command?  Could you imagine, if your house were alive?

Smart phones, Tablets, and Notebooks. Oh My!

As many of you know, Smartphone, tablets, and Notebooks are becoming much more sophisticated and popular. Out of the 310 million people in the U.S., 225 million of them own a smartphones. This is an all-time high for the United States for mobile device use. This trend is only set to increase in the near future. When you read this, ask yourself how many people you know that do not have a smartphones. Most likely you will not be able to think of many people who do not have smart phones. When it comes to tablets, they are gaining popularity all over the world. In 2012 over 100 million people purchased ipads, nexus 7, and many different types of tablets. Many people already own notebooks already, but not to many people have a notebook that is rather advance. I personally own a slightly more powerful notebook, and it is very easy to tell how more and more people are switching to stronger and more divers notebooks. Smartphones are set to have the most growth out of all the other mobile devices we have been discussing. As the worldwide mobile phone market grows in 2012, smartphones are projected to see an increase of sales of about 40% while feature phones will see a decline of about 10%.According to market-research firm IDC, vendors will ship approximately 1.8 billion mobilephones this year, and are predicted to ship 2.3 billion phones by the end of2016. Compared to last year, shipments only increased from 1.7 billion phonesthanks in part to a sharp decline in feature phone sales. In 5 years, askyourself again. How many people do you know that don’t have a smartphone?