Reflection

While looking at my blogs I noticed that my focus seemed to be about innovation and openness. Making it so that new things are thought up and as these new things come into being they are in allowed for the public to use them. Innovation and openness seem to be a great thing that managed to move things forward quickly.

Problems With Mediums

There are many draw backs  to the different mediums as they have developed. Print, one of the oldest mediums that we still see a lot of today, is heavy and required huge machines to accomplish the printing of the works of literature. Print was an amazing invention, don't get me wrong, but print was able to help spread the ability to read from just select groups to many many people. By having the ability to read and collaborate because of the availability of the medium really help to spread literacy.

The medium that we see a ton of today is the spread of many new things in digital mediums. Just think about it all of the blogs and e-books and all of the knowledge that is being spread because of the easiness of access to information about basically any subject that perks you interest. There are many draw backs to today's mediums though as soon as we learn about all of the new things some other new twist on the medium comes out. Look at how even social media keeps changing, Myspace and then Facebook. Now google is even attempting to move into the social media market with google plus. As everything is becoming connected this can be problematic because if one aspect of your account is hacked then the hacker has access to all of your information that is linked together.

Weapon's Builders With Good Intentions

The Gatling gun was made by a man who guess what his last name was Gatling. Dr. Richard J. Gatling invented the Gatling gun which was basically the precursor to modern day machine guns. Dr. Gatling had good intentions when he invented the Gatling gun, he wanted to make it so that not as many people were required for an army to produce the same amount of fire power. With smaller armies Dr. Gatling hoped that there would be less causalities and hoped that he would help people to realize how futile war is.

Alfred Nobel the founder of the Nobel Prize made the money that perpetuates the Nobel prize by inventing something that if used for his desired purpose was extremely useful, dynamite. On the other hand though there are many times that his invention was not used for its desired purpose and instead was used as part of a weapon during war time. Nobel did not like this he invented it to be safer than its predecessor nitroglycerin and it was but it also allowed people to use dynamite as a weapon to cause massive destruction. Nobel didn't want to be remembered as the man who invented dynamite and so he set up the nobel prize to help people who were trying to do good in the world

Some people might not deem this a good intention but protecting you homeland from an invasion was Mikhael Timofeevitch Kalashnikov reason for inventing the weapon that killed the most people of any weapon, the AK-47. Kalashnikov was a tank mechanic who while he was in the hospital came up with the idea and basic design for a weapon that could out perform German machine guns that were killing tons of his country men. He knew that this weapon needed to be able to fire in any condition. Hot, cold, mud, or sand the AK-47 needed to fire. He achieved this but in the end his invention became the weapon of guerrilla resistance. This weapon has killed more people to date than the atomic bombs have. 

Versioning

I was wondering why my game that I play is always having to shut down and release a new "patch" and why some of the time the new patch didn't seem to work as well as a past one for a day. What I found out is that League of Legends is just like most other game that have users playing against each other via the internet, to keep their users interested they have to continually be making changed to their game and technically making a new edge to the game all of the time. This I learned from our class website has an actual name versioning.

Why is releasing software often even when there could potentially be problems the best idea for companies? The reason is that as companies release their software and get it out for users to see the "bugs" or problems will be found out that much faster when there are thousands of people using the software rather then just your few test junkies that are working for the company.

This seems to be the opinion of every company today. They release often and are always looking for feedback.  It can be hard to tell if companies are actually looking at the feedback that they are sent but just think about it if, as per say, you were a software company and were receiving tons of feedback on your product from people that were actually using it wouldn't that just make you super excited because you would know that your idea was actually having the chance to take off.

Funerals

So all this week I was preoccupied because my grandma suddenly became I'll and died. So when thinking about what I wanted to do some research on the only thing that came to mind was where some of our funeral traditions came from.

Modern Burials where people were placed in a coffin after they died didn't happen in the United States until the English began to immigrate to North America. Previous to the English in the 18th century when people were buried they were just wrapped in so sort of cloth and buried.

Originally people were buried in church yards but this began to be stopped when the Puritans wanted to rebel against the established custom and instead had their town set apart grounds for common burial grounds. These were areas that basically were zoned for only being a burial spot. 

When people moved away from living near towns they started going away from getting buried in town to starting family burial plots. Family's wouldn't be able to afford or want to send their family members away from the family farm and so they would just bury them on their property. Wouldn't it be nice to be allowed to be buried on some place that is familiar to you rather than being buried a long way from your family where it would become tough for them to come visit your head stone.

Burial places have a reverence about them that just help me want to be respectful I once got to go visit Arlington Cemetery and it just made me feel grateful for all of those men who were willing to give up their lives for the cause of freedom. Many people serve their country and do their best to protect their family's. This is why graves have such reverence. 

Here is a video of the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

This just shows my feelings on how much funeral and knowing where your family is means to me. I would hate not knowing what happened to a family member who went away to war to defend my freedoms.