You know, after I wrote this flowery message last week defending Christian business owners, some knucklehead had to prove me wrong. From various pages on their web site:
You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.
We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be ‘left behind’ on earth to go through the “tribulation period” after the “Rapture”. You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseball’s seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God.
We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made. “WHY” is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!
We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.
I don’t know if society has even been so concerned about staying “connected” as we are now. My wife used to work in the closing department of a local home builder, and she had to carry a Blackberry and a Nextel with her after hours in case somebody’s closing fell apart at the table and the title company or the customer needed to contact her. Between 5 PM and 8 PM every night, I would hear that thing go off and swear someday that I would pitch it out the window.
Well, now that I’m an adjunct and most students contact me through e-mail, I am the one now who is constantly obsessed with whether or not there are any wi-fi hotspots wherever we go so that I can stay connected with students. For the most part, none of you ever email me anyway, so you either don’t have questions or clearly don’t need to talk to me as much as I seem to need to talk to you. It’s fortunate when I take the family to Panera Bread for dinner that I have access, because after I take 5 minutes to check my e-mail and find out there are no new messages, I spend about 30 minutes on Yahoo! Games.
Whether or not you need to stay connected to your cell phone or your e-mail, we can never forget that we have an eternal connection with God, which is Christ Jesus. You don’t have to check for the location of a hotspot ahead of time to contact Him. You don’t have to check how many bars you have, worry about the signal strength, or check how close you are to a cell tower to reach Him. You don’t have to worry how many minutes you have remaining or how much battery life you have left to keep the connection going. He is there for you 24/7, without a break, on nights, weekends, and Federal holidays. That’s a better connection than you can get with any help desk, cell phone, or laptop on Earth.
In previous posts, I’ve discussed how Chick-Fil-A and other businesses use their Christian faith to draw in customers. After all, a good testimony as a trusted servant is a good reputation to have in business.
However, here are four different accounts about how a car dealership in California advertised on the radio to non-Christians: they told non-Christians to “sit down and shut up.”
One of the mass media that I think your textbook ignores is video gaming. In terms of revenue generated, video game hardware and software is a multi-billion dollar industry that stands right up there with the motion picture and television entertainment industries. It fits as one of the mass media by definition, because the software is the same no matter where it is purchased geographically, and it is meant to be consumed by a large, diverse audience. In fact, on the subject, DVDs and video downloads would also fit into this category.
When the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released earlier this month, there were concerns that it would actually cut into movie revenues of the key male 18-29 demographic, because players would stay at home to play the game. This mirrors the same concerns over lost work productivity when other video game releases such as the Halo and Madden NFL franchises coincided with “sick days”. The game ended up generating $310 million of revenue in first-day sales and $500 million in first-week sales. The link has some other interesting details about the game.
As a communication medium, gamers can go online via the internet and play a character in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) or create a virtual character to live in a virtual world such as Second Life. If you’re unfamiliar with either of those terms, Google them or ask your kids. Either they or their friends are probably playing them. People befriend other players through the game, communicate with each other, go out on missions together, or in the case of Second Life, open businesses and engage in transactions together.
There are also negative arguments against the violence and morals of some of these games and how they influence children. The industry uses a ratings system, but it is not always enforced and parents that buy the games don’t always pay attention. So, video games often come under the same scrutiny as television violence, and perhaps even more so, because in violent video games you feel like you are actually engaging in some of those activities. Here is an interesting excerpt from a blog on Wired.com:
How far into your life does a computer have to penetrate in order to remain a tool and not an annoyance or intrusion? What if your bank considered you a credit risk and could shut down your car if you were late on a payment?
Or, maybe you might have to take your computer in for service, and the Geek Squad just happens to pilfer through your computer looking for private photographs. So many people look at the computer like an automobile: it’s something to use until the wheels fall off, and then you’re looking at major repairs, you have to take it in, and then you’re at their mercy. I guess (thankfully) that they’re stealing pictures, and not financial information.
I know that I have been extremely lax about updating the last couple of weeks. It’s a combination of several projects coming to a head all at once. However, here are a few things to look at to keep your interest in the meantime:
Ten free security utilities you should already be using from ZDNet: your mileage may vary on these applications, but you might notice some topics that we covered in class, such as drive-by downloads and “crapware” that comes pre-installed on computers by the manufacturer.
Blockbuster sued for participating in Facebook’s beacon program: Facebook has a program that monitors and tells your Facebook friends about your e-commerce activity. In the case of Blockbuster, they tell your friends what videos you rent, which is a no-no according to the Video Privacy Protection Act, which was enacted after Judge Robert Bork’s video rental history was published during his Supreme Court nomination in 1987.
Computer hacker hits Advance Auto: It’s not just banks and credit card companies that are getting targeted by hackers. One wonders, though, why they still had information on file that was 7 years old.
Class, here is the PowerPoint presentation from our final night of class. In addition, I may ask some of you if it is okay with you to publish your final presentations for use as examples for future classes. I’ll let you know once I review them again.
I enjoyed teaching your class and wish you all the best of luck in your future studies with Indiana Wesleyan!
A couple in Minnesota were posting personal ads on Craigslist for sexual encounters and then stealing identities, checks, and credit card information to purchase merchandise and prescription drugs.
Who do you / can you trust in these days of rampant identity theft? As we’ve been discussing in class, there are a lot of ways that you can safeguard yourself–you just have to be vigilant.
Class, here are the slides from last night’s workshop:
Also, the university will be coming at the beginning of class to pick up your loaner laptops, so please make sure that you bring them to class and get any homework assignments, your PowerPoints for the class presentation, or other files off of there before you turn them in.
An employee of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan stole information from the records of as many as 40,000 patients, a hospital spokeswoman said on Friday.
The theft — which occurred over the past several years and included patients’ names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers — was discovered during a federal investigation, and the hospital was notified in January, the spokeswoman, Myrna Manners, said. An internal audit by the hospital confirmed the theft, she said.
The hospital does not believe that any medical information was stolen, Ms. Manners said, adding that there is no evidence that the stolen information has been used.
Investigators were looking into the possibility that the theft could be part of a larger criminal scheme, Ms. Manners said.
How do you stop this? Ummmm… maybe stop going to the doctor? As stated earlier in the course, a computer is a tool. How the tool is used is what’s the issue… you can’t stop bad guys from trying to be bad, but you can protect the information enough so that it makes it more difficult for the bad guys to get away with being bad.
