oh yeah, I'm Asian

There is no better hype machine than the war machine.

Not this one

The thought of impending doom and the loss of thousands of lives is a spooky thing but it's also very interesting. Cue the latest news from East Asia as "tensions mount" between North and South Korea. One side has a basketball obsessed dictator with nukes idly resting on his lap and the other has terrible music, women disguised as boy bands, and a people with a Hajj-esque mission to learn English from a 3rd World country. It's a battle between face-melting nuclear weaponry and cultural corruption. Verdict: stalemate.

What surprises me is how close we actually are to this action. Geographically we aren't as far to these at-horn nations as we perceive ourselves to be. We are culturally distant from our neighbors but the cold, hard fact is we're still Asian and we are "related" to Japan, Korea and Singapore as we are related to our weird second cousins. Even if we aren't that close, their achievements still tickle a sense of envy in us. Seeing then how our Asian neighbors have risen from the stereotypical notion that our continent produces nothing but rice-and-noodle loving degenerates begs the question: What happened to us? 

Just ten years ago we had faster Internet capabilities than Japan. Okay. Right now, a Japanese boy just downloaded a movie in a minute and a half while a Filipino dad is on the phone talking to a PLDT representative complaining about his intermittent 1Mbps connection.The gulf in available technology is vast- it's ridiculous but not incredible. Our country is plagued by so many problems that any dream of advancement is hampered and eventually brought to stagnation. I have no hope left for this place. Unless, of course, people would be willing to give up some of their freedom for the sake of the country (which will never happen because people are selfish and they believe that their freedom is a right).

What Martin Luther King Jr Said

At the end of this entry, you will know what Martin Luther King Jr. said. But as of now, you will get to know what I'll say.

I never knew that in fact, about 15 years ago, the Philippines once had the utmost potential in Internet technology. When this fact came to light last week during class, I want to cry over spilled milk. Sayang. Like a girl who thinks of The One Who Got Away, Thoughts of the what-could-have-beens raced through my head. Imagine if we have what Japan have now (with regards to Internet).

All those possibilities.

All those opportunities.

Snap back to reality! There's no use crying over spilled milk. Thinking of the what-could-have-beens without any action is rather useless now. I think if we think that we can still rise from our downfall. It's not like the end of the world for us. We can rise again. We just need to be back in the game. We can be like Japan before it became an internet roaring giant. Japan started slow. What difference is that to the "slowing" of the Philippines? I mean if we work on the technological developments here in the country, I would not be surprised if we would be really successful. Imagine watching the other countries talking about us and looking at us as if we were a resurrected Phoenix.

All hope is not lost! We still have the potential. I think we have more potential now that we ever had in the past. All we need is that tipping point in Internet development. I read about Japan's pitfalls. One is language barrier. Filipinos can work around that! I mean, we know English and the number of people using the Internet is growing.

It's never too late! I hope I get to witness this rise in my lifetime. Just like what Martin Luther King Jr. said, We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The End Marks The Beginning Of Something (Better).

by Chryl Martinez

I was born on February 17, 1990. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything related to the internet on the exact date of my birth. But I did find a lot of interesting events that happened on the same month and year.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was tasked by the government to do research and improve on defense-related fields. One of the advancements made was the creation of an “intergalactic network of computers and people.” The ARPAnet started as a military experiment funded by the government. But later on its potential as a communication tool was recognized.
Then came a time when the ARPAnet can no longer cope up with fast-growing internet. ARPAnet users encountered several problems like difficulty to connect, expensive cost for set-up, unauthorized users, etc. So on February 1990, the ARPAnet was terminated. But the end of something marks the beginning of another thing. Although the ARPAnet has ended, it signified the beginning of the NSFnet.
Like radio, it can be said that the interconnectivity of computers also started from the military. The initial objective was to use the technology for defense, then for communication. Now, we call these technologies as mass media and we use it not only for communication but for entertainment as well. Come to think of it, at first only soldiers who has gone through rigid training can use these technologies but now almost everyone has access to the internet. Even children knows how to surf the net. Another thought, these technologies were made by the military to help them protect or defend what it is that they wanted to protect. But now it seems like it's the same technology that is becoming their enemy. It is because the internet can now be used to spy on the government and the military. It is like the internet has become a "tool
for transparency."

P.S.
Aside from the arrival of the NSFnet, I’ve also learned that Pegasus Mail “has been made available as a free service to the internet since February 1990.”
Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was also released on February 1990. This marked a history for the digital imaging world. We can see the immense influence of Adobe Photoshop through the processed digital images rampant on the internet.

References:
http://www.randomhistory.com/2009/01/12_internet.html
http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/internet_history90s.htm
http://www.pmail.com/history.htm
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/compsoft/soft1990.htm
http://photoshopnews.com/2008/02/19/most-important-date-in-digital-imaging-history/
http://www.answers.com/topic/adobe-photoshop#ixzz161nGfpoV

Me and the Dot-Com Bubble- April 1992.

            The birth of the Internet in the Philippines was on the year 1990- 1995. It was when the Philippine Network Foundation (PHNet), a consortium of private and government institutions, enabled the Filipinos to be connected live via a 64 kbps link to Sprint in the United States .I was lucky because I was born on the year 1992 where internet began to become a popular medium for communication.

When I was googling for my assignment, I was confident that researching for an internet related activity that happened on the same month and year of my birthdate was easy. And yes, I was right. Even though my birth date was not remarkable in the history, some worldwide events had happened such as the biggest concert of Ferry Mercury in London where 80 000 people had attended and the celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday. (Yes, we have the same birthday!).

As I continued to research for an internet-related event that happened on the 20^th day of April 1992, I found out that this date was the birth of the Dot-com bubble. I was clueless about it that’s why I made further research about what this dot-com bubble is. According to google, Dot-com bubble was an internet-based company that did most of its business on the Internet. Its type of bussiness model relied on harnessing network effects by operating at a sustained net loss to build market share . These companies offered their services or end product for free with the expectation that they could build enough brand awareness to charge profitable rates for their services. 

Some of the companies involved in the dot-com bubbles were: Boo.com- a British Internet company that was launched in the Autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel over the Internet, Free Internet. Com which was a Free Internet Provider, GeoCities which was purchased by Yahoo! for $3.57 billion, Hotmail, The Learning Company, Info Space, and many more

This business, though didn’t last until the year 2000 was still influential because it gave rise to the idea of using internet not only for the purpose of communication but for the purpose of business and globalization.  

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freei

http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/ahitler.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startups.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freddie_Mercury_Tribute_Concert 

By: Kathleen Joy Gabaon

 

May 17, 1993: Intel® Corporation released its new Pentium® Processor.

Well that explains it, then.


I've never really figured myself to be someone inclined to technology. When I was a kid all I did was play with my toys and with some kid-neighbors. I even remember often playing that stupid chinese garter game. -_-'


I am pretty aware that I am the oldest student in the class. Come on, that's downplaying it. I may even be the oldest student in our batch for heaven's sake. But that's not stopping me to fit in. Ha, not at all.


IMO my generation straddled the line between being the old, traditional lifestyle of the "analog" age, with which term I used only to contrast with the digital age being the other side of the line my generation sat on. When we discussed about the digital natives and the digital settlers, I was at the end of my wits figuring out where I even belong.

I like to think that I was born amidst the boom of computing, computer gaming and the peak of the internet "revolution", but as it turns out it was then that I was growing up. I was able to use every computer processing technology from Intel's Pentium® Processor--which, strangely enough, was introduced on my 4th birthday, May 17, 1993--up to the most current Intel Core i-series. I was able to play game consoles from Atari to the FamiCom to the Playstation One, Two and Three. I saw black and white Televisions, we had CRT Monitors and TV's when I was growing up. I think we also had a plasma TV once and now, of course, LCD/LED TV's and monitors. I was fascinated for a few months how analog wristwatches worked but when my dad introduced me a digital Casio watch that has a cool blue backlight, I never reverted back to analog watches until I was in high school.


Well, I know most of us probably went through similar accounts, but I just feel that I did savor everything these tech products have to offer at the time and, thus, might have been the reason why I'm a techie nerd like me.


I'm also a music person. When I was young I got to listen to songs that my auntie like. So those were Eraserheads songs, Oasis, and that bit of stuff. Although I didn't really get into music when I was young (I was a J-pop fanboy in my early highschool years) I did like listening to them when they're being played, even to the point of me associating different songs to different points in my life. Yeah, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" reminds me of the day my dad introduced a certain computer game. Now looking at a site about my birthday here, there were a number of songs and singles released on May 17, none of which I recognize but most of which I think became hits. I assume as much because, well frankly I think of myself as a hit. HAHA.


My mother used to tell me stories about how catastrophic the Earth was when I was growing; I was a baby in need of looking after when the Pinatubo erupted years ago, and actually, closer to home, when I was born--I think it was around about 4pm on May 17th, 1989, there was a really really aggressive storm, according to my parents. My dad had to rush from Canlubang to Makati in heavy rain when my mom was on labor with me.

Looking up in the same website, there were a total of five nuclear tests in three different years in Texas and Colorado on May 17. On the same day in 1940, Germany began invading France. on 1976, an earthquake in Uzbekistan killed at least a thousand. Well, there's a fair number of tragedies during the May 17's on different years. Could it be that I'm a disaster myself?...


...NOT A CHANCE!

Jb Aquino

the "beatbreaker"

P.S. for commenting, we should use our own accounts or something, right? That'll be mine.

We Don't Have It Easy (An Unsmooth Segue)

I squirm and swear under my breath whenever older people tell us that we have it easy. It may be true that we can access all the information we may need by a single mouse click but the laws of life will never make anything easier (not forever, at least). The fact is when you can produce something faster and easier, you're expected to produce more. In our case, it's "work". 

My parents would tell me that there was once a time when googling was unheard of and libraries were still the first choice source for info. They failed to tell me how the situation was back then though: the ratio of students to in-demand books, how detailed their reports had to be and what else they had to do at the same time. Googling is a double-edged sword. You can find information faster but you'll be expected to have more information or find out more information about other things. We now have to do so much stuff at the same time, the oldies had to coin the term "multi-tasking" to keep up. It seems that old expressions such as "nagsusunog ng kilay" and "hitting the books" can't accurately describe the modern student anymore. 

Think about it. We know so much stuff that our parents haven't even heard of even if those things existed before and during their time as students. Man. The modern search engine plays an important part in this phenomenon. In September of 1990, the first search engine, Archie (a play on the word archive) was born. It didn't have the indexing capability that we enjoy with our current search engines. You had to know the exact file name to access the document. Unbelievable, I know. 

All this technology available and the Internet is amazing but we really shouldn't be surprised anymore. Heck, Mark Twain conceptualized the Internet in 1898, the year of our independence from Spain. With every astonishing achievement in technology comes a challenge to maximize our output and that's something that will go on until the world ends via zombie apocalypse.

I'm ready for that too.

                                                                                                                     Wacky Torres

Delayed Gratification

January is the most beautiful month in calendar for it marks the start of another year. It symbolizes another opportunity to make life even better. The same goes for the year 1990 which marked the beginning of a wonderful decade of Metallica, boy bands, Spice girls, Leonardo de Caprio and etc. Combining January and 1990 together, the month and year I was born, should be one of the greatest moment in time. Or so I thought?

As I was google-ing for amazing events, cool inventions and personalities born on January 1990, I was expecting to see A-list celebrities to have the same birthday as me, mind blowing inventions of man and unforgettable events in history but Google failed to meet my expectations. I found insignificant results leaving my ego crushed and disappointed. I’ve always thought that the day I entered this earth was something so special that the world celebrated with my parents by having grandeur events and stupefying inventions commemorating my existence. Was that too much imagination? I guess the world postponed everything the day I was born because my mere nativity was way too special to handle. Kidding!

In all actually, I was just trying to comfort myself with the fact that almost all great digital and internet inventions were released in 1991. However, Tim-Lee Berners was still on the process of perfecting the HTML on January 1990. Even though, the internet and digital world were on hiatus on my birth month something remarkable did happen too.

In January 1990, a man named Andrew Cushman rejoined Microsoft Corporation. His contributions to Microsoft allowed us to enjoy the internet to what it is today. He acquired his bachelor’s degree in international studies at the University of Washington and a master’s degree in international business in Seattle University. Andrew Cushman held positions in various Microsoft teams such as Microsoft Money Team, Microsoft International Product Group and most importantly, the Internet Information Services (IIS) team. He spearheaded the development of the IIS 6.0 in the Windows Server 2003. The IIS is a web server application that enables a computer to host and manage a website and other internet contents. It also provides WWW publishing services, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) services. It also has a feature called Modules which allow the server to process requests. This IIS of Microsoft is one of the top web server applications used by many internet websites. At present, an IIS version 7.5 is already available. Features such as Client Certificate Mapping, IP Security, Request Filtering, URL Authorization are added in the IIS 7.5. Cushman is also the Senior Director of Strategy in the Trustworthy Computing Group of Microsoft where he strives for a safer and more trusted Internet. He is also part of the Industry Consortium for the Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), a non-profit forum of collaborating IT vendors that battles internet security threats for a better and protected IT infrastructures. Andrew Cushman represents Microsoft and he shares his knowledge of IT in ICASI for the improvement of security response programs and in minimizing security threats in the internet.

Andrew Cushman’s contributions to the internet are truly remarkable and significant. We must be thankful that on January 1990, he decided to rejoin Microsoft Corporation because he has done so much in improving internet features. We can say that if it was not for him, the security of the internet would not have been this rigorous. We would not be able to enjoy the websites that we religiously visit. Nothing great may have been released on that day but that job opening led to something unexpectedly good.

Sources :

http://www.icasi.org/?q=node/11

http://www.icasi.org/aboutus

http://www.iis.net/team