High Tech Trash

Wow this article had a major impact on me. The main reason was that I didn’t even know that this massive environmental crisis was going on.

One thing that I struggled in my opinion was the thing archaeologists called e-waste. “Future archaeologists will note that at the tail end of the 20th century, a new, noxious kind of clutter exploded across the landscape: the digital detritus that has come to be called e-waste,” (ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text/2).

The second thing that I struggled in my opinion was “A switchover to digital high-definition television broadcasts is scheduled to be complete by 2009, rendering inoperable TVs that function perfectly today but receive only an analog signal. As viewers prepare for the switch, about 25 million TVs are taken out of service yearly,” (ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text/2). I didn’t know that TV is taken out of repair each year.

The third thing that struggled in my opinion “Currently, less than 20 percent of e-waste entering the solid waste stream is channeled through companies that advertise themselves as recyclers, though the number is likely to rise as states like California crack down on landfill dumping,” (ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text/3). The reason that this struggled with me is why are companies that advertise that they recycle and they don’t recycle.

The proactive steps that I might take to help with this major problem are making sure I recycle. If a lot of people do what they have to in order to recycle. It is very important for everyone to recycle no matter what the product is.

The thing that I took away from the link called Field Notes: Essick was the fact that he went around to different countries to study the e-waste. Also the fact of the United States doesn’t make money through High-tech recycling.

My Freeware Experience

When reading the article by Si Chen I learned a lot from reading the article. First I didn’t know what shareware is. He states “Shareware is a different concept. You can download and try shareware for free, but if you use it, you are supposed to pay for it. It is developed and released by someone who keeps full control of the intellectual property. The user does not have access to the source code and cannot modify it. There is also no collaboration or community around shareware,” (opensourcestrategies.blogspot.com).

At first I was asking myself what was open source really means. After reading the article I learned that open source is open for all users which is free and has a modify way to distribute source codes.

I decided to visit Tucows and Download.com. The experience with these two website was different. I didn’t expect to see what I saw on these two websites. When I went Tucows the first thing I saw was for spyware which I didn’t expect to see. Then on Download.com the first thing I saw was Mozilla Thunderbird.

When it came down to install anything I didn’t. The main reason is I have been having a lot of problems with my computer and I was afraid if I ended up installing anything on my computer it might crash. I wish I was able to install something from these websites to see what it looked like.

Before these assignment I didn’t know anything about these websites. I believes that all of these websites are good for every person to use on their computers.

Inside My Computer

Intel Pentium III processor

498 MHZ and 320 MB of RAM

The Intel Pentium III processor is similar to Pentium II. However Pentium III has better 3D graphics. I have a 498 MHZ which means it runs a million cycles per second. Also sine I have 320 MB of Ram which is the “waiting room” when the compute is on. 320 are the raw data waiting to be processed in the computer. MB is a megabyte which is approximately one million bytes.