Recently I made an infographic on a blog post I am currently working on. Don’t worry, it will be out soon. Anyways while doing that I learned a lot about infographics. It is a various useful tool to help organize information. I used my infographic to demonstrate different statistics on video games. I discussed different stats like how many hours people play video games and what video games are the most popular. The way they have set up is really helpful as well. You can choose from various different types of charts and they are very helpful for whatever type of data you are putting on the graph. I would definitely recommend using Infogram.com Here is my Infogram that I made https://infogram.com/video-game-statistics-1hkv2njx1nyn6x3
Converse Vs Walmart. So What Happened?
A court case that happened 3 years ago? Why bring it up now? It is because I felt like it. So, why did this come about in the first place? Converse sued them because they were selling copycat shoes in their stores. Walmart says that the toe caps, toe bumpers, and stripes are their own so, they cannot sue them. Sounds like a Judge Judy case, let’s continue.
The website footwearnews.com does a good job of breaking it down. Not only did Converse sue Walmart but, they sued other 30 other retailers as well. They got off the hook but Walmart is still fighting back. They say that they wanted to keep their every day low prices. Converse has been around for 109 years. It seems to me like a lot of brands rip off their shoes often. To add on to this adventure, they want stores to stop selling the knock-off brands as well. This is making this situation even more interesting.
The reason Converse is so upset is that this fake knock-off is putting a bad taste on the real Chuck Taylors. The solution was to have Nike buy them out for 309 million dollars. They then saw various NBA players wear their shoes such as Lou Williams and Kyle Korver. Not too long after, they came out with a new Chuck Taylor to help boost their sales. It is called the Chuck Taylor All Star. Not only that but, they also entered the skateboarding market as well. They made their own skateboarding shoe as well.
One final reason why Converse was so ticked off by this was that this certain shoe was their first real success back in 1917. They were custom for basketball all start and his name was, believe it or not, Chuck Taylor.
After all of this conflict, Converse comes out on top and is the news undisputed WWE champion, whoops, that is the wrong category. The point is, Converse won the case and now Walmart cannot sell the rip off shoes in their stores anymore. That is until someone else tries to rip off some other shoe of theirs.
Wait, We Break Copyright Laws?
Well, not really but there is more to it than you think. For those of you that don’t know, copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something. In this particular post, the examples have to do with photos and articles.
I am going to out on a limb and say that you most likely have a Twitter account or a Facebook account. I will also go out on a limb and say that at some point you shared an article that you found interesting and shared it on one of your social media accounts. Did you ever think that you could be at fault for copyright infringement? Probably not, and you should be fine because the person who originally posted the article or photo will be the one at fault. This seems like this happens a lot, why don’t we hear more about these copyright infringements? In the article titled Does Sharing A Link To Online Content Amount To Copyright Infringement? Justin Goldman, who works for Getty Images, took a photo of Tom Brady and other parties tweeted it out without giving him proper credit. Another example would be The Washington Post and just about every other news source uses President Trump’s tweets. It seems pretty simple, give the person or publisher credit and you don’t have to worry about them coming after you. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has some different views on this subject. They ruled that if you use sharing links with copyrights for profit may infringe copyright laws. Basically, they are saying that the person who publishes the work better make sure that it is done legally or else they could be at risk of copyright infringement.
The drama doesn’t end here. Now we have a photographer going after somebody big and that somebody is CBS. In the article Photographer Sues CBS for Copyright Infringement, CBS Sues Back we have photographer Jon Tannen telling writer Alex Gleitman to take down his post including Tannen’s photo even though Gleitman says he gives him credit. He then decided to sue CBS and CBS countersued him for $150,000 for being a hypocrite for using copyrighted still frame without permission. This is one of those situations where you look and just hope they stop because you are embarrassed for them.
My thoughts on all of this are why don’t people give credit where credit is due? If people did that, we wouldn’t have these problems. Also, why don’t you just check to make sure what you are doing is legal. Is it too much to ask? Maybe so but, my dad always said, any job worth doing, is worth doing well. Don’t steal that or I will sue you.
Grammarly and Hemingway Editor Review
You have a paper due 11:59 P.M. that night. Every single college kids worst nightmare. Well, at least one of them. Anyways you have to rush to finish the paper and mess up a lot of grammar. Luckily, we have to writing tools on the internet for free. In this article, I will review the two free writing tools, Grammarly and Hemingway Editor.
First up is Grammarly. I will start with my likes first and the segway to my dislikes. What I like about Grammarly is how easy it is to install. Go to your web browser, type in the website, make an account and then install the extension. It’s really easy and free! In terms of Grammarly itself, I have found it to be very useful. One thing I like about it is that it asks if you are a student, teacher or a writer and then proceeds to ask you if you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced. After selecting your two options it tells you what it will look out you while you write. My dislikes include the fact that you have to pay to unlock all of Grammarly’s features. It is $30 a month which is pretty expensive for a grammar editor. Overall I would recommend the free version. It gets the job done and it is an easy process to install.
Next up is the Hemingway editor. What I like about this writing tool is that it gives you more suggestions on what to do. The problem is, it doesn’t always tell you exactly what to fix. Sometimes it will just say it’s hard to read. That’s great but what if you review that sentence multiple times but can’t find something wrong with it. It’s confusing sometimes but it does give some helpful insight at the same time. It also points out when you are using “fluff’ words and when you are using the wrong tenses. While you need to pay for Hemingway Editor to get all of its features, it is a surprisingly reasonable price. It is only $20 which I find to be very reasonable. I do not all the full features that you would obtain. I do however know some of them. If you upgrade you can edit anywhere. It also includes the ability to send your papers to others with the recommended edits and then others can tell you how you could potentially fix that.
Overall I think both are great for being free. I would pick Grammarly because once you install into your web browser, and you see suggestions everywhere you write. After writing this article, I can definitely see a difference in certain things I used to make mistakes with.
You’re Not as Private on The Internet as You Think
So we are in November and Christmas is creeping up on us. You have to start to shopping for Christmas presents. You go to buy that new video game and you see an ad on the right side of the screen. It’s an advertisement for a new type of clothing. That’s cool and all but have you ever thought that the advertisement is spying on you? That’s right, an article written by Jennifer Langston-Washington called “Anyone can track you with $1,000 of online ads” tells us that like the article title, anyone can track you if they pay $1,000 for ads. An example given in the article was that your boss spying on you doing your working hours. With that being said, if your boss cared enough to spend $1,000 on an advertisement to see what you are doing, they could. In fact, a research team went out to see if they could do it and they did. They discovered that “that an individual ad purchaser can, under certain circumstances, see when a person visits a predetermined sensitive location.” (Langston-Washington, Jennifer) Well, what is considered a “sensitive location”? An example is a hospital someone might be in or if someone has their location turned on, on their phone. They also found that they could see what apps people were using. It’s amazing that they don’t even have to click on the advertisement to enable the tracking, it happens which is pretty scary.
Discussing the various ways people can spy on you with ads is already scary enough. How about cybersecurity failures? “The Decade of Security and Privacy” by Danielle Sabrina, she talks about these various threats. Do Target and Equifax remind you of anything? How about the fact that they lost our credit card information to cyber thieves? Obviously, Targets scenario was no one close to as severe as Equifax because you can switch your credit card. With Equifax, they lost over 145 million Americans social security numbers, bank account numbers and more important private things. If I could summarize all of that in two simple words, those words would be ‘not good’. At least we can that the government is taking some steps by spending $90 billion in cybersecurity efforts.
Is there anything we can about this? Are we screwed and we are going to have to sit back and hope that we do not get hacked? No need for trepidation, for we have Blockchain! Basically, Blockchain is using different computers and networks to safely secure your private information. Blockchain is a technology, not a company. Most notably in the article, FortKnoxster is the company that uses this technology. Their goal according to their CTO Mickey Joe Nathan Johnnyson (cool name by the way) wants to make sure that their customers “have a secure place to store their information” and “want to make sure no one is listening in or tapping into the lines of communication.” They want to end all of this spying that anyone can do with $1,000 advertisements. Who honestly cares enough to spend $1,000 to spy on someone? I mean it is outlandish but, people still do it anyways. At least now we are in pretty safe hands.