Falk In Class Writing #7

 Grand Theft Auto games are more than just entertainment, they are a training method to learn how to kill.  Beck points out reasons why the game should not be distributed to people, because of the violence.  He shows that anyone could play the game and then make it into a reality, and all they need to do is play the game to learn the skills. 

     Beck tells about the features of the game, like beating up hookers, stealing cars, beating up police officers, running over pedestrians, buy hookers, and can basically beat or kill anyone they’d like to. He argues on the fact that it used to take a special training to learn how to do some of the stuff in the game, but now all someone needs to know is in Grand Theft Auto.  He is shocked on how many parents allow their children to play it, because of all the many violent actions that can easily take over someone’s life.

     Beck seemed to be stating his opinion mainly, because he was making a general statement on how people who play this game would turn into killers.  He always kept saying that it was only guys who played the game, which by far is not true.  Many girls are playing violent video games nowadays, so that shows how Beck isn’t too informed on facts about the game.  Beck could have made his argument more convincing if he used true facts, that were about percentage of kids who turn the game into reality, or what age rage most likely plays this game, etc.  He also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that in the game the person playing a game can make their character buy a hooker, have sex with her, and then kill or beat her right afterwards.  The main point of the game is not that, but it is an aspect that Beck knew would get parents to realize how violent and horrible or a game Grand Theft auto is.   

Falk In Class Writing #6

Part 1     

     Music on ITunes used to be only 99 cents a few years ago, but now it has gone up to $1.29 for just one song.  There are many different sites for people to download music for free, which is illegal.  Most either do music piracy or have done it, because to pay $1.29 a song is just too much.  It is really easy to download music illegally, because there are different sites someone could use and there isn’t any kind of block on these sites.  My opinion is that music piracy is alright, because I used to do it just because I didn’t have the money to buy songs I wanted to listen to.  People shouldn’t have to pay that much just so they can listen to a song.  I don’t do it anymore because I found an application that is only $10 a month to download and listen to any song I want at any time.

Part 2

     I read the How to Save the Music Business by Paul McGuinness.  The author tried to explain to readers that music piracy is becoming unbelievably popular and it has started to ruin the music industry.  Artists work hard to make their music, so they want something for their hard work and it wouldn’t be right for them just to allow anyone to download their music.  The music industries also provide many jobs, and as music piracy increases, more jobs are lost.  The author is against music piracy, and is doing what he can to get more people aware of how bad it can be.  The author states that from 2006-2009 “music industry revenues dropped from $25 billion to $16 billion.”  The author described his fix to the music piracy problem, and described it as the music company would be included in a broadband bill that way a whole family could download whatever kind of music.     

Falk In Class-Writing #5

      Carmen likes to listen to music by Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and The Saltine Project.  She loves Harry Potter and likes to read the books as well as watch the movies.  Her two favorite television shows are Make It or Break It and Friends.  Carmen doesn’t give too much information about herself, just a few things to complete her profile.  Her roommate attacked her Facebook page by posting random wall posts, and just stating random things.  She doesn’t give much information about herself on Facebook, and most of the comments from her friends are just about how they want her to go back home. 

     The ads I generally get on the side of Facebook have to deal with horses, snowboards or some genre of music.  The horse ads are websites that sell all kinds of tack, and I tend to always get this kind of ad.  It has a picture of a horse jumping or running free, which always catches my eye.  The snowboard ads are usually trying to get me to sign up for an online raffle to win a free snowboard trip or a free snowboard.  The shopping ads that are sometimes presented have a picture of some cute outfit, and it tries to get people to click on the link to go online shopping.  The ads don’t have anything to do about what Carmen likes, but more aimed towards what I like.  Facebook does this, because they know that if they show ads favor the viewer then there would be more of a chance that the viewer would click on the ads.