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My whole junior year I have been bogged down with homework and testing, which puts a cramp on my social life. Throughout all of that, I find myself having ambitions in a variety of subjects. One of my most prominent ambitions is to create the next great website. I’m not the most idealistic person, but I have the skills to make something as such. I’m just having trouble thinking about what will be the next Web 2.0 revolution.

In the computer science field, the one thing I have the most passion in is web development. I won’t be surprised if in 10 years I have a job as a web developer for a big company or my own company. But I won’t know until then. I can only hope that my perseverance and education serves me well in the future.

I’ve recently wanted to start a YouTube channel and get more involved with that community. Unfortunately, I do not have the resources to do so. Or the money for that matter. I’ve been looking for ways to earn money. It seems my best option is self employment. I’m planning on creating an online portfolio, putting myself out there for the world to see. It would allow them to see my computer and web development talents. Whether I use this site or create a new one is still unknown. It will happen nonetheless. (And if you know me, you’d know I don’t usually reach out for opportunities.)

One thing that was recently exciting to participate in was the The Google Highly Open Participation Contest. The contest allowed high school students to get better involved with Open Source projects such as Drupal or GNOME. For every 3 tasks that were completed by the student they received $100. I participated and completed a total of 3 tasks within the time period and I received the money within a month. It not only allowed me to have some pocket change, but I was able to experience Open Source program development. I thank Google for that opportunity.

Other underlying ambitions exist, such as Photography, Journalism and Broadcasting, and Psychology. I hope in the future, I can tap into all of these and maybe tie them all together.

People are consuming more bandwidth than ever these days. What with the on-demand video and renting movies online, a single household could download around 1-5GB per month. The problem is the internet service providers might spoil the fun.

Most ISPs say they have unlimited service when they mean “unlimited”. Recently there has been news about how ISP’s have little tricks in ways to get around their so called “unlimited” service. These tricks, what do they do for the online on-demand video?

An average movie to rent and download these days is around 1GB in size. It could be more or less. Streaming video depending on the bandwidth being used can take up just as much mainly dependent on how long one is connect to a stream. We have internet radio and television that also take up bandwidth.

If ISPs put a cap on a persons bandwidth after they’ve consumed only 3GB then you could only watch two movies a month or you could only listen to you radio station for certain time per month. “Why are ISPs doing this?” one might ask. With more bandwidth per second available these days many people may use it for Peer-to-peer technologies and download file illegally. By automatically assuming people are using their service for illegal things, they punish those people who are downloading stuff legally. There are ways of monitoring certain traffic but that would just make everyones connection slower. A server would have to check every packet of data coming through an internet gateway.

ISPs have to learn that no matter what they do people might abuse their service. They can’t really do anything about it. And personally I don’t think its fair to those who are doing stuff legally. They also need a reality check in which we do have on-demand services out there. If people are going to use them, they need to have the means to do so.

Related Article:
http://www.last100.com/2007/05/28/will-isps-spoil-the-online-video-party/