I The Behrend Beacon SGA offers ISBN service By ,Jeff Smen stall aritri Ir,s(eQo , It's the beginning of the semester, and all students have to do some thing they dread: buy textbooks. While most students buy their hooks at the Behrend bookstore, others buy them online, hut know ing if you're buying the right hook can he a pain, especially it the hook has already been purchased and the professor says it's not needed for the class. The SGA hopes to make the process of buying textbooks online a little easier. On the SGA homepage is a link where students can look up ISBN numbers for their classes. The ISBN is a number on the hack of every textbook near the serial bar that helps identify the textbook. When buying a hook online, most The Bombing of eßaum's World popular webAlte ea By Bryce Sayers contributing writer The humor website ebaumsworld.com is host to many jokes that entertain college students, hut the recent unpleasantness affecting the site is no laughing matter to its owner, Eric Bauman. EBaum's World is a webpage that features humorous content, mostly digital animation and movies. The site receives an incredible amount of visitors, hut it also has made many enemies . Its critics accuse Bauman of using content that was posted on other humor sites and claiming it as property of the site. What is known is that most of the content on cßaum's World is submitted to Bauman from his supporters via e-mail. Bauman 'yes no credit to the creators of t: content he hosts on h. website, and the wil nets of submission coil tests may not he th original creators. Wh many of them are trul upset about is the fa( that their work originai ly appeared on sites thi earn little to no money while eßaum's World a corporation tha according Wikipedia.org, make over six thousand do, Lars a day by sal! advertisers space on h, website. Many of anti-eßaum sentime comes from members something awful. co and fark.com, who hal claimed that some c their stories and humor ously Photoshop-alter pictures were posted c eßaum's World withoi their permission a, rebranded with t eßaum's World logo Such complaints have been made for some This Beacon rendering of multiple pictures of Lohan spl time, but the tension er proves the lack of facial expressions that YTMND tar did not seem salient until a joke about 19-year-old actress Lindsay Lohan emerged on the site. The material in question was titled "Lindsay Lohan Doesn't Change Facial Expressions." a series of fast-moving pictures of her that have remarkably similar facial expressions. The humor website ytmnd.com (short for "You're the man now, dog!" (YTMND) which was Sean Connery's catch phrase in the movie Finding Forrester) had a recurring theme of "Doesn't Change Facial Expressions" for some time, including a Lindsay Lohan animation that appeared on the site before the animation on eßaum's World. Eric Bauman stated that his website's version of the Lohan joke was submitted in a contest, and he has permission from the author. He also claimed that he always allows complaints to be filed when someone cries intellectual property theft and that he has heard nothing from the man who claimed to have created the animation on ytmnd.com. At 3 a.m. on Jan. I I, howev er, the Lindsay Lohan animation was removed from eßaum's World, even though the link to it still exists in the article that addressed the controversy. Max Goldberg, creator and webmaster of YTMND. recog nized that tensions were rising as members of his web site were posting anti-Bauman videos and messages on the site's forum. On Jan. 8 at midnight, members of ytmnd.com's forum, as well as members of Something Awful's forums and other websites "raided" the forum of eßaum's World. The nature of the raid was their attempts to access the forums en masse in order to overwhelm the servers and force the website to tem porarily shut down. According to an anonymous orilmc will ,tis li)i the nuinhcr to 111'111V ,t ‘k. I t)11, , ..1 hook.or tilts cdition 11 )&1^ ihc SGA did not rci all mi the ISBN nuinhei. nil their weh.itc lot the present seines lees Lori the ` , CCFCLIIA ()I the SG:\..aul. — I here are a total of 22( I lull and part time facult \ at Belnend he SGA sent out an e mail asking prole.sors for the ISBN. of the hook they use and we got around 75 We're hoping to get a complete list next semester... The Internet has many different sites students can use to check out the prices and buy the hooks they will need Amaton. Big Words, eCamptis and CheapestTextßooks are only a lew of the companies selling textbooks on the web. Students who still have textbooks left over troth the previonn semester h a ,SOO4 (a P,41,c(111 elf :72) I [JD EITP L r 7is widespread ire source, who was present online for much of the contro ‘crsy, theic was some unauthorized illegal activity in the raid. such as hackers who redirected page requests to other pages (inappropriate sites instead of ebaumsworld.com), but according to the source, "these individuals were rogue elements and did not have the general support of the YTMND community." Goldberg assumed no responsibility for the attack and deplored the incident. latter that day, the front page of YTMND had a statement from Goldberg about the attack, "I tried to stop this all when it was just a snowball, but it just turned into an avalanche... it affects a lot more than lust ebaumsworkl.com and really crosses the line." He has also warned that his websitc is now in danger of tetaliation. Despite the admonishment from Max Goldberg and Bauman's denial of stealing content, the iti-eßaum senti- Alt still exists thin YTMND id many content -cation websites telephone mes sage for verifica tion that the e-mail was indeed his. Bauman's reply to the voice mail confirmed the previous message, includ ing a racial slur and warned Goldberg, "Soon you will he contacted by Federal Investigators." Goldberg sent Neil Bauman a reply, which is posted in the same arti cle that contains the two messages from Bauman. In it he restated that he was trying to prevent his users from attacking eßaum's World and has tried to minimize the anti-eßaum content on his site. After receiving the tirade from Bauman, however, Max replied, "If you had been paying attention, for the last three days I have been deleting hundreds of users, sites and posts with pieces of your personal information...l'm done." Goldberg announced at 2:07 p.m. on the same day that all posts on his site with "ebaum" in the title will be deleted by midnight. There has not been a reply from anyone representing eßaum's World. Many websites contain information about the conflict, but finding a neutral source may he difficult due to the inflammato ry nature of the subject. The online encyclopedia, wikipedia.org, has extensive information on the parties involved. but the moderators of the site warn that the neutrality of the eßaumsworld.com article and related information is still under review. This event is, at least, an indicator of how serious many people take the work they display on the Internet. As Max Goldberg said in his first article on the raid, "I think there is something to he said for communities coming together for a com mon goal, even if it is over something so petty." Lim also sell their textbooks at some the same sites listed above. Malt Cherpak, a second semester Management Information Systems major, said. "I almost always buy , my hooks online and I hate trying to search for the hook I need for a class. Putting the numbers online w ill he a big help." Erin Schroll, a fourth semester accounting major, said, "I never bought any of my books online, but I think it will make it much easier for students who do buy books online. I might consider buying some of my hooks online if I remember to next semester." Brandon Eckstrom, a fourth semester business major, said, "I think it's a great idea, it will defi nitely make buying books way eas- .roughout the iternet. On Jan. 1, Goldberg post on his website e-mail from it Bauman, the ce president of laum's World id father of Eric tuman. The e il was titled and silt." The lan- lage of the mes- Lge was infor ll, implicated x as responsi e for the raid, cused him of vocating the ath threats iuman received d insulted the tubers of the 'MND commu- Goldberg Neil Bauman over a iced togeth- Questions for Qwerty By Jeremy Korwek staff writer Idks(X) 9( p psi sedu Qwerty, I keep hearing from people that they downloaded a cool video or some big file from a program or website called "Bit Torrent." What is "Bit Torrent" in the first place, and how does it work? Also is using this program illegal? If it's not, how do I get started? -Torrential Torrential, Bit Torrent is a very widely used type of file sharing system. Basically, a file of any type is broken down into many pieces and is prepared for distribution. The file, in the new, broken up form, is sent to a group of eight computers in a temporary network group called a "swarm." The "swarm" consists of two "seeds," users who have a complete copy of the file in question and six "peers," users who are still downloading the file. The file in its shattered form is shared among the group; each piece is sent to a different user all the while each user is requesting a different piece from another user. To keep the sharing speed up, the pieces of the file that are fewest in number are requested so that it prevents the net work from bottlenecking and reducing the overall network speed. The great thing about Bit Torrent is that even before you finish downloading the complete file, you arc already sharing the pieces you have with other users creating a sense of com munity among the Bit Torrent users. The distribution of the file allows many more people to obtain a copy of many popular files. This includes new Linux distrihu- tions, new open source programs, videos and other large computer files. On the question of the legality of Big Breasts are a Bust By Michelle Vera Suroviec photography editor mitt 131 Opsu.edu Many women who perceive themselves as flat-chested desire larger breasts. These women do not understand what kind of a curse they are asking for. These oversized mounds of flesh arc not as soft as marsh mallows or the trademark of the perfect woman. If a woman thinks she would like larger breasts, then she should try this little experiment. Take a large purse and fill it with canned goods. Make sure there is a good mixture of soups, beans and tuna, just in case this exhaustive experiment causes hunger pangs later on. Wrap the purse around your neck so that the bag gage drapes across the chest. Find an oversized hoodie, since nothing else will fit right, to throw over the purse. Now step out into the world with that new seductive figure. It may not be the same as being natural ly endowed, but it is extremely accurate. Try to take a run or jog. Notice the back and neck pain from all that excess weight? Good, because back pain problems are always sexy. Getting strange looks at that chunky but larger pair? Is the attention worthwhile? Do the extra wolf whistles and howls from creepy, nerdy, drunken freshmen with a bad case of beer goggles give a special irreplaceable feeling on the inside? If a person enjoys the physical pain, the foregoing of all cute clothes and the unwanted attention, then bigger breasts may still rank high on the list of unattain- Do you have for articles? Send them to us! SLeditor@psu.edu Friday, January 13, 2006 f ri' i j i T l Bit Torrent files in general, one would have to say that it is legal, mostly because of the fact that many more legal tiles are shared using Bit Torrent than illegal files. Many of the legal files that arc distributed include ones that would he too large to be hosted on a regular web server. Some of the largest files are open source operating systems, including, but not limited to Linux, BSD, UNIX and many variations thereof. Each of the operating systems average around 600 MB, and unless the person who is paying for the web hosting is a millionaire or has a million ads on the download page, it would only take a few people trying to download the file to knock down the server and ruin it for everyone As for the "illegal" files being shared over Bit Torrent, just as in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., I believe that the technology itself is not to blame; the people who misuse the tech nology arc the ones to blame. Unfortunately not every one will use tech nology in the way that the ones in power see fit. If you still want to get started in using Bit Torrent, you will need to download a client program that will allow you to download the pieces of the file that you want. My personal favorite is Azureus because of the clean interface and simple controls. You can download Azureus from their website at http://azureus.sourceforge.net. Once you download it or any other client, you can begin the search for "torrent" files. The torrent files contain all the information about who to look at to find the other pieces of the file you want. To find the torrents you want just use your favorite search engine and add the word "torrent" to the end. From there, it is just a period of time until you have the file of your dreams in your hard drive. able wants. There arc countless other ben efits to having a smaller rack, such as the ability to stand straight up and still be able to sec the feet without strange maneuver ing. Any woman who feels her bust size should directly correlate with her confi dence level needs to buy a Wonderbra and stop making excuses. Wishing to look like a professional model is not the answer. Models are paid to look a certain way and have the assistance of a staff of image con sultants at their beckoning. Unless model ing is someone's full-time occupation, there is no need to feel inferior to a cover girl that has her imperfections taped and glued away and has special lighting and post-production airbrushing working in her favor. Real guys prefer all shapes and sizes, so one person's undesired set may be some one else's fantasy. Remember, larger breasts only stay perky for so long. It's only a matter of time before the granny sag steps in. Dove's campaign for Real Beauty fea tures confident women with all kinds of curves in an attempt to change the stereo type. In an effort to improve the self esteem of women, Dove has created the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. In another bold move, Dove is planning to air new com mercials during the upcoming Superbowl in three weeks. In between commercials featuring beer babes and celebrities singing about soft drinks, Dove's message about the self-esteem of women will pro vide an interesting contrast. For some, this message might be very refreshing. ideas
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