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The movie Shattered Glass was a good movie to watch. I've seen it before in Multimedia and both times i watched it i learned something new about how journalism works. Steven is a good person but i think he really skrewed up about the article he made up in the movie.

In this class I have actually learned a lot about online Journalism! Krebs tought me a lot about how to write stories/ articles about anything. It makes me want to take it to the next level and in college maybe pursuay that in my career. I hope for the best for Mr. Krebs at Burnsville and hope he knows he is the realest teacher ive had at EVHS, and a great football coach. This class should be tought to every student because of what you can learn out of jjournalism!

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LAN Gaming (feature story)

LAN GAMING

Derek Schatz

            The thing I love about gaming is that you can do it LANing with other players and friends.  This whole process only works for multiplayer games and in my opinion is better for FPS (First Person Shooters) but it works for any multiplayer game. LAN (Local Area Network) is when you connect multiple gaming counsels to each other using Ethernet cords. If you want to get more than 2 gaming counsels to play you would need a router that has enough available ports and you would need a single Ethernet cord for every counsel playing. On LAN you don’t need internet at all you just need gaming counsels connected to each other to play competitively. Most people play online competitively and when your online you’re farther away from people you’re playing and you’re hooking up through internet so it is much slower. If you’re playing a sports game it shouldn’t make much of a difference switching from online to LAN. But playing Shooters switching from online to LAN is much different and it’s a whole different game style in my eyes.

            When you play a competitive game like Halo, and you want to be good at it, the more time you need to practice on LAN because when it comes down to playing at tournaments or even just to prove a friend wrong LAN is where it all goes down. I just recently had a Halo LAN at my house this past weekend and we had 8 people playing 4on4 against each other. It gets pretty intense when everyone is trying to call out where the opposing team is and every one trash talking after they kill someone! That’s the aspect I love about LAN because you’re around other people and you can trash talk all you want until someone shows you wrong.

            Switched Ethernet is the most common Data Link Layer and Physical Layer implement for local area networks. At the higher layers, the Internet Protocol TCP or IP has become the standard. Smaller LANs generally consist of one or more switches linked to each other, often at least one is connected to a router, cable modem, or ADSL modem for Internet access. Larger LANs are characterized by their use of links with switches using the spanning tree protocol to prevent loops, their ability to manage differing traffic types through quality of service, and to navigate traffic with VLANs. Larger LANs also contain a wide variety of network devices such as switches, firewalls, routers, load balancers, and sensors. LANs may have connections with other LANs via leased lines, leased services, or by tunneling across the Internet using virtual private network technologies. Depending on how the connections are established and secured in a LAN, and the distance involved, a LAN may also be classified as metropolitan area network (MAN) or wide area networks (WAN) Network topology describes the layout pattern of connections between devices and network segments. The most common topology types are bus, ring, star, bus-star composite and mesh.

            All around if you want to be good at something, you have to put in time and do it a lot. For me it’s Halo and I’ve wasted summers playing this game and the majority of my life dedicated to playing competitively. Even though you can’t LAN every day, I still put in a lot of hours playing online just to keep playing and learn new things about the game and play with others like me around the world. A lot of (Halo Pro’s) get sponsored by big label companies like (Dr. Pepper, NOS energy drink, BiC, Old Spice, Gunnar Optics, etc) because they are placing well at MLG (Major League Gaming) tournaments. Major League Gaming (MLG), founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso, is a North American professional videogame league, headquartered in New York City, New York. MLG has held official video game tournaments throughout the United States and Canada. Major League Gaming competitions have been broadcast on television, ESPN.com, other broadband sites, and via mobile distribution. The company has also been involved in television production, game development and product licensing operations through MLG Properties and through MLG Management. MLG's aim is to elevate computer and console game tournaments to viable competitive and spectator events. The MLG Pro Circuit roster currently includes Halo Reach for the Xbox 360 and Starcraft II for the PC. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for the PlayStation 3. All of these tournaments also have prizes. For example if your team takes 1^st place at a tournament for Halo Reach the prize is $20,000 for you and your four teammates, 2^nd place is $14,000, all top 8 teams get cash prize and the top 32 teams are considered “pro” and have “pro status” throughout the rest of the events. After all 5 events/tournaments are over MLG hosts a “National Championship” each year and if your team takes 1^st in halo reach the prize is $100,000! I say halo reach prizes, because it has more money than any other game involved in MLG even though your winning a lot for games like Starcraft and MW2 just not as much as Halo because it’s the most played game.

The idea of playing online, talking to other gamers through a headset, dealing with lag and grief, is simply unappealing. I realize I’m also missing out on some potentially great experiences. It all comes down to simple time budgeting: how much time I have for gaming, versus work, versus family life versus other interests. There are people out there that game for a living and get paid doing it, and that’s why I do it! Because I want to be one of those guys who gets paid to play video games and to show the people who have said “ive just wasted my life playing all the time” that it will soon pay off and ill enjoy my career as a professional video game player!

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LAN Interview Questions

LAN Questions

Sam Ross (Gamertag: MN MA1M3R)

1. Do you think LANing is different from online play?

-yes, more shots register and it isn’t as laggy.

2. How do you think LAN is different from online?

-way more competitive.

3. What is the best part about LANing video games?

-you can get a lot of people to LAN and it’s just a lot of fun.

4. What is your favorite video game to play on LAN?

-halo 3

Jake Goetz (Gamertag: Goetzyy)

1. Do you think LANing is different from online play?

-yes it makes a difference in shooters for sure.

2. How do you think LAN is different from online?

-everything is more even and there’s no host advantage on LAN.

3. What is the best part about LANing video games?

-chilling with your friends having fun playing eachother.

4. What is your favorite video game to play on LAN?

-halo 2

Ben Pelant (Gamertag: DiaBENic)

1. Do you think LANing is different from online play?

-yeah it has no lag as to online lags a lot depending on your connection.

2. How do you think LAN is different from online?

-your playing a person next to you instead of anywhere in the country.

3. What is the best part about LANing video games?

-chillin with the bro’s

4. What is your favorite video game to play on LAN?

-halo 2

How LAN Gaming Works

LAN (Local Area Network)

Twitter Hard News Article

I'll be the first to admit that when I first signed up for Twitter, I didn't get it. If anything it seemed like the bad version of Facebook to me. Where are all the extra goodies? Why can't you attach photos, videos and songs? Once I figured out how to do those things through other sites, it made a lot more sense to me. And today, I actually prefer Twitter over Facebook for 3 reasons. First twitter added an RSS Feed where instead of having your news feed blow up from random friends on facebook and having to go to a certain page to find what their saying, it chooses your most viewed friends/family and shows their important messages instead of junk from other people you would never want to talk to. Sam Ross and Kyle Jonas both say they like twitter because it’s easy and you can see what celebrities are doing from day to day on your newsfeed if you want. Second reason why I prefer twitter is you can send a direct message to a friend by just typing in “d username”, and sending to the Twitter mobile number. Your friend will receive a copy of the direct message through the site, and will also receive a copy of the message via e-mail. Likewise, your friend can respond to you with a direct message, and you will receive that on your mobile phone as long as you have enabled that default option. So Twitter makes it easy to communicate with your followers without having to broadcasting it to the rest of the world. You can also get celebrities tweets sent from a text directly to your cell phone. This is really useful when/if you don’t have internet on your phone and only text messages and there’s a way you can tweet back using just txt messages but I don’t know how to do that. Twitter thought of such a scenario, and added an RSS subscription option on every contact's page. I have subscribed to several of my friends' RSS feeds to make sure I don't miss anything. Sadly, most of my friends and family are still on the facebook bandwagon, and won’t switch over to Twitter. One of the things I didn't like about Twitter is now one of the things I like most about it. There are no games on Twitter, no special groups you can join, and the "about me" page is so much simpler. If you take a look at your Facebook timeline and how much of it is fills up your contacts scores on games and other random updates that really don't interest you. If I'm connected to someone that plays several rounds of a game, they can easily fill up my entire timeline in one day. Twitter forces us to be more concise, and to just publish what really matters! Sometimes it is hard to get your point across in 140 characters or less, but it also helps cut down on the inane chatter. I follow many people in various different fields, some of which appear to have too much time on their hands as well. I'm thankful that some of those folks only have 140 characters at a time at their disposal. So those are the biggest reasons that I prefer Twitter to Facebook.
-Derek Schatz
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