Stock Market with IT

The Stock Market is an entity that really does give the fairest evaluation of how our economy and our lives will be effected for it shows the growth or decline of many companies. This past summer a lot of things occurred which led me to begin following this entity closely and really begin to understand the meanings of various things. It occurred for I interned at an IT staffing company that deals with placing and hiring various technical specialists for most of the fortune 500 companies. The other thing that occurred that helped me understand what was occurring was my brother worked for Bear Stearns in sub-prime mortgages and really was in the middle in what would develop as the credit crunch. What I took out of these events is information and life lessons that have ensured that every day at least three or four times I follow the market and check certain companies welfares and attempt to understand what is effecting each one and how. The field i find most interesting though is technology and how the project managers to the programmers and business analysts are being treated with the recent uprising in the companies such as Lehman Brothers, Merryl Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, AIG and Bank of America. Since my employer, Comsys IT, is training myslef for sales I worked directly with the IT consulants that we placed at these companies as well as the hiring managers. The pay rate that these people receive is extremly high based on the qualifications and amount of time, training, and education that these people have been consumed with. It goes to show that the value weighted in technology is second to none and that without proper IT departments these corporations could crumble from the top down. The amount of legal questions that are going to arrise with regards to the corporations technological rights and that of the advertising market are going to coincide and become a major issue.

Second Life

Upon wandering around the virtual world known as Second Life it really blew my mind. I had never been on this site and other than seeing my younger brother waste countless hours with the Warcraft series i had never been exposed to this entity. Its almost creepy in that you walk around aimlessly and essentially live your "Second Life". After hearing the lecture on how people have made millions through virtual property or the virtual world its really kinda scary that people partake in such activities as a job. It is to say that that the amount of legal supervision that occurs in this realm of the world does not correspond with the amount of users or money makers on such sites. I was so blown away by this website that i had a friend create an account and browse and he was equally blown away.
I began researching different ways that people have made it big in this industry and I found several ways that seem simple to make it rich. The one that i found the least clever and almost assumable was the virtual casino that acted as a real casino that was just the same as such sites as partypoker or fulltilt poker. I also found that Second Life does not "own" everything on the site such as other sites like facebook or myspace. These ideas just make me ponder the endless possibilities that can exist in virtual world and really does scare me with what is to come.

Facebook

Upon reading the articles about facebook, it is tough to believe that people still use this website for certain things. I personally have an account but really only use it as a way to communicate with friends from high school or college friends when i am at home. It is just mind boggling that even with all of the terms and services that facebook currently has, that anyone would actually post pictures degrading themselves on it. I cant even begin to tell of the amounts of friends doing illegal or dumb things on facebook and in all honesty dont understand as to why this is wrong or dumb. First of all its never a good idea to put anything with much magnitude on the interent just to be safe but putting pictures of yourself half naked, smoking a ciggerette, while drunk at a fraternity party is the easiest way for an employer to decide to not hire you.

Another aspect that really bothers me about facebook is the idea that they essentially own the rights to anything put on the site. I heard a story from a secondary source telling of his friends band posted there music on facebook's competitors site, myspace, and myspace actually began selling there music and according to the terms and services this was legal. This is extremly bothersome and almost was the causation of deleting my account on facebook. Facebook's other problem is it is the easiest way to stalk someone you know. You can look at their pictures, information, and other things of value and this especially occurs when your a freshman and meet random people, and than become facebook friends and than they have open access to many of your personal info. All in all the world would be a better place without facebook or myspace or really any site of the sort.