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No one day can be a “perfect” day, where everything can be made into a joke and laughed off. As we celebrate this April Fools day with Google and Johns Hopkins University receiving new names and other pranks happening, we also must remember those who helped get us where we are now. Ed Roberts, one of these unknown pioneers, passed away from pneumonia today. While he may be relatively unknown, his impact on the digital world is still being felt. “Ed Roberts was the founder of MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) and inventor of the Altair 8800, widely credited as the world’s first personal computer. It was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics in 1975, when Paul Allen and Bill Gates contacted Roberts and offered to write software for the machine. Gates and Allen worked with MITS in Albuquerque, NM, and started Microsoft. In 1977, Roberts sold MITS and retired to Georgia where he studied medicine and became a small-town doctor.” [1]

After Gates and Allen had written software for the Intel 8008 microprocessor, they contacted Roberts in order to run a BASIC interpreter. “On July 22, 1975 MITS signed a contract for the Altair BASIC with Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They received $3000 at signing and a royalty for each copy of BASIC sold with a cap of $180,000.” [2] While Gates and Allen were given a meager start, they were on their way to creating the largest software company in US history to this day. This stepping stone of joining both software and hardware has helped bring us to where we are now – palm-sized computer devices you can carry anywhere with performance doubling every other year, and with which you can communicate with anyone around the world. For this we remember where we came from, and are grateful.

This blog post is for week 3 of RIT’s Human Communication course.

As was widely reported on local Rochester news and to the school body on March 17th, a '”[possibly] armed individual [came] on campus”, and directions were given to recipients of the RIT Alert system:

Armed Intruder R.I.T. Alert! Take Cover. Posssible Armed suicidal person on campus. Go into nearest room. Lock or barricade the door. Follow instructions from authorities.

After the initial message was sent out via email and text message, students and others wishing to receive information about what happened went to the RIT website, which links to a page specifically for providing information during emergencies. However, to the dismay of those wanting this information, the page was useless, as no information had been posted. Nothing would be posted on that website until an hour or two after the event was over, in fact. During the time of the “armed intruder alert”, the school would only send out messages via the RIT Alert system, which presented problems of its own: the warning message would be sent out more than once to some people, and others wouldn’t get it at all. Some reports say that a subset of individuals received the messages, but were delayed for an hour or two. The system seems to have overloaded with the amount of traffic that was required to send out all of the messages, and so many were left in the dark.

This is my blog post for Human Communication, week 2

Over the past few years I have been an avid listener of podcasts, especially regarding technology – Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other technology news that comes up week-to-week. The art of communication within podcasts and online audio is accentuated, as the listener is only focusing with one sense – the ears. With this limited scope of attention, the people speaking on the audio have no way to convey body motions or visual queues, so the only real way to convey motion is through the voice. The problem with this is when you’re attempting to listen to a person who is either tired and bored, or just has a monotone voice and isn’t interesting. I find myself tuning the audio out, and concentrating on the other three things I might be working on. 10 minutes later I’ll remember I was listening to something, and have absolutely no idea what happened during that last 10 minutes. The voice that doesn’t carry any emotion doesn’t have the qualities that would portray integral techniques of human communication in order to keep someone listening.

As podcasts have started evolving to include video, new problems may occur due to positioning of the camera, facial expressions, and a combination of other variables. On one of the latest video podcasts I’ve been watching, the camera for one of the two hosts is pointed at an odd angle up at his face, which only makes wrinkles and “pockets” under the eyes even more visible. The lack of facial movement or reaction to other things being said add to the dreariness of the show, and makes the listener/watcher have less interest in the show. I would think that camera positioning, “awakeness”, and emotion are just some of the things needed in order to make a successful audio or video presentation.

I can’t say I’ve truly introduced myself on here, so after almost a year and a half of having this website, here goes. My name is Stephen Repetski, and I’m currently a student in the 0535-480-72 Human Communication class. This is my first year at RIT, and I am majoring in Applied Networking and Systems Administration, a subset of the Networking, Security, and Systems Administration department in the GCCIS college. I don’t currently have an on-campus job, but have worked at the US Geological Survey and Sun Microsystems Federal during summers between school years. I don’t have a set focus on what I want to be after school, but some possibilities include being a Systems Engineer, or Network/Systems Administrator. I hope to minor in Russian, as well.

My reason for taking this class is primarily to fulfill the Human Communication requirement for my major, but also to hopefully learn how I can use types of communication to my advantage in the future for interactions with coworkers, friends, customers, and others. There were several classes to choose from, and this seemed like it would be an interesting fit. I have had many opportunities to use the types of communication talked about during class, but hope to improve the way I approach such messages in order to convey ideas in a more meaningful way and fashion.

• Bob Ryan Says Goodbye [nbcwashington.com] – Goodbye and good luck! We will truly miss you, Bob