Online friends

By Dani Old

“The only active friendships I currently have are internet friendships”

With the Internet being such an easily accessible tool these days, we all, at one point or another, have met a friend through it. But while there are people who have both online friends and real-life friends, there are also people who have only online friends. Such is the case with college student Brian Helms.

“The appeal of online friendships is their ease of maintenance,” Helms says, “I feel that they can be a source of entertainment and I would liken them to the more traditional ‘real’ friendships,” but he goes on to say that, “They can be far more fickle than a traditional friendship. If I am having an argument or am not feeling up to getting angry, it’s only too easy to just close Skype and avoid the other person. They are easy to form, but easy to break.” Helms has not had a non-internet friendship for four years.

Currently, Helms has five online friends. “The oldest would be Matt and I have been friends with him for about 4 years now. I have not made any recent online friends, with the last one being 2 years ago. I don’t just talk to anyone online.”

When I asked him about how he felt about his chosen path, he said, “I feel that I have gained a good circle of friends and feel no need to expand. Although this is both a combination of me not looking, and opportunities not presenting itself. While WoW (World of Warcraft) got me those friends, after I got them I tended to play only with them, so it limited my means of gaining friends that were not brought into the fold by that group.”

Curiously, I asked him how it feels, the difference between real-life friends and online friends that you have never met. He replies, “I cannot talk to some of them for long stretches at a time, but when we start talking it’s like no time has passed. I talk to them as I would someone in front of me. I rely on them just as I would a normal friend. These friendships I’ve made, I feel will probably last longer than some other kinds.”

While some people may think it odd that there are some out there who create friendships with people they’ve never met, in this day and age of technology, meeting someone from the other side of the world has become even simpler than making cereal.

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Photo credit: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ew7AN1IaGTI/Twstttl5yPI/AAAAAAAADiM/yfBVYp-Ht4k/s1600/computer-virus-picturejpg1.jpg

By Nick Kallechy

Pandemonium struck Apple headquarters mid-April as a recent U.S. Cyber-Security census found over 600,000 registered Macintosh’s to be infected with a severe Trojan FlashBack Virus. Sources have blamed poor understanding of technology matters among the public for the widespread infection, particularly the myth that “Mac’s can’t get computer viruses.”

“What do you mean? Mac’s don’t get viruses,” was the general consensus of an everyday sample taken around Leiden late last week. “I bought my Mac because they said it was easy to use and it wouldn’t get infected,” said 33-year-old Christine de Gruezen, who had a hard time believing that the report was real at all.

The fact that Mac’s DO indeed get viruses is one that its parent company, Apple, has kept quiet about for some time. While anybody working in or familiar with the IT industry can tell you that there is no such thing as a computer impervious to sabotage, the vast majority of the public does not understand this concept.

Thus the majority of Macintosh users have not installed Anti-Virus software, a utility which, even in its free version, would have stopped the Trojan dead in its tracks. This small program made the difference in infection rates between PCs and Macs as the particular brand of FlashBack Trojan is almost non-existent on Linux and Window’s networks.

“We all knew this day would come,” says Webster Leiden’s System Administrator, Jeroen Hensing. “Mac’s used to rarely get viruses because few people were taking the time to write them, their share of the market was so low.”

As Macintosh quickly becomes an everyday household name, we will begin to see their infection by new viruses. The challenge for Macintosh now becomes to design a security system as robust and competitive as the Windows and Linux systems it once ridiculed.

The Winter of 2010 and Climate Change

by Julian H. Scaff

The recent cold winter storms that swept Europe, the British Isles and North America have many questioning whether there is a slowdown in global warming, or if perhaps the scientists got it wrong.  However, two recent reports indicate that the opposite is true: that the cold winter weather in these parts of the world was actually related to if not caused by climate change.

 

Snow-covered sand dunes at the beach in Wassenaar, The Netherlands. Photo by Andrew Fundingsland, December 2010

These unusually cold weather patterns were examined in detail in a paper by Julien Cattiaux of the French Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, and in the Arctic Report Card published by the Arctic Council.  Their research found that a reversal of the normal meteorological conditions in the Arctic drove cold weather systems south onto Europe, the British Isles and North America.  During normal winters powerful low-pressure systems called polar vortexes settle over the arctic while high pressure systems sit over northern Europe and North America.  These systems power the jet stream, and prevent cold polar air from venturing south.

The winter of 2010 saw the opposite: high pressure systems over the arctic, and low pressure systems over Europe and North America, or what scientists call an Arctic Oscillation.  This dramatically altered the flow of the jet stream, and actually pulled cold polar air south, bringing frigid winter storms to all the mid-latitude regions from Europe to North America to eastern China.

Julien Cattiaux and his colleagues examined these phenomenon in great detail, comparing it to historical Arctic Oscillation events where this has occurred in the past. They concluded that if not for climate change, the winter would have been even colder.  Past Arctic Oscillations that were weaker than the one of 2010 have actually produced colder temperatures.  The winter of 2010 was only 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than average, making this one of the mildest Arctic Oscillations on record.  This is due in part the pervasive trend of warmer temperatures over the arctic, in other words, the cold arctic air that was flowing over Europe and North America is simply not as cold as it used to be.

Furthermore, Arctic Oscillations are predicted to increase in frequency because of climate change.  The decrease in sea ice across the arctic and around Greenland actually drives Arctic Oscillations.  With climate change, we can expect more intense winter storms, just not as cold as they were in the last century.

While climate change is often measured as an increase in the global average temperature, this does not mean that regionally temperatures will be warmer all the time in every season.  Regionally climate change means climate disruption, and as this last winter demonstrated we can no longer expect the old patterns.

Julian H. Scaff is Head of the Media Communications and Fine Arts Departments at Webster University Leiden.  He is also a filmmaker, environmental artist, and part-time Creative Director for the non-profit organization Blue Planet United.