wow, this semester has flew by. I’m almost sad to say this class is coming to an end. assuming the fact that I feel their won’t be many classes that I’ll enjoy as much as this one. Dr. Brown does a really geat job in all aspects of the class and my personal favorite the comics. having a comic book style text book is a pretty sweet deal, I actually enjoyed the materials and trust me that’s saying something. (Lol) Not to mention that the topics that the course covers was next in line to what makes this a great class you cover the history of computers from their birth and where we are today, as well as binary system the language the computer understands. these topics also include hardware, software, networking, databases, languages, society, robotics, artificial intelligence, VR and social implications. As you can see Dr. Brown does a great job of covering all topics in depth and is very knowledgable and always willing to answers any question. and last but not least this class has a really relaxed learning environment both in the class and the lab also, which I found very beneficial. In conclusion this is a class I’ll never forget and will most definitely recommend other students to Dr.Brown sections and I only hope I can enjoy other classes as much as this one.
A.I.
I find artificial intelligence very interesting and enjoyed learning more about it. however, I think this technology is just something the public is gonna have to wait upon emergence in the future to really be able to make a conclusion about its capabilities I feel as if we are most certainly portrayed in movies as to the current state of A.I. is today.
robots!
last we began playing with robots, which was probably the most fun learning exercise I’ve had quite some time. going into the lab I had known we were gonna have to share with other students but of course it would have been much more fun had we all had one each to program over the week or so of the course. once again, this is a really enjoyable class and working with the robots makes that clear.
security
network security is something that is very intriguing to me, i feel that there is a lot of biased opinions about internet crimes. I actually hope to pursue a career in network security with that being said, what is network security? this refers to any activities designed to protect your network, specifically for usability, reliability, integrity, and safety of your network and data. effective security targets a variety of threats and stops them from entering or spreading on your network. many of today’s common threats include viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spy-ware, ad-ware, zero-day attacks, hacker attacks, denial of service attacks, data interruption and theft and last but not least identity theft. becoming preventative of attacks you must have layers of security, in case one fails. thus security is accomplished through hardware and software although you have a anti-virus program doesn’t mean your fully protected, you must update the software constantly due to the rapid emergence of new threats for our PC’s. just the other day I saw on CNN where homeland security was actually at a shortage for people in the field of networking security so as of now and hopefully the trend will continue their is a great demand in the workforce for security professionals
scratch
I really enjoyed working with scratch, its easy to use and a great learing tool for those who are just learning to program. even though it was designed for kids if your a newbie to programming its great for all ages. scratch allows the user to write programs by dragging and connecting simple program instuructions. when first getting started with scratch amazed at how many people have used it, i think the site mentioned over a million projects are now available for download created by beggineers as well as novice users. as i begin to play around with scratch I was impressed at diversity of such a simple program. scratch projects fall into 3 categories: animations or stories, interactive art projects, and game projects. I think scratch is an all around fun and easy to use learning tool for anyone who is new to programming
HTML
This was my first encounter with HTML, I must say I was a bit surprised at how simple it is to actually use once you get the hang of it such as using the tags etc. I feel that HTML is one of the greater resources we have today for our PC’s, many of its benefits include: loose syntax, supported on the majority of browsers if not all, widely used on all websites, easy to learn even for novice users, and its free.once you know the basics its quite simple to build your own websites. HTML is very forgiving and can still interpret broken code. however, those sites aren’t ranked as high as others that have little if any mistakes. that being said, it does have its disadvantages also such as it cannot produce dynamic output alone, security is limited, and you have to keep up with deprecated tags.
Assembly language simulator
Prior to this class I took a c++ programming class, had I known about ALS, my life would have been much easier lol. I think the simulator is a really efficient an useful tool that everyone should know how to use. So far this class has been very beneficial to me I enjoy the topics we cover. In my college career I can already say this is one of favorite classes I have had so far and the beauty of it is I’m also currently taking csit 1710/1720 and we basically cover each spectrum of the same topics in each of the classes from an overhead point of as well as the hardware and software point of views. however, thus creates a very good learning enviroment for me, as i may not thorughly understand a topic, more times than not that topic will be covered in one of the courses previously mentioned which allows for me to recap and tie all the info together.
building my own computer
I would build high end gaming PC using the following:ASUS sabertooth P67 TUF Editon motherboard, Intel Core i7-990x extreme edition, Corsair Hydro H100 liquid cooler, Corsair vengeance DDR3 2000MHz 16GB,2 X EVGA Geforce GTX 580 (1536 GDDR5), Asus Xonar Essence STX 7.1, seagate barracude xt 2TB, Asus 12x blu-Ray burner and thermaltake TPG-1200 toughpower grand 1200w power supply all inside a Corsair obsidian 800D case. All parts purchased from tigerdirect.com This build is just a wish list for now, as I really have 3 grand burning a hole in wallet. however, this list contains only the highest end and provide stunning performance, quality and reliability. the cpu the Intel i7 extreme edition is the fastest consumer processor available on the market today. although, games cant quite take full adavantage of the of the 6 core cpu it is still very handy for multitasking and reliability. oh i also forgot to mention i would be runing windows 7 ultimate on this machine.
csit 1110 binary
when beginning to learn about binary, I was a little nervous going into it. However, while taking the 1110 class I’m also taking 1710 and 1720 which coincides with each other. thus allowed to get plenty of practice with binary numbers. After getting a feel of it i come to realize that is nothing to scared of, its quite simple if i must say so myself and believe it or not it actually makes sense why its that way. without any previous experience or knowledge of binary it looks very intimidating however that was not the case.
when looking over the notes for this week that covers the info and binary system, well first i must say the comic/novel is great and interesting way of learning and i think it is definately something that more professors should look at doing to gain the attention of their students and to get them more involved. although i did find myself having somewhat small amount of trouble with the complete thought of CCD’s (charged couple devices) I was thrown off by the fact that we use base 10 simply because we have 10 fingers, but what the heck why not? lol sounds like it makes sense but i seemingly over thought the question on the binary quiz. i basically just thought it was to simple and couldn’t be the answer but you learn something new everyday.
My name is Justin, I’m somewhat familiar with the computing field but eager to learn more. I have always been interested in this field as my father does computer forensics for the knox county sheriffs department. I hope to pursue a career in network security after completeing my bachelors degree. I hope to become more involved with the computing organization such as clubs that pstcc may offer and plan to look more into that as just like in technological field everything on your resume builds on top of each other. thanks