MICHAEL F. PRATE III

This semester has been interesting. Overall I believe this course has offered some very excellent topics. Being able to examine the full spectrum of topics related to the computer industry and history of the computer industry has been useful.I found the hardware topic was very useful.Really I fell that everything that we learned in this class has helped me out in some way or another, whether it be from the very beginning when we learned about computers, to when we were building Lego robots, and to now writing this blog. As I sit here and write this blog I realize that I have obtained so much information this semester that can help me in the future, and can recall so many times in this semester that I enjoy driving 65 miles on Tuesday and Thursday to come to class to learn another interesting topic about computers.

I think the most enjoyable weeks were the scratch and robot projects, those were interesting. Though some of the other projects were interesting. The “How I would build my own computer” project was awesome. I really enjoyed being able to pick out your own hardware and software out for your computer and to also see how much of a badass computer you just created. I also enjoyed learning how to use and create a HTML document. I think this was up there at the top of the projects that benefits you the most. The building of the Lego robots was a fun series of labs to do. Except for the part where our robot was taken apart and rebuilt in a dysfunctional manor each time. It was interesting to play with the programming of the robots and to see hat could be done with such a simple robotic structure of software. For the future people who read this these were not the only labs we did class that were fun. About every lab that we did in class was very fun and adventures in that you had to be creative in each lab.

I’ll have to admit, I didn’t expect this to be a fun an interesting class when the semester started. Each week had a lot of things I didn’t expect. For one thing, no text books Dr.Brown, our professor, made a comic book for each week, and it couldn’t have been a better study guide for the tests. The second thing that surprised me the most was how fun the labs were. I know that the labs in my other computer classes were not even close to as fun as the labs that we got to create in Dr. Brown’s class. Probably the last thing that surprised me the most was all of the cool videos we got to see in class. I like all of the videos that we watch in class especially the Randy Pausch speech video it was great. This is by far the best class I have taken at pellissippi state and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I hope I’m able to sign up for more of Dr. Brown’s classes in the future. I appreciate everything that you have done for me this semester and for those future students don’t worry about this class. If you do the labs and study over the comic books this class will be a fun and easy class for you!

Signing off,

MICHAEL F. PRATE III

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This past week we explored some of the possibilities of using virtual reality in todays world and in the near future. I think the technology has been growing a lot over the last few years and it won’t be long now before consumers really start using this technology in different fields. For fun use gaming will probably be the first industry to really immerse players into new worlds and add much depth to games. World of Warcraft would be an interesting game or other first person games would be truly enhanced if companies would start using this technology. In the consumer electronics field 3D television is really starting to take off this year and I feel the next step after 3D will I’d say be a virtual reality based television set or they may tie in the PC with televisions to form a true media center so everything can be an all in one. I do not have any experience in the virtual world gaming. I play xbox 360 and call of duty is a very well graphical game the I like to play. Probably the closest game I have played to the virtual world is the Sims on the time computer, and I enjoyed that game for a long. I really enjoyed all the cool videos that we got to see in class, it was great.

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This week was far more than just some talk about computers, was a talk about what it means to be conscious and what it means to be human. I understand the need to know how we work but if we create more of ourselves but creating a digital conscious mind that was based on the human brain is very dangerous if not strongly limited. If a computer develops a human mind, I am worried that it might be too close a replica. The human brain can be a very dark and scary place. My point is that if we were to create a functioning accurate and complete human conscious, I fear that it may, among other possible problems, develop a negative complex or some other mental imparity. This thought may be derived from watching too many movies but it seems to be quite real to me. That expert system is one of the best sets of code I’ve seen. I would like to se     e it on a T-shirt. Cellular automata was interesting when seen large scale but I would like to see something similar but in three dimensions. If cellular automata are 1D and the game of life is 2D than it makes since to me, if only for fun, to go 3D with it. Pop culture demands it these days. Finally, I would like to say that when this singularity shows up, I’d like to be there. I enjoyed this class session very much this week.

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Security is something that is on everyone’s mind that knows or does anything with computers. Its has become big problem in the world of computers and will continue to grow. Security suites and OS’s will continue to fill voids in their software and hackers will continue to discover new one. This will be an ongoing problem, no doubt about it.

This past week in class has interested me on how malware and hackers get access to your computer. Im not aware of a time that I have been hacked, but I have had a virus or two on my computer from opening emails that contained them. There is nothing fun about trying to get rid of a virus. The best way I’ve found to do so is just save all my important files and reload my OS, but make sure you come up with a good story to tell Microsoft when you run out of uses of your product I.D. I wasn’t real sure how hackers would get into someone computer. When you stop to think about it, you have got to give some of the famous hackers a lot of credit, they took thing such as a whistle to crack a phone code that I would have never realized even existed. And I agree that most of the beginning hackers weren’t try to be mean they were just have fun, except for Kevin Mitnick.

I think the most interesting part in this topic of this week is how easy it really is to hack into someone’s computer. Now I’m not a hacker , but I think it would be sort of fun to see if I really could hack into someone else’s computer. I think by far this week has got to be my favorite week of this semester.

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I have enjoyed learning how to use scratch these past couple of weeks in class. Its very interesting to me so see how animation plays a big roll in created a scratch. Its quite fun when you sit down and full around with it for a while. Its amazing to see what your imagination is when you sit back and watch what you have created. I think for the most part it was pretty simple to understand. I think probably the hardest part about scratch is if your just a beginner and you don’t know what all does what in the programming it is hard to make what your imagining come to life on the scratch because you quite don’t know how to do it just yet. Other than that its very fun and entertaining to sit down and see what you can up with and create.

Also I thought that the Randy Pausch Last Lecture was one of the best lectures I have ever heard. I actually like it so much that I watched it again later that night .To me it really hit home in doing what you have always wanted to do and following your child hood dreams. I really like how he explained that even though he didn’t accomplished the actual dream, he related different things that had happen to him through his life to the topic to show how he really did achieve the dream. For instance the Zero gravity part of the lecture. Another part of the lecture I enjoyed was the very end when he talked about the head fakes. I don’t think he could of done a better job of that lecture. I really enjoyed it.

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I thought this week was very helpful to me. I enjoyed learning what HTML was and how to use it. I found it to be very helpful for many things that you would like to do being in the category of expressing anything you would like to. I felt that HTML is very interactive and helpful. I have never created an HTML before , and I thought that the lectures and tutorials that we discussed and went over in class benefited greatly to the learning of myself on HTML.

I enjoyed being in class this we because I am very interested in what we learned on this week about HTML. I found that learning HTML was not as difficult as I thought it would be. When I heard that there was all kinds of symbols and place marks in creating an HTML I thought it was going to be hard.I was actually suprised to find out that the symbols were very easy to understand and it came very easily to me. I find that HTML is sort of challenging yourself to make your own website better and better each time you create one. Which for me makes learning and creating HTML fun, interactive, and amusing all at the same time. Also I like the different parts in the lecture, comic and video on what we learned about Nikola Tesla I find everything about him very interesting.

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Hello to all,  this week we learned in our Information technology classes how to use an Assembly Language Simulator. Learining how to use and understand all the concepts to this software was quite difficult for me this week. I understand that when using the ALS you have to  know that it is changing the commands into binary and sending them through the processes that we tell the computer to do a command ,but I dont not feel that I know and understand the material and the concepts of it all yet. I found it very confusing in the begining, and now I fell that I have just taken baby steps of learning and grasping the ALS even more. 

Besides learning how to use the ALS I enjoyed myself this week especially in the lecture part of class. I am very interested in learning the history of different items, and I like how we got to see the transformation in the Apple and Microsoft computers in the hardware and software sections. Also i though it was very interesting learning about all the different types of operating systems we have today, there’s so many to choose from unlike the beginning when you only had two choices. My favorite part of this whole week was watching how we have transformed our technology so advanced compared to computer in the past like the first Apple Macintosh to the Apple computers that we can purchase today. Overall this week I thought was the most interesting week that we have had in the class and I enjoyed myself very much.

A question was asked saying ” Do you fill that everything that we have learned in the class already is coming together for you” ? I would have to say yes to the question. I feel that everything that we have discussed in class is coming along for me except the ALS program. I feel if I practice and learn more about it I will finally understand. Overall the class has been great, and I have enjoyed it.

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There where many different ways I thought about going through this blog, and I decided that I was going to make the extreme gaming computer of the future. Now i am not a big gamer, but I do like playing COD 6, Left For Dead 1,2, and other first person shooters and sports games.The have choose these parts that I have selected because it is the top dollar, and best gaming computer parts I think. So if I had the money to make a gaming computer, what you see down below is what I would select to be my ultimate gaming computer. I think it exceeds most  anyone’s expectations for a gaming computer. I hope you like it! 

THE PARTS 

Computer Case - 

-Thermaltake XPRESSAR RCS100 Micro Refrigeration Case $699 

-case.htmlmicrofridge-xpressar-thermaltakehttp://www.xoxide.com/ 

Power Supply -