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This has been an interesting semester. Trying to work a professional level, full time job, do consulting, church work, Board of Directors work and do justice to class assignments has been quite a challenge. Have I learned anything during these weeks? Yes indeed. Have I graduated to computer genius? Nope.

We have covered a lot of topics this semester and I have learned something during each session. The topics include:

The history of computing.

Beyond pictures of ENIAC I knew little of the history. I certainly knew nothing about the creators/innovators that I learned about during the various weeks of this class.

Operating Systems

I was not aware of the relationship between Microsoft and Apple. I knew that they were different operating systems that did not use to talk to each other but I learned a lot I did not know. I did not know that they had partnered and that Microsoft owned a chunk of Apple. I did not know that Steve Jobs had been forced out of the Apple Corporation for awhile. Interestingly Steve Jobs passed away during this semester.

Hardware

While I had some idea of what most hardware does and looks like, this course helped it become clearer. The course did education me on the progression from gears to relays to transistors to circuits.

How to build a computer.

I never gave thought to building my own computer until this class. It always seemed like a fanciful thought beyond my capabilities. However the suggested videos made it seems a lot simpler than I thought. I may or may not ever try it in reality but it is feasible now.

Computer languages

Having been an undergraduate in the early 80’s and a graduate student in the late 80’s, I had heard about COBALT, BASIC and other old languages. What this course did was give me context to how those came about and the evolution of languages from first generation to fourth generation. The class highlighted how much easier it is now to program with such software as Alice, ALS, Scratch and Greenfoot than it was in the “old days.”

Binary Numbers

I remembered something about binary numbers either from college or high school. I had never worked with them to the extent that I did during this class. I learned how to convert binary numbers to standard numbers. Converting to Hexadecimal numbers is beyond me!

Web pages

I knew about using web pages before this class but zero about creating them. Working with the materials presented in this class helped me understand how web pages are created. It gave me new respect for those that do this work.

Hacking/Security

Hacking and security did not bring a lot of new material to me as I am fairly aware of these issues as I try to keep my home computers and network safe. It did bring me some new knowledge as how hacking used to occur with telephone systems. It also gave me some “famous” names in hacking.

Robotics

This is an exciting field with all of the advances in computers. The materials gave a good overview of the happenings in robotics. I also chose to study the Mars Rover project as part of the assignment for this week. That was fun!

Artificial Intelligence

This is probably the most exciting portion of the class for me. AI is a fascinating field. While I think that personal computers have made a quantum leap for humankind, AI dwarfs that step. When AI “arrives” human culture will be changed.

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I am at a bit of a disadvantage with this one since I do not do games in the virtual world or virtual social networks.  The closest I have come is through Facebook which is a social environment and its associated games. I also participate in LinkedIn and Google+.

 I am a fairly active member of Facebook to keep up with friends and relatives.  On the positive side, Facebook enables me to keep up with relatives and friends who do not live close by. At my own leisure I can look at Facebook and see how they are doing. I also keep up with organizations (colleges, professional, non-profits) that I am associated with. It is wonderful to be able to stay in touch.  On the negative side is the fact that with written text is hard to fathom the connotations that are intended. In person interactions or vocal interactions allow one to sense emotions and meanings that written text may not convey.  One other note is that virtual interactions may leave us more remote than in person friendships.  This is highly ironic sense we may have thousands of on-line friends and none in the real world.

Through Facebook I have participated in “virtual games” such as Farmville. While interesting, I really prefer in person games. Part of the fun is being with the person that I am playing with.  On-line games are a second level substitute for that in person interaction. However, I also get a lot more games played on line than I ever would in person. For instance, I usually have five or more “Words with Friends” games going on over my Droid and/or Facebook at any one time. There is virtually zero probability that I would have that much access to live people.

I have played online games on X-Box Kinect where I have an Avatar but other than that I do not have any.

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What an exciting and in some ways almost unimaginable topic! I find the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be most interesting. The whole concept of creating a machine that can “think” or “reason” on its own is mind boggling. It gets to the core of what makes us human. Many would say that the ability to think and reason is what makes us human. If a machine could truly think and reason is it some form of “life” at that point? Would it lead to what we have read in novels and seen in movies with a world dominated and ruled by machines with little or no need for humans? Or would it be a world of benevolent machines that take care of humans and free us from the drudgery of work?

As discussed in the lecture notes, we do encounter AI (perhaps loosely defined) in everyday life if we are around modern video games. However I still tend to share the philosophy associated with the “Turing Test of Machine Intelligence” in that it seems to me that a real test of machine intelligence is being able to understand human language. The parameters of the Turing Test have not yet been met. Also I think that there is validity in the comment that humans boil thousands of facts down to what is important and work from there. Machines do not yet have this ability. This relates to the “Common Sense” issue discussed in the lecture and comic book. Humans can assume certain things because of experience-machines cannot. Also intelligence is differentiated between “knowing that” and “knowing how.”

In some ways, it appears that we inch closer to machines being able to understand language. For instance, my cell phone can, in theory, listen to my voice and dial numbers. However due to conditions, inflections, softness/loudness, the result is often very unsatisfactory. On the other hand many land line telephone systems have effective phone voice interaction software where a human speaks and the computer understands (generally). While we often get infuriated with such software, it is becoming more common and accurate. I also know of software that purports to accept human voice instruction and then prepare documents or fill table. I believe that “Dragon Naturally Speaking” is a software that is intended to allow machines to understand us. However, in the past there have been many limitations to the usage for the software.

Unfortunately as a member of the on-line class, we were not able to participant in the physical robotics work this week.

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Roving on Mars!

Unfortunately those of us who are participating in the web only class cannot easily participate in the “build a robot” assignment. So Dr. Brown arranged for us to have another assignment-basically research on robots, robotic innovators or something similiar.

I chose to report on Mars Rovers that NASA launched on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST, 2004. I pulled a lot of this commentary and information from NASA’s webpage Mars Rover.

This is a tremendously exciting robot as it allows us to see Mars! I think that most youngsters dream of exploring space at some point in adolescence but for most of us this is about as close as we will get.

There are some pictures of the actual robots that have traveled to Mars on this blog page. They look relatively simple and far from the clunky robots portrayed during my youth.

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This week focused on Robots-quite the interesting subject. Our image of robots has evolved through the past few decades. I remember growing up and watching the television show “Lost in Space” with the
Robot working with and talking to the family. The robot was large and awkward. Also during my youth, there were shows like the “Six Million Dollar Man” and the “Bionic Woman” in which certain damaged human parts were replaced by robotic accessories. Many of the shows during this era also featured “androids “or robots that resembled people and were often substituted for a person in order to fulfill a malicious intent. Of course I also grew up with Rosie and Robot on the television carton, the Jetson’s. Rosie was the model for what we all want-a maid that takes care of us and cleans up our messes. While she appeared to be made from steel and very large, we all want some automated servant to take care of the routine tasks so that we have more free time.

We are rapidly evolving to having robots available to us at a reasonable price. For instance, I personally own an i-Robot vacuum. This handy little device is programmed to scurry around my house (at a frequency set by me) and vacuum the carpets. I set the parameters and forget about it. My Roomba then vacuums on the appointed days and times. She is programmed to find dirt and scoops it up. She docks herself when she is satisfied that the floors are clean. Her programming includes logic to stop her from falling down stairs, getting stuck, and many other hazards.

I also have a so called “robotic” gutter cleaner-a Looj. It is not as advanced as the vacuum and probably may not qualify as a true robot (according to the definitions given in class this week) but the Looj sure is a handy device and it is a step toward a true robot. I think the company is a bit aggressive in calling it a robot. Like many other products, its marketing claims are aggressive. It does a good job but it is not truly a robot. It does not sense its environment or manipulate it. It does not demonstrate the ability to make choices, it does not demonstrate intelligent (it just runs until you turn it off) and it is not programmable.

We have robotic arms on space ships and in factories. We have factories run by robots. There are television shows about robot wars in which robots battle each other. There are robotic space explorers (Mars for instance) that have “intelligence” and can move around on their own and transmit data. So many of the visionary robots from my childhood are turning into reality.

I remember watching a rerun of “The Twilight Zone” in which a man is banished to a remote planet for some crime. Twice a year a group of police officers rocket to his location and supply him with food/toiletries. He is starving for companionship and finally one of the police officers sneaks a fully human looking female robot to him. It fact she is beautiful and even feels like a human. Over time he falls in love with her. When he is paroled, his heart is broken since he cannot take her back with him. Dreams like this are still far away from reality.

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This is a critical area of computing in that people will not want to use computers if reasonable security measures are not in place to maintain the confidentiality and security of information that is shared. No one wants to lose control of their financial or health information to an unauthorized person. Nor does anyone want their website “brought down by denial of service attacks.”

While we may all wish that “those bad people out there would go away” they are not going to do so. Therefore computer technicians and programmers have to constantly improve security measures for all software and hardware. The various passwords that we use are annoying and they cost us our most valuable resources-time-but they are critical to our usage of computers.

Computer hacking typically involves an authorized person “breaking into” someone’s computer system. While in the past “hacking” meant someone who could coax information out of a system, it now means something totally different. Hacking can mean that an unauthorized person obtains information about clients or that someone changes data to benefit or harm someone else. Since even medical devices are rapidly becoming “mini-computers” this can be life threatening.

Viruses are an example of “Malware”-malicious software that is injected into a computer to affect its operation in some way. This can be in the form of Trojan Horses (legitimate appearing software that hides the real software that does something bad to the host computer), Worms which “craw” throughout the computer and infect it and then other systems that the host interacts with, Viruses that replicate themselves, Spyware (let’s someone else see what a user does on a computer or obtain passwords that are keyed in) and Logic Bombs (malicious software that is activated by internal program logic -such as time/date).

While there are various laws on the books that allow for the prosecution of hackers, the best game plan for computer security seems to be common sense. Among the important aspects of security are:

1. To know the source of software (verify that it is trusted).

2. Have effective passwords (i.e. not your name/birthday/the word “Pass”)

3. Have effective security software (perhaps McAfee, Symantec, et cetera).

4. Keep software updates current.

It is an on-going struggle that will exist as long as computers do.

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This is an interesting assignment since the two topics to be discussed are somewhat disparate. But here goes:

First there is the “Last Lecture” discussion.

Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, gave his “Last Lecture” concerning achieving childhood dreams and during it, he also revealed his pancreatic cancer. In addition to a personal connection through the cancer (my mother in-law died of pancreatic cancer in 2010), his comments on ways to live life are reinforcements of things that I have been taught all of my life by my faith. Some of the notable comments that he made include:

• Have specific dreams (goals/visions)
o His childhood dreams included:
 Experiencing zero gravity
 Playing in the NFL
 Meeting/Being Captain Kirk
 Winning Stuffed Animals
 Being a Disney Immaginer
• Every brick wall has a purpose
• Have enthusiasm
• Realize that there are certain things that you will never be
• Enable the dreams of others
• Never give up
• Get feedback and listen
• Lead your life the right way and your dreams come to you

While his points are not revolutionary, they are things that we need to be reminded about and inspired to achieve. He certainly has inspired a lot of people with his “lecture” and dying process.

The second part of the assignment is to discuss working with Scratch.
So far working in Scratch has been pleasantly easy and fun. The hardest part for me, is coming up with what I want to do. It is easy to quickly see the results of using the software that someone else developed for me to use. It makes the task much, much easier. Of course that is the general goal of using computers for any purpose-make these easier.

Scratch is handy to use with the built in functionalities. It also provides great ability to personalize and customize everything. Colors, sounds, shapes, movements already exist as templates that can be customized by the user to meet their needs.

I look forward to finishing my project and seeing what I can create.

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This assignment has been much more difficult than I forecast it to be. The coding by hand in week six seemed to be fairly easy. However logging was more complex than anticipated since the original password did not work. The second round instructions worked but my efforts were delayed several days.

When I uploaded the html code, I quickly saw several errors in webpage. It took about an hour to correct the problems-except for the picture links. I could not get the picture links to work. I tried several times to interpret the instructions from the HTML tutorial but I was not successful. Unfortunately for me, I am out of time to make this function work. I leave for Chattanooga tomorrow and will be gone the entire weekend. It is birthday get away for me and my wife and I will visit our daughter at UTC.

I garnered an increased respect and understanding of the work that people do when they code webpages. I had no idea it was so complex!

As to what I learned about databases this week-I learned a lot. I knew nothing of the differences between “flat files” and “relational databases” concepts. I do now understand some of the differences such as the duplication of a column in relational databases.

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While this exercise was a bit involved (getting all of the requirements into it) and while it took a lot longer than I anticipated, it went pretty well. In fact I enjoyed this assignment.

The coding (<>) required (with one exception to be discussed later) was straight forward enough. While it is relatively straight forward, it is easy to forget a closing > in the long web page. I thought the coding made sense and was logical to follow.

The one problem I seem to not yet have surmounted is the insert of pictures. I thought that I understood the coding required but using the HTML tutorial (one of the class assignments for this week)-my picture links would not work. However, I am still working on it!

Inserting ordered or unordered lists and links seemed to go very well for me.

Overall I am pleased with this assignment.

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The reading this week was rather interesting but putting it into action with the ALS Simulator was very difficult. The actions required just do not come naturally for my brain! To me it seemed awkward and disjointed. Hard to follow but then again my natural ability is in words not higher mathamatics.  To sum it up-it was very challenging for me and to have passed the quiz thrills me!

Overall, I think everything is coming together.  The topics from the first few weeks fit together nicely and help one understand how the pieces all come together to make these magical and transformation devices we call computers.  We have learned a bit about the history of computers, the binary math that makes them truly operate, what the various pieces of hardware do and most recently what the purpose of the software is.  Together, they make a computer function by performing tasks that they are eached designed to perform.

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