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CIS 115: Blog 12 - Tech Company Profile

One technology company that interests me is Adobe Systems Incorporated. The primary reason they interest me over other companies is how diverse they are with their programs. From Flash to Creative Suite, Adobe covers the bases on many media development programs. While other companies like Google do a lot of cool things, I figured I’d aim smaller and do Adobe instead. Everyone else is going to choose Google anyway. Probably.

Adobe isn’t particularly unique with the point of their products (ex. image editing software, video editing software, etc) since many other companies make similar programs, but Adobe specializes in pushing tech further with each release of whatever they decide to release. Photoshop is widely seen as the most professional image editing software, and video editing software like After Effects and Premiere are widely used as well, even with similar programs like Sony’s Vegas series in the market. Despite the similarities with many other products, Adobe’s programs are fun to play around with (especially Photoshop) to create content; especially when there’s a “Master Collection” that can be purchased that contains nearly every Adobe product. The collaboration with these various programs can make some pretty cool stuff.

Because of the diversity of Adobe’s work (such as in the master collection), I think it’d be fun to work for Adobe to see how these products work. Learning how to make powerful programs that can modify different types of media would be awesome. I remember looking up videos when Photoshop CS6 was released, and developers would talk about all the new content they added. Hearing them talk about “algorithms” to make the new content work wasn’t enough; I wanted to learn how it actually functioned. I’m probably not going to see source code or whatever, but it’d still be cool. With all the different effects you can apply to digital media, there’s a lot to stare at to find out how these effects work.

Since their advent in 1982, Adobe has been progressing the world of digital media through their products. With various acquisitions and recognition from many business publications, Adobe continues to advance their products and remains a giant in technology businesses. This is why it was my tech company of choice for this blog assignment.

Sources:

http://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/fast-facts.html

#CIS115

CIS 115: Blog 11 - Making Meaning: Tubes

I had two main reading assignments over this semester: Pattern on the Stone, and Tubes. While the first book brought the complex functions of a computer to simpler terms, Tubes focuses more on one aspect: networking. Specifically the history of the internet, its development, and how it works. It was written by Andrew Blum, who’s also (according to the back of the book) written about other forms of technology, and has had writings featured in many publications. Safe to say he knows how to convey information.

The outline of the book is fairly straightforward: it describes a place, describes the hardware in the place that does internet things, describes people involved with the hardware that does the things, etc. It’s very detailed on the history of these various details (lots of details. Details details details, details.), which I like. It shows the practical applications of networking and the internet over the years and explains how all of it works. Seeing how the hardware evolves from decades ago to the present gives the reader a good sense of how everything pieces together in regards to the development of the internet.

My favorite bit of the book was near the end, when the author took a “tour” of a Google data center in The Dalles, Oregon. By “tour”, I mean he got to see the outside of the data center. He wasn’t allowed on the floor; in fact, many people aren’t (even politicians, which was mentioned in the book) allowed, as to prevent privacy breaches. I like how it showed a more rustic look at Google and its inner functions, since everyone looks at Google as a sleek and futuristic kind of business. The blatant obscuring and secrecy of the center just interested me, since Google is seen as more carefree with their projects and facilities. Evidently not in this case.

In general, this book taught me a lot about the history of the internet, and expanded on what I already learned in CIS 115. The sheer amount of detail given in the form of various narratives let the reader feel the development of the internet. I would definitely recommend this book to people who want to learn more about the history of the internet past ARPANET and other early networking experiments; this book covers a lot more bases than my class did.

Sources:

Tubes, by Andrew Blum

#CIS115

CIS 115: Blog 10 - Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?

I have no idea.

I personally believe it’s too early to answer the question above, although at the same time I believe it’s good to think about the consequences this early. The “AI” in question is “strong AI”, which is basically an artificial intelligence that can rebuild and refine itself to do whatever it needs to more efficiently. In theory this means that it can refine itself with deadly speed and accuracy and become something awesome. Whether it’s awesome in the sense that it will blow up the earth, or figure out how to make everything immortal and happy forever, is another question entirely.

So this “strong AI” will most likely become much smarter than any human given time and resources, so I’ll use the development of that as a reference point for the singularity (I don’t think other forms of AI can really be classified as “smarter” than a human). I do think the development of strong AI can happen, I’m just entirely unsure of the process (as it doesn’t exist) of making one, as well as when we will be able to. The wikipedia article itself points out the uncertainty of many predictions as to when strong AI will be made, as well as numerous other factors.

Some of these factors include the aftermath of a “singularity” (the crossroads where an AI can match or outperform a human). Again, completely unsure what will happen, whether stuff turns into Terminator or we all gain immortality. I think it’s a matter of what we use strong AI for. For example, if we’re stupid and we decide to implement strong AI as a weapon, we’re collectively screwed. If we use it to better ourselves as a species, however, I think there’s more leaning towards a nice AI and not Governator. You never know, though.

As for the future, I just have to see what it brings to form a more concrete opinion on artificial intelligence. Whether we improve on modern AI technologies or make whole new ones, there’s more room for said improvement, and that sets the standard for the future. With cool stuff like Cortana for Windows 10 and other programs that do stuff for you, we’re going nowhere but up. There can be all the scientific and philosophical discussion in the world, but in the end, we’re only going to know what happens when we just do it. There’s your free advertising, Nike.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

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CIS 115: Blog 9 - Privacy in an Open Digital World

We had a lecture about the Internet of Things last Thursday (I think), which was pretty neat. In the IoT, everything we use frequently is basically connected to do all kinds of cool stuff depending on what the thing is. Despite how cool it’d be, the question of privacy is a big factor to consider when thinking about the IoT.

This assignment doesn’t ask about the IoT in general, but I thought it’d be a good example. Privacy in general is important, especially in regards to computers which are commonly used to transfer secret data and crucial emails from your grandmother. Making sure this data gets where it’s actually supposed to go without interference is very important as the digital world grows. If the data is transferred safely, then it’s just a matter of doing whatever needs to be done to the data (ex. crunch numbers, find out you need to start a war, put your grandma’s email in the trash bin, etc) and everyone is happy. There’s no catches or anything.

The catch, however, is that there needs to be a fine balance between privacy and security. It’s a mess, really, so I’ll use a fun example: the NSA. The NSA collected a whole lot of data from a whole lot of people to stop a whole lot of terrorists. While the “security” bit may be covered by the off chance they actually discover a terrorist plot developing in the country, the “privacy” bit is not. Collecting phone calls and other random stuff from everyone is far from keeping privacy in mind. But the other wise could be argued as well: that the NSA has actually kept people in the US safe (I guess? I don’t know the statistics). Finding that balance is a debate in itself.

As for keeping my stuff safe, it’s pretty simple. Using a good password is a great idea that too many people don’t do (”password” is the most common password). I actually have a system for my passwords which I won’t explain because I’m not stupid, but it does follow the general idea of using a “passphrase” instead of one word. The possibility that your password will get cracked falls sharply as you add more characters; making your password a memorable phrase (with some extra characters thrown in between words or something) is a good idea. That being said, stop adding dumb password requirements, everyone everywhere.

In general, it remains to be seen how privacy in the digital world will progress (or not), what with everyone’s attention and knowledge on the subject swinging around randomly. Hopefully though, as the world flies further into a digital future, privacy and security will find a nice balance and innocent people won’t have their private stuff leaked. Private stuff as in like, business information or bank information. Not something else. Probably.

#CIS115

CIS 115: Blog 8 - How Has the Internet Influenced You?

I can’t exactly remember when I first got access to the internet, but I think I got it when I was 10 or 11 years old. Since then, whoosh, lots of different stuff happened from then to now.

Back then when I first got access to the internet, I went crazy with all the stuff I could do. Eventually I landed on video games and making stick figure animations to put on Youtube and did that for a while. I would play RuneScape a lot, as well as a few games from the “Orange Box”, which was Valve’s popular collection of plenty of their games smashed into one package deal. At that point I had to make a Steam account, which at first I thought was a hassle, but later Steam just got bigger and bigger. It was just more convenient to have all my favorite games in one place. The access I had to video games from then to now definitely influenced my taste in them, as well as making friends who had similar likes. Now I’m studying Computer Science at college so I can more fully understand how things like video games work.

After I cooled down a bit and the internet was commonplace for me as a kid, I discovered some more cool things that influenced me. One cool thing was the dreaded computer virus, and I can recall a few of the times I’ve gotten them. Scary, sure, but luckily my dad was good with computers so he took care of stuff like that. Yet another reason I’m studying CS here is to learn how viruses work, and delve into cybersecurity.

Another cool thing was the access to information I had. This became much more helpful in high school and college, with resources popping up like KhanAcademy, Codecademy, Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, etc. If I have access to all this, I can learn literally anything I want to. I mean, I could learn everything outside of college if I tried hard enough. Knowing that I have the power to do that at any time is nice, it’s just the matter of finding motivation.

Also friends. I have friends all over the world who share my interests and stuff, as well as local friends who I can easily contact through Skype, Facebook, whatever. A combination of all of the above makes the internet a huge contributing factor of who I am today. Whether it’s playing video games with friends, talking to friends while doing homework/researching, or any other activity, having the ability to these things over the span of 8 years has definitely influenced me.

#CIS115

CIS 115: Blog 7 - Topic Research Presentation

I typed out this entire thing and then Chrome crashed and the post didn’t save. Therefore excuse me if it sounds rushed. I was in team 4 so I am going to be writing my thoughts on team 5′s presentation over cybersecurity.

I've been a fan of cybersecurity for a while; I used to read up all kinds of junk about different fields and concepts in cybersecurity. Rainbow tables, password hashes and cracking passwords, SQL injection, malware, list goes on. I also like reading books about more in-depth functions of computers. I've read about a third of Windows Internals, which is a nice book by Mark Russinovich. It talks a lot about the internals of Windows. Anyways, I feel like all of this information is necessary to explain so it gives insight into what I thought of the presentation, whether I thought it was too basic or whatever.

Despite the above I did learn a few new things. For one, I learned more about the different jobs in the field. I'm mostly a hobbyist so I didn't look up too much about the different careers and stuff. It's cool to know there's such a thing as a virus technician, since viruses are cool. If KSU somehow is infected with something don't blame me, by the way. In addition to the career information, I learned a few more facts I didn't know before which was nice.

On to how well they covered the material, I think they did great. It's very difficult to smash such a huge topic into 12 minutes and cover everything in time. I'm the goofy guy who talked about Doom too much during my presentation and left the last member 30 seconds to cover his section of the speech, so I think being able to condense information and not talk about every single thing you have on your slides is a milestone. They simply brushed over everything they needed to to give the students a general outline of what cybersecurity is all about.

I know time was a huge factor in all the speeches, but I couldn't help but be disappointed when one of the TAs asked team 5 what their favorite virus was when they were researching. I wasn't disappointed because he asked, I was disappointed in the answer: "keyloggers". In addition to everything they covered, I wish they could provide some examples of different topics in cybersecurity. Whether it's viruses or different tools the cybersecurist (?) has in their belt. "Keyloggers" could have been CIH, Maldal, or numerous other viruses that were bad and cool at the same time. Again though, time was a big factor so I understand the lack of detail. I just hope someone gives a presentation on the history of computer viruses sometime. That'd be cool.

In general they did good.

Sources:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963901.aspx

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Miscellanea - Some more plans for this blog

Alright so I lied on my last post about slapping some command line junk on here, but the more I thought about it the sillier it sounded. Something as simple as command line doesn’t really need to be expanded upon.

I should learn SQL though, and codecademy recently finalized their SQL module. I could show that off more than just command line junk. Expect that maybe.

#miscellanea

CIS 115: Blog 6 - The Difference between Humans and Computers

At first I thought this was going to be a boring assignment but after reading some of the ideas outlined in the directions, I was intrigued. As the use for computers becomes even more widespread than it already is, this becomes a valid subject for discussion. It also lets me dig into some fun stuff I found and use links on tumblr for the first time.

The first idea brought up in the directions was trying to imagine computers doing human work, or vice versa. In the case of physical activity, humans beat computers easily, although Boston Dynamics is doing a better job at this. Robots doing things a human can do in a physical sense is still being researched and improved, but in more mental cases it’s different. Computers can do different calculations whether it’s mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc at a very fast rate, as opposed to humans who do it very slowly in comparison. We can do everything a computer can do in this sense, it’s just a matter of speed.

In regards to the above point, it ties in to another idea described in my assignment: are humans being replaced by computers and, if so, does that mean America is doomed? Just kidding about the latter, but there are cases of computers replacing humans and its impact on the economy and other stuff. I’m reminded of a very fancy NPR article that outlines this based on certain jobs. The idea is that the more a job requires human interaction and how ‘clever’ solutions need to be for said job, computers become more or less able to do said jobs. Self-checkout is easily automated and already highly implemented, while a job like teaching is unlikely to be replaced. Giving people their stuff when money is put into a thing is easy, as opposed to giving people abstract ideas and knowledge and making sure they understand it.

I’m sure when artificial intelligence dawns and Skynet or something takes over, everything said here will be irrelevant, but it is still a nice discussion to be had. With self-driving cars continuously improving and self-checkout lanes taking our jobs and ruining the fabric of this country blah blah blah (and lots of other examples), the gap between computers and humans will become smaller, and the debate of if that’s a good or bad thing will come up.

Sources:

http://www.bostondynamics.com/

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine

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CIS 115: Blog 5 - Making Meaning of Pattern on the Stone

A little background for the zero people reading this blog outside my CIS 115 class: Pattern on the Stone by W. Daniel Hillis is one of the required readings for that class. The idea of the book is to explain many different aspects of computing in the simplest possible terms with metaphors, analogies, etc. It’s primarily written for people who know very little about computers.

To summarize my overall feelings of the book, I was generally interested. Although I found it a little weird that the author put himself on the cover in a pensive pose with his name in the biggest font, but that’s about the only negative. Also, some of the language used in the book was a little strange too but I’m not going to judge someone’s writing like that. It was less objective and a little more broad, which is the point of the book so it’s no big deal.

This book goes over the many basic concepts of the functions of a computer, and the parts that make them up. He delves further into these concepts by also explaining pieces of computer history, different theories and paradoxes, computing terms, and so on. This is where I feel I learned the most: it was the first time I ever heard of finite state machines, extensible languages, heuristics, and various other computing terms. Pretty cool stuff, and helpful to me if I ever come across these terms in other CIS classes in the future.

As for covering all the bases, the book did that well. This is surprising as it’s very hard to summarize all the different bits and pieces of computers, whether it’s hardware or software or whatever. For people who know nothing about computers, this would be a good read specifically for that reason: it simplifies many different aspects of a computer, while also diving deeper into these aspects for people who are already experienced with computing.

If I were to recommend this book to anyone, I’d have to think about their way of thinking first. I don’t think this book is for everyone, even if they have zero knowledge of computers. Sure, it outlines stuff well and all that but at the same time, I could understand people being confused or annoyed reading this book. There are loads of other resources to look into to learn more about computing than just this one book, so I’d put them on the list first above this book.

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CIS 115: Blog 4 - Computer Systems in Daily Life

We use a lot of computer systems in everyday life; desktops, laptops, forms of security ID (keycards, fingerprint/retinal scanners), calculators, and depending on how fancy your fridge or washing machine is, those can have computer systems too. Personal computers in general are a broad subject and I don’t know a lot about washing machines, so I’m going with calculator for this one.

Slapping “define: calculator” into google brings up “something used for making mathematical calculations” as its definition. Therefore, there are technically many different definitions for calculator. Most people still living in the present jump to the idea of those little boxes that Casio and Texas Instruments make that do basic math operations. The history behind the invention of the handheld calculator goes back quite a while.

First there was the abacus. Technically there were “counting rods” first but those are just sticks so I’m skipping that part. The abacus was the earliest example of a calculator, dating back to 500 B.C. Many different civilizations are recorded creating these devices, which made basic arithmetic simpler and visualized the base 10 numeral system. While very basic, the abacus set the stage for solving math problems quicker.

Past that point there are really countless examples of calculators, whether it’s groups of people that did math for military/business purposes, adding machines, and so on. These all built up to the invention of the electronic handheld calculator, which I’m going to jump to here. In 1967, officially, Texas Instruments made the first handheld calculator. From this point, technology behind the calculator boosted with the idea of making things smaller and adding more stuff. Early calculators probably just had basic arithmetic functions but I have a calculator on my desk right now that can calculate trigonometric functions, convert from degrees to radians and back again, and lots of other stuff. Richer kids can even make graphs and program on their calculators.

The importance of this is staggering; at least doing math super fast is, and calculators seem to be the go-to tool for that. There are so many uses for the calculator in many different subjects, whether it’s math, various sciences, etc. It’s not just important for my homework, it was also important for everything throughout history that can be described as “progress”. Architecture, technological advancement, I could go on forever talking about the many applications of mathematics and the importance of doing it quickly.

Sources and thanks to:

http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/topics/calculators.html

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/ghenke/historycalc.html

and my calculator for having trig functions and the ability to convert degrees to radians.

#CIS115

Miscellanea - Plans for this blog

I wanted to stick this here just to remind myself about my plans for this blog.

As anyone who’s been reading my blog thus far (just me but ok) knows, I’ve been slapping my CIS 115 blog assignments here and nothing else. That’s fine and dandy but it is pretty boring stuff. So, eventually, I will get around to posting other stuff I’m doing as long as it relates to my journey through learning computery stuff. Stuff stuff stuff.

I’m learning tons in CIS 115, but why not learn more? That’s crucial in computer science because the more I learn now, the more I have to learn later anyways because people who learned more than me are making breakthroughs with computers that other people have to learn. Cool.

Anyways, I’ve got posts set up into categories, and they are tagged as such. So far I’ve only got two (CIS 115 and miscellanea) but I’m planning on adding tons more. This includes blog posts for classes I will take through college, personal projects, codecademy shenanigans, random programs I make, and so on. Whatever I feel like, pretty much.

So yeah. Next couple of posts up here should be blog 4 for CIS 115 and a codecademy post about the command line, since I’m learning from that module. Plan is to install a linux VM and experiment from there with terminal to show off what I’ve learned. Sounds very simple and boring but that’s actually another point I want to make.

Right now I’m not doing anything super stellar, but that’s a good thing. I want this blog to slowly ramp up and show off what I am learning as years go by so I can look back on this post and say “haha loser” and continue to be awesome and rich. Like Martin Shkreli. SHKRELIIIIII

Disclaimer: I don’t actually like Martin Shkreli.

#miscellanea

CIS 115: Blog 3 - Algorithms

I perform many actions every day, but a newfound one ever since my start at K-State was climbing into my bed. Back home my bed was 2 feet off the ground so I could jump in without a problem. In my dorm room, the bed is 2 or 3 feet from the ceiling (the opposite of ground, for those unfamiliar). I didn’t have too much of an issue getting used to the idea of climbing into my bed, but for the topic of this blog post, it’s a little more tricky.

Algorithms are an extremely objective and specific set of steps used to solve a problem. It may not seem like a huge deal, but explaining every small step on how to climb into a bed in a college dorm room is a hassle. For example, you could tell a human being to “climb the wooden beams on the side of the bed” and they’d probably get in just fine. In the case of a robot/computer, simply saying “climb x and woohoo good job” won’t get the job done. Maybe some day it will but if there’s a blog assignment for artificial intelligence in the future, I’ll discuss it then.

If there were a robot that could perfectly simulate human activity physically, but have the ‘mental capacity’ of a computer, things would get interesting. Instead of “climb up the side” it’d go something like “start in x position on one end of bed, move both arms to high wooden beam and grab, move left/right foot onto 1st beam, pull up, move other foot onto 2nd beam” while also maintaining balance of the robot and moving arms when necessary, maybe throwing the alternating foot placements into a loop or something. There’s a lot to explain to computers in simulating many real world situations is the point I’m trying to make.

Delving even further into this, I could say there are many different ways to climb into the same bed. One could just jump and pull themselves up from the sides without the wooden beams that act as a ladder. The bed could be lowered and then the human/robot could just fall onto the bed. The starting position of the human/robot can be in the ceiling, and they could repeatedly bash the ceiling until they break through and land in the bed. Granted the efficiency of these different methods varies wildly but they could certainly be taken into account.

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CIS 115: Blog 2 - Historical Figure in Computing

There are lots of pioneers in the field of computing, but one of my personal favorites is Alan Turing.

Alan Turing was a mathematician and pioneer for the idea of the modern computer, and lived during the time period of World War 2. During this time, he drafted the idea of a ‘universal machine’ that could theoretically emulate the functions of any device in existence, later dubbed the Turing machine. This is one of the things he is primarily known for. In addition, he propositioned the halting problem, one of many problems deemed uncomputable. He was also known for cracking the Nazi Enigma code by building a machine called the ‘Bombe’ with another codebreaker, Gordon Welchman. Besides this groundbreaking work in computing science, he also studied many other sciences and wrote down his own thoughts on large discoveries, during his time in schooling as well as outside of school.

Despite all of this, during this time period, views on his accomplishments were mixed. This is especially true later in his life when he was outed as a homosexual, which was deemed a crime in England then. This inevitably led to either his imprisonment or hormonal treatment, of which he chose the latter. These hormone injections left him impotent; when he was 41, presumably a combination of the treatment along with the stigmatization led to his assumed suicide. He was deemed killed by cyanide poisoning, and a half-eaten apple was found next to his body.

Fast forward to 2013, Alan Turing was officially royally pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II, after profound support suddenly rose in Turing’s favor. A film (The Imitation Game) was also made in his honor, outlining his accomplishments in the style of a historical drama. The amount of support for Turing in the present far outshines the dark past; Turing is now a recognizable figure in modern computing and LGBT rights. Without his influence, the Enigma code would remain unbroken, the idea of a basic universal computer would be discovered far later or not at all, and the computing world would be far far different.

Personally, I am interested in most, if not all of Turing’s discoveries in regards to computing. This is becoming more clear ever since the class played around with Turing machine blocks in Scratch; might play around with them later and do more than just the busy beaver machine. Anyways, I’m also interested in the mechanics behind the Bombe, just to see how the code was designed and torn apart, dealing a huge blow to the secrecy of Nazi plans. As I learn more at CIS 115 and most likely beyond, I will definitely dig deeper into Turing’s discoveries to learn more.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/8-things-didnt-know-alan-turing/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8bgr82

http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/

The Pattern on the Stone, Chapter 4. by W. Daniel Hillis

#CIS115

CIS 115: Blog 1 - Personal Biography

Hey all! My name is Nolan Cates, Computer Science student at Kansas State University. I came from Goddard, Kansas, which is east of Wichita. Goddard itself is a pretty small “city”, but since it was near Wichita, I have had plenty of experiences in an actual city as well.

I primarily chose to come to Kansas State University to learn how computers work; I’ve always been interested in them, but never had the motivation to push myself to learn how they truly work. I heard good things about the engineering programs here, so that’s why I chose KSU. Computing Science is a wide field, so many of the different portions interest me. Cybersecurity, computer graphics, operating systems, artificial intelligence, you name it, it probably interests me somewhat or a lot. My IT teacher at my local tech college back in Wichita was a hacker, so my interests in cybersecurity were heightened there. He recommended a good book called Windows Internals, which is an interesting read if you like computers and junk. Computer graphics stems from video games, obviously. I could go on about each of these fields but then I’d die so I’m just going to move on.

Some of my hobbies include programming, drawing, swimming, listening to music, browsing random shenanigans on the internet, and the obligatory video game playing. A lot of these hobbies stem from my family and friends, who have a wide variety of interests. My father fixes different systems at a local Via Christi hospital (fire alarm, security, etc), so his knowledge on computers rubbed off onto me. When I was a kid I had to get him to install games on the computer for me, but after watching him once or twice, I would just do it myself (it’s pretty easy actually). After that I would do whatever on the computer and since then have been attached to their dark magical powers.

I really have no solid plans for post-graduation. I will have a ridiculous amount of experience with computing which will definitely help. You can do mostly anything with a degree in CS. I’m caught between moving on to a Master’s to become more awesome or just stopping at a Bachelor’s and getting a job from there. Whichever I do, I will still be around those big metal boxes that do numbers, and that’s all that really matters.

#CIS115

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