kakostacbhp’s Blog

It’s actually a lot of fun. I love figuring out how to make a program work the way that I want it to and getting the right results. I’m excited about the more complicated programs that are still to come. I hope I’ve still got this outlook when they get here…

And as for the number systems test, I was a bit disappointed with myself. I did well and I know the material, but I made all these stupid little mistakes! I think I wrote 0110 was equal to 5 at least five times. I knew the calculators were crippling my brain for simple math! But since I’ve done my blog posts early, I’m off to enjoy my free time. Till next week!

Researcher Charles Stevens says that brain circuits don’t resemble digital logic gates. But now we can grow them so that they do.

Individual neurons in the brain can only successfully send an impulse to another neuron 40% of the time. Israeli researchers have found a way to grow neurons in a specific shape that basically creates an AND logic gate, sending a signal along only when it receives to input signals. By coating a glass plate with material that discourages cell growth and then scratching out pathways, coated with a material that promotes growth, they make the neurons grow in a different and much more orderly way. It seems similar to putting a trellis in a garden. And when the neurons achieve their intended shape (it looks a lot like an oarlock to me), they become part of a system with 95% reliability instead of the original 40%.

What does this mean for the rest of us? The article suggests that this development would allow better control of prosthetic limbs, for one. It could aslo be used to help repair damaged nervous systems.

This video showcases a new material, called buckypaper, made of carbon nanotubes. Depending (I think) on the structure of the carbon, buckypaper can be up to 500x stronger than steel. Because of the cost and manufacturing process, current buckypaper is much weaker and can only be made in small amounts. Engineers predict that once the process has been refined and buckypaper can be produced on a large scale, it will revolutionize the construction of airplanes, among other things. Exciting.

Class this week was okay. I’m glad Jaclyn’s back, but that quiz was rough. It’s a good thing we went over it with Jaclyn. I completely forgot chmod…. But I’m pretty confident with number systems. The test tomorrow will prove me wrong or right.

And now we’re into programming. I’ve procrastinated on doing the book’s exercises, but after watching Mark troubleshoot his program for half an hour, I’m nervous. I guess I’ll see how it goes.

I have an English paper rough draft due tomorrow; is it at all ironic that my roommate is playing “Rock Around the Clock”?

All the wonderful home cooking from fall break has made me fat and lazy, but I found some interesting stuff at the last minute. First of all this article (Yay, I figured out how to link without copying and pasting the code! And yes, I know I should have figured that out a long while ago.) talks about security issues and their relation to negligent employees. Sorry, hackers, you just can’t compare to the power of ignorant people with legitimate access to the system.

In other news, I know several CBHers are also xkcd fans and I ran across this other article about the read-youtube-comments-aloud idea. Apparently many Google employees are also fans of xkcd – Randall even went to speak at Googleplex. I don’t know how many of you already knew this, but I was surprised. There is a write-up of the event that includes a video of his presentation. It’s an hour long, but highly entertaining.

Finally, if any of you remember this, Will told us to google September 26, 1983. So I did. What happened on that day, you ask? The world as we know it almost ended because of a computer error. Thanks to one man, it didn’t. And he got punished for it. Truth is stranger than fiction, as they say.

Now to go write that paper.

Class this week was so much fun. Will is so energetic and crazy! I don’t think I could handle that all the time, but Jaclyn picked a great sub for us. I’ll never forget his demonstration of the ping command.

Our field trip was fascinating; I never imagined that the computers would look like that. For some reason, my brain is hung up on the image of the room-sized computers. Cabinets full of relatively tiny processors never occurred to me. I’m also surprised that tapes are used for storage. I didn’t realize how much storage space they have, though I suppose it should be obvious considering the fact that we were able to put movies on them.

Anyone else looking forward to fall break?

This week has been more difficult than I would like. Probably mostly because I’ve been putting stuff off. But on Friday morning I woke up early and finally got around to really working on the UNIX tutorials, and it’s been easier since then. I think this section is going to depend heavily on our out-of-class work, more so than our previous classes. So I’ve already gone up to Lesson 8 in vitutor and I’m having problems with magic, but otherwise I’m doing okay. But it’s only 8:30 and I’m already having trouble spelling, so goodnight.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197003052&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v10n4/halbert104_text.html#What%20Your%20Software%20License%20Says_C                                         [For this article, scroll down to the section labeled What Your Software License Says]

After a conversation with one of my high school friends this weekend, I decided to do some reading about hacking. As I prefer paper to a screen for reading, I went first to a book my dad gave me, Hack Proofing Your Network. The philosophy of the authors is that learning to hack your own computer can help you secure it against other security violations. The first chapter, however, deals with the politics of hacking, including legal/moral issues and the like. During my reading, I came across some disturbing facts. I decided to do some outside research on shrinkwrap licenses and found these two articles.

I’m all kinds of displeased with what I’ve discovered. It’s hard to believe that we as consumers have let software companies pack so much outrageousness into end-user license agreements (EULAs). As the second article discusses, no other form of information distribution takes so many rights away from the user. We aren’t even buying our software! We’re buying the storage media and renting the right to use the software it contains. Any use other than the manufacturer’s intended one violates the EULA. Worse, we have no ability to negotiate the terms of the agreement. We can either accept the stated terms or go without the product. Which is why nobody reads EULAs in the first place, aside from the fact that they are incredibly boring. There’s just no point to it.

Something should be done about this. Not many companies really care whether users stick to the EULA, under most circumstances. But the fact remains that there is a huge potential for abuse in this system and it needs to be changed.