CS 4100 Senior Seminar - Final Post

Hmmmmmmmm the three most important things I learned this semester....

1. Emotions can fluctuate massively in relatively short time spans.  Depression sucks and you should probably go see someone instead of just not doing any work for the first third of the semester or so.  Or not.  Life is long and things will probably work out in the end no matter what path you take.

2. Even if you don't do most of your work for the first third of a semester, as long as you sorta start up and get stuff done for the two other thirds you'll do just fine.  Or at least you'll probably pass all your classes with a little luck, and if you can really kick it into gear at the end.

3. I learned that, currently, all I want in this world is to be a self-sufficient member of society.  I couldn't really care less how that happens, as long as I can live on my own and provide for myself without sapping someone else's resources.  Basically I want some form of a job that I can live off of so that I can feel better about myself.  Once I can live then maybe I'll start caring about what I'm doing to live.


The one piece of advice I guess I would give is that even if you don't feel like no know jack and you feel worthless, you probably know a lot more than you think.  I know typing that is pretty much almost certainly not going to help you if you are feeling like that, because you're feeling that way and emotions spit in the face of logic, but you really are probably way better than you think and it'll most likely work out in time.  But yeah, I would agree with what I heard freshman year, that Computer Science is a soul-sucking major.  Everyone around you probably feels just the same as you.  Once again, I have no delusions that saying this is going to help you in any way though.  Feel-good inspirational stuff rarely does.  Try to just hope for the best.

On that note, here's some graffiti from the 309 lab I found last semester.

Intellectual Property Presentation

I thought the presentation was pretty interesting, if a bit rambling.  It was basically all new to me, so I liked learning about the differences in trademark, copyright, etc., as well as the process of getting a patent.  I know my father has a number of software patents from his time working with Hyperformix, so it was neat to learn how he likely went about it at his company, and how it make work for me in the future.

I definitely feel like some type of software patents should be available, and I think it sucks that after the Alice supreme court decision they seem to be harder to get.  It feels like software, at least in some cases, is analogous to machine patents.  If you can patent a physical thing to do something in a certain way, then it seems like you should be able to patent a software program or algorithm in a similar fashion.  Though I'm sure that there are far more intricacies to the issue than what I know.

Guest Lecture: Larry Bridges

So this lecture was probably a bit less engaging to me than to others, as I am currently enrolled in the Cybersecurity class that Mr. Bridges is teaching.  However, I very much enjoy him as a professor/lecturer.  He is almost always energetic and excited to talk about the material, and loves when we get into discussions or look up answers to questions that we have brought up.  I am almost never uninterested in the class, and wish that we could go into more detail, but security encompasses so many things that it would be impossible.  I think that Mr. Bridges is a great orator and a very effective teacher, and I would recommend him to anyone.

Final Topic Presentations

I was pretty lucky with my topic.  I was at a loss and couldn't think of any issues that I regularly was interested in, but I stumbled upon self-driving cars.  It was really interesting reading the articles I read and learning about the legal, moral, and ethical issues surrounding them.  Beforehand I had heard a couple scenarios that would bring up issues with self driving cars, but wasn't aware that there actually was a lot of things to think about.  Extending it further to AI in general also opens a whole other can of worms.

It was definitely cool to hear about everyone else's topics as well.  There were a number of ideas that I hadn't heard before, so I think the presentations will be interesting.

Citizenfour Thoughts

I definitely enjoyed the movie.  It was tense, suspenseful, informative, and well done.  I thought it was very interesting to actually hear Snowden talk about exactly what he had access to and how extensive the surveillance (allegedly) was.  Since I never really paid much attention to it when it was happening it was nice to get the details of what he was claiming.  It definitely is pretty scary stuff if it was/is all true, and I'm inclined to believe him.

And I do think it's wrong that the government would do that.  But in reality... it doesn't affect me at all, at least not in ways that I can perceive.  It changes nothing if you just ignore it.  Of course, then you fall into the "First they came for..." problem.  Yeah, I do think I should be doing something about it, trying to fight what could easily become a much more prevalent and real issue than it is now.

But I'm resigned to it, and really just trying to get through each day right now.  There's too much to worry about in this world, so I'll focus on what I know I can affect: me.

The FBI and Apple

I definitely think that Apple has made the right choice in choosing to fight the FBI and judge's orders in the San Bernardino case, especially after some more news that the situation could have possible been avoided.  Once again, while I'm not the most informed citizen, I think it would create a terrible precedent if Apple were to comply and create the tool that the FBI is asking for.  Personally, I would not trust that even the tool itself would only be used in this one case, or that various parts of the government would not try to continue to use their power in a similar fashion, regardless of the legality.  I generally think that people are good and try to do good, but I also don't have blind faith in the government, and wholly believe that there are plenty of less-than-legal things going in the United States' government.

Reflections on Snooping

So I honestly thought we were going to find out more about our classmates.  I was pretty surprised at how little we found, and was surprised at how difficult it was to find some things.  Of course difficult is relative, and I'm sure if you dedicated multiple hours to looking into a person you could have more luck with it, as well as more luck finding out ways to find out information on people.

I did think there was a couple of very clever things that people brought up. For instance, finding someone's hometown then specifically going to that town's website to look up public records was smart.  A friend of mine also pointed out that his personal Facebook URL gave away his online handle that he used for many things, which could've been used to find a lot of other online activity.  I had also realized that a few years ago if you had reverse image-searched one of my old Facebook profile pictures, you could have found a forum that I used to be a part of, which would have given away my online handle.  Although now the website no longer exists, it made me think about some more complicated and clever ways you could gain access to someone's information.