Electronic Voting

After watching that documentary on electronic voting having to do with the basic monopoly of diebolds voting machines. It makes one wonder about the Manchurian Candidate, sort of... Simply the codes on these machines may be manipulated to tabulate negative votes for one candidate, or simply adding a vote for another candidate once cast for a different one.

These are not secure because of the simple facts, and how they tested whether or not they could change it via the chip. Once the chip was inserted, the 9 people voting for "is diebold corrupt" said yes, but it printed out 8 for no and 1 for yes. It was able to be corrupted. And with dealing with the top position in the United States, it is a huge debacle.

If I were to run the process of tabulating votes, I would have a much different and politically correct system. All the votes should be run on a simple program adding vote after vote. These machines should be watched and recorded by members of seperate parties to ensure no corruption. This way members from each side can raise an argument whether or not the votes are being tallied right. This may make lines longer, watching people vote, and somewhat remove anonymity. But the only people seeing your vote would be high ranking officials that you would not ever personally deal with. This system may be long and tedious, but it is the price for majority justice.

Blog 5: Intellectual Property!

File Sharing defined by The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English is "the practice of or ability to transmit files from one computer to another over a network or the Internet: file-sharing software" Without File Sharing, people would not be able to educate and/or post information for anyone to see and process. There should be a few limits to what may be shared online but for the most part, lets SHARE AWAY! I mean...your parents always taught you to share growing up, now didn't they? ...Take a second...yea I thought so.

Now as far as these circumstances go, I may or may not vary on the severity of the difference between discrepancies of file sharing. Downloading a song that I do not own from a major label artist. I have done so in the past and do not believe that it is wrong because there are still enough people out there buying his/her/their music albums, posters, other enterprises... Downloading a song I do not own from a struggling independent artist (without explicit permission), I as well have done and do not find that unethical because a struggling independent artist would love to get his/her/their music out to as many audio players as possible. File Sharing can spread hype quite quickly, perhaps the quickest of all possibilities.

Downloading another copy of a song I already own is most definitely not unethical because if someone got rights to a song whether buying it legally or downloading it underground, copying the disc, only means more audio players will have his/her/their CD inside. Shoplifting a CD from a store in my mind is completely unethical and I have never done so. Stealing an item of merchandise from any store is completely illegal and is far different from simply re-copying and downloading an MP3. Instead of just listing all the ones I believe are ethical and which ones i find unethical I will just differentiate what is acceptable and what is simply out of the question.

Basically if something is on the internet and being shared my level of guilt is minimal because the artist is getting the most intense and rapidly shared hype and talk that he/she/they could possibly get. Example: youTube. Millions of videos have Millions of hits and of those Million hits many people will buy that song and perhaps songs from that artist or genre in the future. Stealing an actual physical CD, Record, Tape, DVD, is extremely unethical and a PD officer will arrest you for such an offense, right then and there on the spot.

Blog 4: Python Output!!

This will go parallel to my previous post, including the math information and solutions. These Python questions are aimed to help in the area of retaining python information for midterm and final exams! So without further introduction, here we go: ...

1.def combine(a, b):
result = 0
while b > 0:
result = result + a
b = b - 1
return result
a. Combine (3, 4) returns 12
b. Combine (6, 7) returns 42
c. Combine (3, 0) returns 0
d. Combine (a, b) returns a x b

2. def splitup(a,b):
result = 0
while a >= b:
result = result + 1
a = a - b
return result
a. Splitup (10, 2) returns 5
b. Splitup (8, 2) returns 4
c. Splitup (35, 5) returns 7
d. Splitup (a, b) returns a / b

3. def strange(a):

print "Strange: a = ",a
def weird(a, b):
print "weird: a = ", a, "b = ", b
strange(a+b)
def reallyWeird(a, b):
strange(a - b)
print "reallyWeird: a = ", a, "b = ", b
strange(a+b)
def downrightOdd(a):
print "downrightOdd: a = ", a
reallyWeird(2*a, a)

a. strange(6)
Strange: a = 6
b. weird(8, 4)
weird: a = 8 b = 4
Strange: a = 12

c. reallyWeird(8, 4)
Strange: a = 4
reallyWeird: a = 8 b = 4
Strange: a = 12

d. downrightOdd(3)
downrightOdd: a = 3
Strange: a = 3
reallyWeird: a = 6 b = 3
Strange: a = 9

4. def odd(a):

result = 0
while a > 1:
a = a / 2
result = result + 1
return result
a. odd(2) = 1
b. odd(8) = 3

Math

Binary conversion
1. 1011 in base 16= B in base 10= 11
10101 = 15 and = 21
10010110 = 96 and = 150
1111111 = 7F and = 127
Decimal conversion
2. 8 in base 2= 1000 in base 16= 8
63= 111111 and = 3f
113= 1110001 and = 71
97= 1100001 and = 61

3.
A 200 MB file downloaded at 56 kilobytes/sec would download in about 61 minutes
A DSL connection dl'ing at 5 MB/sec would take 40 seconds
A Highspeed connection at 10 MB/sec would take 20 seconds

4.
A MP3 @ 60 MB @ 3MB/sec
You could download about 180 MP3s in an hour
and 129,600 MP3s a month

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is considered to be a term that encompasses many similar producers that deliver hosted services over the internet.  Cloud computing however is different than normal hosting because principally it is sold on demand and charged by time (i.e. per minute/hour).  The service can be tailored to the users wants, whether or not they desire services maximally or minimally during that period of time.  The host provides all the services that the customer or client is paying for.  The term cloud is used mainly because the thought and the diagram of the internet is compared to a cloud.  A cloud can be a private or public structure or infastructure.  These reliable and depended upon services are all delivered through data centers and are stored on servers with seperate technological levels.  Those who point out the cons of cloud computing tend to focus on how encompassing and vague the definition of cloud computing is.

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality or Network Neutrality is a concept that is pushed very hard by its advocates.  This act or principle promotes that there are no restrictions on the content of a site and that all internet traffic is equal.  Advocates of this principle have come up with three different rules or ethics of this principle.  The first is "absolute non-discrimination" which can be deciphered as the main concept of neutrality, which is that all internet platforms should be treated equally.  The second "rule" is "Limited Discrimination without quality of service tiering: which state that quality of service discrimination is allowed but there can be no special fee implemented for higher quality services.  The third and final is "Limited Discrimination and Tiering": meaning that higher fees may be implemented for higher quality however there may be no exclusivity in co tracts.  Opponents to this concept argue that rich citizens will be enjoying higher quality services, and all the median income families and citizens will be forced to put up with bad quality and slow connections. Large hardware companies are infamous for opposing network neutrality.

Welcome to the first posting of my blog for the CS 107 computer class!