CS4All

After reading through some of the articles, I have seen some good points made, but overall I do not think that everyone should be required to take a computer science or coding class. I look at it as another profession that some people will be trained in. I do think that it would be good for people to get at least some exposure so that they can determine if programming is for them or not. Not everyone becomes a mechanic but knowing some simple things about your car can be useful. I know that programming is a little different than your typical profession simply because there is a much larger demand for people with that skill set. But while I don’t think that computer science should necessarily be taught to everyone, I do like the points made in the article on MotherJones.com. This article talks about not teaching kids the how to code and knowing the ins and outs of a language, but rather to teach them how to think like a programmer, something they call computational thinking. Computational thinking is being able to take pieces, in this case the capabilities of a programming language, and use those pieces to create imaginative projects. I feel that this is a more important basis to learn. Kids should be taught how to think like this, and the programming languages can come later if that is something that they so desire.

A problem with CS4All is that it could prove difficult to bring this kind of education to everyone. For one, many areas might not be able to afford computers in order to teach their students. We also already have a large need for people who are skilled in programming and software design and now we need to pull even more people out of the industry in order to go and teach students about programming. This could cause issues with initially getting the program off the ground. There is also the question of where it should fit in the curriculum. I personally don’t think that other subjects should be completely replaced by computer science because they are there to give a well rounded education to kids and also so that they are exposed to a wide variety of subjects so that they can better figure out what they are interested in. Therefore, I am not sure how best to incorporate computer science education into the current curriculum. One option would be to shorten classes in order to fit it in. But some schools only have 45 minute classes, so to take time from that in order to add in a whole other class could make it difficult for kids to effectively learn in any subject because the classes are so short.

The most important underlying questions to this whole debate is if everyone has the ability to learn to program and also if everyone should. In regards to if everyone has the ability, I think that everyone can learn to do something to some degree. As with all subjects, I can learn something about them, but just because I know little bit about anatomy doesn’t mean that it’s useful for me or that I will become a doctor. Not everyone will be able to get good enough at programming that they can make that their career, but I do feel that most everyone is capable of learning a little bit about it. But while people are capable, I don’t feel that everyone should. Maybe just as an interest everyone can learn, but if everyone knows how to program, then will it inherently make the world a better place. An example one of the articles gives is if learning to program would make my mayor better at their job. We can’t all be professional programmers, we need people to do other jobs as well. So if it’s not important to your profession, then it’s not necessary for you to learn how to program to the level that it could be your profession. Programming isn’t different from any other job, yes we need people to learn and know how to do it, but we don’t need everyone to be able to do it.

Copyrights and Open Source

Copyright is a subsection of intellectual property. Copyright is intellectual property relating specifically to artistic endeavors such as literary works, films, music, artistic works, and architectural design. There are several resons to grant copyrights to porperty like these. By granting these rights, creators, and those granted permission by the creators such as companies whose job is to work with copyright laws, the right to control reproduction, public performance, broadcasting, translation, and adaptation. These rights allow for the creators to make money off of their creations. Another good reason for these rights is that these people have created something that they associate with themselves and gives the public a certain image of that person. For this reason, creators don’t want people changing and using their creation as they please, so copyrights laws prevent this from happening.

There are pros and cons to both open source software and also proprietary software. One pro of open source software is that is typically cheaper and sometimes even free. But this cheaper product can result it a slightly lower quality product because they do not have the funds to better develop the software. Proprietary software on the other hand is typically very smooth and a quality product. But in order to get this higher quality product, you are going to have to fork over more money. So for these reasons, open source software products can be good for spreading a product to a wider customer base while proprietary software will potentially be a better product, but fewer people will be able to afford it and therefore it will reach fewer people. One example where you can see these differences is mentioned in the Open Source World talk on NPR. This example is for the Android mobile operating system and iOS, the mobile OS for iPhones. Android is based off of the open source OS Linux while iOS is a closed propreitary product made by Apple. Some people consider iPhones to be a product that operates a bit smoother than it Android counterparts. But iPhones are also very expensive, but you can get an Android phone for considerably cheaper. There are some more expensive phones that run Android, such as Samsung, and they easily compete on the same level of iPhone. Because an Android phone can be cheaper, more people are able to afford to buy these smartphones. Therefore, more people are going to have Android phones over iPhones, which is evident from the current market share of Android devices to iOS devices. Another reason that more people may like the open source Android device is because since it is open source, companies can make their own tweaks and imporvements to the system in order to offer their customers a different experience allowing themselves to reach more customers.

From the readings, there is a distinction between free software and open source software. This difference lies mostly in that open source licenses can be more restrictive than free software licenses and also that some products don’t allow you to make your own executables that can run on the device or use all of its capabilities (Android OS is an example of this). But while there is a difference between the two, for the common person the difference is negligible and unimportant to them. In fact, most open source softwares are also free softwares.

I feel that the Oracle v Google case is a huge legal mess. There are small sections that are being argued over and the legality is walking a very fine line that depends who you are talking to. I feel that the court was correct in ruling the APIs are copyrightable. I liked the argument made in one of the articles where it said that while the underlying function of the API is not copyrightable (because that would be effectively the same as copyrighting an algorithm), how a person creates that functionality has a creative aspect. Now, in some cases I feel that there is perhaps few ways to implement a certain functionality so there would have to be guidelines set, but overall there can be many different ways to implement a functionality with a certain creative aspect and for that reason, APIs should be copyrightable. Oracle therefore had a valid reason to call for copyright infringment on their code. Now on to the next question: whether Google’s use was fair use or not. There are four factors that are considered when determining whether it is fair use or not. One is to look at if the use is commercial or not, which in this case it was since Google made money off the Android OS. Another is the amount of the work that was copied. In this case, a fairly small portion of the overall Android OS was made up of the code that was copied verbatum. Another factor is if the new work infringes on the ability for the original creator to use their original work. I don’t think that Google’s use infringed on the ability for Oracle to use their software, especially since Oracle wasn’t developing an OS for a phone. Overall, I feel that the court ruling of Google’s fair use was perhaps correct in the legal sense. By looking at all the factors of what makes something fair use or not, Google’s use was in fact fair use. This does not mean that it should still be ultimately allowed. Google did in fact use code verbatum in their new operating system that provided functionality that could be implemented with a sort of creative flair. I feel that the failure of this verdict that the articles talk about is that the current laws in place do not effectively govern the use of software and what is exactly copyrightable and protected by copyright. Therefore we need to create better legislation to help protect copyrighted software so that highly disputed cases like these don’t occur or at least receive a proper verdict.

Self-Driving Cars

We are moving towards a world full of automation. One big source of this automation is the creation of self-driving cars. There is a lot of controversy around the idea of self-driving cars, but I for one am completely on board with it. Part of the motivation for creating these, is that it has the potential to create safer environments on the road. I feel that part of what makes driving dangerous, is the irrationality and inattentiveness that human drivers can have. Sometimes people will be distracted when driving or make rash decisions that have fatal consequences. Self-driving cars can help to diminish reactions like these. A self-driving car isn’t going to be distracted from the road by looking at its phone. I do feel that they can make the roads safer, especially when the roads are full of them. Google’s self-driving car drove for a long period of time (maybe years but don’t quote me on that) and was involved in very few accidents. Even when the car was in an accident, it was almost always due to the error of another human driving. While self-driving cars are already somewhat safer because they remove the distraction, I feel that roads will be made even safer when there are more self-driving cars on the road. I am currently in Social Sensing and Cyber Physical Systems with professor Dong Wang, and we have discussed self-driving cars before. The ability for all of these cars to be connected in a system would increase safety because even when one vehicle cannot see an obstacle, maybe another one can and is able to send out a warning saying that there is something in the way.

While self-driving cars could make the roads safer, there is still the possibility that accidents can happen. One big one that was mentioned in one of the readings, was an accident that happened with a Tesla. Because of the color of a vehicle and the brightness of the sun in the cameras, the Tesla automation system was not able to detect a semi and ended up plowing into it, killing the driver. While this is a big issue, from what I read on the incident, the driver was not using the feature as intended. This individual was not paying attention to the road, reports actually say that they were watching a movie when the accident occured. While having self-driving cars is cool and all, I feel that we should be so comfortable with their abilities that we don’t pay attention to the road. Tesla themselves came out and said that the intended use for this feature is to still be prepared to take over at anytime in case something goes wrong.

And this is not the only issue people have with autonomous vehicles. Another big debate against their use is the moral decision of what to do when an accident is unavoidable. People tend to say that you should do whatever will harm the fewest number of people. Yet in a study done to determine how people felt about self-driving cars, while they did agree with the previous statement, they said they would not want to be in a car programmed to kill its passengers when that was the option that resulted in the fewest injuries or casualties. People are wary about the use of self-driving cars when it comes to a dilemma like this. But an article by the Washington Post, not in the given list of articles, discussed this issue and alluded to a previous time when people liked the idea of a product, yet were still concerned about using it. In this article they talked about the use of the refrigerator: people liked that it preserved food better, but there was an apparent risk that the equipment could catch fire or leak toxic gas. As we know, improvements were made so that this isn’t as much of an issue and refrigerators are used everywhere today. While there is a current concern, I feel that public opinion will come around to the idea and systems will continued to be improved so that this risk with autonomous vehicles isn’t as much of an issue. Perhaps we can make the structure of cars safer in general so that even if the car wrecks itself, the passengers will still be safe. In situations like these, perhaps there are decisions that the car can still not make properly at this time. I feel that when a wreck seems unavoidable, then the human driver should step in to help figure out what to do in the situation. The guilt of a wreck will then fall on them as it always has, and no programmer or car company will realistically be held responsible for the accident. Regardless, people will still complain as they have when anything new comes around and we will have to deal with these complaints.

I do feel the government should have some play in this whole thing. They are the ones that currently set the rules of the road, so why shouldn’t they have a say in the rules and regulations applied to self-driving cars? I feel that this falls into any other product that has benchmarks that have to be met, like car emissions. The government should make a set of rules dictating whether a particular self-driving car should be allowed on the road or not.

I am definitely excited for self driving cars and feel that they will continue to get better and make the roads safer. If I have the money, then I could definitely see myself buying one. I am friends with someone with someone whose family owns a Tesla and have had the privilege of driving it. I am not sure if their model is new enough to have any of the auto pilot capabilities, it may have the lane stay feature, but in either case I have not used it myself or seen it in use when riding in the car. Either way, I absolutely love the car and all the cool technological features and would love to own one myself someday. For me, the auto-pilot is just an awesome added bonus.

 

Trolling and Anonymity on the Web

In the most general sense, a troll is someone who will spout things to try and spread misinformation. They also are well known for harassing people through social media and other forms of communication between people on the internet. Trolls feel that they can do what they do and harass people because they are hidden behind a wall of anonymity. You don’t know who they are, so what do they care that you are hurt by what they are saying. Internet trolls are essentially your typical school bully, but they have been given the power of being anonymous and also be able to bully anyone they want over the entire world from the comfort of their own home. As with bullies, there could be deeper issues with the bully themselves that causes them to lash out at others because it makes them feel better. An example of this is in the article where the writer confronted one of their internet trolls. The troll ended up coming clean that he harassed the person because the troll had similar personal issues as the writer and didn’t understand how they weren’t super upset with themselves. They decided to troll the writer because of their own misplaced emotions. As we have seen throughout the articles and may have experienced ourselves, trolling can be very harmful, especially when it goes to the extreme (sexual harassment, stalking, etc.).

As I mentioned before, trolling can often happen through popular social media sites. Therefore people question, is it the sites responsibility to take care of these trolls? On some level I feel that the sites should be doing at least something to hep with trolls. I feel that if a company openly allows harassment and does nothing to stop it, then that speaks volumes about the morality and character of the company. It is in the companies best interest to try and do something, less they pegged as people who are okay with harassment. But it can be difficult to determine if a person is trolling or not and also difficult to seek them out and take care of the issue. They also have to walk a line of preventing harassment while not overly restricting the right to free speech: this makes it very difficult for them to help. But like one article said, we have seen these types of issues before. Years ago, it was “appropriate” and accepted that women were harassed in the work place; now it has just moved to the internet. But laws were put in place to help prevent that work place harassment. These laws took time and careful execution to make them work. The same must be done for these internet trolls. I feel that we will eventually be more capable of preventing this behavior but it will take time to come up with and enact laws that can do so.

One solution that people have proposed for solving this problem is the use of real names online. But this is a double edged sword. On one hand, if names are created through proper verification, i.e. they are who they say they are, then it can help with knowing the actual names of the trolls. But this also allows for trolls to more easily find the person they are trying to troll. If I am trying to troll John Doe, it is much easier to find them if their username is @JohnDoe, than if its something unrealistic like @xgamer64. For this reason you have to be careful with using real name systems. As seen in the articles, even Google has seen that there are problems with this idea and have given up on trying to use a real name policy for their social media Google+.

Trolling is definitely a big problem on the internet and one that could take a while to work out. I myself have experienced trolling but in a much less serious sense than those discussed in the readings. I completely understand why people are upset and feel that we should be doing something to try and prevent these extreme levels of harassment that we see.

Project 03 Reflection

For project three, my group and I decided to replace a cloud service with a self-hosted version of that service. We decided to replace the online service called Pocket with the self-hosted version Wallabag. I felt this was an interesting project because it makes you think about what the trade offs between cloud services and self-hosted services. When using a cloud service, you have the convenience of someone else taking care off all the technical back end systems that make the service work. But in letting a third party do this management, you are in a sense giving them access to the data that you are using their system to store. There may be user agreements that say the company will not steal your data or use it in some illegal manner, but they are fully capable of doing so since they are the ones storing your data. This is something that you need to consider when choosing between a cloud service and a self-hosted service.

But as I saw in setting up the Wallabag server, using a self-hosted service is not always easy. For those who are not trained to work with computers in this way, there aren’t great installation manuals on the Wallabag site and it may be almost impossible for someone to do on their own. They will ultimately have to have someone else do it for them, a third party, that you then have to worry about trusting to set up your service. Because of the complications of installing and setting up these systems, I don’t feel that I see myself switching over to these systems instead of their cloud based counterparts. Another factor that comes into play with this decision is having the hardware to host these services. For our project, we used a Digital Ocean Droplet to host the server. Fortunately, one of my group members had some credit on Digital Ocean so it didn’t end up costing us any money. But if I were to be hosting all these different services myself, I would need to pay for the hardware, instead of using the free cloud services that are offered to me. In my mind, the data I store on these services is not extremely confidential and so I am okay with using the free service while knowing that they have access to my data.

Something that we have discussed a lot in class, and also has pertinence in this matter, is moral standing on certain issues. The issue here is that you are trusting companies to store your data. They are offering a service that usually requires nothing in return (i.e. money), so it not necessarily a surprise that a company wants to be able to use that data in some way. It may not be looking specifically at you as a person, but they could be using this data to get big pictures on how society is being directed or whatever information they want to glean from all of this data. I feel that you can be upset or a little irritated if a company starts to encroach on your privacy, but you are the one who gave your data to them. They did not technically steal it. And now, even the companies that you pay for services, in this case ISPs, it is legal for them to distribute your browser history as the see fit. If a company who charges you money can do this, what’s to stop a company that doesn’t charge anything for their service to try and get a little something in return by using your data. And you always have the option to store everything yourself and use practices to make sure you data isn’t lost. There are compromises that have to be made when we settle for the easiest option.

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is the idea of giving all content providers on the internet an even field of content delivery. Basically, Internet Service Providers want to be able to charge content providers to be able to be placed into “fast lanes” that guarantee their content is delivered faster than normal. Net Neutrality opposes this and says that ISPs are not allowed to throttle services based on how much money they are paying. This is a highly debated and argued topic because there are large groups both for and against net neutrality.

Those who are for it are commonly the content providers like Google, Netflix, and similar companies. These companies say that the absence of net neutrality has the potential to prevent greater innovation. Their argument is that if a content provider has to pay to have their service provided faster, then the small startups who are trying to make their place in the world will not be able to afford this increased rate and therefore be stifled out because people aren’t finding their content online. One of the articles I felt gave a good analogy in support of net neutrality. In there analogy they used electricity/power providers. Power companies simply charge you for using their service, which is to provide power to your home and other buildings. These companies aren’t allowed to tell you how you can use that energy, as long as it is legal, they just provide the service. People feel that ISPs should be the same. They shouldn’t be able to tell you what you can or cannot do on the internet. Their job is to simply provide access to the internet and let the users do as they please, again, as long as it is legal.

Those who are against net neutrality are then obviously the ISPs. They stand to lose money from these laws because they aren’t able to charge increased rates to create fast lanes for content providers. The interesting thing about their argument is that it is the same as the content providers. They say that the presence of net neutrality is what will actually stifle innovation rather than the lack of it. They argue that it is the ISPs themselves who are innovating (which in my opinion doesn’t make much sense). Another argument is that the without net neutrality, the ISPs are free to manage their networks how they wan’t which creates competition among the companies.

If you don’t like the fact that Netflix is slower on Comcast than it is on AT&T, you can switch to AT&T.

After reading some of the articles and learning more about what exactly net neutrality is, I am in favor of it. In regards to the argument against talking about cultivating competition between ISPs, I think that is stupid. I don’t feel that I should have to choose my ISP based on what specific services I want to use. If this were the case, then it could be possible that there are services that I want but neither ISP provides reliable delivery of all of those services, e.g. better Netflix on AT&T but better YouTube on Comcast. I don’t want to be stuck having to choose the lesser of two evils like that. If the companies want to have competition between them, then do so by providing better reliability and speeds than the other companies(*cough* Comcast *cough*). Another issue with the ISPs being able to show preferences to content providers is that the ISPs can start just giving preference to their own services and choke out everything else. I feel that there is too much room for abuse of power for the ISPs to have this kind of freedom.

But regardless of if I support net neutrality or not, there is of course the issue of how it would actually work. I feel that there are probably systems that could be put in place to monitor the speed of sites when being used on different ISPs. If it is obvious that a site on one ISP is much slower than another, then it is probable that the ISP is throttling the site. However, this solution doesn’t really work if all ISPs collaborate and uniformly throttle the same sites by the same amount.

I am not exactly sure what concerns of over regulation might specifically be, but in my mind net neutrality is a simple idea: don’t throttle websites just because you want people to use your version of the service instead.

Corporate Personhood is the idea that corporations are similar to people. They are at least similar in the sense that they have certain legal rights that people also have themselves. Corporations do have some similar rights, such as being able to sue and be sued, but do not have all of the same rights as people, such as the right to get married. It is true that corporations should have rights, but this can have certain ramifications. One way in which this could have legal and ethical ramifications is in election funding. For a long time, corporations have not been allowed to directly fund political candidates. In my opinion, this is good because this prevents corporations from directly funding and choosing a candidate simply because it would be beneficial for them for making more money. I do not feel that companies should be able to sway an election to favor themselves over the general public. But in 2010, corporations were granted the right to spend money as they please in regards to political elections which has resulted in a mound of controversy. For reasons like these, I feel that corporations having certain human rights can have negative effects and ramifications.

I feel that what Volkswagen did is definitely unethical and immoral. In one way or another, whether it was through a contractor or if one of their own employees did it, they deliberately put code into their system that would effect the emission readings so that they would score better when the emissions were being tested for regulation purposes. They most likely knew that their vehicles were not as clean as they claimed they were and put in measures to make it so that people wouldn’t find out in order to make more money. As a result of these actions, VW has been forced to pay large sums of money. According to the articles, they were estimated to pay nearly 25 billion dollars after a plea agreement and and the agreed compensation to the people affected by the scandal. In my opinion, these consequences are a fairly decent response to what they did. They had to pay a bunch of money, the CEO was removed, and their company image was definitely damaged in the process. While it seems that the legal repercussions may not have been that great (although they had to pay money because of those), the money and the damage to their company image will definitely have a huge impact on them as a company which I feel is a decent punishment.

And finally, in response to the given quote, if companies are given similar rights as an individual, then they should be required to have the same expectations as the individual at least in regards to the rights that they have similar to the individual. I feel that this is the case because companies should not be allowed to get away with things just because they are a corporation. I feel that this could lead to some corruption that the general public would not be pleased with. In the context of the case study that I chose, I take my viewpoint because if an individual were to do something to purposely cheat regulations, then that individual would be reprimanded for doing so and possibly banned from working/operating the area that they cheated regulations. I feel that companies should also be treated in a similar fashion because if we let companies of the hook, why can’t we also do the same for individuals.

Online Advertising

I don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with the idea of online advertising. Companies are just trying to make money and advertising helps to do that. Where the ethical issue comes into play is how these companies decide what advertisements to show you. They look into everything you do on the internet, the sites you visit, what you click on, etc., and use that information to then create ads that are tailor made to what you might like. I get almost annoyed when I Google something and then get on Facebook a few minutes later and they are already showing me adds and suggestions related to that thing I just Googled. I can understand using data to get an overview of a population, but I don’t necessarily like being singularly targeted by ads based on my search history. The idea is that the companies are trying to show you what they think you will like, but I find it more obnoxious than I do convenient that they are able to show me things that I have searched for before.

I am fine with companies collecting data and looking at what users are doing. People have made some very interesting applications using big data and data analytics. But I thing that this information should be used for more broad analytics and projects. I am okay with being part of a larger whole, but not when I am targeted by the information that they gather. This means that my information is not some anonymous data point but that they know exactly what I am doing and what my habits are so they can gear their products towards those things.

Another problem that I have with online advertising is the sheer volume of advertisements. Some sites bombard you with ads and render their site basically useless because I can not comfortably navigate it. For example, I hate the webpages that I click on sometimes on Facebook because of this. It will be something that I am genuinely interested in looking at, but there will be so many ads and they will force me to go through 20 different pages to read all of the material instead of just putting it all on one page or at least just a couple of pages. When this happens, 9 times out of 10 I give up and just exit the page. The point of these ads is so that the company hosting the site can make some money, but they get money for views, and when the users don’t even bother with going past the first page, then they aren’t getting those views and aren’t making money. These are the reasons for why I feel using ad blockers is almost a necessity. Not using one now seems like a hassle because I have to deal with constantly being interrupted by ads popping up which makes my overall user experience plummet. The article from ars Technica talks about how using an ad blocker is basically stealing from them because you are denying them their source of revenue. I do understand this on a business level, you have to make money somehow. And perhaps their site has a moderate and manageable number of ads that don’t cause the experience of using the site poor. But it is the sites that go overboard with their number of ads that cause me to just run ad block on every single site, not just the ones that I get annoyed at. So it is the actions of a few that have ruined the use of ads for many other small businesses that are just trying to make it in the online industry. So I apologize to them, but do not see myself turning of ad block permanently any time soon.

Edward Snowden

I always find it difficult to classify the actions of whistle blowers. There are people who think what they are doing is just and helping to bring down corruption, but there are also those who think they should just keep their mouth shut and if they don’t like it then they can leave. Edward Snowden is one of these whistle blowers that became very popular for the mass amounts of government documents that he released to the public. In my opinion, I feel that Edward Snowden is more of a traitor than a hero. Now, I do agree to some degree that full surveillance of an entire nation’s people is not necessarily ethical. But, that surveillance was being done in order to prevent terrorists and other attacks on the US. If you are a simple citizen that has nothing to hide, then there is no reason you should be concerned with the being watched by the government. It is an invasion of privacy, but there is a price to safety and security, whether that be the lives of soldiers fighting our foreign enemies or the privacy of people in our nation. While I think that Snowden is a bit of a traitor, I don’t think the government is completely hands free in blaming him and sentencing him as such. In my Computer Security class I took last spring, we watched the Snowden documentary Citizenfour and discussed his actions some in class. What I learned is that it was very easy for Snowden to steal these files. He was given complete access to any and all files that the NSA had on their servers. He wasn’t even on the site that some of this information was stored at and was still given unrestricted access to it. Also, he was not searched going through government checkpoints when leaving the sites that he worked at. He was able to simply walk out with a thumb drive in his pocket without even being questioned and searched. I feel that these leaks could have been very easily prevented if the government but half as much effort into checking what the people they contract to do work for them as they did with spying on the citizens of the US.

But moving past the legality of his actions, I don’t feel like what he did was necessarily ethical. He stole classified documents from the government and willingly exposed national secrets. Now, I can’t say for certain that what Snowden did has any major effect on the world. The Patriot Act, something that he opposed and felt should be ended, did expire and was not renewed. The government did however pass a new bill that still allows for telephone surveillance, just changes the ways in which the government can acquire those phone calls. So there is still a law in place that allows surveillance, so what did Snowden really do? Some people, including form US Attorney General Eric Holder, say the acts of Snowden did provoke a beneficial discussion about the security of the nation. However, he does agree with me in that what Snowden did was not right and that he exposed national secrets that really should not have been exposed and did have repercussions as a result. So he did a little bit of both in harming the nation and also helping it in sparking these discussions. But ultimately what he did was illegal and unethical. But I can’t say all of this has impacted me that much. I am not hiding anything so that knowing the government is watching what we do is a concern for me. In this day and age we do almost everything online so it is not that much of a surprise that what we do, our searches, calls, tweets, Facebook posts, and everything else are saved and used. In the usual sense, these are used to do data analytics about users to make things better, but this information can be used for other purposes so it is not surprising to me that it has been.

Project 2 – Reflection

For our second project, we decided to make a podcast discussing the interview process for Notre Dame Computer Science and Engineering students. If you would like to listen to that podcast, it can be found here.

In our podcast, I felt that we did a decent job in covering some of the key features of the interview process and some tips on how to prepare for interviews. For me, one of the most important parts of our guide was the section about getting started with making a resume as early as you can. I feel that this is something that I should have done much earlier than I did, and wished that I had had our guide to get me started in that direction. I did make a resume Sophmore year for the first career fair that I went to, but unfortunately I did not get it reviewed as much as I should. Yes, I had my mom look over it and he had some of her HR friends look at it as well, but no one had me change it too much. When I finally did go more in depth with someone, they helped me a lot to have my resume structured better and be more presentable. So if I could stress any one thing from our guide, it would be get your resume reviewed, and when you do, sit down with the person and go over it with them in detail. Don;t just have them look over it once and suggest a few things.

I don’t really like the fact that college has become so much about getting a job. And even doing that has become so much more difficult. I remember when I first started into computer science Sophmore year. I had very little experience in the major and did not have much faith in my skills so I was nervous about getting an internship. Then, to make it even worse, we had an alum come to our one of our classes and talk about the interview process and how best to prepare and present your self to get a job. This individual made it seem like we need 6 years of experience in a 4 year program in order to have any hope of landing a job at some of the larger tech companies, which did not bode well for my confidence. I don’t think that Notre Dame should change their curriculum in order to prepare us for the interview process. I think that it could be good to have some electives that might help in this area, but we don’t need to completely overhaul the major for this purpose. College should be about teaching us the skills of being a computer scientist so that we are able to show off our skills to employers. We can have clubs and other groups devoted to learning about the process, but what is the point of knowing the process if we don’t have the skills to then succeed. Because of this, we should continue to learn in the classroom, not do interview prep. I feel the university is headed in a good direction with expanding and improving the CSE department to make Notre Dame a more competitive CSE school. I can train myself to be good at interviews and to get the job, but I am at school to learn the skills necessary to then keep that job.