Human Interaction with Technology and Information

I looked at the Email episode from 1986.  It wasn’t email like we think of today though- it was a pay-per-message system that could do about a tenth of what any email server can do now. The first email system they showed was something called Lotus Express. It worked on an IBM, and you paid for each message you sent out. It allowed for sending of graphics and other files, which was a huge deal to the host. The next was source mail, which worked in a similar way, though they were pushing it for use from country to country. The third was Call for Text- you dialed into your computer from a phone, and a computer voice read your messages to you. The last one called Watson worked like an answering machine. Someone else could call into your computer, leave you a message, and then you could listen to the message straight from there.  Useful, I guess…if you don’t have a phone.

 What was most interesting to me were the security concerns.  They generally weren’t about someone else getting into your inbox, or about someone sending you something that would harm your computer.  The main concern was about sending messages up into space.

I really liked the video dealing with software piracy especially since now one of the biggest issues is music piracy which has affected tons of singers. In the video, software producers explain why software is so expensive due to marketing and creating the software. It takes up to 1500 to 200 hours to create software. Various reporters and lawyers were saying that this is no different than car theft. A software developer explained a program called locksmith which can create identical copies of software and include the serial number and all the protection that the original software contains. Vice president of Activision stated that all buyers can simply call a hot line and state their issue and the manufacturers would help them. School system uses Locksmith program the most because they create an archive and give the backup to their students for usage. Franckie mouse who is a software pirate was interviewed and explained that pirates do this for the recognition and to be able to outsmart the software workers however, pirates do not receive any profits from their illegal work. He also showed how he illegally copies programs and the software can be used by anyone in the nation. A lawyer stated that the penalty of piracy can be up to five years in jail and fines. At the end, an editor for a software company said that the best way to reduce piracy is to create cheaper software’s which are more affordable to consumers. The video was very interesting and I encourage more people to look at it because of the new form of theft in this day and age.

Here are some things I learned about Perl from the video:

• Perl is considered to be an old program (in computer terms).
• The version of Perl 5.10 is being developed now.
• It was written by a UNIX system administrator who wanted to get things done more quickly and efficiently.
• Its codes look like that of C, but they are totally different. In fact, it is more LISP like.
• Codes are written unto Perl in text files.
• Perl is a compiler (just like Java). That means that it translates the whole program at once and not just line by line.
• In practice, Perl is similar to Java.
• Perl is designed to do some pretty bizzare things.
• Perl is very user friendly.
• Because it is user friendly, it takes up more resources, that is: processor and memory.
• A lot of DNA manipulations work with Perl.
• Perl can be either written as Procedural codes, or Object oriented.
• Perl makes life easy when wanting to build big projects.
• Lots of resources of Perl are available everywhere. Some of which are books, articles, online blogs, etc.
• Over 10,000 pieces of usable codes are available on the Perl program.
• It’s got many interfaces (this feature is mainly used by SAP).
• Perl can read MP3 files.
• Great program for organizing. That is why Ticket Master uses Perl for organizing its system. Therefore it is very reliable

This program seems great for every user. though, it may be hard for users who use other programming languages because it is a bit different.

In this episode they discuss how amazing the Amiga 3000 is. Going over all of its many functions (mostly video editing). However a few interesting things popped up. The first was the visual programming language where you could create programs in a matter of minutes by expressing commands as icons and then later editing the parameters.

The second, and really more interesting thing, was their Toaster card that allowed for video editing and processing. A 15,000 dollar card that rivaled (according to them) 50,000 dollar computer sets. They showed it in action and it did seem effective, but, not knowing what other video processing sets were like back then I can’t really comment.

The ending news dealt with laptops, primarily TI’s new laptop and how small it was getting.

Matthew Fingerman

Programming

6/25/84

3 levels of language

Machine language

Systems language

Application language

The hosts begin by talking about how Mac and Pc are not compatible and the problems that may cause in the future. There are different languages for different things such as science, art and education. Pl1, and four tran, are the most popular as of 1984, and the new system code is Cobal. Paul O’Grady talks about his product and the innovations that it has created. It shows how graphics can be made simply from easy text language.  Problems with Cobal include issues with syntax such as periods at the end of all statements. Apple Computer Co. representative talks about his use with Pascal programming and says that it is used for more general purpose then actual business use such as the Cobal. Cobal is trying to become more personal by diary and personal filing applications. The show continues by bringing a special guest, the President of Fourth, Inc. to discuss her new program language and its applications. The positive attributes of her program is that a user can use execute minor everyday tasks such as text, and very complex computations pertaining to graphics. She goes on to show how she can change the color of screen by using a combination of letters. They discuss whether there will ever be a single language. While the all agree that it would be nice, they agree that different languages are like tools, you need the right one for the right job. The new program they show is how they can now play blackjack on the computer, against the computer. The common beginning language on most PCs is Basic, but it is limited when you try to do anything complicated. They end the show by saying that once you learn a language others can be picked up very quickly.  

Data Source Project: Rate My Professor.com

Hidehiko Udagawa

1. Description of data

According to Wikipedia, RateMyProfessor.com allows college and university students to anonymously assign ratings to professors of American, Canadian, British, New Zealand, and Australian institutions. The site contains more than six million ratings, for more than half a million professors. All ratings are supposed to be anonymous without any instructor input or decisions.

2. Why is it interesting?

· We all want to know how helpful a professor is before taking their class. This data helps us to pick classes. We also may post a rating and review of any professor already listed on the site, and may create a listing for any individual not already listed.

· The site is not only useful for our college; we could also search for the teacher in other places.

· It is interesting that we can rate the professor’s “appearance” as “hot” or “not”, and may include “comments”

3. How we can obtain data.

· Go to RateMyProfessor.comhttp://www.ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp

We can pick either from the professor’s name or the school name to search for the professor you are looking for.

Type the professor’s name or school name into the small box and click search. Lists of professors will appear. We could just scroll the bar to find the correct professor. Or we could find the professor by department. Pick the department where the professor works and lists of professors in the department will appear and we could click on the professor we are looking for. We could find the rating of the professor on a 1-5 scale in the following categories: “easiness”, “helpfulness”, “clarity”, and the rater’s “interest”

4. What specific questions the data will/can answer: The data can answer several questions, including:

· Although the information about professors is not accurate, we could get general personalities of the teachers.

· We could find the rating of the professor in the following categories: “easiness”, “helpfulness”, “clarity”, and the rater’s “interest”

· We might be able to find pictures of professors before taking classes.

Flights.com

Description of the data:

Website used: http://www.flights.com

Flights.com is a website that allows users to book flights, hotels, cars, cruises, hostels, European rails, and insurance (for trips) across the world. Even though it serves many purposes for customers, I would like to use this website only to acquire statistics about flights data. I would like to compare the flights’ data released on a time period of one month (from November 12, to December 12^th). Different departure and destination airports will be chosen randomly, to acquire the data. Data such as: how many airlines offer services from the departing airport, and at the arrival airport, will be acquired. If some airlines offer more than one flight per day, this would be recorded as well). Then, prices will be compared for each airline’s service.

Why is this data interesting?

Travelling has become a part of everyone’s lives within the past few years, due to globalization and industrialization. Many times, people book flights with airlines that do not offer the best service. Yet, they are ending up paying way more than they are supposed to. It is hope that after analyzing this data, prevention for customers to pay extra money will start taking place.

How can we obtain the information?

Information can be obtained through the given website (http://www.flights.com). On the webpage, there is a tab that says “Flights.”This will scroll down through the page, in order for the user to reach the search box for the flights. This search box allows the user to modify the search for flights. In order to modify the search, the user will enter the data asked in the appropriate field.

What questions can this data answer?

· Which airline offers better service and is still cheaper than others?

· What makes one airline better than another?

After acquiring the information online, this is how the data will be analyzed:

Project title        Eval A    Eval B
Sarit’s project        2    1
Polling            4    2
Video Games        2    4
Baseball Stats        1
Buying            3
YouTube            4    3
Target Audience        3    2
Ticketmaster        1    4
Baseball Pay        1    2
Movie Monologues        4
Listening Trends        3
AOL Stalker        3
Banned Substances    1
Ebay            4
Vehicle MPG        3    2
RateMyProfessor        1

Matthew Fingerman

Computer Science – Project Data

November 7, 2007

                              Chinese Food vs. College Students: A reputable marketing campaign?  

a.      Describe the data (clear, precise)

I plan on using the webpage aolstalker, which comprises a search engine to look through the AOL data released in 2006. The site show what anonymous AOL users searched for in a given time frame. If I were to conduct this on a larger scale I could use larger search engines such as Google or Yahoo. To do this I will need to do other random searches to prove that all searches don’t include college related searches.   I will be trying to prove that a large portion of those who search for “Chinese Food” are college students. Therefore I would receive the numbers of the users given to me from Google/Yahoo that searched for Chinese food and I would examine their other searches that would be related to colleges.

b.      Why is this data interesting?

The data concerning what types of people search for Chinese food could be used in order to place ads on the campuses webpage such as the ads seen on the schools news paper, The Acorn. Currently there are several Chinese food services that advertize with pamphlets on campus but a detailed report on how many college students search for Chinese food would be extremely helpful for more wide scale marketing campaign. The information gathered could also help college campuses dining contracts more successful by supplying more food that students love. As well as dining contracts the data could also be used to help determine eating habits of college students and examine why the particular food is appealing.

c.       How do we obtain this data?

I will obtain the data by going onto aolstalker.com or if I were to conduct this search on a larger scale I could contact Google or Yahoo for search results for Chinese food. While at AOL stalker I can search though data free of charge; however, I would have to pay to get searches from Google or Yahoo. Once I gained the data base of items searched for, I could place in key words such as “Chinese food” and see who searched for that data in the search engine as well as the other items they searched for. The data will be easy to obtain and looking through the search results I can tell what college related sites they went to (eg. Facebook, universities, ect).

The data on a larger scale can be found at Google/Yahoo on the webpage below:

http://bizsolutions.google.com/services/

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/?cmp=Yahoo&ctv=fp_footer

The privacy settings for Google/Yahoo are explained here:

 http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html

http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/

d.      What questions will the data answer?

I want to be able to prove that college students are a large population of the Chinese food business. I will be able to get this by analyzing search result data from Chinese food and see what other searches they looked for that would relate to colleges and/or Universities.   

Extra: Brief finds from AOL stalker users who searched Chinese Food into the AOL search data

4 Users searched for Chinese Food in AOL search engine

¾ users searched for at least one University or College as well as Chinese Food

An example of how I would use the data would be as follows:

AOL STALKER - #562483 Searched: “Chinese food”

Other College related searches: facebook, Cleveland state university, University of Toledo 

My proposal

1) Description of the data
a. Using the website espn.com, I would like to look at different baseball statistics over the last few years. Specifically, I would like to take a look at the number of homeruns hit by players each year between 2003 and 2007 for the top three paid batters for each team.

2) Why is this data interesting
a. This data is interesting because many players are paid an inordinate amount of money and provide little results while some players are paid little and provide many home runs for their teams. This data would provide fans, players, and teams with information about getting all they can for their money

3) How can we obtain this information
a. This data is rather easy to obtain whether from a google search for each of the teams over the last few years or just by going to espn.com and spending time looking at each team and player playing for the last five years of baseball.

4) What questions will this data answer?
a. Is a team getting the best results for the amount of money they are paying these players?
b. Who is the most economical player (has the highest homeruns to pay ratio)?
c. Who is the least economical player?
d. What team is getting the best deal (three players homeruns to pay ratio is the highest)?
e. What team is getting the worst deal?