Privacy on Networked Computers

Once you start using the Internet, you no longer have that much control over exposure of personal information. When you register to some social network, you may provide your personal information about your name, photos, birthdates; when you search something using a search engine, it may record your preference based on your searches. Even though there are certain terms or policies claiming that those related companies will not release clients' personal information to others, you will never be sure whether they would.

However, does it mean that we should just give up using the internet and return to the old century? Apparently the answer is no. With the convenience brought from the internet, many people would just ignore the fact that they are also sharing information with undesired users. A risk to that is those people that are careless about privacy may encounter harms caused by exposing too much personal information through networks.

As a result, the best way is really to stay in the middle, which means that people should be aware that they may be sharing information with unintended audiences but should also avoid being overly concerned about privacy issues. Some tips to that are to use complex passwords and regularly change them, periodically clear your history, using trusted websites etc.

Assignments

Last week, I got feedbacks from all my previous assignments like the Wikipedia assignment and project #1 and I also handed in project #2 waiting for grading. I am pretty happy that I got full marks for both Wikipedia part 2 and project 1; and the results are just like what I expected. As for project 2, I still think I did very well on that since I successfully completed all definitions or check-expects labeled as "!!!" and the programs ran properly when I tested them.

So far, I am quite worried about my SLOG assignment as I am writing it. I saw some other people's SLOGs and many of them used pretty background and decorations whereas I chose the simplest format when I set up this blog. I truly hope that this would not be that significant.

Term Test #2

Last week we got our second term test back, and the result is as I expected. I did reached my goal of getting an A; however, I still think that I could do better after carefully examine the test. As usual, the main places where I lost points are the first two questions about the general knowledge of computer programming and the Dr. Racket's part was done well. However, I should be more specific when describing what Dr. Racket would produce (like diameter of 5 instead of size 5) to get full marks for that part. As for my weaknesses of the first two questions, I really should gain more information about the topics covered in the "longer notes" and try to think what kinds of questions may be tested before the exam. I hope that practices like that would help me do better in the final exam with regards to those type of questions.

Week #10 Summary

Last Wednesday we had our second term test. Unfortunately, I mistakenly thought the second term test would be on Nov. 20 and did not realize it until that Wednesday morning when I received the professor's reminder. As a result, I only spent a couple of hours preparing the test and mainly focused on the "longer notes", which I thought are the most challenging materials to me. Even though I was not that well-prepared, I feel I did well for the test, especially for the Dr. Racket part, as I always understand and keep up with the tutorial materials. On the other hand, I still feel that I could do better on the first two questions that are about the general computer knowledge, and maybe I should read some articles about it to better prepare me for the final exam.  

Project #1

Our first project assignment was due on last Friday and I think I did pretty well on it even though I haven't received the results. That project mainly asked us to add several definitions to make the entire program run properly. Basically I didn't experience any difficulty adding the definitions, but I was confused about the first three lines in the file at first. It said: "

;; The first three lines of this file were inserted by DrRacket. They record metadata ;; about the language level of this file in a form that our tools can easily process. #reader(lib "htdp-intermediate-lambda-reader.ss" "lang")((modname sneeze) (read-case-sensitive #t) (teachpacks ()) (htdp-settings #(#t constructor repeating-decimal #f #t none #f ())))",

with them copied to my definition pane of the Dr. Racket, my program can't run successfully. I later figured out that those lines are really generated automatically when saving .rkt to .txt form. So I shouldn't have copied and pasted all those stuff from the .txt file but should save it and then open it with Dr. Racket. By doing so, those lines did not appear on the definition pane. In the end, I successfully finished all the needed areas and submitted it with the properly run sneeze simulation. 

 

Difficulties That I'm Experiencing So Far

During this week's lecture, we got our first term tests back. My mark is ok but did not reach my goal. After analyzing the results carefully, I found that the Dr. Racket parts are fine for me, but the general knowledge or history of computers and computer programming is the part that I found more challenging.

In order to make improvements, I plan to pay more attention on first half of the lectures when the professor is usually introducing the history or general knowledge about computer programming. Moreover, I plan to carefully read those "longer notes" posted on the course website under each lecture to better prepare me for those kind of questions.

There are some other questions that I'm facing as well. It seems like we still haven't gotten our Wikipedia Assignments' marks back so I'm not sure how I did. Furthermore, I can't open the rubric for SLOG assignment and I'm not sure whether we are supposed to have access to it, so maybe I will ask the prof. for clarification during next week's lecture.

Start

As one of the assignments for my computer science course, we are asked to keep a course log to keep track of my participation in the course, and here's the start.

And I'm wondering whether I could change the time zone for this blog. It's using Pacific time now.