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Reading 00

Humans have played games from the beginning of time. Whether it be physical games which we call sport or intellectual board games such as chess, these activities have been aroumd for a long time. The reason for the longevity of games in human culture is that they give us two things which we as humans love and that is the chance at companionship/friendship and competition. Often times board games are made to be played with at least 4 people to create a fun atmosphere that allows friends to spend time together while doing something engaging and the games usually have a winner so players natural competitor can still be brung out to make for an involving experience. Even as gaming platforms have switched to computer/console games the most popular feature of games is the chance to play with friends online as well as competing against strangers for in game perks or a space on the leaderboard. As I was growing up my family would play Guess Who? or Monopoly on some nights and my friends and I
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Reading 14 Response

Becoming literate in programming can be a very helpful tool not only when it comes to the idea of creating software and getting a job in the tech industry, but also when it comes to expanding the mind and helping you to think in different ways. I believe that learning coding is not only beneficial from a career stand point, but also from the idea that learning to code which includes understanding data structures, syntax, and many other different things can help you to think more analytically or creatively because there are a multiple solutions to a problem in coding just like in many other professions. There are many difficulties which will be faced by schools trying to implement programming into their curriculum such as gaining access to computers and general child interest. For this to work in schools i believe that it should be offered as an elective, but one which is for the highest amount of credit which a HS class can be given for to encourage it as a challenging field but not m
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Reading 13 Response

Patents is an agreement with the government and a form of intellectual property which gives an inventor/creator a 20 year monopoly over their idea/invention as long as they disclose it. A patent doesn't give a right to make or sell the invention but does give the right to choose who can and can not make your invention or use your idea. There are many reasons for granting patents. One of the reasons is to protect the inventor from losing out on the benefits of his/her work if a larger company finds out about his/her idea and mass produces it without giving them anything. Another reason may be in order to spur innovation, because if an inventor can be convinced that their idea is safe to let other people know about then maybe they will make it public and allow others to build on to and improve on the idea. I think that patents should be granted as they do help inventors keep control over their ideas and help preserve their work while not harming the abilities of others to innovat
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Reading 12 Response

The motivation for building self driving cars is to ease the task of transportation as well as to attempting to create an overall safer environment on the road. The thought is that with the number of sensors and cameras on these cars they will have a better visibility and feel of the road than any human possibly could and this would then allow it to make the best decisions and react quickly to dangerous sitations. The problem with this though is that these cars can be almost too safe. By that i mean self-driving cars would be coming to a stop at yellow lights instead of speeding up to get through or coming to a full stop at a yield when there is no need; which is a problem because self-driving cars don’t drive like humans so some things they do like coming to a stop at a yellow may cause a crash because the human behind and all humans around would be trying to get through the light on a yellow. The other problem with self driving cars is the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles which
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Reading Response 10

Fake news is the spread of mis-information whether it be for the reason of attracting clicks for money or attempting to sway the opinion of a population. A lot of the article took a look at the presidential election and the effect which fake news may have had on the outcome. The article  Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook gives examples of horribly false and slanderous articles about Hilary Clinton which where liked, shared, and commented on thousands and tens of thousands of times. Some people have no ability to filter false information or their wanting to accept the article as truth makes them do it causes the further spread of false information. If these false links can really sway people to vote for one candidate on false pretenses then this deluge of content is very dangerous and shows how brainwashed people are by what they read on social media. SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY FACTS PEOPLE!! I understand that with the amount of content that is already on and submitte
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Project 03 Response

What trade-offs are you making when using the cloud? Have you consciously evaluated these trade-offs? What is your justification? When using the cloud the trade-off you are making is really just convenience for privacy/confidentiality. As I found, setting up your own GitLab instance takes maybe a total of 6minutes of actual work, but you have to have a computer running one of the supported OS's if you want to make it an easy process because installation from source did not look too simple (for a CS major, for a average joe would be a hassle). In the scenario of running your own host/server you have to pay for the host computer, maintain any updates, do your own troubleshooting on server errors, do all configuration and management of the host on your own. For some people this may sound like a fun and easy task, but for others it may be too much so they will default to the cloud services. Cloud services will manage everything for you, make sure you are able to reach the servic
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Reading Response #9

Net neutrality, which is also known as the open internet, " is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) should give consumers access to all legal content and applications on an equal basis, without favoring some sources or blocking others." What this means is that an ISP such as AT&T would not be able to charge content providers, like Netflix, a premium fee in order for their service to propagate through the ISPs network quicker than other services and they ISP would also not be allowed to throttle the performance of services which are provided by their competitors via their network.  The arguments for net neutrality are that it allows an even playing field for businesses that depend on the internet for their service to be provided and provides an open forum for internet discussion and general activity as well as taking away power from an industry that is already a monopoly in most areas. Net neutrality allows all businesses equal access and priority to an
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