Since I was around 8 years old, I have had a fascination with computers. I also have a passion for problem solving, so when I went to college, it seemed natural for me to major in computer science. In high school, I took a programming class and loved it, so I was confident that this was the right decision, and it was. I love working with computers, and using them to solve problems is not only fun, but is also exciting and challenging. I couldn’t be happier with my decision to choose computer science and more specifically, software engineering, as a career. This is the primary reason I didn’t end up switching majors in college.

The story begins at my junior year of college…

In the fall semester, I had signed up for Philosophy of Religion. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I had some invested interest in religion, so I thought this class would be cool. I really wasn’t expecting anything more than “cool”.

By the end of the semester, it was official…I had what some philosophers refer to as the “philosophy bug”. Like I noted before, I took this class because I thought religion was interesting, but I ended up discovering that philosophy is not only interesting, but totally awesome. Prior to this class, I had no idea about numbered premise arguments or sound and unsound arguments. I also had no idea that philosophy involved so many things, such as critical thinking, that directly related to problem-solving. I was hooked.

The next semester of my junior year, I took two more philosophy classes, Epistemology and Life and Death. Epistemology ended up being one of my favorite classes in college, and I think at the end of this semester was when I truly realized how awesome philosophy was. I took three more philosophy classes my senior year, and ended up getting a minor in philosophy.

After college, and even to this day, people will ask me what I studied in college, and when I tell them computer science and philosophy, they usually say something along the lines of “That is an odd mix! How did you pick computer science and philosophy?” However, I think that, like me prior to taking to philosophy classes, people that say this don’t really understand how relevant philosophy is, not only for computer science, but all disciplines.

Philosophy and philosophical arguments are based on logic. Computer science is based on logic. When you do philosophy, you work with logic. Seeing as working with logic is an incredibly important part of being a computer scientist, studying philosophy helps you not only grasp logic, but also to see logical flaws in certain statements. Being able to see logical flaws is an invaluable tool for software engineers. The reason your computer crashed? Flaw in the software’s logic. The reason software X has a bug in it and doesn’t do what you expect? Flaw in the software’s logic.

Philosophy also involves critical thinking. Again, as a computer scientist, critical thinking is absolutely…well…critical. You need to be able to think about a problem, actually understand why something is a problem, and be able to come up with ways to solve the problem. Critical thinking is how software engineers come up with solutions and find edge cases. Again, being able to critically think is an invaluable tool for not only computer scientists, but for any discipline or career. Critical thinking is important for humans in general.

I could probably go on and on about why philosophy and computer science are really not all that crazy of a mix, but I want to discuss how philosophy has helped me become a better person.

One of the most important things I learned in philosophy is that it is okay to be wrong. Being wrong doesn’t make you stupid. You might be thinking to yourself, “Obviously, no one is perfect,” but I really think there are a lot of people that don’t realize this. Think about how many people get offended when you tell them they are wrong about something? It is one thing to simply tell someone they are wrong, but if you tell someone that they are wrong, and you back up your claim and give some logically valid argument as to why they are wrong, people often take offense to that (granted, there is a time and place to challenge what someone said, but I have seen people get offended in the most innocent scenarios.). Why? Why is it so important for us to always be right, especially when we are talking about something that we don’t really know all that much about? I encourage my friends to challenge my beliefs. I want to have true beliefs. I want others to have true beliefs. If I say something that you think is false, speak up. One of us will learn something from the conversation that follows.

Philosophy has also taught me that there is a HUGE difference between disagreeing with someone, and disagreeing with what someone said. Anyone that says, “You shouldn’t talk politics,” are a perfect example of people that don’t understand this. (Again, there is a time and place to talk politics, but some people say this anytime someone talks about politics. I guess politics is a big secret?) It is one thing for me to disagree with you as a person. It is a completely different thing for me to disagree with something you say or believe. Again, I think this goes back to my first point about being wrong. If I disagree with you (I think you are wrong), I don’t think you are stupid. I don’t think you are a bad person. I don’t think you are crazy. When I disagree with someone and think they are wrong, I simply think what they said is false. That is all. Being wrong doesn’t mean you are crazy or stupid.

Another thing philosophy has taught me is that it is important to question everything. There are so many things I took for granted as being true, that once I actually questioned them, I realized they might not in fact be true, or at the very least, I wasn’t justified in believing them. Questioning everything, including our own beliefs, in my opinion, helps us strengthen what we believe and be more open-minded.

I am sure there are more things I could write, but I will end it here. If you are questioning taking a philosophy class, I strongly encourage you to take one. If you’re lucky, you might get an awesome professor, and philosophy will change your life like it did to mine.

However, Apple is now trying to downplay their mistake by claiming that other phones also suffer from the same issue. While it is true that other phones will have their signal reduced when their internal antenna is covered, the iPhone loses signal when you simply put one finger on the device (see: video below). This problem cannot be recreated with other phones.

The most recent phone that Apple claims has this problem is the Droid X. They posted a video that shows someone holding the phone and the signal bars dropping. However, compare these two videos:

iPhone Antenna Problem:

Droid X (this is the video that Apple made):

Look at how the person in the Droid X video is holding their phone. I have owned a cell phone for the past 8 years, and I have never held a cell phone that way. Cnet seems to agree that the way the person is holding their Droid is a bit ridiculous. When I talk on my Droid now (I have the original Droid, not the Droid X), I hold the sides of the phone when I am talking (the side of the phone is where the iPhone’s antenna is). If I am really busy but decide to answer my phone, I hold the phone with my shoulder.

I would like to note that the reason Apple has to hold the Droid X  in this crazy way is because it has two antennas, one that is in the center of the phone near the bottom, and the other that is at the top (source: PCmag.com). However, in the iPhone video, the signal drops to 0 bars with the touch of ONE finger.

Putting all of our commonsense about how people hold cell phones aside, let us side with Apple, and agree that it looks like the Droid X has a signal problem. Now we are at the next interesting point. People have been posting several videos that show that even though their bar icon does in fact drop to 0 bars when they hold the phone in this ridiculous manner, they STILL don’t drop the call. Furthermore, when they hang up the call, their phone shows that it does in fact have bars. See this clip:

So at the end of the day, here is where we are at:

1. Apple originally claimed that there was a problem with the algorithm that displayed the signal strength. They released iOS 4.0.1 to fix this issue.
2. Ars Technica reports that this update doesn’t fix the fact that the signal drops when holding the side of the phone.
3. Consumer Reports posted this article confirming that the problem is real, and withheld their recommendation of the phone.
4. Apple did the right thing, and told customers that they can return their phones for a full refund, or they can get a free case that prevents skin from coming into contact with the external antenna. (source: Engadget)
5. Apple then tried to downplay the issue by posting videos of other phones having similar problems. However, in some of these videos (see: video posted above), the problem is no where near as serious, and Apple looks ridiculous.
6. Apple never officially admits that their antenna design was a poor design.

Description: “Grade tool for teachers who use grading rubrics. When grading an assignment, score each rubric category as you go. This app will generate the final grade.”

More Info: http://androidforacademics.com/grade-rubric/

(This is Dr. Andrew Cullison’s first Android app! Congrats, Andy!)

QR Barcode:

QR Barcode for Grade Rubric

During my second semester, I began doing research with one of my professors. Now that I was doing research, I had much less free time, and again, the free time I did have I spent doing other things that were not reading. The last thing I wanted to do during my free time was read, seeing as I did a lot of reading when I did research,  homework,  and studied.

Fast forward three years, and the last time I read a book that was not a textbook was those first two weeks of Freshman year.

Now that I am finally finishing up my undergraduate studies, I can’t wait to start reading for the sake of enjoying a good book again. I have compiled a decent sized list of books I hope to finish reading this summer. Here they are in the order I plan on reading them:

1. The Seven Storey Mountain – Thomas Merton
2. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
3. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander – Thomas Merton (I have read parts of this)
4. On the Road – Jack Kerouac (it’s embarrassing admitting I haven’t read this yet…)
5. Belief about the Self – Neil Feit (this is a critical analysis of philosophical topics related to Philosophy of Mind, and I have read parts of it, but I would like to read it in its entirety. The only reason this is last on my list is because I think you could argue that this could be classified as a textbook. With that being said, I am really looking forward to reading this.)

Note: To avoid and confusion, “story” and “floor” mean the same thing in this example.

The Problem:

A firm wants to determine the highest floor on its n-story building from which a device can fall with no impact on the device’s functionality. The firm has two identical gadgets that you can experiment with (each costs $1,000,000). You are allowed to break both gadgets,  but no extra gadgets will be provided. Design a brute force algorithm in the best efficiency class to solve this problem.

The most simple solution seems pretty obvious. You start at the first floor and drop the gadget. If it breaks, you know it cannot be dropped from anything higher than 1 story. If it doesn’t you go to the next story and drop it. You keep doing this until the item breaks. When it breaks, you know that the last possible story that you can drop it from without breaking is the previous story.

There must be a much faster way, right?  What if you had a building with 2000 floors, and the gadget would not break until floor 1900? You would waste a lot of time using this simple brute force method. The asymptotic time complexity of this algorithm is linear, or . So assuming it takes on average 10 minutes to drop the gadget, take the elevator all the way down to the first floor, inspect the gadget to see if it is broken, and take it all the way back up to the next floor, it would take you 1900*10 minutes to find the answer to your problem. That is A LOT of time.

Another possible solution, which is much more elegant: (note: this is still considered a brute force algorithm)

Remember, we have two gadgets to use during this testing project.

First, you drop the gadget at where n is the number of stories. If the gadget breaks at this story, you know the lowest possible story it will not break is between story 1, and story . If it doesn’t break at then drop the gadget at .

If it breaks, then you know the lowest possible story it will not break is between and . If it doesn’t break at , then you just increase the multiple by 1. You keep doing this until you find a story where it breaks.

For instance, lets assume it would break at . You start at floor (remember, we already dropped it at so we don’t need to check it again). If it breaks, you know the lowest story is .

If it doesn’t you just keep incrementing until you get to . If it does not break at this floor, you know the lowest possible floor is that floor, since we know it broke at (we already tested it an it broke at that floor).

This solution has am asymptotic time complexity of or

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More Info: http://androidforacademics.com/grade-ticker/

QR Barcode:

Some screenshots:

 

Here is what is going on in my life:

• Last semester was incredibly tough. I took a couple of really hard classes, was working on a few research papers (which got accepted to conferences in Russia!), and started working on a few Android apps. It was REALLY freaking busy.
• This semester isn’t as busy, but is still very busy. I am taking all morning classes (which turned out to be awesome), and I am in the middle of developing some awesome Academic Android apps for professors and students. I am really freaking excited about this. I love working with the Android SDK.
• I am TA’ing this semester for Systems Programming. I have a total of 3 jobs on campus.
• I have been applying for jobs, which takes a lot more time than most people think. In most cases, it isn’t a simple “write cover letter + submit resume” process. There are usually other steps involved, and in some cases, these steps are VERY time consuming.

Along with application development, Andrew Cullison and I have opened up Android for Academics to promote the use of Android based smartphones in academic environments (this site is still under construction). We also plan to use this to promote some of the applications I am working on for Android.

On top of all of this, some of my really close friends are moving away, and I have been doing my best to spend as much time as possible with them before they are gone. Furthermore, it looks like I am going to be moving (pending I get a job) and I have my heart set on Boston. I have been trying to balance my time between family and friends seeing as I might be moving, which has been both interesting and difficult.

Needless to say, 2010 has been a very busy and interesting year so far, and it is only going to get more interesting in the upcoming months.

My last year of my undergraduate studies has begun, and so far it is going okay. This again goes back to the reason I wasn’t able to post anything this summer, but I don’t want to get into that.

In terms of Philosophy, I am taking Philosophical Inquiry, and Philosophy of Mind. Both are awesome.

In terms of Computer Science, I am taking Theory of Computation. I knew going in it was going to be a hard class, but I am actually really interested in the material. Granted, its still hard, but at least it isn’t boring and hard. I have my first exam for this course this week.

I also found out last week, that three papers I worked on were accepted for publication! I worked very hard on these projects, and it feels very rewarding.

Anyway, I hope that I will find the time and motivation to post more. There is a lot of cool tech news floating around, so I am sure there will be more to come.

This is going to be a very weird summer for me. It is the first summer since college started that I am not participating in an internship, so I have an insane amount of free time. I plan on working on a few mobile applications this summer, as well as a few other things. I am really excited about developing some cool software this summer.

I also plan on finally being able to read a novel again. The first two or three weeks of my Freshman year of college, I started reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, but never finished it because I got swamped with work. I hope to finish this book, as well as a few by Thomas Merton this summer (Thomas Merton has been on my “things to read” list for about 4 years).

I am also looking forward to reading some good philosophy this summer. I have a paper written by one of my professors to read, as well as a paper defending Presentism (which I can never pronounce correctly).

I also got invited to be a contributor to Open SUNY, a website dedicated to promoting the use of open source software at SUNY Fredonia. THere is a lot of good material up there already.

Hopefully I will be able to update this more frequently now that I have more free time. Stay tuned for more frequent updates.

The following is an e-mail I sent to CNBC after watching the video above:

Dear CNBC,

I am a computer scientist, and was appalled when I heard the claims made by your “tech analyst” Jim Goldman.

When it comes to Windows vs. Mac, I take neither side because I use Linux. (Hey, how about you do a story on how Linux and other open source software is free, and can save people hundreds of dollars?)

The information that Jim Goldman provided was incredibly false. Here are a few things:

Claims:
1.) PC’s need a $50/yr Norton Anti-virus subscription. This is simply not true. Colleges have been promoting FREE alternatives such as AVG and Avast. You do not need to pay for an anti-virus software.

2.) Jim Goldman claims that Mac’s come with Photoshop. This is simply not true, and incredibly misleading.

3.) Multimedia Software – $80-$104???? Why? What software? Windows comes with Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and you can get iTunes for free. In terms of pictures, Windows Picture Album works fine, and there are also free alternatives to use.

4.) Video Editing – What about Windows Movie Maker? Does that not count? It comes FREE with Windows.

5.) Music Software – $100? I am sorry, but this is beyond ridiculous. Windows comes with Windows Media Player. Also, iTunes is FREE. Mac’s use iTunes. There are also many free, and popular alternatives such as VLC, RealPlayer, etc. If you are taking about recording music, yes you can get a version of ProTools, or other recording software for $100 for PC. However, this software is MUCH better than garage band which comes with a Mac.

6.) Geek Squad Visit – $129? You can get a local computer shop to fix a PC for much cheaper.

7.) Mac Battery life 4x better – This is just completely false. If you want battery life, get a netbook which runs for 9 hours on a single charge. Also, my Lenovo laptop gets 3.15 hours on my battery, while my friends MacBook gets 4-5 hours. That is not 4x better.

8.) Faster Chip – This is absolutely terrible. Mac’s use the SAME PROCESSOR AS WINDOWS MACHINES. The Intel processors that Mac’s use are also available on PC. Oh, and guess what, Mac’s do not use the latest Intel processors. When Intel releases a new CPU, it is immediately available for PC users, but it takes awhile for Mac to offer them in their products.

I cannot believe that Jim Goldman is your “senior tech analyst”. This is some of the absolute worst journalism I have ever seen. These claims NEED to be clarified and the truth needs to get out to the people who are shopping for PC’s. If you want to help people save money and get quality software, why don’t you do a story on Ubuntu and Open Source software?

How dare you try to convince people, especially in a struggling economy, that they need to spend more money based on completely false evidence.