CPSC 430 – June 30, 2010

I’m currently taking CPSC 430 and one of the requirements is to keep a journal throughout the term. I will be blogging here my class notes, thoughts, and links as they come up that are relevant to the course material. Also, see the other posts in the CPSC 430 category. Class Notes for today: Kantianism – duty to respect others as rational beings Utilitarianism – consequences Social contract – collective rights Can mix duties, rights, consequences when evaluating Bayesian filters – similarity Can detect “huge profits” ~ “massive profits” Synonyms Grey listing – send “please send later” to spammer. Disadvantages Continue Reading

CPSC 430 – June 28, 2010

I’m currently taking CPSC 430 and one of the requirements is to keep a journal throughout the term. I will be blogging here my class notes, thoughts, and links as they come up that are relevant to the course material. Also, see the other posts in the CPSC 430 category. Today we covered more of the ethical theories we started last week.  This unit is all about adapting ancient lines of thought with our new technology. Ethical Egoism ~ Alan Greenspan ~ Ayn Rand E.g., acting to maximize own profit Ref – Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene Altruistic behavior Continue Reading

CPSC 430 – June 25, 2010

I’m currently taking CPSC 430 and one of the requirements is to keep a journal throughout the term.  I will be blogging here my class notes, thoughts, and links as they come up that are relevant to the course material. CPSC 430 entitled “Computers and Society” isn’t a typical computer science course which involves programming or mathematics.  In fact, I don’t think there is any programming involved at all.  It resembles a TOK class I had in high school in the way that theories and controversial ideas are brought up and discussed and debated. The course description from the course Continue Reading

Cheerios and Lectures Don’t Mix

So I was in my economics lecture peacefully taking notes on an interesting lecture about oligopoly by Professor Gateman as some “delinquent” (as Gateman calls them) walks in late and finds a friend who happened to be sitting on one of the seats on my row and settles down beside the friend.  The latecomer is offered Cheerios from the friend and proceeds to munch and crunch on a small box of the cereal for the next half hour, not noticing how loud the crunching sound really was, not noticing how the other student sitting on the other side was covering Continue Reading