Arin CSE 91

In media:

Computers and computer systems absolutely dominate almost all media in the modern times. Be it movies, video games, books, or news articles it can be accessed from a user’s personal computer. Even the monstrous industry of television has begun to lose ground to online streaming due to more convenient methods of instant access. One of these possible ways of instant access is online piracy and peer to peer sharing networks. These relatively new ways to illegally access copyrighted have presented interesting issues with modern law. While downloading copyrighted materials is indeed illegal by copyright law, the actual laws in place to prosecute illegal downloading are amorphous. This leaves large areas for a massive inequality between crimes taken place and actual punishment. The issue of engaging in illegal media activity online presents an interesting question about our future in how we engage in bringing the wild-west of the internet into a lawful domain.

In privacy:

From Google now forcing users to post comments on Youtube with their real names, to the recent NSA (supported by a budget of $52 billion) controversy over online spying, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain anonymous online. Even further, it’s becoming harder and harder to ensure your data online remains secure. Even reputable companies, such as Sony, aren’t safe from data breaches and hackers. In the 2011 breaches of Sony’s data centers 77 million users had their data leaked to hackers who then threatened (and possibly proceeded) to sell their information online. This information included things such as addresses, names, emails, and ages, and allowed anybody with the data to know anything from who you are to where you live to whether or not you like crunchy or creamy peanut butter. With the vast amount of online monitoring it’s almost always safer to assume that there is no privacy on the internet. If your data is on the internet, it’s possibly open to anybody with the know-how to access it.

In our social interactions:

With a large majority of modern social interaction taking place on the web, it’s entirely possible that youths growing up in the social networking age have lost some portion of their ability to interact in person. Furthermore, the abundance of social media has changed the way we write as a whole.“socialmediatoday.com” believes that the writing of post-social media generations has become more concise and to the point, and that the same goes for conversations. People are more direct in what they want and tend to have a harder time paying attention during long conversations due to the immediate-gratification of online media most people are used to.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/17/technology/online-privacy/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toni-johnson/anti-piracy-laws_b_1242535.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/29/playstation-network-data-for-sale_n_855381.html

http://socialmediatoday.com/karenn1617/1745751/effects-social-media-how-we-speak-and-write

Many freshmen students coming into UCSD only see professors doing one thing: teaching. That could be because we are yet to participate in research opportunities, or because we’re used to our high school teachers simply being teachers; yet at UCSD professors and other faculty members do much more than only teach and grade papers. In fact, in my research of professors and staff members the teaching aspect of their job is often hardly listed in their accomplishments. Professors seem to be, primarily, researchers devoted to bettering and advancing technology and knowledge as a whole. Professors, being heads in their field, are also often used as consultants for companies doing work in their field. Being a staff member at UCSD, and in the engineering department in specific, seems to constitute utilizing technology in new and creative ways to analyse our world.

The first professor I found to be interesting is James D. Hollan with his work studying the effects of computer-based media on our brains. I found this to be very interesting because it merges the two areas of cognitive science and computer science, which brings an interesting juxtaposition of our own body’s “computer” and machine computers and the effect that one can have on the other. With modern computers being such a recent invention we have little idea of what long term effects they are going to have on the human populace, so research like this is going to be integral in fully understanding the lasting effects of the machines that dominate our lives.

The second professor that struck my eye was Trey Ideker with his work using computational modeling to analyse human systems. Once again I was intrigued  by the idea of using computers for tasks computers were generally not thought to do. When one thinks of analysing DNA or human diseases the image of doctors in scrubs comes to mind, not an engineer at a computer doing modelling work. Furthermore, Prof. Ideker’s work seems to have real and constant impact on the world as he searches for ways to detect and prevent infections such as HIV. I think this highlights the kind of work many engineers are going to be doing in the future. Using the power of computing technologies to bolster all other fields makes a large impact on the speed and effectiveness of those fields. In the case of disease-study it’s currently often even possible to find cures for diseases without ever having to test a drug due to computer learning algorithms which can model the effects of different compounds on diseases. Work like this and Prof. Ideker’s will have large impact on making the world a better place.

The first question I would like to ask a professor at UCSD is whether or not they think teaching gets in the way of their research. Do they actually enjoy the teaching aspect, or do they find it to be a drag?

Secondly, I would like to ask how the professors manage to juggle their time between teaching and researching, as it seems both are full time jobs.

http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/faculty/faculty_bios/findprofile.sfe?department=cse&fmp_recid=216

http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/faculty/faculty_bios/findprofile.sfe?department=cse&fmp_recid=302

  Coming to UCSD I was immediately shocked at how incredibly helpful the advising staff was. Coming from a high school with an advisor gone AWOL half the time it was a pleasant surprise to see how you could get immediate and accurate help from any member of the advising staff at UCSD. A less pleasant surprise (depending on how you look at it) was the overwhelming amount of paths I could take in the CS department. Straight Computer Science wasn’t the only thing being offered, and I could choose between several different major or study paths. I didn’t even know what Bioinformatics was before I arrived at the school, so seeing that as one of my many options showed me how diverse the field is. Even so, in utilizing the advisory staff and resources such as the undergraduate CS site (http://cs.ucsd.edu/ugrad) I was able to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.

  One of the main questions I had at the start of the year (and still have now to some degree) is how to find viable research and work options on campus. In every talk by every successful student or member of a successful company it’s mentioned that taking classes is simply not enough to be competitive in the CS world. To truly stand out, it seems, you have to be heavily involved around campus. This had me a little worried, since I wasn’t even sure where to get started in that area. Conveniently enough, the CS undergraduate site mentioned above can help with this too. So for all you future UCSD CSE students out there, don’t stress out about research positions or work opportunities. Along with the helpful advising staff and plethora of internet resources out there (http://cs.ucsd.edu/node/47 being a good one to  find opportunities in specific fields) it seems almost too easy to find a position around campus.

  Even after looking over the sites and talking to advisers about future opportunities there were still a few questions in my mind, like what should I do right now? Should I just pay attention in class and try to absorb as much info as possible? Can I just walk up to a professor right now with my limited knowledge and try to get into a research project, and if not, how will I know when I’m ready?

As an undergrad in a computing program there are many opportunities to get involved and prepare yourself for working at top companies after college. Work experience, research, and info sessions are great ways for any undergrad to ensure they are sought after by recruiters and well as informed about possible work opportunities even before starting their career.

Work Experience

                Internships and other work experience is a great way to see for yourself the demands of a career in computing as well as an opportunity to learn new skills while on the job. For me personally, internships have played a large part in my computer science education even before coming to college. At an internship you’re often forced to learn new things on the fly in order to keep up with the work you have to do. One specific internship opportunity that was brought up by representatives from Intel visiting campus was the IRISE Intel Early Internship for Software Engineering program. This program allows students to intern while still developing real working code to be used in actual software engineering projects. Applicants to the IRISE program are expected to have some experience in developing software as well as the capacity to quickly learn how to be effective on the job site. This internship opportunity is highly competitive so may not be the easiest to acquire, however the on the job work experience definitely seems worth the effort.

Research

                At UCSD there is a huge amount of research positions available to students. One resource used to filter and allow students to analyze all of the positions is the Undergraduate Research Portal (URP) web app. After opening the web app I was immediately bombarded by possible research positions in which I could learn incredibly useful early-career skills that would help me secure a job in the future. Research opportunities presented by the URP range anywhere from programming assistant positions to “quantitative investigations into the effects of advertising”. Furthermore, many of these positions are paid with hours ranging from part time work to a full time summer job. As an early-career opportunity research is a viable option for people of varying schedules and experience.

On Campus Info Sessions

                 With the mass emails computer science students receive on a daily basis about the multitudes of companies visiting campus and hosting information sessions it’s incredibly easy for computing students to get information about their prospective fields. This week alone companies such as Intel, Hulu, Microsoft, and Yelp are visiting campus to present about their work and possible early-career opportunities for students. Visiting these info sessions gives students extremely valuable insight into computing fields in general which could give an edge when finding jobs later on. Info sessions aren’t only being held by computing companies, some, like DECaF, are hosted by student organizations and bring in presentation leaders from nearby companies to talk about what it takes to get jobs at the top tech companies in the area.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/jobs/locations/united-states/students/internships/intel-early-internship-software-engineering.html

http://urp-app.ucsd.edu/opportunities

http://career.ucsd.edu/

http://tesc.ucsd.edu/decaf/2014

http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/groups/wic/

    In the field of computing there are a myriad of job opportunities for skilled individuals. A college graduate with a degree in computer science can end up with a job in anything from business analysis to a systems administration, and with each job comes vastly different hours, pay, and overall opportunity. This blog post will be taking an in-depth look at two possible areas of employment in computing: network security and web development.

    Network security specialists work to analyze possible security issues with systems and establish safety measures to combat malicious software or intrusions into a company’s personal and private systems. Applicants for positions in network security are recommended to have at least a bachelor’s degree in some form of computing field as well as experience in network administration in general.

    Several sites (like this one: http://education-portal.com/articles/Network_Security_Specialist_Job_Description_and_Requirements.html) describe the necessary qualifications for a position of this sort to be years of experience in related fields. For a college freshmen with little experience in any of this, like me, this seems a bit daunting. Going through the list of required knowledge on a job listing (http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?sc_cmp1=js_jrp_jobclick&APath=2.21.0.0.0&job_did=JHQ7XR5VKG3MPPMR8K4&showNewJDP=yes&IPath=JRKV0A) and seeing “TCP, UDP, ICMP, FTP, SFTP, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, SSL, NTP, DNS, BGP, VLT, MPLS, QoS” and not knowing what 90% of the acronyms stand for quickly shows that these positions are meant for professionals with a lot of experience in the field. Virtually none of the jobs offered under network security or systems administration require any sort of travel, as you would generally just work in a single office dealing with the administration of computing systems there. Network security specialists average a salary of $87,000 a year according to indeed.com’s salary search engine (http://www.indeed.com/salary/Network-Security-Engineer.html).

    Compared to network security and administration for large companies, web-development seems like a much more free and accessible career path for people without much experience. Unlike network administration, the job qualifications on web-development are much looser. Creativepool.com in their job description (http://creativepool.com/articles/jobdescriptions/web-designer-and-web-developer-job-description) notes that jobs of this sort require “creativity and imagination”, instead of the terrifying list of acronyms above as requirements for network security. This lack of qualification other than minor programming experience and creativity comes at a cut in salary with web devs and designers having starting salaries of around $18,000 according to the above job description. In comparison to a starting job in network security earning almost $90,000 a year this is small change. Web programmers and designers do, however, have much more freedom in their work and can work on multiple projects at once, even from home. Echoditto.com in their description of web-development job positions (http://www.echoditto.com/content/job-description-web-developerprogrammer) notes that developers could potentially work from home, as long as communication with project management is met.  

    This is not meant to underplay the job of web development, as in some job postings devs were expected to have years of experience in the field as well as programming degrees. After reading several job listings, it seems that the job of web development has a much higher requirement for working with other people. Communication skills are seen as key and the ability to successfully communicate with a project leader or manager is a major part of working as a developer single developer who is part of a much larger team.

Overall, it seems majors in computing fields have an extreme level of choice in what career path to take depending on personal interests. Each field has its own pros and cons, and ultimately the choice between them depends on just figuring out what areas you are interested in and pursuing your dreams in those fields.

During the Wednesday lecture on October 2nd, we discussed several strategies to both help students succeed in university classes and professors succeed in teaching them.  Many of the learning strategies were ones I had personally used in the past to great effect, like sleeping instead of pulling an all-nighter, linking facts to previously solidified pieces of knowledge, and discussing homework after-the-fact. In high-school it was a common occurrence to walk by our lunch table to hear us loudly arguing about the cause of World War 1 after a History test or assignment. The main thing that I agreed with during the lecture was that learning is an active process, and a student must be actively involved in their own education. There were, however, also many points that I disagreed with.

One of the first points that was brought up (and agreed upon by many in the class) was that the transmission model of teaching is outdated and ineffective. While I do agree that simply sitting and listening to a professor for extended periods of time makes students more prone to sleep than learning, I believe professor guidance and “transmission” of information is absolutely integral in gaining any sort of in-depth knowledge in a subject. Having experienced a mostly student-discussion led 12th grade English Literature class I found students are very prone to confirmation bias while discussing with one another. One student could very easily suggest that the meaning of a poem was that the narrator was homesick and have every other student in the class quickly agree, despite that assumption being very far from the truth. This problem comes up simply because we, as students, are inexperienced. Communication with professors is a necessity, and sometimes the best way for a teacher to communicate an important point to three-hundred students at once is to sit them all down in a lecture hall and make them listen for fifty minutes.