Field Trip To Sony Online Entertainment 8//7/2012

On Thursday, August 7^th, 2012 we took a field trip to Sony Online Entertainment.  I’m really glad we were given the opportunity to experience touring their company.  During our tour of SOE we witnessed firsthand what it would be like to work behind the scenes of the online gaming community.  Actually seeing firsthand how the company operates and is structured was very enlightening.  Overall I enjoyed this field trip, and above all that even left SOE with some exclusive goodies.

      Working for SOE almost felt like it would have been more fun that actual work.  They have onsite beta testers for every game they’ve produced.  Each employee had their own desk with multiple displays.  Their graphics department was very kick back.  In one area, employees would literally spend their day playing their newest games, re-enacting battles or cool gameplay scenarios to create potential You-Tube videos and commercials.  One building was dedicated to server maintenance, which is arguably the most important department.  For obvious reasons that department is monitored and maintained 24 hours a day.

      Sony Online Entertainment had a very upbeat and comforting environment through-out every building we toured.  There was no question that they invested a lot of time and effort as well as an exciting original like personality into their work.  They had developing game rooms which were used to invite people from all different kinds of demographics to play and test out their games. The rooms had about eight cameras strategically placed around the room so they could record the physical reactions to help fine tune their games accordingly.

      Overall, I had a very good time and enjoyed our field trip to SOE.  It opened my eyes to a whole new possibility.  I also feel this field trip motivated me as well as gotten excited and pumped up for my career.  I hope that every school year they do this.  I strongly feel that I got a lot out of it.  Before leaving SOE they even hooked us up with some exclusive goodies.  The most memorable one being a beta code allowing us to download and become one of the special few to play the game before everyone else for free. 

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Assignment: Million Dollar Project PPT

In my computer fundamentals class the Million Dollar Project was to spend $1million dollars on yourself and only yourself, without investing the money.  We were to separate what we bought into at least 4 categories with a minimum of 12 purchased items.  I'm not going to lie I worked it so I pretty much did the bare minimum in terms of really getting into the project, but my excel and PPT were not done half-assed so I'm okay with it, and that's all that matters... the video above is my million dollar power point presentation saved as a wmv file.

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Anzaldua Brainstorm Using Microsoft OneNote

I had never used Microsoft OneNote before.  The above picture is my brainstorm for an English 99 essay I had to write.  I was able to draw this up without ever using the program before in literally an hour or two. (Took that long to actually come up with the content of the brainstorm, not drawing the outline.)  I'm sure if OneNote is capable of a lot better, but for the first time trying it out I was impressed.

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OPS101 ASSIGNMENT: Write an essay to describe the evolution of operating systems from the early 1940s until today

Evolution of Operating Systems

      Operating Systems have come a long way since the 1940s.  The first generation of computers was literally the size of a classroom, requiring little need for an operating system.  In 1955, the second-generation computers were introduced.  Computers at this time were still very expensive, averaging $200,000. The third-generation computers didn't come along until the mid-1960s. These were designed with faster CPUs. In 1976 the first supercomputer was produced. By the 1980s, computers started using multiple processors, which now required a new type of operating system. In 1990 the Internet became extremely popular, and the 2000s brought the ability of virtualization, the ability to run multiple operating systems on top of a single operating system.

      First-generation computers were literally run by programmers. The way the system was debugged was by literally stopping the machine, adjusting the register, and then restarting the system. Programs could only be edited by its creator due to the fact that the programming language was so unique. Needless to say, at this time the CPU was utilized poorly. By the second-generation, computers could now job schedule which slightly improved efficiency. There was still an imbalance between the CPU and I/O devices, causing extensive time lag. It was common for the CPU to be idle 94% of the time. Eventually I/O devices became faster, and blocking was used, allowing several logical records to group within one physical group. The third-generation brought multiprogramming, which allowed multiple programs to be loaded at once to share the attention of the CPU. Eventually using multiprogramming, operating systems were able to take multiple slices of programs, and feed them into the CPU when needed, greatly increasing efficiency. By the late 1970s virtual memory was now possible, making it so that programs didn't have to reside in the memory to run.

      The operating system pretty much had to step up its role in the computer system as soon as virtual memory became possible. Because of the increase of efficiency, to get the most out of the computer, operating systems now, not only had to control the subsystem manager and devices, but had to do it both user-friendly and efficiently. By the 90s, the Internet boom brought networking. Operating systems now had the ability to use remote desktop capabilities, or control other computers without physically being at the computer. Today, in 2012, we have the ability to use virtualization, which allows us to run multiple operating systems, such as Linux, on top of our main operating system, allowing a number of possibilities. Just the thought of that alone, is enough evidence to show how drastically operating systems have been improved in just 50 to 60 years.

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Assignment: Technology Related Business Article Reflection

LinkedIn is a hacker's dream tool 

        According to (Cowely, 2012), LinkedIn is literally a hacker's dream tool. LinkedIn is pretty much a social networking website for business professionals. (Cowely, 2012) tells how much help LinkedIn actually gives a hacker in terms of infiltrating even the wealthiest companies today. They do so by creating fake profiles to connect with employees of targeted companies. They learn certain details of the companies, such as the names of all employees, then send fake legitimately looking e-mails containing attachments the employees then open. Hackers also collect connections and then re-sell them to others for payments via pay pal.

      In my opinion that's genius. That would totally work. I, myself, personally never created a LinkedIn profile, and never really knew what the point of it was. I just knew it was pretty much equivalent to Facebook, only more professional based. I think it's very interesting that, despite all the caution signs newscasters put on the emphasis of sharing on Facebook, a flaw this big is even possibly existing; let alone in the professional world. I mean, aren't these companies supposed to be on the top of their game? It is understandable that fake employee profiles created on LinkedIn could possibly be accepted into the LinkedIn company networks due to the size of these companies, but I don't see how they could be so far out of the communication loop to actually break the number one rule of online safety, opening an unexpected, unrecognized attachment file via E-MAIL! I mean seriously though, that's like getting an e-mail asking for your full name, address, SSN, and CC info.

      (Cowely, 2012) does say hackers have the ability to easily mask e-mail addresses, and because they are able to connect via LinkedIn, they know which e-mail addresses to pretend to be, but if the e-mail address is convincing enough to the victim, you would think that the e-mail address would have to be one from the same department of the victim, which would mean there would have to be verbal communication at some point. If a strange attachment is never verbally mentioned, you would think it would at least be confirmed first. I guess what I'm getting at is companies are also at fault for this vulnerability in which LinkedIn creates. Although after reading (Cowely, 2012) LinkedIn seems completely flawed, the website in my opinion only put forth a potentially effective networking resource for professionals everywhere. These companies are the ones failing to take precautions to protect their businesses. Thus making LinkedIn a must have resource in a hacker's toolkit. 

 
Cowely, S. (2012, March 12). Linkedin is a hacker. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/12/technology/linkedin-hackers/index.htm

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Old memories from Google search....

Google yourself... you'll find a lot more than you may think... right off the bat I found an old newspaper article from my football days... 

Huntington Beach downs Eagles, 28-12

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