Marq Untivero :: Blog

Last meeting, we discussed a topic where companies still use old programming languages. I was thinking of the same question why do they still use those old languages while I was in OJT with accenture under the COBOL group with Jed Ching(michelle ching's bro). I asked one of our instructors where do they use COBOL and why are they still using it in the first place. They said that most of the companies including accenture, use COBOL on mainframes. companies still use COBOL because switching to another language requires a lot of money and if the companie switch, they have to code all their system to whatever language they want to switch. It's analogous to translating a lot of chinese books into english. I also asked if there are advantages of switching to another language. apparently, it has SOME advantages but it still does not compensate the cost of money and manpower of switching to another language.

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i just wanna add something not related to our discussion:expert cobol programmers are either too old or dead. that's why the search for COBOL programmers are high. the pay is also high. COBOL is strict about codes. even the number of columns is important. my experience in COBOL is not so good because it's frustrating to keep count of the number of column you're at. maybe i asked why accenture doesn't switch to another language. wala lang. share ko lang haha.

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Our techology has been evolving and has given us countless good things. but even those technologies has its flaws. The internet, for example, is used by people to research and communicate. But what if the information you're researching is just misleading you, giving you wrong info? In our class, we discussed the technology where an individual can access his bank account by implanting something in his body. also,the bible said that  "in the future, people can access his money with a chip implanted at the back of your head or at your right hand and by recieving that implant, you'll be marked by the beast and will never go to heaven". Although that's the only bad thing in the implant-to-access-money thing, it's still a bad thing. All technology has its share of flaws. What if one day our technology evolved to the point where the AI is so smart that it becomes smarter than the creator? this may sound like science fiction to most of us. The thing is, our technology today has been inspired by science fiction. Take the anime "daimos" for example. in daimos, richard (the main character) controls daimos by attatching devices to his body and what he does inside the robot, daimos does it also. Nowadays, there is motion capture, which is sometimes used in hospitals when operating a person. the doctor acts like richard and the robot operating the patient acts like daimos. So there is a connection in science fiction and our technology today. it's like the backbone of our technology.

All i'm saying is that what we see or read in science fiction can be factual in the future. It can be a good thing but all good things comes with a price.  

 

Jean Paul Marquix du Untivero

200407406141

IT issues that changed the world

In the modern world, where computers are almost everywhere, people depend on technology. People use computers to store or handle very fragile data. Technology is now the backbone of every industry that exists today. Financing, communications, medicine and even the military depend on technology so much that it may never exist without the help of computers. Programs that are being used by these industries have to be very precise, exact and most of all, safe so that nothing and no one will be put to risk. Bugs and glitches must be put to 0% to attain that safeness but we also know that a program as complicated as the ones that are used in those industries cannot have a 0% bug count. This paper shows some of the issues that have caused havoc in the said industries caused by bugs and glitches

In the medical industries, it is important that their systems work properly because lives of their patients are at stake but there is one issue that have caused deaths because their system did not function properly. The Therac-25, which is a radiation therapy machine, have caused at least 5 deaths of patients due to massive overdose of radiation. The reason of the malfunction of Therac-25 is that the design did not have any hardware interlocks to prevent the electron-beam from operating in its high-energy mode without the target in place. Also, the engineers reused software from the older models of Therac that hardware interlocks that masked their software defects. Those hardware safeties had no way of reporting that they had been triggered, so there was no indication of the existence of faulty software commands. The software set a flag variable by incrementing it. Occasionally an arithmetic overflow occurred, causing the software to bypass safety checks. These are just some of the engineering and programming problems that caused Therac-25 to malfunction, killing some of the patients that used it.

In the military industry, it is important to have its system working properly because if it does not, it may cause the deaths of civilians or may cause friendly fire. One of the military’s vehicles, the MIM-104 Patriot, has caused 28 deaths of US troops on the Gulf War. The error was caused because of its internal clock. The Patriot missile battery at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia had been in operation for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by one third of a second. For a target moving as fast as an inbound TBM, this was equivalent to a position error of 600 meters. The radar system had successfully detected the Scud and predicted where to look for it next, but because of the time error, looked in the wrong part of the sky and found no missile. With no missile, the initial detection was assumed to be a spurious track and the missile was removed from the system. No interception was attempted, and the missile impacted on a barracks killing 28 soldiers.

In space exploration, it’s important to have the system work as it was supposed to do because billions of dollars are used to make a single project. There were many disasters in space exploration just because of faulty engineering and programming. One example of faulty programming is the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter, where the orbiter was destroyed because it was given entries of momentum in imperial units instead of metric units. Another issue is when NASA Mars Rover freezes due to too many open files in flash memory. Another issue is the Ariane 5 Flight 501, which has self-destructed only 40 seconds after in launched.

One famous issue regarding the electric power transmission is the northeastern and Midwestern blackout of 2003 in the US. It has caused nine fatalities and economical loss of $6 billion USD. The cause of the blackout was a computer software bug in General Electric Energy's Unix-based XA/21 system that prevented alarms from showing on their control system. This alarm system stalled because of a race condition bug. After the alarm system failed silently without being noticed by the operators, unprocessed events (that had to be checked for an alarm) started to queue up and the primary server failed within 30 minutes.

These issues have caused the deaths of people and financial losses. The impact of technology can be truly helpful, but at times, it can also cause big trouble. If only the people that develop the systems for these industries are more careful, they could have saved the money of the companies and saved lives. It is not wrong to depend on machines, but people should also know that there are still risks by depending on the machines to do the work.

Jean Paul Marquix du Untivero

200407406141

Facts and Fictions of Access Nation

Based on the episode of Law and Order that the class have watched, it has displayed some ways of how to obtain certain information not obtainable unless security is breached (on this case, hacked). Based on what the episode has displayed, it may be one of the movies/films that featured computer technology to be the “closest to the real world” compared to other films where the GUI is uncommon and computers talk and are able to think. But even if this episode does show what could possibly be done in the real world, there are still some things that cannot be true (yet).

The scene where the IT professional of the police recovered a document that was altered. Apparently, the IT professional was able to recover the original document even after it was altered. It could have been possible if the criminal had made a copy of the original, modified the copy, then delete the original. There was an episode in Discovery Channel that shows that when a file is deleted from the computer, it still stays inside the computer. If that is true, then the way of how the IT professional recovered the file would be possible.

The scene that explained how the criminal obtained the password of the victim, it is possible to happen in the real world. Nowadays, there are numerous ways of obtaining a password form somebody. One popular way is phishing.

The scene where the IT professional explains to the two investigators that the criminal can see what the victim was typing or doing, it can be possible because just like in netmeeting, users can see what others do. There are also programs called keyloggers are basically programs that lets a user see what another user is typing by detecting the keystrokes that the other user is doing. Keyloggers are used mainly for spying and can be found on various internet cafés here in the Philippines to obtain passwords of customers. If the technology used in netmeeting accompanied by a keylogger is used, it can be possible to truly see what other people are doing.

Finally, the concept where a company sells information is highly not possible to happen in the real world. There may be existing private companies that do obtain information through hacking but there are no public companies that do sell information.

Most of the things that is displayed in the episode were possible. That episode was meant to be created and showed to people so that people can be more aware of the security breaches that can be done with a computer.

Jean Paul Marquix du Untivero

200407406141

Battle of the GPUs

GPUs, or graphics processing units, is a very important part of the computer especially when it comes to gaming. For gamers, it bring the life to the games that they play. With a good GPU, a gamer can max all a game's visual settings to max to make the game's graphics look beautiful and lifelike.

There are two main competitors that make quality GPUs namely, NVIDIA and ATI. The two companies have developed various GPUs. A budget price for people who likes gaming and editing videos. A mainstream GPU for common gamers and a high-end GPU for video game enthusiasts. This paper looks on the flagship GPU of both NVIDIA and ATI.

NVIDIA's GeForce 8800GTX

The GTX is equipped with 768 MB GDDR3 RAM. The 8800 series replaced the GeForce 79x0 series as NVIDIA's top-performing consumer video card. GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS use identical GPU cores, but the GTS model disables parts of the GPU and reduces RAM size and bus width to lower production cost.

As of September 2007, the G80 was the largest commercial GPU ever constructed. It consists of 681 million transistors covering a 480 mm²diesurface area built on a 90 nm process. (In fact the G80's total transistor count is ~686 million, but since the chip was made on a 90nm process and due to process limitations and yield feasibility, NVIDIA had to break the main design into two chips: Main shader core at 681 million transistors and NV I/O core of about ~5 million transistors making the entire G80 design standing at ~686 million transistors).

The GTX is available in the Philippines for php 23-28k. It is the first GPU in the world to support directx 10, a new kind of shader made by microsoft for better textures on graphics.

ATI's Radeon HD 2900XT

The Radeon HD 2900 series is ATI's high-end product with 320 stream processors, spanning a 420 mm² die size. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is the first graphics card product to implement digital PWM onboard, specifically 7-phase PWM.

The R600 core used in the HD 2900 lacks the ATI Unified Video Decoder (UVD) required for hardware acceleration of certain types of HD video. Nonetheless, the card is fully capable of playing any HD video format; however, shaders are utilized for the decoding process. Initially there was much confusion as to whether or not the product included dedicated video processor hardware, due in part to statements that it supported the software program AVIVO HD. Many reviewers and subsequent readers/consumers interpreted this as meaning the HD2900 incorporated the same UVD hardware as found in the HD 2400 & HD 2600 series, despite some sites noting this difference at launch time, weeks before the issue first gained traction as a result of a TechReport article. This confusion and subsequent discussions prompted AMD to make a formal statement designed to clarify exactly what UVD was available in which models. The HD 2900 XT video playback capabilities are similar to those of the previous X1000 cards with AVIVO capabilities.

The Verdict

The 2900XT is in general slightly faster than the 8800GTX but the design of 2900XT is clearly made to make use of the ATI's crossfire feature, which requires two of the 2900XT to be connected in the computer, which some motherboards doesn't support. The 8800GTX, at the time of its release date, is very fast but now as the 2900XT was released, it beats the 8800GTX. Only one of the biggest problems with ATI cards is that not all games support a computer running with an ATI GPU and is required for users to download a patch to enable gamers to play with the ATI GPU. In terms of pricing, the 2900XT is more expensive especially when a customer buys two to make use of the crossfire feature. Even if the 2900XT is faster than the 8800GTX, both will surely perform well for 4-8 years until it becomes obsolete.

When I first encountered the internet, i didn't know about google maybe because it wasn't that popular or maybe i wasn't just adventurous in the internet. as years go by, i see yahoo evolving, then i discovered google. when i went to google, i saw nothing but a search bar. i said to myself "ang pangit naman ng google. napaka "dull"". because of that, i didn't use google when i try to search things.

After the discussion last meeting, i never thought that google was the first one to be a search engine. i never knew that it yields better results than yahoo. honestly, i just use google to check if my internet connection is connected because the page is fast to load. I never knew that there was a counterpart of yahoo messenger that was owned by google maybe because i didn't care for google that much. Today, google is still the same page as before : a text box with a search button. Yahoo's page today is more "appealing" to me because it has the recent news for entertainment, sports, etc. I really liked yahoo because of that. because of yahoo, i knew about steve irwin's death (the one who chases crocodiles). 

I don't know if i'm the only one liking yahoo more than google. it's just that sometimes, what I see on tv has an effect on me based on its popularity. i remember yahoo's commercial with the guy singing "yahoo!" just before the commercial ends. i never remember a commercial with a guy singing "google!". I never even saw one commercial with google on it. maybe because of yahoo's publicity stuff made me like yahoo better than google.

When we encounter the word pirate, what image comes first in our minds? for me, when i hear the word pirate, i think of people in ships wearing corsair hats. And what do those pirates do? they steal money from other ships. Pirates nowadays still do that. they still do those things ( steal money ) but not from ships, nor do they wear corsair hats. Some pirates in the digital age now steal money by copying materials illegaly ( copying without asking the owner of the material ).

some software nowadays are not easy to make an illegal copy. software needs to be "cracked". some software are even protected by anti-piracy programs but still, pirates are able to make copies of it and make the software work normally. if they have the knowledge to crack the software and bypass the anti-piracy programs, why do they still choose to just make pirated software? there are many alternatives to earn money. some legal ways are to make open-source programs and gain recognition beacuse even if it's free, some companies will hire him for his skills in coding. another way is to apply for the company that he used to make pirated copies and apply his skills so that the company's future software cannot be pirated at all.

I think the pirates do know about the ways to earn money legally. maybe they're either too lazy to work for a company, doesn't want to have a boss, or just plainly hates the company that he makes pirated copies. As for the people, pirated stuff isn't as good as the original one. for starters, most pirated software cannot be updated, which is an important thing because of patches. Also, for gamers, pirated games doesn't allow you to be logged on to the internet and play with other people because every software comes with a unique cd-key, which is stored in the game developer's database. the only good thing about pirated stuff is the price. but having said the drawbacks of pirated software, the cost does not suffice for the unusable features thanks to pirated software. 

There are many kinds of existing scams that revolve in the computer world. One of which is when someone emails you and tells you that you've won some money. I know someone who was really convinced by that kinds of scam.

 

He received an email that says someone rich has died and there's no heir. in short, walang magmamana ng kayamanan nung namatay. the email also told him to send some money for processing some documents, legal rights ek ek and some other things.  My friend was really convinced and really wanted to get the money. fortunately, he didn't have the amount of money that the sender requested for processing.

 

When we receive emails like that, it's just so suspicious because why would anyone give away that kind of money? there are billions of people in the world and why was it you that was chosen to be heir of someone that you don't even know?

 

Those kinds of people who send those kinds of email are just sick. They use their creative minds for something bad. Hackers and some other people hack into systems with variable info or create a virus. Why? maybe they wanted attention (to be hired by some big IT company?) but if that's the reason, they can just create some open source programs so that they get the attention while not pissing other people. People always talk about wanting to advance technology even further. How will technology advance if the people that are good in computers do not teach the people that aren't good in computers; and even worse, they use their genius minds to scam people because they don't know any better.

many IT people have been tagged as "equal" by other people who doesn't really know much about IT. I think that if there's a problem, there's only one answer and if there's one answer, there's only one solution for that answer. We all know that it isn't true. All programmers have different ways of solving a problem. One solution might be better ( faster, more efficient code ) than the other.

My father and some teachers told me that "all men are created equal, but some are more equal than the other". in short, we're not equal. let's face it. In this world, there is always someone better than us. What's annoying is that the people that, let's say worse than us, are of no difference to many common eyes. I remember a story that a teacher told us. it goes something like this :

Teacher: ano'ng alam mong mga programming languages?

IT man: lahat po!

Teacher: oh talaga?

IT man: opo!

Teacher: wow ang galing naman!

IT man: alam na alam ko na po lahat ng programming languages! yung Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc..

 

i don't remember how exactly the story went but you get the point, right? the IT man thought Word and Excel and other MS Office were programming languages. 

Not to be rude or anything, but honestly, I hate to be treated as equal to the IT man. I'm not saying that I'm better than that person, but at least i know what programming languages are.

Because most people treat It people as equal, people tend to hire any IT people. Sir Alain said that some IT people graduate without even knowing how to program. If companies will lay down big money for some IT people, they should at least know what they're dealing with. I really think it's their fault for not checking who they hire for their projects.  

The last discussion told us about the evolution of memory portability. From diskettes that store 1MB+ to blu rays that could store up to 50GB. Some technologies was welcomed with open arms like the CD and some are sorely forgotten like the zip disk. But what about the future technologies like the Hd-DVD and the blu ray?

 

I'm quite afraid of what will happen to blu ray because the player is expensive. even the blu ray itself is expensive. in the present time, 50GB of storage is still overkill for a portable storage. 

Movies are currently being released in blu ray format. What does it offer? more special features? maybe with an HD quality+special features will take up to only 25GB of its space( not sure though ). the remainng 25GB will be a waste and the people who bought that blu ray movie will have to pay for the whole 50GB of it. I think it would be better if it's released in an HD-DVD format. HD-DVD can store up to 30GB max. 

 I think that the only future of blu ray are games. PS3 is a blu ray reader (blu ray and PS3 are manufactued by sony)  but still not a clear, bight future because :

PS3 doesn't sell well

not many game developers develop for PS3.

most of the games suck 

its online capability suck (which is a very big thing because players like playing online) 

PS3s are expensive

 

I only said that the blu ray has a future because if the PS3's processor and GPU is optimized, it can finally optimize the storage space of blu ray. I even read an article about a future PS3 game that says "one level is equivalent to 2GB". because of blu ray's large storage, its games can now have better graphics and longer games, which is not possible for a DVD.

With these things in mind, only time will tell if blu ray can really stand the test of time