Why I am doing the MSc in Computing Science

The reason is that I intend to know more in-depth knowledge about computer science. It is a fast development area, but the essence is the same, the basic thing is the same, we need to thoroughly know, for example, data structure and algorithm as lots of new stuffs are based on these.

Although I have worked for two years as a Java programmer towards telecom systems, I still think it is a threshold for me to reach a higher stage in this pyramid. When I cooperated with our CTO, I can feel that how deeply he has understood the computer science. Although he is a Chinese, most of his materials are in English version. It is a truth that most of the latest technologies are in the English version. It is a huge advantage if we are able to read the English technical materials. So I decided if I go abroad to accept a further education, an English speaking country is the prerequisite.

The future of the iPhone as a programmable platform

The future of the iPhone as a programmable platform

Fugui Yan

Computer Science Department

Griffith College Dublin

I.                    Introduction

iPhone has become one of the most popular smart mobile devices in the world. In this report, I will briefly describe what these two authoritative papers talk about and provide my own views.

II.                 Literature Review

1.      The first paper which is “Evaluating the iPhone as a Mobile Platform for People-Centric Sensing Applications” briefly evaluates whether the iPhone it is suitable to be a smart mobile device programmable platform. The author analyses the advantages and the disadvantages of the smart mobile device programmable platform. For the advantages, the author briefly discusses the programming language, which is Objective C which is easy to grasp, APIs, User Interface, application distribution and so on. For the disadvantage, the author shows that iPhone can not support the push notification service. “With the push notification service, probes can be sent by the Apple backend servers, which, in turn, serve as relays for push messages sent by a sender host to a receiver iPhone. As the receiver iPhone is woken up by the probe the user is asked by the iPhone OS whether to let the application run in response to the probe message or not. [1]”

2.      The second paper which is “IPHONE SECURITY ANALYSIS” concisely illustrates the security structure and the vulnerabilities within the iPhone Operation System. The author pays attention to the issue of jailbreaking, and says that the jailbreaking have made financial losses for Apple and AT&T and the reputation of the Apple.

III.               Conclusion

Firstly, for the programming language Objective C, if programmers have learned Java or C++, they will think the syntax for Objective C is a little bit weird. It uses square brackets to instantiate, but if we are familiar with the syntax, then everything will be the same. Another issue which should be paid attention to is the memory management to avoid memory leak. Objective C uses reference count to manage object [3]. Secondly, right now Apple has already published the SDK including Push Notification Service [4], but one thing which is worth to know is the probe programming which I found in the paper. I will spend more time to investigate this topic in my leisure time. Thirdly, for the issue of the jailbreaking, actually, it is about the privilege to the root system. We know that, Mac and iPhone, both of them are based on Unix System. If User gets the root privilege, he can choose to install any third-party application he wants which will result in the poor sale of the application on the App Store [5], which will continuously make developers lose the enthusiasm because of the financial issue.

References

[1] Emiliano Miluzzo, James M. H. Oakley, Hong Lu, Nicholas D. Lane, Ronald A. Peterson, Andrew T. Campbell, “Evaluating the iPhone as a Mobile Platform for People-Centric Sensing Applications”, “http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/urbansensing/papers/miluzzo_urbansense08.pdf”, Nov 4, 2008

[2]Vaibhav Ranchhoddas Pandya, “IPHONE SECURITY ANALYSIS”, “http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/stamp/students/pandya_vaibhav.pdf”, May 2008

[3]ObjectiveC,http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/introObjectiveC.html”

[4] Push Notification Service, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3576

[5]Benjamin Eriksson, Codemill Ab, Emanuel Dohi , Fredrik Georgsson ,  Per Lindström, “Research in the App Store Era Experiences from the CenceMe App Deployment on the iPhone”,  Sep 2010

A review for Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age

The book illustrates the relationship between remembering and forgetting.  Before the information era, forgetting is default and remembering is the exception. But as the development of information technology, things are changed. Right now, remembering turns to default and forgetting is changed to be an exception.  The author advocates that the things that bring side effect to people should be allowed to be deleted.  People have been losing opportunities because of some of their past scandals which are published on the Internet.

First, I want to applaud that the author proposes a counter-intuitive viewpoint.  But to the things that bring side effects to people, we have to analyse it a bit deeply.  For the things that bring disaster to a society or even to the world, we have to keep it forever to remind our descendants that which things they can do and which things they cannot do, and we should backup more copies to prevent someone destroying it intentionally. But for some problems that cause people feel uncomfortable in the coming years of social activities, for example, the picture, that the author mentions, showing a lady disguise herself to be a drunken pirate, should be allowed to be removed from the Internet.

The technology, that can store information in cheap storage device, does bring many conveniences to people, we can’t deny the fact.  But things, which programmers need to do, are that we need to develop some software that allowed some information to be deleted. For which things are allowed to permanently removed, I recommend that it can be organised to a public organisation to censor them.

 

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