the role of my research topic in my future career!

To start of, while I was reading Hannah’s post, I am really impressed and inspired on what she has gone through just to come up with her research topic. It’s one of the nicest posts I’ve read (no kidding! heheheheh)

Anyway, just to second the motion with what Hannah said, honestly speaking, at first it’s really hard to find a research topic that would be interesting enough not just to my professor but also to my classmates. As I have searched in the web, one of the most common topics I had was on the CO2 Calculator. The mere fact that it’s really technical (I mean it involves both hardware and software implementation), I was hesitant at first, but then what urged to propose it to the class via forum is that “everything is worth a try”, what I am trying to imply in here is that it doesn’t matter if my idea is rejected or not, what really matter is I tried. Gladly, it took the attention of my professor that he told me that if I would make some adjustments or new refinements, it would be a good topic. First question that came up to my mind is, am I ready for everything (I should, perhaps.. hahahaha). Another would be is my knowledge enough to do the research (because what I have in mind that time is the implementation stage of the research) and knowing that the hardware part is not my field of expertise. I am really bothered with the way I think and with my attitude and with the way I act. I am on my 5th year in this University and honestly, I really want to graduate and work.

Time passes by, days to weeks, weeks turned into months. Even our professor have been encouraging us and begging us to post our topics, he even asked what is the problem on coming up with our research topic. He kept asking what our problem is so that he could help us, honestly, I am hesitant, and that question that was raised by my professor stuck me in my seat, I simply asked myself, what is really the problem? Is it the theme? I, myself cannot answer the question. Probably because I didn’t do my part as the student, I got pissed off with my attitude, with my laziness. I am only seeing the smaller part of the theme, I stuck with only one topic and not venturing to other. I am dependent in the web. And knowing GREEN COMPUTING is not just focusing on the larger environmental issues but it started with the small things. What I have in mind is only focusing on CO2 Emissions, computers radiating CO2 and wastes of energy. Honestly speaking, I really do not know what I am doing that time or where my path is going. My professor told us that all of us are planning to fail. I was stunned; I simply asked myself, do I really want to fail after 5 long years of hardships in this University?

During a class meeting, our professor decided to do the research by group. As they say, two heads are better than one. On my part 3 heads are better than one. Together with my group, we had our own brainstorm and honestly our brains are stormed! (hahahaha), and again, days turned into weeks, up until one group’s proposal was approved. I think, that’s the go signal for us, we really have to think as hard as possible. What I have in mind is something that is simple but very useful not just to one person but for everybody. As I was charging my phone, an idea came up to my mind, why not make a mobile application that has an alarm system to notify the owner that the battery is 100 % fully charged. It would not just save energy and electricity but also it reduces CO2 Emissions and other harmful gases. It would not just be very helpful to one particular person but it’s everybody who has mobile phones.
As I search in the web, there is an existing IPhone application that has the same idea with mine. But to add a twist with the application, I simply added a feature wherein the application can send text messages to people who can remind the user to unplug the charger. I think the application would not just help the environment but it would be very beneficial to the users not to spend money much. Since, with the help of the application, it can prolong the battery’s life and a person would not spend much money in buying new phones (one cause would be they tend to change their phones because it can no longer be used which would be the result of overcharging). If there are many junk phones, another problem will occur; there will be an increase in E-Waste. Hey! My application is really helpful and its benefits are really rewarding! And as an IT student, it gives motivation to me knowing that developing a mobile application for a good cause and would contribute not just for the betterment of one person, for every mobile user, for every human being but also to save our Mother Earth in my own simple way. After proposing the topic, our group was surprised with the comments with our classmates, they said that it’ really useful and helpful. And gladly, our topic was approved and recently we were able to proceed to the Review of Related Literature stage of our research. It maybe hard at first but then reflecting on a text message that was sent to me by my friend “DO NOT ASK GOD TO GUIDE YOUR STEPS IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO MOVE YOUR FEET”, I know that we are getting there, but with the guidance from up above, I know that we will reach our goals.

Why am I telling you my own journey as I came up with my topic, I think it would simply explain the impact of my research topic in my future career. If one would be observant enough in very small and simple things that are going on with his surroundings, and would be very curious enough to formulate questions, I think that would give a very good impact in research. On my own point of view and basing from my experience in my on the job training, the role of my research topic in my future career is very simple. I would like to develop applications that are useful, interesting and would contribute in saving our Mother Earth. I would like to indulge myself in organizations that do have advocacies in Green Computing. I would like to be a developer, developing any applications that could help each and every one in the world. I maybe very ambitious but that’s my simple way of foreseeing my future. Aside from giving my family a good life, I would like to let them live in a healthy and livable environment. Most probably, if given the chance, I would like to start of here in Davao City. I know that there are students who are interested in Green Computing. What I am trying to say is that, we should not wait let things get worst. As we can see today, we’ve seen changes in our environment.

As far as I can remember, while I was watching a documentary of Al Gore which is entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” which tackles about Global Warming which is a result of abuse of the human kind to the environment. The very simple explanation of global warming is that whenever we want to eat an ice cream, it would just simply melt and we cannot eat it anymore because of the intense heat that we are experiencing. Al Gore pointed out that in ten to twenty years from now, CO2 Emissions will double up and the ice that is on the North Pole would melt and would cause lands to sink. Even today, here in Davao City, we are experiencing the effects of global warming, even in an ample of rain, the downtown do experience flood. And it is the first time in my whole life here in Davao City to see flood up to the knee.

What I am trying to imply here is that, we can see the problems today. Why not implementing solution to lessen the problem right? That in our own way of unplugging the unused wires would help save our mother earth. We may not see the impact of doing the solutions today but surely in the near future, we would be fulfilled and satisfied.

To end this, there are lots of ways in saving our Mother Earth. And in my future career, the impact of my research topic today would truly make a difference and would leave a good mark and experience as to what will in-store for me and my career in the future. Good Day!

How do we know if a research is good or not? How are they evaluated?

Assign5

How do we know if a research is good or not? How are they evaluated?

The question is tough (hehe). Anyway, based from my readings, I have come up with the factors to be considered for the evaluation of a good research paper.

According to Simon Peyton James of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, he stated that writing papers is a skill, it is a skill that is worth learning. Well for me, it’s true, it is in writing that we can express our great ideas and also if it is backed up with evidences and documents that would support our ideas. Also, a good writer should also be a good reader. Am I out of the topic? Hehehe, I get carried away.

As Simon Peyton said that papers communicate ideas, is one of the factors that need to be considered in evaluating a research. A good research should infect the mind of the reader with his idea like a virus in our computers. As the saying goes, great ideas are worthless if you only keep it by yourself. That is why we write papers and do research right?

Another factor would be the presentation of the idea. The researcher should figure out what is his idea. The researcher should make certain that the readers will have no doubt on what the idea is. In other words, the researcher should state the main purpose of the research. We may somehow relate it with the “ping” or a ring of a bell, in which the research should just have on ping or one clear and sharp idea. In presenting an idea, the researcher should explain it as if he/she was speaking to someone. He/she should convey his/her perception towards the readers that even if the readers skip the details, they can still take something important from what they have read about.

The researcher should also state the purpose of the paper, he/ she should present a situational analysis that would state the problem, of course, and he/she should make it an interesting and unsolved problem, then after stating it. He/she can now present his idea, should explain his idea properly stating on how to solve the said problem. Example, in the abstract of his research, by just reading his papers abstract, the reader would know and would understand what his research all about. According to Kent Beck, the abstract should contain four sentences. The first one is that the researcher should state the problem first, and then he would say why it is an interesting problem. Next, the researcher should state what does his solution achieves and should say what is next or what follows from the presented solution. Another example would be in the introduction of the paper, the researcher can use example or examples to introduce the problem.

In addition, another factor that is needed for the evaluation is the relevance of the research to the readers. When we say relevant, it simply means that it has importance to people or it has a great impact on the lives of the people. A reader would give his time and attention to one thing if he/she can relate into or it has something that took his/her interest with. For example, as an information Technology student, our research is all about Green Computing. For me, the topic is really interesting that it pertains to the impact of technology to out Mother Nature and that we should provide ways to minimize and lessen the impact of it to the environment. Knowing that one of the major contributors to global warming is the technology itself that we use everyday.

It’s really hard to come up with a topic but after a while, we have come up with an idea which turned into an approved research topic.

In addition, the research should also be evaluated by the appropriateness of the methodology used to come up with the results. Another factor would be whether the idea or the research is proved to be rationally consistent; this one pertains to the results of the study or the research that was made. Perhaps the results that came off from a survey, does the mean, median and mode correct. Does the questionnaire used for the survey was validated by an expert, does it go through a series of validation. Stuffs like that. One thing that I have kept in mind was that, every research or in everything that we do, we should take into consideration the standards or the guidelines presented by some organizations. There are some simple guidelines that we should follow and I think the most basic and the most important one is citing the references and acknowledge them properly in your research. Since if without them, you cannot come up with a topic that could improve not just your life but also the lives of other people.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/writing-a-paper.zip

3rd reading...

Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and

Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects1

Karim R. Lakhani* and Robert G Wolf **

*MIT Sloan School of Management | The Boston Consulting Group

**The Boston Consulting Group

September 2003

SUMMARY:
The research paper is all about the stating the outcomes of the study on what are the motivations behind the individuals for their continuous contribution to the Free/Open Source Software. In other words, what are the factors or what are the driving force to the developers to give their much time and effort in developing Free/Open Source Software.

What are the motivations of the F/OSS developers?

In the paper, they have stated and reviewed the two types of motivations. These are:

Intrinsic Motivation
From the word intrinsic this means a motivation that is found deep within a person. It stated there that when a person is intrinsically motivated, he/she is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external prods, pressures, or rewards. And again, according to Lindenberg 2001, intrinsic motivation is separated into two distinct components: 1. enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation and 2. obligation/ community-based intrinsic motivation.

According to Deci and Ryan 1985, the idea behind of the intrinsic motivation is having fun or enjoying oneself when taking part in an activity. Csikszentmihalyi (1975) proposed a state of “flow”, in which enjoyment is maximized, characterized by intense and focused concentration; a merging of action and awareness; confidence in one’s ability; and the enjoyment of the activity itself regardless of the outcome.
On the other hand, the obligation/ community-based intrinsic motivation, according to LindenBerg (2001), he stated that individuals may be socialized into acting appropriately in a manner consistent with the norms of a group.

Extrinsic Motivation
The idea behind the extrinsic motivation is gaining rewards (whether direct or indirect) for doing a task or an activity. In other words, the developer is paid and most probably he/ she are given incentives for doing such activity.


How does the study done?
The researchers did a sample web-survey. The samples that are to be included in the survey was from the individuals listed as official developers on F/OSS projects that is found in SourceForge.net, the F/OSS community web site. The researchers sent personalized e-mails to each individual inviting them to participate in the survey. The researchers also provided or assigned a random personal identification number for accessing the survey. The first part of the survey was done from October 10-31,2001 generating 526 responses giving a response rate of 34.3% . The second survey was conducted on April 28, 2002 that generated 173 responses out of the 573 mails sent, giving a response rate of 30.0 %

The results:
According to their study, they’ve found out that 87 % of all the respondents received no direct payments, 55 % of them contributed code during their work time. The combination of those who received direct payments and those supervisors knew their work on the project created do consists of approximately 405 of the sample.

On the number of hours per week spent on a project, they’ve found out that the respondents spent an average of 14.1 hours on all their F/OSS projects and 7.5 hours on the focal project.

On the personal creativity and flow of the respondents, based on the research done, the respondents noted a very high sense of personal creativity in the focal projects. More than 61% of the respondents said that their participation in the focal F/OSS project was their most creative experience.

Motivations to contribute
With respect to the results of the said survey, the top single reason to contribute to projects is based on enjoyment-related intrinsic motivation: “Project code is intellectually stimulating to write” which gains 44.9 % of all the respondents. Improving programming skills, an extrinsic motivation related to human capital improvement, was a close second, with 41.8% of participants saying it was an important motivator. Approximately 20% of the sample indicated that working with the project team was also a motivation for their contribution.
Paid contributors are strongly motivated by work-related user need (56%) and value professional status (22.8%) more than volunteers. On the other hand, volunteers are more likely to participate because they are trying to improve their skills (45.8%) or need the software for non-work purposes (37%).

To end, the study shows what are the driving force of the developers to contribute to the F/OSS projects and what is good in here is that, whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, there are many people who contributes to the fast growing and success of the F/OSS community.

Evaluation:
The research paper really interests me that it shows the motivations that affect the developers to contribute to the continuing success of the F/OSS community. The research is very informative, complete in a sense that it gives the information on who are the respondents, the scope of the research as well the results and their conclusion.

2nd reading... hehehe

Charity Begins at… your Mail Program

Peter G. Capek, Barry Leiba, Mark N. Wegman

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center,

Hawthorne, NY 10532

{capek, barryleiba, wegman}@us.ibm.com

Scott E. Fahlman

Carnegie Mellon University

Computer Science Department

Pittsburgh, PA 15213

sef@cs.cmu.edu

Summary:

There are many methods introduced in the industry to minimize the spam mails or junk mails. One of which is asking the sender of an e-mail to pay the recipient just to prove that the sender is not a spammer. And this study introduces another technique, “charity seals” which means that the money you spent will be donated to the charity, and most legal users would not mind dong it and the money they will be spending is for a good cause.

The primary interest of the study is more on the e-mail involving the users which are not familiar or do not even know each other. Nowadays, the information about the sender is usually not confirmed or not verifiable at all and these would result to the spam problems.

The study also introduced number of approaches of solving the problem of spam e-mails and comparing it to the “charity seals”. One of those is the one-time-use or “passworded”-e-mail address idea. Also, there are many authors that promote “sender pays the recipient” schemes that suggest the exchange of money. The idea in here is that, if the sender is caught as a spammer, the recipient can collect the money; otherwise, the recipient will return the money to the sender. The thought in here is just to determine whether the sender is a spammer or not. Another approach is using CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing test for telling Computers and Humans Apart”) scheme. The primary intention of this scheme is the idea that any human can answer the CAPTCHA easily and would be difficult or impossible for the computers.

Also, included in the paper that Fahlman and Wegman have proposed another approach, it is the “sender pays charity” in which the idea of the “charity seals” have taken. The idea is similar to the “Christmas seals” in which it has been used by the United States for quite some time now. Since Christmas is the only time that people will send large amounts of conventional mail. The idea is, these seals are distributed by a charity (using paper mails) with a solicitation for a contribution. The sender will only use the seals if he/ she will make a contribution to the charity that issued the seals.

The idea of the “charity seals” is the same as with the one stated above, the exchange of money and the electronic version of the seals. The only difference is that it tightens the combination; the seals are not reusable and not forgeable.

How it is done? At first the sender will choose what specific charity which he will donate the money. Then, an agency collects donations on behalf of the charities. The agency operates an Internet service which supplies to the donors a custom-created seal which the sender can include in his e-mail. The seal is essentially a document containing at least the recipient’s identity, an amount of money donated and a unique number – perhaps a time stamp – and the sender’s identity. It is digitally signed by the agency, and is proof that the sender has made a qualifying donation to a participating charity. Effectively, the agency keeps an account for each contributor and debits it whenever a seal is issued.

If the task is giving money, the system requires a connection with some banking system. Typically this would be done using a credit card. Senders probably do not want to give credit cards out to everyone they send mail to, and most recipients are not set up to take credit cards. Financial institutions do, however, have the idea of escrow accounts. The notion of escrow is that one person puts money into an escrow that is trusted by both parties, and they agree to terms under which the money would be released to one or the other party. This makes it much easier to handle payments when one party could disappear.

One way to achieve the advantages of a central server when the task is delivery of money is to have the sender establish an escrow account for each recipient. If the recipient votes the mail as spam within some pre-established time limit, the money is paid (that is, the task is performed). Otherwise it is returned to the sender. If the time limit expires, before the recipient reads the mail the system has the options of assuming that if the sender was willing to risk the money it is probably legitimate mail, or of not delivering the mail to the actual person until money is placed back in the escrow account.

There are many approaches in addressing the problem of spam mails and one of which is the “charity seals”. This would make the cost of mail low to those who are legal users and making it expensive to the spammers.


Evaluation:

It is true that spam mails do really exists and does contain problems. There are many people who have been victims of the spammers. I think, the awareness of the people about this problem should be the number one that should be addressed into. With regards to the study, it’s a good idea that they have introduced this kind of approach since giving money to charities is a good cause though you spend a little money. I think, they’ve introduced the idea but with respect to the implementation of the said methodology are still missing.

1st reading...... hehehe

A Biologically Inspired Immune System for Computers

Jeffrey O. Kephart

High Integrity Computing Laboratory

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598

Summary:

The study primarily focuses on the computer viruses that are in fact being thought of as a serious problem in the industry nowadays. According to the study, two alarming trends are likely to make computer viruses a much greater threat. The first one is the speed at which new viruses are being written is high and accelerating. Imagine that new computer viruses are being created and being spread almost every after minute! The second is the trend towards the increasing the interconnectivity and interoperability among computers which would result to the fast spreading of the computer viruses.

Then, the IBM conducted a study and was able to create an immune system for computers. The primary features of the immune system are the following:
1. Recognition of known intruders.
2. Elimination/neutralization of intruders.
3. Ability to learn about previously unknown intruders.
o Determine that the intruder doesn't belong.
o Figure out how to recognize it.
o Remember how to recognize it.
4. Use of selective proliferation and self-replication for quick recognition and response.
Their system develops antibodies to the viruses and worms that were once encountered by the computer system, the computer system remembers them and would respond quicker if those viruses and worms will again attack the system.

With respect to the immune system of the computers, the system would not recognize a virus via exact match or exact information or data with regards to that virus but it is detected via an exact or fuzzy match to a relatively short sequence of bytes occurring in the virus (termed as the signature).

How do they eliminate the intruders? If the computer immune system were to find an exact or fuzzy match to a signature for a known virus, it could take the analogous step of erasing or otherwise inactivating the executable file containing the virus.


Their system also has the ability of learning about the previously unknown intruders. First, the process by which the proposed computer immune system establishes whether new software contains a virus has several stages. Integrity monitors, which use checksums to check for any changes to programs and data files, have a notion of ``self'' that is as restrictive as that of the vertebrate immune system: any differences between the original and current versions of any file are flagged, as are any new programs. Then, Mechanisms that employ the complementary strategy of ``know thine enemy'' are also brought into play. Among these are activity monitors, which have a sense of what dynamic behaviors are typical of viruses, and various heuristics, which examine the static nature of any modifications that have occurred to see if they have a viral flavor.

If one of the virus-detection heuristics is triggered, the immune system runs the scanner to determine whether the anomaly can be attributed to a known virus. If so, the virus is located and removed in the usual way. If the anomaly can not be attributed to a known virus, either the generic virus-detection heuristics yielded a false alarm, or a previously unknown virus is at large in the system.
At this point, the computer immune system tries to lure any virus that might be present in the system to infect a diverse suite of ``decoy'' programs. A decoy program's sole purpose in life is to become infected. The algorithms extract from a set of infected decoys information on the attachment pattern of the virus, along with byte sequences that remain constant across all of the captured samples of the virus. Next, the signature extractor must select a virus signature from among the byte sequences produced by the attachment derivation step. The signature must be well-chosen, such that it avoids both false negatives and false positives. In other words, the signature must be found in each instance of the virus, and it must be very unlikely to be found in uninfected programs.
With regards to the usage of self proliferation and self-replication for the quick recognition of the viruses and worms, their system also has the ability that when a computer discovers that it is infected, it can send a signal to neighboring machines. The signal conveys to the recipient the fact that the transmitter was infected, plus any signature or repair information that might be of use in detecting and eradicating the virus. If the recipient finds that it is infected, it sends the signal to its neighbors, and so on. If the recipient is not infected, it does not pass along the signal, but at least it has received the database updates -- effectively immunizing it against that virus.

Their system develops antibodies to the viruses and worms that were once encountered by the computer system, the computer system remembers them and would respond quicker if those viruses and worms will again attack the system.

Evaluation:
The research is not bias. It is interesting that the IBM develops an immune system similar to the immune system of human beings. The research is very informative in a sense that it shows how to avoid and even fight the computer viruses by providing an immune system for computers.

key factors in publishing a research in top-tier journals

First and foremost, before I discuss the key factors, I just want to say what’s really on my mind right now, doing a research and coming up with a good research topic is really a tough job. As what Ms. Hernandez said above, it needs time, focus, effort and proper funding. I totally agree with that. Almost everyone in the class is really having a hard time in coming up with a good research topic. I think what is more important is it’s usefulness to the people, what I am trying to say is that we should come up with a topic wherein it’s simple but useful. Anyway, as what I have said above, the difficulty of coming up with a good topic is also same as true with publishing a research in the top-tier journals.

Let me discuss it one by one, from the most simple down to the complicated (I am not sure if “complicated” is the right term, hehe). Anyway, I think, one of the simplest factors that a researcher should follow is the standards of writing, most probably the proper citing of references, providing good English or the most appropriate word is the grammar or the proper usage of words. The researcher should also include glossary, perhaps if there are words that are unfamiliar with the readers. Another factor is the presentation of the research. The research should be easily understood by the readers and would catch their attention.

Next, it’s the timeliness and relevance of the information or the research, example; right now we are doing a research with regards to the Green Computing. Yes, it’s timely, since each and every one of us are experiencing global warming and climate change. We should think and research well on how to minimize the emissions of different harmful gases. In the aspect of technology which is one of the major contributors to global warming, we should do something that could lessen the impact of it to the environment by providing means and services that could protect the environment. Of course, the timeliness of the information would result to another factor which is the impact of it to the people.

Then, another factor would be the precision of the research. This would answer the following questions like does it follow the specific standards? Does the source of the information reliable? Was the information correct? Does the information itself is consistent? What are the methods or the methodologies used? Is the methodology appropriate for the research? Things like those.

As the saying goes it is easier to say than doing it. Doing a research is a tough job. As far as I can remember, in one of our class discussions, a good researcher should be patient and should be full of enthusiasm. If we will just persevere and if we will just give and do our best, time will come that everything we’ve done will be rewarded it may not be money but with the blessings from up above.