Issues Regarding Properties

Here are some questions brought up in class that are worth thinking about:
    What is property?
    Would we consider our toothbrush is our property?
    Would an entire life form such a mouse be a property of someone?
 
In fact, a company could own a gene for a life form. Other companies that want to use it would have to buy it from them.

    What about certain parts of our body?
    We would buy and sell blood. Does that mean certain parts of our body is one's property?

Below presents the arguments on why private property is good:
1. Because if you go out to nature, where no one owns anything, and cut down a tree to create a chair, that chair would be your property. It is because you mixed your own labor with natural resources.

2. When something is not owned by anybody, no one would takes time to take care of it and manage it.
    For example, oil tank spoiled sea water.

Intellectual property:
Ideas don't work like chairs. You sell chairs to other people, the chair would be their property. You cannot do the same thing with the ideas, tunes in your head. After transferring the property to another person, you would still own it in your head. Therefore, we come up with:

•  Trademark:

 For example, Coca Cola's trade secrets

• Patent: 

For a number of years, you own an idea and have head start on developing the idea. In Canada, it is 20years.

• Copyright: 

The expression of an idea is special and is protected. In Canada, copyright is 50 years after one person is dead. For example, a book, a painting, music
Copyright is taken seriously for music after we have computers. With computers and internet, music became much more easier to copy. Tape copying was not a big deal because music quality decreases with every copy. CRIA and GNU prrotects members of copyright in Canada.
However, you may find musician themselves not reinforcing copyright. This is usually because they do not rely on the songs to make money. Their income would be from, for example, tours.

Access Copyright:
In Canada, recently, using copyright material in teaching does not mean you have to pay for the material. For example, a student is writing a book review. The person does not violate copyright by using the book in the report. UofT students no longer need to pay $28 for access copyright in the near future.

Term test 2 and Lecture Material (Products of Sum)

       During this week's lecture, an interesting handout was given to us for practice exercise.  It is called "Products of Sum". In this exercise, we should come up with a solution for obtaining the largest products of the numbers that sum up to one number. For example:

•  if the number 1 is selected. The largest product will be 1 itself. 
• For the number 2, we can use 1+1 or 2 itself. The larger product would be 2 since 1*1 = 1 which is smaller than 2. 
• For the number 3, we can have 1+1+1, 1+2, and 3. Out of theses numbers 3 has the largest product.
• For number 4, we can have 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 1+3, 2+2, or 4. 4 would be the largest product.
• For number 5, we can have 1+1+1+1+1, 1+1+1+2, 1+1+3, 1+4, 2+2+1, 2+3 or 5. In this case, 2*3=6 would be the largest product.
• For number 6, we can have 1+1+1+1+1+1, 1+1+1+1+2, 1+1+1+3, 1+1+4, 1+5, 2+2+1+1, 2+2+2, 2+3+1, 2+4, 3+3, 6 etc... In this case, 3*3=9 would be the largest product.

      By trying out these numbers, a pattern was quickly found and I realize that a recursion program would be able to solve this problem. Although I have not test the solution in Dr.Racket, the following code is what I have come up with.

(define max_product n
   (cond (> n 4)

      (* 3 (max_product (- n 3)))

    )
    (else n)

)

Note that this code is only at its initial stage and might need changes and checks from Dr.Racket to be functional. 

         Term test two was held this week during the tutorial section. The parts involving Dr.Racket was straightforward. The two questions related to the knowledge of computer and internet was a bit harder in my opinion. The first question asks about the development of internet had if the government is essential for it. The second question asks about the difference today's browser and a terminal in the 1960s.

      Also, project two has been posted on the course website. I will be looking into it and start working on it. This way, any question I have in the process can be solved by asking the TAs or the prof. ahead of time.

Recursion Technique of Dr.Racket

Recently, we have been learning about a new technique of writing codes. The technique is to have a function call on itself within the function. This is called "Recursion". An example of the recursion would be:

   

  (define X n

          (cond ((zero? n) (square 10 outline black)

                       (else (beside

                              (X (- n 1)) (X(- n1)) 

                        ) 

                     )

            )

      )

This means when n is zero, a size 10 black square would be produced.

When n is 1, two size 10 black square would be produced side by side.

When n is 2, four size 10 black square would be prodcued side by side....

This function fascinates me as the image would be significantly larger for each increase of the value n. Also, a patter can be seen after trying out several values of n.

However, I feel that some slightly more complicated functions that use this recursion technique may be hard to understand at  time. I feel like the quiz I did for this material last week did not go well as a lot of time was spent on figuring out the difference between n=0 and n=1.

I would have to spend more time and effort on this section of Dr.Racket in order to identify the codes faster.

More time would be spent on studying the term test for this coming week.

Impression on CSC104

     After going through half a term of Computational Thinking, there are several features of the course that I discovered to be useful and interesting.

    The two hour lecture sections by Danny is always worth going to as it helps students to think in a way similar to computer programmers. Danny gradually introduces the step-by-step process of writing a computer program starting with presenting interesting examples of the "Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich" and the "Paper Folding Pattern". These exercises draws the interest of students and clearly describes the importance of algorithm. Without giving a detailed algorithm on how to make a peanut butter and jam sandwich, anyone who has never heard of the term before would not understand how to make one.

    A programming language, Dr.Racket, was taught to us as an introductory language to computer programming. Through this program, Danny introduces us to several coding techniques such as defining a variable, defining a function, and various ways to alter an image. The basic concepts of this program is similar to other programming languages such as C, C++, Java, etc. With a basic principle in mind, I believe learning the other languages would be much easier.

    Although I think the introductory materials of Dr.Racket was easy to understand, the recent materials have become more difficult. It involves codes related to changing the colours of an image or modifying an image with several colouring functions.

   Regarding the Wikipedia assignment, I think it is an interesting topic. It enables us to interact with people around the world through the internet. By creating content on Wikipedia, we are responsible for the reliability of the article. However, I would like to understand how this assignment is related to the whole course as I find difficulty relating it to other contents of the course such as the Dr.Racket language.