James Culp at UNC

Hey guise!

Cautionary Edit:

I haven’t fully gone through any exams yet, but I’ve quickly looked over a few. I’m already seeing several people NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION. Make sure you answer the question. If you don’t understand the question, ask. I’m not going to award you a boatload of points just because you wrote SOMETHING and didn’t bother to answer what I’ve asked.

————–

Final exam, including instructions, is now available online here.

It is due next Monday, May 4, by the end of the day. You can have until I wake up on the fifth if you want to take your chances, but once I start grading points will come off pretty fast if I get your exam late.

Clarifications should be requested early and often via email. I’ll post my responses on this site as they come in.

Edit:

Whoops, I’ve gotten several emails wondering where this was. It got “saved” but not “published”, so I could see it but you couldn’t — sorry. You can have an extra day, meaning exams are due by the end of Tuesday, May 5th, or before I wake up on Wednesday.

Edit 2:

I don’t think it’s in the PDF, but per in class instructions, and common sense, this is the final exam for the class, and collaboration is NOT allowed at all.

Edit 3 (clarifications, may be updated in the future):

Monitoring

I just wanted to clarify one thing on the employee monitoring question of the exam. What other kinds of data other than personal data would one be concerned with in regards to monitoring? I’m not sure if I’m interpreting certain forms of data differently than you. For example, I would consider medical information/history to be personal data. Likewise, most of the information an attorney needs to perform their job requires their client sharing personal information. If you could let me know if I am misunderstanding something I’d appreciate it.

The distinction is between personal information of whatever kind and *protected* information under attorney/client or doctor/patient privilege. I guess the last sentence in the exam is awkward, but that is the intent — distinguishing between privileged info, and “normal” personal information that’s unprivileged, even if both are merely telephone calls (as an example) going through the law firm’s or hospital’s phone system. The reason it’s somewhat confusing is because it’s the attorney or doctor that’s being monitored. Thus, if he’s working on an outside case, it’s likely all privileged info in that context, but from the POV of his firm, or hospital, or whatever, whose equipment he’s using, it’s non-work-related/”personal” by the same standards that we’ve used before in class.

Voting

This is how I’m interpreting it: What are other concerns that the government will have in implementin electronic voting, besides the shrinking population of people that are not familiar with the Internet? -is that what this question is ultimately asking?

Well, kind of. It’s specifically asking about the responsibilities the gov’t will have, both to ensure ability to vote one side, and to not radically overspend on the other side, given the inevitability of a certain degree of unfamiliarity and lack of access to computers and the Internet dying out with our elderly; i.e., that some concerns (”my grandmother doesn’t have a computer”) just aren’t going to be as much of a problem in 20 years, as those old people die off.

If you take it as a given that Internet voting is coming, and that it’s reasonable to expect a greater and greater percentage of the population to be able to take advantage of Internet voting, there will come a point when it looks attractive to ONLY have Internet voting, or at least to radically shrink the “offline” voting infrastructure. How does the government handle that balancing act? Certainly it shouldn’t waste money, but it also starts to cost an immense amount per capita to have widespread polling locations to service an ever shrinking population. This is the question you should be exploring.

And also- I’m confused with what you mean about consider governmental burdens and offerings in public libraries.

Yeah I thought perhaps some/most wouldn’t see the connection. It’s not necessarily a super important one; you can definitely make an answer without taking this consideration. However, public libraries have a very interesting case history legally w.r.t. services it provides and is obligated to provide.

If you’re interested, do a Google search on public libraries and pornography. Many “decency” laws requiring filters and whatnot have been stricken because the SCOTUS determines that public libraries’ Internet access is so important a public service that it’s unlawful to restrict the content you can view. Stuff like that. Anyway, it’s definitely not an answer in and of itself, and if you were to use it in an answer about voting, I would expect to see it backed up and integrated well, not just tossed in, but I think there are some helpful parallels to be drawn.

Outsourcing

I am confused about the question regarding outsourcing.  What do you mean by end-game?  Could be please verify that for me?

End-game is just a common metaphor. The question is using it in the context where it refers to a time where, assuming the rationalization of outsourcing is correct, that virtually all world markets have been “brought up” in terms of technological literacy and sophistication.

General

Everyone -

Everything but presentations from groups 1 and 7 is online. (I’ll put those up as soon as they’re emailed to me). They’re under the Groups and Project Topics page on the right.

You can expect a detailed explanation of the final exam to be posted by about Monday, and the exam itself will be available for download next Wednesday, April 29 at about noon. It will be due five days after that, via email, on Monday, May 4. (In all candor, before I wake up on May 5.) I need to be told like now if there’s anyone that wants an in-class exam to be proctored for them.

Paper revisions are also due at the very latest before I wake up on May 5. They should be delivered via email, and I expect to see the revisions for which I’ve asked. Direct any questions to me sooner rather than later.

We will have class on Monday. It won’t be anything too heavy, but do attend.

Edit:

Last presentations are online.

This is not a COMP 380 post.

However, if anyone aside from my class comes by my web space, this is hilarious: Closer.

I laughed.

Group 1 - check your email.

Hello everyone -
This week we have group presentations both Monday and Wednesday. Please be on time, attentive, and supportive of your classmates; you’ll certainly expect the same from them.
Tonight at 5:30 is our final speaker for the semester: Gary Bishop. We rescheduled Gary from his previous date due to snow, if you recall. Anyway, please be at Sitterson 014 for that at 5:30.
Thanks,
James

Guys -

My power apparently flickered this morning, and undid my alarm. This isn’t the first time, which makes me think perhaps it’s the clock and not the power. Anyway, there’s no possible way I can get to campus in time for class. I’m very sorry!

I believe group 5 was scheduled to rehearse today. I know y’all must have worked hard to get ready, and I truly apologize for the inconvenience. We will reschedule at your first convenience. If your schedules allow, I will even be in this afternoon in my office — Sitterson 136. Send me an email soon if you want to pursue this option.

For Thursday, groups 7 and 6 are scheduled to rehearse their presentations. This will not change. Those groups need to be ready to start at the beginning of class. Whoever’s there first goes first, and the other group will go work for 40-45 minutes to let them rehearse privately. All groups other than 7 and 6 should not come to class that day. Instead, work on your presentations elsewhere. Papers for groups 1-4 are due Thursday via email.

For everyone: we still have a speaker tonight. 5:30 PM, SN 014 like normal. I will actually be there. Please don’t be like me, and come on time and ready to listen

Actually forget about it, I don’t feel comfortable putting up more written information so late and expecting people to check this and digest it when y’all have other classes and such. I will adjust the exam so that there shouldn’t be any questions not covered by notes put up already earlier this afternoon.

Midterm is tomorrow. Its description should be online now. Let me know if you still have questions.

I’ve uploaded copies of the Reiter slides in PPT and PDF for those who couldn’t open PPTX.

I realized I was still a couple of hours behind on final privacy notes, so I’ve got some work-in-progress notes uploaded now. They mostly focus on identity theft. I’ll have more complete notes available shortly, probably by 5:00 or 5:30. The difference should be that ideas will be expanded upon more, and there will be written material on the kind of Facebook/cyberstalking type stuff we have discussed at length. Frankly identity theft is a more likely topic to appear on the exam, so start with these and review the final ones to pick up any additions when they come online.

As some folks have started doing, you may email me to find out ahead of time what grade your cyberstalking assignment is being assigned.

If you have not yet emailed me your group evaluation from the detailed outline period, do so as soon as possible. These are confidential, and I only want to collect them to help you and your group out in case you have some kind of problem with a group member later on in the semester.

-James