Archive for March, 2009
Robotics in Hampton Georgia
Posted by admin in BJU, Education, Robotics4Kids on March 31st, 2009
My BJU Robotics Team and I enjoyed a great day in Hampton GA, home of the Atlanta Motor Speedway, where we meet with the great students of Bible Baptist Christian School. They came up with some fascinating robots. They especially liked the ones that responded to noises! They also learned the similarities and differences between robots and humans, the crowning jewel of God’s Creation. One of the biggest differences is that of a free will – the ability to make independent decisions.
I would like to welcome the students that participated in this event to leave their comments – did you enjoy it? what did you learn? would you recommend the event to your friends?
Bit Building in Bulldog Country
Posted by admin in BJU, Education, Robotics4Kids on March 31st, 2009
My BJU Robotics Team and I enjoyed a great day in Athens GA, home of the Georgia Bulldogs, where we meet with the great students of Athens Christian School. They came up with some fascinating robots. We especially liked the one that would crawl, no matter what the obstacles. I think it would make a great sermon object lesson on determination – run the race that is set before us!
I would like to welcome the students that participated in this event to leave their comments – did you enjoy it? what did you learn? would you recommend the event to your friends?
If computer is the answer you might be better off to change the question!
Posted by admin in Education, Internship, MBA, Worthwhile on March 14th, 2009
The greatest strength of computers is that they don’t have a specific purpose for their existence. We call them general purpose devices & never before in the history of man have we ever created a device that wasn’t designed for a specific purpose. Cars, microwaves, typewriters, televisions, washing machines & airplanes were all designed with a single purpose in mind.
But computers, what’s their purpose? Some would say they exist to frustrate us! While others might say the were designed to compute. What determines how a computer is used? the software – those mysterious arrangements of 1’s & 0’s determine what a computer will do. This amazing flexibility is not only a computer’s biggest strength, it can also prove to be its greatest weakness, depending on what really needs to be accomplished.
For instance, a few weeks ago I invited my MBA students to join me for an early morning Bible study @ Worthwhile. I was showing a DVD series called “Business by the Book” which studies how to run a business built upon timeless principles taught in God’s Word. I setup my macbook to the DVD. Connected it to the big screen & brought in a small sound system. It took about a half an hour to get all the connections just right. It was a most frustrating & somewhat humbling experience!
The next week I decided to go for a simplier, machine specific solution. I bought a $50 dvd player which took all of 5 minutes to open the box, setup the player & start the dvd! an amazing contrast with the 30 minutes required for the general purpose device.
For me this underscored the truth that “less is more”, “simpler is smarter”. I have noticed in my 28 years of teaching computer science, those of us in the field seem to look for solutions that involve using this amazing general purpose computer. I guess that’s natural for a computer scientist. but the lesson I learned was that specific purpose devises might just be a better solution.
So next time you go looking for a solution & everyone is telling you the computer is the answer, it might be worthwhile for you to ask a different question! 
MBA 675 – Backside/Darkside of the Bit Business (chapter 5)
Having seen the “backside” of the bit business – servers, data centers, power, bandwidth, SEO, DNS, ICANN, ARIN, IP addresses, registrars, security threats, firewalls, uptime demands, rackspace U’s, etc – comment on your understanding of all this bit business stuff.
- Take any 3 terms from the list above and describe the role it plays in the business of hosting e-businesses.
- What impact does it have on business?
- What impact does/will it have on your business?
- What are the advantages of outsourcing your web hosting to a data center? – pay special attention to information security and chapter 5 here
- What are the risks?
An A-grade post is expected to be 750-900 words in length.
Copy the original BOLDED questions and paste into your response. Answer each question separately putting your answers after the related question.
Grading – each question is worth 10 points and will appear as a single combined grade item in Scholar360 titled “Chapter 5 individual blog”