Monday January 31st, 2011

Lecture Notes:

Reviewing proposal review is essential part of proposal writing.

Expectation from feedback(with the scale [1..5], where 1 is too low and needs improvements, 5 is excellent):

• SYNTAX: Clarity, Detail, and Completeness
• SYNTAX: Restate idea(to assure the reader was clear of the understanding of the project) - about 1-2 sentences
• SYNTAX: Inconsistencies within documents
• SYNTAX: Structure - Grammar, typos, legibility of figures, diagrams, spread sheets, etc.
• Plausibility (feasibility of implementation and completion)
• Support (evidence for any claims)
• Novelty
• Stakeholders(identification: investors, end user, etc.)
• Scope of the project
• Profitability of the project
• Legal (Copyrights)
• Security concerns
• Total Score of the document

The feedback must be posted as a comment on the proposal's posting as well as an independent posting on the reviewer's site(with identical text).

DO NOT clarify anything to the reviewer, he/she must review the document by itself with providing the feedback of the document.

The proposal paper should be professionally done.

Homework: Requirements on selected object

The main object I rely on every morning is my coffee maker and a coffee mug. So my selected object will be the one I carry around for the first half a day, just about every day - coffee mug!

Here is the list of 'must' have requirements:

1. Must be large enough to hold medium drink.
   
2. Must easily fit in one's hand (by either have a good grip or a handle).
3. Must fit into the car's cup holder!
4. Must have good isolation for preventing burns to the carrier, as well as for preserving drink's temperature for a longer time periods(either cold or hold).
5. Must have secure lid that functions as a isolator and spill proof cover.

And here is the list of 'desired' characteristics:

1. Would be preferred to have nice stylish design to attract a potential buyer.
2. Would be preferred to be make of some durable materials that will last and don't break from the first fall to the ground.
3. Would be preferred to be microwavable.
   

Proposal for Dynamic Traffic Control System

Here is my proposal for the team project. Download PDF here

Background research

I just want to add this link to the blog which describes already implemented the actual Speed Harmonization Signing system in Netherlands and Germany. I have never been in neither country and never heard of this system used, but according to this website they have used this system since about 1970s.

I am actually kind of shocked, but pleasantly surprised by this discovery that people already been thinking and making a huge effort in building such systems to relief the stress on the roads.

Friday January 28, 2011

Lecture Notes:

• Reviewed UML. Cheat sheet with the arrow diagram - here
• Modeling is an important learning milestone in this class, understanding of UML eases this learning.
• Training and budget: sometimes need to set some time aside and budget for training time.
• IBM 360 example: adding new person to the project isn't always good because there is time consumed for training

Important Considerations for SW products development

• Maintainability is an important factor for the design of SW products
• Financial Profitability - even for the open source SW
• SW product must be within legal bonds
• American society is very entertainment and service based
• Copyright - important to have legal considerations about SW development
• Licencing SW, maintaining the ownership of the SW and renting SW licences.
• Privacy
• Testing
• Security factors and concerns: 'Fuzz test' - blast SW with garbage (Can't potentially protect yourself from every possible bridge, but this test could potentially reveal at least some of the most obvious)
• Liability

Think about it:

• Take some device from daily life and break down design of it down what considirations used for design of this particular product ( ex. used in class - alarm clock)
• UML cheat sheet on the blog

Wednesday, January 26th

Lecture Notes:

• Brush up on UML diagrams
• In budget planning, allow some buffer( highly recommended to inexperienced budget planners)
• Our currency in this class is TIME

Monday January 24th, 2011

Lecture Notes:

• Covered in detail the format of preliminary proposal
• Customer will be paying higher attention to what actually proposed system do, honesty of the proposal about its easy and critical parts.
• Graphs and pictures of any essential project elements and graphical presentation of time-line is essential for potential customer review and clear understanding of the project.
• Key formula for time estimate(with time allowance for errors): (time what you think it will take you) * 2 = realistic time;

Just another idea for the project, but scale of it might be too small

In my other class, Environmental Science, we currently cover water usage, waste, and treatment. One of my classmates, Amanda Kennedy, had mentioned in her discussion the following:

"I think that a monitoring system should be designed which is both accurate at testing for and removing contaminants, while remaining cost-effective for consumers. This idea is most likely improbable, but not entirely impossible. Unfortunately, until that monitoring system is created, I believe if further purification is desired for the water we drink, it should be handled at the level of personal intake."

I really liked the idea of implementing something that is not there as of know yet.

So general idea would be of having a testing system that performs the testing of incoming water, evaluates results, determines what chemicals and what amount would be added to treat the water, and performing the treatment. The challenge would be in the possible delay of the system between testing and treatment operations, and keeping the flow of the water the same at all times.

Concept Paragraph

I am pretty sure that this is something that people thought of in various ways, but not exactly as I am imagining it would be.

First of all, who ever experienced traffic in the rush hour probably can relate to my personal feeling of being tired and frustrated that with all this technology, nothing yet had been done to relief the stress of the road rage and make the roads safer and more pleasurable to drive. Another example is staying at the traffic light with no other cars around seems like for eternity, yet traffic light had a fixed time latency and nothing, literally nothing would change it to make it more fair in certain situations.

For once, accidents do happens, yet there is nothing there in the system to guide the rest if the traffic without causing the major traffic jam. Yet some of the GPS applications start providing such services, but I am not taking about another service here. How about changing the entire system of how we all drive and how the road signals and signs dynamically inform us of some condition that possibly change a head of us.

So I want to propose the entire change to the all driving rules. It is probably too futuristic, yet something I believe can be accomplished! So what if all traffic lights and traffic speed signs were dynamically adjusting to the road and traffic conditions?

Each traffic light and speed sign would be an independent agent of the entire system. They all would communicate with the central database that will be collecting information about all of the other agents as well as weather road conditions that could be taken from current services available out there. Based on that information, agents can adjust themselves to allow more even flow of the traffic through their point of service. In addition to signal lights and speed limit signs, re-directional dynamic sign posting could be introduced to this system allowing to inform driver of the road's closures due to the weather or accident, as well as having warning messaging to warn drivers for lower speed limits and higher traffic flow ahead or on the branch of the other road.

Yes, the change would involve re-design of the actual traffic light system and introducing more dynamic speed limit signs(intelligent traffic light sequence), as well as adding more of the message boards with hopefully higher quality (just the ones most common would be seen by the casinos), which will increase presentably of the information to the driver for faster processing (but even simple message boards that are on the roads now could be used!).

But who knows how much frustration would that take away from our daily life, and make roads safer to avoid some unexpected weather changing conditions, and make the traffic flow more even and fair through out the entire system.

Brainstorming...

Brainstorming some ideas for the class's project that will be interested and motivating to do, and at the same time feasible to complete considering the time restrains we have given.

An important factor considered in filtering out some of the ideas if it is not something already out on the market. The goal is to make something fun and creative without replicating someone's work!

My personal interests in SW areas that I would like for this class project to have some portion of in it:

• Some basic database
• Artificial Intelligence for system's learning over time by adjusting itself after analyzing data from its database

Friday January 21, 2011

Quick Lecture Notes:

• On the average proposal's length does not exceed 20 pages. For this class considering that proposal will have 9 sections, 10 pages will be sufficient.
• Proposal should have great quality as well as great attention to detail.
• Proposal should catch and keep attention of the reader.

Link to the class's blog: http://unm-cs460.blogspot.com/index.html

Reading:

Continue on reading "Mythical Man-Month, Essays on Software Engineering" by Frederick Brooks. I really enjoy reading this book and I love the way it is had been written.