A Student's Perspective

  Case file #3 The patient is terrified of heights following a "harrowing experience" in the air. The patient claims to "know something about the missing one." Strong antipsychotics will be prescribed. Excerpt from the patient's diary: It wasn't on the 7th one. The pilot was right. They won't find the missing one. I knew I shouldn't have done what I did, but I had no choice. I hated working the railroads. YOU NEED TO FIND IT!  UP BPZMM AMDMV HMZW The patient appears to be talking to someone. An alternate personality, perhaps. More investigation is needed. Age: 92 (89) Weight: 74 kg Height: 180cm BMI: 23 Current medication: Experimental antipsychotics

 Case File #2 Staff Update:  All patients are now required to write a diary. The patient is hallucinating. He keeps mentioning writing about having "figured it out." I am recommending a strong regimen of Haldol, (10mg per day). This should keep the patient calm and cooperative. Excerpt from the patient's diary: "I've figured it out. I've fgured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. It's missing. They left the key. It's missing. It's missing." The above entry shows the patient's deteriorating mental status. Weekly psychiatric evaluations will be scheduled to remedy the situation. Age: 71 Weight: 45kg Height: 172cm BMI: 15.2 (Severe) Current medication: Haldol (10mg/day)

Most people have come across cryptography in some way, shape or form. To most people, it's just a way of encrypting a message in such a way that only the intended receiver can decrypt it. In this article, I will be exploring the benefits of public-key cryptography, most notably RSA, as well as explaining the basic concept behind computer cryptography for the uninitiated. Cryptography (intro) So, if this is the first time you've heard of cryptography, this section is meant for you! The basic concept of cryptography is relatively simple: You take a message and, combining it with some type of secret shared between sender and recipient, turn the message into something that cannot be understood without said secret. If you've ever come up with some sort of secret code in your childhood (or early adult life, no judgement here), you've probably done cryptography, even if you didn't know it. The simplest form of symmetric-key cryptography is the Cesar Cipher. The way it work...

Case file #1: The patient seems to be struggling with many issues. As agreed to, the patient has been writing diaries. A very human thing to do... Excerpt from patient's diary: "Notes: Purest motivation, concentration? Muscular strength and functionality reduced. What is happening?" As is evident from the above entry, the patient is still in the early stages of the disease, he displays only minor symptoms and, as such, will be placed under mild sedation. Age: 53 Weight: 66kg Height: 185+ cm BMI: 17.9 (too low) Current medication: --Classified--

 Welcome back! This is the second and final part in a series of articles about why unmanaged programming languages are the best. In this article, I will be covering the ways in which unmanaged programming languages, such as C++, are far superior to managed languages when it comes to data management and manipulation. Pointers Pointers are literally the best thing since sliced bread...  They seem like such a simple concept, but oh man are they powerful! Basically, a pointer is a variable that holds a memory address. It's actually a little more simple than that. A pointer, at it's lowest level, just holds an integer. This means you can do integer arithmetic with it. It might not be immediately obvious why this is useful, but I'll get to that in a minute. The first thing pointers allow you to do that is pretty neat is to change the data type of a variable very easily. Now, this isn't strictly speaking converting the data to another ty...

In this article, I aim to discuss the benefits of unmanaged programming languages, such as C++. As a currently enrolled Computer Science student and a programmer with at least six years of programming experience, I have come across my fair share of programming languages, from the ubiquitous commercial languages like Java to the extremely specialized and mostly unheard of ones, like Prolog. The point being, in six years of programming, the most useful languages I come across are almost always unmanaged languages. With a couple of exceptions that I will also discuss, such as Python. But wait! I'm not even a programmer! That's okay! (Jeez, stop shouting...) I will be explaining the concepts necessary for understanding my argument in full. So just hold on tight, maybe grab a coffee, and enjoy the ride. Data allocation: Variables If you've never programmed before, you must understand the concept of variables. Specifically, how the underlying memory they are con...

Here's a fun fact you probably didn't know: Every computer I own runs on Linux. For the most part, this has been a taste and practicality issue, but as the years go by, Linux is getting more and more accessible to everyone. In this article, I aim to highlight a few reasons why you, the reader, should use Linux. To most people, the idea that there are multiple options for choosing an operating system seems foreign, and that's completely understandable. Some people (my parents included) don't even know what an operating system is. For that reason, I am going to try not to get too technical in this article. I'm also going to be comparing Linux to Windows pretty extensively, so, Windows users, feel free to shout at me. Money This might come as a surprise to most people, but Linux is completely free. I'm serious! So many times people have asked me to get them Windows for free since it costs about $200 (The exact price as I'm writing this is $199 for Windows 10 Pr...