REAL TIME GRAPHICS AND RENDERING

The presentation focus on the giving the general concepts on how graphic can be produced by computer programs. The are several terminologies which was used in the presentation. Raster Image is the two dimensional image, Vector Image is an image which is created by mathematical algorithms as three dimensional images, Modeling is process of creating images similar to actual things, Texture is the process of building the surface, Animation is the rapid display of image in sequence, Rendering is the final process of creating an actual 2D image or animation from the prepared scene.
The history of computer graphic goes as early as ages of the 1960s the time when computer technology was rapidly gaining power to stand onto its feet like sketchpad program spacewar game and other animated graphics. In 1990s many films were created by graphical animation e.g. terminator 2, Toy story, beauty and beast. Many scenes contained 3D animated objects which were flat shaded with bright colors so as to blend with characters.
Computer graphics refers to any picture or series of pictures that is generated with the aid of computer. By discussion computer graphics refers to 3D graphics and not images created using 2D images or painting programs such as Photoshop, Gimp or Painter. The difference between 2D and 3D is that, most of 2D software is bitmap (raster) based, all 3D are vector based. Real time Graphics refers to computer graphics that signifies reality.
The field is applicable in movie industries where computer graphics characters are designed and associated in the movies. In other cases the full computer graphics movies are produced e.g. The movie of Madagascar and Bee Movie, also some times Movies that involves both computer graphics characters an humans are produced. E.g. Lord of the Ring, Star wars. The field is also applicable in the car model for designing car engine and the whole model. Games are designed by creating actors by computer graphics which animate the models. Medical Imaging and scientific visualization are used to design the teaching tools and diagnosis.
The advantages of this field is –
>It minimizes the cost of actual production/ construction in the field of Engineering.
>It gives more flexibility and allows complex effects and movies to be produced in film production.
>In games it allows real objects to be designed and programmed so that gaming becomes more interesting
>In medicine computer graphics simulation of body organs helps the process of studying the body easier.
The disadvantages of the computer graphics are as follows-
>It takes too much time to design the models depending on the size of scene.
>The computer graphic applications have got complicated interfaces which is difficult to be adopted by novice people
>Requires fast machines for fast rendering
>It takes the part of human actors in some of the movies/films thus these people are fired from their jobs
The computer graphics is the very complicated field though it is important to many fields like medicine, engineering, film production and all other technologies

Reference:
T. Strothotte, Computational Visualization: Graphics, Abstraction and Interactivity, Springer Verlag, 1998.

J. Foley, A. van Dam, S. Feiner, and J. Hughes, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice (5th Ed),Addison-Wesley, 1993.

IRIS RECOGNITION

The topic aimed to give the general ideas on how to identify the human by using the iris. The topic was well organized and presented to the class, Iris is the muscles within the eye that regulate the size of the pupil and controlling the amount of light that enters the eye. Iris recognition is the process of analyzing the randomly pattern of the iris.
Before the recognition the iris is located in the landmark features, localization of iris is important step in iris recognition because if it is being done improperly can result to noises. Also, require the use of high quality digital camera, but nowadays commercial iris cameras that use infrared to illuminate the iris without causing harm is used.
The vector on the iris is taken and are converted in the codes and then stored in 256 bits. The vector will give the position are of formation of the vector. This vector includes the information on the orientation and spatial frequency and the position of this area. Iris pattern are described by an iris code, using the phase information collected in phase. The polar coordinate systems included in the description of the iris are control bytes that are used to exclude eyelashes, reflection and other unwanted data.
The advantage of Iris recognition
1 Ease usage.
2 Certain conclusion ands minimum error rate.
3 Since the iris is unique, this ensures maximum security.
4 Identification of a persons who have limited use of hands or arms.
5 Is its stability, or template longevity.

Challenges of iris recognition-
• Distance scanning.
• Cost.
• Border control.
• Environmental challenges.
• High quality image

So far to recognize someone can be done the many other ways like speaker recognition, fingerprints and others using the iris recognition can be helpful in ensuring the security by identifying the real person.

References
1 .Digital Image Processing (2nd Edition), R. C. Gonzales, R. E. Woods, 2002.
2. Biometrics, J. D. Woodward, N. M. Orlans, P.T. Higgins, McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2002

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT
This topic was the very interesting topic as far it was giving the very important concepts about the simulation of the human behavior. Edward coelestin and Dastan Kamuzola presented the topic. Artificial intelligent is the phenomena, which imitate the human behaviors. The presentation focuses how some mechanical devices actually are demonstrated to behave with some degree of intelligence like human being.
The artificial intelligent history goes as far as the ancient Greek mythology(from 5th-20th century). In 1950 AM Turing introduced the Turing test as a way of operationalizing a test of intelligent behavior. The modern history e.g. Nomad robot explores remote regions of Antarctica looking for meteorite samples and brought the good report. Now Artificial intelligent is the capability of a device to perform functions that are normally associated with human intelligent e.g. reasoning, thinking, interpreting etc. while robotics is the science of robots and their design, manufacture and applications.
Artificial Intelligence is characterized with the following, namely:-
1 Reasoning depends on logic criteria inserted by the programmer otherwise the robot does not reason as people do (e.g. Voice recognition)
2 Multi-agent Planning can perform different tasks at once
3 Communication ability by artificial intelligent can communicate according to the information given.
4 Identification can be (e.g. Finger print & The Nomad robot explores.)
5 Manipulation of object
6 Interpretation
Examples of artificial intelligent
1 Machine translator
2 Location detection e.g. tags
3 Automatic essay assessment
4 Electronic sensor e.g. weapons, drugs etc
5 Black box in an airplane
6 Robots

AI can be applied in some areas like
Supermaket
Scientific experimentation
In sport and games
Domestic Activites
Location detection
Security affairs


Some of advantagies of AI are:
Simplify work
It is efficiency and accuracy
It reduces misleneous ambiquity e.g. (finger print)
It enhance good communication( natural language understanding & translation)

When expecting good, bad also comes.
Some disadvantages of AI are:
Initial cost is high or expensive
It requires highly skilled expert
It led into loss of job
Difficult to implement esp. in some third world countries

After modern computers be available, followed by 2ndWorld War , it has become possible to create programs that perform difficult intellectual tasks and tools are constructed which have applications in a wide variety of everyday problems


Reference:
Feigenbaum, E.A. & Feldman, J. (eds.) Computers and Thought. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
Gardner, Martin. Logic Machines & Diagrams. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1958.
McCorduck, Pamela. Machines Who Think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1979

PROGRAMMING AND COMPILER

The topic aimed to give the class different concepts which associates with programming. Programming is the widen topic which associates with different languages which are used to write different programs. In the presentation, there are several terminologies, which were used. Compiler is the program that converts from some source code to machine language. Software is the collection of set of programs to accomplish a certain goal. Programming language is the artificial language used to write a sequence of instructions that can be run in the computer. Machine language is representation of a program, which actually read and interpreted by the computer. Decompiler is the program that translates from a low-level language to the higher-level one.
The computer programming languages are divided into five types, which are-
Machine language that is directly understood by machine languages, the lowest level of programming languages (0s&1s). The second is the assembly language, which need a translator or converter to be understood by the machine. Thirdly is the Higher level language resembles some how to human language can be used in more than one kind of machine, the language is interactive user and computer communicate with each other directly during the writing and running program these language are like PASCAL, C/C++, COBOL, FOTRAN, PYTHON, JAVA etc. Fourth is the Very higher-level language allow users to specify the desired results without having to specify detailed procedures needed for achieving the results is like MYSQL, ORACLE, VISUL BASIC etc. Fifth is the Natural language programming language(NLP) the development steps are being developed make human more interactive to computer programming.
Selection of language greatly depends upon the nature of activity and availability of the simplest language to solve the preferred task or problems. There is no best language might depend on many things, which may be type of program, reason the program is built, size of program, programmer familiarity, ease of program verification etc. For stance VISUAL BASIC(1990s) for development of Microsoft Window application(writing interface), COBOL(1950s) for commercial application and data manipulation, FORTRAN(FORmular TRANslator-1950s) for doing complex mathematics for scientific engineering application, C/C++ for writing and developing operating systems and JAVA (1995) used for world wide web application and development.
The importance of computer programming languages.
Important for students in all disciplines of computer science
To improve your ability to develop effective algorithms
To increase your vocabulary of useful programming constructs
To make it easier to learn a new language
To make it easier to design a new language
Soft ware development, Interface writing etc
The challenges of programming languages are as follows-
Currently the programming languages are challenging on learning.
New languages are being invented
Need for skilled programmer
Difficult in debugging
Programming and Compiler this is a excellent field research to be aware of because it assist the user to recognize numerous things applying on the device.



References
o Principles of Programming Languages, Bruce J. McLennan
o Programming Languages Concepts and Constructs, Ravi Sethi
o Programming Languages Concepts, Carlo Ghezzi, Mehdi Jazayeri

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

This topic aimed at helping the students to understand how technology can ease the method of teaching and learning. The lesson was presented by Bahati Sanga in collaboration with Austin Jofrey. Education technology is complex as far as it involves people, procedures, ideas, devices and organization. Educational technology is the knowledge about teaching, learning and conditions of learning to improve the efficiency and training.
Education technology is the way of identifying, solving and facilitating learning process by using the available resources/tools. It facilitates learning by control of environment, media and methods by analyze the characteristics of learner and organize the content in logical. The main goals of of education technology are to teach by involving the techniques, which will bring about the behavior change toward that knowledge gained. Here is another thing, which is similar to educational technology that is technological education is the situation where by education is used to construct stuffs for education like teaching tools, some times these two things are used interchangeably.
The evaluation of the learner’s performance follows different paradigms which focus on the input, process, output, the nature of the learners and the nature of the content (subject matter) whether they have achieved the educational objectives.
The benefits of educational technology are many but some of them are-
Gives a structure, which make easily to measure the improvement of outcomes.
Easy to access course materials e.g. By the use different materials from the internet has helped the students to change positively or not.
Widen the participation through the internet
Improves students writing and language structures e.g. different correction in the word.
Subjects are easy to learn through a variety of educational software e.g. computer simulators graphics
Motivation to the students.
Also there are some criticism put forward by those who challenges the system of learning whether the technology can replace the work of the teacher, this is found no the work of a teacher does not be replaced by any technology because it lack motivation. More challenges are as follows-
· It involves special training e.g. the knowledge of using the devices like computers to both trainers and students.
· Without proper training teachers and students cannot benefit from the devices that will improve the quality of education.
· High costs to invest and run these devices need funds.
· It needs the proper administration of these devices.
To change the system always face a lot of problem and challenges but in order to improve the educational performance we must match with new technology. The evaluation of the learning environment, the learners’ behavior the nature of the subject matter will not be helpful if the advancements of technology will not be associated to the learners.

Reference.
Wicklein, R. C., & Schell, J. W. (1995). Case studies of multidisciplinary approaches to integrating mathematics

Zeisset, C. (1989). Many ways to cut a pie. Bulletin of Psychological Type

Zuga, K. F. (1989). Relating technology education goals

PARALLEL COMPUTING

Parallel computing this topic has been portrayed in order to give the general concept on how the computers (CPU) are organizing their activities. Abdala Sasya presented the topic with collaboration Mary Mwakisisile. The presentation was good so far, it gave different concepts to the class. Traditionally the software to be run in the computer was written in serial way, this made them to function in single computer having a single CPU.
CPU is the integrated electronic device that interprets instructions to the computer, performs the logical operation, and causes the input/output operations to occur. Under serial computation, the problem is broken into a discrete series of instruction and executed one after another at a moment.
Mathematician Neumann invented the idea of parallel computing when he was asking himself if a single CPU can solve a problem in ten seconds, then could ten CPU solve the same problem in one second. To get the answer for that question took long run; so he can explain that the parallel computing is the form of computation in which many tasks are carried out simultaneously then software was programmed in parallel computation in order to be run using multiple CPUs. Under parallel computing, a problem is broken into discrete parts that are solved in at the same time.
Those are forms of parallel of computing; Bit level parallelism is the amount of information the processor can execute. Instruction level parallelism controls how many operations in one computer program can be performed concurrently. Data parallelism is the distributing the data across different computing nodes. Task parallelism the different calculations either can be performed on the same or sets of data. These forms of parallel computing can be used in electrical engineering e.g. circuit design, Computer science e.g. Mathematics manipulation. Physics applied e.g. nuclear atoms.
The importances of parallel computing are those:-
o Parallel computing saves time in the sense that the concurrent execution of the problems limits the time.
o Solves even large problems which are complex
o Data sharing is also possible due to fact one machine may be doing normal activities and transferring other files.
Challenges of parallel computing.
The system is very expensive due to facts mounting many chips need good technology
Increase the traffic congestion to the shared memory (CPU path).
There must be a programmer to ensure correct access of global memory.
Parallel computing is the great idea to computer experts as it serves time to execute any problem also sharing information and solving large problems.



References:
.htt://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/computing.
.Leadbetter chips, (2004) Computer studies and information technology. Cambridge university.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

This topic aimed at exposing the students at the general concept of software development are the rules regulating the use of that software. Nelson Shoo with collaboration with Christin Obed presented the lesson. The presenters brought about the real concept on how the software engineering started and developed to the way it is now. Software engineering can be explained as the systematic approach to the design, construction, develop and maintenance of the computer programs.
The Historical background of software engineering goes as back as 1950 when programming languages started to appear such as Fortan Algon and Cobol in the world of computing. In late years of 1963-1968 then emerged the software crisis where in 1968-1970 it was necessary to the birth of software engineering as profession appeared in NATO software conference that was held in 1968 to solve the software crisis.
In 1960s the software were sold together with the computer so the software engineers were not at all paid for their hard job that they did, so they were discouraged with such act. By so doing most of them, they didn’t develop software any more and lead to that software crisis. The resuming the software engineering as profession was to overcome the crisis which were invading the world of of computing. Also aimed at creating the software of high quality, cheaper, maintainable and deliver them at time.
The software can be classified into different four categories, which are-
Retail software is sold off the shelves of retail stores
OEM software (Original Equipment Manufacturer) this refers to software sold in bulk to reseller, designed to be bundled with hardware e.g. Microsoft.
Shareware is the software which is downloaded from the internet but after a several period of time the customer has to purchase
Freeware is the software, which is downloaded from the internet free, but person use, while commercial use it requires a paid license.
The modern development of the software is done in join venture of different group of professionals in active collaboration of the customers who knows what are their needs (what do they need the software to do for them).
The methodologies of software engineering are-
Objects Oriented Programming (OOP) is the computer program style that uses data structure to design application and computer program.
Rapid application development (RAD) refers to a type of software development life cycle, which uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping.
Scrum (all at one approach to software engineering) is the type of methodology where different people with experience work together to manage complex work, such as new product development.
Team software process is defined operational process framework that is designed to help teams of managers and engineers to organize and produce large scale software projects.
The challenges, which face software engineering, are-
¨ Heterogeneity challenge that every day the needs are diverse, people are demanding different things by which the engineers are not yet made the software to serve those demands.
¨ Delivery challenge is the time bound between the customers and the engineers, always the engineers do not meet the time bound the mean the delivery takes too long time.
¨ Trust challenge sometime the customers do not understand what is possible and what is impossible with software at that particular time.
¨ Legacy system challenge it is possible to customer to amount money or property to engineer to avoid postponing the product.
The criticism to software engineering are-
o Fail to manage the expectation.
o Poor requirements from customers.
o Rising complexity requirement and user expectation of the customer.
o Ongoing change of technology.
o Ongoing failure of technology.
o Failure to pinpoint the causes of problems
o No theorems about people and projects.

As far as the software engineering is concerned has green future (job opportunities) we have to work hard so that we meet the people’s demands and behave ethically in a responsible way.



References
Ian Sommerville (2000) Software Engineering 6th Edition, chapter 1

www.freetechbooks.com/software-engineering-methodology-the-watersluice