What is it like? (App. Comp / Comp. Forensics)

jakedixon2004

Im strongly thinking about doing computer forensics down in WIT but i just want to know:

1. What is the course like?
2. What is the gaming scene like down there?
3. What is the broadband like?

Any help would be great!

Sully

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

Im strongly thinking about doing computer forensics down in WIT but i just want to know:

1. What is the course like?

Most people seem to be enjoying it. Its the first year of it running irrc, but has been part of the Applied Computing Course as an optional stream for some years now.

There are a few topics on the forensics course around the WIT Forum. Iv been meaning on getting a proper synopis of whats covered, but im just short on time at the moment!

2. What is the gaming scene like down there?

In WIT or just gamers in general? I dont think its big within WIT, not even sure if there is a Club or Society for such. As for Students, iv no idea if its big but I know plenty of "gamers" - people who play there Xbox/PS/Wii etc. throughout the day.

3. What is the broadband like?

Depends where you stay. Templers Hall residents use NTL mostly, with offers recently from Smart Telecom. Supposed to be just as fast as the college if not faster, but it depends on the package you pick with them. Manor Village is fast(sh) but comes with restrictions as does Riverwalk afaik. Lismore Park and other areas are probably using NTL.

College has good broadband speeds and most of it is covered by a secured wireless (dodgy) network. Lots of computer rooms after being upgraded (outside of the IT Building) so you got great machines to go with it to.

christophicus

I tried to get info about the gaming Soc at the start of the year and no one replyed to my txt so I am assuming its dead.

jakedixon2004

does anyone orginise LANS?

christophicus

Not that I am aware off. But then again there are so many people in the collage that I only know a tiny fraction of them.

There is an internet cafe down here that used to host lans and have gaming rigs. If you were so inclined you may be able to get one going in there if you could get enough people in the collage to attend.

Sully

christophicus wrote: »

There is an internet cafe down here that used to host lans and have gaming rigs. If you were so inclined you may be able to get one going in there if you could get enough people in the collage to attend.

If I recall, they stopped that and its more a training facilite. Though, Murderer would know better..

christophicus

Yeah I think you are right. But I am sure they would consider hosting a lan if enough people would come.

AdMMM

CyberMart, on the Park Road in Waterford, run an overnight LAN once a month, usually on a Friday. Although Brendan would certainly be interested in running it on a more regular basis and at a more convenient time should you be able to convince him of adequate interest.

An idea would be to try and resurrect the WITless gamers society which hasn't been active this year and apply for funding from the college which you could use to pay for your own LANs in CyberMart and run regular competitions with prize money. I'd be interested in doing this myself, but I've been very busy setting up and running the Poker Society in the college and haven't had time to even consider it.

Although trust me when I say that if you're interested in gaming, you'll find yourself being invited to people's houses for mini-LANs and mini-tournament once you settle into college and get to know people.

christophicus

**** man I did not know that they still do Lans there , Are you sure they still go on there? I used to go to the BF lans a few years ago , but they died out because no one was showing up. What games do they play ??

Murderer I would like to help you set up witless gamers again if you are considering doing it. I am not sure I would want to try and get it started on my own though .

jakedixon2004

OMFG that would be unreal to have a gamer society in WiT
I am definentaly going to go to WiT now

jakedixon2004

What is the broadband like in College Field's?

ec18

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

What is the broadband like in College Field's?

Where's college fields?

Sully

ec18 wrote: »

Where's college fields?

At a guess, id say thats the oncampus accommodation. The ones on the small car bark at the side of the hall.

ec18

ahhh...I thought that was only for ERASMUS students....Probably wrong though

jakedixon2004

I havent a clue where it is but it is on the website
Does anyone know what type of maths and physics are on the Applied Computing Course?

ec18

see here http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=54869244&postcount=4

stick-dan

Hello,

I hear you're planning on coming down to do computer forensics in Waterford IT. Good idea i must say but make sure you do the computer forensics dedicated course instead of choosing it as an option two years into an applied computing course.It has two major advantages doing it this way because the course i think is 3 years long, a yea shorter than the applied computing course for just as good education and also you would not be stuck in a course for two yeas before you got to do it and then discover it is not the course for you.

You asked about the gaming scene in the college, This year there has been none. Two friends of mine non-boardies this year did attempt to rejuvenate the witless gamers club but due to their lack of attendance and eventual and probable exist of the course this never happened. I am definite though that it was discussed with clubs and society by them and they got the go ahead to re-establish the club although i am a bit sketchy if the college was providing finance,I'll try to find out though. As for if there are gamers in the college there most certainly is.I know this because i was stuck in a class full of them for the year even though i am not a gamer myself.So don't worry you'll definitely have gamers to mess around with should you come down if even the last two years of applied computing students and this years computer forensics student are anything to go by. And yes it is true that there also has been the hosting of LAN parties within the student society of the college although i have never attended one but some of the boardsies here have, you know who ye are :P

With regard to broadband and its quality in waterford there are many options you can partake with all Dependant on where you decide to reside in the city. Should you for example decide to reside in Riverwalk where i did last year you will suffer no download speeds worth noticing and regular loss of connection. Living in manor village you will have slightly acceptable broadband but i personally would not accept it's level of speed as i am sure either would you being a future computing student yourself. To be honest and frank if you are a computing student and want a place with a decent broadband connection there are no student accommodation facilities in waterford that provide adequate broadband services for a computing students needs in my opinion. The option i choose to take this year after spending a year in the company of Riverwalk's continuous crappy broadband service i choose to get a house and contract 6mb broadband from NTL which is brilliant. It has only broke down twice so i have no major problems with it and at one stage they unknowingly provided us with 8.2mb broadband for two months without knowing.they only noticed it when i rang up the time the service went down.

So to summarize, Waterford IT provides a good forensics course which seems to be being enjoyed by both courses using it at the moment and the city provides no decent enough broadband service so the better option is to get a house and contract from NTL who do pretty good student deals in fairness to them.

jakedixon2004

sorry i just noticed the reply now
thanks for all the information , i am probably going to WiT providing i gets the points and the B in maths
It says that there is programming on the course
do u know what it is like

Sully

The programming is intense, and its all Java.

ec18

Sully wrote: »

The programming is intense, and its all Java.

Which turns out to be useless in Industry

jakedixon2004

thats a pitty
I was looking forward to learning something like c

Sully

Im not sure of the streams for that course, but in Applied Computing you do C in the Gaming Stream in second year.

jakedixon2004

I will probably stick with Forensics for the moment
I heard that Applied computing is a very difficult and diverse course

ec18

C is hard and nasty java is much nicer to learn and use for most day to day things. C is used when memory allocation and speed are the most important factors. In the Game Dev stream we use C.....and its a very hard transition going from Java to C

stick-dan

The applied computing is a diverse course and also a very dis-heartening course at times. I'm in second year of it and you just want to leave at times but its my own fault for not paying as much attention as i should. If you do decide forensics you'll like it, the current crop seem to. It has advantages doing the applied computing though.True you don't do forensics until second year but you do get a greater understanding of technology i think anyway. Either way you go you'll get your forensics. It's just a semester shorter in the applied computing course. Forensics is good though. I like the class i must say. Can't wait for cryptography wayhay lol. As with regard to programming sure the programming is combined between the two courses but it all depends on the lecturer you get that will determine how hard it is. This years first years are getting a better run at it than i did last year. They are already touching on stuff we only doing in second year. It's luck of the draw with regard to programming.

coadyj

well java and c# which is pretty much used exclusivly in the work place are nearly the same language, just slightly diffrent api's

you kids have it easy now though with eclipse and vs2008, back in my day all we had was notepad.

Also i would harldy call the programing intensive kev, you start off with basic object interaction without writing a single line of code.

I was in the first year forensics course and it was a little slow for my liking, but i already had a degree in ICT from Trinity. So they bumped me up to 3rd year appliced c. Same course really

Sully

1st Year semester 1 is fine. But your put straight into the deep end of it in second semester with little or no help. Its a kinda shock, unexpected one. I assume you were pretty good with programming, so it would always be a walk in the park for someone who had a flare for programming! Like we had to do an interactive text game, football league with sorting / top20 chart with sorting (similar), web side for either of the earlier projects (a bitch and pain in the arse). The general web coding for servlets is grand but for a web course I would have expected something like PHP or ASP at least.

If you have a talent at programming and find it easy, its grand. I think PHP is an easier language to learn then Java. Don't like Java, and from speaking to graduates there not being asked to use it. A lot of companies people ask on those graduate days are being told that they don't want Java. C on the other hand, is a requirement.

ec18

I'm currently on work placement and java hasn't been mentioned yet...its ruby and php

jakedixon2004

do u have to secure networks and stuff in the course or is it more complicated than that

stick-dan

Depends on if you take the networking stream of the course. Sources in the networking course suggest that it is an exciting stream and liked alot. You will touch on cryptography in forensics or networking and also all about network administration and security, I still have to do that but people have told me the module is great.

Also i don't know if you would be interested but the college also offer a CCNA course which is backed by cisco that students of any year can avail of. It is run once a week and you are tested every week from the second week onwards and you must get a required mark of 80%(i think 80% not sure but there is a required mark for every test a minimum pass if you will but a lot higher than the ordinary pass mark of 40). The cisco (CCNA) course offers a lot when it comes to networking and if you feel drawn to the idea of networking you would have that course to provide you with networking modules instead of waiting for third semester to start it.

jakedixon2004

sounds like fun
I will defo do that course in cisco anyway it will be a huge benefit i the future

stick-dan

so you've made you mind up then?

coadyj

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

sounds like fun
I will defo do that course in cisco anyway it will be a huge benefit i the future

CCNA is a load of ****, unless your going to do deskside support which you can do without a degree nobody is going to care.

"Wow you know what a rooter is, omg your so smart"

As for java and the industry you guys could not be more wrong, java is completely platform independent which means is has api's to run on phones, webservers, pc's and even on xbox's. digital convergence was the biggest thing to hit IT in the last few years and would not have happened without java.

as far as job in java when your finished well http://www.jobs.ie/Jobs.aspx?Categories=&Regions=&Keywords=java&Submit=Search

also if you cant learn java, then you will never be able to program at all. its fundamentally the simplest OO language. And kev i wasnt always good a programming, my first year in trinity i was ****, I just sat down and went threw all all the assignments and it came to me, but be warned, most people dont get it.

coadyj

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

do u have to secure networks and stuff in the course or is it more complicated than that

not at first, but yeah obviously its harded the WEP and WPA.

for example you may know about router security, but do you know the theory? you may have an idea about what a network is but do you know about topologies, ieee standards? and that just basic 1st year stuff.

You would want to be good at maths too.

Sully

Didn't you do ****e in your interview with Google when it came to networks James?

I still stand by my statement that Java in the course IS intense, and its a matter of you either like it or hate it. I don't mind Java to much, but I warm more to PHP.

stick-dan

James you're terrible bitter about the course aint ya. :P

CCNA is a good starter point if you would rather not wait until third semester to do networking.

Sully

Bare in mind, that CCNA is pretty much everything you do in Networking in 1st and 2nd year. The notes are practically the same.

jakedixon2004

I never knew that there would be Maths involved in networking (that shows u how much i know about it)
As for that cisco course, I thought it would be vital for a career in networking

I am definentily going to WiT providing I get the B1 in Maths and the 360 points requirded for the course

Sully

Im not to sure what Maths James is on about, but there is very little Maths involved in the course right up until 3rd year at least.

Cisco is a recognised course, and I would suggest you do it if you want a career in networking. Doing it via WIT is time consuming but cheaper.

coadyj

i didnt mean maths in CCNA, i mean in the degree you need to be good at maths. sorry for the confusion.

now although i do know kev to be the guru of all things WIT i will say that i know a lot of people who work in IT, and i working in IT myself for a few years and I or any of my friends have ever been asked weather we had the ccna.

AHH but james, your a programmer i hear you say. true but most of the people i went to college with ended up in networking. My mate did the Microsoft networking administrator exam, but it was a lot more intense then the ccna.

I would like to see the college offering the sun cert and the msad ect so sully get on that.

A friend of mine works in ibm without a degree as a desk side support person and he is thinking about doing the ccna. but only because he has nothing else to show. and i still think its a waste of time.

and btw, if i did so bad in the google interviews then how come
:):)

(I turned them down too.)

Hi James,

I hope that you are well, I have just received great news overnight that everything has been approved for your internship.

What happens next?
You will receive two copies of your contract, one via email (to allow you to read through and ask any questions) and one by post. Please contact me the moment that you have received and read through your contract (email) so that if you have any questions I can address them. If you are happy with everything then we need to start your work permit application as soon as possible.

Questions/not heard?
If you have any questions at all or haven't heard from us regarding your placement please do contact me as soon as possible (contact details below)

Its great news, we just need to make sure that all of the final elements are organised now!

Well done!

Alex
xxxxxxxxx@google.com
+44 207 03x xxxx

jakedixon2004

So what type of Maths/Physics is there in the degree

Sully

coadyj wrote: »

i didnt mean maths in CCNA, i mean in the degree you need to be good at maths. sorry for the confusion.

In Applied Computing / Forensics? I'm not that good at Maths or Physics and its what held me back, but I got thought most of it now thank god - only one more and all is back to normal. Id imagine the OP is good at Maths?

now although i do know kev to be the guru of all things WIT i will say that i know a lot of people who work in IT, and i working in IT myself for a few years and I or any of my friends have ever been asked weather we had the ccna.

AHH but james, your a programmer i hear you say. true but most of the people i went to college with ended up in networking. My mate did the Microsoft networking administrator exam, but it was a lot more intense then the ccna.

Fair enough, its what we were told about the CCNA. I think its a very useful course either way.

I would like to see the college offering the sun cert and the msad ect so sully get on that.

I would like to see the college offer more Web Dev. courses, and move around languages more - rather then sticking with Java. I agree, these courses on offer would be great. I think they have a nice handy deal with Cisco & Microsoft, which is probably why we don't see more being offered - open source technologies, different certs etc.

and btw, if i did so bad in the google interviews then how come
:):)

(I turned them down too.)

I meant in regards to your networking questions they asked you - if I recall, you had difficulty with basics? Anyway James, you know full well you have the experience and intelligence to pick up a job like that - with or without networking knowledge!

Sully

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

So what type of Maths/Physics is there in the degree

2 years of both - maybe more depending on the stream you pick.

The Maths & Physics in Forensics is the same as those covered in the Applied Computing course - you will be mixed with them for those (and other) subjects.

stick-dan

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

So what type of Maths/Physics is there in the degree

Physics in the course is simple to be honest because i just about passed my junior cert physics. It was my weakest subject in secondary school but i found it simple enough in college. The physics is split down the middle. You have a double practical every week that is manditory to attend, miss two of them and you fail but generally people enjoy the practicals. The practicals have to be logged each week and handed up for assessment at the end of the year. The physics consists of gravity theory,electromagnetism and kinetics and lasers:D in first year first semester.

You don't have physics in second semester.

In third semester you have digital electronics. It is a tedious module but if you apply the effort is easily passed.Digital Electronics consists of looking into diodes,transistors, conductivity theory,looking at binary counters, multiplexers,demultiplexers, decoders, karnaugh maps, playing with a multi-processor thats mainly it. The practicals in digital electronics are not as good as failing components are annoying but after we complained this year we were assured it wouldn't happen again. Again a log book has to be completed and assessed for the practicals.

Maths in first year is ok. It is about differentiation, integration, complex numbers,sets,functions,enumeration,simpsons rule,logic,etc. Basically first year maths is like leaving certificate applied maths.Not too bad.It all depends on your lecturer. Some people have different view on the lecturers.

Second year maths is easier in my opinion. Differential Equations, Integrals,vectors,scalars,transformations,rotations,eigen vectors and eigen values etc.Then i fourth semester in second year you have statistics which i ma in at the moment and trust me i dont need to tell you what that is about you did that in first year.;)

You'll be fine. Are the points 360 this year??

stick-dan

Sully i know you are the moderator but i am pretty sure jakedixon2004 would like to hear more about the course and less about you two debating.:):D;):rolleyes:

might i suggest you two being more direct.

Sully

stick-dan banned. Nah your right, we went of topic there. Iv posted whats on the courses a few times, and given a good bit of info - give a search and you should be able to find. I wont repeat myself, so I just gave you a summary

jakedixon2004

Thanks for all the help
I took physics in Leaving Cert thinking that I would need it but by the sounds of it I dont
I think it is 360 points but i am not sure

stick-dan

If you do physics in the leaving cert you will be fine. I took no science subject in the leaving cert. Have you decided which one you will choose. Forensics or Applied Computing.

jakedixon2004

I am going to do Forensics
What type of jobs can u get after the course

stick-dan

here's a hint, go to any of the major jobs sites and look up anything to do with computer security,.You could join the fraud squad,any anti-virus/malware prohibiting company,e.g norton.

There is also "exciting new developments in the forensics scenes and the guards apparently are expanding into this section as cyber crime becomes and increasing problem.

In special cases the CSI and FBI do hire for internet security and computer probing personnel.But this is a long shot unless you are very determined:)

England is expanding big at the moment in the area of cyber crime prevention and internet security and fraud so you will not be left for a job.

I have only named a fraction of the jobs here. No doubt James and sully will inform you more:)

Unfortunately as is misinterpretated there is no herratio kaine in the course, no speed boats, analyzing blood samples etc.:)

coadyj

You can get into two side of forensics

Security or Investigation, not too much of the latter in ireland, but security is pretty big, they say over 25% of irish companys lost over €100,000 from hackers, so obviouly its something they want to crack down on.

You could also go the other way and see it as a IT degree, which it basicaly is and you could get into networking, programming or even support(but that is like the worst job you can get)

My advice to you is to spend first year completly focused on programming, It may seem like a lot of work but belive me it will be worth it in the end. Dont mind these guys when they say java isnt good, its the best and easyist language to learn by far. I can garantee that you will never be able to learn c/c++ if you cant get java.

Anyway, good luck with the course.