A Word on Ethics

A simple, yet sure way of knowing if what we are doing is ethical is to ask yourself the proverbial, "What would Jesus do?" If Jesus would do it, it is ethical. If he would not, then it is unethical. Let us follow the example of the Savior in all things. This is the surest way of guaranteeing ethics in the workplace.

Video Blog - Using Computers in Moderation

Technology: Another One of God's Tools

Improvements in technology lead to improvements in the quality of our living—faster cars. slimmer TVs, and smaller computer chips. These are just a few of the miraculous results of improving technology. However, what is often overlooked is that while these improvements are working in man's favor, they are also working in God's favor. His purpose is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." This is done by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. What better way to do so than by allowing missionaries to stay in contact with their investigators at any place via cellphones; or how else would branch members in the middle of Hong Kong watch General Conference if there was no satellite to carry the signal? The fact of the matter is that technological advances work in God's favor just as much as it does in man's favor.

The Solution to Near Perfect Software

Open source software is the best solution available to creating near perfect software. I say near perfect because there will always be someone who doesn't like a certain feature in software, no matter how amazing everyone else thinks it is. However, open source software has many developers working on it at once–sometimes several hundred at a time. Many developers equals many diverse backgrounds. Many diverse backgrounds means many different people specializing in different things. Thus, open source software may have the advantage of someone expert in machine learning, and someone expert in data structure architecture, and someone expert in mail protocols. All together, these developers can, and with enough time, will turn the software into a [near] perfect masterpiece.

Flattening the World

The world is being flattened as we speak. Thomas Friedman pointed out ten of the world's greatest "flatteners," but we also need to recognize the smaller "flatteners." Since Thomas Friedman wrote The World is Flat, several new technologies have emerged that have further globalized the world. The cheaper and more portable version of the laptop, the netbook, has allowed many people to go online in places where laptops just aren't feasible. The rise of the 3G network has permitted people in even the most rural of areas to be able to communicate with friends, families, and coworkers. Additionally, social networking has been playing a huge role in globalizing the world. Eventually, the countries of the world will mesh almost as if as one huge nation.

Media Industry vs. Consumers

A radical change needs to be made to how media is accessed. Within ten minutes, a person can burn a CD with over one hundred songs, and not pay a dime for any one of them. The same can be said of burning DVDs. If a person knows how to download a movie to a computer, then that person is just one step away from being able to burn that movie onto a DVD. It is all too simple. The music and movie industry is being walked on by consumers. The rise of Netflix and Pandora has introduced solutions to these problems. The media both content providers provide is cheap (for the consumer) and difficult to pirate (for the music and movie industry). We need to get rid of CDs and DVDs and move to streaming everything on secure servers online. This is a better solution for both consumers and suppliers.

The Death of Mozilla Firefox

It's time to start saying your goodbyes to Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla recently reported that the popularity of the web browser has declined three months in a row. This is the first time in Firefox history that popularity has sunk like this. Instead, Google's Chrome browser has been stealing users from what is now known as the hottest open-source browser on the market. Google has just created too big of a name for itself for Firefox to be able to compete with Google Chrome. Firefox is following after the footsteps of long-gone Netscape. Within the next couple of years, Firefox is going to be another fad of the past. Bye Firefox.

Security in Technology

One thing that I have been pondering recently is how difficult security is to maintain in the realm of technology. It seems like everyday some piece of technology's weakness is exploited. One day hackers are attacking the iPhone. The next day, hackers are working on Windows 7. And the next day, hackers are stealing confidential information off of Citibank's main servers. When will this end?

I assert that the exploitations of security in new technological devices will never end. Let's face it, these devices are built by imperfect programmers. Therefore, the devices themselves are also imperfect. They all have weaknesses. And as long as there are people around looking for a good challenge (legal or not), the security in these devices is going to be breached.

The only possible way to ensure 100% security on these devices is if the programmer tests the device exhaustively (i.e. the programmer tests the device in every possible way, which, due to time constraints, is impossible). Not only that, but assume that upon learning of such design flaws, the programmer modifies the device's software to fix such flaws. Often, fixing a flaw, creates a new one. Therefore, I think we are going to be facing these kinds of problems forever. Thirty years ago it was a problem. Fifteen years ago it was a problem. Now it is a problem. And rest assured, ten years from now it is still going to be a problem.

Well, looking on the bright side, at least the computer security experts can harbor a strong sense of job security.

Technology in Pushing Forward God's Work

It blows my mind to see how the church has used technology in advancing the Lord's work. The process of building a family tree has never been easier. Years ago, one would have had to go through volume after volume, catalog after catalog, in order to find information on a relatvie that lived one hundred years ago. Now, I can login to my FamilySearch account, and find out how many siblings my great-great-great-great-great grandfather had in less than three minutes. I think of the cool things about this phenomenon is that it is so tied to what I am currently studying. It is more efficient algorithms and data structures that allows users to find their ancestors among a database of billions of names in just a few seconds. I love living now! It blows my mind to think what other advances will come about in the next 10, 20, or 100 years in the way the church does the Lord's work. Who knows, maybe one day someone will create a data mining machine that does all of our extraction work for us. That would be awesome.

Current Event 2

The Google/China clash will be a strong force in either relaxing or tightening China's censorship policies. The attack on several of Google's servers a couple of weeks ago that was caused by Chinese hackers has created quite a stir in China's internet politics. The hackers hacked into Google to access content that is currently restricted by the Chinese government. The hackers want to access censored content. Google wants into China, but not at the expense of getting attacked again by hackers. In order to lower the likelihood of being attacked again, China would have to relax censorship policies., but the Chinese government doesn't want to do this.

In order for this conflict to be resolved, somebody's going to have to give. The hackers probably won't stop hacking. So, Google is either going to have to pull completely out of China, which I think would give Chinese censorship laws more leverage. Or, China is going to have to relax its censorship policies, which I think would lead to more attempts by powers, both domestic and foreign, to further attempt weaken the censorship laws. To all of this I say, "Go Google!"

Women in Computing

I am fully aware that the number of women pursuing a degree in computer science is low. In fact, in every computer science class that I have taken here at BYU, I have only seen 1 to 3 females in class at a time. What is interesting though is that approximately 45% of Mathematics degrees are given to women (http://www.ams.org/ams/press/notices-survey2004.html). These women would rock in the field of computer science. Mathematicians and computer scientists can work together to create more efficient algorithms.

I would love to see more women taking computer science classes. I think they have just as much to offer to the world of computing as do the men. More needs to be done to entice women into computer science. However, I think that it's going to take a lot of work in doing so. Someone is going to have to convince women that computer science isn't just for geeky guys who built computers all throughout their teenage years.

Current Events 1

Lately, a hot topic to discuss in class has been the many booms found in the technology industry. Apple and Google seem to be the hottest companies right now. It seems to me that they are both proving to be quite formidable competitors to Microsoft. Apple has revolutionized the portability of music and video. Google has made it a piece of cake to access any kind of knowledge all across the world in a matter of seconds. Apple has pumped out several new generations and variants of the iPhone, iPod, iMac, iTunes, and Apple TV just wiithin the last few years. Similarly, Google has also created an explosion of products—Google Chrome, Google Wave, Googe Docs, Google Code, and Gmail. And that is not even an exhaustive list of their products. It would seem that after all these innovations and advances in technology, we would start to see a slowdown in the technology sector. But, I think, we're just getting started. I assert that the battle between the computer superpowers of our day, specifically Microsoft, Apple, and Google, is just getting started. And despite the rapid advances these companies have been making in such a short amount of time, I, the consumer, am loving every minute of it. The quality of my life is better. I can get more done sitting on my rear-end than ever before. I look forward to continually being bombarded by new IPhone apps and Google whatevers. It's great!