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!