Monday, April 7, 2008

Economics Rule

In today's society, where information and content are freely available and easily distributed, infinite goods will eventually become free. This is basic economics: scarcity creates value, so infinite goods are inherently less valuable. When those infinite goods are free to produce (or copy), then the price of the good is pushed towards free. I believe that within 20 or 30 years, we will see an explosion of availability to goods that are currently tied up behind copyright and licensing agreements. This includes television, movies, pictures, music, and even books as they become more widely available in e-book formats. We are already seeing this with publishing companies distributing their e-book catalogs for free and networks that are, for the first time, allowing free internet access to their television programs.

The question then becomes, who will pay for all this free content to be created? The answer is simple; free, infinite goods will help sell the scarce goods produced by companies and individuals. This could be any number of things, such as a free music track helping create fans for an artist or an e-book sparking a desire to buy a book you never would have considered. The point is that, at the core, it is all basic economics.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Redefining Internet Safety

The Internet is full of new and exciting things. However, like anything, it can be misused; often in ways we can't imagine until it happens. Take, for example, this recent attack on a forum for epileptic individuals. It difficult to comprehend someone reaching out through the web and physically causing harm to someone else, but that's exactly what happened with these individuals. New ways to use the Internet to cause damage are dreamed up daily, just as new ways to benefit society are being created. As the Internet becomes ever more important in our daily lives, the opportunity to be harmed by something or someone online increases. The answer to fixing this problem isn't to curl up and hide from the Internet, but to become more aware that there is risk involved in everything, and recognize how much risk we are willing to accept from this important medium.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Art of the Prototype

"Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.'' (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Chapter 11) This highlights a point that's often overlooked in software: it's impossible to fully understand a problem until you attempted to solve it; therefore, your first solution will always be lacking. In software we tend to assume that we can do a few case studies, put together some user stories, and then roll out a piece of software that will meet the needs of our users. This has led to some major disasters in software; for some shining examples, just look at the market of enterprise software.

These problems could be lessened if more companies would invest in a serious prototyping stage. I'm not talking about a PowerPoint presentation showing the imagined functionality of your software. I mean pulling out the rapid prototyping tools, creating something that meets the core needs of your users to solve the basic problem, and rolling it out to 20-30% of your users to watch while they use it for 6 months. When we do this, we are following Brooks' council in planning to throw away the prototype, but saving time and energy by not wasting a lot of time creating a tool that has a good probability of begin fundamentally flawed.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Outsourcing is your friend

Enrollment rates in computer science dropped over 60% from 1999 to 2005. There are lots of theories attempting to explain why students are not choosing computer science, but one that has popped up assumes that students don’t want to enter a field which they perceive as being outsourced. That is to say, students believe that a degree in computer science will only prepare them to do coding jobs that have been shipped outside of the US in the past few years. Fortunately, this idea is easy to disprove.

First, it’s important to note that the idea that computer science graduates are only prepared to sling code is absolutely false (or, at least, should be). Universities strive to produce well-rounded students who can not only implement projects in code, but think about long-term sustainability of the systems they design and create elegant, algorithmic solutions to a problem. The jobs which require these skills are not being shipped across the ocean. The jobs that are leaving the US are typically pure implementation jobs which require less immediate oversight and are thus good candidates for remote work. The jobs which require close interaction with users, such as system design, or require higher levels of interaction with an organization’s management team are less likely to leave the US. These are the jobs for which CS graduates should be prepared. Therefore, US college graduates should not be competing with overseas workers for jobs that may leave the US.

The idea that jobs in IT are scarce is another falsehood. By most accounts, the jobs available for IT workers are only increasing, and are increasing at such a rate that the current supply of US workers can’t meet the need. Hence, companies are fighting over the ability to bring in foreign workers to fill their backlog of IT positions. Hence the problem the past two years with the shortage of H-1B work visas. For a qualified graduate student, there is no scarcity of jobs in IT.

The amount of jobs existing in the US and the type of jobs leaving should give CS graduates something to be excited about. As the lowest level of IT positions leave, and more interesting positions open up, students have more opportunity available to them than almost any other field.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

DRM Must Die

When Vista first came out, the copy protection on the system was lauded as the most advanced seen in the industry. Soon after, the copy protection was broken and it became possible to illegally run Vista on your machine. So the cumbersome verification system used by Microsoft does nothing to stop pirates and continues to annoy consumers. Such is the burden of DRM. The systems put in place to stop piracy only frustrate those consumers who want to legitimately use their content, and do little to stop those who wish to illegally distribute that same content. We see the same issues with the iTunes store and the new Blu-Ray format. Because consumers have now been burned by content that becomes unusable when you switch providers, consumers will hesitate from adopting new formats that employ DRM, which will hinder new markets such as the eReader market. Ultimately, businesses will realize the damage they are doing to their markets, but it will be a painful process.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Women in CS

As a woman in Computer Science, I have had a front row seat to determine, by personal experience, whether or not there exists discrimination in the field. After spending 5 years in the field (both in school and in the workplace), I have concluded that discrimination does exist, but mostly in a subtle, unconscious form, and not any outright hostility. For example, the most common discrimination I’ve experienced comes in the form of men who are uncomfortable working with women, for whatever reason. This is especially a problem at BYU, where many of the male students are married, and avoid working in a group with a woman. I have also experienced unconscious assumptions about my ability or desire to work, based on the fact that I am a woman. This happened while I was a tutor for CS courses and in my current position working for the Corporations of the Church. Fortunately, most men with whom I have worked are good people, and the discriminations I have experienced are certainly not career-altering or life-changing. I am convinced that most discrimination is completely subconscious and unintentional; therefore, the best remedy is a continuing awareness of the issue, and a commitment from men to fully include the few women that choose to enter the field of Computer Science.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Hey Corporations: We Loath DRM

Even as we see another victory scored against the kitten-killing DRM monster, Adobe takes a giant leap backward and proposes putting DRM into Flash. I don't understand why big companies refuse to see the light when it comes to DRM. If companies would open their eyes to the headache consumers experience when they try to use DRM-encumbered devices, they would see that it's hurting their businesses by alienating consumers. Someday, the madness will stop, and companies will realize that people don't want to be thieves; people just want things delivered and consumed in the most convenient way possible. (Hint: DRM doesn't fit the bill.)

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Government needs help governing technology

The government clearly has issues handling technology. There are questions regarding jurisdiction and application of laws written before certain technologies existed. The problems, as I see it, are two-fold. First, lawmakers misunderstand technology and its ramifications. Second, the process for creating laws and policies is too cumbersome to rapidly respond to situations created by new technology.

For proof regarding the ignorance of policy makers, one needs only recall Senator Ted Stevens’ explanation of the Internet. His speech is indeed concerning when we consider that he was arguing against net neutrality, an issue central to the technology sector. The same misunderstanding displayed by Ted Steven’s is rife throughout the upper echelons of our government, and we see examples of it in recent laws such as the one tying federal funding for universities to a prevention plan for illegal downloading. My personal belief is that age, more than anything, contributes to the inability of our lawmakers to understand technology. Examine today’s successful technology companies; most were started by younger individuals who had grown up with new technologies and had a more intuitive understanding of its true applications. While age isn’t necessarily an indicator of technical understanding, there is a correlation. Therefore, it is concerning that most politicians are in their late 50’s to early 70’s. We need lawmakers to understand technology so they understand its ramifications and change laws accordingly. As long as our lawmakers don’t understand technology, laws governing things like identity theft and intellectual property will remain out of sync with the general public.

Another concern hindering our government is that the method for creating laws and policies is flawed and unusable when it comes to technology. Let’s take, for example, the recent outbreak of data leaks in government organizations. The most frequent kind of leak is a laptop or external hard drive that goes missing. Because of this, some organizations have begun to require hard drives to be encrypted in order to mitigate the damage when a hard drive does get lost or stolen. Unfortunately, that won’t help the situations, as just a few weeks ago hard drive encryption was cracked by a team of researchers. From the rise of data leaks to the breaking of the encryption only took about a year, rendering all the budding policy around encrypting hard drives essentially useless. The organizations created to implement policies are so cumbersome that they simply can not keep up with the rapid changes in the technology world.

RIAA at it again

The RIAA has made it obvious time and time again that suing their loyal fans is a better business strategy than actually finding new and innovative business models. Of course, they don't want to go at it alone, and would love to get DAs to prosecute more pirating cases. Their latest tactic is a doozy: a training video created for the National District Attorneys Association.

Apparently, the RIAA is claiming that prosecuting piracy can be used to convict known criminals who the DAs can't convict on more serious charges. Think Al Capone, who was convicted on tax evasion charges. One gem from the video: Frank Walters is asked if people who have committed serious crimes are "gravitating to this type of piracy." Walters replies "More often than not, we find that most of the defendants we deal with...have spent time incarcerated on much more serious crimes." If that's the case, I wonder that the RIAA repeatedly claims that college campuses are the biggest source of piracy? Most college students hardly fit the picture of a typical music pirate painted by Frank Walters and Deborah Robinson.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Family History is not just Genealogy

Regarding family history, the council from church leaders frequently centers around genealogy, which is identifying your direct ancestor. My father has traced almost all of our family lines at least 10 generations back; the work that needs to be done to find names requires, at least, knowledge of languages I don't know. Continuing my family's genealogy has proven to be extremely difficult. Fortunately, the church emphasizes not only genealogy, but family history work, which calls people to "turn their hearts" to their ancestors. I believe we will soon see an increased emphasis from the church on that aspect of family history as more and more individuals trace their families so far back that traditional genealogy becomes too daunting to the average member.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Working for the Church

I'm in my third year working for the Corporations of the Presiding Bishopbric. It's fascinating watching, from the inside, how an organization I've been a member of all my life operates. I've grown up knowing the this is Christ's organization, but I've never thought of the very human errors and processes that make up all the levels of the Church. The Church is an inspired organization, run by individuals called of God, but the average person working for the Church doesn't have big revelations regarding exactly what they should do in their day to day lives. The Church operates much as we are told to run our lives; stay in tune with the Spirit, make decisions, check in frequently to make sure your not far off base, and move ahead. It's wonderful watching the principals of the Gospel put into action by those who steer this world-wide organization.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Send in the designers

The medical industry has undergone a veritable revolution when it comes to provider technology, but patient technology is stuck in a 70's time warp. The insulin pump is a good example: the device is functional and reliable, to be sure, but there's no thought given to the usability and design of the pump.

Young technology companies with a fresh industry perspective can help fix this problem. Unfortunately, the inherent risk in developing a life device is too high for new companies. If an insulin pump's hardware fails silently, or a software glitch causes insulin to be dosed at the wrong levels, the patient's life is at risk. This exposes young companies to legal liabilities they can't financially handle.

If a revolution is going to happen, the existing medical device manufacturers need to rise to the challenge. They stand to benefit the most by by making devices that integrate smoothly with life.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

College isn't the end of learning

Nobody knows what a CS degree should be teaching, but it doesn't matter. College can't teach everything needed to be successful in a future job; the decisions made about curricula will always be random choice from a myriad of possibilities, and there will always be people who think those choices were bad.

Once I get a job, the rest of life will have little to do with what I'm learning in school and everything to do with my personal drive and learning patterns. The cool things I learn are almost never in class, but through my own study. This won't change when I graduate, and it's this capacity to learn on my own that will determine what kind of employee I'll be.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

The RIAA == Neil Postman

The RIAA is run by people like Neil Postman. The core problem with governance in the RIAA is they don’t understand their business. Postman shows the same flaw of understanding; take this gem from a speech he gave in ’98:

“School teachers who are enthusiastic about [television’s] presence always call to my mind an image of some turn-of-the-century blacksmith who not only is singing the praises of the automobile but who also believes that his business will be enhanced by it. We know now that his business was not enhanced by it; it was rendered obsolete by it, as perhaps an intelligent blacksmith would have known.”

If the blacksmith’s business is defined by using a forge and handling all metal work in the area, then yes, that sort of blacksmith is gone. But if you define the blacksmith as someone who works with metal to create and fix, then blacksmiths are very much in business. Postman didn’t recognize automobiles were a boon to blacksmiths because he didn’t understand their real business. Similarly, the RIAA doesn’t recognize that file-sharing is beneficial because they don’t understand their business isn’t only distributing music, but providing entertainment through music.

Monday, January 14, 2008

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