My CS 404 Thoughts

12-5: What do you do with a technical education?

2006-12-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

Today's presentation and discussion had two effects on me. First, it reminded me that I really do want to do my own thing, and start my own business again at some point. Second, it reassured me that there are people in the high-tech community that think like I do. I wouldn't have guessed that someone as technically savvy as Phil Bunker would agree with the RIAA about DRM and what I can and can't do with media that I have legally purchased, but it was nice to get the affirmation that someone a little older and much wiser than me thinks the same way I do about the subject. It was also great to hear his thoughts about what rights your employer should have over your outside-of-work intellectual property. Despite the fact that I'm not likely to have much leverage when I first begin my career, I can always turn down a job with an employer whose ideas of intellectual property don't allow me to exercise my own creativity. If everyone in the high-tech industry held the same belief, that their personal life and creations were completely separate from their employer, I believe it would have an impact on those employers who want to control or own their employees lives and creations. If no one would work for them under those conditions I think they would change their manner of thinking much more quickly than otherwise. Most of all I appreciated his (maybe underlying) message that your life and what you make of it are your own, and you can go as far as you choose.

11-28: Open Source or Free Software Foundation: Can you make money on something you give away?

2006-11-28T21:12:00.000-08:00

The topic of free and/or open source software is one that my wife is familiar with, as I am a somewhat vocal advocate of both. Since I started using Linux two years ago I have followed the Free Software and Open Source movements fairly closely. While I don't know all of the nuances of the GNU General Public License and I can't clearly mark the dividing line between the GNU system and the rest of the utilities in Linux, I have come to a conclusion about the difference between them. It seems to me that the Free Software Foundation, led by Richard Stallman, is advocating a philosophical ideal, while the Open Source Initiative is striving for more of a practical, use-able compromise. In light of the overnight "tanking" of Red Hat's and VA Linux's IPOs, it is relatively easy to dismiss the financial viability of either model. However, Red Hat is now arguably a successful business. VA Linux operates Sourceforge, Slashdot, and a couple other resources for the Open Source community. While neither of these two companies has Microsoft's cash flow, I would say that both are successful. I am not aware of any such companies operating strictly within the ideological area covered by Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. This is not to say there isn't one, but I think that the difference between philosophical ideal and practical compromise may be a cause.

11-14: How hard is working too hard?

2006-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

Today's press conference highlighted some very distinct memories and experiences for me. In the early spring of 2002, I started selling stuff on Ebay and quickly turned that into my major source of income since the company I was working for (partly owned by my brother) was going out of business. A week later one of my brother's partners offered me a job in another company he owned. The very next week he left on a family vacation to Europe and, much to my surprise, he left me in charge of the other 4 employees and our relationships with the companies we contracted with. For the next 2 weeks while he was gone I worked very hard to hold everything together. When Steve (my boss) returned from Europe he pulled me aside one day and told me he wanted to make me the office/business manager and basically double my salary. For the next several months I worked long hours, sometimes 70 or 80 per week, to keep everything running smoothly. Then two things happened that bring me to the issue of personal and professional ethics. First, things on the Internet started to change in a way that made it increasingly difficult for a small, individually run business (99% of our clients) to establish a presence for their business online. Second, I met and began dating the girl who would become my wife. Professionally, I had a major problem with the fact that the salespeople were still telling the people they referred to us that they could in essence get something for nothing and make loads of money almost instantly with our help. Personally, I no longer had the desire to work 80 hours per week because I wanted to spend time with Nicole. Both of these things eventually led to me leaving the company. Having had that experience makes me concerned with the perception of programmers working around the clock. I am more than willing to put in a full work week of 40 hours and to work hard during that time, but my family is now a major priority in my life and as much as I have an ethical obligation to my employer, I have a personal obligation to spend time with my family.

11-9: Whose idea is it, anyway?

2006-11-12T17:04:00.000-08:00

Today's trial and discussion revolved around one of my biggest fears as a programmer: that the company I work for would own everything I wrote while employed by it. For a company to own the rights to the software I write not only at work, but in my own personal time, is one of the biggest killers of creative thought I can imagine. If a project I worked on at home because I saw a need for it in my own personal computing was automatically owned by my employer, there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to produce anything. During the course of my studies here at BYU I have come up with a couple of ideas for tools that would make my life easier, and it is nice to know that when I build them, I will be the decider of whether to "Open Source" it, or to try and make some money by selling it. It would also be a comforting thing to know that while employed somewhere, I could still contribute to any of the Open Source projects I frequently use. I am a firm supporter of software copyrights (but NOT software patents, which is an entirely different topic), and believe that an employer has every right to prevent their commercial products from being copied or reverse-engineered by their own employees. However, I don't at all like the idea that an employer can have the rights to work done by their employees on their own time and on something totally unrelated to what they do at work. After reading about a situation where this happened I have resolved to read very carefully any contract I sign with any company I ever work for.

11-7: Technological research strengthens the Kingdom of God

2006-11-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

Ransom Love's presentation on the new family history technology was very inspiring. When I was in high school there was a part of me that thought it would be nice to be a CES teacher, either in Seminary or the Institute program. Despite the fact that teaching is not the highest-paying discipline, I really felt that I could do some good in the world teaching the gospel to young people. Being here at BYU and taking some very high quality religion classes has caused that small sliver of my sub-conscious to resurface. During my time here I have been touched by the professors (not just religion professors) who are here because they want to be here and who devote themselves to building the kingdom in their own field of study, and by motivating us to do and be better. The amount of computing research and resources the church is putting into family history research has given me hope that I can still satisfy that desire to devote time and energy to the church as well as making a more comfortable living for my family. Hopefully when I have finished school I can have a little time to contribute work and research to the church, and maybe someday I will be able to teach at one of the universities belonging to the church and fulfill both of my dreams.

11-2: What happened, Novell?

2006-11-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

I quited enjoyed the video we watched today. I always enjoy learning about the events that shaped the computing world as we know it today. It was especially relevant in light of the agreement Novell just made with Microsoft. As I work in an office full of Linux and Mac users, we have had many discussions about Microsoft (usually about how Windows drives us nuts). It seems a little bit fishy to me that Novell, who has refused offers from Microsoft in the past, now thinks the time to join forces has come. Novell's current state of uncertainty may have some effect on this, but historically allying with Microsoft in any way has been the beginning of the end for everyone who has done it. I'm sure that Microsoft threatening legal action over use of their proprietary technology in Mono, WINE, and other software that makes coexistence of Windows and Open Source Software also has something to do with this agreement. All things considered, it almost seems to me that Novell didn't have much choice in the matter, and that the only reason Microsoft was a generous as they were in the agreement was to avoid more incurring any more pressure over their anti-competition, monopolistic business practices. The whole issue has reminded me that as I begin to take on larger projects and prepare to go into the industry I need to be very careful about what contracts I agree to and what technology I use.

10-26: Dot Con?

2006-10-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

The video we watched today was very amusing to me. I don't recall seeing so many different ways to hedge and beat around the bush by so many people in such a short time. What really got my attention was that it wasn't the programmers who were the instigators of the problem, or even the owners of the businesses that went public, but the investment bankers. I have never been overly fond of the stereotypical upper level banking executives, even though I'm a firm believer in the capitalistic system. Even though I was in high school and on my mission and relatively unaffected by the dot com bust I irks me to see that a handful of investment banking executives can have that kind of impact on our society. It may not even be the magnitude of the impact, but the intent and the duration that is the main problem. I owned a business before I started school. For a short time, that business was my sole source of income, and I believed I had a pretty good foundation. However, I would never have dreamed of trying to take it public based on the short duration I had operated it for. That the investment banking executives were so hungry for IPO kickbacks as to take untested and unprepared businesses public drives home the fact that money can indeed be the "root of all evil."

10-24: Where are all the female geeks?

2006-10-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

After the online readings we did for class today our guest speaker wasn't quite what I was expecting, but she raised some good points and clarified my thoughts a little. I was intrigued by Carla's recognition of the fact that programming often requires "non-standard" hours, and that it is a field dominated by "nerds who just want to solve problems." The De Palma reading about why women avoid Computer Science seems to me to confirm this. I have always wondered why my wife who is smarter than I am asks me to fix her computer, or figure out how to do something and then show her. Carla's mention of the mindset of a programmer and De Palma's discussion of the "tinkering factor" are a clearer answer to this than I ever thought I'd find. While reading De Palma's article and listening to Carla acknowledge that we are here because we are "nerds" it just clicked. I really do like to tinker. If someone asks me to do something with a computer that I don't know how to do, I have no problem telling them that I'll "figure it out." On the other hand, my wife (and most other girls I've known) is not so fond of tinkering. I think that many of the obstacles faced by women in Computer Science are partially due to a lack of numbers, and I'm not sure that will change without a fairly major paradigm shift in our world of "tinkerers" and "nerds" who just want to solve problems.

10-19: Deadlines?

2006-10-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

I am no stranger to the idea of a missed deadline. I have seen construction projects that I've worked on go way over schedule, and I've seen numerous software products late to market. The question I have to ask is: who sets these deadlines? In the case of construction projects (houses or other buildings) it was almost universally the real estate agent or some other agent of the development. In the case of software products, I would guess it is usually middle to upper management and marketing executives. This presents the question: how are these deadlines chosen? In my experience, this has next to nothing to do with the level of complexity of the project. I worked on several three to five hundred thousand dollar custom log homes before I moved to Provo, and we were well past the "deadline" on each one. The problem was that the person who set the deadline had no clue how much effort was involved in the vaulted ceilings, multi-pitched roofs, tongue-and-groove interior siding, and the multitudes of other "custom" or "rustic" options that were sold. I would make a guess that this is the same with the frequently late software products (Windows Vista comes to mind). I would also guess that the whole economy is somewhat inured to missed or pushed back deadlines. In the case of our construction projects, if the development real estate agents would have asked us how much time it would take, invariably we could have helped them set a deadline that we could assuredly make (barring some kind of catastrophe). So I don't think that the question is so much "the case of the missed deadline" as it is "the case of the over-eager marketing and management people."

10-12: Can we secure the internet?

2006-10-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

The idea of hackers breaking into computer systems has been highly romanticized since even the earliest instances, and especially so since the early to mid-nineties, when movies like "The Net" and "Mission: Impossible" were seen by millions of viewers and brought "hacking" to the mainstream consciousness. This creates a major problem. What should be done with "hackers" who get caught? In my opinion, existing punishments (when it is extremely hard to catch a "hacker" in the first place) are not an effective deterrent. The young man in the movie from Wales who stole hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers was left to his own devices while awaiting trial (with his computer still plugged into the web). If he had broken into an actual physical building and stolen the same information in some kind of tangible form you can bet he would be singing a different tune. The teenager who illegally accessed NASA and other government files was sentenced to 6 months of house arrest. With this lack of deterrence, it is no surprise that these "hackers" think that they will never be caught. It is much easier to think you won't be caught when you are not afraid of the consequences of your actions. I think that we need to make the deterrent strong enough that they are afraid of it, so instead of "They will never catch me..." these miscreants start thinking "What if they catch me?". Until we do, we will have to rely on making our individual computers harder to break into than someone else's and hoping that this makes it not worth the "hacker's" time.

10-10 Should terrorists and citizens be treated equally?

2006-10-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

Our discussion in (and after) class today is something that I have thought about somewhat frequently for the last few years. The additional security measures enacted since the attacks on 9-11-01 worry me a little bit. Terrorists do what they do to disrupt lives and strike fear into the hearts of those they target. John Locke stated that people form a society to receive, among other things, the protection of that society. Terrorist do what they do knowing full well that these societies will treat them with the same rights granted their citizens. As far as I'm concerned, in antagonizing and seeking to destroy these societies terrorists are waiving their "right" to those protections. In cases where there is confirmation of terrorist activity I believe wire-tapping and other forms of electronic eavesdropping are completely warranted. However, I don't believe that we need new legislation to allow for secret electronic eavesdropping on law-abiding citizens without a warrant as granted in the Constitution. The question of where the line is drawn between confirmed terrorist activity is something that must be considered and there must be some accountability, even if after the fact. I also believe that the way to counteract those terrorists is not to let them affect the way we live. I am firm believer in the idea that much of the damage done on 9-11-01 could have been averted if citizens of the country were better prepared to fight back like the passengers of United Flight 93. But that is another subject for another day.

10-5: Not enough seconds in a day?

2006-10-05T23:10:00.000-07:00

The movie we watched in class today really hit home to me. It's funny to watch how ridiculous people sound when they say that 3 seconds between songs on a CD is too much blank time, or that most people hung up if the person they were calling didn't answer within three rings. It's a little less funny, however, to see some of that impatience in myself. For example, slow internet connections drive me crazy. Until very recently, my wife's parents had an AOL dial-up connection for internet at their house. It was so slow that I couldn't even stand to use it to check my email. When we stayed at their house for any period of time I just resigned myself to not use the internet for that time because I couldn't stand how slow it was. Watching the little segment on how our brains measure time the time taken to complete certain tasks helped me to make a little more sense out of why that slow internet connection bothered me so much, but it also provided pseudo-scientific evidence that whether or not we are actually wired for speed we are creatures of habit. Is this dependence on speed good for us? Does it make us more effective or productive? I don't know, but I do know that for thousands of years humans didn't count the seconds like we do today, and even ten years ago waiting a few seconds for a web page to load was no big deal. Knowing that this is a real issue and is grounded in how our brains work, I have now resolved to remember that next time I catch my foot tapping while I wait for a web page to load.

10-3 Danger on the Internet?

2006-10-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

I grew up with a dichotomy of sorts in my home as far as rules and choices were concerned. My dad's idea was that he did his best to teach us right from wrong, and he left us a large measure of freedom concerning our choices. My mother, on the other hand, tried to prevent exposure from things that could harm us (mostly spiritually). The result of their different strategies showed up fairly well in our class discussion today. In my younger years, I expended considerable amounts of creative energy circumventing my mother's preventive measures almost as a matter of principle. With my dad, however, I knew what was expected of me and quickly learned that there would be unavoidable consequences when I made poor choices. As it turns out, I was stubborn and foolish enough that often it was only through the consequences that I fully learned the lesson and its accompanying principles, which leads back to our class discussion. Do we filter out even the possibility of objectionable content in our homes? Or do we teach our children (and ourselves) as best we can, and let filtering take a secondary role to protect against accidental misfortunes? I personally tend to lean toward the latter, with the addition that in my home (whenever I have children old enough that this is an issue) there will be consequences for bad choices. I greatly hope that I will be able to teach my children effectively enough that filtering or blocking measures will go largely unused, and serve mostly to protect against accidents. I also hope I will be able to teach my children effectively enough so that they don't need the consequences of a bad decision to be what they learn from. So where do I stand on the issue of censorship and freedom? Pretty much right in the middle.

9-28-06 Software Design?

2006-09-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

The trial case concerning the "Gimli Glider" raised some questions and ideas that I haven't thought about much. I have two years of school left, and then graduate school (I hope), but what then? What will I do when I'm in the industry and have the responsibility to design and develop a software system? Will I design only to the bare specifications I am given to reduce time to market, or will I try to envision the intent and purpose of the specifications? Chris Critical, the designer/developer at Honeywell who designed and wrote the software responsible for controlling and monitoring the fuel in the Boeing 767, obviously didn't think too far ahead or plan for contingencies when designing his software. The fact that the system actually went into service tells me that he was a good programmer, and that his code passed the quality assurance testing, but my opinion is that he could have done more. I would think that the "what if?" questions such as "What will my software do if the front-line processor fails?" are questions that cannot go unasked in development of any system, let alone a system on which thousands of lives will depend. This is a question that the design and testing teams at
Honeywell apparently didn't ask, since when the main processor died the system did not switch to the backup processor. Because of this very issue, my greatest desire when thinking about where I would like to work is that I would like to find a company where doing things right is the first priority. I would like to work in a place where if I overlook something as critical as was overlooked in the Gimli incident, someone else is likely to catch it, and where a thorough design process--with contingencies taken into account--is encouraged. Hopefully I will find that there are companies in the industry where this is the case.

For those who are not in my class and are wondering what all this is about, you can read about it here or here.

9-21-06: What about this "Information Age?"

2006-09-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot in the last few months about the whole idea of the "digital age" and what that means about the amount of information available to me today as opposed to my ancestors 200 years ago. I haven't always been what anyone would call a computer nerd. In high school I wrestled, ran track, and set school weight-lifting records. In my spare time I shot guns. Almost everything I know about computers is self taught, with the majority of that knowledge coming in the last 3 years. With so much information available, it isn't surprising that there are a great many people who abuse it, exploit it, or are so overwhelmed by it that they stay as far away from it as the can. However, what we do with this information is entirely up to us. Ten years ago I couldn't care less that you could learn almost anything about anything on the Internet. Now hardly a day goes by that I don't turn to Google, various mailing lists, Wikipedia, and other information sources online to solve a problem or learn something that I didn't know but wanted to. So despite the large scale misuse of the incredible amount of information available, I say that it's a "Good Thing" we have it.

9-19-06: did GUIs gain us anything?

2006-09-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today we watched the final installment of "Triumph of the Nerds." A few
things caught my mind as I learned some things about the history of the
graphical OS that I didn't know. When the Macintosh computer was introduced, a
graphical user interface was what most people wanted and needed, even if they
didn't know it. IBM was raking in the cash by selling its clunky PC, which was
what it had convinced business and personal users they needed. I had an Apple
IIgs at the time, and I remember how much easier it was to use when we got a
hard drive with the Mac OS. Computers are much easier to use today than the
were 15 years ago, but I am amazed by the number of irritating behaviors we put
up with in our computers because "that's the way they are." Then I realized
that Windows is exactly what IBM was back in the days of the PC and DOS: the
product that we have to have, despite its clunkiness. In stark contrast to
this, my brand new MacBook is incredibly easy to use. It does what I want and
stays out of my way. It's no wonder Steve Jobs said, "I always hear about how
people love their Macs..." because I sure do.

9-14-06

2006-09-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

The more I learn about computers and programming, the more I think about
what I want to do with this knowledge. With just three semesters to go, I
have learned more than I thought possible and can only imagine what more I can
learn in my remaining time. But what I want to do with it all is still
somewhat of a mystery. I would like to go on and get at least a Master's
Degree, and possibly a Ph.D. The Master's is a somewhat selfish desire, as I
believe it will greatly improve my ability to provide for my family, but the Ph.
D is another matter entirely. I would love to someday teach, and give
something of worth back to the community that has helped me learn. In contrast
with my desire to give something back, this "splogging" escapade we read about
today appears to me to be a selfish and intellectually lazy endeavor. As a
recipient of a BYU Master's Degree, this individual is not giving anything of
worth to the community. In fact, in his quest to capitalize on this
"opportunity" he has become a parasite, making money by harming the community
that allows him to do so. I remember from last week the creator of VisiCalc
who is now a teacher, but is comfortable with his motives to make something of
worth to the computing community, and not just make a pile of money. I only
hope that when I am finished with school I will remember that I want to
contribute more than I want to get rich.