The New Drug

I had never really stopped to consider scientifically why it is that pornography can cause such a strong addiction to it's consumers. Having this new knowledge paints a clearer picture and greatly highlights the counsel we have been receiving by inspired General Authorities for decades. Pornography is indeed a black plague that is destroying earth: it can be accessed freely at any time by anyone that has an internet connection. The internet is not going to go away, on the contrary, it is being embedded more and more into the lives of individuals with the passage of time. I believe we should be very weary about this problem, because no one is really safe from it. How we prepare against this plague today will define how the next generation will be exposed to it, and they will need to know and understand how dangerous it is. Just like we tell the youth to stay away from drugs, we need to treat pornography as one of the most dangerous drugs.

Vlog: Piracy and DRM

Position Vlog! This video addresses the topic of piracy and DRM. Enjoy.

Things I learned from Eliot

It was certainly a pleasant surprise to hear from Eliot in the last class period. To be honest, I didn't know exactly what to think of him at first: between his pedantic attire and him "giving us permission" to be creative, I really wasn't expecting much from him. Fortunately, things changed as he began to talk more and settle more into himself. I learned some valuable things from his story at PayPal: first, that I must think outside of our limits to overcome obstacles, and second, to plan ahead when I code. When Eliot described the shame the team had about having so many dependencies on the front-end to the back-end I knew exactly what he was talking about. In the story, there is a valuable lesson all programmers can learn: that we must aim to create versatile code to avoid having to rewrite large and critical sections of code. This in turn takes careful planning to avoid creating dependencies. I liked how both ideas link to each other when creativity was an essential part to finding a solution to the problem.

Here Comes Everyone!

Social media is transforming our society: this is the underlying message of the author in each of the stories he shares in "Here Comes Everybody". In the past, we had to rely on media organizations (such as FOX news) to gain access to information. These organizations have a hierarchy and have control of the information. We can also say that both employers and employees of these organizations are professionals in their respective fields. Nowadays, in addition to these organizations, we also have the social media: an organization that has almost no governance, that has virtually no filters and that is driven by the common people, amateurs and professionals alike.

As I thought about this, I saw the many great implications that came with this new way of doing things: gathering of information that was impossible in the past is now feasible, information is now being disseminated by people all around the world as events unfold, we do not have to wait to receive the news, we do not have to actively seek out the news (the news come to us), and, more importantly, I (or anyone) can start the dissemination of any piece of information from anywhere at any time.

I believe that these self-governed, self-healing organizations will continue to greatly change the way we do things in the future: the way we learn, the way we share, the way we communicate, the way we organize ourselves as communities, the way we organize as institutions, it is all going to be dominated by this new way of doing things, since nothing can match their versatility, portability and ease of access.

Nevertheless, as we have discussed in class, with new technology there is always a price to pay. In regards to social media, we can already see some of its consequences: cyber-bullying (who would've thought that some comments in the internet could cause people to lose their jobs, lose their families, or drive them to commit suicide), civil unrest (and whether this is detrimental that is completely subjective), piracy, just to name a few. As we continue to adopt this deeper into society, we will find more unforeseen consequences; we should be weary of those problems and evaluate whether the price is too big to pay.

Women in Computer Science, or any science

While it is true that sometimes women are treated the wrong way in work environments that are mostly dominated by men, I do not believe this is the only or the dominant reason as to why women "avoid" these careers. As a matter of fact, I believe there could be a dozen of other reasons as to why women decide to pursue other careers. One of these reasons might be that women are inherently less interested in those fields, and prefer other careers that suit their abilities and preferences better, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, men and women are different. This is something we learn from the Gospel. Now, by this I do not mean that women should not pursue careers in science or engineering, or that none of them are suited for such careers; many of them are talented and more than qualified for them, sometimes even more than some men. My desire is that we, as men, can welcome them openly and without prejudice, and that we disallow any improper behavior towards them; what I do not wish is to try to artificially get women to pursue these careers out of what some people call "equality".

The Revolution OS

The Linux Operating System, or should I say the GNU/Linux Operating System, is truly a revolutionary OS. Nevertheless, as discussed in class, Linux has some problems when it comes to support in the business world. It might be argued that today there are companies that specialize in providing support for Linux, such as Red Hat Linux (which also develops its own Enterprise Red Hat Linux distribution), but such support comes at a price. So, really, it is matter of choosing who you want to pay: Red Hat or Microsoft. Apart from this, I strongly believe Linux has many great merits. If I was completely broke and couldn't afford to buy an operating system, I would definitely use Linux and it would satisfy all of my needs and satisfy some of my wants. Free Software, or Open Source software, definitely has a place in computing, but I feel that as businesses become larger and more complex, Linux might not be the best choice if the people that are in charge are not fully familiarized with the environment.

Big Data and the Goverment

An interesting discussion was had in class: to what extent is it okay for the government to gather data that for some might me considered private? In The Cuckoo's Egg this idea is also explored, and I have reached the conclusion that if we want some security, we need to allow the government agencies to have access to this data. Nevertheless, where do we draw a line? If it is to little, then it cannot be used for any good. If it is too much, then it can be damaging to people's privacy and to our trust of the government. I have often thought about the amount of power that we can give to government agencies if we let them have all of our data; visions of Big Brother dystopian societies come to me. I believe that we must be wary of this problem, and that we have to accept that some of this data must be shared. Nevertheless, we must not stand in silence and let it go by if at some point the government crosses the line where we as people do not have any more privacy.

Modern Day Cuckoo's Eggs?

It has become evident to me that the problem of cyber security will be a problem that we will continue to have for as long as computers exist, and for as long as we continue to be computer illiterate. As I read The Cuckoo's Egg, I just couldn't help but be dumbfounded at how careless the people in charge of computer security were, and at how they left critical parts of a system completely open for anyone to pry on; the most sobering part of it is that it could all have been easily avoided if they had just cared a little bit.

In the book, we read about how the hacker kept turning knobs in hope that some careless system manager would've left a door unprotected and wide open for them to come in, explore, change and steal. What I ask myself is, what where they thinking? Were they really this oblivious about the security holes? As I kept reading, and as Cliff Stoll continued to interact with the system managers, it became apparent to me that they were not clueless, that they had knowledge about the holes, but ultimately neglected them on the grounds that they didn't think any normal person could come in and cause any harm since they were not educated enough in computer systems to know about them. The problem is that all the people that came knocking were the people that knew of such exploits, and would not forgive once they found any open doors.

Many years have passed since then, and with it a wave of changes have come into society because of the Internet and of modern day computers. Computers have disseminated everywhere, and people use them everyday as a fundamental part of their lives, and hackers have not stopped to exists. I believe that now, more than ever, people need to be conscious about the risks and the problems that can arise in regards to computer security. Even though children are learning about computers and using them from a young age, they are not really learning much about them in terms of security, and problems within the corporate world continue to exist in the same way that they existed in the time of the events of the book. For example, just a couple years ago Sony had a huge hacking problem with their PlayStation Network. In it, millions of user's personal data was compromised, including credit card numbers, and mostly because of carelessness (the data was not encrypted). More recently, there has been a wave of celebrities' phones and their internet accounts being hacked, and their personal data and files disseminated to the internet, much to their dismay; again, because of carelessness.

So, there seem to be two fundamental problems: people not being educated in how to properly secure their data in the internet and personal computers (ie. choosing bad passwords or pins) and also negligence from the industry in regards to acceptable security standards (ie. leaving open holes or not encrypting sensitive data). It believe it is our utmost responsibility to take care of these issues, because computers are not going away, on the contrary, they continue to evolve and I'm sure that they will continue to be more ingrained within society. If that is the case, security has never been more important to us, and I believe that from a young age we should be educated about it seriously so that both users and developers can be better prepared to secure cyber information.

Shellshock

Worse than Heartbleed

"Many eyes" can't see straight

As I've read the story of Cliff Stoll, my mind has turned to the topic of computer security. Just last Wednesday, there was a huge bug discovered in the Bash Shell that virtually every computer running Linux is vulnerable to. The exploit has been categorized as being worse than the Heartbleed bug that received international attention earlier this year. As described in the article, Heartbleed allowed attackers to get sensitive information such as "encryption keys or passwords", but the Shellshock bug "allows an attacker much more power. They can use it to take complete control of a system even without having a username and password". As I thought about this, the first question that came to my mind was:  how is this possible? how can holes in security like this be overlooked? Being a free and open source project, many people believed the idea of "many eyes" would apply to this software, but as we have seen, this a bug that has survived for more than two decades since Bash's conception in 1989. Clearly, the way we test and prevent bugs is not perfect, and can greatly be improved upon, and after these two incidents this year I believe that it is something that we as programmers need to direct our attention towards.

The Gospel will fll the Earth

I do believe, as is discussed in class, that many of the technological advancements of our day have been inspired by God. Not only are these innovations improving and enhancing our lives, but more importantly, these changes are allowing for the Gospel to be spread in all the world. I personally loved the address given by Elder David B. Haight, which illustrates another way in which technology has allowed us, the members of the Church, to contribute to the building of the Kingdom of God through family history. When I think about it, I can clearly see all the pieces that God has slowly put together to facilitate this work: with the advent of computers and the internet, absolutely anyone with the desire, a computer and the internet can do family history work anywhere. This is so exciting to think about! We no longer need to go to a family history center, we no longer need to peruse through endless files in search names, but now we can with some little typing find the information of our ancestors from our homes, and share all this data with millions of members all around the world, which in turn will also help build our own genealogy. Now, what does this mean to us? Is this not the time which has been appointed to us? Is this is not the time in which the Lord has made this task the most accessible for his children? I believe this is something serious for all of us to think about and to act upon, for in the last day we shall be accountable for it.

What are we yet to create?

Painting in virtual reality

While watching "The Triumph of the Nerds", I couldn't help but notice that the introduction of new technologies always brought an explosion of new ideas and creations, many of which changed the course of human history. In my previous blog post, I explored a little bit the topic of Virtual Reality, on how in the near future I think that this new technology is going to greatly affect the lives of everyone. Now, I ask myself: who is going to benefit from this new technology? Who are the people that are going to exploit this new technology? What kind of new creations are we going to see spring from it? What kind of new experiences are we going to be able to have? The article linked in this blog post shows one of the many ways in which VR is already igniting an explosion of creativity. I strongly believe that with VR, just like the video shows in the link, that new ways to express ourselves will emerge and also new ways to create content that can touch human lives in way that no other technology can do right now. This is very exciting to think about, and it is even more exciting to know that any software developer that so desires can begin to contribute and tinker with this new technology right now. Thinking about this, I can't help but wonder what the world will be like in a few couple years.

The Next Big Thing

Oculus Rift and Virtual Reality
Another article on its potential changes

In class, we recently studied many of the different repercussions that come from introducing new technologies into society. We talked about how technology changes society and how in turn we as a society influence technology. Also, one of the most significant points that we discussed was that, ultimately, there is always a price to be paid when we adopt new technologies. The world has changed drastically since the introduction of the Internet, and many of the changes that came with it are still rippling and evolving in our present time. More recently, smartphones and tablets were introduced into society, and their effects in society are largely noticeable: the way we work, the way we learn, the way interact with friends, family and work, it all has been changed by this new medium (which is driven mostly by the internet). So, I ask myself: what technologies are in the horizon that could once again change drastically the world? My attention turns to the Oculus Rift, a piece of hardware and software that will make virtual reality (VR) a reality in our homes. It is important to notice that the giant Facebook recently purchased this project, and with its introduction slated for 2015, I feel that once again there could a be revolution in the way we interact with people all over the world. Not only has Facebook jumped into this bandwagon, but Sony as well by unveiling earlier this year it's own VR headset, code named Project Morpheus. Also, just a few weeks ago, a partnership between Samsung and Oculus was announced to bring virtual reality to the mobile world. VR will bring with it a tidal wave of changes if the way we interact and perceive the world: video games in which your are inside the game, talking with people as if we where in the same room, shopping while seeing and manipulating an object as if it was in front of us, "surgery simulators are just a few years away, and medical students or even hobbyists (...) could poke and prod to their heart’s desire", just to list a few of its countless applications both in entertainment and in the business world. With this tide of revolutionary changes on the way, I also ask myself: what price will we pay once we adopt this new technology? what does it mean for video game addiction? what does it mean for pornography addiction? what does this mean for human interaction? I even wonder: will VR introduce new issues that we didn't initially anticipate?

Be prepared to be wrong

I thought the video that was shown in class was very interesting. I felt that many of the things that the speaker talked about were indeed true. Nevertheless, the phrase that had the most impact on me was: “be prepared to be wrong”. When I think about how a creative idea takes form, it almost always assuredly comes with risks; therein I think the counsel to be prepared to be wrong comes in. To me, being creative is trying out new things, trying things that are innovative and unheard of, novel in nature, and useful both for the individual and for everyone else and, therefore, there is always the question whether our creative endeavors are indeed valuable, or even novel. Sometimes we shrink away from our ideas for the fear that they might be deemed of little value, or that they won’t be appreciated, maybe we even doubt whether it is creative at all, and we worry about what others might think. The speaker related this mostly to the field of the arts, but I think this principle can be applied in every other single field of knowledge and learning; we can find creativity everywhere, and often I have seen that people that are successful in their fields has a lot to do with their potential and ability to be daring and courageous when it comes to creativity. So, echoing the words of the speaker, I believe we should to a certain extent, foster always an atmosphere in which people can bring out the best of themselves through their ideas, and not squander them, or squander ourselves. We will not always be successful but then again there are always things to learn from our defeats.