#LDSConf

Was it just me or was the main tag never as popular as the individual speakers? It was cool that Elder Uchtdorf was on the national twitter hits for two different tags. 

Twitter, you never fail to amaze or cheer me up. Mostly because it is fun to see poor spelling and the good education funds go down the drain. 

An Honest Concern

As a Mormon, this hit straight on. I stand up for my beliefs, though now I worry how that will effect my carrier in software engineering. Three years of late night programming and frustration may go to waste if employers start to reject potential leaders on the basis of what they believe. I understand the hate, the fact that we are closing an option for them. I talk about it with my friend from high school who was openly gay. What leaves me laying awake at night is that people can force repercussions on someone for their beliefs, totally contradicting the first Amendment of the Constitution. I believe that people shouldn't drink, I believe that people shouldn't smoke, and those opinions would be fine in the common eye. As soon as someone takes a stance against gay marriage, you may as well quit your job. It is an opinion and a belief that I hold to be true from God Almighty. It won't effect how I work in a position at a company.

Net Rant

The Other Side of the Addiction

My father in law played second life for several years because his avatar could run, play, enjoy life and live without cancer. He fulfilled many lifelong dreams while recovering from chemotherapy in bed. Video games meet peoples needs and dreams quickly and efficiently and for me it is an escape from the different problems I face every day. No progress on code for hours results in an hour of punching bad guys to relieve my stress. Frustrating essay prompts bring lines of Tetris to my eyes. Punching and puzzles make me feel competent in a field filled with people I think as better problem solvers. The video states that we do what works and video games work wonders. Those addicted to League of Legends or Diablo have a core need being met which must be considered before just cutting the cord. 

The Internet is mightier than the gun

It could be said that having an army with guns allowed for international war. The countries with guns casually overthrew governments of those without to create worldwide empires. The imperialism of the 19th century demonstrated the strength of the modern army. Any fight against the government would fail. That is, until there came something that modern weapons couldn't fight against. The Internet provided a way for the world to band together, to share and spread ideals and ideas. Ideals like Voice of the Faithful and their abhorrence with the inaction of the Catholic Church after Father Geoghan raped young boys flew across the Internet. Ideas of public protest, such as flash mobs to condemn the Lukashenko government for corruption, found homes in the web. These are but few examples given by Clay Shirky in his book "Here Comes Everybody" about how the Internet works to accomplish common goals worldwide.

Governments in the old world relied on the idea that there was no group of people large enough to stand against them. Shirky explained that such a stance does not work today. The group behind Voice of the Faithful and their was so big and their complaints so public that Cardinal Law had to listen and communicate. No appeasement could be made so Law resigned. The connected Internet provided a way for the Chinese people to publicly show the destruction after the earthquake in 2008. When details were leaked that many of the children who died in schools may have lived if the public building contractors did embezzle funds, the parents were furious and launched a campaign against the government to which some leaders publicly begged the mothers to stop. Microsoft released details about a new video game system which required an internet connection in order to process the DRM on the games being played. The gamers took to the Internet in droves to attack the new requirements until Microsoft relented and took out the required internet connection. 

People have a way to make their voice heard. Shirky showed us how the power can be used to change for good. Thus the Internet provides the tools to make changes to governments and institutions that guns alone would never accomplish.

Equality in Software Enviorments

Finally, I have an excuse to buy a new 22" computer monitor! After intensive research, it was shown that a larger monitor helps women work better with a computer. This was one of the findings done by several groups of individuals who investigated the idea that the design of software has an impact on how well women interact and think about computers as a whole. Larger screens improved females' performance while males showed no real change. This topic is among several tests on how different genders interact with hardware and software. The study showed that many software aspects did not entertain to women, like video games, the term hackers, or ways that a webpage was designed. Why would it, as technology has increasingly become a synonym for unnecessary and sometimes horrific scene of sexism. Look at threats Anita Sarkeesian received when she started the Tropes vs Women in Video Games series. This culture and us with it need to change if we ever want to change the shift of females in computer science. 

DRM

This cycle will continue as long as we keep the same forms of copyrights and patents that have plagued the internet for the last decade. There isn't much a corporation can do to prevent it, so why not just make the copy free of all DRM? Pirates would still be pirates and the consumers would be happy. Take drinkbox, a game developer who made the outstanding game Guacamelee, which sold copies of their game without DRM attached. My friend bought it and gave me a copy and I was hooked! Demos rarely do it for me but playing the full copy made up my mind to buy Guacamelee when the next edition comes out. In the end, I understand that the corporations are trying to make the most money they can, but what they are doing neither works or helps. Let me put my digital copy of Robin Hood on the devices I want, not one device the corporation wants.

Spread Without Contention

History has proven that religion causes conflict. Christianity was rejected almost everywhere and missionaries were killed because they did not understand or respect the local traditions. Chaos reigns and more people die. I'm a Mormon videos focus on meeting people, not a religion. The messages avoid the historical preaching of, "I am right and you are wrong" and instead use people from similar backgrounds as the messengers. This is the kind of world we should live in, a world where we use the internet to spread the goodwill of the world instead of the hate. Stop making all the headlines seem like something is horribly wrong. Try to defend something good for a change.

Easy Access to an Account

Username: username
Password: password

The username and password of a log in are supposed to be unique. When a password is on a list of the 25 most common passwords of 2013, it is time to switch. In a book called The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff showed that the main reason a computer and data is compromised is because a username and password were easy to guess. His solution to these attacks was simply to create unique passwords, and specifically a password that is not found in a common dictionary. Looking at the list shows that we are still not creating unique passwords after twenty years of the internet. At least many are not in the dictionary like "trustno1."

I would often think about work while reading the book as we have a simple username and password to guess in order to access a public computer account. Gigabytes of sensitive information would be accessible on thousands of people if someone were to access it. Luckily the most important data is behind another username and password. Still, as shown in the book, simple programs can find the email addresses of important individuals, then read them until the right information is needed to access the critical data. This form of attack is not some crazy person doing it for one night, it is done over a long period of time.

What We Bring to the Table

Ready for 45% unemployment rate in the United States? Oxford calculates that computers will pioneer such a future in the next twenty years. What can't robots and computers do? Many things, most of which involve the enthusiasm and creative process of humans. Humans possess common knowledge and though processes which don't make sense in bits. Out interactions are fueled by emotions which defies all logic. These traits of creativity produce monumental success in the world. Developing these will help us keep our jobs and maybe get us a promotion to boot.

WORST POST EVER!

"This guy has no clue what anything is about and needs to be shot to keep him from ever making such a terrible post again!" 

Comments like this plague the Internet. It has gotten so bad that companies like Google decided that comments on Youtube need to be filtered by relativity. Google tried to make it so our real names would be posted with our comments. It turns out though that I can now sue people for such comments. I don't want to but the culture of the Internet has become one where we don't take responsibility for the words we say. Suing the people who decide to make comments that are intentionally hurtful introduces consequences for the things we say, just like in the real world. Matt Smith said in his article, "Internet exists in the real world, not a fantasy-land of limitless free speech." How true that is. 

Research the Real

The internet, in all its glory, cannot create human souls. So all that "research" that people have done on their genealogical line to Adam have a lot of made up shells. Vital records and parish records rarely go past 1500 A.D. and those that do go this far back are frustrating to find, and in Latin. "We went through royalty!" It is surprising that so may of noble blood are among us today, and how did they get permission to research important political and historical figures? Besides, heirs to the throne have often had many different rises to power and power struggles, hardly a good way to legitimize a claim. Following the names of such a record though time shows only a father connected to a son, and a generic date. The sons eventually became their own grandfather and so cycles appear. Research should be spent within the first half of this millennium, where the information is more complete and possible to obtain. Chase the real people, not the shells of speculation.

Immersion

Awesome right? Looks like a fun way to exercise without leaving the living room.

Any gamer worth their system should know that the Oculus Rift has been making headlines. This Kickstarter posterboy has the goal to immerse a player in any compatible game they are playing. Now that people have had their hands on development kits, inventors created other was to be immersed in a game such as the Omni pictured. A first person shooter not your style? How about a space dogfight reminiscent of Star Wars? This runaway success is still in development, but I am excited to see what people come up with next, with some reservations.

Over-reliance on Technology

Technology would be fired if it was a person. I have never seen someone or something which had a certain job to do, fail so often and still be relied on for every presentation and meeting. As an AV guy working at the Missionary Training Center, I help set up and run many power-point presentations, Microphones, and meetings. Every week we have some problem with a power-point freezing, some kind of microphone ringing, or a random glitch in a system which frustrates us and the presenter. Does any of these things stop people from using technology again? Nope. The blame falls to us, and the technology gets the benefit of the doubt. Why rely on technology when it fails us so much? Because it is the norm and we are compelled to follow the norm.

The Wrong Time to Switch

I just moved into a new house and now have to pay for all my services like gas, garbage and internet. After living a month without internet at home, and realizing that Google Fiber won’t be coming to my home anytime soon, I decided it was time to change and ordered internet last weekend. Unfortunately, I learned today that Net Neutrality, the idea that the internet service providers (ISPs) can’t limit the internet in anyway, is dead. Some arefurious about it, explaining that ISPs can limit content and charge fees for content. Others are for it as any kind of regulation by the government is in some way regulation and would limit the internet services more than if Net Neutrality stayed in effect. I oppose the idea of ISPs controlling what we have access to. What if Comcast (the service I just chose) had a huge argument with Google? It’s possible that Comcast would limit my access to all of Google services such as Gmail, YouTube, this blog or even the Google search engine.