A Dangerous Cave In

The software industry is a goldmine. Fortunes are being made every day.  With the lure of high salaries and bonuses comes a real danger of loosing personal integrity. Last semester I applied for several fulltime positions. As I went out for interviews I had the chance to meet many recruiters. Recruiters from these companies try to win students over with large benefit packages, competitive salaries, and all kinds of swag. In the face of such high demand, it can be hard to remain humble. I found myself seeking greater and greater opportunities with little thought of how blessed I had been. Once I had signed a contract and had a little time to think, I realized that this interview process had changed me. In order to have real success, a person must keep a strong focus on his or her personal values, otherwise an excited miner will quickly find his life caving in.

Stemming the Tide

My family has always been somewhat of an anomaly. In my younger years, I was oblivious to sports, music, and the current TV shows; I still am. Over the Thanksgiving break I talked to my father about many of the gaming and technology addictions that others face. I was surprised to learn that my family’s success was a result of a dedicated effort by my parents. My father loves sports, but to prevent sports addictions he worked hard to ensure that our family never watched sports in the home. My mother made it a rule that there would never be a television in the family room or in any of the bedrooms. As we grew up these influences were minimized. As I prepare to have a family of my own, I will need to make a concerted effort to protect my children from the tidal wave of technology.  

Internet Neutrality

A Haiku and a Short Story

My laptop is safe

Files encrypted, no loopholes

What was the password? 

I tried to be original once… It was patented 

Here Comes Everybody

Earlier this year I worked with a few friends from my ethics class to promote social change. Our Goal: To make simple acts of service a part of each student’s day. Together, we founded Text2Serve.  By sending a simple message to 40404, a person could sign up to receive daily service challenges. Within a week we had over 100 members! One day the challenge was to make a yummy treat and share it with a friend. Within a few hours three plates of goodies had shown up at my door. Unknown to me, we had formed our own Text2Serve community. The book, Here Comes Everybody, discusses the global impact of easy networking. Suddenly terms like flash mob, open source, wiki, and crowd sourcing have become commonplace. With no barrier to communication, vast communities can form overnight. As growing numbers of individuals connect, a network can quickly gain an enormous amount of influence. While The First Amendment enables freedom of speech, this ability to network grants power of speech. The game changing power of the Internet enables even the youngest of students to have an enormous impact on the world.

Majorly Unattractive

The first day I entered my family history class, I was surprised that half of my classmates were women. I had to remind myself that most classes are this way. As a computer science major I have become accustomed to classrooms dominated by men. Why are there so few women studying computer science? The rise of video games seems to be a contributing factor. As women try to enter the field, they find themselves surrounded by game-crazed men. Is this appealing? A recent survey conducted at my apartment complex showed that women rank video games as a highly unattractive trait in men, just below bow hunting and hatchet juggling. Is it any wonder that women aren’t flocking to tech companies? I am fascinated by computer science, but if my classrooms were filled with cat-crazed grandmothers, I would leave in search of better company. 

Security in Public Code Books

How do you make a secret more secure by publishing your code book? Many companies hide their code; this hides bugs from exploitation, in essence providing security through obscurity. However, Lava-bit, the flag ship of secure email, just published all of its encryption code. While this may sound counter-intuitive, open sourcing their encryption code is one of the best ways to provide security. Now Lava-bit encryption will be open to constant public review. Hidden bugs will be trampled by mobs of contributors. Perhaps most importantly, this decentralizes all the public keys preventing big brother from stealing lava-bit’s keychain. Now I hold the key to my secure email, and only I can decrypt them. Because Lava-bit has revealed its secrets, I can rest assured that mine are secure. 

Sharing The Gospel With All Your Might: Pinterest

How long before we see missionaries called to serve over Pintrest? While serving my mission, the church began the “I’m a Mormon” campaign. I received excited emails from friends and family members telling me that billboards, banners, and even Times Square were filled with “I’m a Mormon” advertisements. Now, my neighboring ward has been asked to pilot sharing the gospel over Pinterest. The church is encouraging us to embrace new technology and learn to use it to share the gospel. I never would have thought that serving the Lord with all my might, mind and strength would have included using Pinterest. 

Permission to think? No! Someone patented all the ideas

I find most software patents ridiculous. Patents were designed to promote growth by encouraging inventors to share their work and offering royalties in exchange. Instead, patents have become a rat race for intellectual ownership of common ideas. There is a finite number of viable solutions to any given problem. As a computer programer I rarely find myself facing a unique problem; the solution is almost always on stack overflow. Patent Trolls quietly buy up the copyrights to the common solutions, then come out from under their bridge to sue anyone who has solved the problem in the same way. If these companies buy up all original ideas, and sue anyone who thinks the same way, our nation will be left in a state of endless stupor.

Show, Don't Tell - Proving Your System Security

In reading The Cuckoo's Egg, by Clifford Stoll, I was surprised that Stoll’s hacker gained most of his success by exploiting simple oversights in system administration.  This hacker would check generic accounts like username: guest, password: guest. In about one of twenty attempts he would succeed. Interestingly, most current cyber attacks also take advantage of simple oversights. The foremost of these involve SQL injection, a well-known and easily preventable attack. Amazingly SQL injection is the culprit for the majority of data theft and loss on the web. The outside world tends to view strong cyber security as being reliant on bigger and better programs, when in reality security stems from informed, vigilant system administrators. To me, it seems that any secure company needs a division devoted to solely to penetration testing. To those who claim their system is secure, I say prove it! What kind of hackers have you thwarted? How many companies have tested your security? Software and architecture mean nothing, only once a system has held up against thorough penetration testing should a system be labeled secure. 

Public Privacy?

A school district in California is paying $40,000 to monitor public posts by students. As students tweet and post pictures on Facebook, the data is being sold to monitoring companies that process and flag suspicious content. Through the aid of this program this school district has been able to detect suicidal students and provide counseling. Cyber-bullying and drug abuse are also kept on the radar. Internet monitoring programs raise an interesting question. Should there be such a thing as public privacy? Is it right for social media networks to sell access rights to my public content? While these questions have many people concerned, the bottom line is that social media is public. While a photographer must obtain written permission to publicly use your photo, we preemptively forfeit this protection as we accept online terms of use agreements. Best to learn quickly- public posts are never private.

Police, schools tap social media to track behavior

Family History, Meet Social Networking

Family History is being revolutionized by the rapid growth of social networking. With new tools available on familysearch.org a person can upload pictures and stories of their ancestors. As you trace your genealogical line you can learn all kinds of information about your heritage. You have the chance to connect with other descendants who are interested in the information you have to share.  Genealogical work used to be a compartmentalized effort, but now participants can feel the excitement of working with people around the globe as they work to build the family tree of the human family. What a blessing it is to live in this modern age! 

A Shiny, Internet-Crippling Snare

A shiny new device named The AdTrap hit the market last month. This device sits between your computer and router. The box intercepts content sent by ad agencies and remove it before it can reach your computer. AdTrap is even able to remove the ads before youtube videos. Many people see this as a kick back against the targeted advertising and information gathering prevalent among internet advertising companies. While this device looks to be a powerful protection from advertisements agencies, it also has a potential to maim the internet. Many free web-services depend on ads to generate revenue. Websites will have to fight against the AdTrap by further intermingling ads among their content, resort to other more pervasive (and annoying) means of generating revenue, or cease to exist. The AdTrap may just cripple the internet with its snare.

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/adtrap-ad-blocker-butkus-russell-online-advertisements/

Verizon vs. The First Amendment

Verizon has been fighting in court to end net neutrality. Verizon claims that newspapers choose which articles to publish, therefore Version should be able to choose which websites it will carry. Verizon’s main goal in doing this is to charge websites for the amount of fiber-optic traffic they generate, if the websites refuse that website’s bandwidth is restricted. The newspaper argument may sound valid, but Verizon holds a monopoly on America’s broadband coverage. Should Verizon be given the right to govern the internet, we could quickly find ourselves under pervasive internet censorship similar to that of China. Furthermore, the internet has grown to become a first-world liberty. A great quality of our nation is the freedom of expression. Imagine what damage would be done in charging tariffs for publishing information. I for one am not ready to hand off my first amendment rights to Verzion.

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Lamps and Loneliness

America is working hard to help Botswana become a first world nation. Outside the cities, people live in villages with dirt roads and cinderblock homes. If you follow our culture’s natural tendency, you feel some degree of pity for them. While the desire to bless them with electricity is noble, we often do not realize the impact of modernization. As homes are connected with power, cable, and internet, families within them disconnect from the community. Children stay indoors to watch television, neighbors interact less frequently, soon the community consists only of strangers. That is the American dream in a nutshell. I’m not saying technology is evil. I love computers and advocate modernization, but often it is easy to overlook the costs. As we embrace the marvels of advancing technology we must remain aware of its impact. Otherwise we may fool ourselves into thinking we need nothing but facebook friends.