Monday, October 29, 2007

Weather the Storm

I was living just outside of Houston, Texas in the fall of 2005. The recent devastation of Hurricane Katrina was fresh on our minds when we heard about a category 5 storm heading right towards Houston. Nobody wanted another New Orleans and the city of Houston (the 4th largest in the United States) was evacuated.

In retrospect, it is interesting to think about the role that technology played in this process. First, it took powerful computers to help predict the existence of a storm, the storm's strength, and its trajectory. Second, while the evacuation was not perfectly executed, and many people sat in their cars in the heat for hours, it would have been impossible to get away from the city at all without modern conveyances. Third, the chaos that accompanies a massive evacuation could cause families to be separated for long periods of time, not knowing the fate of loved ones and property. Cell phones and the Internet allow evacuees to communicate regardless of their current location (assuming the infrastructure has not been damaged).

It is true that hurricane Rita did not end up striking Houston directly. It ended up making landfall east of Houston in much less densely populated area; causing great chaos in that region. In the end, the most traumatic experience for many Houstoners was not the storm, but the evacuation. I am glad that I was there for such an evacuation now, and not 20 years ago. One can only imagine how another 20 years of innovation will allow us to better weather nature's storms.

Post Inspiration: A story about technology in the recent California wildfires: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/10/fire_technology?currentPage=1

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Recent Wikipedia Edits

I have learned to love the power of the Wikipedia. I am glad that I am assigned in a computer science class to contribute. My contributions are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Scottielad. Here's a summary of what I've done so far:

  1. My alma mater Century High School has a sports section to which I added a wiki link to the OSAA. The text was already there, but now curious browsers can find out more easily about the OSAA.
  2. Max Hall. Thanks to Firefox's spell checker, in College career section I corrected spelling of "consistently" and "received". I also added John Beck's first name and a link to him, as well as changing two prepositions ("departure at BYU" to "departure from BYU" and "his poise in such an early point" to "his poise at such an early point").
  3. Peanut butter cup may soon be deleted from Wikipedia! Maybe changing "Recent years have shown Reese's to experiment with changing the different types of peanut butter cups" to "In recent years Reese's has experimented with different types of peanut butter cups." will help keep it afloat (although the real reason for the possible deletion is lack of notoriety).
Hopefully the wonderful world of wikipedia is now a little better place.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Family Ties

Families illicit stronger emotions than any other group. Whether they be happiness and admiration or frustration and anger, feelings seemed to be magnified in a family setting. Proximity and love are, in my estimation, the root of this. Nature and nurture, both, cause us to love our families and want to be around them. It is this same closeness and desire for welfare that can bring strong negative emotions. When families are apart for a time, at least in my experience, the problems that come from so much familiarity depart and only love remains.

If we define family as those who are related to us by blood and marriage, then our family extends back to the Creation of the Earth, and will extend to its end (and beyond in both directions actually). Thus, we have never met in this life even a small fraction of our entire family. Yet that strong love that binds families together still exists. This love is, I would like to believe, part of what inspires people to do family history.

I am glad to be living in a time in the world's history where family history work is simplified by technology. I can only imagine the frustration of trying to contact distant locations to obtain information and records, only to find out some one else has taken the exact same steps before. While finding records and duplication of effort still exist, they are greatly reduced by the collaboration made possible through computers and the Internet. Technology also facilitates indexing of records, making them far more accessible.

Last week I was called to be an extractor for the ward in which I reside. That means I will get to help make indexes that family history researches can use to find their relatives. I look forward to strong positive emotions as two of my greatest loves are combined: family and technology.

Inspiration for post:
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1991.htm/ensign%20may%201991%20.htm/linking%20the%20family%20of%20man.htm
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1998.htm/ensign%20may%201998.htm/a%20new%20harvest%20time.htm
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/2000.htm/ensign%20july%202000.htm/family%20history%20via%20the%20internet.htm

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Happy Ubuntu Day!

I have been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2002 or 2003 (with a two year mission hiatus). I had tried Suse, Mandrake and a little Red Hat/Fedora. When I returned to the world of computers in Summer 2006, I was surprised to learn from my dad of a popular new Linux distribution. Ubuntu? I was skeptical.

That skepticism soon left as I tried the OS. Most things just worked. What has been very interesting is what has happened since. It seems with almost every release they add some new feature that might make some say, "How did I ever live without that?"

Today's release, for example, automatically sets up a printer once it's plugged in. I didn't particularly mind going through the printer set up wizards. Now that I know I don't have to would probably find the process frustrating. Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, consider the details, making small improvements that make a big difference. As I learn to develop software I hope I have a similar attitude towards usability.

I am excited to find some bandwidth and download the newest version, 7.10 the Gutsy Gibbon, released today. They say desktop effects (like the transparent window borders in Vista) should work out of the box. I'm a little skeptical, but I was last summer, too.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

What to Expect on a Tour of the Internet

If I were to visit a foreign country, let's say Canada, I would want to learn about that country before my journey. What should I wear? What am I allowed to do? Not allowed to do? Do they serve pizza at the McDonald's (yes, oddly enough, at least last time I visited a Canadian McDonald's). I would not just hop into my Kia and start driving.

The Internet, like a foreign country, is, at one point, new territory to each “net-izen”. Crossing into a foreign country involves crossing some well-defined line. The thing that makes the land foreign, is not that artificial border, however. There is not that much physical difference, for example, between northern Washington, and southern British Columbia. Trees, check. Rain, check. Yet discuss the correct pronunciation of the word “about” and you'll see that there is a real difference.

The thing that makes one land foreign is not borders, but that the territory is governed by a different set of rules and norms, a different social contract. I emphasize the word social because democracies are governed by the collective views of its citizens. The Internet, in a way, can be viewed as Earth's largest democracy. For the most part people expect to have basic rights protected. But the Internet, like a nation, is made up of people, who use technology as a means to an end.

Before I enter new territory, I need to see what values and rules that area possesses. Most Americans, for example seem to expect rights to privacy, freedom of information, and security. These rights, at times contradict one another, and a happy medium must be found. Before entering the online world, people should be aware that the balance of rights may be quite different than what they are used to. Privacy on the Internet, for example, is often sacrificed in order to allow the free exchange of ideas. Just as a visitor to Canada might be warned not to express disrespect to hockey, a first time Internet user might be well advised not to post anything online that they do not want to be public knowledge. Currently in America, security concerns seem to be “someone else's” responsibility, not the individuals. Taking this attitude online creates victims of viruses, spyware, phishing, or other nefarious schemes. Internet citizens need to be aware that they are largely responsible for the well-being of their computer and personal information. With this vigilant attitude people would be safer because they would stay informed of current threats, install software updates, have firewalls, run virus scanners, and practice other important security measures.

Overall people should expect to have an enjoyable experience on the Internet (and in Canada), with unprecedented access to knowledge and communication. We need to understand, however, that we are entering foreign territory.

Inspiration for this Post: Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo Egg" and class discussion

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

No Girls Allowed

We do not need to perform an expensive study to determine that women are less likely to major in computer science. All we need to do is look around a typical computer science class. Some argue that girls are scared of math. Others that claim that society breeds disinterest by forcing young girls to play with Barbie. Discrimination is another proposed as a cause for the disparity. Not many dare posit that there may be some inherent difference between men and women that cause them to be interested in different subjects.

Now before you get out your “politically incorrect” branding iron, please understand what I am saying. I am not suggesting that discrimination should be a policy of academic institutions nor of businesses. I do not claim that women are somehow inherently less capable of software engineering than are men (I know some very capable computer-oriented women). What I am saying is that the gap in the number of women versus the number of men who go into computer science is not necessarily something we need to “fix”. Let's make a level playing field. Let any who are crazy enough to want to come, come. Computer science need not be an “all boys club”, but women who choose to enter this field should do so for the same that men do, for the love of code, not for the sake of filling a quota.
Inspiration for this post:
http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/sept03/wyden.html
http://cpms.byu.edu/speeches/family-education-careers
De Palma, Paul. "Why Women Avoid Computer Science". Communications of the ACM. Jun 2001. Vol. 44 No. 6. pp. 27-29

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Will Code for Hugs

"Computers should just work."
That's easy for you to say. The fact is that, unlike dogs and children, computers do exactly what they are told. If you instruct your computer to read a place in memory that has not been initialized, it will do just that. If you delete the root of your file system, there is no reason to be surprised when, on the next boot, your computer stops working.
"But I didn't mean to..."
Maybe we don't want computers to do exactly what we tell them then. Maybe we want them to do exactly what we mean to tell them. Reading users minds is not enough though - programmers must foresee what users will think. In my limited software engineering experience, this is what makes programming difficult and time consuming. Every possibility must be considered; actually, every conceivable combination of future possibilities must be considered. Hours can be spent trying to figure out why some unexpected input caused a program to fail.
So next time you see an error message appear on your screen, resist the urge to yell at your computer programming friends. Instead, give them a hug. We could use one.
Inspiration for post: Finishing my CS240 Collections Project.