Better Motivation than Caffeine and Heavy Metal

“As you keep these standards [from For the Strength of Youth] and live by the truth in the scriptures, you will be able to do your life’s work with greater wisdom and skill and bear trials with greater courage” (For the Strength of Youth, page 2). Those words meant very little to me when I first read them in high school, mostly because I had relatively little work to do. But now that finals are approaching, big decisions abound, and I often wonder if I can get everything done, this promise has taken on greater meaning. What’s more, I’ve already experienced this in my life. Often I’ve spent hours working on a project half-heatedly, but when I’m filled with hope and the Spirit I'm much more effective with my time. I especially find starting my homework sessions with a scripture study session to be helpful. Not necessarily because Nephi wrote much about programming in Ruby, but because scripture study helps me be more optimistic and motivated. Some programmers’ best fuel is caffeine and heavy metal; mine is hope and the Spirit.

The iPad: So Easy a 2.5-Year-Old Can Use It

The iPad is just a big iPod, right? And yet it’s the way of the future. As I write this, I keep getting this nagging feeling, saying “You dinosaur! Look at you with your mouse, keyboard, and clunky laptop… get with the program! Get an iPad!” Why is this so? The iPad’s interface is incredibly intuitive, as this 2.5-year-old demonstrates.

It will be great for typing when you don’t want the noisy keyboard-chatter. It can simultaneously be your textbook and notebook. Artists will use it for sketching. You can watch movies on it on road trips, and use the Internet and email comfortably on this Goldilocks-sized device. But does the iPad have its killer app? To be honest: I haven’t seen one yet and am personally unconvinced I need an iPad for now. But with the open-market app store the possibilities are limitless, and many killer apps are surely on the way; in 5 years expect to throw your laptops, books and GPSs with the rest of your junk and use the iPad for everything.

Vlog post

Technology and Perdition

Why do we fight against integrating technology into the Church? Brother Cannon’s 1984 statement that “too much dependence on computers can cause a person to be less receptive to the promptings of the Spirit” is an almost humoristic example; how could technology possibly dampen my receptiveness to the Spirit? Perhaps if I ignore people, or if I waste my time playing Minesweeper, technology could be a detriment. But, 36 years later, the Church is clearly dependent on computers, despite Brother Cannon. How could ward clerks fulfill their calling without computers today? They can’t. Brother Cannon’s statement simply appeased the Luddite Church members, of which I am, partially, one. Do you cringe with me when you see cell phones used in Church? Or how about iPhones used instead of scriptures? Maybe it’s a good idea but, deep down, we feel people are “cheating,” or not doing it the “proper” way. I’ve dreamt of having all my notes from Church on my computer, so I can organize them according to date, theme, or whatever. But I’ve resisted bringing my computer to Church because of that Luddite knee-jerk inside me. “Won’t I distract people if I’m typing away during Sacrament meeting?” Perhaps, but nowhere in scriptures does it say “all spiritual impressions must be written down on paper.” Nephi sure didn’t use paper, why do I feel I’m restricted to that? I say it’s the inner Luddite—better yet, Pharisee!—speaking.

Where's the Empirical Evidence for Open Source Superiority?

Eric Raymond, in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” proclaims the wonders of open source development. But where is the evidence for its superiority? Where is the empirical evidence? Linux is successful, but closed source Windows and Macintosh are far more successful! Why has closed source software won in these two cases? Because most users don’t want to be developers. When you go to write an English paper, you just want a word-processor that works, not one that forces you to fight through bugs and to add new features. From the developer’s perspective it’s very nice to have your users be your debuggers and co-developers, but most users don’t want those extra jobs. The only users that happily fill that role are in a technically-orientated minority. For that reason open source is not the way of the future, but it survives and thrives in its own niche.

5 Keys for Being Well-Rounded

The future will go to the great synthesizers: those who can combine two seemingly unrelated things and make something new of real value. For example: combining degree programs and breakfast cereals, swimming and chocolate pudding, or swivel chairs and skiing. But in order to become a great synthesizer, you need to first be well-rounded, a skill which is taught only indirectly at best. In the spirit of professionalism, I have found the following 5 things have successfully turned me into a well-rounded individual:
1. When you get exercise, turn the TV onto a random channel and watch it, regardless of whether you like it or not. Even though this may not teach you about real life (e.g.: you could coincidentally tune into The Cosby Show, which teaches you nothing about real Afro-American life, or Die Hard: Or Live Free which teaches you very little about how to safely drive a truck down an elevator shaft), this exercise has nonetheless proven beneficial in my life.
2. Periodically, learn more what it’s like to not be well-rounded. E.g.: Do homework all day every Saturday. You will learn to become amused at incredibly small things, like billboards and jingles, and have more self-control.
3. Sit somewhere new in class every day and meet the people you sit next to. Not only is doing things in different ways incredibly stimulating to your brain (my brother demonstrated this by opening the door backwards, which he claimed somehow made him smarter,) but you’ll learn about lots of different people. Although you, a granny, and punk-rocker all live in the same neighborhood, all three of you effectively in live dramatically different worlds.
4. Be a nerd. It doesn’t matter what type, but be a good nerd. You could be a movie-nerd, a football nerd, a punctuation nerd. Nerds diversify society, and provide comical relief. Imagine life without nerds: World Of Warcraft nerds, Pride and Prejudice nerds, and CPU-optimization nerds! You owe it to yourself and society to be a nerd.
5. Write in your journal and ask yourself “Was that a waste?” This will help you to reflect and prevent wasting years of your life towards useless pursuits.
I hope these five principles help you become as well-rounded as they have me, and thus help you too to become a great synthesizer.

Wild West Style Stem Cell Therapy

Doctors from Colorado have bypassed federal FDA regulations in administering stem cell therapy. The procedure involves no surgery, only extracting stem cells from a patient’s body, growing them in a culture, and reinserting them into the damaged area; and it has worked remarkably well. While experiments show stem cells heal dogs and horses in miraculous ways, it is a long road to FDA approval, and these doctors couldn’t wait any longer. Because their practice is restricted to operations solely within a single state, they claim exemption from federal FDA regulations. While many laud this as being just what the doctor ordered, and find FDA approval is too slow, let’s not forget the Wild West days are over: the government needs to approve new therapies. While bureaucracies are slow-moving, in this situation they’re better than total deregulation. (Imagine it: “Oh sorry, these pills don’t alleviate head-aches like we thought, they actually kill you.”) These doctors are not only defying the FDA by claiming these procedures are safe, they’re doing it without any peer-review. Although stem cell therapy may be the miracle cure of the future, and the FDA may be unnecessarily slow, trusting therapies which haven’t been approved by the FDA, or anybody besides the administering doctors, is a bad idea.

The Entertainment Industry's Century-Old Business Model

How popular would Google be if you paid per search? Imagine it: you type in a search and “ding!” and you’re redirected to a page basically saying, “If you really want to see the search results, pay $2. Otherwise, forget about using Google.” The search engine would have been a complete flop because that business model is totally unsuited for the business. And yet, that is precisely what the entertainment industry is doing: continuing to try to apply an aging business model to a business which is radically different than it was a century ago when it emerged. Consider another example: your city is having a fireworks show tonight downtown, and they insist the show is copyrighted and charge $10 per viewer. Even if you weren’t interested in seeing the fireworks, you probably would look up at least periodically and see it from anyone in town, and inadvertently infringe copyright. Should you be sued? The entertainment industry sure would try! They sue for viewing material which is as easily copied and viewed as the cityscape sky. Rather than adopting their business model to maximize on technology’s incredible ability to distribute their products (say through placing advertisements in their movies or songs) they instead prefer to restrict its distribution and charge customers directly. Music and movie files are as easily distributed as radio and TV programs, so why not adapt their business model in the same way? Whether they like it or not, technology has changed our world: the entertainment industry needs to stop suing and start updating their century-old business plan.

Video Game Testimonial

With the headline “[Iowa State University] study proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids,” everyone above the age of 40 who has never played video games sits back in their chair and declares “I knew it.” I personally decided at age 17 to nearly completely wipe video games from my life, but I can personally testify of three of their benefits. First video games improved my typing skills: although middle school classes helped me to type faster, nothing helped me type as fast as when I was calling for help while under a zergling attack. A second is learning: the board game/video game Risk taught me more about geography than any class. Ask anyone where Siam (an otherwise obscure country, but important in the game) was located, and if they’ve played risk they’ll tell you. They might not, however, be able to pinpoint Thailand with the same accuracy, even though they’re the same country and that would have been what your high school classes would have taught you about. Lastly, the third way video games helped me is through computer skills: we always assume “techys play video games,” but rarely consider the possibility that “video games help make techys.” Yesterday I was reinstalling an old computer game from 1995: Command and Conquer. I was reminded of how much extensive configuration was needed to install it, and how much more understanding of modems and cables was necessary to play online. So if kids wanted to play this game, they would, of necessity, need to learn about their computer in ways they would otherwise not learn until university. Could that be a reason why some kids are so technologically advanced? A different study than the Iowa State one “concluded that computer games can be a positive feature of a healthy adolescence.” While I neither praise video games as heaven-sent, nor conclude they are for everyone, I can personally testify of their benefit in my life.

Optogenetics: controlling the brain with light

It’s a mad scientists’ dream come true! Researchers in the field of Optogenetics have discovered how to control brain cells using light. They take the light-sensitive genes from certain bacteria, using genetic-engineering techniques, and insert those genes into brain cells. These cells will then fire anytime light is shone on them. But how do scientists get light to brain cells? And why do we care if we can make specific brain cells fire? Light is usually introduced into the brain through a fiber-optic cable. Although this seems like a very impractical fashion-feature, combining it with genetic engineering techniques of pinpointing certain cells it allows scientists to fire specific neurons at an unparalleled level of accuracy. Using it, scientists have controlled the movement of mice, the taste-preference of flies, and have come to a far better understanding of mental illnesses like Parkinson’s’ disease and depression. Although human-testing is still some years away, using it in combination with special genes which work in the opposite direction (causing brain cells to glow when fired) it may also revolutionize human-computer mental communication. (Think robotic arms: the arm speaks to the brain by sending light to the brain, and the brain communicates to the arm by having certain brain cells illuminate.) Despite all of Optogenetics’ practical purposes, mad scientists can’t help but smile at that.

Why Youngsters Make Computer Viruses

Why do young people make computer viruses? Because you treat them badly! Imagine this: you’re a nerd, everyone makes fun of you, you’re not good looking, witty, or athletic, and you want to get even. How would you do it? No matter how much you take it out on village folk with your “Sword of a Thousand Sorrows” in World of Warcraft, you’re eventually going to want to do something else that really proves your worth and power. So you focus all your reclusive strength on developing a computer virus. And it works; you make 100,000 computers crash over the course of a month, you hear your virus’ sweet name all over the news, and you get instant bragging rights. It really makes sense. You’re getting back at a society that deserves it and proving you can cause about as much havoc as Godzilla.
So what can we do about this? Is there any way to harness all this computational power for good? Is there a way to help those who are socially inept but technically advanced show their skills and gain recognition? One idea is to have more computing contests: for example, to have Microsoft award $10,000 to whoever can design the coolest new feature for Microsoft Word. This would also provide a monetary incentive, but admittedly lacks the juiciest part of making viruses: doing damage. So another idea is one that’s already well implemented: having open–source software which nerds all over can develop. For young hackers who want to annoy Microsoft, making competing, completely free, software seems to take chunk out of Microsoft’s profits and effectively “stick it to ‘em.”
Also, why are hackers always between the ages of 17 and 26? Why are there so few 40-50 year old hackers? At BYU’s Office of Information Technology, nearly half of all employees are in this age range and experiencing their midlife crises, so the reason can’t be because there are no technologically oriented middle-aged folk. But when they’re presented with the choice of working for 8 hours at their high-paying job, or working for 8 hours receiving only the wages of anarchy, they choose the more profitable one. Whereas when young people are presented with the choice of either eight hours at near-minimum wage or becoming cyber Ghanghis Khans, many choose the latter. And, again, it makes sense. Once they have proven their skills, software designers would be foolish to not hire such a demonstrably talented upstart.
Any economist can tell you that people react to incentives. And the incentives for young, technologically-orientated people to become hackers are often outweighing the deterrents. If we spent less money trying to catch and fight them, and more trying to harvest their brains, this situation could be dramatically changed.

Outsourcing the Church

In my home city of Victoria, there was a government-owned, poorly managed ferry service which was recently made public. It was sold to some company which made major overhauls, not all of which were welcome, but which caused it to be managed far more efficiently. As a result, it is no longer a public liability and is actually profitable. The LDS Church seems to be making some similar changes. I recently heard that the Book of Mormon is now to be published by a private company and the Church’s Personal Ancestral File (PAF) genealogical management program is being phased out by a private program called Roots Magic. Is this wrong? Should private companies be allowed to profit from religious endeavors (like scripture reading and family history research)? If the work can be done more efficiently by a private company, and thereby occupy fewer tithing-funds, why not outsource? Economics teaches us that generally private companies are more efficient than public ones (the Church being compared to the government) but that they’re also less responsible. As long as the Church is able to oversee these private companies I think the principle of outsourcing can be just as advantageous to the Church’s progress as to any government organization.

Is Twitter dead?

Twitter, the online phenomenon which was once growing at the fabulous rate of 900% per year, has seemingly reached a peak of popularity and hasn’t surpassed its July 2009 highs. What happened? Is it already old technology, obsolete and destined to become junk in a landfill somewhere? Don't jump to that conclusion just yet. I personally still have never used Twitter, but I can see why it would be useful. I don’t care about bits of “cool,” but useless, information (like what Miley Cyrus had for breakfast). If, however, I were investing and wanted to subscribe to Warren Buffet’s latest tweets on the stock market, I would be happy to use Twitter. It won’t have the social impact the printing press had, but it has its place. Twitter has experienced what is often described as the “Peak of Popularity,” (when we were tempted to use it just because it was “cool”) and is now in its “Slough of Disillusionment,” (we're realizing it won’t bring world peace) and will soon reach the “Plateau of Productivity” (we'll keep using it because it's useful). So no, I don’t think Twitter has actually died. It just got stuck in a grocery store and is flapping around in circles crazily, but will eventually be shooed out the doors by staff, and all will be well.

Is this the face of a nerd?

Computer Science is not just for nerds! Why do we all have that impression? Just look at my photo on the top of the screen —am I a nerd? (I hope you’re not hesitating, wondering how to respond.) Obviously not! During my first year at university, I was surprised to find a girl I knew from high school in my computer science class. She wasn’t a “Dungeon Master," Ladder-Match Starcraft player, or even a ”techy,” but she did fine in the class. She often explained junk to me. Contrasting this, I did have some friends who had “Half-Life 2” t-shirts, PDAs (while they were still new and cool) and lived and breathed computers but couldn’t get their programming assignments done on time. They were the stereotypical nerds, yet showed that nerds really are no better at Computer Science than normal people. So why does this stereotype persist? For the same reason people think “frenchies” don’t bathe, blondes are air-headed, and college students are always brewing anarchy: ignorance and television.

France vs. Microsoft

January 15, 2010, the French government officially advised its citizens to not use Microsoft Internet Explorer. The reason the government stepped outside of its usual bounds is Internet Explorer 6 has a bug which allows remote execution of malicious code. Despite this reasoning, the government is probably not solely looking out for its citizens' protection, or else it would have only discouraged using version 6, which has the bug, instead of all versions. It's like the Canadian government discouraging its citizens from buying Fords, or wearing Levi's. It just seems weird, but not entirely out of character for the French government. My mom, who is French, says they banned peanut butter 20 years ago because of "high cholesterol content." So the Fifth Republic has angered the peanut butter guys, the Microsoft guys, most Americans since 2001, and actually most of its own citizens (as shown by their annual strikes on most public services). So I'm pretty sure we have another French Revolution in the oven.

Dishwashers? Where we're going we don't need dishwashers

Clearly, using a dishwasher and putting dishes away is too difficult for most college students. The best technologies, like good friends, accept you for who you are and work with that. I don’t want to get up and put dishes into the dishwasher, don’t have enough dishes to merit another wash-cycle, and don’t want to then arrange dishes in my cupboard. When was the last breakthrough in dishwashing technology? Since the dishwasher, there have been none. Are you ready for the next generation of dishwashing technology? Take a breath. Here it is: self-washing dishes that you don’t want to put away (SWDTYDWTPA, or Swda for short). Each dish: cleans itself by emitting soapy-steam through microscopic pores when it detects disuse; is a piece of artwork, like a painting, you want to display instead of hiding in a cupboard; and is magnetized for easy placement on your corresponding magnetized wall and furniture. So imagine it: you’re watching Die Hard 4, and eating a microwave dinner on your Swda. Unfortunately, your meal and the movie don’t end at the same time. So instead of being unnecessarily inconvenienced by putting your Swda away, you simply throw the Swda against the wall, it magnetizes and sticks, cleans itself by emitting the soapy vapor through its pores, and then your buddies come over, see it, and say “No way! You got the Kobe Bryant Swda! That’s the coolest one!” A new age of dishwashing is upon us.

first blog entry

Here's my first blog entry. I was tempted to try Wordpress, but I don't want to have to install anything (I bet it has more functionality, but this is so much simpler to just do it from the web-browser. Once again, the product that encourages laziness wins.)