Angry Birds Did Not Improve My Productivity

Back in the day when I had both free time and friends, I played tons of First Person Shooter video games at LAN parties. I stopped playing video games to make more time for studying and haven't played them seriously for at least 7 years, that is, until Angry Birds was released for PC. Instead of programming I played over 100 levels of bird flinging, pig killing awesomeness, practically drooling on myself. I noticed that I had neglected my wife all night and realized that I have a weakness toward simple video games. When a person is extremely busy they have to look for small and quick distractions to keep them sane. Little games are great for this and so are web comics or blogs, used in moderation. If given too much attention they can overcome your willpower to work on important things. I deleted Angry Birds from my PC because I knew it would be an ongoing problem for me. Everyone has to know their own limits and take appropriate action to avoid negative consequences of video games and other distractions.

Social Media: My Conversion

I just read "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky. It is a terrible book and horribly repetitive, but it convinced me embrace social media and stop hating it. The most important idea that stuck in my mind after reading it is that personal restraint has to be a part of social media. The public nature of social media exposes the author in ways they never have been before. What they write is available to the whole world and is not likely to go away any time soon. Where does your Facebook status go when you post it? Facebook's servers, i.e., out of your control forever. Anyone interested in learning about you now knows that you think your cat is adorable.

I have always seen social media as blogs with no substance or grammatical correctness, the Wild West of the Internet where anything goes because there are no rules. Facebook statuses like "chilin wit my homies" make me cringe because they are completely unnecessary! The only people that care about my status updates are the "homies" I'm "chilin wit". Social media is a way for an individual to publish for a audience that is genuinely interested in their life, but the broader audience of the Internet must always be considered. You might think that your boss is an idiot, and it might be important to your immediate audience to know about it, but remember that what you say is very public despite any illusion of privacy. Find your niche, be creative, have fun, express your unique perspective! Show the world the best of yourself, but be responsible.

Interview from The Green Show - Rouge Sys Admins

Show Us Your Papers!

The entertainment industry needs to find other ways to monetize their products or change their business model to cope with the new challenges the internet has produced. They have replaced fair use with Gestapo tactics trying to put themselves on your computer and tell you what you can and can't do with your legally purchased media. Instead of suing alleged pirates tracked through sketchy ISP traces, they should be focusing on developing good content that people want to purchase in high quality format. I watched a poor quality version of the third Narnia movie a few days ago and it was great! Has the movie studio lost anything from me? Absolutely not! Despite my distaste for the industry, I'm going to purchase the Bluray when it is released and I'll probably pick up a copy of Inception too. (I watched it at a friend's house. It was awesome!) I'll purchase a good product because I enjoy having high quality things, but I'll use it in my own way within fair use. To the entertainment industry: Deal with it.

Women in the Workplace

I believe that men and women should get all of the education they can. Men should be educated so they can be good providers for their families and women so they can raise their children. Therefore, women should only study cooking, sewing, child development, and family dynamics. Absolutely not! Those are all fine things to study but engineering, math and the hard sciences are too. If America needs a new generation of engineers to compete with developing nations, then no one would be better to raise them than mothers that have hard science degrees. I love it that my wife will have degrees in Civil Engineering and Mathematics because I intend to instill in my children a desire to pursue an education in the hard sciences. I have seen the influence a good mother has on children and it is worth much more to me than an extra salary. There are some women in the workplace that should be in the home until their children are raised properly. Work will always be there, but children will not.

Not Your Grandma's Internet

Technology and electronics have become far too diverse for one person to participate actively in every area. I feel like the old fart of the computing world because I don't care about social networking and can't play games on my phone.  Sure, I built my wicked fast desktop, and I've got more monitors than you can shake a stick at, but no gadgets. I was pretty slick learning to type in 8th grade, but my little brothers have been pwning me in video games since they were 6. It's kind of like high school where there are 30 clubs and you can realistically only join 2 or 3. As more people join the tech community even more niches will develop and hardware and software will be developed to support them. Our little world will continue shrinking and diversifying, and there isn't anything you can do about it. People stick to their own interests and groups in real life and they will increasingly do the same thing online. The only thing you can do is find your group and learn to enjoy the ride.

Genealogy: The Slippery Slope to Robot Domination

Long ago---the 1970s---genealogy was done by looking through family archives and visiting cemeteries in foreign countries linking deceased relatives. Genealogists could only dream of an easier way. Today the old tactics are still valuable, but searching enormous databases of extracted data from immigration records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and other legal documents is much more efficient. Computers have not yet been taught to make the connections between names and records that humans can, but they will be. To us that doesn't seem as remote or ridiculous as the idea of searchable databases did to people in the 70s. When computers can do that work, people will not be surprised and will return to looking through cemeteries trying to make the most difficult links. Well, until we find a way to make computers do that too. "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."

It Takes Two to Tango

It takes two to Tango, but it takes three to develop good software. The user, programmer, and middle management execute an intricate dance where all are happy, or at least one is not. Users want reliability and new features, but not overwhelming changes. Programmers want their software to be useful and different, but don't want to fix bugs. Middle management wants to be profitable, but not look bad for missing deadlines. If you release too many features too quickly, or if the software is buggy it won't be financially successful. If you spend too much time fixing bugs you will miss deadlines. If you try to capture a different market with a major GUI change then you tick off your current user base. Windows Vista is an excellent example of this process failing. Vista missed 3 ship deadlines and was not well liked by Windows users. In contrast Windows 7 was released on time and is now the best selling operating system ever. Huge companies can step on their dance partner's toes occasionally, but dancing well is imperative for the success of a small company.

1337 H4x0rz

Real hacking is an art. A black art, but still an art. No one can sit down at a computer and say to their self "I wonder what Pixar is working on in their data center right now?" and then break in and poke around. It would be a trivial task if you could traipse around a network knocking on doors until one opened, but important networks aren't like that today. IT professionals and programmers have learned through hard experience and public embarrassment that they can't trust anyone on their networks. If a network is valuable it is highly secured. Our networks have become an extension of us. Misbehavior on a network can lead to very real consequences. The most recent wave of copyright infringement lawsuits have shown that it is possible for file sharers to leave digital footprints that can be traced right to their real front doors. If a hacker is determined and educated in computer architecture and network communication, they will eventually find a weak spot and penetrate the network defenses. It won't be done overnight, or probably in a few weeks, but it can be done. Once they are in they can do whatever they want until they are detected; if they ever are detected. There will always be a need for security professionals to help keep our networks safe. This need will only increase as the earth becomes more connected and people move more and more personal information online.

Your Private Moon Tour

Man hasn't returned to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. That isn't about to change, but the first private vehicle could be going in 2013. This private exploration--if successful--will demonstrate that any resources available on the moon can be available to corporations with enough money. A whole new economy will emerge for moon goods or perhaps services like moon tours. Imagine that! Renting a lunar rover to go check out that crater you saw in a telescope. These ideas are all somewhere in the future, but doors are beginning to open now which will make it real tomorrow.