Video Games can Easily become Addicting

I know games can easily become addicting because I have been addicted. In the article "Just A Game" by Charles D. Knutson and Kyle K. Oswald, it mentions questions to ask if questioning your addiction. Many of these questions like: do you have difficulty stopping, and do you play as often as you can, I would have answered yes to 6 years ago. Games changed my goals. My main goals in life have nothing to do with games but when I'm in a game my life is very different. My only goal is to slay a dragon and save the digital world. When I'm having fun, it's hard to let go and focus on my main goals in life. Games relax me to a point that I don't want to go back to work. Games are great for having fun if that is your only goal. If your goal is something else, don't let games get in the way. Don't get stuck in the life of a game.

Leave Technology to the Private Sector

Fully Committed

To be successful you have to be fully committed to what you want to accomplish. Ever since the computer industry's beginning, it has been fiercely competitive and rapidly growing. In the book "King of the Seven Dwarfs" GE saw this opportunity and jumped into the computer industry via a contract with Bank of America. GE took the necessary risks to win the contract with the Bank but didn't fully realize the long term commitment that would be required of them. Before signing the contract with Bank of America, GE had very little experience with computers. GE was ultimately unable to excel in the computer industry which ended with their computer departments purchase by Honeywell. This was because they were not fully committed to the computer industry. GE had more faith in their other products because of their experience with them. Other companies at that time like TI and IBM had much more experience with computers and the technical costs associated with them because they were already fully committed to the computer industry. TI was competing for this same contract and may not have had to bend over backwards as GE did to meet the needs of Bank of America and other customers. To be competitive and win, you can't just take calculated risks. You must be fully committed to the direction that you take.

Women Chose without Force

Right now, women enjoy the freedom to chose to be a computer science major or not. Ron Wyden ventures to guess in his paper Title IX and Women in Academics that women are forced out of computer science by lack of equal access and discrimination. This is not true. Women have found other majors of more interest to them. You can't force women to study what they don't want to study. One sided incentives for women in computer science would not improve the drive necessary for women to compete in the fast passed software marketplace and would be discriminating against men. There are many majors that men shy away from, not because they are discriminated against, but because they are less interested. Men and Women are naturally different with different interests and goals. We should not force them to be the same. The educational freedom women have now are equal to men and should stay that way.

How to win friends and influence people

Any avid Facebook user knows that social media is the quickest and easiest way to get a message out. From the article Using Social Media for Gospel Purposes we are encouraged to share our testimony of Jesus Christ through social media. If you have a lot of friends on Facebook and love sharing the gospel, what easier way to share your testimony then over Facebook. A message through Facebook or Twitter can be sent to as many as one thousand people simultaneously. Brother Calderon, for example, created a simple event for saints to post their testimony of Christ. He expected about 4 to 500 testimonies, but got 23,000. Sharing your testimony can influence your friends for good and through social networks this has never been easier.

Business Practices with Copyrights

Businesses never get any respect. From reading "MP3s Are Not the Devil" we can see that Orson Scott Card is frustrated with the choices and practices of businesses through copyrighting. Copyrighting is our method of giving back to the inventors of new thought processes or stories. The way Card complains about companies taking advantage of their customers sounds passionate, but also contradictory. He complains of copyright laws being taken advantage of by companies because artists sign contracts that give up their rights. This is a choice by the artist to give up their copyright for the risk that the company takes on by using it. The company risks losing money by using the artists art when they could turn a profit. He also complains about how companies treat their customers badly through copyright laws. Companies that treat their customers unfairly will lose their customers. Because companies turn a profit doesn't mean they are cheating their customers, it means they are doing the best job of serving them.  

Where there's a Linux, there's a way

Linux is an operating system that came out of no where and replaced a void in the market, a void only programming wizards knew about. The operating systems of the day were supposed to solve users needs with ease. It wasn't enough for these wizards. When the nature of programming is creation and customization, platform conforming is not what gets a developer excited. What he or she creates is the unexpected. You can't tell a good programmer "that's dumb," or he'll do it, and do it well. Linux is a polished collection of programmer's coordinated efforts. Now, Independent developers and companies through out the world use Linux for their projects. It will continue to be one of the most used operating systems because of it's flexible nature and endless open-source support.

Cyber Attacks are Viral

We have to take cyber attacks seriously for our safety. With any new computer technology that creates new doors for users, there also comes the ability for enemies to pick the locks of those doors. "The Cuckoo's Egg" reveals one of the first major cyber attacks. It was 1986. Because hacking was early in the life of computers and networks, many people, including the FBI, did not realize the abilities hackers had at taking crippling advantage of them. Clifford Stoll understood the danger a hacker was posing on his school network. He used every bit of energy he had to track down and capture the spy that was invading. He borrowed terminals to check every phone line, slept under his desk at night, and even wrote down every keystroke the spy was making. Clifford is a great example for how we can prevent our own cyber attacks. Whether we know very little or a lot about computers and networks, we must take very seriously any attack made on us through our cyber security. If someone has access to our computer, they can have access to much of our life through email, Facebook, and any other records stored on our computer. The most respected companies and the most powerful country in the world are currently becoming immobilized by hackers. The well known and respected Sony Computer Entertainment company had a major cyber attack that paralyzed their company for more then a month. Sony's online service that users were paying for was gone and their personal account information was possibly stolen for thousands of individuals. According to CNN this month, Major FBI websites are being hacked by a group called Anonymous. This directly effects the safety of all Americans. We have to treat these and future cyber attacks as a serious incursion of our safety.

Google is OK at the game of Acquire

Good news and strategy for Google. The Justice Department just allowed Google to buy Motorola Mobility with no strings attached. This allows them to acquire many new patents to help in building new products. Very often large companies like Google will have to fight for acquiring a company because it lessens the competition. In this case Google isn't winning in the game of Monopoly, but is in the game of Acquire. With Mobility's hefty patent portfolio, Google is free to expand and compete in new markets. It will be exciting to see what Google does next with their Midas touch.

The Next Printing Press

The personal computer is revolutionary for family history work. Like the printing press, the computer has transformed documentation by making it easier to store and duplicate records. Elder Russell M. Nelson tells of its current widespread use and our future work to bring us closer to our ancestors.  This is similar to how the printing press brought the bible and Book of Mormon to so many early saints that joined the church. These technologies have brought families closer together through record keeping for centuries now. Now is the time to take advantage of saving family records on personal computers.

Untethered tech

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57367685-76/untethered-tech-wireless-sensors-monitor-brain-waves/?tag=mncol;cnetRiver

Because of the endless possibilities with mind reading, we need a grasp of the challenges that may come with them. While Scientific American mentions a few major benefits like helping paralyzed people interact with the world, there are still important liabilities. One liability is that it could be used to take advantage of others in a very new way. With future improvements to this technology, terrorists could read pass codes or military plans from their hostages. It may even be possible to put thoughts into someones mind. I hope we each take steps to protect ourselves from such weapons while using this technology for good.

SOPA Halted

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57362783-17/sopa-halted-in-house/?tag=mncol;3n

I feel that intellectual property over the net has not been adequately protected by its owners or the government for a very long time. The government is finally making a move toward preventing this theft through S.O.P.A. After the public caught wind of S.O.P.A., the overwhelming majority of internet junkies and large web organizations disproved of it as overcompensating. It's interesting that many companies like Google went as far as protesting openly on their websites. I think it's good that government is tying to step up to protecting American property from foreign thieves and also listening closely to criticism. I agree that S.O.P.A. is to overreaching in its ability  to censor the internet, but something must be done to help protect valuable intellectual property.

One Thing to Know About Technological Change

I agree with Neil Postman's fourth point of inventions changing everything and not just some things, but I have a very different view on who is to blame. Instead of pretending to be the victim, people should praise inventors for taking hold of American opportunity. Certainly Ford and Bell had a pursuit of happiness, but to assume that they could avoid the unpredictable negative effects this would have on the world is absurd. If they didn't invent it, someone else would have, and therefore taken the profits for him or herself. To say that Capitalists should be disciplined is to say someone else should decide who benefits from their invention and who does not. This is discriminating the positive and negative effects without eliminating the problems. If inventions give others an edge over us, we only have ourselves to blame for not finding how we can take advantage of it.