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.