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« Previous EntriesHave you tried a little love?
Thursday, April 8th, 2010Ethics are a funny thing. We spend hours making them up and then try and find ways around these self-imposed moral rules. The best solution to an ethical problem is love. If everyone loved their boss, everyone would always give an honest day of work. If everyone loved their customers, we wouldn’t need the Better [...]
Few May Start, But Many Will Succeed
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Wikipedia was started by a handful of people; Linux was started by one person. Both of these projects have become mainstream. They are well accepted by the general populace and everyone knows about them. They succeeded because after a smart founding, a large group of many people supported and helped the project to progress. The [...]
Externalities Are Amazing
Thursday, March 18th, 2010The Internet motivates people with externalities. Ask any economist and he or she will tell you that externalities do not motivate people. Yet, the Internet illustrates that externalities do motivate people; Wikipedia and open-source software being the two best examples. These projects show that externalities motivate because the people who write Wikipedia articles do not [...]
Software Outsourcing – Two Options and They Both Stink
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010There are two kinds of software outsourcing: some or all. Outsourcing the whole project is not smart. Typically, when outsourcing a complete project, the outsourcing company acts as a consultant. This means they write the software, get paid more than they bid for the job, and then leave, never looking at the software again. Because [...]
Crowd Source Patents
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Disclaimer: I know quite a bit about patents. However, I don’t know everything. If there is already an easy way for people to comment on patents, regard this article as a highlight of my ignorance. People file for crazy patents all the time. Even a simple patent search turns up patents for things like linked [...]
A New Dinosaur
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Brigham Young University recently found a new long-necked dinosaur in a quarry in Utah. There is a large problem with new dinosaur discoveries: no one really knows if they are correct or not. Scientists have supposedly found “120 known species of sauropods [but], there have been only eight instances in which scientists have been able [...]
75 cents – Would it be enough today?
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010In The Cuckoo’s Egg, a novice computer administrator enters into a ten month battle with a foreign hacker because of a 75 cent accounting error. The administrator had to verify that the 75 cent discrepancy wasn’t from a software error, but was caused because of the activities of the hacker. The state of software during [...]
New Random Number Generator! – Who cares?
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010An exciting new development has taken place in the computer world: a new random number generator was created. Most people will never notice or even realize that a new kind of random number generator was conceived of and implemented, yet this random number generator could have a great impact on their lives. If this new [...]
Collaboration vs Confidentiality
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010In the new age of social networking, we, the users, must closely watch the balance we strike between collaboration and confidentiality. Genealogy has progressed wildly since people have started to place their pedigrees on their personal websites. Collaboration has made the increase in genealogical research possible. Yet, many people fail to realize that being able [...]
Apple: The One Man Company
Thursday, January 28th, 2010Today, Steve Jobs and Apple announced Apple’s newest piece of hardware: the iPad. But this announcement confirmed yet again that Apple is a one man company. This is clearly illustrated through the history of Apple Computer. When Mr. Jobs was ousted from the company, Apple began to stagnate. In fact, from the time that Jobs [...]
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