Ubuntu' Philosophy: A Lesson for the Open Source Community

The success of Ubuntu Linux demonstrates the importance of a philosophy that the open source world has lacked for years. By envisioning a product that the world at large could use and enjoy, that “just works”, and by working to foster a community where new users are supported with kindness, Ubuntu has unequivocally become the most successful Linux distribution on the market. Other open source projects need to learn this valuable lesson, that writing software has a selfless and empathetic component, where the developer must learn to comprehend and fulfill his or her users’ needs.

I have personally tried to use open source software that failed to even compile, only to find out after research that the author has not only been aware of the bugs in his system, but has openly admitted that he has not fixed them because he finds the prospect uninteresting. I have witnessed new users flamed for incompetence by developers too blinded by arrogance to understand the user’s point of view. I have seen too many open source advocates with the belief that a person should have a firm technical background in programming, and that the concerns of users without that background should be ignored. If the open source paradigm is to succeed, this attitude towards software development must change completely. If we truly want to benefit the world by making our works available for public use, we cannot simply pick interesting problems to work on and then shove the results of our coding into the public domain. We need to do as the Ubuntu community does. We need to write software for human beings besides ourselves.

The Moral Consequences of the Internet

In terms of morality, the Internet’s greatest impact on our lives is the infinite expansion of choices laid before us that have broadened the scope of our moral agency. Never before has an individual been integrated so tightly with the world surrounding world, with limitless access to information and ever increasing modes of communication with others. The moral dangers posed by the Internet are not new; the evils that have suffused it have always existed. However, just as so much previously inaccessible good and wholesome knowledge has suddenly become available through it, so has so much filth and sullied media, previously hidden in dark corners away from the eye of society, suddenly become available with unprecedented ubiquity. The challenge for the future then, in terms of protecting ourselves and our children from the ills of the Internet, is simply to better learn how to make wise choices when using it, how to screen out the bad and discover the good. This should always be our focus when using the Internet and when discussing with our children how to do the same.

Internet Safety Wiki Needs Volunteers

The Internet Safety Wiki is dedicated to providing a one-stop resource for learning how to use the Internet safely and manage Internet usage individually and as a family. The Wiki is currently growing very fast and has a lot of valuable information! If you are interested in Internet safety information, or if you are interested in contributing to the wiki's content, please visit this link. There is also a podcast on Internet safety topics here.

The Misdirection of Recent Copyright Laws

The introduction of new copyright protection laws in the past few years has put a bad mark on our country’s strong tradition of balancing the interests of inventors with the greater good of progressing the arts and sciences. While doing very little to protect inventors and in many cases reducing their incentive to innovate, these laws are calculated only to protect the outdated business model of large corporations in the recording and movie industries. Many roles, careers, and organizations in society have been suffered to pass away and be replaced as new technologies remodel the world’s cultural and business landscape, but few have had the money, resources, and political clout of these corporations, and few have fought against extinction so fiercely. This battle, and the damage it is causing to society, mostly clearly reveals itself in the current struggles between the music and electronics industries. New innovative products that bring us information faster and more conveniently are literally being held back from store shelves until the copyright legal wars are resolved. It is time for us to recognize the tactics of these self-serving industries for what they are and begin to shift our legislative focus towards creating laws that restore the balance between creator and consumer in the context of the changing technological world.

Why (Not) Read “The World is Flat?”

In his book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman very enthusiastically sets forth his analysis of the globalization trend of the past decade, its present and projected effect on our lives, and how best to adapt to it. Right now I am going to tell you what I didn’t like about it. I do this in spite of the fact that the book is a valuable read with plenty of praise-worthy, thought-provoking content to satisfy the intellectual cravings of any modern thinker. For instance, anyone could tell you that computers and the Internet transformed society in unimaginable ways, but few of them describe in such thorough, specific, and accurate detail just how people used these technologies to bring to pass the world’s flattening. With that said, here is what I don’t like about the book.

Where’s the Hard Evidence?

While Friedman introduces to the reader’s mind a host of new ideas and propositions about globalization, very often I found myself asking him mentally to “prove it,” because there is almost no quantitative evidence to support most of his points. This desire manifested itself strongest in a chapter Friedman dedicated to convincing his readers of the value of an open market. By the end of the chapter, however, he proved most effective in convincing me that economics is a branch of philosophy instead of a science. Can anyone imagine any organization, private or institutional, making a far-reaching decision, one that everyone agrees will have a profound impact on the organization’s future, based solely on someone’s opinion on the subject? The choice to maintain or constrain an open market in the U.S. is one such decision, one that demands at least some supporting quantitative information.

To Adapt to Globalization, Be Better…. At Everything!

Friedman spends a significant number of words informing the reader what individuals, companies, and educational systems must do to adapt to the modern world. To summarize, we need to train our students more extensively in math and sciences, and we also need to round them out with an improved liberal arts education. Our companies need to outsource commoditized services and at the same time insource their own services to other companies. Big companies need to act small, and small companies need to act big. People need to be more creative, passionate, and curious, and learn how to love to learn. They need to improve their right brains, and also need to improve their left brains. In short, everyone needs to be better at everything!
At first I was caught by a feeling of raw enthusiasm infused in Friedman’s calls for national self-improvement in response to an increasingly competitive world. Unfortunately, after a while I began to view his general, all-encompassing, and often times repetitive assertions as an overly long motivational speech. While I sincerely enjoyed the book’s energy and positive thinking about our current era, I would not shed a tear if much of the above material were simply sliced from the book.

Conclusions

To end on a positive note, anyone who wants to understand how the world has changed in the last decade with respect to business processes will stand to gain much from reading The World is Flat. There are simply a few imperfections of the book, and hopefully pointing them out will help others to observe the book’s content in a different light

The Rights of Software Makers and Consumers

Imagine if with the purchase of a brand new television set came attached an EULA specifying that only channels and movies authorized by the product's maker could be legally viewed on the T.V. Or imagine if a car dealer forced you to sign an agreement on purchase of a new car requiring the purchaser to only buy gas and replacement parts at locations authorized by the dealer. These ideas are absolutely ludicrous, yet software companies continue to attempt to enforce similarly ridiculous constraints on their products. For example, Apple has recently placed severe restrictions on the iPhone that disallow installment of a number of software packages that compete with products of Apple or its affiliates. Skype, a direct competitor to services provided by AT&T, who has an exclusive contract with Apple, cannot be installed because of VoIP restrictions on the phone. Neither can Firefox, an alternative to Apple's Safari, be installed because of other software restrictions. While some acts such as software piracy have direct illegal analogs in the concrete world, restrictions like those above serve no one's interests but the companies making them, and we are fortunate that modern government agencies like the EU are taking an interest in protecting the rights of consumers and competing companies. Much work remains to be done in defining the rights of a software IP holder versus the rights of a software purchaser.

Looking Before Leaping to Solve Gender Equality in Computing

Amid the varying opinions about how best to handle gender inequality in science and engineering a common theme repeatedly reveals itself; we don’t yet understand the full nature of the problem or how to solve it. This theme materializes from contradictions such as Senator Wyden’s statement that math is a male-dominated field being contrasted with Paul Palma’s assertion that nearly half of math graduates are women. It also shows itself when both of these independently admit that the reasons women avoid hard sciences, including, but not limited to, gender discrimination, are currently only supported by anecdotal evidence. If a profound change in our current education system to cause a many-fold increase in the number of practicing female scientists and engineers is desired, as some suggest it is, then much research and formal analysis of both the nature of this problem and the effectiveness of proposed solutions needs to be conducted first. If not, we may find our changes profoundly damaging both our educational system and the progress of our country instead of helping them.

Microsoft, the EU, and Free Market

This week’s announcement of the European Union’s new fine on Microsoft’s non-compliance, combined with their increasing monopoly charges against American companies such as Intel, causes me to question the nature of these accusations and wonder. Are the EU’s anti-privacy laws too strict, or are those of the US too lax? Is the EU unfairly biased against American companies? I only know that the EU’s harsh stance against American companies brings an uneasy feeling to me as an American citizen. I want to know why the collective punishment inflicted on Microsoft US courts has been derided as a mere slap in the wrist, yet the EU has fined Microsoft over 1.3 billion dollars and is openly continuing investigations on Microsoft’s monopoly status. As Europe should continue to be our ally in international business affairs, work needs to be done to reconcile the policies of US courts and the EU to be more in harmony, regardless of whether it is more just and beneficial to continue to punish Microsoft or to let the free market flow naturally.

Uprooting the Cuckoo's Egg

In The Cuckoo’s Egg Cliff battles the seeming dichotomy between security and personal rights as he tries to enlist different government agencies to help him catch a cyber criminal for which he has gathered more than sufficient evidence. The majority of the book could even be accurately condensed down to the story of Cliff Stoll, the author and main character, trying gathering enough support to convince the FBI to give out a warrant for a hacker’s arrest. This article explores some of the possible changes to the current law enforcement structure that could have prevented Cliff’s unnecessary frustrations from occurring.

One possible solution that may have ended Cliff’s story soon would involve the creation a less centralized system for law enforcement. For instance, if the FBI refused to grant him a warrant, he could have a place, perhaps the courts, to appeal to in order to override the FBI’s decision. Without such a system, Cliff was helpless as he found himself stopped by a narrow bottleneck for which there was no alternative route. He simply could not progress unless the FBI were willing to help, no matter how many other organizations supported him. This approach has the disadvantage of complicating the law enforcement process.
Another solution to the warrant problem would be to authorize more than one agency to grant warrants, or to have more specialized internal departments in the FBI. The former, however, might make the process of earning a warrant too easy for other warrant clients, mainly the police. The FBI could delegate special cases such as cybercrime cases to internal FBI divisions that specialized in these areas, but this would require that the FBI already recognize the special case as important, and the very act of creating the internal division would demote the case’s status from “special” to “categorized and normal.” For Cliff, the FBI had not yet made such a recognition with regards to cybercrime or privacy breaches in general.

Finally, authorities could be authorized to perform monitoring and surveillance without the need of a warrant. This has been the path actually taken since Cliff’s story ended. While if such power existed with the authorities during the story, Cliff may have caught his criminal sooner, the increased power in the hands of law enforcement could lead to a significant loss of personal rights. For instance, what if Cliff’s information led law enforcement to the wrong conclusion and they began monitoring the wrong people? If, they had decided the criminal was likely to be at Berkeley, they might have wiretapped all internet usage at the Berkeley library fruitlessly and to the loss of privacy of all innocent students there.

Overall, I think that The Cuckoo’s Egg shows us that we still don’t have a good system for dealing with cybercrime. No safe balance has been discovered between personal rights and security measures, no government checks and balances system exists to help a citizen get a warrant when one is warranted, and there still is no organization a person can turn to for help when he or she is victimized by a cybercrime. Progress still needs to be made in order to enable the American citizen to be able to report hackers and help bring them to justice.

Reveal More.... Bugs!

In recent news Opera employees called foul on Mozilla for giving them only a day's notice about a security flaw Mozilla discovered before publicly disclosing the security hole to the public. Without considering the politics and circumstances surrounding the conflict, one may observe that Opera's cry brings again to bear an often discussed security issue: what policy of revealing security flaws best serves the public interest? Influenced by my reading of the book "The Cuckoo's Egg", I believe Mozilla's policy of fairly transparently publicizing security holes as they discover them is of greatest benefit to their user base. The above mentioned book describes multiple real-life accounts of hackers compromising exploits known to the exploits' authors, as well as authorities, sometimes for whole years, but not publicized at large. If details on these exploits were promulgated to administrators everywhere, these people would have been both empowered and made responsible to protect their machines against the exploits.

Opponents of rapid exploit dissemination argue that publicizing flaws without fixes alerts hackers to these flaws faster than they would discover them on their own, but, especially with the case of open source software, hackers have free access to all codebase updates and can always easily search for exploits on their own. Also, Mozilla only provides access to detailed exploit information to a smaller circle of privileged users, so that information on how to exploit a flaw is not as easily obtained as general knowledge about it. Finally, software users themselves, aware of the exploit, can take precautions as necessary, potentially even turning off or discontinuing use of vulnerable software until a fix is found. Other advanced users can even actively contribute to solving a problem by submitting patches themselves. Overall, the benefits of a mostly transparent process of security bug publication outweigh the associated risks and provide the best protection to the public at large.

One Repository for One Family Tree

In the past years I have viewed the large quantities of genealogical data spread among multiple disparate sources with disapproval, and felt intimidated in beginning my own family history project. This problem seems to have arisen because the first software-based technologies for family history work were invented before the advent of the Internet. For instance, the church used to periodically distribute CDs containing their most up-to-date information to each ward and branch. Later the creation of PAF and the GEDCOM file format encouraged each person to maintain their own personal databases of family history, and as the Internet matured a host of different web sites have popped into existence with their own individual purposes, scopes, and information formats.

However, If we are to map the single family tree of human history from Adam to the present, we need to have one major repository for all genealogical data that is easy to use, explore, and contribute to. I believe the church has been tackling this problem for a while, and I hope that their new family history web service fulfills this requirement. If this new service succeeds in enabling most users to quickly comprehend accurately the current state of genealogical research in their families and know where they must begin to add to this body of knowledge, then it will become the greatest contribution so far in speeding along the work of redeeming the dead.

More on Technology and the Church

Sometimes I feel like the church always lags behind a fews years in technology. I visualize it almost as a large, ancient, lumbering organization trying to adapt to a fast-paced society. For instance, my calling, home teaching supervisor, should be mostly automated by requiring ward members to go on-line once a month and fill out a form communicating their home-teaching results. Instead, I have to manually call everyone in my group, record their results, and then pass them off to my quorum leader who has to tally the results and compile the final report. Perhaps because of my computer science background, I occasionally spot what I see as inefficiencies in the church bureaucratic process that could be easily smoothed over by some type of computer-based solution.

Whenever I read about how the church is technology, however, I am almost always awed, not by what they are doing, but by the attitude they have toward technologoy as they attempt to best utilize it. The church continues to see technology as a gift from God to help further the work and this belief pervades all of their decisions on technology useage in the church, from mormon.org to the church's internal record-keep systems to the new Family Search API. They are cautious because the very nature of the work requires them to be. So far, the results have been very positive and beneficial to the church as well as the world.

Finding Style

For a long time I bitterly puzzled over the large variation in grades assigned to me by different English teachers and professors I had over the years. Given the same effort on my part I could earn anywhere from a low B to a high A. One day I asked my wife and talented writer how she managed to consistently earn the highest grades in all her writing classes. She responded that early each semester she figured out the style of writing her professor preferred and modified her own style accordingly. This confirmed my belief that much of writing style is simply a matter of preference, and at the same time brought me to the sad realization that were I to seek the same grades as she, I would have to learn to do the same.

I have since decided to worry less about my writing grades, focusing instead on reacting to some criticisms to improve my writing, and ignoring others I feel are stylistic preferences of reader. While I run the risk of improperly categorizing important nuggets of truth about my writing flaws as mere opinions, overall my anxiety about writing has decreased and I believe my writing continues to improve. My advice then, to struggling college students everywhere, is to find the style of writing that best suites yourself and master it, even if not every reader appreciates it. If done with a humble attitude, such a course will not only improve your writing, but also make the task of writing much more enjoyable.

Sun's MySQL acquisition consolidates Open Source Power

Sun's recent purchase of MySQL met with a variety of reactions. Some wondered what Sun has to gain besides PR. Others, aware of Sun's long alliance with Oracle, accusingly predicted that the company would let MySQL crumble from lack of support and be overcome by competition. Many people, however, see the acquisition as a sign of the growing influence of open source as a business model. Both companies have a strong history of open source support, and both Java and MySQL are available under the GPL license. The future of both of these companies now merged together will be a strong indicator to the corporate world of the viability of the open source model. If successful, these companies will have the power to continue enrich the pool of freely available software, and more importantly, to invite other companies to do the same by their example.

Differing Perspectives on Technology and Society

After reading and comparing two articles discussing the impact of technology in our lives, one by Neil Postman, a professor and media theorist, and the other by Elder Dallin H. Oakes, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I gained a greater appreciation for the LDS church’s position on the impact of technology on society. The former article, paranoid and pessimistic, hid behind a thin veil of impartiality as it painted a picture of technology as a dangerous, uncontrollable beast. Postman left me with the message that every innovation has the power to wreck society and therefore should be carefully tucked away from the world until its global impact is ascertainable. In contrast, Oaks spoke of technology as an opportunity when employed wisely, only a curse when used irresponsibly. For instance, Oaks cautions that “With greatly increased free time and vastly more alternatives for its use, it is prudent to review the fundamental principles that should guide us.” Here Oaks mentions a potentially negative effect new technology has had on our society, and then proceeds to talk about what we can do to both cope and take advantage of the situation. He also provide a powerful quote from President Young, “Every discovery in science and art, that is really true and useful to mankind, has been given by direct revelation from God. … We should take advantage of all these great discoveries.” Whereas too often both religion and science arbitrarily decide to wage war on one another, the doctrines of the LDS church harmonize them perfectly.

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