Why Can't People be Computers?

The best thing about a computer is that it only does exactly what you teach it to do.  No more, no less.  To programmers, this can also be one of the biggest frustrations.  Sometimes I'll be up at 2 a.m. yelling at my computer, wishing it would do the correct thing instead of what I've programmed it to do.

Sometimes I wish that I were a computer programmed by God and that I always did the right thing.  Then I remember that I WAS created and programmed by God, but he didn't program me to always do the right thing...  So God must be evil right?  Wrong.  He created us in His image and allows us to make our own choices.

A lot of groups and organizations like the ACM try to teach us what choices to make.  They even encourage us to spread their doctrine and encourage others to make similar choices.  This can be a good thing, but God has already laid out His doctrine and we can learn about  it in the Book of Mormon and the Holy Bible.

If you are a Mormon programmer, start spreading what the Book of Mormon teaches like you spread your nerdy computer science beliefs.  If you aren't a Mormon programmer then read the Book of Mormon and contact the missionaries.  Then learn to code.

Be Here Now

When I was growing up, my brother-in-law would tell me to "be here now" whenever family was over and I was texting my friends.  I would grudgingly put my phone away and pretend to be bored with the family conversation.  I grew to love that time spent with family and I learned many valuable life lessons from those simple conversations.  My brother-in-law might have saved me from a lot of trouble with those three simple words "be here now."  Text conversations can be useful at times but a face to face conversations are always more meaningful and will always build better relationships.  The same holds for all other forms of virtual communication.  Living in such a technological world it is tempting to do all of our communication through virtual channels but if we succumb to this temptation, we will gravely regret it.

Fireside Reflections

The Time Goblin Gobbles Time

We - smartphone and laptop owners - spend disgusting amounts of time on the Internet.  Whether it's playing games, posting to Instagram, reading the blogs of people we will never meet or writing our own, it is hard to justify the time spent.  Obviously, some things we do on the Internet are productive and beneficial, but if we divide all of the time we have ever spent on the Internet into the categories of productive and wasted it would be hard to spot the Titanic of productive as it crashes into the glacier of wasted.  We can all site instances where someone's smartphone shot helped the police to catch a criminal but we can site a thousand more where some form of Internet addiction ruined someone's livelihood.

I would like this post to be a productive use of my time instead of time wasted and so I am going to challenge whoever reads this to try something.  Over the next 7 days, when you are about to get on your phone or your laptop and you think it's going to be a waste of time, don't do it.  You be your own judge.  If, at the end of the week, you don't see an improvement in your productivity, please comment on this post and tell me how wrong I am.

Coder and Coderess

DotA... LoL... WoW...  No I'm not making up words, laughing out loud or astonished with my own intelligence.  I'm talking about things that no girl has ever heard of, nor will she hear of in this post (you're going to have to look it up girls).  The reason every girl who has read to this point is googling right now is the same reasons there are a total of two girls in my five computer science classes.  When I was 17 I thought it was cool how I, as master chief, could slide-snipe someone across the beach of Zanzibar and stick a converging Warthog all as I listened to the Killers in the comfy armchair of my bedroom.  In this setting, unknown to me, the desire to be a coder was born.  Girls don't have that seed planted because they are doing responsible things when they are 17.  My wife was in Phoenix getting straight A's and prepping for the academic decathlon while I was in Sandy having system-link-Dr-Pepper-all-nighters with my friends.  I wish it weren't true, but it is.  There's a direct correlation between hero skins and lines of Java written.

Software Wonders of the World

We, computer scientists, have a congenital belief that if you clumped our brains together, the pile would be the new center of the universe.  We believe that in the solar system of software uses, our uses are planets and the uses of everyone else are debris.  Though we are clearly more important than everyone else on earth, we must consider their needs as well.  Give us a pizza and some coke and we'll happily stay up all night programming a fix for Emacs, but we must learn to love staying up all night to make the UI more beautiful just because our customer asked for it.  Good software is not is not written because it "scratched a developer's personal itch."  Good software is written because the developer was excited about the project and it is shameful that we only get excited about projects we have a personal affection for.

e-testimony

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is on a mission to make people joyful by bringing them to Christ.  I am a happy person because I follow Christ and keep Heavenly Father's commandments.  When I meet someone who is not a Mormon, I want to convert with an undying desire.  I don't want to convert them because of some diabolical or egotistical desire.  I want to because I know they would be permanently and eternally happy for their choice.  I am not perfect, but I have joy when I follow the Savior.  I am flawed, but not due to anything I have learned from the true gospel of Jesus Christ through the LDS Church or the Book of Mormon.  I know Christ lives.  If you are a Mormon, share your testimony through all of your channels.  If you are not a Mormon, contact the missionaries and read the Book of Mormon.  I promise, you will be happier if you do.

Tech Parasites

Business men for years have been making unearned and undeserved money off of the inventions of genius technology creators.  I know of someone who makes millions of dollars a year buying stocks and selling them at a higher price milliseconds later with no risk of losing money.  Situations like this are an abomination because people who did not develop or create anything are making profit for nothing.  Now, if we live in fear of every immoral practice in the business world, we would live a very fearful life.  Many of these immoral practices are fed by inventors selling their patents or not caring how they are used.  We, as inventors, need to hold onto our patents and do all that we can to make sure that our technologies are being used how we intend them to be used.

Rogue Nerd

In 1990, some German hackers were put on trial for stealing US government information and selling it to the Russian KGB.  This, and countless other hacking fiascos, proved that computers are vulnerable to data thieves.  I know how careful we software engineers must be from personal experience.  I write software that touches MILLIONS of American's personal information.  If I code up one security hole, it's not only my rear-end on the line, but a fat lawsuit agains my company.  To make sure there our no holes, the executives put millions of dollars into security reviews and testing.

If one of our programmers went rogue, we would have an even bigger problem on our hands.  They could clone all of our source code, copy tons of the secure information off the database, and sell it to whoever they pleased.  I don't believe that anyone I work with would commit such a heinous crime, but there are thousands of other companies who have the same amount of information we have.  Those companies have hundreds of programmers with access to information that could be mine!  Odds are that some programmer out there, with access to my information, is not a law-abiding citizen.  We need to worry as much about that programmer as we worry about security holes in our software systems.

My company makes us sign a few papers saying we wont steal information when we are first hired and that's about the end of it.  That means similar companies probably have the same procedure.  This small amount of attention is nothing compared to the millions spent on finding security holes.  Companies with secure data should put just as much attention to reviewing and testing employees as they do into finding security holes.  Only then would our information be truly safe.

Gentlemen, Start Your Smartphones

Hyundai will be using NFC technology to eliminate car keys on their newest models (www.wired.com).  NFC is the coolest technology that is not currently being taken advantage of.  Apple doesn't even employ near field communication in their newest iPhone 5s.  NFC can eliminate the need of credit cards, house keys, car keys, drivers licenses, and everything else we lug around every day.  Imagine a world where you only have to carry around your smartphone...  It is already possible to create this world with NFC.  Google is already on the path toward this world with GoogleWallet.  With Hyundai's help, we'll be there soon.

ACE II

The new methods of doing family history research make genealogy exciting.  Ten years ago, just hearing the word genealogy would put anyone under the age of 50 to sleep.  Today, if you have 15 minutes to spare you can find interesting information about your ancestors.  During my lunch break at work today I discovered that my great great great grandma was named Annie Christine Ekstrom.  Why is this exciting you ask?  Because that is my wife's name.  Which makes me married to Annie Christine Ekstrom II.  Like most other members (at least I think), I would never have gotten interested in family history if I thought that meant going to the library to search through some old books.  Now that everything is online, we have no excuse not to do genealogy.

Deprecate PC

Tonight, AT&T announced that they will offer gigabit home Internet in Austin (news.cnet.com).  AT&T are going up against Google, which is not the most epic part of this story.  Gigabit Internet is going to make PCs obsolete!  Data processing can happen so much faster on big servers than it can on our computers.  Those servers are also connected to massive data storage units.  Now that those servers can send data at gigabit speeds, having a huge desktop in your home is like having a suitcase-size car phone in your back seat to respond to the pages you receive on your beeper.  In five years, there will be no computer manufactured that is larger than a MacBook Air.  All we will needs is a screen and a wire.  Give it five more years and we won't even need the wire.

Word(Not So)Perfect

Novell's lawsuit against Microsoft that started 10 years ago finally got thrown out of court this week (washingtonpost.com).  Since 1995, when Microsoft decided to go with their own word processor instead of Novell's WordPerfect, Novell has gone from a technology industry leader to... "what's Novell?"  If Novell were still innovating like they were in their glory days, a lawsuit against Microsoft over something that happened 18 years ago wouldn't even be worth their time.  To be strong in an industry evolving as rapidly as technology, you can't get hung up on one product like WordPerfect.  You have to find what people want right now, rethink your strategies, and reinvent your company to stay on top.  20 years ago anyone in the tech field would be able to tell you all about Novell.  All I know about them today is that they used to own WordPerfect, and I only know that because I worked at a law school.  Apparently, lawyers still use WordPerfect.  It must be easier to tell lies on a crappy text editor.

Insta for RMs

Returned missionaries should use instagram to find their brides.  About three hours after I got off the plane ride home from Brazil, my parents took me to get an iPhone.  Soon, I had instagram.  I posted pictures after I got out of the temple, when I went on cool hikes, when I spent time with my seven sisters, and when I got straight A's.  Two years later I met a girl named Annie.  On her instagram, I found pictures of her baking pies with her grandma, shining her dad's shoes, playing tennis with her friends, and spending time with her nieces and nephews.  Once Instagram stalking turned into dating Annie, I found out she loves hiking and she found out I love playing tennis.  We discovered that our families are very similar.  I realize now that we are married,  she probably thinks I'm a little egotistical for posting a picture of my straight A's.  Instagram served my purpose nonetheless.   RMs reading this, use instagram to find your wife.  If you aren't, you're wasting a valuable resource.  If you are using it for anything more, you're wasting valuable time.