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.