Entmoot: Computers and Internet

Genealogy, Technology, and Latter-day Saints

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:50:00 GMT

Gordon B. Hinckley is hopeful that technology will fix the problem of ordinance duplication. The LDS Church is doing ordinance work for thousands of dead ancestors every year. Proxies perform baptisms and other ordinances for dead ancestors. The Church records names, dates, and places in an attempt to record who has been baptized and who has not. Millions of members worldwide submit names of the deceased. The problem is many names are submitted multiple times and consequently work is duplicated for those names. The Church is developing a technology that will allow names to be grafted into a central family tree. Patrons of the system will be able to find out if they are duplicating the work or not before they actually perform the work. President Hinckley is hopeful that this will solve the problem of ordinance duplication.

Microsoft's Monopoly Grows

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 19:03:06 GMT

Microsoft will have a more complete monopoly because of Apple’s new Intel machines. The dual core Intel machine 800 D processor supports native virtual machine support. This means you could really run any OS on them just fine. You could boot into OSX or boot into Windows XP. Now corporate America will be able to enjoy Apple’s slick designs with the dominant Windows XP software and suites. Apple and Microsoft will both benefit from this new union. Microsoft’s only competitor in the home and corporate PC market will be Linux. Other competitors will exist for servers but in the most profitable market Microsoft will have a more complete monopoly on operating system sales.

Patent Law

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 20:13:28 GMT

Today’s business in the computer science space is about patents. Without the patent your product is unmarketable. It is unmarketable for two reasons: first, another company might submit a patent for your design and force you out of the market and second, your product could be copied and distributed freely to everyone in the world. In interviews I’ve had with Microsoft and small business entrepreneurs the talk has always included patents. Small businesses prize their few patents to be their source of revenue and take their profits higher. Microsoft and other large companies often measure a team’s progress and production by how many patents they produce in a year. Because of the distributable nature of bits on a disk, it is important to devise means to protect a creator’s fair payment. The bottom line is that ownership is an abstract idea and in computer science ownership needs to be clearly defined to ensure that the business is profitable.

Google vs Government

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 19:46:23 GMT

Google is protecting pornographers who are targeting children. In January of this year the U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanded that google share a general list of terms used on their search engine. Google refused. Google claims that even though this would not violate any specific person's privacy that obeying government subpoenas could lead to privacy infringement in the future. The subpoena they refused, however, does not violate any person's privacy. I would not be surprised if google is embarrassed at how they themselves are facilitators in giving pornography to children. Recently google was sued by pornography companies who claimed google images was caching and indexing their copyrighted material. The pornography companies understand how people are getting to their images. Google also understands what images their search engine delivers and they are very reluctant in sharing that information to our government.

Women in Computing

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:29:19 GMT

Eventually we will see more women programmers in the United States. I know many women computer scientists. They are often the brightest computer programmers in their classes. My friend Maria from Ukraine explained to me that in the Ukraine the computer science discipline is split evenly between men and women. This is likely to happen in the United States as more women see computing as a viable career. The ability to work from home is especially convenient for women who plan on raising children. There are many who believe that there is a fundamental difference between men and women that make women avoid programming. I readily agree that there are fundamental differences between the psychology men and women. However, I do not believe that these differences make one more likely to be a programmer than the other. As society progresses, I think the United States will mirror the trends of European countries where both men and women are programmers.