Broken Patent System

The government provides patent protection in order to prevent stealing ideas and also protect small companies from large corporations. Currently, patents seem to do more harm than good within the market, specifically the technology market. Anyone can get a patent on an idea they have for a new technology. In order to protect the rights of the patent owner, the owner can sue other companies for making money off of that technology. Patent trolls are people who own many patents and sue other companies while having no desire to actually create the technology. These patent trolls prevent innovation by making money off of a flaw in the patent system. The trolls steal money from hard working citizens who had an idea, worked hard for that idea, and became successful. The patent troll doesn’t need to show any proof that they have been creating the same technology. They only present their patent in court. In order to receive a patent, there should be a plan on how the technology will be created and have proof of an actual attempt to build that technology.

The Cuckoo's Egg

Picture all of your belongings stored away in a locked chest and you have the only key that opens the chest. The chest protects your personal belongings from others and only grants access to the owner with the key. If there are any flaws with the chest, then your belongings may be compromised to any attacker who knows the chest's weakness. This principle is an ongoing problem in the computer world. Computers store valuable data that needs to be locked away and can only be accessed by authorized users. Hackers find flaws in computer systems and in encryption algorithms in order to access data that does not belong to them. Many hackers expose systems in order to steal information and either causes damage to the victim or sells that information on the black market. This heinous crime is a serious attack on personal privacy, on classified data, or on companies that profit from that data that is stolen. Companies and consumers need to be informed of basic security protocols in order to prevent large attacks from happening through the Internet.

Ctrl-Alt-Del

Bill Gates calls the Control-Alt-Delete feature on Windows a mistake. This feature was meant to be used by the developers of Windows and the developers kept the feature a secret. Software publishers found out about the feature and learned that this three-key combination logged the user out of their current session on Windows. PC users need this feature when the operating system or any program becomes unresponsive. I do not understand the reason why Bill Gates considers the feature a mistake since it is a necessary feature when the system fails. The failure comes from the design and the experience of the feature. When first discovered, some software developers included Control-Alt-Delete in sets of instructions as a prank to users who didn't know about the feature. This certainly created a frustrating experience for PC users who didn't understand why their system kept restarting. If Microsoft informed the market of this feature, the outcome would have been different for Control-Alt-Delete.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/tech/innovation/bill-gates-control-alt-delete/?iref=obinsite

Twitter: LDSCONF

This was my first experience with Twitter. I really liked how some of the important key points of each talk were being tweeted and it gave me a good summary of what was being said. I can definitely relate to Prof. Knutson's comment on how he would get more out of conference from conference tweets than his sleeping children would get by watching conference. This is definitely a good feature to have for certain events. I personally won't use Twitter to follow my friend's posts. I prefer Facebook.

LDS Genealogy

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints invests heavily on genealogy research and encourages members of the church to participate in this work. Elder David B. Haight answers the question as to why the church invests millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours by saying "Because we love them [our ancestors]." This simple answer explains that genealogy is part of the core doctrine of the church and that the church performs service to those who cannot help themselves. This selfless project does not compete with other genealogy services, such as ancestry.com, rather the LDS project, FamilySearch, encourages users to use other online sources and any preserved historical documents to build the FamilySearch project. FamilySearch is comprised of two important components; truth and love.