Hello,

Here we are again touching each other with the jingle bells of our cut hands.

Naked veins, illusory lines on paper

In the world infected with logic…

This is the game of cautiousness, but I have never played this game,

Surrounded sky, and nevertheless, being dare to stay alive

In the world infected with logic…

I learned to bite the ceiling,

I learned to write on water,

I learned to yell into the void,

And distract the trees from standing still

In the world infected with logic…

This is just the right time to watch the sun with the eyes open.

Soon it will get completely dark, and we will end up with the cold thorny walls

In the world infected with logic…

Reading For the Strength of Youth and ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct I noticed how different they are in appearance and how the underlying principles they describe are the same. The first publication is by the LDS Church while the second is by the ACM Council, so they are written in different styles: counsel and professional guidelines. The principles of honesty, integrity, and respect to your colleagues/fellow men are emphasized in both readings. Both publications discuss morality standards, personal accountability, and leadership imperatives. However, the first article teaches us how to live our lives properly, not only how to have good professional conduct. In fact, following all the guidelines in the first article could eliminate the need for the second article. The purpose of the second article is merely to walk the individuals not familiar with LDS standards through the proper behavior guidelines at the workplace. If you already live by LDS standards, you may read the second article just to find the standards that you may derive yourself through common sense. Yet no matter how good you are, it’s necessary to review the Code of Ethics to be familiar with the details of corporate culture.

VanDenBerghe’s article mormon.org made me smile. It’s the second time I have seen an Ensign article that includes an explanation of a piece of the church’s technology instead of just counsel, which is so common to see in the Ensign magazine. The author gave an idea about the purpose of www.mormon.com, explained its organization, and even provided detailed instructions on how to send electronic greeting cards. This article was written back in 2002, and now the church website, www.mormon.org, looks completely different than it looked back then. Of course, now it takes some time to follow the explained organization of the original website using the current website. However, although the site’s layout has changed a lot, the main idea is still preserved: to introduce people to the LDS religion. This article is now just another piece of the Church’s technology history that will be carried over to our descendants and will remind the website’s developers to follow the original ideas of the site creators.

Reading this article, I realized how unbelievably good an open-source software development approach could be. I knew that Linux started as open-source and remained evolving as open-source till now, but viewed it as the exception rather than the rule to have a successful software development project. When I develop software, I want to control who contributes to it. This way it could be used as Freeware, and later (if it becomes good) can be converted to Shareware or even proprietary software; both of them can earn money. Open-source software doesn’t earn you any money, but it also doesn’t cost any money to debug and evolve. It’s a cheap and unselfish way to turn a great idea to into reality. Your idea can serve the needs of community (including yourself) well, evolve, and progress once it is turned into an open-source project.

Reading the Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat I realized that it prepares us to live in the 21st century. The author explains several “flatteners,” which (if used properly) can help us to create multibillion dollar companies, to get a free or inexpensive education, or to engage communities around the world in open research.

Supply-chaining created companies like Wal-Mart, which itself doesn’t produce anything. These kinds of companies order the right quantities of goods to be produced right at the time they are sold in the store. This type of management allows Wal-Mart to avoid shortages and surpluses to some extent. Innovations in technology in this century allowed us to make China a “next door neighbor” and a perfect supplier for the supply-chaining model. Supply-chaining is not the only “flattener” Friedman discussed. Moreover, some of the “flatteners” are not used in all the markets. If we can look for the markets that can benefit from any of the “flatteners,” we can create completely new business models that can earn us billions of dollars.

Friedman pointed out that open-sourcing and uploading is another “flattener” that already changes the world dramatically. Look at the Wikipedia and open-source software. Both are developed and supported by volunteers; however, free Wikipedia can compete with an expensive Encyclopedia Britannica and free Linux can compete with Windows. I also noticed that open-sourcing made its way to education, which is generally expensive in the U.S. A good example is MIT Open Courseware, a set of MIT course materials that allows any individual on the earth to study any course an MIT student studies on campus independently and for free. MIT is the one of the oldest prestigious and expensive schools in the U.S., yet it just gives away all the study materials that previously were accessible only to students who paid tuition. In contrast, BYU is too conservative to offer all of its materials to everyone. There are class web pages, but they are not organized, and sometimes even password protected (CS235 Lecture Notes page). Humanities Learning Resource Center Online Media is organized pretty well, but is accessible only to BYU students. Another example of open-sourcing influence in education is www.w3schools.com, a set of tutorials about web development.

Open-sourcing not only provides the way to educate ourselves for free but also allows the communities to engage in open research. The results of many studies are published online and accessible to the whole world. This means that any individual or group who wishes to participate in the research can easily get all the data from the previous research and continue researching without having to start from scratch. I imagine someday a high-school student in a third-world country could download the human genome and then answer to the questions scientists were asking around the world.

In conclusion, the “flatteners” Friedman discussed describe globalization in its early stage and prepare us to live in the 21st century. To be successful in this century and to move technological progress ahead we should be aware of many “flatteners,” which could help us to create multibillion dollar companies, to get and provide free and inexpensive education, and to make a breakthrough in research conducted openly around the globe.

Reading this article, I realized that the author’s views on copyright violations are incomplete. To fight piracy in the U.S., it’s necessary not only to lower the prices for CDs and DVDs, but to lower them to the extent that no one would want to get the copyrighted material illegally. Would you spend your time copying a CD or downloading a movie from the Internet if you could own it for a dollar or two? This would increase the sales of the copyrighted work and the artists would be better off. If it’s not going to work, why don’t we make all copyrighted material a public good (which everyone can freely share) and let the government pay artists for their work?

Looking at the market share of the old Windows Mobile, the operating system for smartphones and PDAs from Microsoft, one can conclude that Microsoft lost its chance to be the first on the operating system market for mobile devices. After reading the article “After Fumble, Microsoft Redoes Phone Software,” I was glad that Microsoft finally realized that it hasn’t been very competitive in the smartphone business since Apple developed its iPhone. According to the article, Microsoft will allow its new operating system, Windows Phone 7, to be installed on third-party devices, which will make it more widespread. Windows Phone 7 will most likely provide better compatibility with Microsoft Outlook than Apple iPhone, because both products are developed in the same company. Also Windows Phone 7 and will provide Microsoft SharePoint capabilities (which Apple doesn’t have at all). It would be nice if Microsoft opened its own application marketplace just Like Apple did. This way all users will know where to find a particular application instead of browsing the Internet. The company would have a much bigger success if it started developing Windows Phone 7 at the same time as Apple started developing its iPhone. Microsoft wouldn’t have to catch up with the mobile industry if they released their phone at the same time as Apple released their iPhone. Moreover, competition would drive the originally high iPhone prices down.

In January I posted about the attack on Google that was suspected to be from China.  As the result of that attack, Google announced that it’s not going to censor search results for Chinese users any longer. Recently I read the other article about the consequences of that risky decision – the possibility of China brain drain. I can understand Google’s reasoning; they wanted revenge for the January attacks. Google wanted to teach the Chinese government a lesson of how bad it is to leave the hackers unpunished. I believe it was not a smart decision. Google had all its censoring capabilities working and in place to censor the search results in China; however, the company made an effort to disable them as revenge and without receiving any gain from doing that. Possibly, Google wanted to put the Chinese government under pressure to pursue them to find and prosecute the hackers, or to pay money for the loss of intellectual property, or to create a special anti-hacking division inside the country. Consequently, the Chinese government started thinking about blocking Google and developing an alternative search engine as powerful as Google. Not only did Google upset the Chinese government, it put its own employees in China under pressure. Google’s employees in China felt that they could lose their jobs if Google decided to cease its presence in China due to incompliance with Chinese censorship. As the result, in order to stay employed, Google employees were more willing to leave the company as their jobs became insecure. Moreover, as other Chinese companies offered them a competitive salary, some of the Google’s employees actually left the company. This is yet another example of the importance of the decision a company makes. Google made a poor decision and the Chinese market reacted smartly, benefiting from the mistake Google made. So, now Google is losing very good programmers, who also may happen to know the company’s secrets and implementation details of the world’s most popular search engine.

Recently I read the book titled “Cuckoo’s Egg” by Cliff Stoll where the author described how he being an astronomer became a security expert and a “hacker chaser”. Throughout the book Stoll referred several times how his personal life was hurt with sleepless nights spent in the Lawrence Berkley Laboratory, and even expressed his attitude toward Markus Hess (the hacker), describing him as “a reptile”. Despite the author didn’t state his attitude toward hacking explicitly, one can infer that he wasn’t happy about it. Although both hackers and viruses hurt businesses and individuals, I believe hackers’ and virus writers’ brainpower and skills can be used the serve the community, businesses, and even interests of the country.

The author ended his book with a conversation with the Australian hacker named Dave who got arrested later. Dave broke into Stoll’s computer and then called the author to report a security fault. Is it good or bad? Dave claimed it’s good, while the author didn’t clearly stated his opinion regarding this question. Perhaps, he wanted us, the readers, to think about it and decide for ourselves. Though, the author warned us that even people with good intentions can be arrested for hacking.

We can argue that hacking is bad in any form and with any intentions, but there are always good sides in it. Look for government agencies like CIA and FBI. Former will do intelligence (which is also called espionage) by breaking into computers around the world, while latter will break into computers across the United States for domestic surveillance and investigations. Are these activities good or bad? Intelligence, domestic surveillance, and criminal investigations are good, while their synonyms, espionage, control, and invasion of privacy don’t sound that great. Hacking is bad in a sense that it violates privacy, when people do it for personal gain, when businesses lose their money, and when countries lose their secrets. However, some individuals, like Dave, do it as a hobby. They just like to feel themselves like experts in a computer security, they don’t care about the information on the hacked system nor do they pursue any personal gain. Good hackers can be good security experts, and I believe our Government agencies like CIA and FBI could take advantage of their brainpower and skills instead of sentencing them to a jail (and losing the brainpower of this country). Thus, bad guys can be converted to good guys and serve this country well.

We have similar controversy about virus writers. Of course it’s bad to write viruses to harm communities and businesses on purpose, whether just for fun or to obtain a personal gain. But what’s wrong about writing and testing viruses yourself? It’s like a hobby, when you are creating a toy for yourself to play with. Nothing is wrong about it, as long as you’re playing with it yourself and not releasing it in the Internet. Besides, a good virus programmer could be a good virus expert and creator of antivirus algorithms. Thus, antivirus companies cold hire virus writers, so they can apply their brainpower to serve a community — develop and advance the antivirus software. The virus written for yourself and not released in the Internet could be a valuable item in the programmer’s portfolio, demonstrating that he or she understands how viruses work. And again, bad guys can be converted to good guys and serve their community well.

In conclusion, hacking with good intentions should not be punished but noticed by government agencies and security companies. When those agencies and companies are in need of specialists, former hacker could be a good candidate. Virus writers whose viruses were not released in the Internet should be primary candidates as software developers in the antivirus companies. This way both hackers and virus writers could serve the community, businesses, and interests of the country. Both hacking and virus writing have their dark and light sides; we shouldn’t demean all hackers and virus writers just because some of them are on the dark side.