ITGS@SMIS

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

2006-12-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

My Life as an iPod

2006-10-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about my experience with ordering an engraved ipod.

OK Sunday evening – I ordered it with engraving. My nephew’s name.

Late Sunday Ordered. When did it arrive? Early Tuesday. 38 hours WOW!

Let’s track what happened.

How did this iPod get to me? All the steps that were taken.

First step was – I went on the internet.

1. Order on the Internet.
What happened next after I ordered?
Your order goes where? Apple receives it.

2. Apple receives.

What happens next?

3. Confirm transaction with VISA.

So the transaction is confirmed, then what?
Oliver – send it to the factory.

4. Engraving Order request – to the factory.
5. Engraved.

6. Boxed
7. Shipped via FedEx

Where does my box go? It go to Memphis.

8. Memphis (FedEx shipping hub)
9. NY (Where I live)
10. Hand delivered by FedEx Delivery

OK NOW…What I want to draw your attention to is the question, at what point did a human being touch this iPod?

No human being has ever touched this ipod. No human being has ever touched the parts or plastic or metal. No human being has ever touched this ipod ever – its all automated. And that goes back to the metal in the parts and plastics too. From the time the metal was removed from the ground at the mine until it was held by my nephew, no human ever made contact with this product. Or even saw it.The whole process was fully automated.

Furthermore, no human being knows that I bought an ipod. It COULD be known but nobody knows. Nobody knows that you bought an ipod. Except the FedEx guy, maybe. Apple doesn’t know about it for sure. It gets boxed automatically, it transfers onto crates automatically. It goes to Memphis, nobody knows in Memphis either.

Delivery systems like this – FedEx etc. They are really the “unsung heroes” of the modern age. In America, you get next day order delivery on most everything.

Apple is now experimenting with mini-stores. After playing with the sample models of the equipment, you just go to the touch screen, scan your credit card and click ‘Send’ and guess what – you don’t even have to carry the box out to your car. You go home and next day it will be there. Wouldn’t you rather have the guy bring it to your house next day?

This is way cheaper because its all automated.

I see the future of most retail moving in this direction. Stores with no stock rooms, shipment direct from the warehouse.

Vulnerability of the network.

2006-10-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

How do Networks prevent INTRUSION?

ROUTER

Firewall – software/hardware that selectively limits communication on ports.

Port - A data connection.
Usually data’s in a file but sometimes file comes from some place and comes to your hard disk and then you use it but with a port the idea is that it comes straight in and gets used right away and doesn’t get written to some place. Or straight to the video game, right? Martin is not here.

Router – data comes through a firewall.

Vulnerability of the network.
Do many computers have a firewall or not? Windows doesn’t and Mac does we doesn't need it.

When the person instaled Vista, the registry was turned off and then the computer said that registry should be turned on but then when he went to turn it on the computer said ‘you sure you want to turn it on?’

IBM Punch Cards and ASCII Code

2006-09-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

I am going to sing a few lines.

Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle made for two.

It’s a song called Daisy. It would take a long time to get back.

I picked this book up, “In the beginning”, what they did is that I think what happened is that original software programmers in the 60s they would be going to conferences and they would present a paper and this guy did it too and he got this idea that before these guys died off they would submit their recollection into book form and they did and ther’es about 10 of them here and they talk about how it was like programming in the 50s and 60s.

YOU want an example?

Aite..so I don’t remember the company but if you wanted to write a program you wrote it all in pencil and after thaty you went over to this big machine was like a typewriter and you took the punchcards and they were called IBM cards and I guess they were automated and the card would feed in and you would type in the code of that line and if you were gonna say – if x equal to four and it would say x=4 on the top and then it would punch out the holes in the cards – physical holes.

Dhruv says “I have seen those”

The A means America but the original ascii code didn’t have things like that but its like this – they decided that they needed to have a common number and every computer system the letter A would always be written as a number and they had to decide what number was gonna be for all computer systems and computer systems of a computer is binary = either 0 or 1. that’s the two states. If you wanna think about it, think of it as light bulbs and try to communicate with light buls and if you can communicate to people with it right?

Go along with that idea and if you need two pieces of information – if the dad’s awake or not so you look at all the possible combos. 2^4 and all light bulbs. A lot of STUFF about LIGHT BULBS!!

What about period and exclamation marks? That gives us a 128 possibilities and is that enough? 7 is not a enough number. They decided 8 is not enough bits so they went to 16 bits.

8 bits = 1 byte.

Eventually they decided that for universal code – ascii – they went to ‘double byte code’ – 256*256.

Colors on the screen – the original screen just had a black screen (640*480) They went from black to four colors. 2 bits would be a sign of 2 pixels and this somehow gives you a choice of black, white and two grays. Then they went to 8 colors and required. Each pixel needed a byte.

You couldn’t show a photograph in 8 bits and for the photographs you needed 2 bytes – 16 bits. And then you just do 2^16 = 64,000 colors. But now computers can show movies and this means that any single photgraph could show with 64000 colors but if you wanted to show a series of pics but it turned out that 64000 wasn’t enough to show a movie. So they added another byte.

Double byte.
So here was the question – we got to the point that we had 16 million colors. Technology made it possible to go to 4 bytes = 32 bits and these were 32 bits processors right so it was inconvinent to send 3 bytes but push to go to 4 bytes of color.

But human eye can’t see 16 million colors! They struggled with the question

The computer operator and he would take your stack of cards and put it in this big holder thing and he would drop in there and your cards would be at the bottom and they would be sucked into the machine each card at one time.

So what would happen is that in the old days you only got to run your program once and at the end of the day you would bring your thing to the guys and you did one run and in the morning you would the print out and if ur printout says that ‘u forgot a semi colon on the second line’ so instead you did the checking in your hand and not the computer. If you made a stupid mistake, you lost the whole day!!

Computers and editing in the movie process and movies used to be edited just with tape and the guys who edited it they would think to themselves and one fading in and one fading out but did he have that to show people? No! but later on he would create that crossfade and as he was working his way trhough different edits it would take like a year to edit a major film and they could think about it for months and it’s just not working and all those transitions can be showin immediately so when you edit stuff now – they give you less months now cuz its much easier so now editing decisions are made quickly and they don’t go back and do it again. Its completely changed the way movie gets finished. All the first decisions are last decisions now. They do the editing, shoot simultaneously and then later make the film copy the video and now they have gone digital and the movie is already finished. That’s the equivalent in real world compared to software.

Wire-tapping

2006-09-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Wire tapping

Eaves dropping

Patriot Act

Privacy

FISA

Watergate

Constitution has trouble defining technology

Phone company Supervisors

Freedom of speech

Taping phonecalls by one side

Wearing a wire

Bugs

AMerican embassy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_microphone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone

• In 2001, the government of the People's Republic of China announced that it had discovered twenty-seven bugs in a Boeing 767 purchased as an official aircraft for President Jiang Zemin.

EAVESDROPPING!!

I did a little reading on the ideas of eavesdropping and even in then Roman times it was considered wrong to listen to other people and had laws against it. Usually it was fairly minor punishment for it and some of the laws still exist in different countries but almost never is it enforced.

Listening – overhearing.
This is where it starts with.
If two people are having a conversation right in front of you, are you allowed to listen to it and use that information?

Can you go on your blog and say you know what they are working on in Microsoft because two guys sat next to you? What if someone leaves the laptop in front of you and the font is big?

Let’s move to doing it on purpose. Listening with intent.
You know your competitors are sitting there and you go sit beside them. Listen to their info without revealing who you are.

Parabolic microphone – police started using it and others. They are across the street and they point the microphone in through the window. It is just magnifying the sound (information) and it serves exactly the same thing as binoculars are doing for vision. Binoculars are just taking available lighit and magnifying it.

So is it illegal? Is it wrong to look at your suspects from across the streets? You are innocent until proven guilty.

So look, the point of government observing its citizens is this that they find out a lot of information about everyone but it just sits in a file. They don’t care if you are breaking the law. Not yet. They have just got the information. Many people are breaking the law, many people are not paying taxes. What they do is that they just collect information on everyone.

When does it matter what you’ve done?
It matters when you get on their radar. There are millions of people but only few are on the radar.

What could put them on radar?
Dramatic crime.
Going against goverment policy.
Crimes against a big business.

Potential Abuse of Power By The State Scenerio

Information is used against you when it's useful to do so. If you are on the right side, it is less likely to go against you. But if you start being a problem then that information can be important and more information will be collected about you. They’ll start focusing more on you. If you are lucky, all they will do is come and approach you and say ‘we have things on you’. They don’t even have to tell you what they have and how they got it and you might think – ‘this thing I did 5 years ago’ but they don’t want you in jail. They just want to stop opposing them. Its not the individual that matters but the population in general.

There was a point in 90s and they had a 5% market share and they still do. No..computers. And somewhere around 1992, for some reason, it started really catching fire in Japan and every year their percentage of market share went up to like 15%...! About 1996, they got to 18% market share! For personal computers! In 93, I was looking to change jobs and umm…I did get a job. At the time apple had a large building in Yoyogi. They had a glass building with their logo.

I went to this building to give them my resume and say I want to work for you apple. You know what they said they had 18% of the personal computers market share well you know we only have 300 employees here. Imagine THAT!!! 18% market share and 300 people.

I know Watergate scandal.

The water gate csandal went like this. In 72, there was a presidential election. Richard Nixon was still involved in Vietnam War. And the republicans had mad ea big issue about the democarst that the democrats had gotten into Vietnman for 5 years and Nixon said that ‘any prez you can’t get you out of a war is not a good prez’. So…umm Nixon was set up to win pretty big – he was going against very liberal senator from North Dakota. He was seriously going to win. So but for some reason, they were really into dirty tricks. Now for eg. I am talking about ordering 30 pizzas for democratic nationals and sending it to them even though they didn’t order it and having them pay for it. This is the way elections win. It was just understood that. So now what happened was that its also happening in Japan now. What’s considered OK and what’s not. Its catching some people off guard. Politicians who follow in other politicians footsteps – doing same kind of manipulation. Rules were always there and certainly the mood of people is changing and look ‘eh’s breaking all these rules’ and politicians say ‘we always broke the rules’. That’s not a good defence. So what happened was …

There was an advisor to the democrats. He was seeing a psychiatrist and what they did was…about 4 guys broke into psychiatrist’s office but they screwd it up and got caught. They got caught doing it. There were other people but umm these guys got arrested and republican party tried to help these guys because they were working for him. Hired lawyers too fast. They thought it was going to be a small little gag thing and with good lawyers they would get off but what happened is it got connected too fast to republicans and eventually Nixon. But it was never proven…but then “ability to deny knowledge” and what you do is you give power to people. The people above don’t know what people below are doing it. They were never able to say that ‘he knew in advance’ but they were able to find out after he had been caught but now the prez of USA is aware of it. Instead he participated in hiding the information. Usually politicians get in trouble for covering crimes. Now the latest scandal is about congressman who was sending messages to boys. Some of the information was hidden and they didn’t act on it.

Holding this information for few months and waiting right now to deliver it by surprise~! Guy incharge of election for republicans, has always brought up something in october.

There were four years of audiotapes recording everything that was said in oval office.

The president bugged himself.

I wanna talk about the telephone company. The telephone company had operators. The telephone company was called BELL.

This is what happened at the phone company. The operators all have headsets and they are connected into systems and when people call and ask for information. We are going back in the past btw. Back in the 70s, 80s you talk to a real person. Not a computer. They had espestos in the building. The supervisors were also into the system. So if there was a problem that she couldn’t handle so umm that was one of the things – one of the reasons for that loop so that the supervisor was able to listen in to handle the calls to watch new people to make sure they were doing the right thing. But it certainly was allowed for supervisor to listen in as you dealt with different people – that’s cool. That’s understandable. But what happened was that between calls you had a free moment and I imagine they were all women and if your friend was not taking a friend either then you could talk to your friend. What happened was the supervisor was still listening eventually someone said something that got in trouble. The person who got fired said that the supervisor didn’t have a right to act on the information. The phone company was saying ‘you work for us all day and we are allowed to listen on our equipment at any time’ and it went all the way to Supreme courts. Not the toilets.

Recording was bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Can I give you the tape problem? She made friend with his woman Linda Trip. She was old and ugly. Linda Trip got pushed out of her job in the pentagon because no one liked her and her connection to republicans went back to 72s. how could monica think she was her friend?

In the state of Maryland you cannot record a telephone conversation. It is unfair to do so. She knew all along. She was told it was illegal but she still made a 7th recording. And the 7th recording, they tried to arrest her.

Next time we will talk about SECRET SERVICE.

My Mickey Mouse Rant

2006-09-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Did I tell you my Mickey mouse rants? What did I say?

The copyright law is supposed to last originally 25 years but then Mickey Mouse turned 25 and he was invented in 1928 and Disney thought they could get it changed. And they said can you make it 50? In 1978 before Mickey turned 50 and they changed it to 75 and now 2 years ago he turned 75. That's the Disney side of it.

The public domain side is "don't you think after 75 years of living with Mickey, hasn't he joined the culture of the country? Isn't he a cultural icon now? It's public, isn't an idea like Mickey is a mouse or does Disney get to keep it forever? If you go to Tom Sawyer, I don't think anybody owns Tom Sawyer. He was a great friend. Nobody's making money off Tom Sawyer anymore.

So let's talk about ownership. If I invtent something, some idea or a drawing and it sells well and I make lots of money, when I die should the ownership go away? Should it drift into public? Should I be able to give the rights to my children, my grandchildren? It never enters public domain.

Public domain is the place where people share.

[Tomer asks a stupid question " Why would you want to share?"]

The advantages and disadvantages of not letting it into public.

Public Domain to Closed to Open Source

2006-09-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

Public Domain and Open Source

Topic 2: Software

Software, Public Domain to Closed Source to Open source

Procedural - viewing a program as a series of commands (linear programming)
Procedural - the first way of programming - write commands in a line, chronological
Coding was viewed as following a bunch of steps. It was like baking a cake
Spaghetti code - only the author could change it or know what it is. - a series of steps 
Never get fired, because no one else knows how to fix it . Where a programmer does not document anything about the program, so if something goes wrong, no one except the programmer can fix it
- Boss tells them to use comments – each comment says what the line means or does. 

Modules
- Separate the program into sections

They separted that did different things.
IF you are worried about printing you would just have to go to one page of the code.

ex:
-input
-computation
-output

with possible to jumps out to other subprograms and jump back into and etc. 

comments – shows what something means or does
- notes placed in the programming which serve as a reminder for future use

Objects oriented programming, OOP
- Program focused on data
Instead of thinking of programs as commands, as data

View the programs from the point of view of data.
So managing data – what’s the status of the data?

Modern software is in a loop.
There is no more visible “end” of the program.
Software reacts to responses from the user . Mouse clicks, return key

Classic example of an object is car.
Ex: a car in a game have commands for each thing. like gas and speed

HOW DOES THE GAS DATA CHANGE? Gas!!!

It changes because you use part of the function –car accelerator.
Two ways to change car’s gasoline levels – Car.Accelerator() and Car.Fillerup()

Cheats- Test game, like get lots of money to test section .
Cheat codes - originally for game testers to jump to end-game content so they could test it.
First made for the shortcut for the programmers but internet allowed cheats to spread so programmers realized that cheats could be part of the game.

Porting- Conversion without starting from start  IBM vs Unisys -IBM
= Great -Use idea of IBM and advance it 
-Vaporware
- big companies say that they create a new and better one later 
-Unisys made a computer that does exactly the same thing as IBM but cheaper
(reverse- engineering) 

Input- BOX –Output (Black box) 

Computers - 3 categories
Mainframes – large computers, Work station – QDOS
Minicomputers – about the size of a desk
Microcomputers – regular desktop computer
Around 1980, microcomputers began to take over minicomputers and minicomputers slowly died out.
Eventually the micro computers gained enough strength and price advantage that these kinda went away.
Did I tell you that ATMs started on minis?

Porting
OS from mainframe was converted to work on minicomputers. Later, minicomputer OS was converted for microcomputers. This conversion of OS’s is called PORTING.

Porting is converting. Big monster computers – when they invented the mini they could write the software with the new mini or you could start with this operating system and convert it till it ran on the mini.

Porting – downside is that since it was written for strengths of main frames and mini is going to miss it.

New chips would come out and people would change some parts of the machines and they ported it over. And they let the operating system run on that and when microcomputers. SO IT PORTED OVER AND OVER FROM MAINFRAMES TO MINI TO MICRO.

IBM 1960 was the most dominant
Unisys also sold mainframes
Even if Unisys made a better computer, IBM simply says “Soon we are going to make better one”
Then Unisys made a computer as good as IBM but cheaper
Buy Unisys computer and use IBM software on it
Everyone bought the Unisys computer and then used IBM software so IBM had to sell its software separately
Profit – in hardware, not software

Until 1965, there was no software. Software was just goodies that came with the machines. All the stuff was in the hardware

IBM vs. Unisys
IBM dominated the computer market during the 1960’s. Unisys was its competitor. IBM killed Unisys’s market by telling companies that they were coming out with a new product that was even better than Unisys’s. This caused companies to wait and not buy Unisys computers.

Reverse Engineering – Unisys took the IBM computer and made a computer that functioned exactly the same, with equal processing power, and sold it at a cheaper price.

For the first time, IBM software was able to work on non-IBM computers.
Software was considered part of the hardware during the 1960’s, and there were few property laws regarding software.

Unisys came up with a machine that was so like the IBM that you could run IBM operating systems on it. And IBM was kind of stuck because they didn’t have a product code for their OS. They never sold it and people now just wanted to use the OS and it wasn’t even a product. There was no such thing as software and there was no software ever sold. It was all given away with the machines. Finally IBM had to separate their OS and because people were using it on other systems so in the early 60s software finally became a product.

Reverse engineering: break it apart and re make it at your own company.
Black box: You don't know what’s inside, only what it does to the input data (engineering term)

Bill Gates enters scene with Paul Allen

Altair 8800 was a microcomputer where you build it like a kit.
The first software for it was the Basic Interpreter.
Bill Gates made a basic interpreter for microcomputers and got 5 dollars for each disk bundled with each computer kit.
It was considered not fair because he only ported it to micro from mini.
Took basic (from main, mini, to micro) and add to Altair 8800

Takes us back to IBM. In the early 60s – it was like a copy of the IBM = Unisys.

All right, Bill Gates and BASICS. When the micro computers first came out they were sold to the hobbyist market and the most popular one was called Altair. You bought a box of stuff and put it together yourself it was a kit and when you finally built the computer there was no software in the box. What you needed was a programming language.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen quit Harvard in 2nd year. They realized that there was a real need of programming language and the easiest one to work with was basics. He imported it over to the micro.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in 1975.

Somebody else – he just made it work on a different computer. He tried doing such a thing. He treated software as a money making product.

Microcomputers were a hobbyist market. You ordered the microcomputer and it came in a kit, called the Altair, which you would use to construct the computer yourself. However, there was no software included, so the computer was quite useless.

Technical side of BASICS – one used as a interpreter and compiler.

Compiler takes your code and converts it to something the computer can understand.
It’s called an OBJECT code and the SOURCE coding.

And then you can run it anytime you want.
Once you have got the object code.
Unless you get to the Era.

Two kinds of Programming Languages
Interpreter – the code that makes up the program. People can see the code.
Basic interpreter: The code that gets run ( not safe because you have the actually the code ) but simpler

Compiler – takes the code and turns it into a product. This makes the code impossible to see.
Compiler: take a code of a program and compile it or convert the machine code ( safe, no one can read your program )

Public Domain: Everyone gave the software away.
Bill Gates sold it for money, so now selling things he didn't write and everyone else did not sell.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen ported BASIC from the minicomputer to the microcomputer. They then went to Altair and said, “Hey, why don’t you put this BASIC interpreter in your computer so that it will be more interesting?” Altair agreed, and more people began to buy its computers because then they actually had a purpose.
Bill Gates PORTED IT SO HE COULD MAKE MONEY OFF IT. He was allowed to do it because it was PUBLIC DOMAIN. Everyone shared their work with each other and built off each other. He was the first person to charge for software.

1984 – IBM was not selling the microcomputers. They were selling the minicomputers

Floppy disks - 7 inch
Platter – floppy disk cover hard disk platter thing. 5 MB of storage space

1989 - Mac plus. No hard drive, 9 inch screen, 4 MB of RAM

Neuromancer by William Gibson, early book describing in novel form the future of the internet back in early 1980s

IBM made everything and they kept all the profits and they wrote all the software
– all of it but didn’t see any profits in these little tiny PCs.

Not everybody can make money like that.

There is a guy if you type in certain combination of keys and if you ask Microsoft and if you ask Microsoft why the dollar sign comes up but they wont be able to tell you why it come up but I’ll be able to tell you that.

Open source = code is shared as long as you follow the rules.
Public domain – everything just left everything for people to use so that people gain knowledge.

Public domain- write program then share it, the problem that it was hard to share.
Share with floppy disk, they used to have a floppy disk 7 inch. It did not hold a lot data, and broke easily.
 
-License one copy one computer Probs
- home/office Site license, 10 user, world wide license (whole world)  

When buy software now you get a license for one copy that you only install once
Site License - make site (a place where you use one software for all of the computers) license

License Agreements
Single User: Install one copy of the program once on one computer
10-User License - License for up to 10 computers
Site License - allowed use of the software on as many computers as they want at a certain location
Worldwide License - License to use the software as much as they want around the world

Netscape: 85% market share in 1996, not free, but should have been, beta was free, and there was always a new beta but you had to use explorer to get Netscape.

Internet Explorer: Microsoft made the operating system look like the browser so say that explorer works together with windows operating system and internet with the same feeling. Microsoft included a free copy of Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows.

Internet Explorer gave the illusion that there was no way to separate the browser, because it looked just like the Windows operating system. There was no feeling of the browser being a separate program.

iTunes distributes music the old way, not the direct new way (from the creators website)
Musicians only get about nickel, apple .35, record company .60

Windows Licenses on Compaq
Microsoft gave out Windows pre-installed on all new computers so that more people used Windows instead of Linux. Microsoft threatened Compaq that if they put Netscape on their computers, they would not give them Windows Licenses anymore. This screwed Netscape over even more because then their program wouldn’t be on computers anymore.

Sun Microsystems tried to compete with Microsoft Office by making Star Office.
They failed so they turned Star Office into an open-source program called Open Office.

On writing your essay

2006-09-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Obviously as you work your way through an essay, you start off with some points and then finally make a point the reason why I beginning I am going to convince you and at the bottom you are convinced right? The conclusion is kind of restating it. At the end the person’s with you. I didn’t see that a lot. Some people just stuck close to the technology. What does this mean? Why do I care whether we vote with a voting machine or push button or on paper as a voter what do I care what way it gets done? The only thing I care about is that my vote gets counted. I don’t care if it gets counted today or next week. That’s the social issue. Does the job get done?

So anybody who argued that if you were going to tell me that pushing buttons on the screen was better because it was faster. Its hardly important at all speed is not important at all. Doesn’t matter at all – speed. Just not knowing is no good. In a country that can slip through civil war if you don’t give an answer. America was civilized enough that we can sit around and work it out. People cared about voting for the first time in a long time. They cared about the system and they actually thought about it. What was fair, unfair? Speed is a good way to die quick. The funniest quote from the whole election problem, it was so funny:

6 million people voted in Florida. The chairman of the national republican party and said:
“I can’t believe they are fighting. We won by over a 1000 votes. And they want to contest it.”

Romeo, he wrote down the questions (HAHAHAHA!!)
Tanay, you are all over the place and you are also a victim of a lot of words.

I would like you to go back to your essay. Do what Romeo DID!

For Su Chen, I wrote that you summarized everything you did and its like these are your words and not my words but you need to link it to social issues.

But some people said the opposite – some people said touch screens were awesome.

Oliver’s was good.

Opinion is wrong.

XiaoXiao, good connection to issues. Just say balloting box failed and this is to people that it messed up and these are the people who benefited.

Vaibhav, no social issues.

Nitish, all technical you didn’t get into issues.

Sam, which questions are you addressing?
Romeo, are they steakholders or stakeholders?

Elections

2006-09-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

Technology that surrounds Elections

Life of Paper

2006-09-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

Paper - uses.

Record stuff write stuff. Write books draw.Paper!!

Paper is thousands of years old. Paper comes from papyrus. So ink? Right. Unless they invented All right so? They have been using paper for thousands of years. Then think about the life of a piece of paper. Lets go back 50 or 60 years. Then somebody was working in a company and someone places an order so you make 2 copies of it to make in the afternoon and you send it out to the delivery guy and the delivery guy and he gets paid for it.

He signs both pieces of paper and customers get both pieces of copy and you take that paper back to the office. And you put it in a folder of a company who bought it. And put that in a file cabinet.

Customers stop being your customers and files are not relevant anymore. Market failure. You decide that it might have some value some record of what we sold and how much. You take that Maybe its useful for a day and the rest of its life which could be years and years in storage. It’s like what modern hard disk or cd-roms storage device. Pretty cool. Used it for thousands of years so if you keep it out of the sun. Gets yellow but doesn’t really matter because you can still read it. So what eventually kills paper?

The courthouse burned down and asbestos wasn’t discovered for 30 more years so certificate was burned up and she thought she was a years younger. How did she figure it out? There were other pieces of paper that didn’t catch fire and the 1899 and 1909 census.

The bible says it – the first book ever written. That’s all the monks did write the bible.

So now how is paper used today? Cycle first of all the rough draft are much done on the computers and then you get your finalized copy and print if out and then use it. So the actual amount of time you are even working with the paper is reduced from couple of hours or even less. The use is less. And after the paper is used it can be disposed of. Because we have a digital copy. And that means the paper is main use was a record and it has completely gone away.

Dhruv: Toilet paper is storage.
Martens: It is not.
Harsh: What, What?
Martens: “What’s funny, did I miss it again.?”

Asbestos - Good vs Bad,

2006-08-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

Asbestos - Good vs Bad,

Maybe just the technology is so useful that we are willing to live with the problems at the cost. You know asbestos right? After building thousands of schools in USA in 60s and using asbestos in every single one of them, they discovered that the workers who were putting in the asbestos were getting a cancer. Asbestos, unburnable fabric foam stuff and dries. So what did they do?

They decided that asbestos was bad. I don’t want my daughter going to school with this stuff. Asbestos usually sits in the walls. This is a drop ceiling. So asbestos. I guess this falls in the category of tech. But this was great – this was a great new technology you pumped it in with a hose. It went all over everything and it dried and it stuck there. White stuff. And it really it doesn’t burn. You know the Apollo’s capsule? I mean its really good. It doesn’t burn. It flakes away. So then they put it in all the schools.

Everything burns.
[Tomer asks a stupid question]
You know baby’s diapers? Yes I do.

So what did they do? They decided to remove all the asbestos. [Stares at someone]

Get it? I love WIKI.
Wiki is the power of the internet. How do they make money?
I don’t know how they make money.

So they uh pull out all the asbestos, all the money that school raised in taxes to pay teachers n books n etc. they spent that money removing the asbestos, downside – the school is not now fire protected. The guys who are paid to remove the asbestos also get lung cancer. The old asbestos gets really powdery.

You know how hot it is? You know how tempting it is to pull that thing off?
[Tomer asks another stupid question]

Abstract to a young person. Care about being alive. I don’t get it. I went to family reunion and my parents smoked as older teenagers college around that 18-20 around that time smoke and then they quit right. And then my generation me and my brothers and their husbands and wives none of them smoked. But their children – many of them do. The next generation they got used to it. I am saying maybe in the 70s the impact of this knowledge that smoking causes cancer had more power than it does now. 20 cigs or 40 cigs a day for 20 years = cancer.

Lung damage. Tobacco is an addiction. Asbestos probably caused quite a few lung cancers but on the other hand I am sure it saved a lot of schools from burning down. It saved a lot more lives than it took.

[Tomer’s question - Why should it take lives in the first place?]

Let’s make the general rules of engagement here. If I say something and if it catches your imagination or you step into it but still relevant. You owe it to me to raise your hand and share it with me. If it doesn’t qualify for that then don’t talk to your friends and talk to them. If it’s not important don’t tune out of the conversation.

Moving back to the pluses and minuses of technology. Going back to the elections.

The date on that video was on December 12. As the guy in the video said, we can manipulate the whole thing. You have to watch the video. No 2004. What electronics should give to us I feel is fast estimates. Fast good estimates of results. They shouldn’t be the bottom line. The bottom line should be paper. Its crazy that paper is our best solution. You need something simple something very low-tech. each paper then it’s a matter of guarding the pieces of paper. You can use tech to speed things along but in the end you need something solid. Something real physical to protect yourself. The benefit of it is that the more you can prove its easier to get the losers to admit that they lost. If you can show them the process is not really disputable. If you have software running touch screen and if you lose by 5 votes, its really hard for the losers to accept that. So its to the advantage of actually winners to have this strong way. That’s the conclusion you should draw. Politicians have to prove it all the time. Honest politicians didn’t trust the people. So if I was a politician that entered because I’m trying to make the government more honest who says to me how do we know that you really won? Instead of saying it to the person – how unpatriotic you are to question your govt. I am glad you asked that because I’d like to demonstrate you to how I won. Much active participation.

13 Questions That Will Guide My Life

2006-08-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Seven Social Questions

1. What are the issues associated with this subject?
2. How did this technology emerge?
3. Who are the stakeholders?
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages for those stake holders?
5. What solutions can overcome the problem?
6. What areas of impact does it affect?
7. Evaluate the impact locally and globally.

Six Ethical Questions

8. What are the ethical issues?
9. Who is responsible?
10. Who is accountable?
11. What laws apply?
12. Are there alternative decisions?
13. What are the consequences of these decisions?

Key Words
1. Reliability
2. Integrity
3. Security
4. Privacy
5. Authenticity
6. Intellectual Property
7. Equality
8. Control