Open Source Advantages

Microsoft produces the most popular operating system for business and home computers.  Their release cycles vary from release to release.  While some releases are really popular, others are completely ignored (Windows Me and Windows Vista).  On the other hand, Ubuntu, a Linux distribution sponsored by Canonical Ltd., have release cycles every six months.  A lot of Ubuntu users are former Windows users who have migrated to Linux because it offers what they need in a more stable platform.  One of the advantages of Ubuntu is that is released under a GNU license where users have access to the code.  Windows is famous for being buggy and is known for being slow to patch bugs or updating new features.  During the last release of Windows (Windows 7), Microsoft launched a public beta program where they received a lot of feedback.  While this helped them get rid of lots of bugs, it is nothing compared to the testing system offered by a software where the code is openly available.  Ubuntu users don’t only report obvious bugs, but they are also able to find bugs that can only be found because the code is available.  These users act not only as testers, but also as debuggers: two roles that are strictly separated on closed platforms like Microsoft’s.  Another advantage of open-source software over closed platforms is that the software available is closely related to people’s ideas and needs.  Users start their own projects and are later joined by many other users, with different levels of experience, across the globe. On the other hand, Microsoft has to conduct studies and surveys to better understand the actual needs of the users.  Again, their last beta release helped them a lot this time, but is it enough? As open-source operating systems like Ubuntu become more popular, Microsoft will have more trouble staying up to date in offering what users need most. Microsoft has an advantage with the number of users, but how long can they keep them happy?

Organizing with Technology

Last week Google introduced a new site called Boutiques.  It targets people who buy clothes online. It allows you create your own curated boutique or follow a collection of boutiques curated by celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers.  Why would you want to create your own boutique? It gives you an opportunity to give other people a sense of your style and teach them about your taste.  People can follow you and expect you to update the content of your boutique.  You have the ability to display your expertise or talent. The number of followers you get could turn into something competitive for some people. You might get more followers if you are recognized by other users as a person with good taste and style, but one that is also frugal.  All this is something that new technology allows us to do.

Technology has removed obstacles that otherwise would stop us from interacting with other people.  It let us take collective action and achieve results that we couldn’t have before.  It has opened the doors for a lot of opportunities.  It let us become producers.  We have never been able to share, coordinate or act in the ways we can now.  This also increases our freedom.  For example, decades ago we had to pay for an Operating System and other software that didn’t always meet our needs or expectations.  Thanks to new technology, masses of people can collaborate together and come up with something that meets their needs.  This is how we now have many distributions of Linux, a free operating system that meets the needs and expectations of many users.  People can contribute to these kinds of projects, but if they don’t contribute they don’t get penalized either. Technology lets us move as a group and receive the benefits of a group without the effort needed years ago.

Years ago I used to participate at help.com, what used to be an online helpdesk by CNet.  People would go there and post all kind of questions related to technology and computers.  You were ranked according to the number of questions you answered.  It provided an opportunity to publicly display your knowledge and created a motivation to answer in public.  Every week it displayed the top-ten contributors on the home-page and my goal was to be on that list, public to the world.  People saved money and time by not having to go to an expert. The same kind of idea has evolved to online forums with more complex, but more effective systems that keep promoting the participation of ordinary people.  Just over the last couple of years I have saved hundreds of dollars (literally) by going to a forum and ask about my car’s problems.  Going to the dealer would require at least a couple of hundred dollars every visit.  This is an incentive for people like me to visit these forums.  Having saved this money has also motivated me, and the rest of the users, to keep participating.  When people ask about the same problems I’ve had, I’m more than willing to help them.  To help these other people, we don’t have to go out of our homes, we don’t have to pay a membership, no one has to spend time organizing the community and telling us what to do or not to do, it is a powerful way to get what we look for.  This is the power of organizing without organization as Clay Shirky puts it.  Technology makes it much easier.

Demanding a More Secure Web

A few weeks ago Eric Butler, a software developer based in Washington, released a free open source Firefox extension that allows the user to hijack other users’ sessions that are on the same wireless network.  When you sit down at a public place and use Facebook or any other social network over a public hotspot, the site sends a cookie (a file with information that identifies you as you) and stores it to your computer.  Another person on the same wireless network could use the extension, called Firesheep, and hijack your session pretending to be you on Facebook or whichever other sites you are logged on to.  This is a widely known problem that has been talked about over and over again, but websites continue to fail at protecting their users.  Many sites use HTTPS to log users in but then return the user to unsecure connections to serve the rest of the their pages.  An easy fix for this problem is to encrypt the network using WEP/WPA, but the extension’s developer is trying to make us aware of how vulnerable sites not using HTTPS are.  He writes “they’ve been ignoring this responsibility for too long, and it’s time for everyone to demand a more secure web. My hope is that Firesheep will help the users win.”  At the end we can expect sites to start using HTTPS over HTTP, instead of users having to change the wireless encryption or manually adding extensions that are supposed to force HTTPS , but that are not always reliable.  An interesting fact is that HTTPS does not produce an overhead on the sites’ servers, which is the reason many companies decide not to offer HTTPS.  HTTPS requires an initial handshake which can be somewhat slow, but the actual amount of data transferred as part of the handshake is about only 5kB. This can be a burden for small requests, but with the high speed internet that we have access to it doesn’t mean much.  Look at gmail, it’s been using HTTPS since January (before it was an option) and the access speed is not slow at all.  Hopefully the message sent by Eric Butler will catch on and companies will start protecting their users’ data using HTTPS.  It is time that we the users who control the internet demand security on the services we depend on.

Enforcing Copyright Laws: A Huge Challenge

One of the challenges about copyright laws is that the new generation is growing up thinking that they don’t have to pay for music or other intangible products.  They will pay for clothes and food, but won’t pay for music.
I remember reading an article in the Ensign magazine a couple of years ago.  In the article the author suggested to not distribute music illegally, and to be careful about copyright laws, among other things.  I remember sending the link to the article to one of my friends in a country where piracy is common.  He said that he did not want to read the article because he knew that he was not willing to follow the counsel given there.  That is just how he was brought up; that is how the new generation is brought up.
Companies can sue and go after companies and individuals, but they will not be able to shut down the network or the technology where file sharing operates.  The most effective way to solve this problem of infringement of copyright laws is trying to change how people think.  Just how you can say “no” to someone that is offering you a drug, you can say “no” to someone offering to copy copyright material for you.

Civil Disobedience in the Digital Era

Civil disobedience, as defined by Wikipedia, "argues that people should not permit government to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice".  One of the greatest examples of the benefits of civil disobedience is Gandhi’s campaign for independence from the British Empire.  Like the civil protests that we all have a right to, hacking can be seen as civil disobedience when it shows discontent and opposition, and it ultimately shows a way of doing things better. What are the benefits of hacking?  One benefit of our disobedience is that it gives us more options.  When the iPhone first came out, the options to customize it or doing other productive things, like reading PDF files, or just changing the background, was limited or inexistent.  The hacking community created applications and modified the OS so that we could change those settings and add functionality to the phone, functionality that was already available on other phones.  What did Apple do? They came up with their own implementation of the features introduced by the hacking community, i.e. we now have multi-tasking, we can change wallpapers, will be able to change sms ringtones soon, etc. As someone puts it "we need to keep on hacking so long as we're angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied with the status quo.  We can sit around and complain, or we can do better." It should be a pretty easy choice and as long as someone is willing to "disobey" we all will enjoy the benefits that come with it.

"...in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed"

President Woodruff said: “The eyes of God and all the holy prophets are watching us. This is the great dispensation that has been spoken of ever since the world began.” We live in the dispensation of the fullness of times, indeed, and all the blessings that our ancestors had are available to us.  It is our turn to be grateful for this blessing and to be faithful on helping fulfill the prophecy and bless all generations; the technology available to us helps us speed the process. I remember when my dad used to look at microfilms to extract information to do the work for our ancestors. Years later he started using FamilySearch and his work became much easier.  He found out that he had duplicated the work for a few people, something that with FamilySearch would hardly happen.  And now with the New Family Search the work is a lot easier. I just had to log in and link to my dad to be able to see all my ancestors for whom he has done the work for. He recently found out that there was a man, thousands of miles away from our home, that is also doing the work for his family. He didn't know the man, and he doesn't know if they're related, but they're both working on their families.  What a wonderful blessing it is to have the technology we have and be able to contribute to the Lord's work.  What a blessing it is to live in this last dispensation.

"...in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed".

Cyber Attacks and the Cyber Space

Most of us have probably visited a web site that has been down due to a DoS (denial-of-service) attack, but were not aware of the cause for the site being down.  These kinds of attacks are an attempt to make an internet site or service not function as designed. The average internet user has little idea of what's happening behind the screen in being able to communicate with someone on the other side of the world. The knowledge of the average user decreases when we address the threats and security implications of having a network as open as the internet.

One or two decades ago, even an advanced user was little aware of all the holes that are open for people to take over a system. We have come a long way as the Pentagon's Cyber Command was scheduled to be up and running this month. Even though it missed the deadline to be fully operational, we can see that the government is aware of the need for an agency such as this one.  Interestingly enough, the Pentagon's Cyber Command missed the deadline because it was struggling to fill out the rest of the organization which needs more than 1,000 employees.

Even with this new Cyber Command, the rest of the U.S. government is lagging behind, debating the responsibilities of different agencies.  We have heard this before; It might be understandable as many people don't see or understand the tangible consequences of a cyber attack until they experience it firsthand. It would be interesting to know how much authority the Pentagon has to help fend off cyber attacks within the U.S.

An article recently reported that more than 100 countries are currently trying to break into U.S. networks. China and Russia are home of the greatest concentration of attacks. Attacks between different countries have been increasing recently as they are attempting to take down each other’s websites with DoS attacks. Many of the victims are government websites, but many victims also belong to the private sector.  How will the government respond to a call of aid due to an attack on the private sector? Does the Cyber Command have the authority to respond to it?

Government agencies have to catch up with the threats that Cyber Space presents, and they have to come up with a proper response model adaptable to the civilian and private sector. Meanwhile the other countries or organizations, like the U.N., could also have the initiative to help limit and punish cyber attacks. Cyber space and cyber attacks are real.