Book Post 1 - The Cuckoo's Egg

I wonder if a story similar to the one in the Cuckoos Egg would be possible today. Technology has improved greatly since that story took place. These advances make it both easier to track people as well as to hide. I can think of two reasons why it is not likely to happen again. First, Cliff Stoll received a lot of help from individuals at the network companies that probably wouldn't be available today. He called them at unusual hours. They performed call traces because they were interested in what was happening. These people had extra time to help Stoll on his hunt. In today's world I don't think a company would allow one of their employees to waste time on a wild goose chase. Second, the job of searching for a cyber hacker would not be pushed onto one of the individual victims. Federal agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA, have taken a greater interest in cyber security after incidents like this, and now react quickly to threats of this nature. These agencies are more formal and take proper legal action in conducting their investigations. Any significant work done by a regular person would most likely be discredited because they did not have legal jurisdiction.
This does not mean that we no longer have a responsibility to keep track of things happened on our networks. Every network administrator is charged with ensuring privacy is secured and if a problem is found it should be reported to the proper agencies with jurisdiction to further investigate.

Smallish Post 9/30

It was very interesting to see the progression of family history work and technology in the articles read. Something I find interesting about this community created on family search is that it is completely regulated by the users in terms of what information and names are put on the site. When adding a new name or making a new connection, users are always encouraged to provide documents or pictures to clearly identify the person and it is. This is then verified by other users. But who is to say whether or not it is accurate? The users of family search really become the experts in this field of determining whether they have found the person they are looking for. There isn't any higher authority that can give the final say on this. I think it is very interesting because it is different from other fields of research that typically have a small group of people who are very knowledgeable and can be relied upon to settle any disputes.

Current Event 2

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140924006503/en/Samsung-Starts-Producing-3.2-Terabyte-NVMe-SSD-Based#.VCOYgRb_TUc

It seems the amount of memory we fit into a single drive and the processing that can by done by a single chip increases every year. I often think about the new potential with so much available to everyone. A large company will have many uses for extra storage space and processing speed. They can store and analyze larger amounts of data even faster than before. But at some point I wonder how much data they actually need. People are becoming more aware of information that companies gather about them through software use and web interactions. The availability of larger memory drives is not the reason that companies keep track of personal information but it is certainly making it easier. I am not saying that we should limit the amount of memory allowed in a single drive. I do think we should look at what this never ending expansion of storage space is allowing companies to do. And we should decide if it is right or not.

Current Event 1

http://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-talent-wars-engineers-come-get-your-250k-salary/

I found this article to be a very interesting change in the world of engineering that has the potential to gain some traction. In the triumph of the nerds series someone made the comment that during the computer revolution it was all the young people, who didn't already have steady jobs at big companies, that were leading the movement to personal computers. I think this concept is true for any field, it is always the people who feel like they don't have much to lose that innovate new things. The people who already had steady well paying jobs at IBM would not likely leave a secure place to take  a risk on something new. In this article the company, Weeby, is going to pay engineers much more than the current market rate. They hope to draw in many engineers and be able to take the brightest young minds. I think offering to pay this higher wage is their way of bringing more of these younger minds that haven't yet settled into a large steady corporation.

9/10/2014

In Neil Postman's article, the second idea he presents is that there are winners and losers when new technology is created. He suggests that the winners of the computer revolution, large corporations and computer companies, are trying to convince everyday people, the losers, of their need for computers. I believe that in today's world the large corporations and computer companies are not the only winners. Through open source projects we are no longer required to simply buy whatever the large corporations want us to use. We have the option to choose and this takes some power away from the computer companies and large corporations and gives it to ordinary people. Thereby making everyday people winners as well.