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News and Views from The Institute for End User Computing!
How Apple tracks your location without consent, and why it matters
April 20th, 2011A Sneak Peek at the Next Big Thing in Computer Science Education & the Future of the Profession
April 1st, 2011As you may know, the Institute for End User Computing, Inc. is most fortunate to have the widest network of operatives placed in government, industry, and academia this side of the CIA ,and do we have a story to break!
In a series of secret Skype communiqués with followup meetings at The Mohonk Mountain House representatives of The Masonic States’ Attorneys General fresh from their work on The Charleston Principles, The League of Illuminated Computer Science Employers whose market capitalization stirs covetous thoughts in the hearts of tax collectors, and the little known Priory of Computer Science Deans have drawn up secret plans to implement a new Millennial Roadmap for Computer Science Education & Practice in a protocol known as The Arkham Charter.
The First Principle of the Charter recognizes that traditional computer science curricula aren’t compatible with the neurobiology of today’s young people. Years of cell phone use and continual texting have led to demonstrable neurological changes in the cerebral cortex rendering the vast majority of individuals under age 35 incapable of performing the kinds of mental gymnastics necessary to develop programming abstractions. Ironically, these same evolutionary changes have enabled them to preform tasks beyond the keen of their elders like syncing tunes across multiple devices and operating complex home theater systems with multiple dueling remote controls. This entire line of research is best summarized by the new mantra of computer science majors and instructors alike — CS is Too Damn Hard.
Strong input from the League of Employers led to the Second Principle of the Charter which states that the first principle doesn’t matter since American CS Grads are Too Damn Expensive. This lead the Priory of Deans to devise a radically re-envisioned curriculum focusing on what people really do. Since wherever possible people don’t write their own code any more, a major re-thinking of student ethics was in order.
As one professor noted, “We can’t keep students from using Google and there is no way we can keep dreaming up new problems that students can complete in the time allotted to a course but which have also not be solved and indexed on the web. And even if we could, they could still hire somebody else to write the code. So we figured, lets just go with it.”
Under the new rules, instead of turning in working code, students will submit the google queries they used to find the answers along with brief descriptions of how they chose and validated the solution they opted to submit. Since some searches can churn out too many results to be filtered in a time effective manner, students will also be given a formal budget which they will be encouraged to use to outsource the completion of their assignments. Whoever comes in with the most correctly completed assignments with the most money remaining in his or her outsourcing budget at the end of each course will be awarded top marks.
This approach will have the salutary effect of shifting a fraction of tuition dollars to worthy third world students who will be doing our actual coding in the future. Students will also face a new foreign language requirement for technical communication with native speakers of either Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, or Spanish. Other required courses will include “The Psychology of Dealing with Bosses, Employees, Venture Capitalists, and Irate Customers” and the all important, “How to Draft Broad Software and Business Method Patents”.
Naturally, all high school and undergraduate course work will focus on playing games to make the major more appealing, and candidates will be required to purchase an X-Box and Playstation along with a number of popular game titles. Said one Dean, “We actually think this requirement may help attract students to the major and of course we will incorporate green computing and other progressive themes into our assignments to show that computers are more than business tools.”
The Third Principle of the Charter recognizes that it is Too Damn Easy to Learn to Program Poorly. As one employer noted, “It is really hard to find good people who will work for Ramen Noodles and can walk in off the street, implement a new product feature without any bugs, and cycle out for a new assignment elsewhere before their unemployment benefits vest. A CS Degree just doesn’t give us enough detail to go on. I mean, even if their program uses Python, which version did they learn?” A dean expressed similar concerns, “Really all they [students] need are a few good books and a $300 netbook running Linux to learn to program. What with all the great Open Courseware on the web, how are we going to keep justifying raising our tuition at several times the rate of inflation?”
Fortunately, the Masonic Attorneys General were able to suggest the ultimate solution to all of the stake holder’s needs. A system of comprehensive software practitioner licensing with biennial registrations and mandatory Continuing Professional Education accreditation. Non-voting observers from the Confederation of CS Academic Societies were thrilled by this prospect as was the Priory since such a regime would insure them a continual fee generating role in the lifelong study of their members and graduates.
The League was similarly thrilled at the thought of being able to hire a Licensed Software Engineer with an optimally tuned set of credentials for a much lower rate once all programmers were forced to attain such certifications. “Sure they don’t really need to pass a test in each version of every tool they use, but hey, if they didn’t get to it yet, we have every right to take that into consideration when they negotiate their salary,” said one employer. “This is also a great way to keep American grads in the loop, since employers will have to hire one to sign off on any outsourced labor while giving overseas programmers a great reason to seek a student visa to get directly certified through one of our programs,” one Dean candidly confessed.
When asked what was in it for the regulators, several of the Masonic Attorneys General chuckled, “endless licensing and certification provider accreditation fees. No longer will people be able to just go around starting companies to write and sell software all willy nilly without registering with us, although we might carve out a narrow End User Programmer exemption since we don’t really have the resources to prosecute everyone using Spreadsheets and Word Macros for the Unauthorized Practice of Software Engineering. But even with that temporary loophole, licensing represents a huge revenue stream to the states; and with the Tea Party breathing down our necks over deficit spending, we need every red cent we can generate.”
As word of the Arkham Charter’s Millennial Roadmap leaked out, The Knights of the Lambda Calculus vowed to preserve The Old Ways.
N.B. Please note the date of this posting and take it in its intended spirit!
Updated to WordPress 3.1
March 26th, 2011We have just updated our blogging software to WordPress 3.1 without incident.
Apple Arrogance
February 2nd, 2011The latest evidence of growing Apple arrogance comes to us from BusinessInsider.com : “Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle”
End Users need to reject Apple’s business model of taking a 30% cut of “in application” content sales and recognize the degree to which such hidden expenses are disguising the trust cost of iDevice ownership.
As competing tablets reach End Users we trust that market forces will bring about an end to such overreaching practices.
Growing App Store Concerns
February 1st, 2011It is now being reported by the New York Times that Apple has blocked Sony from releasing a Sony Reader app for iDevices via Apple’s App Store : “Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store”
Businessinsider.com put this quite succinctly : “WAR: Apple Blocks Sony E-Reader App, Kindle Might Be Next”
End Users and Antitrust Regulators should be deeply concerned by Apple’s growing efforts to tie purchases of their current hardware to future purchases of software and media content through their exclusive distribution channels.
To allow this approach to stand as a mater of public policy and common sense would be the equivalent of letting the manufacturer of a refrigerator dictate where one could shop for frozen food or letting car manufactures restrict which brands of gasoline could be used to fuel your vehicle while permitting both to get a cut of your future purchases inflating the price of every purchase without adding any real value in return.
Consumer electronics manufacturers shouldn’t be able to condition the purchase of software and content by End Users of their “platforms” on their receiving a cut of all such sales by restricting third party vendors from directly meeting their customers needs without going through them as an intermediary. The Apple model of a single sanctioned App Store serves as little more than a content tax and anti-competitive barrier that prevents other firms from competing with the platform vendor and its preferred business partners to offer improved quality and value.
Naturally, proponents of the App Store model will argue that it benefits consumers by providing a vital quality control filter, but this end could be achieved through a Certification Mark without intruding into the Freedom of Contract between End Users and Third Party Vendors.
In all likelihood, most End Users would still choose to go the official App Store route, but only by forcing hardware vendors to permit alternate app stores and convenient side loading of content and unmediated purchases of such content can we insure an honest market.
In no other product category would we even contemplate the notion that manufacturing a product entitles its original vendor to exercise this level of control over its use and the aftermarkets for its compliments.
End Users stand at a crossroads between one future where we continue to enjoy the benefits of the free markets that have brought us to where we are today and and a much darker world of monopoly-priced platform-locked content and utter subservience to the whims of platform vendors restricting what programs and content you can see and use to only those apps and media that fit into their self-serving marketing plans.
The battle lines are being drawn and we can’t necessarily count on the courts and government regulators to protect our interests if we willingly embrace products that try to leverage of convenience of an App Store model to enslave us.
Blogging Software Update
January 5th, 2011We have just executed an automated upgrade to Word Press 3.0.4 without incident. Let us know if you encounter any problems with the upgraded software.
Happy New Year!
January 5th, 2011
Everyone at the Institute wishes you a very “Happy New Year”.
2011 promises to be a banner year for the IEUC. We have a lot of new ideas in the works and look forward to serving our fellow End Users!
Stay tuned for more news as we ramp up for the Spring Semester.
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 25th, 2010Today we give thanks to the Countless Innovators who created the Personal Computing Revolution — both the Researchers in Academia and the Entrepreneurs in Industry — without whose dedication End User Computing would still be a thing of Science Fiction.
More directly, we thank the past and present participants in the life of the IEUC — The Institute’s Founders, its Officers & Directors, its Advisory Board Members, and the many Donors whose modest contributions over the years have enabled us to do our work for the Public Good.
Unlike any other holiday, Thanksgiving compels us to look back to the roots of our nation and that Pioneering Spirt of Innovation that has driven our pursuit of technological excellence through the daily struggles of ordinary citizens . . . of End Users Like You!
Election Day Horror : The Death of The Secret Ballot in New York Election District 21
November 2nd, 2010I just returned from voting in the 21st Election District of New York where a new pen and ink based election system has replaced our reliable mechanical system. The new ballots had to be marked with special felt tipped markers that bled outside the designated circles, presumably to no ill effect, although trying to stay within the lines required considerably more manual dexterity than our old lever pulling system.
Vastly more upsetting was the elimination of privacy curtains from the voting area. Given the extreme width of the new ballots which required two wide sheets of paper to accommodate all of the offices up for a vote, most voters opted to bypass the four small wedge shaped nooks in the sole marking station and sprawl out on lunch room tables to struggle with the ballots instead.
Regardless of whether you crammed into the ill lit marking station or tried to find an out of the way table anyone in the room could tell how you were voting. The “Privacy Shield” – a glorified manilla folder, was a joke since you had to pull out the ballot in front of the machine attendant, other voters, and nearby poll workers to feed it into the scanning machine. With the big black bubbles in plain sight and bleeding through the back of the ballots it would be trivial for anyone who cared to see how everyone was voting.
Even the markers had a faux-cap end and non-intuitive click-to-write ball point pen style operating mechanism.
The scanning unit itself only indicated whether it could or couldn’t read the ballot with error message for an Overvote, BlankBallot, or Misread Ballot. For the first time in my life, voters left the poll seriously wondering if all of their votes had been counted when a simple feedback dialog along the lines of “25 of 25 Votes Recorded” would have eliminated all fears. Even more counter intuitive were the big “Cast” and “Return” buttons. This made it particularly unnerving when the machine operator instructed voters to not push the “Cast” button, which was presumably really an “Enter Vote Counting Mode” button and not a “Cast This Voter’s Vote” button.
Ironically, instead of making it easier to vote, the new process took much longer, frustrated Seniors who had trouble deploying the markers and filling in the bubbles, and, by making a mockery of privacy, violated one of the most basic tenants of our Republic.
This was a clear misapplication of technology that utterly failed to take human factors into consideration.
Indeed, the absence of drapes to keep people from viewing the marking process is particularly unforgivable. Let us hope that this process can be reformed before our next presidential election.
Pre-Election Jitters — The Case for Mechanical Voting Machines
November 1st, 2010Make no mistake, we love computers, especially where they are employed to give a measure of independence to people with disabilities.
They are remarkably fluid and can have their behavior changed on the fly possibly without leaving any forensic evidence of their previous configuration.
This makes us apprehensive of the potential for computerized election machines to be tampered with in ways that defy subsequent investigation. Indeed we are deeply troubled by radio reports that some of the new touch screen devices may be pre-selecting candidates of one party rather than presenting voters with a blank slate.
Equally troubling are reports of erroneous instructions on how to use the new voting machines and human factors issues that could lead voters to hit ‘enter’ after accidentally entering an over-vote, which would have the effect of disenfranchising them! Likewise, on other machines, there is a simple counter that indicates that some mark was scanned without any feedback for the voter to know that all of his or her ballot selections were picked up in the vote.
Moreover, given the ease with which a technically competent criminally minded election worker might be able to tamper with tomorrow’s election, we urge you to exercise extreme caution in using whatever configuration of voting device you are confronted with. Also, bring a camera or cell phone in with you if it is permitted so you can snap a photo to create a record of any screen layout that you think might have been tampered with and immediately raise the alarm with election officials.
Beyond the sheer cost of replacing our old fashioned voting machines with these new computerized systems — for non-disabled voters — their user interfaces are unduly complicated. Filling in little bubbles with markers will take much longer, be harder for our seniors, and be more stressful for all compared to the ease of pulling a physical lever in older voting machines. Moreover, those older mechanical systems were infinitely more tamper resistant than anything driven by a computer chip.
For those with disabilities we really like the new multi-modal systems and it makes perfect sense to have one of them at each polling place. But for the rest of us, lever based systems with their mechanical interlock to prevent over voting and the direct one-to-one correspondence between lever positions and reliably recorded votes have yet to be matched by the newer designs.
Newer is not always better and adding a computer to the mix doesn’t necessarily make for a better solution.
Corporate Computer Science Training Goes To High School
October 4th, 2010
IBM, which has sometimes been criticized in the blogosphere for hiring too many job applicants from overseas, is making a bold move to strike at the root problem — the lack of technically qualified American students — by helping to create a new High School for Grades 9 through 14 focused on Computer Science training.
By developing the new prototype High School in partnership with the City University of New York and situating it in New York City, this exciting project recognizes the growing importance of the New York Metro region as an alternative source of innovation to Silicon Valley on the West coast.
According to Mayor Bloomberg, who spoke at NBC’s “Education Nation” summit, when students “graduate from grade 14 with an associate’s degree and a qualified record, they will be guaranteed a job with IBM and a ticket to the middle class, or even beyond”.
According to IBM’s Vice President of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, Stanley Litow, “The idea is to create a new model for science, technology, engineering, and math–areas where companies are aggressively hiring. If you look at hiring requirements, you won’t see a huge amount of difference in a lot of entry-level IT jobs.”
We look forward with great eagerness to seeing what the new school’s curriculum will look like and how well its 500-600 students, chosen by lottery will perform.
Our only concern is that the City’s lottery system will hobble the new venture by mandating that one third of its slots be filled by students performing below grade level. This will force valuable resources to be wasted on remediation and potentially introduce disruptive students into the mix who may sabotage the learning experience of their peers. Meanwhile many of the City’s truly best and brightest will loose the lottery to far less qualified applications thus throwing all of their hard work back in their faces.
This sort of short sighted attempt at enforcing statistical fairness in the name of equality of outcome can’t help but send the powerfully destructive message to students that success in life is purely a matter of luck and that working hard doesn’t pay off. After all, only one third of the slot in the new program will actually be award to students who have proven that they are ready to tackle the material and advance to college level studies. Perhaps this is way New York City Schools so often seem to be foundering on the shoals of failure.
Accessible Mobile Phone Options for People Who Are Blind, Deaf-Blind, or Have Low Vision
September 28th, 2010
As is often the case for ordinary citizens who don’t spend their days trolling the Federal Register for notices of pending rule making, we are very late to the party in reporting that the time for input to the Federal Communications Commission on possible government action to make mobile phones accessible to disabled consumers is nearly closed.
Indeed there are only two days left for End Users to register comments on this issue which was presented as follows:
In this document, the Commission, via the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (“the Bureaus”), seeks input from all stakeholders in order to be fully informed on issues raised by consumers and to determine the appropriate next steps to achieve telecommunications access. The Bureaus seek input on the following issues: The wireless phone features and functions in the current marketplace that are not accessible for people who are blind, have vision loss, or are deaf-blind and the extent to which gaps in accessibility are preventing wireless communication access by these populations; the cost and feasibility of technical solutions to achieve wireless accessibility for these populations; reasons why there are not a greater number of wireless phones—particularly among less expensive or moderately-priced handset models—that are accessible to people who are blind or have vision loss; technical obstacles, if any, to making wireless technologies compatible with Braille displays, as well as the cost and feasibility of technical solutions to achieve other forms of compatibility with wireless products and services for people who are deaf-blind; recommendations on the most effective and efficient technical policy solutions for addressing the needs of consumers with vision disabilities, including those who are deaf-blind; and recommendations on actions that the Bureaus or the Commission should take to address the current lack of access. For example, is additional guidance needed on specific access features that should be included in wireless products? Should the Bureaus or the Commission facilitate a dialogue among stakeholders in order to reach a specific agreement to address the accessibility concerns outlined herein?
Naturally, the notion that mobile devices need to be fully accessible by those who are both deaf and blind probably strikes fear in the hearts of device developers given the tremendous design constraints any such mandate would entail. Whether we like it or not, current devices are designed around touch sensitive flat panels without any tactile controls beyond volume and power on/off. Voice input is a viable way to let the deaf-blind dial, but without dedicated hardware, it is hard to imagine that capability getting them very far. Moreover, even voice dialing will break down in extremely noisy environments and won’t do a thing for the deaf-blind-mute who are every bit as deserving of accommodation as the merely deaf-blind.
What we don’t want is to see is some naive attempt to limit technology development to a one-size-fits-all solution or to demand that vendors create in-house solutions for every conceivable permutation of disabilities as a pre-requisite to marketing products to the general public, since such moves would likely hobble innovation by driving good companies out or the market and driving up prices to the point than ever greater numbers of the poor, whether disabled or not, would no longer be able to afford them. An equally unpalatable solution would be yet another tax imposed on phone use to redistribute wealth to the users and developers of accessibility devices.
From both a technological and economic perspective, about the best we can hope to achieve through regulation would be a requirement that handset manufactures provide some sort of well documented I/O Port and/or wireless access interface and software API by which any user authorized accessibility device could assume control of the phone to place and receive calls. Then we could give a sizable tax break to companies building on those hooks and let the free market find the best forms of accommodation. Phone carriers could also help set up a non-profit entity to carry out pre-competitive accessibility research and channel voluntary public donations to subsidize phone purchases and use by the disabled.
That said, the last thing we at the Institute would want to do is to get into proposing legislative fixes since we represent many with varying views. If you want yours to be considered by the FCC, you only have two days left to act by submitting a formal comment.
Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report
September 23rd, 2010
The Preserving Virtual Worlds project (which was conducted under the auspices of the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure for
Preservation Program) has just released its Final Report addressing the many vexing questions of how to create archival copies of the content and surrounding infrastructure of platforms like Second Life. It also looks at the preservation of smaller works of Interactive Fiction.
Preservation Program) has just released its Final Report addressing the many vexing questions of how to create archival copies of the content and surrounding infrastructure of platforms like Second Life. It also looks at the preservation of smaller works of Interactive Fiction.
Of particular interest in the report is its excellent, though somewhat small – for want of established case law, treatment of the Legal Issues surrounding the creation of software emulators for defunct platforms.
The Textbook Crisis
September 20th, 2010
Anyone on campus will have no doubt noticed the insanely high cost of textbooks this year. Some are now topping $200 and a variety of cheaper pricing options are available in the form of used or rented books and new eBooks.
In some respects we have done this to ourselves by recycling commonly used texts so successfully that original sales are far lower than they might otherwise be. As a result, the first student to buy one, has to pay for all of the “freeloaders” in subsequent semesters who won’t be sending any profit to the textbook publisher.
Sadly, as the high cost of textbooks and recommended readings drives more students into discarding theirs, we are producing a generation of graduates who have missed out on the opportunity to start building a personal library. Of course the content of some subjects is more transitory than others and it is understandable that a legal treaties on this year’s tax law for example will have virtually no long term value. However, in disciplines like computer science and math quite the opposite is true. Indeed, it is sometimes possible to find texts from the 1950′s like William Ross Ashby‘s Introduction to Cybernetics that do a better job of elucidating key ideas than modern sources.
If more students would hold on to their texts and start building personal libraries rather than dumping them into the used textbook market, we might be able to start a “Priced to Own” movement. Just imagine, cheaper books that you can refer to again in the future!
As to the digital editions, we are highly skeptical of schemes that only provision temporary access. If ever there was a medium suited for the long term archiving and automatic hypertextual crosslinking of material it would be the electronic textbook.
There are also fights brewing over the reimportation of textbooks sold abroad since publishers realize they can’t charge $200 to students in the developing world. Publishers fear that transshipment of vastly cheaper texts originally sold in those markets back into the US will further reduce their ability to extract the maximum revenue from each country.
Clearly, we need new economic models that optimize both revenue to publishers and textbook authors as well as the accessibility of the knowledge transmitted in those texts without forcing students who want to keep their books to unfairly subsidize everyone else in the system.
Software Bloat vs. App Overload
September 14th, 2010
In the early days of personal computing the ratio of Programmers to End Users was such that a new platform would only see a handful of applications in each category. With a new platform, like the original Macintosh we had MacWrite and MacPaint and later MacDraw and MacProject. These programs were open ended, feature incomplete by today’s standards, but you could do almost anything you needed to do using them.
As the market matured, new players arrived and everyone started larding on feature after feature to the point that a machine of the 90′s couldn’t boot without an order of magnitude more computing power than a top of the line mainframe of the 70′s.
Then with the emergence of small mobile devices, the monster applications could no longer be supported and the dedicated App was born. At first there were but a few and life seemed good. But by now, there are legions of programmers stampeding in a Gold Rush fever to churn out gazillions of Apps so each mobile platform can compete on the size of its App Store. But on small form factor devices this leads to a user interface nightmare of page upon page of admittedly gorgeous program icons to choose from, the Apps themselves are individually lean, but in aggregate waste vast amounts of storage supporting redundant functionality and there is no way to combine and leverage them.
Data interchange is dicy at best and the vendors really don’t care that their customers are constantly trying and abandoning incomplete half-baked solutions.
What End Users really need is a platform with a small number of extensible general purpose applications, so they can purchase those features they need from arbitrary vendors without loosing the overall interface simplicity required of a small format device. In short, we need to decouple purely functional bits of code (i.e. the features) from the GUI scaffolding that supports them (i.e. the applications) and let our End Users choose the feature sets and interface bindings that work best for them.
Happy Programmer’s Day!
September 13th, 2010
Continuing on our Holiday round up, today is Programmer’s Day in Russia. The professional holiday will likely grow in stature and gain traction internationally as more End Users come to recognize the contribution to society made by the world’s computer programmers.
The holiday is celebrated on the 256th day of the year because of the symbolic value of the number 256 as a power of 2, the number of bits in a byte, and the highest power of 2 that is less than the number of days in a year.
Happy Grandparents Day!
September 12th, 2010
Today we remember the contributions of our Grandparents be they departed or still with us.
We are particularly grateful to those of them who pioneered the Computer Revolution, building HAM Radios and developing the Foundational Computer Technologies that we all too often take for granted today. If your grandparents participated in this sea change, we encourage you to take some time to listen to their stories and perhaps record them so you can pass this valuable history down to your children.
We’d also like to hear about their contributions to the birth of End User Computing, so do feel free to send us email at: info@ieuc.org.
In Memoriam :: Remembering 9/11
September 11th, 2010
It is with deep sorrow and fond memories of those lost that we extend our sympathies to those here in New York and around the world who were touched by the barbarism of 9/11.
Scarcely a day goes by in which the values of our Great Nation and the Western World don’t seem to fall under attack despite the countless benefits that our American entrepreneurial spirit, technological innovation, and willingness to put American lives on the line to defend Freedom the world over — not to seize resources & territory nor to impose our political will on others, but to preserve their Liberty from Tyrants.
Let us never forget the sacrifices of our service members and first responders or the lives snuffed out by those who fear the values they proudly stood for.
Site of the Day: Hacker News
September 10th, 2010
If you only have time to skim one news aggregator site, we strongly recommend Hacker News.
The Hacker News highlights a mix of stories ranging from hard core technology postings, patent wars on the legal front, the occasional spot to technology related political commentary, and a healthy sampling of topics related to launching high tech startups. Periodic pointers to postings with advice for students will be of particular interest to many of our readers.
Reading About Computer Science With An ACM Student Membership
September 9th, 2010
Sadly, few Middle School, High School, and Public Libraries have well developed Computer Science sections in their collections. We are hoping to address this pervasive weakness in the future by having the IEUC develop some basic library acquisition suggestions.
Until then, the best way for students to read about Computer Science in a systematic fashion is to join The Association for Computing Machinery as a Student Member for as little as $19 for a basic membership and an extremely modest $42 to also gain access to the ACM Digital Library which will put anyone, anywhere on a par with researchers at the world’s top academic institutions in terms of their ability to explore the world’s computer science literature.
The New York State Broadband Speed Test
September 8th, 2010
The State University of New York at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government is now partnering with the New York State Office of Cyber Security to conduct a survey of broadband internet access speeds throughout New York State.
If you are a New York State resident, we encourage you to visit the main project website to take part in this import research.
The Higher-Ed Bubble
September 7th, 2010
In today’s New York Post, Michael Barone offers a stinging column on “The Higher-Ed Bubble: Ready To Burst” that questions the value proposition of a college degree. The piece cites the work of the American Council of Alumni and Trustees whose whatwilltheylearn.com web site gives appallingly poor letter grades to most schools.
Reading between the lines, what is clear is that as Tuition costs have skyrocketed most schools have abandoned their traditional role of establishing a challenging core curriculum. This means that it is easer than ever for students to cheat themselves out of a quality education by taking easy classes.
For most students this comes down to a choice between facing a lot of hard work and a potentially lower GPA or having a higher GPA and a lot more free time to party. By opting for the easy path, they ultimately devalue their degree and do little to prepare themselves for the gristly reality that once in the real world they might one day need to compete with peers who tried to squeeze as much learning as possible into their college years.
Pursuing a discipline like Computer Science may seem like a lot more work but it forces a certain honesty on its disciples. A program will or won’t compile, the time and resources it uses can be measured. There are wrong answers and this a good thing.
Without timely feedback it is far too easy to delude oneself about the quality of one’s work and this is no doubt the situation faced by many institutions of higher learning today.
On Labor and the Computer
September 6th, 2010As we look back on this Labor Day at the history of computing, we can’t help but ponder whether the Computer is Friend or Foe of the Working Man.
From the earliest days of the industrial revolution there have been fears of machines destroying jobs as automation substitutes for ever increasingly skilled levels of manual labor. But by so doing, these machines have driven down production costs and thus increased the level of profit to be split between labor and management making for a rising tide that could lift all boats. The cost savings from automation have been invested in and led to new lines of business, with the computer industry itself being the foremost example.
It is only the efficiencies introduced by our information technologies that support our Western lifestyles, and for many decades the Computer seemed to be a net win for Labor particularly as robotics have reduced the toll in human suffering paid by those laboring in dangerous occupations.
However in recent decades, broadband international communications have leveled the Global playing field introducing competition from third world labor forces. Even high tech economies in Asia like Japan, which initially benefited from Western outsourcing have seen their own workers displaced by competition from lower wage labor in the developing world.
But there are limits to the degree of automation and outsourcing that will be palatable to customers and no level of sophisticated programming is likely to attain the level of flexibility when confronted with an unanticipated situation that a human can. This is why many in the medical profession fear standardized computerized medical records, since individual cases often don’t fit into preplanned categorization, raising the chance that it might not be possible to pass the right information through the web of automation leading to a misdiagnosis, coverage denial, or harmful treatment.
What this says about the future is that the outsourcing and automation trend will likely reach a natural limit with computers doing what they do best — amplifying and augmenting human intellect — and people doing what we do best — innovating, creating new ventures, bouncing back from the unexpected, and providing a warm human touch.
Increasingly, these dynamics blur the line between Labor and Management and point to the way to avoid having one’s services outsourced or automated away. Each worker needs to find a personal balance between roles of artist, technician, and entrepreneur. The Key is not to fight management or to fight automation, but to find mutually beneficial ways to work with them. Only by adding unique value to create goods and services desired by our fellow man can any of us secure true career security — be that by working for others or by going our own way to start a new venture.
It doesn’t depend on a Union Contract or a Government Job, or on Going to the Right School or Knowing the Right People. It depends only on your ability to creatively make the most of your God given gifts and the technologies and opportunities that abound around us.
The future is not bleak. The future is not written in stone. The future is what you make it!
We are here to help.
Happy Labor Day!
On Computer Programming and Latin
September 3rd, 2010It is hard to think of a more modern subject than programming or a more archaic one than Latin. But they share a powerful bond in their educational value. They both force you to develop new mental muscles, have many levels of nuance, and are initially hard subjects if seriously pursued.
Sadly, pressure to maintain a high grade point average has made pursuing such course work unattractive to many students trying to game the system by minimizing the risks they take. But we suspect that college admissions committees will be most favorably impressed by those students who persevere and demonstrate their mastery of them.
Programming and Latin are also excellent compliments. While both require extended concentration and focus, Programming requires a curious hybrid of mathematical and engineering logic while the process of learning to translate and appreciate Latin mixes linguistics and oratory in a way that has a profound and lasting positive impact on one’s ability to write and persuade in English.
Fusing these critical skills enables one to tackle complex projects and bridge the gap between interpersonal and human-computer interaction. These abilities will remain relevant throughout one’s career.
Thus we encourage students, particularly, those in Middle School and the first few years of High School to give these subjects a chance.
IBM Develops the World’s Fastest Microprocessor
September 2nd, 2010We applaud our neighbors at IBM for developing their new 5.2 GHz z196 Processor capable of processing 50 billion instructions per second using four cores and 1.4 billion transistors while only occupying 512-square millimeters of surface area.
The new chips were designed by IBM engineers in Poughkeepsie, New York with contributions from IBM labs in Austin, Texas and IBM’s overseas research arms in Germany, Israel, and India. They will be fabricated here in IBM’s state-of-the-art East Fishkill, New York facility, making this technology a sterling example of New York State’s growing prominence in the Computing Sector.
The z196 is slated to begin shipping for use in mainframe applications on September 10th.
In time we look forward to seeing this technology transition to the desktop where its staggering processing power will make it feasible to deploy ever more compute intensive user interfaces and applications.