Smallish post 6

There are many things a person can do to protect themselves from inappropriate content on the internet.  From an antivirus to a PC's location, there is an infinite list of actions that someone can take to help protect themselves.  But I believe the most important thing I can do to protect myself is to gain knowledge.  As a parent I think about what I'm going to do to protect my son from all the bad things that are out there on the internet.  I'll have rules and policies like most parents have, but more importantly make sure that he knows right from wrong and how to handle those situations where inappropriate content  comes on the screen.  If I can lay that foundation of right and wrong with him the rules and policies become less useful because he will understand the spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law.  That will be when I feel that my son is protected.

Here comes everybody

The world hasn't been the same since social media became mainstream.  When the ideas of MySpace and Facebook were first conceived, I wonder if their creators knew the impact that they would have.  Here comes everybody by Clay Shirky explores both the positive and negative impacts that these social tools have had on our society.  To me the main question that the author is posing throughout the book is whether progress in this area is a good or a bad thing.  It benefits people, but at also harms people.  Most people have had both kinds of experiences with social media.  I enjoy going to Facebook every once in a while to catch up on what's going on with my friends and sometimes join in on a conversation on a subject that I enjoy talking about.  But I've also known people that have lost their jobs because of what is on Facebook.  I believe that no matter what the experience, I would not want someone to restrict my ability to be on social media.  I would rather take the bad with the good than to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Especially when people get into trouble with things that they have voluntarily put on social media.  When posting, know your audience.  Expect that people outside your target audience will be able to read your post as well.  If you do not like it, then you have the choice of not using social media.

Smallish post 5

Open source programming is not very intuitive.  I, like most people, think at first that open source development is not an efficient way of developing useful software.  It may be because I have been conditioned to accept software from Microsoft to be the way things things work.  They make it and distribute it, I buy it and use it.  If I come across a problem I send them an email or an automated error report about the problem that I'm having.  Not once have I ever received a personal response back about how to fix the problem or receive an acknowledgement they are even aware of the problem.  Open source programming approaches it fundamentally different.  Everyone is working together, as "co-developers" as Eric Raymond puts it in his article  The Cathedral and the Bazaar.  There is unity, which is a contributing factor to their success.  Communication is more open and it is not as if the programmer and the user are on two sides of a continuously waging war.

Smallish post 4

Free software is an interesting idea.   Usually when I am buying software I think it should be free, but other times I think otherwise.  I've always been a supporter of the free market where price is determined by supply and demand.  Software is unique in that it is difficult to quantify the supply. If another copy of a program is needed, a copy can be made fairly easily.  With an almost unlimited supply, logically the price would be low if not zero.  But there are 2 reasons that companies like Apple and Microsoft can charge so much for their software.  First,  they protect their source code, which allows them to control the supply of their software.  And second, there is an extremely high demand for the software.  The combination of these two factors allows companies to charge so much.  Controlling the supply is something that monopolies do, so in essence these companies have a monopoly on the software market.  But that may be beginning to change with the expansion of other software companies that open source programming like Linux and Android.