A Cautionary on Cloud Computing

I'm concerned about cloud computing. It is shaping our future in powerful ways, yet ways that are transparent to the average user. The basis of cloud computing is that bandwidth has increased to the point that consumers don't need to store anything on their computer. The computer will just be a gateway to the internet where all your files are stored.
The advantage to this is that anywhere you go with a mobile device, your files will be readily accessible. You will never have to worry about your hard drive crashing either!
The disadvantages are varied and some are insidious. First, intellectual property (IP) rights will be harder to enforce as the company holding your files may be subcontracting the server space in foreign countries with lax rules regarding IP ownership. Second, search and seizure protections guaranteed by the Constitution will easily be worked around because law enforcement will be searching a database far from your house, not to mention your control. Third, in the case of communication failures, your computer will be useless as it can bring you no data. On a related note, those communication failures may be due to bandwidth controls set up by your service provider. Can you imagine? "I'm sorry, you can't have access to your class paper because you used up your bandwidth allotment watching those movies. Please upgrade your account to continue using the internet." Even worse would be the bill if they allow overages but charge dearly for them, as in cell phone contracts. Finally, control of data will be removed from the user. If it was determined that a song wasn't paid for, or payment was made to the wrong entity, the service provider may just delete it off the server. You will no longer have access to it and you will have little recourse in the case of a mistake.
The removal of control from the consumer results in reduced agency, a failure of one test of ethics. We need to take care shaping our future with technology or it may turn into one we do not wish for.

Importance of Ethics

America is a large country. While we have a few traditions that are common to most of us, Americans are actually a diverse group of people with a multitude of heritages and cultures. While cultural  and philosophical differences violently tear other countries apart, how is it that we can live together in peace? How do we manage to work well together despite our differences? We have done so because of our standard of ethics. Ethics is the standard of behavior that leads to greater freedom of agency. Agency is the ability to make a choice. Therefore, the better our ethical standards are, the more freedoms we can enjoy.

Ethics is the set of values we use to determine whether a course of action is good or bad and whether we will allow an action to occur and in what circumstances this action may be acceptable. There are three main sources of ethics. Religions instill a code of living into their adherents, teaching the right way to live, usually according to holy texts.  The Ten Commandments is one well-known example. Standards of social behavior are also created by popular agreement. Americans vote for and against laws that formalize acceptable practices in society. Finally, sociologists are also studying ethics, scientifically explaining how certain behaviors lead to the rise and fall of civilizations. Marcus Aurelius, writing on social unity, said, “Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly of remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity.” (Forstater, 2000, p. 105) Humans are highly social and even the least interactive of us is inextricably linked to the whole of society. The ability to choose how we may live our lives is a cherished freedom in America. While it is not absolute, the test of agency is a good rule of thumb for most applications. The test of agency asks two questions: Will this action lead to greater or lesser ability to choose? And, will this action interfere or constrain another’s ability to choose? As a simple example, we may apply this test to addictive chemicals. Currently, I can choose to take drugs, or I can choose to abstain. If I choose to abstain, I have lost no agency. If I choose to partake, then I will no longer have an easy choice. Abstinence would be the ethical choice in this situation. There are other philosophies on the source of ethics. In his overview of ethics, Kakos states, “Some philosophers view ethics as an "a priori" truth, i.e. like something that we have embedded in us as "knowledge" prior to any physical or social experience … That knowledge is what drives us into behaving good or bad during our lifes. Philosopher Kant played a major role in that part. In this case the inherent validity of a invinsible but imperative moral law is what drives us into being good (or have guilts for being bad).” (Kakos, 2011) Kakos goes on to describe other types of ethics and ethical rules such as the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done to you. Another test of ethics is that of consistency. Is what I am doing consistent with the end goal? Much has been written on the end justifying the means. Gandhi refuted that argument in an article of the Hind Swaraj. “Your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. Your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a noxious weed. If I want to cross the ocean, I can do so only by means of a vessel; if I were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would soon find the bottom…. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the tree as there is between the seed and the tree.” (Brown, 1989, p. 84)

The founders of the United States of America were in search of a way to govern a fledgling civilization. They researched and debated and worked to create a system of government that would benefit all. They borrowed heavily from other cultures, like the Greeks and the Romans. In this society, all would have equal opportunities to live as their conscience directed and attain whatever they worked for. It wasn’t perfect then, and it still has room for improvement now though it has improved greatly. We no longer tolerate slavery, and women enjoy most of the same legal benefits as men. This process of continual improvement may never finish as we strive to create a system that is just and equitable for all individuals. The goal is to create a society where all are free to decide for themselves how to live, so long as it does not interfere with the freedoms of others.

Leading an ethical life creates many personal benefits. If you are honest with everyone, then you will never have to worry about what story you told to whom. Additionally, people who consistently tell the truth are respected and honored. Indeed, “Act uprightly, and despise Calumny; dirt may stick to a Mud Wall, but not to polish’d Marble.” (Lemay, 1997, p. 554) Going in the other direction, what would our society be like if there were no standard of honesty? Gordon Hinckley, a former president of the LDS church said, “Without honesty, our lives disintegrate into ugliness, chaos, and a lack of any kind of security and confidence. Imagine a society in which it would be unwise or unsafe to trust anyone-from elected officials to financial advisors to insurance adjusters to your child’s babysitter or kindergarten teacher. Imagine having surgery performed by someone who had cheated in medical school or found a way to short-circuit the requirements of medical residency. Imagine the terror of a society that condones or at least turns a collective blind eye to dishonesty. The prospects are horrifying!” (Hinckley, 2000) Indeed, we have found these words accurately describe what started happening just eight years after their telling. Integrity comes from dealing honestly with your fellow man. It feels good to be thought well of, and a rise in self esteem can result from an ethical lifestyle. Honesty is not the only thing that brings its own rewards. “Leave your campsite better than you found it” (Huntsman, 2005, p. 171) is not just a good adage but a great way of life. If every time you borrow something you return it in as good or better condition, then no one will worry about lending to you. A financial parallel to this is the credit report and its attendant score. As a person proves to be responsible in managing and repaying debt, their score can rise over time. The higher the credit score a person has, the easier it is to obtain credit and the cheaper that credit will be. A woman asked me once if defaulting on a credit card would be considered dishonest. I told her it would, because when she applied for the credit card she signed her name on the credit agreement. This is a written promise to abide by the terms of the agreement. If she defaulted on the loan, this would break two ethical laws: she would have broken her word, making her promise a lie, and the money in question, lent in good faith for its return, has been stolen. Keeping a promise to gain a reward falls under the philosophy of enlightened self interest. Enlightened self interest is the philosophy that one reason to be ethical is to garner good karma. In other words, doing good things brings rewards. This cannot be the only reason or people would lie, cheat, and steal when they believe they can get away with it.

Societal benefits from ethical standards cannot be overstated. No business can operate without trust. The foundation of any contractual dealing is the expectation that each party will discharge their duties to each other. There are safeguards in place to limit the damages should one party fail to fulfill their obligations, but these only mitigate risk. It is the expectation that each party will deal honestly with the other that leads to partnerships in business. This ability to trust is what allows us to enter into negotiations and create contracts to build roads and  hospitals, hire employees, and buy and sell products. Another benefit to society that ethics brings is peaceful conflict resolution. Countries that have a reliable system for addressing grievances are able to enjoy a peace that is otherwise unobtainable. If the only way to redress wrongs is through violence, then that society will suffer from the “might makes right” philosophy. This only benefits the powerful at the expense of the weak and the timid. One may make the argument that the application of best ethical standards will lead to the greatest peace and stability. This stability leads to another benefit; that of economic expansion. With the notable recent exception of the Great Recession, America realizes the potential that economic stability brings. Ethical behavior at all levels of society is required to take full advantage of continued stability. Actually, the Great Recession helps prove this point. Ignorant and greedy consumers purchased more than they could afford. Banks allowed poor lending practices that cheated the consumer to benefit only the banks. So many people thought only for themselves and this resulted in a financial upheaval that destabilized the world economy. This hurt not only the greedy, but also the innocent, whose home values dropped, and jobs were lost by the score. Companies are now hiring more Ethics Compliance Officers to ensure that this debacle is not repeated.

According to a current Management textbook, “We define ethics as an individual’s personal beliefs about whether a behavior, action, or decision is right or wrong.² Note that we define ethics in the context of the individual—people have ethics, but organizations do not. Likewise, what constitutes ethical behavior varies from one person to another.” (Griffin, 2011, p. 100) While it is true that each individual has their own set of ethics, I must respectfully, but emphatically disagree with disregarding organizational ethics. To hold blameless an organization in its dealings with society is, by extension, to disregard the responsibility of those who created the system in the first place and those who are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the organization. Just as it is possible for an organization that benefits society’s welfare to have employees that are corrupt, so it is possible for ethical employees to work for an organization that actively degrades the quality of life of its consumers. For example, payday loan companies operate in this exact manner. They offer short term loans at usurious rates that invariably leave the customers worse off than before. This fails the agency test because it reduces the ability of the customers to make choices (they have less money and so are constrained by their lack.)

It is important to note that ethics is not an application of arbitrary rules listing all the things that we are not allowed to do. When first learning social norms it may seem that way. Many of us learned the Ten Commandments when we were very young. After all those “Thou shalt not” directives it is important to learn the “Thou shalt” imperatives that make life meaningful. Michele Borba, Ed.D. in her book Building Moral Intelligence, listed seven essential virtues to teach children to do the right thing. These virtues are: empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance, and fairness. (Borba, 2001, p. ix) I would add that they are good for adults to learn as well. Aristotle, in his loquacious manner, wrote, “Virtue has been taken to be the state which makes people doers of what is best and through which men are best disposed in regard to what is best, and the best is that which is in accord with the right principle, this being the mean between excess and deficiency relative to us. So it would follow that virtue of character is essentially a mean state in each case, and concerns certain means in pleasures and pains, and things pleasant and unpleasant.” (Woods, 1982, p. 21) By which he warns against dwelling on things that are painful and refusing pleasure, and also warns against focusing solely on living a life of pleasure only while refusing to acknowledge anything unpleasant. His virtue is that of refraining from excess and keeping to the ‘mean’ of life’s experiences.

We still need to work on equality in social interactions. In a discussion with a friend, she mentioned how we think differently about an action depending on who performs it. If a girl slaps a boy, many would think, “He probably deserved it.” In the reverse situation, the boy is thought of as an abuser. Similarly, I have always thought it unfair and contradictory for the ‘N’ word to be racist and derogatory – unless a person of color used it. Finally, it has been the trend to remove chemicals from classroom settings, including chemistry class. This, to prevent some student from burning themselves on a Bunsen burner or otherwise hurting themselves. The same is not true for sports, however. Football is a popular sport in which students are injured often and sometimes severely. No one attempts to remove footballs from school. In each of these three examples, there is an inequality of standards based on situation. Should physical violence be allowed based on gender, or profanity allowed by color, or should teaching be limited if it is risky and there is no paying audience?

Ethics is a way of living that when practiced, provides many benefits. Living an ethical lifestyle promotes respect and honor. It opens doors leading to greater choices in life. When practiced as a community, it simplifies complex interactions and makes possible steady business. Communities with high ethical standards stand out and can be more prosperous than their neighbors. It promotes peace and creates the ability to work productively in a multicultural environment. A study of ethics can be a turning point in any life for the better. As I researched this topic, I started with an idea of ethics that turned out to be incomplete. My original idea was that ethics was a system of personal rules that make life better for everyone. While correct, it was missing empathy. A high standard of ethics is what has enabled America to prosper economically and socially. It has also made life more satisfying. Honesty, honor, and integrity can be good places to focus on, but it would be incomplete without attending to empathy, forgiveness, and charity as well.

References

Borba, M. (2001). Building Moral Intelligance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brown, J. (1989). Gandhi, Prisoner of Hope. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Forstater, M. (2000). The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Griffin, R. (2011). Management. Mason: Cengage Learning.

Hinckley, G. (2000). Standing for Something. New York: Random House.

Huntsman, J. (2005). Winners Never Cheat. Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing.

Kakos, S. (2011, Jan 7). The Source of Ethics. Retrieved Feb 10, 2011, from knol (Beta) A unit of Knowledge: http://knol.google.com/k/the-source-of-ethics#

Lemay, J. (1997). Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later writings. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.

Woods, M. (1982). Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Global Warming?

I'm inclined to agree with the majority of public scientists; the Earth is warming up. I'm not as inclined to agree that this warming trend will be the end of civilization as we know it. Actually, humans can adapt, have adapted and will continue to adapt as the Earth changes with or without our help. Though, I do think it's rather silly of us to change the ecosystem by accident when we could easily do so on purpose. We could water a few states by drilling a large tunnel from Death Valley to the ocean. The evaporation would provide rain for Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of Mexico. (My theory)
On a more serious note, before global warming gets to an unbearable point, we have the danger of algae blooms creating dead zones in the oceans and the possibility of hydrogen sulfide eruptions from the decaying vegetal matter. See this link for an example: http://www.physorg.com/news170743350.html As nitrogen from fertilizers is allowed to pollute our waters, algae feed on it. Some algae types are not beneficial to complex animal organisms. As we overfish, we pull the ecological system further out of balance. Fishing one species allows another species more food to grow. With fewer fish, jellyfish take over the niche. As CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, corals die and grasses grow in their place. Remember, nature abhors a vacuum. This is not just cliche, it is life! It is silly that we change the balance of species on accident to our detriment when we could as easily do it on purpose to our benefit. Silly. Self-defeating. Perhaps self-exterminating? Were we to target 'trash fish' for consumption, the more tasty varieties would gain population again.
Always perform for the greatest gain. To be short sighted is a luxury we can no longer afford. We complain about fuel prices but buy houses far from where we work and work far from where we live. If we designed our cities for efficient use (allowing multiple zoning perhaps?) we could accomplish the same work for less energy. Why can't we build skyscrapers where employees lived a few floors from where they work? No one would force you to live where you work but perhaps offering a discount on the rent if you work in the building?
So here are some ideas with expected benefits:
Stop fishing the good stuff - let the populations rebound.
Live close to work. Work close to home. - use less fuel (cheaper insurance, too!)
Use less fertilizer on crops so less washes away to the oceans - keep our atmosphere free from hydrogen sulfide
Turn the lights off at night. Including the streetlights. - Lets see some stars (and save energy)
Any other ideas, anyone?

Pearls before Swine

Many things used to be science fiction. Science fiction is scary for a reason!

Tabasco’s Long Road, a SWOT Analysis

My father and I love Tabasco sauce. We use it in our cooking to spice up dishes and enhance existing flavours. My father says Tabasco will be around forever, but will it? As Jeffery Rothfeder says, this “closed, quaint family business collides with 21st century realities.” (BusinessWeek, 2007) How does this one and a half century-old company survive in our modern times?

Strengths:
Since 1868 the McIlhenny’s have been making their signature product, Tabasco sauce. By adhering to the original recipe and ensuring consistent quality they have developed a loyal customer base. Their brand is known world-wide and Paul McIlhenny, the current CEO says, “We sell directly to 165 countries and we print labels in more than 20 languages.” (Pepitone, 2010) The McIlhenny recipe is simple, Tabasco peppers, salt and vinegar. They age the mash for up to three years in used white oak bourbon barrels. (Pepitone, 2010) This has the side benefit of creating a noncyclical product – they aren’t dependent on the seasons for selling their product. The McIlhenny Company caters to its fans, offering not just sauces in sizes from 1/8th oz to gallon jugs, but also Tabasco related products - kitschy knick-knacks like the camouflage Tabasco holster and Tabasco bottle shaped flash drives. (Tabasco.com, 2010)

Weaknesses:
The McIlhenny Company’s greatest weakness may be its practice of nepotism. Very few companies that keep the business in the family survive for more than a few generations. The makers of the iconic Tabasco sauce have proven to be the exception to the rule so far. Jeffery Rothfeder, author of the book Tabasco Road, “maintains that the company's set-up demands that it find more ways to expand. When it was established, all family members were deemed shareholders—the only shareholders. Consequently, the dividends owed them multiply with each generation.” (BusinessWeek, 2007) As the family grows, dividends paid will be diluted unless the company increases profits or buys out other family members. Another issue with nepotism is that there may not be a family member with the skills needed for a particular position. Hiring the best qualified person for the position strengthens a company.

Opportunities:
While the McIlhenny Company has expanded its business by selling Tabasco sauce in 165 countries, it has not complemented its newer products with any large scale advertising campaign. There is a great market for both milder flavours and for the extremely hot sauces. Companies are not only advertising in television, radio and print. Today, social media is the hot new way to advertise. MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, and dozens more websites have millions of potential customers sharing their likes and links to products. To ignore this new advertisement medium would be folly.

Threats:
Complicated labor laws create a difficult environment to do business in. Paul McIlhenny says, “Look at the laws regarding wages, labor relations, 401(k)s, health care. It's all highly regulated now. There was no HR in 1868. It's much more complicated than it was in every area of administration -- the legal requirements of shipping, different laws for each state, tax laws, different laws for every country…” (Pepitone, 2010) Regulations aren’t the only thing that has changed since 1868. With the increased population and economy, boutique sauce companies have sprung up, each with their own products vying for consumers’ attention – and wallets.

Conclusion
My father believes that this sauce will be around forever, and I hope that is true. Few companies are willing to invest the amount of time into their products that the McIlhenny’s do. While I wonder how the McIlhenny’s will deal with the changing business landscape, competitors, and fickle consumers, I’m sure they will adapt. Their flagship product, Tabasco sauce, is worth keeping around for several more generations. Their attention to quality has attracted fans all over the world and in the highest places. “It is said, that to this day, Queen Elizabeth uses Tabasco pepper sauce on her lobster cocktail.” (Stradley, 2004) Who knows quality better than the Queen?

Bibliography

BusinessWeek, Tabasco Road (October/November, 2007)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056444.htm retrieved 2010-09-25

Sara Pepitone (March 1, 2010) 142 years old and still hot, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/01/smallbusiness/tabasco/index.htm retrieved 2010-09-25

Shevory, Kristina (2007-03-31), The Fiery Family, The New York Times,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E7D81130F932A05750C0A9619C8B63, retrieved 2010-09-25

Tabasco website, http://countrystore.tabasco.com/ retrieved 2010-09-25

Stradley, Linda (2004) History of TABASCO Pepper Sauce
http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Tabasco.htm retrieved 2010-09-25

Financial Education

Consider the state of finances in the American public today. Reputable banks are seemingly unwilling to lend and loan sharks are all too willing to lend, but at a significant price. The American markets are still reeling from the financial collapse caused by a perfect storm of loose lending practices, greedy real estate agents, and ignorant home buyers. If any one of these had shown some responsibility or foresight, the collapse may not have occurred. As individuals we cannot change the bank’s practices nor the high pressure sales tactics used by the real estate agents. We can however, fix our own ignorance and we should teach what we have learned to the next generation so they may learn from our mistakes.
Solid financial knowledge is scarce in the general public. Advertisements compel us to continually buy with little regard to payment. With our desire for instant gratification, we use our debit and credit cards so often it is difficult to balance a checkbook. The tax code is complex. One of my managers, who has a PhD, mentioned to me that he doesn’t know how to do his own taxes. The news is full of stories about people who bought homes under terms they didn’t understand. In 2006 George McCarthy, a housing economist at New York’s Ford Foundation, said an option ARM is, “like a neutron bomb. It’s going to kill all the people but leave the houses standing.”(Der Hovanesian, 2006) His words were prophetic. Many who took out ARMs lost everything when the rates brought up the payments due on their houses. I believe there are few that know how to use an amortization schedule to their benefit. Even this tool however, is made impotent by contracts which eliminate the ability to calculate interest and predict future payments.
Financial predators are common and often merciless. Payday loan companies peddle their services to the poor and ignorant, earning millions from people who can’t pay their bills. While payday loans have recently been outlawed, the companies peddling them have found ways to stay in business by changing the name of the loan or offering them online. (Quinn, 2010) (Fox11, 2010) Banks gave loans to people who could not afford them, leading to the current housing financial collapse. Credit card companies often charge fees for customers to use their own money. For a ‘secured’ credit card, there is an annual fee, plus the deposit. Customers can only borrow against the deposit and the interest charges go to the company. Capital One and Wells Fargo are among those that offer this type of credit card. (www.capitalone.com, www.wellsfargo.com)
Despite all the bad news, there are individuals who are not only knowledgeable about finances but are also willing to share. There are several philosophies presented by wealthy authors who share their rich experience. On one end of the financial spectrum there are books like Robert Kiyosaki’s best seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which stresses business intelligence and becoming wealthy by earning more. At the conservative end of the spectrum are books like David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber, which takes a common sense strategy to creating a comfortable retirement through savings. As Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” (Franklin, B.) The internet provides forums for like-minded individuals to create and share ideas. Columnist MP Dunleavey blogs about her and others’ experiences geared toward female readers in MSN Money. (MSN) “MyMoney.gov is the U.S. government's website dedicated to teaching all Americans the basics about financial education.” (MyMoney) With so much combined knowledge and experience available to us, there is no excuse for the general public to be so ill-informed about finances.
Teaching finance while students are young would open discussions about money. This would hopefully mitigate our existing cultural taboo on financial communication. Communication is essential to educating about money. A basic finance course would educate about balancing checkbooks, reconciliations, and the use of savings accounts and loans. Some high schools are already requiring finance credits. (Wu, 2010) Students would learn how to build credit, compare credit card offers, and prepare for large purchases like a college education, car, or house. These are some of the basics we need to know to live outside our childhood home, to avoid scams, and to negotiate better deals.
We need to start early to teach finances. As the bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 KJB) By consistently and systematically training financial responsibility in our youth we may rest assured that this nation will not soon suffer financially as we are now. We have the knowledge available to us. We have the need. Considering the state of our nation’s finances, we can and must do better. I’ll end by quoting Benjamin Franklin again, “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
References
Franklin, B. (n.d.). The Financial wisdom of benjamin franklin. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://www.echristianfinance.com/2010/03/the-financial-wisdom-of-benjamin-franklin/
Capital One (2010) Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://www.capitalone.com/creditcards/products/secured/?sol=11296&tc=1&credit=3&linkid=WWW_0608_CARD_TGAFF01_Z_Z_01_T_CP29601LW
Der Hovanesian, M. (2006) Nightmare Mortgages. Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_37/b4000001.htm
Fox 11 (2010) Payday loans on notice in Arizona. Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://www.fox11az.com/news/local/Payday-loans-on-notice-in-Arizona-96067344.html
The Holy Bible (1611) [Online], Available: http://scriptures.lds.org/prov/22/6#6
MSN (2010) Meet the Women in Red. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/MeetTheWomenInRed.aspx
MyMoney (2010) Welcome to MyMoney.gov. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://mymoney.gov/
Quinn, D. (2010) Industry shifting to new services as payday lending becomes illegal. Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://azstarnet.com/news/article_ff55e5ce-2c89-5ccb-9d1f-1bbc73dfff89.html
Wells Fargo (2010), Retrieved August 7, 2010, from https://www.wellsfargo.com/credit_cards/secured/
Wu, A. (2010, July 23) School Credit. Newsweek, [Online], Available: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/23/school-credit.html

DeVry Open House - Careers for the 21st Century

Devry is having an open house next month, August 7th. http://www.choosedevry.com/openhouse/index.html?vc=200101#/arizona/mesa-center
1201 S Alma School Rd. Suite 5450 in Mesa.
To register, please call 888.460.9559 or visit DeVry.edu/Phoenix

MyScribe eReader

As a student at DeVry, I am using an eReader called MyScribe. Having used it for a little over three weeks, I have developed a few opinions about it. There are some rather serious flaws in the software, but if these problems are ironed out it would be an excellent program.

Major issue - unreadable text. Scrolling down my statistics book, I suddenly saw classic gobbledygook. Closing and restarting MyScribe seems to have cleared this issue for now.

Taking notes: Myscribe allows notetaking on your eBook! This awesome feature is only marred by closing spontaneously before I'm finished writing my note. This happens often esp. if I pause to think about what I'm writing. It acts like it is on a short timer.

Applets: Are the applets supposed to do something? A potentially useful teaching tool but mine do nothing. Example - applet on 1.3 of Elementary Statistics, Fourth Ed, by Ron Larson and Betsy Farber. It looks like a random number generator. Specify minimum and maximum values and the number of samples and press the button. Presto chango! Nothing happes on this one. (All the applets are dead, actually.) I can't even type in my numbers.

Scrolling: scrolling is not smooth between pages. Sometimes it pauses quite a while. This may have to do with my memory, but it would be nice if the scrolling was steady.

Auto Summary: While useful (I think it is a great feature!) it does not handle math well at all. f/n (where the f is over the n) is shown as "f n" Mixing text and variables results in useless/unreadable notes. I was esp. saddened by this as I am taking Statistics. I need those equations.

Page numbers: This is just a note for future improvement. I would love to see the Book page # and the eBook page # being the same. For example, my stat book's page 1 is on page 25 of the eBook. Most educational books have pages i, ii, iii, iv, etc before the regular number system begins. I would have thought that MyScribe (pushed by the college) would compensate for these pages. Adobe Reader does this well on the one PDF math book I have.

For reference, I have a laptop running Windows Vista, Norton 360, it has 2GB RAM and I usually run MyScribe alongside Word and Excel and perhaps a web browser, IE7.

Conclusion: MyScribe has some great features including note-taking, highlighting, and an auto-summary that seems to work backwards (page up to see the following page.) If the bugs were worked out MyScribe would be a valuable educational tool. As it is, I see incredible potential hampered by poor execution. Perhaps the next upgrade will be better.

Prayer in Peace

We had lots of fun last night. The family went to a friends pool and played. I enjoyed the "hold your breath" contest. Restful. The wife and kids went home leaving me to help our friends move furniture. When Kim said the prayer over dinner, it almost brought tears to my eyes. No, really! It was the first prayer in AGES I could actually hear without "I wanted to say it" "She's saying it wrong" "Martin's not folding his arms" and the like. Prayers among adults are different than those with four kids. Then we talked about the latest finds on the internet. The French rock pop Romeo et Juliette was awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-2DCYbb-uM I think I would enjoy it just for the music but with the subtitles it is nice to be able to understand what they are saying. My French is not up to snuff though I do pick out the occasional word here and there. Dani drove me home and told me about Friendly Hostility, another webcomic. I'll check it out next I have the time. www.friendlyhostility.com

I, for one, LIKED Google's new look

The beautiful shades of green and blue, startling not only in their vibrancy but their context, surprised me as I logged on to Google early today. I wondered what the occasion was. Google has often used Easter Eggs to celebrate holidays and momentous anniversaries. One such recent anniversary celebrated 30 years of Pacman. The Pacman Easter egg is still available at www.google.com/pacman This photo of islands was a surprise take as it filled the search screen instead of being contained by the logo as was the usual case. Later, at work, I had occasion to use Google again - and there was a new picture, this one of glass floats in a lily pond. I noticed the option to change my backgrounds if I logged in and made my final decision: I like it! To my dismay, returning to Google later brought only the classic white background. What happened? Evidently, I am in the minority. Most others thought it too 'Bing,' a correlation I did not make until it was pointed out to me. While Bing is useful, I still feel Google is best. I enjoy the memorable graphics, Easter eggs, and of course the versatile search options Google supports. Experiment away, Google! Never fear to innovate. (Just let me have my privacy.)