Just walk away.

One day I decided to just quit playing an MMORPG that I had been playing for the last 3 months. The funny thing is that after quitting, I never looked back and I never felt like I had lost anything. I did, however, look back with regret at all the wasted time. At two separate times in my life I have been addicted by a MMORPG, once in middle school and once in high school. In hindsight, most people are able to recognize that their gaming addiction was a complete waste of time, but in the moment, these games truly captivate your attention and monopolize your priorities. As I leveled up and got better equipment, I really felt a sense of accomplishment. Enjoying this, many people are captivated and trapped by these games. The thing that brought me back into reality was simple, but I wish to reiterate it here for all to read. I simple sat on my bed for a few minutes and pondered to myself. Within minutes, I had come to realize the stupidity of my actions and the toll it had placed on my schoolwork, friendships, and family relationships. By simply reassessing our lives, I believe the willpower to leave these wasteful MMORPGs will come to us. The rest is simply doing what your brain tells you to do.

Vlog -- SOPA

The amazingly social social network.

Think of your most unique interest. If this interest is unique enough, chances are you don't know anyone who truly shares your passion for the subject. If you want to interact with those who share your interest of say, extreme geocaching, your options are really quite slim, but with the help of the internet, specifically social networks, other extreme geocachers like yourself can interact easily and share stories and helpful hints. This is one of the amazing implications of social networking, and one of Clay Shirky's points of interest in his book "Here Comes Everybody." Social networking has allowed for people with similar interests, no matter how obscure, to interact with great effectiveness. This social connectivity can foster all sorts of progress, such as disgruntled customers banding together in an effort to right a wrong caused by a corporation, or political activists joining together to speak with one strong voice. This powerful tool can also be used for evil as well, and it is up to us as users to moderate our actions as to promote good cooperation and progress.

When will companies learn from past copyright history?

Something that has caught my interest of late is researching the history of how the actions of copyright holders progress as they encounter a new technology. In my childhood, I remember two of these periods of time. One is when the music industry reacted to the prevalence of mp3 files and the other is when the movie industry reacted to the prevalence of consumer access to writable DVDs and file sharing programs. In each case, the industry assaulted the technology and did everything in its power to prevent the technology from harming sales. The industry struggled for a while and eventually gave in when they realized that their actions were hurting sales more than the new technology. The music industry reacted by suing people who shared mp3s and by selling DRM (digital rights management) encoded audio files. The movie industry reacted also by suing people who shared movies and by protecting DVDs with DRM. In each case, the industry was met with public disapproval of their actions and eventually someone broke the conventions of the industry and everyone else followed. Ever since iTunes stopped selling it's audio files with DRM, very few online retailers sell DRM encoded audio files. Also, DVDs and CDs are no longer sold with dubious copyright protections in them. Given this history, you would think the e-book industry would follow suit, but surprisingly, they haven't learned anything. The current e-book industry is segmented by various e-book formats and riddled with DRM in almost every e-book sold. It is only a matter of time, in my opinion, that e-book retailers will realize the hassle they cause for all of their customers and sell non-DRM e-books.

CS, the manliest degree....

As I've progressed through my Computer Science courses during my years in college, I've noticed that the number of women in my classes has dwindled with each semester.  My freshman year, I though it oddly peculiar that less than a fourth of the class was female.  Last year, my classes had even fewer females as I progressed farther along in my schooling and progressed past the classes required to earn a minor in Computer Science. And now, in my Junior year of school, there is not a single female student in any of my three computer science classes this semester.  This trend is nothing new, and it has been documented and studied by many people. Some suggest that the lack of women pursuing a Computer Science degree is because women are trying to avoid negative labels such as nerd or geek.  Others suggest that women feel ostracized by the male dominated culture and that women feel that other career paths will have more opportunities for employment.  All of these ideas seem to point to the idea that women just don't feel like they fit in with the primarily male computer scientist population.  This bothers me because the problem itself is causing the problem.  As women see less and less women in computing, less women feel welcome in the field  causing a further decrease of women in computing.  I believe that there is nothing about computing that suits men more than women, and it is up to us to make them feel more welcome in this field of study.

Ever met your ancestors?

One of the most captivating and awe-inspiring experiences in my life was exploring my ancestry through the use of familysearch.org.  The website allows anyone to search for an ancestor by name and then access genealogical information on several if not hundreds of generations back in history.  I am somewhat lucky, as the website already has most of my ancestry data completed and recorded with no effort on my part.  Others may find that there is missing information, but that is great because everyone can contribute the ancestry information they know to the database and make it more complete.  I spent an entire evening digging through my ancestry, and it was amazing. I traced my ancestry back to dozens of royal couples.  One of my ancestry lines even went back to the 1400's.  If that doesn't impress you, then something is wrong with you.  I'd encourage everyone to explore the website and learn a little about your ancestry, everyone who does will be impressed.