An adage from the business world states, “Great ideas are a dime a dozen but people who follow through on those ideas and actually make them work are priceless.” A patent is defined as “a grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and [...]

Categories: CS404

The music industry has been so intent on keeping people from copying music that they have alienated their customers even though there is no definitive data tying the drop in CD sales to copying CDs or downloading MP3s illegally. CDs are bulky and inconvenient in comparison to an MP3 player, so it seems perfectly natural [...]

Categories: CS404

Few people plan to have their personal compositions accessible to millions of people, but it happens all the time on the internet. People later wish they could take back what they wrote, but that’s not an option. What you once wrote may no longer express your current views on the subject, but it’s very difficult [...]

Categories: CS404

Learning about your ancestors can be a rewarding and intriguing experience, but there are negatives as well. The methods used to research one’s family history can be time consuming and tedious. Multiple people often end up working on the same ancestral line, unaware of others doing the same work. A single page in the census [...]

Categories: CS404

The phone rings. You check caller ID before answering, but the voice on the other line is not who you expected. Caller IDs can be faked or spoofed, just like e-mails, so the number you read on the screen may not be that of the actual caller. Thieves can use caller ID spoofing to activate [...]

Categories: CS404

The reasons behind the dearth of women in computing and engineering require more research to understand fully, but if a large portion of women aren’t interested in studying those subjects, it would be unwise to force them. Requiring people to study a subject in order to meet a contrived balance is just as bad as [...]

Categories: CS404