Ethics and Life

What does a man live by? For a man to survive, he needs food, sleep, air, water etc. These are the needs not only man but all animals or living beings need to survive. But what makes a man a man? Is it brain? Is it knowledge? or Is it Ethics?
In my view, I think man is not born unethical. Ethics is the most important thing that man inherits by nature, but the depending upon the society he grows up, he either loses it or develops it. A mans inner spirit never teaches a man to do bad things. We can easily be ethical if we follow our intuition of good things. If we have a doubt about anything, our spirit can help find out which one is right and which one is wrong.
In every field, ethical persons are always respected. They may not be as rich and successful as unethical persons, but they will have an inner satisfaction that always drives them to do ethical things. If every man can live by ethics, then the world will be a far more better place to live in.

Internet Safety

Internet is a very good tool for information sharing but it is not just a tool for information sharing. Its like a hole in your house for the rest of the world from where everybody can peek in if you don't cover it properly. Internet is the tool from where you want to know about the world outside of your hosue, but you don't want the rest of the world watch you.There are all kinds of people in the internet, some are good people trying to help others, and some are online predators always looking for good chance to harm others. Identifying these people and allowing the right people through is hard for those who are not aware of these issues. Kids are very vulnurable to online predators. They can have very bad long-term effect if they are allowed to spend a lot of time in internet by themselves. So, we must always be behind their shoulder when they use it and carefully guide them how to navigate safely through it.Recently, privacy has been a very sensitive issue. People can do many things if they know about you, and with your information they can do anything they want putting all the blame on you. This is technically called "Identity Theft". People have been left bankrupt with the help of identity theft. Not to let this happen to us, we must be careful before we disclose our private informaiton in the internet. We must be aware of who we are sharing our information with and not blame this useful tool for everything.

One laptop per child

I grew up in a “developing” country. I am lucky I grew up in the capital city of my country and my parents were able to put me in a pretty good school where computer education was easily available. There are children in my country who have never seen a computer and may never have heard about it.
Annual income of Nepal is very low. Most of the people earn existential income, that is they earn to live, they don’t have any extra money to spend on technology and other stuffs. Most of them do farming for living and they don’t get a chance to earn money to spend on educational stuff for their children, leave apart personal computers.
Programs like “One Laptop per child” may not sound that revolutionizing in US but it may act as a very big step to make children in countries like Nepal educated with recent technology and help them keep with technology. I am lucky I got to play with computer since my fifth grade, but most of the children in my country are still not fortunate enough to have a computer.
For an average American income $399 is not a large amount to pay for a computer but for an average Nepali person $188 can be his gross annual income. If an average American parent buys his children with that price in that program he will be educating one other child from a developing country. I want every parents here in US to look at the link below and think about buying a computer with this program.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312877,00.html

Outsourcing: An international Perspective

Since my childhood, I had a impression that USA is a land of innovation and opportunity. Whenever I saw white tourists in my neighborhood, my eyes had a different view of looking towards them. I had the impression that he must be really rich, as his single unit of money was worth nearly eighty units of my money. I had heard about people getting rich just by guiding tourists around the city. Then I kind of decided to earn my wages in dollars, luckily my education and my dad’s economic condition was good enough to bring me to USA for college education.
I come from a developing country to US to get a “US degree,” which is very renowned all over the world and can sell for a very good price. Whether I am in USA or any part of the world, US college degree works it magic. If I was in my country and earning the same amount of money I am earning right now (even as an intern), I could live a very high standard of living with that money in Nepal . The cost of living is very low in developing countries than it is in USA. But on the other hand, income is ridiculously low for the same degree in the developing countries. This fact is very well known by American companies, so they are buying the cheap labor of developing countries in a wise manner, which Americans call Outsourcing.
Outsourcing is mutual. The wage that US based companies offer people of developing countries is reasonable for both parties. Suppose a US based employee asks a certain wage for doing some kind of job. If the company outsources the job, the overseas employee is very happy to take a fourth of what the US based employee had asked. With that money he can live a very good life there, as it is almost four times the wage he would have got from a company in his country.
Thinking from a different angle, American companies are using all the innovative people of other countries to work for them. Though all the hard work is done by a person of a different country, the credit goes to the American company. So is it leaving a positive or negative effect in the US Economy?
I think outsourcing is only a practice of open international market. We import cheap electronics from China; many clothing stores import their product from different parts of the world. If somebody thinks outsourcing is putting a negative effect on US Economy, they should also think twice before buying any product that is not made in USA.
I think outsourcing doesn’t take away the jobs from US job market, but it provides more free time and resources to US based companies to spend on innovative ideas and new inventions. If the manpower in US companies were stuck in the same old job that could be done by a cheap employee offshore, the technology wouldn’t grow as fast as it is right now. So the people working for American companies offshore are not really invaders, but are helping hands to make America always on the top in the field of technological innovations.

My mp3 player

I love listening to songs, especially in my car, I want it banging in my ears. I had an ipod, I got it for free by opening a checking acount at a bank. I gave it to my sister on her birthday. Since then I am without a mp3 player. I could live without mp3 player for almost a year, but now it is such a necessity, I had to get one. I didn't want to spend much on an mp3 player so I ordered a mp3 player that looked exactly like an ipod. It took it one month to get to me, it broke the day I got it. I googled my problem, people recommended to upload the firmware, I did, now the mp3 player doesn't even turn on.
I listen to a lot of mp3 songs, I get whatever I want to listen from the internet and honestly I have never paid to get the songs. This time I have been benefited by the weak copyright rules. But at the same time, the Ipod like thing made me suffer. It cost me 40 dollars to get the mp3 player, it doesn't have a brand name and I know it hasn't bought any copyright from Ipod to make it alike. If they had bought the copyright, the player wouldn't be that poorly designed as they had to follow certain specifications.
Analyzing the two things I figured out that the weak copyright enforcement has done more harm to me than benefit. If I had bought all the mp3 songs I listen to I wouldn't have spent 40 dollars in total which I lost in getting a crappy mp3 player.

Google joins hands with Myspace

As soon as microsoft bought some of the most popular social networking site facebook, the other big competitor Google has joined its hand with myspace. They are launching the new networking "Opensocial" together.
Google lost in the race of getting Facebook with Microsoft. But they went after myspace to join hands not to lag behind in the current era of social networking. Is the present age, age of social networking? Why are big companies like microsoft and Google trying to put their money in these kind of websites. Can the next generation really benefit from these investments?
I am sort of addicted to facebook in the sense that I have to check my facebook profile at least once a day. I have seen people who spend more time on facebook than on their studies. If that is the case then, is social networking really helping to build a healthy society?
Lets see how these big companies will change the way the social networking. Its for sure their investments in this area is a notion of new era in social networking, which is still to be seen by the world. And we also have to see who is going to win in the race.

Is it co-ed?

Some take Lady Ada Lovelace as the first programmer in compuing world. She was very close with Charles Babbage who is also someitmes referred to as "Fathter of computer Science". Lady Ada Lovelace was close to writing instructions for his incomplete analyitical engine.
People say computer scientists are nerd. When somebody tries to visualize a nerd, we think of a man. An woman seldom comes to our mind, is that because of lack of female computer scientists?
In my computer science classes, the ratio between men and women is ridiculous. Most of the time, my classes don't have female students. Some big classes may have one or two. I never get a feeling that I am in a co-ed school when I am in a computer science class.

Facebook worth 15 billion?

Social networking is getting very popular these days. Websites for social networking are attracting a lot of advertisements as many people visit these sites and stay in them for a while. Social networking is taken as the present generation hangout spots where people can meet and talk about whats going on in their lives.

Though there are a bunch of social networking sites on the web, some of them are gaining more popularity and their monetory value is raising in an alarming rate. Recently the leading software company, Microsoft bought 1.6 percent of Facebook in 240 millions. Google, a leading search engine company was also aiming to buy a share of facebook but Microsoft was able to give a better offer.

I also spend a portion of my day in facebook. It allows me to see what my friends are upto. I can see what they did over the weekend and can comment on their pictures. I also make myself updated on facebook. Its been like a visual journal and part of my life. Many people take it like that thats why its value is so high.