Ownership and What it Truly Means to Own

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Welcome back everyone! Today's topic is ownership. How much do we, as consumers, really own? We may think we own our phones, our computers, our apps because we bought them with our own money. And that may seem fine but we don't really own those products. The current patent holders of "your" goods are the real owners that are allowing you to use said goods. Take for example the average smartphone. According to Google's top lawyer, David Drummond, "the typical smartphone could be covered by as many as 250,000 patents."(Regalado) That means that a smartphone, even your phone, is intellectual property of up to 250,000 different owners. Most of these patents will be held by a select few, however. Not only that but large companies, such as Google, are claiming patents on technology that still does not exist yet such as computer glasses that project a keyboard onto the user's hand!(Regalado) What could this mean for developers? Because of these patents, it can be hard for some startup companies to succeed due to having to pay significant amounts of royalties to the current patent owner. This makes especially hard for those startups that use agile methodology, as the income from said project can be insufficient to allow for proper updating or fixing during subsequent sprints. This could also mean that any company or individual that tries to claim a patent from their prototype design, even something never before created, will still be patented and royalties will need to be paid. This can lead to what has been referred to as the "tragedy of the anticommons".(Heller & Eisenberg) This "tragedy", so to speak, is when a resource is prone to underuse due to multiple owners having rights to exclude others from said resource and no one has an effective privilege of use.(Heller & Eisenberg) Now, with that being said, I leave you with one last question. What do you really own? Thank you again for reading and I will see you again next time!

Works Cited

Regalado, A. (2013, November 29). Google's Growing Patent Stockpile. Retrieved March 21, 2015, from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/521946/googles-growing-patent-stockpile/

Heller, M., & Eisenberg, R. (1998). Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research. Science, 280(5364), 698-701.

Using Agile In Your Project? Here's My Card...

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Hello again everyone! Today I wanted to talk to you about a very useful system for working on projects called Agile. Agile, in short, is an iterative release of the product that gradually releases a more refined version rather than delivering a product at the end. Agile will make your life as a budding developer significantly easier and better. By using Agile, developers are able to better communicate with the customers, the development team, and the other teams working on the project, such as project managers and business analysts. Agile also helps cut the risk associated with a project due it its incremental/iterative nature (PSInternalTraining). "But how does it do that?" I hear you asking. Agile's manifesto changes the way the project is approached by all parties. It values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan (Pressman). This change in the way of approaching a project allows the team to deliver the product that the customer really wanted rather than a product the team things the customer wanted rather than a product that the team thinks the customer wanted. In my team's current project, designing a jeopardy-esque game for Green Ninja, we are using Agile and I can fully agree with the manifesto and everything else said about Agile. It really allows for better communication between everyone involved. And to help get used to the Agile terminology, it's really helped show me who are the "pigs" and who are the "chickens" in product development. I hope to hear what changes you guys have had switching to Agile, if you do. Like before, thank you very much for your time and I will see you next time!

Works Cited

PSInternalTraining. (2013, June 19). Scrum Training - Crash Course - 2013-06-18 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNwfFStmtw8&t=71

Pressman, R. Agile Development [PDF document]. Retriefed from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/cis/sfleisher/Chapter_03_sim.pdf

Projects Project Future Career Projection

The Outsider game made for a class project.

Welcome back everyone! Today I wanted to talk about projects in Computer Science, projects are a valuable resource that is used in the industry on many different levels. Projects are important because they help show increased interest in that area of science, desire to continue improving on those skills, and even previous work experience. It can show increased interest by demonstrating that you are willing to go out of your way to research and work on your own. It can demonstrate desire to continue improving skills or even show previous work experience. This can be important whether or not a company will want to hire you. According to the Occupational Outlook Quarterly of 2014 STEM 101: Intro to Tomorrow’s Jobs, “In some STEM occupations, work experience in a related occupation is required at the entry level. For example, computer and information systems managers usually need at least 5 years of experience, first honing their technical skills in lower-level roles before moving to management.” This has been gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and supports the claim that work 

Zombieworld remake text-based game project.

experience is strongly recommended for those in the Computer Science industry and projects, such as those finished for the other company, apply to this example. I have a few self projects I have worked on including a text-based game using Java, a 2D game constructed in GameMaker and an I/O Java application that would accept input, originally designed to receive input from the Dragon speaking software, and then save that input to a text document along with the user’s current name and the exact date and time. Projects can even be useful for learning different kinds of worth methodology, such as agile. Although I was not familiar with the official agile methodology at the time, I did construct these projects using an informal version of agile. There were no daily scrumms as there was nobody else to report to, the backlogs consisted of handwritten notes for features rather than official documentation and sprints consisted mainly of finishing a feature to test and then "release" said version for friends to try out for feedback. So remember, projects hold a plethora of valuable teaching tools and ways to demonstrate your skills and experience! I hope to hear what projects have helped you out with. Thanks again for reading and I hope to see you next time!

Works Cited

Stem 101: Intro to tomorrow's jobs. (Spring 2014). Retrieved March 25, 2015, from http://www.stemedcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/BLS-STEM-Jobs-report-spring-2014.pdf