Scratch

The site seems like a great opportunity for this society to learn. The saying "two heads are better than one" will never lose its meaning, and I believe Scratch had this saying in the back of their heads when creating this website. What I like most is that anyone can do it. There is no discrimination which is so important in learning. It provides a chance for some younger minds to display everyone is intelligent in their own way. I think this is a great way for younger individuals to get a grasp of reality. By reality, I mean how influential the Internet can be in today's society. Being able to share projects with one another creates a constructive environment. If the website grows more and more popular, society may move towards a collective approach rather than the individualistic society we see today. If this moves to the classroom, even in elementary school, children will be one step ahead in this world. However, I do see some negatives/consequences from this. Younger children have low patience, and may become dependent on a website like Scratch. I don't know about anyone else, but as I became older, I probably never read one book in middle school or high school. Why? Because of "Sparknotes." I can see for even larger projects, students will rely on Scratch as a resource for ideas, which may result in many plagiarism cases. With every benefit, there is always a flaw so I am in no way trying to put down Scratch. All I am trying to do is face reality, and weigh the options. Other than that I think Scratch is a great website, and I see success in the future for them.

JMU Only

I believe a JMU wiki would differ greatly from a worldwide version. JMU has specific guidelines, or a checklist, to the typical student they want at their school. So, after getting accepted, its as if you are now part of one big club. Also, after attending college for at least one year, your opinions tend to get biased. If the assignment was to talk about what is the best college in the United States, JMU's wiki would be completely different from the world's perspective. After the riot last year, the world had this perception that JMU was a no-for-good party school that is detrimental to society. However, if JMU's society was to create a wiki on that experience, they would be able to tell the world there were about 12 felonies committed that day, and 11 of them were not JMU students. People from all over the country came to JMU on that day because we have a great student body who are smart, and also like to have a good time. So, I believe the wikis would be far from similar, but JMU's wiki would definitely have a higher quality in respect to the subject I brought up. I say this because we know exactly what is going on, experiencing national news of events like the riot first-hand. JMU knows what happened that day, and the rest of the nation/world does not.

Main points on Wikis

The first major point I believe is important is the definition of a Wiki, which "all users are allowed to edit any page or create new pages within the website. The second main point is "project management." When working on a project with multiple people, wikis are very user-friendly when trying to manage a team. On the wiki, you can create links to meetings, agendas, documentation, and other things related to the overall project. This type of collaboration gets rid of annoying emails that may never get read. Third, wikis make it very easy to track project status. This promotes creativity because every project does not need a destination, or an end. As the lecture states, when using wikis it's easy to be a part of a "running project." Fourth, I think it is important to be knowledgeable interpreting a wiki page the correct way. Wikis allow you to link to pages that don't even exist. Blue links are to pages that do exist, and the red links are to pages that do not exist. If someone is an expert in that field, they can take a challenge in creating the page that does not exist. Lastly, history is very important. So, the last important point is how Wikipedia first got started. Wales and his community of volunteers had a dream of providing a "free encyclopedia in the hands of every person on the planet." So, it's a great story, and a great source of information.

Should drug companies be required to come clean?

Of course they should come clean about issues like this. If drug companies are selling products and not mentioning potential side effects, that type of behavior promotes deceptiveness in our community. Overall, it is unethical. Even though it may steer people away from the product, it is better to be truthful than not. So, if you leave out important information, and someone does get a side effect, it will ruin that products reputation, and acts almost like "bad karma." I don't know what else to say other than companies need to tell the truth because it is unethical, and, the truth will come out one way or another.

Proprietary Software, Advantages?

First, open source software is defined by "peer production" through collaboration with the "blueprints" which is available to the public at no cost. From what I read, proprietary software is the exact contrast of open source software. Usually with this type of software, the source code, also known as a "trade secret," is kept from the public. Access to the source code by a third party usually requires the party to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). I believe there holds advantages with both software. In open source, you can get opinions about your product all over the world. I think a good example of the "concept" is wikipedia. It is a working website, where people continue to post information on numerous topics until they get the best explanation or definition. Even though you may have a patent or copyright on the software, there must be some paranoia held in making it ultimately available to the public. So, I believe this is an advantage for proprietary software in being that you cannot access the "source codes." People can still view the software without altering the original product. Also, you may be at a comfort level in knowing it is almost impossible to take this particular idea and "run away with it." However, according to Harvard Business School, software companies are taking a "best of both worlds" approach by creating products using a combination of OS and proprietary software code. I just thought this was very interesting because I never knew you would be able to create a software that implements both open source and proprietary. As I read the article, it states, "In the past, a pure OS model was the big thing, but there were many firms that found it was very hard being profitable." An example they provided was Sun Microsystems, which ended up being acquired by Oracle because it was "too open" which is a major disadvantage of open source software. At the end they still cannot determine if the "mixed" approach is the best way. Overall, controversy will seem to exist within the topic for some time. 


 Sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software

3. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6158.html