It's official - NY Times reporting Meg Whitman was named to lead Hewlett-Packard

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/technology/whitman-expected-to-be-named-at-hp.html?ref=business

Computer science departments don't teach "experience." That's why a co-op or internship is more important than ever! I graduated nearly 25 years ago from college (when Pascal was used to teach programming, but nobody used it in the real world), and I had delayed my graduation one semester just so I could get in a 6 month co-op assignment at a nearby company. It was the best move I ever made since it gave me an edge over other CS grads when I was being considered for my first job out of college. Get your "experience" now before you graduate. Otherwise recruiters will screen you out quickly early in the hiring process using their usual shallow cookie-cutter approach of pattern matching skills. The real world mentality is: "Can you hit the ground running from Day 1? I don't have the time or money to train you." After you get the experience from your first job out of college, your degree won't be worth much as you re-enter the job market as a "experienced professional." A Masters Degree or Ph.D. is even worth less and are only considered in tiebreaker situations when hiring. Sorry, I wish it was not like this in the "real world" - so take this bit of wisdom with you now before you graduate.

On a related topic, the NYT has an article about how the Mubarak regime exploited Internet's weaknesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html

This quote from Matthew Berger, son of Professor Lee Berger, was posted on Good Morning Silicon Valley today.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2010/04/quoted-matt-i-told-you-to-stop-playing-around-while-were-whoa.html

“I turned the rock over and I saw the clavicle sticking out — that’s the collar bone. I didn’t know what it was at first; I thought it was just an antelope. So I called my dad over and about five meters away he started swearing, and I was like ‘What did I do wrong?’ and he’s like, ‘Nothing, nothing — you found a hominid’.”

There was an interesting article in the NY Times a few months ago about this..

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10basics.html

The author mentions all the gadgets he had previously hooked up, but threw them aside and now has a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to his television. He also mentiones Boxee, Hulu and Joost.com. There is also a picture of his wife operating a wireless mouse called the Loop.

I can just see it now. Some pinhead manager is going to read about this and come to the conclusion that this pizza problem would make a great job interview question to weed out software engineer candidates.

Springfield! D'oh!

I guess I better run over to the party store and get my Starfleet uniform costume before they are all gone!

He also said that duct tape is the handyman's secret weapon.

I can relate to that.

I worked for a startup. For the first nine months I was getting excellent feedback from the manager who hired me. Then there was a shakeup in management (company was in trouble) and my manager was forced out of the company. The new manager had very high standards and told us we were going to work "with our balls against the wall." My assignments changed as well as my job responsibilities and I have to learn different work quickly. I had a learning curve and could not fix bugs as fast as people who were junior to me (they were more familiar with this particular app than me and fix bugs all the time). I started to hate my job and hate my boss and began looking around for another job. Apparently, my boss had the same idea. I saw a job ad from my employer on Monster.com that had the same job description as mine, but at time I didn't realize he was looking to hiring someone to replace me. Three months passed and I got my review. It was far worse than I expected - I was shocked. Then two weeks later I was fired. The next day I heard my replacement started. I filed for my unemployment claim and my company challenged it at a hearing. At the hearing my boss wrote a written statement saying how I was not working up to "senior level" citing the lower number of bugs fixed compared to the junior programmers. I still got the unemployment!

Sometimes no matter what you do - especially if you are in a high pressure startup environment with a bad boss that is determined to get rid of no matter what - you're still a dead man walking. I still don't think taking these steps described in the article could have saved my job. I was never put on probation and was never given a chance to improve. The whole experience of being fired and having my ex-boss fight to keep me from getting unemployment benefits was traumatic. It took several more successful jobs since then to regain my confidence and realize that I really don't suck as a programmer. A few years after I was fired, the company went bankrupt and my boss eventually lost his job. What goes around comes around.

IBM is now withdrawing the patent application.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090331/BIZ/903310326

Maybe IBM got scolded by Lou Dobbs. :-)

I can't remember things that I learned 20-30 years ago in school. Even when I was a student, the mantra was "Learn - Test - Forget" (repeat as neccessary).

"Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain." - Homer Simpson.

// age discrimination corrollary

if (Engineer_B > 40) {
    reject();
}

Last month, Make Television on PBS showed how to make one of those Hoverman antennas using coat hangers, a pipe and some pieces of wood. Here's the video.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_dtv_antenna_steadyca.html

Here are some GPL'd antenna designs I also found on a different site.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/design.htm

I predict that after the DTV transition, many folks living in fringe reception areas will find their existing (indoor or outdoor) antennas aren't good enough for Digital TV. Digital signals either come in with a perfect picture or no picture at all (cliff effect). People living 50+ miles away who used to get snowy reception with analog will now get no reception with digital. If they are lucky enough to receive any digital stations, they certainly won't get as many Digital TV channels as analog TV channels. Centris predicts 9 million households could have DTV reception issues. I happen to be one of those households with DTV reception problems. I'm located 65 miles north of the Empire State Building (where NY TV signals originate) with an existing UHF/VHF rooftop antenna setup that can pull in all seven of the VHF analog TV stations and one UHF analog station. Some channels have better reception than others (less snow). When I got my digital converter box and hooked it up, I couldn't pick up any Digital TV channels from New York, probably due to the hilly terrain that blocks line of sight signals. This makes UHF reception difficult. I don't buy the argument that rabbit ears can suddenly provide digital-perfect pictures as well as many more channels. It all depends on your distance from the transmitter, the terrain between your home and the broadcast tower, and what kind of antenna you have and where it is mounted. And if you live in a fringe reception area your chances of getting over the air digital reception worsen as you get beyond 50 miles. Cable companies might actually pick up more customers in these fringe areas after the digital transition. As for me, I already signed up for cable.