My various degrees were EE and Computer Engineering, but I have a CS minor. My first semester undergrad I took the CS Assemblers course before I could even take the EE courses (pre-reqs), since it looked interesting and was part of the minor.

The course was excellent. The material was good. The professor was good. The TA was (IMHO) even better than the professor. The projects were cumulative and built on other in such a way that if you wrote crappy code that was hard to re-use you'd experience why that was bad during the next project.

Most of the students were CS 3rd years. There were a few other engineering students.

A lot of people failed the class. I don't believe any were the few engineering students. Some of us blew the curve.

That was the last semester the CS department let non-CS majors take the class, and the class was removed from the minor requirements and replaced with something much easier.

This is just one data point. But if other EEs experienced similar things when taking classes on the EE/CS boundary, I can see why they would get such an attitude toward CS.

I've also had experiences of helping engineers having trouble with CS- there are plenty of people on each side who have trouble thinking like the other side. I've found being able to do both (and to borrow techniques from one side to improve designs on the other) very helpful and would prefer if there were more useful communication between the camps. But often enough the "solution" taken is like that CS department, where a wall is built instead.

"what's the point in not conforming
if it changes you"
- Five Iron Frenzy, "Marty"

I was listening to that this morning, and I think it is apropos.

Listen to what you like. Don't listen to what you don't like. Support the folks you listen to.

I actually got very bored by the Covenant series, but found the Gap series quite good. While both are harsh stories, the Gap doesn't feel as derivative. (yes, I realize the literary reasons that Covenant was written the way it was, but it didn't work for me as a good read)

My employer already knows. We have beer (and wine) every friday afternoon starting at 4pm.

I've been at my job 10 years now, and if I interviewed for it or a similar one now would expect (and do well at) a detailed technical interview. But it is in a very different area than what I studied in school- when I was being interviewed, we all knew that what the interviewers needed to discover was whether I could learn what I needed quickly and then apply it to designing new things. They already knew I didn't know it yet. I didn't even know Verilog (I do the digital side of mixed signal chips).

The best question was a quick lesson in how one of the main building blocks of many of our systems works, followed by questions about implications and what would happen if various broad changes were made with the architecture.

But the puzzle questions (usually requiring broad math and science knowledge, no one asked me elephant in the fridge type questions) were a good way to get at whether I had a broad knowledge base and could apply it to new things.

So they have their place, probably more for people crossing fields than those doing something they are experienced with.

For some reason I have gotten a lot of mod points these last few weeks, after a very long dry period. The system appears to be modal- either it wants to give you a lot or none. My karma has been excellent for a long time, so it's not a (visible) karma change.

It depends a lot on the state you live in. In some states, there need not be an employment contract and both workers and companies have the right to end the relationship at any point for most any reason. In those situations, the company may be able to change the terms of employment a considerable amount the the employees only recourse to leave.
Other states have laws that would still require overtime pay for most IT positions anyway.
Some states do tend to have contracts, and getting rid of workers or changing the terms of employment is more difficult.

Generally, if you have an actual employment contract, it can give you rights beyond the guaranteed minimums of the law.

IANAL, but I do live on a state where the situation is much like my first paragraph. I am a salaried employee with no overtime, but make more than most hourly employees who do get paid overtime.

My employer historically has hired lots of PhDs; we design mixed signal chips. My own PhD has basically nothing to do with my job, but the sort of person who can make it through the PhD process in a hard (science or engineering) field has tended to do well here. That high % of PhD folks is changing a bit as we have been growing way too fast lately to not hire a larger % of MS, but when your bread and butter is to do chips that are "hard" enough to get decent margins rather than being commodity priced the ability to go figure things out that everyone doesn't already know is quite useful. Actually FINISHING the PhD is a lot better predictor than STARTING a PhD BTW.

As someone who has avoided Facebook and is trying out Google+, part of it is trust.

I don't trust Facebook to honor what I tell them in my controls; I think they will neither provide adequate technical protections, or believe they will act in good faith whenever they can make a buck. I also don't like their lock-in.

I think Google will do a better job on these fronts. The non-lock-in approach is an excellent show of good faith. I've used other Google products, and with the exception of some honest mistakes with Buzz they have AFAIK done a good job of walking the line of only using info they have access to ethically.

Of course due to personal web pages I have had in the past (accessible forever via the wayback machine), and various publications, there's already plenty of info about me out there- combined with what Google already knows from my gmail account, they already know more than they would learn from mining what I've put in Google+.

And there are things (i.e. pictures of parties) that I won't be putting online in any form, because I'm only willing to bet so much on my assessment:).

There are also liquid crystal phases. Basically, ordered liquids.