If you work like hell at Google, your project gets cancelled, and you get laid off.

California first banned non-compete contracts in 1872. Since then, California has been the central focus of technological innovation, as in Silicon Valley.

Companies started in California and prospered BECAUSE of no non-competes: Hewlett Packard, Apple, Intel, AMD, Oracle, Silicon Graphics, Google(Alphabet), NVIDIA, Facebook (Meta), Twitter(X), OpenAI, Uber, and tons more. Your smart phone is either Apple or Android, both located in Silicon Valley.

Management has to manage with the possibility that any or all of their employees (but especially the A++ people) could just quit tomorrow and start / join a competitor. Unlike other companies that chain their employees to their desks with non-competes.

Smart people know NOT to work at companies with non-complete agreements.

The next "Silicon Valley" will not have non-compete agreements.

During the late 1980's, Pascal was THE undergraduate programming language, running on DEC-20's with a Stanford developed operating system called LOTS (Low Overhead Time Sharing). Earlier, I used Turbo Pascal on my home PC. I always wished for the same level of integration on mainframe and minicomputer work computers.

The Sonoma County Library (California, about a hour north of San Francisco) dropped fines on July 1, 2019. About 30% of patrons had outstanding fines ( 80,000). Fines produced about $300,000 per year, about one percent of the budget.

Front line staff hated it, because they had to be the 'bad' guy to patrons. How do you tell a crying kid that they cannot borrow their pile of books? There were patrons locked out. Staff had to handle money, make change, deal with rejected credit cards, yelling patrons, really bad vibes.

It was not free book day. Patrons would be charged for the item at 42 days (official checkout was 21 days).

Change was announced with newspaper ads, local radio ads, posters.

Results: Items that were 'lost' were turned in. Patrons, previously locked out, came in and thanked staff. Patrons checked out more books at once. Staff only has to be 'bad' guy for lost items (not often). Reduced money handling. Staff much happier.

The change in official attitude from "strict rules" to "nice to patrons" was important when the pandemic hit: branches closed, then limited hours, limited item drop off, curbside delivery, quarantined check in, other issues.

As part of the Computer History Museum's collection strategy, they interview many computer pioneers. Every year, they select four or five pioneers to present Fellows Awards at a big fund raising banquet. The Fellows are interviewed while at CHM.

Oral History web page: https://computerhistory.org/or...

CHM also has lectures, these usually appear on youtube as part of their channel. For example, when the Babbage Difference Engine arrived at CHM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Recently, they captured two long interviews with Ivan Sutherland: https://computerhistory.org/bl...

Does anyone use UML, or another graphical design tool (not UI)?

1. Texas allows non-compete agreements. California does not. Silicon Valley companies are great BECAUSE all the employees could change jobs tomorrow. 2. Texas, the state, is very Republican. Focused on a mythical 'great' past, not the future. 3. Summer weather very, very, very hot. 4. Infrastructure is broken. 5. UT Austin is more focused on football, not engineering or software. 6. Impossible to program wearing cowboy boots.

Will there be releases of the 3D versions of some movies?

Amazon needs to pre install an app that teaches coding on the Kindle Fire. Something like HyperCard.

At my local Apple store there are no signs on any of the Apple Products on display. No names, no specs, no prices. Looking at an enclosed display of Apple watches, there is no indication of what the model, features, and size of each watch. And no prices. Looking at the iPads, no information on memory sizes, model name, works with stylus, and no prices. Same with the desktop computers, the monitors, and the laptops. Boxed items on the shelves are priced, and the box has critical info. Both the Apple website and Amazon have the tech details and PRICES. The wireless carriers have great information on the iPhones. While I understand the employees dressing casual, looking like a homeless person is too casual.

The original proposal was for a second Headquarters with 50,000 new jobs. But, there were two 'winners' each with 25,000 new jobs. So bait and switch, big time. So is it sort-of Headquarters 2 and 3 or HQ 2.0 and HQ 2.5. Amazon did not follow through with their promised prize.

The volume of bits flowing over the Internet goes up and up, but investment in infrastructure goes down, and current infrastructure decays. Latency goes up. Streaming services have pauses, intermittent failures, Interactive websites have flaky responses. Everything that depends on a continuous connection becomes irritating and unreliable. "Always connected" becomes a dream. Major businesses fail.

In the good old days, a new DOS or Windows computer came with BASIC pre-installed. There were a bunch of books available on programming in BASIC. Many people started programming this way.
In the good old days, all Apple Macintosh computers came with HyperCard pre-installed. There were a bunch of books availaable on programming in HyperCard. Many people started programming this way.
If you buy a new tablet/ laptop/ desktop with Microsoft software, there is no learning to program software.
If you buy a new phone/ tablet/ laptop/ desktop with Apple software, there is no learning to program software.
If you buy a new tablet with Amazon software, there is no learning to program software.
If you buy a new phone/ tablet/ laptop with Google software, there is no learning to program software.
The confusion over which of the many choices for learning to program environments is a show stopper for most people.

Knuth is giving his annual Christmas lecture on Thursday, Dec 8, 2016, at 6:00 pm PST in the Huang Engineering Center's NVIDIA Auditorium. It will be webcast. See: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford... All of the previous lectures are online.

Volume one was my textbook for Algorithms many, many years ago, so I read it. I read volumes two and three when they first came out. I read some of the bits of volume four A. When I read 1-3, they were the best or only sources of their content. One of the key features is the use of assembly language for a mythical computer (later revised to be more RISC-like). i wrote an interpreter for MIX for my computer architecture class. Possible programming languages in the 1960s were FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL-60, IBM's PL/I, and IBM-s APL, and compilers did not optimize. The obvious real computer architecture to use was the original IBM 360 instructions set (Principles of Operation). Choosing any one of those would obsolete the books in five to ten years after publication.

My fantasy is to publish the draft of the original two volume Art of Computer Programming, started in 1962. When he started rewriting it, he planned for seven volumes, which are outlined on the end papers of the published volumes. The two volume original is a snapshot of Computer Science in the early 1960's.

The Computer History Museum is on Shoreline Drive, a couple of blocks from the Googleplex. It has public bathrooms. Check the website for hours. The building was built for Silicon Graphics' Marketing department. The Googleplex was the Silicon Graphics' Engineering building. Also in the neighborhood is Microsoft and LinkedIn.