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More from Karen Sandler... IT Conversations has an interesting podcast featuring Karen Sandler talking about her efforts to get source code for her defibrillator.

Along with some interesting revelations, the interview of James Whittaker about his book, How Google Tests Software, included some discussion about effective crowd sourcing of software. Part of his argument is that even the best test engineers are going to miss things that end users find easily, so one way to leverage this is to make it as easy as possible for end users to provide high quality bug reports. He also has a lot of interesting things to say about scaling the testing process.

1. You may be able to do the same work, but in another country. I know a math major about your age who worked at a nuclear power plant and was sent to China last year to work as a consultant on a new nuclear plant being placed into operation. He's a black guy, not Asian. You often have to move within the US as a career develops, so why stop at the boarder. 2. For perspective and possible insight go to http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml and listen to any of the podcasts that look interesting. All of the speakers are specialists and experts on topics related to economic matters and no topics are dry or uninteresting. And speaking about perspective is what this TED Talk is about, which may also help: http://bit.ly/LDbj8M 3. Buy a copy of "What Color Is Your Parachute" at http://amzn.to/OfdaAs or check a copy out of the library. That book has been around and reissued/revised for at least 20 years. It can help you learn about yourself and perhaps create a new job, even in your present organization. Perhaps you can get $1 million or two from Kickstarter.org! Someone here mentioned folks fighting over the same piece of pie which reminds me of a comment about finding a way to grow the pie larger. 4. More perspective and ideas may come from a reading of "Reflections on Bullough's Pond" at http://amzn.to/LTNpZl . It offers insights and explanations about New England's economic development over the last 400 years that apply today and may offer ideas about your organization and career. 5. Further into left field is this: the Conversations Network is looking for editors of podcasts it offers for free via the internet. It pays a nominal amount for each description submitted and at any given time there are about 100 podcasts in need of being so described. What's neat is that it makes you describe the interesting work of a variety of people, so you have to do some creative thinking, some creative writing, and use your internet skills while learning about work in other fields. This is a non-profit organization, so a career with it won't be your goal. However, the exercise might be useful. Other members of your family, etc. might also be interested. Here's the link with information about how to apply -- a small exercise in job hunting, too: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/websiteEditorApplication/ Good Luck.

There is a lizard which can hold the upright position no matter how it dropped on the floor. More than that it can hold it in the wind tunnel with artificial turbulence.

I listened to a radio show on this topic at http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/ . It is being studied already, but engineers cannot get it how it works so far. They say this threatened lizard should be definitely preserved for studying by smarter engineers in the future.

Still my claim hold, it was: If a man could cover the same number of the lengths of his body as an ant per the same amount of time, he would run at the speed about 1500 km/h (about 1000 miles/h).

Actually, it was not my research too.

I use Google Reader to gather data from any rss feed of interest and also download weekly about 60 podcasts from various sources each week using the Feedreader aggregator. I have to plug, in particular, podcasts (or videocasts) from This Week in Virology, This Week in Parasitism, and This Week in Microbiology, all available via a starting point of www.twiv.tv . (If you think Parasitism is not interesting, listen to TWIP 22.) The Naked Scientist based in Britain offers a nice weekly collection of news gathered from that area. The Australian Broadcasting Network at www.abc.net.au/radio/ offers podcasts about technology oriented towards that part of the world. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the BBC also offer podcasts which include new developments in all areas, but don't allow you to specialize in one area, such as medicine or computers. Futures in Biotech ( http://twit.tv/FIB ) has produced some terrific interviews in that area and Leo Laporte and his This Week in Technology does a few podcasts that offer more than his usual troubleshooting genre. http://www.podnutz.com/ is strictly computers, but three podcasts in particular are of interest as trendsetting. They are 274, 302 and 316. They deal with the development and growth of Lisa Hendrickson's career. She's a female computer troubleshooter who is rapidly building a large business that repairs computers remotely and worth watching and learning from as an example of how to grow a new business in the US. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute produces podcasts and videocasts about advancing technology Do a search for NIH Videocasts for presentations by this organization. Econtalk may not be strictly technical, but has outstanding interviews about developments and history that disproves that idea that economics are dry and boring. I've been saving a list of Best Podcasts for over a year and they number now about 90, but amount to over 2GB, so are not readily posted. I also have the addresses of podcasts that are plugged into the Feedreader aggregator that I'll try to add here in case that's of interest if the moderator agrees to include them. Several of these were worth noting, too, like NY Times Tech Talk and RadioLab: http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/ppq/56641.xml http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-5/asunto-del-dia-en-r5/SASUNTO.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/clickon/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cyberspeak http://feeds.feedburner.com/diffusionradio http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510030 http://feeds.feedburner.com/GlobalChallenges http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/healthc/rss.xml http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/HHMI_Lectures.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://www.materialstoday.com/rss/podcasts/ http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml http://dow

I would advise to the IE designers and engineers to listen to Elaine Wherry' talk:

"What Web Application Design Can Learn from the Harpsichord" http://chi.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4404.html

Sometimes one has to stop to do a fancier and fancier design, but make things really functional and understandable.

I agree completely. The entry level of PHP is so low it effectively encourages bad practice, allowing programmers to get away with things that no sane environment would allow. That said, in the hands of a professional, those same "shortcuts" can be immensely powerful and greatly increase productivity. PHP runs about 30% of the web because it has that power and is relatively simple to learn.

In 2004, Woz gave a great presentation about his early work at Gnomedex 4.0.

"The Gnomedex Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was fixated on this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a true geek's geek. His playing started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes.

Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0."

The recordings are still available in MP3 form:

Part 1: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail214.html
Part 2: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail215.html

Direct links to the MP3s:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%201%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%202%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

In 2004, Woz gave a great presentation about his early work at Gnomedex 4.0.

"The Gnomedex Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was fixated on this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a true geek's geek. His playing started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes.

Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0."

The recordings are still available in MP3 form:

Part 1: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail214.html
Part 2: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail215.html

Direct links to the MP3s:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%201%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%202%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

In 2004, Woz gave a great presentation about his early work at Gnomedex 4.0.

"The Gnomedex Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was fixated on this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a true geek's geek. His playing started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes.

Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0."

The recordings are still available in MP3 form:

Part 1: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail214.html
Part 2: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail215.html

Direct links to the MP3s:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%201%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%202%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3

Chris Anderson
has foreseen the most profound change since the age of reason. Man has
reached the point where his "understanding" can impede evolution. It is
time to concede that some processes may be beyond our
comprehension.

Research in the area of Artificial General Intelligence provides a
crystal clear demonstration of the problem. A half century of research
has led to "intelligent" data mining and voice response systems and
very little else.

However, Koza, Fogel
and many others have observed evolutionary computation machines
creating solutions to real world problems. In some cases these
are patentable solutions beyond previous human achievement, and some of
them defy understanding.

Unless you have unlimited funding and lots of time, it's not necessary
to understand why every complex solution works. It may not even be
possible.

A million MRI's of functioning brains are not likely to result in any
Lisp program for AGI, so the search for AGI seems to be coming full
circle back to the "baby bootstrap". Even Ben Goertzel
is looking to virtual babies to mine the clouds.

Like others who have managed to see beyond the horizon, Anderson will
be widely misunderstood. He is not rejecting scientific method, he is
simply showing us its limitations.

Doug Kaye from IT Conversations has been doing some pretty heavy stuff on EC2. He did a podcast with an Amazon guy on Technometria where they got in to a lot of detail have a listen.

Anyone interested in intelligent reasons for why this is an incredibly bad idea could do worse than listen to this outstanding speech given by Lawrence Lessig at the SDForum Distinguished Speaker series titled "The Comedy of the Commons".
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail349.html/
It's a bit long but very worthwhile.

There are a lot of podcasts on making money with open source here:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/index.html

You may need to look around a little.

I have made money indirectly from open source. Basically I through it out there and some people picked it up. When they needed other projects worked on I was contacted.

Documentation is more important than code I can tell you that much. Installation documentation, user documentation and most importantly programmer documentation.

The "extra features" part I mentioned was actually me thinking about how great it would be to get that one extra feature in Javascript plus the ability to enforce a certain inheritance model (just for consistency within one project). This all got in to my head after listening to Bruce Johnson talking about GWT on Technometria (and fwiw I thought he said "static typing").