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Have you looked at some MS programs that help with transition?

Some of the major issues you will encounter are:
communication with the Business (they will have language barier)
selling technology to business
Budgets
Politics
Managing teams

There are great programs that will help. For example in NY you can attend:
http://ce.columbia.edu/Technology-Management
http://www.stevens.edu/sit/development/schools/Howe-School-of-Technology-Management.cfm
http://www.poly.edu/amot

.
It is a very different academic world in which to live.

"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out." Thomas Babington Macaulay

It appears on the stationery of the Honor Board of my college.

Technical progress often takes the form of a repetitive S-curve [see figure 4 in the .pdf] It could be that we're just in a somewhat horizontal part of the curve now, and the industry will experience another boom in the near future.

It's like trying to describe to someone a book by describing which pixels are black and white on the page.

Very good analogy, thank you. This is what someone who knows only about printing press would say about impossibility of showing text on a computer screen - "imagine the work that would have to be done to split the image into pixels and then put them together so that they don't look like gibberish".

Formal proofs are (...) nowhere near able to handle genuine problems in mathematics.

If you really want you can always make this statement true by selecting the right definition of "genuine problems", for example defining genuine problems as those that have not been formalized yet. Otherwise you may want to check the list of top 100 of mathematical theorems to see which ones have proofs written in a formal proof language.

Unreadable by humans: there's no point.

Here you have a point. This proof is not designed to explain to a human why the theorem is true. It should not be called a proof, it should be called a verification script. But this is just an unfortunate choice of the language. There are other proof languages that are designed to be readable by humans.

Yeesh, that was quite hasty of me. What I meant to have said was that Benjamin wrote the photographs/film lacked the authenticity that art before the mechanical age contained. Furthermore, what one can derive from Benjamin's article is that during the growth of photography and film, there were conflicting interests regarding the artistic value of the two mediums, and Benjamin essentially provided a work around for the debate. Benjamin most certainly applied different levels of value to the mechanical mediums. However, Benjamin brought the two new mediums into the realm of art by doing so. Overall, he allowed for the progression from one medium to the next, much as the majority of art folks today might want to rethink their current definition of art.

With regards to your own art criticism in the field, I'd have to say that I personally agree. My main point is as follows...that the society as a whole should not disregard the medium of Video Games based upon the current selection that exists within popular culture. At this point, it becomes either a matter of personal preference (as there really isn't much for arguing once a person decides what art means to them), or for a real debate, attempting to see whether each piece has added to the progression of the field (as far as I understand, this is generally what defines art).

But I most certainly appreciate you pointing out my blunder. With regards to your work, that sounds insanely interesting. I'm presently in my last year at Stevens Institute of Technology, for a bacholer's in the relatively new Art and Technology program, which is nothing of all of what it sounds. I began with an E.E. degree, and I hope that at some point (preferably soon =D ) the relationship between the two fields (argh, at least video games and art) become less of the hot button issue it is today.

Nima Arkani-Hamed says:
June 6th, 2007 at 2:52 am

Hi James,

Someone pointed out your slate article to me, and I have to say as your ex-undergrad advisor I was very disappointed. You got the physics 100% wrong, (which is all the more surprising to me given that I know you understand some subtle physics rather well). As some of the commenters above indicated, if there is anything at all to the D0 rumor, there is absolutely no way it can be the standard model higgs. It would instead be a remarkable indication of physics *beyond* the standard model, and would lead us to expect much more at the LHC, not less. One possible explanation might indeed be an MSSM higgs, though until there is an actual D0 paper and the details of the analysis are known one can only speculate; there is still a real chance that (like other significant excesses in the past) it will go away. BTW you say above that an MSSM higgs at 180 GeV isn't plausible, but that is because you misunderstand: it is the SECOND Higgs of the MSSM, the one that is not the Standard Model Higgs, and 180 GeV is certainly OK for it's mass. Your assertions to the contrary don't change this fact; saying something with confidence doesn't make it true.

To add insult to (your) injury, if the D0 rumor turns out to be real, not only would we think that the LHC is more likely to see lots of extra new physics, even beyond confirming this second higgs, the LHC would also still be set to see the actual Standard Model higgs itself! So the entire logical structure of your article is completely wrong, indeed almost exactly the opposite of the truth.

Of course in this bloggy, postmodern day and age, where people routinely pontificate on things they know nothing about, I suppose a little wild inaccuracy about physics in slate is a drop in the bucket. It is nonetheless irksome to me that the work of hundreds of amazingly talented experimental particle physicists gets characterized in such a profoundly incorrect way. They are charged now more than ever with moving fundamental physics forward, and are working around the clock to make it happen. They deserve a little fact-checking when you write about them. I strongly encourage you to do everything you can to set the record straight in this matter.

Nima

PS I will not be checking back here; I detest the blogosphere for reasons that this little fiasco make completely self-evident, and I have already wasted more time on this than it deserves. However I did feel the need to write something about it, especially since you invoked me as your ex-advisor, lest anyone get the impression that I condone this type of shoddy work in any way.

There a certain facts about JFK's assignation that will always make me conclude that Oswald was a lone gunman. 1. Oswald was nuts. He fits all the personality profiles of people that do this crazy shit. 2. He was an excellent marksman. 3. The book depository window was less than 200 feet from the limo. That is not very far for even a mildly skilled marksman. 4. His rifle was a Italian Carcano. http://personal.stevens.edu/~gliberat/carcano/ One of the most accurate military firearms issued. My father had this gun, and he used to shoot muskrats at a 1/4 mile with iron sights -- much less 200 feet thru a scope for Oswald. 5. Carcano bullets can go thru tree stumps and come out undamaged -- I've seen it. 6. Bullets do weird things at high velocity.

Taken as a whole, it's much simpler and believable to see that one crazy man with skill and mental illness can shoot the president from less than 200 feet with a highly accurate rifle, rather than everyone from LBJ, Castro, the FBI, the CIA, and the KGB helping him.

... they're called information management or information systems. I have a bright new shiny MS in Information Systems with a concentration in IM from Stevens Institute of Technology. My undergrad degree was of a similar nature.

Computer Science degrees, to my mind, are for those that are designing next gen computers, or AI algorithms, or compilers or languages. When the fruits of the CS people become commercialized, it's up to the information management people to put that new capability to work.

At least that's my take on it.

Last year (during my senior year), we had a class that did almost exactly this. We worked on one major project for basically a semester and a half. It started around November and we had to present our project in May. The general idea of the class was to come up with a project, or pick one of the projects the professor had come up with. After that, the whole class split into 4 groups (about 10 people per group). We went throughout the entire software development cycle from coming up with requirements documents, development plans, delivery dates, cost estimation, etc. By May we were supposed to have something that was ready to be delivered to the customer, along with any documentation or anything else that would be needed. I'd say all in all it was a rather interesting experience and I'd like to think it somewhat prepared us for the real world of software development.

For anyone that is curious, this was at Stevens Institute of Technology

There is a school of engineering in Hoboken -- Stevens Institute of Technology. ( I attended it myself, as an undergrad. ) Reverse-engineering the robotic software, and releasing the source code as Free Software should be an interesting challenge for Stevens students and faculty. Stevens, please help your lovely town out!

It entirely depends on where you go. Perhaps the difference here is between a technical education and a university education.

I went to an engineering school and saw an average of 20 hours per semester. They offered a very popular option of spreading the courseload over five years (with no additional tuition fees) to reduce that average a bit. I think it was a total of 156 credits, but if you ignore the PhysEd (I think it's a NJ mandate) and humanities credits you approach the 'standard' courseload which doesn't resemble your example of a general curriculum with engineering on top - closer to the opposite, actually.

As for dual degrees: a roommate of mine was attempting to get a BE and Masters within 4 years before he figured out that 30 hours may be a bit much. I think he envied my 5 hours of sleep each night.

I was able to participate in a sport and a have a limited role in a couple clubs but, due to the heavy courseload, time was a very precious resource and everybody understood the situation.

Lastly, the commuters probably had it worst: a perennial problem with parking in addition to the traffic nightmare of being closely situated between two of the three roads connecting NJ and Manhattan. Beautiful view, though...

We were all handed "free" (laptop + support paid in tuition) laptops as freshmen complete with Wifi, and we were one of the first campuses to implement Wi-fi throughout campus. I've seen the pros and cons firsthand and still I think it's generally more positive than negative to have one in class, although self control is required if you bring it.

In the massive lecture halls with rather boring lectures, having a laptop was great because you could do other work or emails, and at random times type up the notes the professor is putting on the board (which you'll have to regurgitate in a few weeks). Yes, I also noticed the problem of games, etc. which would distract those surrounding one individual, but that was quite rare actually and only for a few of the worst professors.

I suspect some professors actually fear the power of Google. I had humanities professors, for instance, who could get away with saying absolute BS because no one could immediately check, and bringing up old news wouldn't be nearly as effective. However, I've cross-checked and verified what the prof says so s/he cannot get away with anything! It keeps a professor honest and class discussions interesting.

Other professors, especially in CS, are so ridiculously old-fashioned by writing notes on the board. Rarely are pictures involved and thus it seems like a total waste (while if they are, I understand why using the board or markers on a blank slide on overhead would be preferable). All this mental energy is spent on keeping up with their writing rather than thinking critically about the problem at hand. Some of my better professors would write on the board (or use overheads) but insist that we do NOT copy down their notes (as they will make the notes available). I find that much preferable, and combined with the power of the Internet to provide examples or other lecture notes, I can build my list of resources during the lecture itself.

My alma mater (Stevens Institute of Technology) had a reputation for having students who take many credits at a time, and so I've seen multitasking among a few that I found absolutely amazing (side work being done in class while at the same time catching the drift of the class dicussion for example). The other students would often drop (or fail) out or switch majors, which is fine by me! The WiFi, which wasn't always used but has become more and more prevalent, has greater potential for good than for bad for the students who are there to learn. The others would sit around in their dorm and skip class or play games on a laptop - it really didn't much matter. BTW, I did graduate in 4 years with high honors with BS and MS in Computer Science, so my high level of laptop use did seemed to work out fine. YMMV

  - Hubert

In general, my OSS lecture is more of advanced system administration, advanced programming and advanced operating systems, pulling many things together - the tools used in open source, install mechanisms, software and package management, source code management, etc.

See the (english language) class webpage (also available in german) for more information, and feel free to send mail.

- Hubert

It was a neat thing for students at Stevens Institute of Technology, my alma mater, who were involved in ACM to take top 10 in the greater New York Regional contest for the last 4 years (while I was in school). Although I would have loved to take part, due to the timing of practice sessions and competition, I couldn't. However, I knew the leadership and others involved, and they became much better programmers as a result of this. We were competing against many larger and more well-funded schools like NYU, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, and so on. One major organizer behind it all is now working at Amazon right out of college, for what it's worth.

Professor Roger Pinkham of Stevens Institute of Technology is a gem.

Not all PhDs are so arrogant as you suppose.

Professor Roger Pinkham of Stevens Institute of Technology is a gem.

Not all PhDs are so arrogant as you suppose.

Mod parent up bigtime! Some very big advocates of OSS (like IBM and others) have some very mercenary interests in mind rather than goodwill to the community that causes their overall change in focus. And as mentioned, Solaris is very similar - you buy Solaris, and they'll hook you up.

Just take off the rose-colored classes and look around. Take Apple. So, they use and contribute to the OSS community which they *must* do legally to keep from hypocrisy and lawsuits. Do their changes to Safari really help KHTML on OSS platforms become used more often? Or do they benefit Safari users predominantly. And Apple has for a long time combined hw/sw together and not ever thought of allowing SW on x86 even though it is everywhere. Is it lock-in or protection of their brand and reputation? Depends on your perspective...

Google sees it's search engine as a service, so that being viewed as "good" by a vast majority of people and people flock to their PageRank because I (and others) as a consumer find the ads tasteful and often useful. Then, there's trust so that once people see them as "doing no evil", they can have more data mining of user information and TrustRank(TM)...and rake in the $$$.

Microsoft also treats its customers pretty well lately (especially for its size) - take Channel 9. Also, a personal anecdote: I emailed Rob Relyea, a Lead Program Manager on the Avalon Team recently about having a competition where any of us could design components/mock-ups that end up as the new Longhorn UI! Prizes (Pocket PC, Tablet, XBox, or other) could go to the winner(s) and customers would get a very user-centric UI from people who are UI experts and using some awesome Microsoft technology. Instead of ignoring my email (I'm just a college student from a no-name school), he emailed back and said he passed on my idea to another program manager on the team and said, "Engaging with designers is critical for us. Thanks!"

I think OSS has its place, and I give massive kudos to those who design OSS solutions. I definitely have an interest in doing so myself, provided I find some time. However, major players are not going to stop paying THEIR developers to write their proprietary code (Google's 20% rule goes back into Google's coffers for instance) and chances are there will always be a "catch" when they adopt OSS. But if it's worth the money, why does it have to be EVIL because a company's not totally pushing FOSS? And a fragmentation of the OSS OSes, while being a great aspect of OSS, can be a real (or perceived) negative for PHBs and how they view OSS as a whole.

"You're very comfortable with the metric system," Swean observed.

"I grew up in Mexico, sir," Oscar said.

Swean nodded. He eyed their rudimentary flip chart.

"Why don't you have a PowerPoint display?" he asked.

"PowerPoint is a distraction," Cristian replied. "People use it when they don't know what to say."

"And you know what to say?"

"Yes, sir."

These guys would be a huge asset in any good college because they have more desire to learn this stuff than many students I've seen combined together. I seriously doubt they'd waste their time playing CounterStrike if given the chance at a good Engineering school. Maybe I'll mention their names to my school.

Very interesting story...

What my university did (which helped to some extent) was place a bandwidth cap on downloads/uploads from Napster and similar services. Still, some chose to download illegal content/movies/etc. at insanely slow speeds (or through other venues).

At some point, they shut down some internal networks that shared files pretty openly. Others continue to run so there isn't as much of a crackdown as at some places. They operate under the mode: "If you do illegal stuff and get busted, we're not going to protect you."

This sounds pretty fair to me, because the Internet speeds were really slowing down in general because of around 70% of bandwidth going toward file-sharing. With those caps in place, it's helped to increase on-campus speed.

Source: pdn_src_2_0.zip (10,995,752 bytes)
Installer: PaintDotNet_2_0.msi (8,087,552 bytes)

My own mirrors (should download at up to 200 KB/sec, and arrive in less than 1 minute):
Source (1)
Source (2)
Source (3)

Installer (1)
Installer (2)
Installer (3)

I've tried out the program, and if you think about the fact that this was a student project done by full-time students (for senior design), it's quite impressive. I've noticed some lag on speed on some things but much faster load time and better undo, etc., than some commercial programs.

Also, keep in mind it is written in C# (which means managed code), which means there is garbage collection and other things causing some decrease in performance. Any takers on implementing this in Java with similar performance?

All in all, I'd say it was very nicely done, and with the source available, you could add your own file types and other effects with not much effort. Definitely a huge leap from MS Paint and much more intuitive to me than Photoshop.

Source: pdn_src_2_0.zip (10,995,752 bytes)
Installer: PaintDotNet_2_0.msi (8,087,552 bytes)

My own mirrors (should download at up to 200 KB/sec, and arrive in less than 1 minute):
Source (1)
Source (2)
Source (3)

Installer (1)
Installer (2)
Installer (3)

I've tried out the program, and if you think about the fact that this was a student project done by full-time students (for senior design), it's quite impressive. I've noticed some lag on speed on some things but much faster load time and better undo, etc., than some commercial programs.

Also, keep in mind it is written in C# (which means managed code), which means there is garbage collection and other things causing some decrease in performance. Any takers on implementing this in Java with similar performance?

All in all, I'd say it was very nicely done, and with the source available, you could add your own file types and other effects with not much effort. Definitely a huge leap from MS Paint and much more intuitive to me than Photoshop.

Source: pdn_src_2_0.zip (10,995,752 bytes)
Installer: PaintDotNet_2_0.msi (8,087,552 bytes)

My own mirrors (should download at up to 200 KB/sec, and arrive in less than 1 minute):
Source (1)
Source (2)
Source (3)

Installer (1)
Installer (2)
Installer (3)

I've tried out the program, and if you think about the fact that this was a student project done by full-time students (for senior design), it's quite impressive. I've noticed some lag on speed on some things but much faster load time and better undo, etc., than some commercial programs.

Also, keep in mind it is written in C# (which means managed code), which means there is garbage collection and other things causing some decrease in performance. Any takers on implementing this in Java with similar performance?

All in all, I'd say it was very nicely done, and with the source available, you could add your own file types and other effects with not much effort. Definitely a huge leap from MS Paint and much more intuitive to me than Photoshop.

Source: pdn_src_2_0.zip (10,995,752 bytes)
Installer: PaintDotNet_2_0.msi (8,087,552 bytes)

My own mirrors (should download at up to 200 KB/sec, and arrive in less than 1 minute):
Source (1)
Source (2)
Source (3)

Installer (1)
Installer (2)
Installer (3)

I've tried out the program, and if you think about the fact that this was a student project done by full-time students (for senior design), it's quite impressive. I've noticed some lag on speed on some things but much faster load time and better undo, etc., than some commercial programs.

Also, keep in mind it is written in C# (which means managed code), which means there is garbage collection and other things causing some decrease in performance. Any takers on implementing this in Java with similar performance?

All in all, I'd say it was very nicely done, and with the source available, you could add your own file types and other effects with not much effort. Definitely a huge leap from MS Paint and much more intuitive to me than Photoshop.

To give one example where a Live CD is incredibly useful: I recently used a custom NetBSD Live CD for a programming contest -- all machines at two locations needed to be absolutely identical and using a Live CD obliterates the hassle of installing a new OS or reconfiguring your current setup in any way -- just pop in the CD, boot, done.
See this link and this link for details.

There are two complaints I have, with the interviewer and the one being interviewed. I'll start with my complaint with the school being interviewed.

The administration in all schools love/hate these lists. It's a crude way to provide a relative measure of a school's performance.

fta: To determine the rankings for America's Most Connected Campuses, The Princeton Review solicited data from 357 top colleges and universities around the country, asking them twenty questions about the technological sophistication of their campuses.

That tells me that the administration had the opportunity to present to the interviewer. Most importantly, they have the opportunity to even bend the truth a little. Given that, WHY would they answer 'no' to anything that was even remotely a 'yes'. Answering 'no' is guaranteed to reduce your score and a higher score means that you can brag about the rank even more during admission season.

Take the example of my alma mater: Stevens.
question: Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations?
answer: no.

Really? Just a quick look at their website states, "WCPR is now online and accessible both on-campus and off-campus via our Internet webcast! (see the link to the right)". Yes, it does work and they've had streaming radio there for years - just check the wayback

If they answered yes to that one, they'd have 5 'no' answers and get listed in the top 25 - where I'm sure they'd love to be. Someone is not promoting the school well enough and to drop from being #1 last year to this.... As an alumnus, I'm rather disappointed.

On the complaint I have with the interviewer: IMO, the worst question is "Does tuition include a computer?". Any school that answered yes to that should be avoided. Yet a 'yes' would give you a higher score...

In defense of Forbes, they do list a lot of the details. At least one can point out the failures in their methodology to anyone interested.

Hopefully, your password hashes are properly hidden, and you are using something like MD5.

If the answer is you are using crypt(3), and the hashes are user visible, they you are in trouble. Crypt(3) is dead, as far as I am concerned. It only allows up to 8 character passwords, and is far too vulnerable to cracking on modern hardware. I wrote a paper for class back in 1997 on brute forcing crypt(3) using easily available software. Since I wrote that paper, cracking speeds have increased over 50-fold. Given a dozen 3GHz P4's (say a small computer lab), I can brute force all possible lowercase alphanumeric passwords in a little over 4 days. Mixed case would take longer, a week for 7 character and under passwords, and a bit less than a year for 8 character passwords. If I had access to a cluster, or a group of 0wned machines, it could still be done in a reasonable timeframe.

If the answer is you are using old-style NT LanMan passwords that someone can get a copy of, you are screwed. They use no salt, are uppercase only, and the entire keyspace can be brute forced like butter. The password is split into two 7 character halves, which can be cracked independently. If you have a machine running Samba, you can find these in the smbpasswd file. On NT/2000, they are still used if you have Windows 95/98 clients on your network. You have to extract them from the SAM using PWDUMP or the like.

If anyone wants to try cracking his or her own password, I suggest getting John the Ripper.

I have the perfect device for you my friend:

Cheap, not really a computer and with a keyboard! It's called a P-P-P PowerBook

Where do you want me to ship it?