office hours tuesday
No office hours today. I'll be available from 12-2pm instead. Come to the ACM meeting at 4pm!
Monday, March 29, 2004
Monday, March 15, 2004
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
If anyone's going to the O'Reilly Open Source Convention - July 26-30, 2004 - Portland, OR I just found out last week or so that I'll be giving a talk there on open source development networks entitled "Do the Rich Get Richer? The Impact of Power Laws on Open Source Development Projects".
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Friday, March 12, 2004
Outsourcing
Here's an excerpt from Wired 12.02: The New Face of the Silicon Age which summarizes pretty well my take on the whole outsourcing issue:]
As I meet programmers and executives, I hear lots of talk about quality and focus and ISO and CMM certifications and getting the details right. But never - not once - does anybody mention innovation, creativity, or changing the world. Again, it reminds me of Japan in the '80s - dedicated to continuous improvement but often at the expense of bolder leaps of possibility.
And therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It's inevitable that certain things - fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine knowledge work - will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for us to do. After all, before these Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined and invented. And these creations must be explained to customers and marketed to suppliers and entered into the swirl of commerce in a fashion that people notice, all of which require aptitudes that are more difficult to outsource - imagination, empathy, and the ability to forge relationships. After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar jobs with any lasting potential in the US won't be classically high tech. Instead, they'll be high concept and high touch.
As I meet programmers and executives, I hear lots of talk about quality and focus and ISO and CMM certifications and getting the details right. But never - not once - does anybody mention innovation, creativity, or changing the world. Again, it reminds me of Japan in the '80s - dedicated to continuous improvement but often at the expense of bolder leaps of possibility.
And therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It's inevitable that certain things - fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine knowledge work - will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for us to do. After all, before these Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined and invented. And these creations must be explained to customers and marketed to suppliers and entered into the swirl of commerce in a fashion that people notice, all of which require aptitudes that are more difficult to outsource - imagination, empathy, and the ability to forge relationships. After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar jobs with any lasting potential in the US won't be classically high tech. Instead, they'll be high concept and high touch.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Working at a strip club
The recent Pendulum article Working at a strip club: Is it the best choice for making money? was a real eye-opener for me. Are students really working at strip clubs? I am finding this hard to believe, and oddly like a train wreck: I don't want to read about it, but I can't look away. What would compel a young woman to work at a strip club as a cocktail waitress? The mind boggles.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Harvard eliminates tuition for some
Yahoo! News - Harvard eliminates tuition for students from families with less than $40,000 in income.
Defining Computer Science
I was investigating the concept of a wiki to use in my classes, I came across this interesting wiki page about defining Computer Science.
funny excerpts:
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit MicroController!)."
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
funny excerpts:
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit MicroController!)."
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Interview with Jef Raskin
Here is an interesting interview with Jef Raskin on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. Professor Raskin started the Macintosh project at Apple. This interview highlights some of the good and bad user interface choices that were made for the project, such as the one-button mouse and the use of the hierarchical file system.
As for the one-button mouse, I'd observed at Xerox Parc which had a 3-button mouse, that people were very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for the Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was only one button, there would never be any question on what you have to press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse. I think this was probably a mistake...
As for the one-button mouse, I'd observed at Xerox Parc which had a 3-button mouse, that people were very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for the Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was only one button, there would never be any question on what you have to press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse. I think this was probably a mistake...
Monday, March 08, 2004
SIGCSE 2004
I went to SIGCSE 2004 last week and it was great. I learned a lot, met some very interesting people, and managed to park in the correct lot and be on time for presentations more than half of the time! Yay.
I was extremely glad to see old friends and colleagues too (hi Kelly!). There were 3 of us there from my grad program (hi Grant! hi Jeff!), and all 3 of us were presenting in one form or another (poster, presentation, panel). That made me very proud.
My poster (powerpoint) was pretty successful I think. It certainly looked good! I give huge props to the Media Services folks (hi Jen!) for hooking me up with the color plotter and for printing the poster.
I was extremely glad to see old friends and colleagues too (hi Kelly!). There were 3 of us there from my grad program (hi Grant! hi Jeff!), and all 3 of us were presenting in one form or another (poster, presentation, panel). That made me very proud.
My poster (powerpoint) was pretty successful I think. It certainly looked good! I give huge props to the Media Services folks (hi Jen!) for hooking me up with the color plotter and for printing the poster.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Computing as a career
Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
In the context of Bill Gates trying to "talk up" CS majors and careers, this article discusses numbers of CS majors falling at universities, including a 33% decrease at MIT in 2 years, and 23% decline in other American and Canadian university CS majors in the past year.
Discusses strategies for discussing CS as an interdisciplinary pursuit, and a foundational liberal art rather than just a technology-centric type of "training".
In the context of Bill Gates trying to "talk up" CS majors and careers, this article discusses numbers of CS majors falling at universities, including a 33% decrease at MIT in 2 years, and 23% decline in other American and Canadian university CS majors in the past year.
Discusses strategies for discussing CS as an interdisciplinary pursuit, and a foundational liberal art rather than just a technology-centric type of "training".
