The trouble with Tribble

The title of this post refers to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by an author writing under the pseudonym of "Ivan Tribble". Prof. Tribble is a humanities professor at a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest, and he writes about the trouble his hiring committee has had finding new faculty who don't have blogs. It seems that they've concluded that faculty who blog "might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum." Of course, this is ridiculous; as Dan Drezner points out: just a few mouse clicks, and anyone can have a blog.

Back when I was a grad student, blogs were called "Usenet newsgroups". All us computer geeks hung out there. As far as I can tell, the only negative impact was on our research productivity. Or, maybe it helped; who knows?

I'll close with this remark from Prof. Tribble:

...we can't afford to have our new hire ditching us to hang out in computer science after a few weeks on the job.

I'm not surprised that his department is wary of new faculty developing interdisciplinary interests. After all, don't we all want to be in academia so we can lock ourselves in our offices, with occasional forays to department-only talks for social events?

Other blogs commenting on this include: Planned Obsolescence, who serves up a much more detailed flame than I have patience for, One Man's Opinion, who points out that what Prof. Tribble is really arguing for is dishonesty: hiding information from search committees (and search committees not wanting to find out things about candidates that would make their jobs tougher), Robert Farley, who points out that Tribble is confusing the purpose of different media, and Bitch, Ph.D., who does what she does best (i.e., space-efficient mockery).

P.S. This whole issue actually never occurred to me until I read this Chronicle article. Perhaps it's the case that only fields like computer science, in which computers and the net are places for doing many non-job-oriented things, have such a relaxed view of things like blogging?

Topics: academia, jobs.

The Church's curious op-ed and ID an admitted religious belief

Update: If you're visiting here from the thirteenth Skeptics' Circle, you may want to go to this continuation post to make your comments; the comment section here is already a bit long.

There's been a fair amount of discussion of the opinion piece by Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, in the July 7 New York Times (linked above; also available in the July 8 International Herald Tribune). In this article, Cardinal Schönborn appears to be laying the ground for the new Pope to distance the Church from his predecessor's accommodating, though somewhat ambiguous, stance on evolution. Now that there's been a fair amount of comment on other blogs and my migraine has gone away, I thought I'd comment on the situation. Note that, since I'm not a Catholic, my reading of Church officials' statements is that of an outside.

Let's start with Pope John Paul II's October 22, 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The key part of the address is as follows (heavily edited by me for length, hopefully not changing its meaning):

3. ...I would like to remind you that the Magisterium of the Church has already made pronouncements on these matters...

In his Encyclical Humani generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points...

4. ...the Encyclical Humani generis considered the doctrine of "evolutionism" a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study... two methodological conditions: that this opinion should not be adopted as though it were a certain, proven doctrine and as though one could totally prescind from Revelation with regard to the questions it raises. He also spelled out the condition on which this opinion would be compatible with the Christian faith...

Today... It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory...

5. The Church's Magisterium is directly concerned with the question of evolution, for it involves the conception of man... the human individual cannot be subordinated as a pure means or a pure instrument, either to the species or to society... St. Thomas observes that man's likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect... It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter the spiritual soul is immediately created by God...

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

So, John Paul noted his predecessor's statement that evolution and the Church are not incompatible (essentially, I believe, he said that it was permissible for Catholics to work in evolutionary sciences). The two conditions that he cited were that evolution not be accepted as definitively proven and that no claim be made that the human soul arises merely from the material world -- that the creation part that God enters into is the creation of each person's soul.

John Paul appears to relax Pius XII's statement on the unproven nature of evolution, noting the independent evidence for it from numerous fields. So, what he appears to be saying is that, if one accepts that mind is not produced solely as the result of the action of matter and that individuals' roles are not merely that of a cog in an evolutionary machine, then it is acceptable for Catholics to consider evolution to be a well-supported scientific theory. Since evolution makes no statement about the soul nor of the purpose of individual organisms, this presents a very accommodative stance on the part of the Church. My interpretation appears to be supported by this web page, written by Michael J. Ghedotti, an Associate Professor of Biology at Regis University (he also summarizes the relationship between evolution and a number of other religions).

Now we come to Cardinal Schönborn's op-ed piece.

EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.

But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

He then goes on to minimize the importance of John Paul's 1996 address and pick other statements by him to support his thesis that evolution is guided by God. I think he is being very clear here, and is formally aligning the Church with the intelligent design crowd.

It is my understanding that, at some level, the official positions of the Church are considered eternal and infallible. Understandably, this makes Church leaders hesitant to make swift decisions or unambiguous statements. Even the cardinal's statement is not unambiguous. However, the gist of his writing is that while common descent may be true, the driving force behind evolution is not random, it is intelligent (and supernatural). This is much more restrictive than what John Paul said -- he place no such restriction on the mechanism of physical evolution -- and it certainly appears that he is laying the groundwork for Benedict XVI to, maybe not repudiate, but reinterpret the Church stance away from a focus on the special creation of the human soul and towards divine intervention in the ongoing processes of life. If you read this article, you may decide that this is mostly a subtle change of wording rather than a truly substantive change of policy.

A might be expected, the wackos at the "Intelligent Design" Institute are spinning this as a major victory. This is nonsense, and in fact ID's advocates' statements give the lie to their assertion that ID is science. If ID were science, then the Catholic Church's position would be irrelevant. The validity of scientific theories is not affected by the support of authorities or organizations -- it is supported only by evidence. By citing the op-ed piece as support for ID, these folks are in fact admitting that ID is a religious belief, and not science.

Other blog postings relating to this include: Chris C. Mooney, The Panda's Thumb, Red State Rabble, and SciAm Perspectives.

Topics: evolution, religion, Catholicism, creationism, intelligent design.

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Paul Graham: Hiring is obsolete

The title links to a May essay by Paul Graham on how smart computer science undergraduates may find jobs in the future. Actually, he's even talking about the present, to some extent. His main thesis is that it's very difficult for companies to evaluate the worth of new, inexperienced employees. Their main solution is to not value them very highly, make them do low-level tasks to start with the assumption that the smart ones will rise to the top (which, if you read Paul's other essays on high school, for example, you'll recognize as wishful thinking, as the really smart ones get bored and tune out or leave), or bypass them entirely for people with experience.

The phenomenon he observes is the purchasing of small startup companies: companies started by new graduates that show interesting ideas, hold valuable technology, and showcase the founders' talents. He notes that, today, startup costs (for software companies, at least) are basically just subsistence for the founders, and that most startups are bought outright when they are fairly new. His conclusion is that they are purchased to access the founders' talents and for whatever technology they've already developed, thus solving the problem of identifying talent (already proven) and developing innovative new products (already done). The premium paid for the startup is then a signing bonus. And even failure can be rewarding. Here's the money quote:

I asked managers at Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft how they'd feel about two candidates, both 24, with equal ability, one who'd tried to start a startup that tanked, and another who'd spent the two years since college working as a developer at a big company. Every one responded that they'd prefer the guy who'd tried to start his own company. Zod Nazem, who's in charge of engineering at Yahoo, said, "I actually put more value on the guy with the failed startup. And you can quote me!"

This interests me because of the idea of undergraduates developing portfolios of their work, which is a formal or informal component of many undergraduate programs. A startup company is essentially a public portfolio of your work. In a job environment that's still somewhat difficult for new grads, this can be a way to stand out, if you've got the wherewithal to live without a paycheck for a while (and an interesting idea wouldn't hurt).

Topics: computer science, education, entrepreneurship.

Weeder course humor

Over at Ernie's 3D Pancakes (linked from title) resides some college weed-out course humor (at the expense of premed students). I remember, along with other engineering undergrads, torturing the premeds in physics class. Anyway, this reminded me of a story by a doctor friend of mine. The setting is a first-year med school class (I forget the subject). Professor is dealing with a clueless med student: "Here's a quarter. Call your mother. Tell her you're not going to be a doctor."

Compared to that, the weeder-course humor seems kind and gentle, doesn't it?

Topics: academia, humor.

Welcome to The Academy

I'm now part of The Academy, a new TTLB Community created at the request of Dr. Steven Taylor at PoliBlog. Basically, it's an index of blogs written by university faculty. It also has some interesting features, such as lists of articles that are most linked to within the community and most recently updated (which seems to miss posts). It also ranks the member blogs by number of links within the community.

Topics: academia, blogs.

Best science podcasts

Looking at my referrer logs, it seems that the most frequent searches that end up at my blog are people looking for podcasts and finding my two previous posts: "Best podcasts?" and "Some good specialized podcasts". Who am I to argue with such demand, especially now that iTunes supports podcasts directly? One type of podcast that I like to listen to are science podcasts, and so I went through the entire list of science podcasts on the iTunes music store (a superset of the PodcastAlley list) and here are my opinions. No doubt, this summary will be incomplete almost as soon as it hits the web. For each that I liked, I have two links: one to the RSS feed (from the show title) and one to the iTunes music store entry; you can use the latter to subscribe using iTunes without bothering with the "Advanced/Subscribe to podcast..." menu and dialog box, or the former to manually add the feed in whatever podcast client you prefer. I'll go from ones I like the least to ones I like the most. Be forewarned: I prefer podcasts with a high information-to-time ratio. In other words, a 10-minute podcast with a 4-minute intro will get a low rating from me, as will a very chatty podcast that has 15 minutes of real information in a 30-minute show. I also like those either produced by or including scientists who talk from first-hand knowledge (as opposed to people just reading or who have just read something on the topic). That's my bias.

Not science at all

I won't even both linking to "Consciousness: The Inside Story," which is produced by the Maharishi University of Management, the transcendental meditation (TM) people. TM might be a helpful relaxation method, and most of us can certainly use a bit of relaxation, but it has nothing to do with quantum physics (at least, nothing more than anything else in the world). What they have to say about neuroscience or consciousness isn't science, either. All this is probably best left to a Skeptics' Circle contribution.

"The infidel guy show" (iTunes) is a mixture of all sorts of things, including some science, but also lots of other stuff, mostly skepticism about religion. The detailed information about it in the iTunes Store lists it under "Religion & Spirituality", so I don't know why it is under "Science" in category browsing mode.

"International House of Dancakes" (iTunes) seems to contain science-themed original music from the podcaster. Or maybe it's just mis-filed.

For some reason, some local radio weather forecasts are classified under science. These include the "K8 WeatherTALK Podcast" and the "Kansas City Weather Podcast".

The "MAKE Magazine Podcast" (iTunes) has a strange title; perhaps the folks who added it to the iTunes Music Store messed up. It's from O'Reilly and Associates and focuses on seriously geeky software development. An interesting tech podcast, but it's not science.

The "Matamea Podcast" (iTunes) is a science fiction podcast about a fictional world, I guess invented by the podcaster.

Low signal-to-noise ratio

I like to talk as much or more than the next guy, but that doesn't mean I like to listen to other people nattering on.

"BeachCast" (iTunes) has some science content, mostly things like interviews with volunteers at a marine mammal care center. I thought about putting this under "not science," but there is some science there. If you like more personal podcasts and aren't searching for a lot of real science content, then you may like this. (You can tell I got a "good vibe" about the people making this and wanted to say something nice about it. Not really my cup of tea.)

"Berkeley Groks" (iTunes) is a weekly radio program from Berkeley, California. Not really bad, but lots of jabbering from the hosts.

"Dr. Karl podcast - from triple j" (iTunes) from Australian "youth radio". Jabber, jabber, jabber, tidbit, jabber, jabber, jabber.

"Slanderbox Media" (iTunes) has a combination of science and other shows. I don't have the patience to manually delete the shows I don't want to listen to.

"SWAOG Amateur Astronomy Network" (iTunes) is for and by amateur astronomers. Recorded off of ham radio. Pretty much an in-group discussion.

Honorable mentions

Because there's only so many minutes in a run, I don't subscribe to these. They're not bad, they just didn't make my cut to be added to my iPod.

"Singularity Podcast" (iTunes) is focused on answering emailed in listener questions and current events in physical science. Fairly basic information (that may be good or bad, depending on your preferences).

The Great Lakes Radio Consortium (formerly part of US public radio) produces the "GLRC.org Weekly News Report" (iTunes) focusing on environmental news, with some regional emphasis on the Great Lakes region of the US (Michigan and Ontario primarily, it seems). Very much a professional-quality newscast, which means lots of short segments.

"Radio Frontier Channel" (iTunes) is quite interesting. It's a mixture of shows about science and shows about scientists (interviews, not historical). I have provisionally subscribed to it, but I suspect that I won't listen to it very often because of its length (seems to be typically an hour long).

"Regulus! The Astronomy Newsletter" (iTunes) is for amateur astronomers, talking about what can be seen in the night sky. If I were an amateur astronomer, I'd be more interested in this. Maybe when the kids are older and stay up later? Who am I kidding, by then they won't be interested in star watching with their old man.

"Science Friday" (iTunes) is a well-known US National Public Radio program. It's wide-ranging in scope, but the shows are hit-or-miss as far as my interests are concerned, and they're long.

"Sciencecast.net" (iTunes) is an amateur science podcast from Germany (in English). It's not clear to me how much of the commentary is from personal knowledge and how much is read from other sources. Part of that feeling may come from hearing someone talk in a second language. It also includes snippets from radio shows and podcasters from around the world. In my opinion, those inclusions could be more selective. A good portion of the content is really tech, rather than science.

"Skepticality - Science and Skeptical Thought" (iTunes) interviews people like The Amazing Randi and Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy. Not in my core interest area, maybe a bit long at around 45 minutes per show, and uneven in terms of first-person expertise, it's unlikely to stay permanently in my subscription list.

"The Science Show" (iTunes) is from Australian ABC radio. Not bad; shows are a bit under an hour long. I put it here simply because there are other shows I prefer that are shorter.

"The Space Show" (iTunes) is an interview show about space development. It can be interesting, but is invariably quite long.

"theWatt" (iTunes) has both a mini and full-length podcast about energy and related topics. Fairly basic stuff. The links are to the mini podcast.

"This week in science" (iTunes) is similar to Slacker Astronomy, but with a broader scope. It's recorded from a radio program, with phone calls from live listeners. The biggest effect of it being a radio program is time overhead and chattiness. I want to like this show more, but there's just too much extra talk.

"Wanhoffs Wunderbare Welt der Wissenschaft" (iTunes) is in German, despite being listed in the iTunes Music Store as being in English. I put it here as an act of faith, as it is from the Fraunhofer Institut, which are well-respected research institutes in Germany.

The good stuff

To make my cut, shows had to have a high information-to-time content. Here they are, in no particular order.

I listed "Science@NASA" (iTunes) as one of the best podcasts there are. Short and filled with information, right from the source. I wish they'd improve their sound quality a bit, though.

From Canada, there's "Quirks & Quarks" (iTunes), CBC Radio's Weekly Science Radio Program. It covers all sorts of topics, usually including university faculty and listener questions in at least part of the show. The also have a weekly email newsletter.

From Australia, "All In The Mind" (iTunes) from Radio National focuses each week on brain and behavioral sciences. Recent topics include Alzheimer's disease and hysteria.

The US National Public Radio podcasts its weekly show, "Living on Earth" (iTunes), which focuses on environmental issues. They also have a weekly email newsletter, and an information-rich web site.

"EarthNews Radio" (iTunes) is a 90-second program from the Environmental News Network. An eclectic (and brief) podcast.

"EarthWatch Radio" (iTunes) is from the University of Wisconsin and focuses on earth, ocean, environment science, and global climate change. Five, roughly 2-minute, shows per week.

"SETI Podcast" (iTunes): who wouldn't listen to a science podcast from the SETI Institute?

"Slacker Astronomy" (iTunes) is just great fun. Lots of information and fun to listen to, this should serve as proof that amateur podcasts can be as good as any the professionals do.

"Stardate" (iTunes) should be familiar to many US National Public Radio listeners. Short, single-topic shows written by the folks at the University of Texas McDonald Observatory.

"Universe Today" (iTunes) has some good astronomy interviews and the show is tight at less than a half hour each (many around 10 minutes).

Topics: podcasts, science.

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Chicago Tribune: Professor sued over anti-aging comments

See the article linked from the title. If scientists need to start worrying about the consequences of criticizing pseudoscience, then we're truly headed for the dark ages. Bloggers (especially those who contribute to the Skeptics' Circle) beware, too!

The Oracle of Starbucks

Behold the Oracle's wisdom:

Personality type: Clueless

You don't go to Starbucks much; when you do you just tag along with other people since you have nothing better to do. You would like to order a Tazo Chai Crème but don't know how to pronounce it. Most people who drink Grande Mocha are strippers.

Also drinks: Wine coolers

Can also be found at: The mall

Man, this Oracle is spot on! Thanks to Ernie's 3D Pancakes.

Topics: humor, coffee.

AAAS: Building strength in computer science

The title above links to a news story from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which, among other things, publishes the respected academic journal Science. It's about a report, "Preparing Women and Minorities for the IT Workforce: The Role of Nontraditional Educational Pathways." This is a topic near to my heart, as a Computer Science faculty member, as a faculty member at an institution that purports to facilitate access by non-traditional students (i.e., students who are not full-time, 18-21 year-olds), and as the father of two daughters. The entire report is 178 pages long, so I hope you'll excuse me if I focus instead on the news article and the 12-page executive summary.

The news article conflates together the issues of under-representation of women and minorities in Information Technology/Computer Science (IT/CS), the recent drop in CS enrollment, and support for non-traditional students (here meaning: students who are non-traditional because of their age and/or part-time status, not merely because they are women or from an under-represented minority group). Among other things, it gives the case study of Tanya Gunn, who started taking night classes in CS in the early 1980s. Here's an interesting quote:

"There weren't that many women majoring in computer sciences," Gunn said in an interview. "I kind of struggled because a lot of the guys in the class, including the instructors, really were stand-offish. It was like I had the plague, and they didn't know what I was doing there. 'She's a girl -- let's don't talk to her. This is a boys' club'."

There's a problem with this: the early-to-mid 1980s were the peak of female CS enrollment; many departments had around 50% women students! I guess that this was a difference between night classes and full-time study, which brings me back to this issue of conflation:

The new report found such themes common among non-traditional students. Even now, the authors report, traditional four-year schools often are not structured to meet their needs. Instructors are not always sensitive.

The case study was a non-traditional woman student in a non-traditional CS program, at a time when traditional programs were apparently receptive to women and graduating them in increasing numbers. In contrast, the non-traditional program seemed at best insensitive to her. Can you see the problem I'm having here? In what way do the problems in a non-traditional program say anything about the traditional ones? At best, you could say that the non-traditional program wasn't like the traditional ones in terms of accepting and encouraging women, but that seems a failing of non-traditional programs of the time, not traditional four-year schools.

That's not to say that four-year schools do meet the needs of non-traditional students -- they don't, in general. And there's good reason. Because of job and family commitments, non-traditional students attend night classes: one or two at a time, for a number of years before getting their degrees. This is a considerable sacrifice for them, being away from their families, perhaps working in a job they don't like so they'll have the time to go to school, doing without time to relax, etc. But, the effort is self-limiting -- eventually, they'll graduate -- and rewarding -- upon graduation, they'll get a career change. Now, consider the faculty who teach night classes. They make similar (though less extreme) sacrifices, working in the evenings when their children are out of school and so not seeing them, perhaps for days at a time, the abnormal social lives and sleep schedules of people who work the late shift, etc. But, for the faculty, this is not a self-limiting or rewarding existence: they look forward to a career of doing this, with no better reward than their colleagues who teach traditional students.

Is it any surprise that "for-profit schools such as Strayer University and DeVry Institute of Technology were the top U.S. producers of computer science bachelor's degrees in 2001" (links added by me)? Go to those "universities'" web sites and look around. Do the "Bachelor degree" majors sound like those that other universities offer? Who are the faculty members? Can you even find information about the faculty (I couldn't)? It's easy to find investor information, however.

In fact, contrary to the AAAS news article, I couldn't find a CS degree program at either; instead, they have a strange combination of specific and generic BS majors, like Computer Networking, Computer Information Systems, Internetworking Technology, and Database Technology, all of which seem to be a mixture of very specific, skills-oriented courses (e.g., "Administering Windows 2000 Professional") and general-education classes.

The executive summary itself doesn't have "Computer Science" in the title, and the cover has a photo of a woman assembling some kind of electronic device. So, maybe it's not about CS, and the news article was misleading. Then, I read the abstract, which says, "It was sparked by the finding that the nation's number one producer of bachelor's degrees in information technology and computer science (IT/CS) was not a major research university, but instead was Strayer University..."

The rest of the summary isn't too much better. There are several recommendations. One is that CS/IT curricula go through a standards process similar to that done for engineering (which is via the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, or ABET). There already is one, run by CSAB, which is part of ABET. I'd be surprised if any for-profits were CSAB accredited. However, CSAB accreditation isn't considered very necessary by many excellent CS departments, and perhaps it should be, at least for marketing purposes.

Other recommendations will certainly increase enrollment at traditional schools, by increasing access and funding. I think the idea of changing financial aid to better match the need of part-time students with full-time jobs is well taken. Some financial aid is already based on credit-hour, rather than time, limits, but some is still targeted at four year durations. Internships and co-op programs can be very valuable, if properly managed, but do require significant oversight to ensure that projects have real educational value and in any event are standard parts of many engineering-based CS degree programs.

The summary also makes some points about the lack of CS/IT faculty diversity, and notes the pipeline problem. It then mentions that over 50% of CS doctorates are awarded to foreign students. This seem a non sequitur. Are the authors implying that too many foreign students reduces faculty diversity? No explanation is given. There is a suggestion that admission criteria need to be changed "to emphasize the applicant's problem-solving IT/CS skills in the admissions process rather than his or her programming experience alone." Personally, I'm not aware of a requirement that incoming students to a four-year degree program already have computer exposure, and I'm not sure how programming experience would be assessed prior to admission, so I'm not sure where this is coming from. Freshman CS1 classes start from the beginning.

The argument that increasing access for non-traditional students will increase the diversity of the CS/IT workforce is well taken. However, I don't see that this will be much more than at the margins. Certainly, if we want to increase the number of women and minority members in the profession, we must attract them from the enormously larger traditional college student population. Their absence should serve as a "canary in a coal mine," warning us that something is terribly wrong. As I've said before, I consider this to be a very different issue that the recent drop in enrollment, which will be self-correcting as the employment picture brightens, as it has been in the past.

A final note I'd like to make is the lack of distinction made in the news article and summary between the for-profit schools and the traditional universities. I find the skills-oriented curriculum of the for-profits especially troubling considering the extended educational periods of many non-traditional students. Of what use is studying Windows 2000 administration to someone who won't graduate for six or more years? Even in the lower-level courses, there's a big difference between learning how to program in Java (or PL/I, thinking back to the early '80s) and learning fundamental concepts of program design and implementation using Java as a particular tool and example. I understand completely that, when you're hungry, being given a fish seems like the best possible thing. But, in the long run, a fishing rod and some lessons on how to use it are best. Strayer and DeVry may have slick advertising (by the way, look at their web sites -- do they appear to be targeting non-traditional students?), but they also have stockholders and that's where their interest lies -- providing a return for their stockholders. If you're considering one of these schools, ask yourself this: what are they selling? It's certainly not their faculty, who are almost absent from their web sites. But the faculty will be the folks you learn from and traditional schools know this -- that's why departments' web sites always list faculty and link to their personal web pages.

Topics: academia, computer science, information technology.

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IT: The unfriendliest profession?

As I've written about before, the number of women (and their percentage) receiving degrees in computer science and related information technology (IT) fields has greatly declined over the last 20 years. And, as I've opined, one good reason for this is the nature of the IT workplace, well summarized by the following quote from the Tech Republic article linked from the title above:

In many ways, IT is unfriendly [to women] because of the nature of the job. IT is a 24/7 job. Achieving any significant position in IT often means putting your career before many other aspects of your life. You will find yourself putting in 70- or 80-hour weeks, becoming deeply committed to both the short-term and long-term needs of your career, and this will result in the loss of time spent with family or in personal activities.

When asked in a recent survey if their IT jobs were meeting expectations, 52 percent of women said they worked more hours than expected. The same survey stated that 40 percent of the men felt the same way. It is hard work, and most people, especially those who want to participate in a significant family life, are not willing to make the sacrifice.

While there are certainly many other factors involved, simply put: women are less accepting of sacrificing their lives on the altar of their company's bottom line. One way to look at this is that, traditionally, this has been expected of men and so men are acculturated to it. Or maybe women just have more sensible priorities. In any event, as an educator in this field, and given these characteristics of the field, I'm not surprised that enrollment craters whenever the job market begins to look even a bit bad.

Topics: information technology, computing profession, women.

Why US carmakers are in deep shit

OK, Dodge just came out with the 2006 Charger, which is sort of like an incredibly ugly version of the new Ford Mustang. But, tell me this: do you think it makes sense to come out with a new car that sports a 17 mile/gallon V8 when oil is selling for close to $60/barrel and contracts for later in the year (i.e., winter) are over $60/barrel? Think that "charger" will become synonymous with "bad timing"?

Some good specialized podcasts

A while back, I blogged about what I thought were the best podcasts out there. There are other podcasts that I listen to, and some of those I even consider pretty good, but targeted at more specialized audiences. So, here is my current list of "best special-interest podcasts":

• D'Arcy Norman Dot Net, a podcast from the Learning Commons at the University of Calgary. This podcast focuses on educational technology, such as the use of blogs, wikis, etc., in higher education. Grab the feed at <http://www.darcynorman.net/feed>.
• Continuing the theme of educational technology, there's Edupodder, out of San Jose State University, which currently has more of a focus on the use of podcasting itself in education. Its RSS feed is at <http://www.edupodder.com/edupodder_rss.xml>.
• You sysadmins out there should check out In The Trenches, where Kevin Devin spends 20-40 minutes each day talking about various issues he's had with his own company's systems and other topics of general interest (or of general annoyance) to systems administrators everywhere. I'm only an amateur sysadmin for my own personal machines, but I still scan his shows for an interesting tidbit or story. Get it at <http://www.kevindevin.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=2>.
• For something completely different, you might listen to Hot Radio, an investing podcast. It's really a marketing vehicle for Steve Wirrick's stock/option picking service, and I went back and forth about including it in this list (I'm not a subscriber to his service). However, the podcast is just too entertaining for me not to mention it. Mr. Wirrick has a great deal of enthusiasm (he's the kind of person who says things like, "anywho" -- at least, in the podcast; I don't know about in real life), and even if you're not interested in stocks, I think this is a good example of how to use podcasting as a marketing tool (though I don't know how successful it is in generating business). The feed is at <http://hotradio.blogspot.com/atom.xml> -- some podcast clients may have trouble retrieving the audio files.

Topics: podcasting.

Update:I updated D'Arcy Norman's feed location; seems I've been using a deprecated location for a fews months now!

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Fake CD copy-protection

My interest was piqued by the article linked from the title, which is really rather confusing if you read it carefully. Basically, it talks about some sort of copy-protection strategy being incorporated into audio CDs that allows record labels to limit copying. The article says that the copy-protection prevents the content from being transferred onto iPods because it uses Microsoft DRM. Now, this didn't seem to make any sense, because the CDs are still "Red Book" compliant, which means that they adhere to the standards that govern, among other things, data formats, and allow CDs to play on any CD player. A little more poking around brought me to

this article, which makes it clear that this copy protection applies only to PC users, and that no protection or restriction applies to what can be done on Macintoshes. Reading between the lines on the copy-protection vendor's web site, it seems that what they do is add software onto the disk to "fool" a computer into not recognizing the disk as an audio CD, but rather as a collection of audio files protected by Microsoft DRM. Apparently, this is taking advantage of a feature of Windows, and the promised future "Macintosh compatibility" is not the enabling of Macs to read the audio content, but rather getting the protection scheme to work on Macs. Even on PCs, this scheme is easy to get around, perhaps as easy as holding down the shift key while inserting the CD, and apparently Sony will tell anyone who complains how to work around the copy protection!

So, what is the logic behind producing "copy protected" CDs with trivial methods for circumventing the copy protection? If you're paranoid, you might agree with this Slashdot posting, which suggests that what they really want to do is to make all acts of illegal copying -- copyright violation for unprotected disks -- into felony violations of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) -- circumvention of an encryption device.

And for anyone who thinks that copy-protection can work for digital media, consider that: 1. it only takes one person who breaks the protection to render it irrelevant as non-protected versions proliferate and 2. it is usually a trivial matter to intercept the digital stream somewhere before conversion to analog and copy that stream to an unprotected format (and the software for doing so has many legitimate uses).

Topics: copyright, intellectual property, music.

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An ode to Usenet

One of my favorite quotes from The Princess Bride is when the grandfather says, "When I was your age, television was called books". Well, in my youth, blogs and web discussion forums were called "Usenet". I've often wondered about the balkanizing effect of having various topical discussion scattered across thousands of web sites, rather than "centralized" (in a distributed sort of way) via a news server: a one-stop shop for all discussion forums. In fact, RSS feeds and aggregators are a response to this balkanization, allowing each of us to, in effect, create a virtual news server of just those news streams we're interested in. However, this approach has three problems:

1. We have to rely on serendipity to find feeds of interest, as opposed to just searching the news server.
2. Each news source is distributed in a centralized fashion, with the originator bearing all of the bandwidth costs. Usenet is a distributed model. But, then again, each site (ISP, company, university) has to maintain a dedicated server for Usenet news. We'll call this a tradeoff between concentrations of disks for local caching versus concentrations of bandwidth for distribution.
3. The posting interface is separate from the reading interface. You can't post comments from any RSS aggregator I know of. Not only that, but there are really two reading interfaces, the aggregator and the web site itself, with different user interfaces.

Anyway, this was all brought to mind by the coincidence of the article linked from the title and an email conversation with a colleague about creating some sort of online discussion area for UW faculty separate from UW itself and the obsolescence of Usenet for this purpose.

Well, Usenet lives on, and you can still read and post to newsgroups via Google Groups. They're also supposed to have an archive of Usenet since the beginning of time, but it seems the search is still beta. Here's the earliest post of my own I could find:

Newsgroups: net.emacs
From: sti...@zeus.cs.ucla.edu (Michael D Stiber)
Date: Wed, 16-Jul-86 07:46:31 EDT
Local: Wed,Jul 16 1986 7:46 am
Subject: GNU Emacs on the IBM RT

Does anyone know if GNU Emacs has been ported to the RT yet, or 
if there are plans to?

                     Michael Stiber
                     ARPANET: sti...@ucla-locus.arpa
                     USENET:  ...{ucbvax,ihpn4}!ucla-cs!stiber

I'm pretty sure I posted before then, but it still brings back memories.

Topics: Usenet.

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The Phantom Professor: Double trouble

"...she went to the best private school in San Antonio.”

So... hard... to... resist.

Best private school in San Antonio? Is that like... No! I won't say it! Feel free to make your own smartass comment after reading The Phantom Professor's three-parter. I'm a New Yorker only on my mother's side.