Do Internet passwords protect personal information from unwanted intrusion? How can you be sure if someone on-line is who they say they are? Does anti-virus software really protect your hard-drive?

To help parents, educators, students and individuals with these questions and many others associated with wide usage of the Internet, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has created SAFE-Net, a program of cyber-security awareness. Through SAFE-Net, PSC presents workshops that train educators and provide materials for classroom learning — developed in collaboration with in collaboration with the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) Program at CMU’s Software Engineering Institute. These materials address cyber threats, measures of protection, and questions of cyber ethics that arise as a result of social networking and other wide uses of the Internet.

The SAFE-Net website provides free information, including classroom and parent materials about cyber-security issues, with lessons geared to grade levels 1-3, 4-6, and 7-12.

“Many Internet users lack an understanding of common threats they may face online,” says Cheryl Begandy, PSC director of education, outreach and training. “Among parents, many lack confidence that their child is safe when using the Internet.”

“Cyber security involves more than small barriers, such as anti-virus software and knowing to delete spam,” says Wiam Younes, training and awareness coordinator with CMU’s Information Security Office, who has collaborated with PSC on SAFE-Net content development and training. “It requires a wall of defenses, and the SAFE-Net program is geared to provide thorough cyber-security education in three areas: cyber ethics, cyber safety, and cyber security.”

PSC has held two Cyber-Safety Train-the-Teacher workshops introducing SAFE-Net to 18 Pittsburgh-area teachers.

SAFE-Net is funded by an NSF grant for Cyber Safety Awareness.

As part of PSC’s involvement with TeraGrid, the NSF program for comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure, PSC staff have led TeraGrid’s working group on cyber-security, experience that contributed to development of SAFE-Net.

Recent research at PSC by CMU researchers has brought national attention to the vulnerability of personal information on the Internet: http://www.psc.edu/science/2009/privacy

About Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center:  http://www.psc.edu

via smut-to-go

I am taking part of this satellite bit of programming relevant to the EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY exhibit entitled BODY DOUBLE EXPLORERS CLUB as a guest speaker…um, well speaking while someone in another city relays what I’m saying in person to a captive audience in an interview context. Cool! This Saturday!

• “Join us Saturday night at the Waffle Shop when six fascinating people from around the world will take our stage for a not-to-be-missed edition of the talk show. The only catch is you, the audience, have to sit in for guests or their voices won’t be heard. Audience members will act as local physical avatars for global guests from countries including Iran, Finland, and India. As our host asks questions, participants in the shop will wear headphones and repeat the virtual guests verbatim.THE BODY DOUBLE EXPLORERS CLUB is an open league whose members explore the world through the bodies of others. THE BODY DOUBLE EXPLORERS CLUB is being presented in conjunction with the exhibition Experimental Geography, Guest curated by Nato Thompson at the Miller Gallery.

• Facebook event
• Waffle Shop
• Miller Gallery

From the exhibition notes for EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY, guest curated by Nato Thompson at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University (my bud Astria Suparak is the Director there):

• “The manifestations of “experimental geography” (a term coined by geographer Trevor Paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today: sewn cloth cities that spill out of suitcases, bus tours through water treatment centers, performers climbing up the sides of buildings, and sound art of the breaths exhaled in running Boston’s evacuation route. In the hands of contemporary artists, the study of humanity’s engagement with the earth’s surface becomes a riddle best solved in experimental fashion.”

CA, Inc., The School of Business Administration at Oakland University, and the School of Information Systems and Management at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III College will hold a Regional Case Competition on Friday, November, 13, 2009. The winning student team will be invited to compete against teams from around the world at the second International Case Competition on the Strategic Value of IT Management, held in conjunction with CA’s user conference, CA World 2010 in Las Vegas, May 15-17, 2010.

Bringing together students from leading Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Information Systems (MIS) programs from local universities, the competition will enable students to evaluate and demonstrate the strategic value of IT management to contribute to the success of organizations. Prior to arriving at the competition venue, the teams will be provided with a case study of a company that is in the throes of change. They research and evaluate the organization’s challenges, and give recommendations on how to adapt and align technology to better support the changing business environment. 

Each team is comprised of three graduate students, with at least one student pursuing a degree in information technology (IT) or information systems.

• What:    Regional Case Competition will determine one finalist team to     participate at the second International Case Competition on the Strategic Value of IT Management, which will be held in conjunction with CA’s user conference, CA World 2010 in Las Vegas.  Teams from the following universities are registered for the Regional Case Competition: Carnegie Mellon, The College of William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Pittsburgh.

• When:   Friday, November 13, 2009, 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

• Where:  Holiday Inn University Center, Pittsburgh, PA.

The International Case Competition on the Strategic Value of IT Management brings together students from business and information technology disciplines to demonstrate and evaluate the strategic value of IT management for an organization. This competition is sponsored by CA, the School of Business Administration at Oakland University, Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, and Indiana University.

About CA
CA, the world’s leading independent IT management software company, helps customers optimize IT for better business results. CA’s Enterprise IT Management solutions for mainframe and distributed computing enable Lean IT—empowering organizations to more effectively govern, manage and secure their IT operations. For more information, visit www.ca.com.

MOBILE ART && CODE is a symposium on the artistic and tactical potential of mobile, networked and locative media: November 6-8, 2009 at CMU!

MOBILE ART && CODE is a three-day symposium focused on the design of new forms of mobile and locative experiences. FRIDAY and SUNDAY feature hands-on workshops in arts-oriented mobile phone programming (including workshops in creating software for the iPhone, Android, Nokia, SMS text messaging, etc.); interface design for mobile devices; interactive telephony and voice-response systems; and prototyping with the Arduino (a tiny computer which is popular for making interactive objects). SATURDAY is a lecture marathon, featuring a dozen presentations by leading international artists, designers, historians, hackers, entrepreneurs and researchers working in mobile and locative media.

WHO IS IT FOR?
Mobile Art && Code is intended for anyone interested in learning more about developing mobile and locative experiences. Although the events take place at Carnegie Mellon University, you don’t have to be affiliated with CMU to participate. The workshops accommodate participants with a variety of technical skills: some are very introductory, while others are intended for people with a little bit of programming experience

For more information, visit the Mobile Art && Code site.

Los resultados de este paper dan esperanza. Si sufres un quiebre amoroso y piensas que no podras soportar la vida si no estas con tu amado(a), lo mas probable es que te tomara mucho menos de lo que piensas olvidarlo(a). Te gustaria saber cuanto tiempo? lee el paper:

The results of this paper give hope. If you suffer a romantic breakup and you think that you won’t be able to bear with this life without your loved one, probably it will take you less time than you think to forget him(her). Do you want to know how much time? Read the paper:

Mispredicting distress following romantic breakup: Revealing the time course of the affective forecasting error

Bye

Adios

“Graduate Finance Association” (GFA), which is the largest student club at Tepper this year, organized Wall Street trek between Mini 1 and Mini 2 break. About 102 first years students from Tepper MBA and MSCF program visited 19 companies over a period of two days. Everyone was able to visit 4-5 companies and GFA was able to give everyone a chance to visit their top 2-3 companies.

I and four of my classmates decided to drive to New York on Saturday, we were hoping to leave early morning. After the last exam of Mini 1, most of the first year decided to chill out at a Shady-side bar called Doc’s Place and hence our plan for leaving early the next day never materialized. We managed to leave around 2 pm on Saturday. Roughly 6 hours drive took us 8 hrs including time for the coffee breaks and delay due to rainy weather. While I decided to stay at the hotel, three of my classmates partied the night out at one of the NY clubs.

Sunday was a free day for us and I utilized this time to visit my brother’s family in Jersey City. I spent the evening with my brother and classmates bar hopping at Times Square. We reached our hotel late at night. My first appointment was at 11 am with Thomson Reuters. The session went very well and I got to know the company a lot better. I had already attended their session and office hours at Pittsburgh so I was quite familiar with the company. We heard from some alums from Tepper (CMU) and Stern (NYC). After a break and some lunch, I visited investment banking firm Cowen And Company. The hour was full of valuable information and allowed me to connect with Cowen. Once again I was comfortable because I have attended Cowen’s session at Tepper. Their offices reminded me why I want to be back and work in NY. The opportunities are very exciting but the competition is going to be fierce. Back in hotel room we chatted about our day over some beer and called it a night.

Tuesday was busy day for me as I had to visit three companies. Most interesting visit was with Leerink Swann a health-care investment bank. They are highly specialized and focused in this sector. I found this opportunity very interesting and would keep on exploring it further. They have not visited our campus yet, so the visit was great way to know about the company. The drive back put us back at Pittsburgh around 4 am. My first class of mini 2 was going to start at 8.30 am. Talk about hectic life.

The trip was successful and a big shout out goes out to the GFA and the participating companies. My trip would have not been possible without support of my best friend and spouse, who held the fort while I was away so here is a public “Thank You”.

Carnegie Mellon University today announced the expansion of its Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) project, which will gauge the effectiveness of mobile phone-based games for teaching English lessons to students in rural India. This new phase of the research project is made possible, in part, by a grant and a supply of 450 mobile phones provided by Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif.

Even today’s low-end mobile phones exceed the capabilities of the original IBM personal computer and thus could become important learning tools as wireless carriers extend their services into previously underdeveloped regions, said Carnegie Mellon’s Matthew Kam, assistant professor in the School of Computer Science’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He and his colleagues in the MILLEE project have spent six years designing educational games for mobile phones that are relevant to  the culture of rural India. During the next two years, MILLEE will conduct a controlled study involving 800 children in 40 villages in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

“With Nokia’s assistance, we will be able to conduct field research that is more extensive and more rigorous than we could previously,” Kam said. “Our previous, smaller studies have shown that students have significant gains in learning when they use these games. By aiming to replicate these results in a much larger study, we anticipate that we can understand how to design and develop phone-based games to improve educational prospects for billions of people throughout the developing world.”

“Nokia is pleased to contribute to the MILLEE project,” said John Shen, lab director for the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto. “The opportunities to use the mobile phone as an educational tool are unlimited, and Carnegie Mellon’s vision in this area is very aligned with that of Nokia’s.”

Kam and his students already are working on games that support a new English curriculum adopted by Andhra Pradesh schools this summer. Their goal is to have at least six and as many as a dozen games ready to deploy next year. If their field study is successful, they hope to establish partnerships with a growing number of content developers in India who are currently focused on educational programs for desktop computers.
                
“We’re trying to build an entire ecosystem of educational content developers around mobile learning, which does not currently have a critical mass,” Kam said. Shabnam Aggarwal, the project manager, will be relocating to India where she will oversee the research project and develop ties with content developers, wireless carriers and groups interested in implementing mobile learning programs. Aggarwal, who earned a degree in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon, has experience on Wall Street and with non-governmental literacy programs in southeast Asia.

Despite their small screens and low computing power by today’s standards, mobile phones could become a major educational resource as wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers move aggressively to extend mobile phone penetration among rural consumers, Kam said. And if the educational benefits of mobile phones can be demonstrated convincingly, he added, those consumers will have an additional motivation for investing in mobile phone service, which will further spur mobile phone adoption.

Name: David Tuzman

Location: Montclair, NJ / New York, NY

Education: Carnegie Mellon University 2009; Electrical and Computer Engineering

Greatest Vice: Ice Cream Sandwiches

Favorite songs on your recent playlists: “Drifter” by Little Bang Theory, “Brother Sport” by Animal Collective, “Arvada” by Motel Motel

Weird Habits/Routines in Creating Music: Recording in my towel after a shower.

Favorite Part of the Process: Finishing.

In my first year of college, after seven years on a strict diet of Punk Rock, I turned towards a wider realm of music (how original, right?). Astounded by the beauty and minimalism of Post-Rock and Ambient music, I sunk into my own headphone-dominated world. -D. Tuzman

David Tuzman forms the foundation of his music with repetitive guitar. Without any specific idea of how the song is going to evolve, he records random patterns of sound. It isn’t until most of the sounds are recorded and the mixing ensues does the sound begin to take a discernible shape. Inspired by Do Make Say Think, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed, he created his first two tracks to form a soundscape intended for headphone listening:

…I bought my first non-distortion guitar pedal, Line 6 Echo Park. This little baby is so fun, with its tap tempo and delay modeling, not to mention the sick sounds that chirp out when you jerk the time knob. I figured it was time to record some of my own trippy tunes. Armed with an acoustic/electric guitar, Apple Garageband, and a Monster 1/4” to 1/8” converter, I laid down ten minutes of processed guitar and synth loops. Sadly, I only mixed the song on simple Sony headphones, so it sounds muffled on speakers. But on headphones… it’s pretty snazzy.

Listen to SURFACED EUPHORIC from Spring 2007.

A song starts from me screwing around with a delay pedal and figuring out an interesting chord progression.

I’ll record it into Logic and then take a few weeks to layer more melodies over it.  As I’m filling in secondary parts, I’ll figure out a new direction to send the song and try something new.  I generally set levels, effects, automation etc as I record new tracks, but once I get sick of playing new diddlies, I go back through the whole song to smooth out everything.  This takes the longest time of anything.  For Hospital_2, I finished recording and was midway through mixing in December 2007, but I didn’t put  on the finishing touches until the middle of Summer 2008. In regards to song development, Hospital_2 is the first song I’ve done with a specific theme. The song is loosely a story of someone’s trip to the emergency room, I invite you to interpret the specifics on your own.

Tuzman does all the recording himself but sends early versions of the song to his friends to get constructive feedback. His general aim?

For the first 2 songs, my main goal was to create a soundscape to be listened to on headphones.  I incorporated a lot of heavy panning, melodies swimming back and forth between your ears, and general trippyness.  A more consistent aim, though, is to create a seemingly monotonous and repetitive sound in order to force the listener to focus less on melody and hooks, and enjoy subtleties in tone and texture.

You can access Tuzman’s music on his MySpace, or his Personal Website (under construction but definitely recommended). He has also remixed songs from “The Early” and provided music for short films. One for friend Adam Abada can be viewed below or on Tuzman’s Personal Website.

This Columbus Day weekend The Nerve in Bloomfield will play home to a unique festival combining Pittsburgh’s celebrated robotic art and experimental music communities. Musicians from Boston, New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh will be collaborating with local artists to produce unique new works of sight and sound that will be debuted during the festival. Workshops and lectures will will provide hands-on introductions to the highly evolved merger of technology and creativity that is providing Pittsburgh with a unique place on the national radar.

Friday, October 9th from 8-10pm: Roy Gee Biv’s opening reception takes place, featuring a talks by Eric Singer of the League of Musical Robots (Pittsburgh), and JTS3K, discussing his installation “Automatic Glassware.”

Saturday, October 10th, at 7pm: Kinetic sculptor Greg Witt (Pittsburgh) and sound artist Daniel Paul Boucher of Neptune (Boston) will present a mechanized track rover, weaving through the audience throughout the performance with spatial signal processing. Kinetic sculptor Joshua Space (Pittsburgh) and sound artists Dreamweapon (Chicago) will present a riff on the Dreamachine, a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Locals Gangwish and Technical Drawings will perform as well.

Sunday, October 11th: A colloquium on robotic music will take place starting at 2pm, workshops will be given by John McNulty entitled “Entertaining with Robots: Animatronics Suited to Spontaneous Speech and Song” (Pittsburgh), and Michael Johnsen (Pittsburgh) on homemade microphones and loudspeakers

Admission to the events is $10 per evening or $25 for a three-day pass, students and seniors receive a 20-percent discount. VIP passes are also available at the funder level of $40, which includes admission to all events and a robotic music-related goodie-bag.

The mission of Roy Gee Biv Festival is to bring together kinetic and sound artists to make new cross-platform work, present intelligent discourse on robotic music, and educate a multiplicity of Pittsburgh communities in collaborative methods of artistic production.

For more information, visit: noisyrobot.org.

The lack of blog updates is a clear indication that I am busy with exams, classes, homework and quizzes. Besides, I also have to ensure that I am spending some quality time with my two sons and of course, my lovely wife. Well, I am also committed to providing an insider’s account of Tepper MBA program, so let me get on with it.

After the mid-term exam, in Financial Accounting class we covered “Long Term Assets”. David Levy from Exxon Mobil provided some real world account of “Fixed Assets Accounting”. Some other areas we have focused on included Inventories, Investment in corporations, Long term liabilities (both bonds and leases). We have to cover one more area i.e. Equities. This will be part of next week class and we should be in good shape for the final. Wait a second, didn’t I talk about mid-terms couple of weeks ago, well you can see how fast paced mini system is.

Moving on to “Probability & Decision Making”, since our mid terms we have covered a Case, Continuous random, Continuous distributions and Central Limit theorem. As part of our case study we are doing a simulation using a Decision tool called @Risk. Needless to say next week we have finals.

In “Optimization & Decision Theory” we have covered Nonlinear programming: functions of one variable,
Nonlinear programming: functions of several variables & Nonlinear programming: the Lagrangian method. Is my head spinning a bit with all these decision models, yes. I just wish I had more time to practice these skills, I am sure I will look back at these lecture notes and book, several times in my career.

In “Managing Organizations” we are focused on few cases and participated in “ChangePro” exercise. This simulates the process one would follow when bringing about a change in an organization. Specifically, the simulation asks you to implement “Six Sigma”.

In “Interpersonal Managerial Communication”, I have led two discussions. Instead of memorizing and having detailed notes , I decided to have an outline and lead the discussion ex-tempo like I would do in real life. The role play exercises are really interactive and fun.

I also found time to participate in my 1st case competition and enrolled in AT Kearney Global case competition. I love the whole experience of case competitions.

October 6, 2009

2:00pm – 3:30pm Eastern
Register today ($25.00)
Presenter: David Dombrosky
Executive Director, Center for Arts Management and Technology
Adjunct Faculty, Master of Arts Management Program at Carnegie Mellon University

For many arts and cultural organizations, the social Web has been both an exciting and sometimes frustrating laboratory for experimenting with new ways to maximize awareness, engage audiences, foster community building and more. This webinar explores the insights gained from these experiments and offers ways in which organizations can use this information to formulate strategies for more effectively utilizing social media and social networks without draining financial and human resources.

In this 90-minute session, you will learn:

• A strategy framework for communicating via social media and social networks
• How to adjust expectations and set reasonable goals for constituent engagement
• How to identify who in your organization should manage your digital identity
• Tips and best practices for moving your towards the development of a solid social media strategy

The Second Annual Wild Pockets PA Game Jam will take place in two locations – Pittsburgh and Harrisburg – on October 3rd and 4th, 2009. 
The Wild Pockets Game Jam event is two days of intense creativity where teams of game developers compete to create the best games while using the new free Wild Pockets 3D game engine and platform. 24 hours after you start, you and your team will have the chance to submit your game and have it judged by a panel of industry experts for a chance to win some amazing prizes.

When?
9am Saturday October 3 through 4pm-4, 2009

Where?
Pittsburgh, PA – Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center [map]
Harrisburg PA – Harrisburg University’s Center for Advanced Entertainment and Learning Technologies [map]

Prizes
Grand Prize Team
$2,500 cash
J.Fold wallet for each team member

Second Place
1TB Seagate FreeAgent XTreme External Drive for each team member
J.Fold wallet for each team member

Third Place
500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Drive for each team member
J.Fold wallet for each team member

Best of all — admission is free!
For full details visit: http://www.wildpockets.com/pagamejam/
To register click here.

Fitwits graphics

When I was studying design in college, I had big aspirations of what I would do with my career.
I could change the world, get published, do something wonderful that could help people… YEAH!… Hmmmmm. Well, here I am, eleven years later and although I know I have done many things I am certainly proud of, I also feel that I have not contributed nearly enough to the well- being of our society. I suppose it can take awhile to fully understand how one’s skills and talents can be useful in a larger sense, and often times, survival comes first— you just do what you can to get paid, pay bills and try to relax in between. Right? Right.

Well, I recently read an article about a woman named Kristin Hughes, an associate professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University… and she’s using design to do something amazing… and it has to do with FOOD.

She has helped develop a school program, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, called Fitwits. It consists of lessons, activities, and games designed to educate and encourage smart choices in nutrition, portion control, and physical activity for youths.

Obesity is a major problem in this country, and it begins with how our children are raised. Through programs like Fitwits, parents and children can learn about the importance of food and nourishment in their own lives, and hopefully how it can affect their families, communities and on, and on, and on…

I really love this, and think you will too. Check it out.

Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh had to be pretty spectacular to lure The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses author, Jesse Schell away from Disney’s Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio in 2002. The renowned ETC program offers an interdisciplinary Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, co-sponsored by the University’s College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science.

ETC Program Background
A number of precipitous events spurred the creation of this unique program; most significantly, late Professor Randy Pausch’s (you may have seen his viral video, Last Lecture) creation of a groundbreaking computer science course, Building Virtual Worlds, and, at the same time, the Drama Department’s interest in the convergence of technology and the arts. Together, these two departments joined forces to expand their “interdisciplinary friendship,” creating the ETC. Each year, the background of the incoming class is equally split along those lines – half from art and design, half from engineering and computer science. The goal of the program isn’t to turn the geeks into artists or the other way around. The program emphasizes each student emerging from the program with a broad toolkit of interdisciplinary knowledge and awareness.

ETC Master’s Program
In the two-year program, ETC students study topics ranging from game design, technology, storytelling, and improvisational acting. According to their program website, project work forms the core of the curriculum, “bringing together interdisciplinary student teams that must produce working artifacts; in the tradition of Carnegie Mellon, this emphasis is on making real things that work.”

Interview with Jesse Schell about the program.
Read the original post on the San Diego State University Blog.

We have another sizzlin’ news announcement for you here on the TECHburgher. This exciting news just came across my desk less than 10 minutes ago. Enjoy!

ReCAPTCHA Inc., a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Science Department, has been acquired by Google Inc. The Pittsburgh company developed online puzzles that serve the dual purpose of protecting Web sites and digitizing printed text.

The reCAPTCHA puzzles, which consist of words with distorted letters that computer users must decipher to register for services online or otherwise gain access to a Web site, began as a research project of Luis von Ahn, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. ReCAPTCHAs were introduced in 2007 and are used by many leading Web sites. The company, ReCAPTCHA Inc., was founded by von Ahn in 2008.

Like similar CAPTCHA (Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) puzzles, reCAPTCHAs distinguish human visitors to Web sites from automated intruders. But reCAPTCHAs are created using words from printed texts that current optical character recognition programs are incapable of reading. So when humans solve the puzzle, they also help digitize pre-computer-age books, newspapers and other printed materials.

 “Google is the best fit for reCAPTCHA,” von Ahn said. “From the very start, people often assumed the project was connected to Google, so it only makes sense that reCAPTCHA Inc. ultimately would find a home within Google.”

Multiple ties exist between Google and Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, von Ahn noted. Many researchers from the two organizations collaborate with each other and Google’s Pittsburgh engineering office is situated on Carnegie Mellon’s campus. In 2006, Google licensed the ESP Game, an online game devised by von Ahn, for use as the Google Image Labeler.

Von Ahn will remain on the computer science faculty, but will also work at Google’s Pittsburgh engineering office.

ReCAPTCHA Inc. is among the startups that have participated in Carnegie Mellon’s Project Olympus, which provides advice, incubator space and investor connections to help faculty and students explore the commercial potential of their ideas.

Die Carnegie Mellon University hat ein Statistiktool online, mit dem du deine Chance abrufen kannst, in den USA und Europa an diesem und zu jenem zu sterben. Auch und gerade in Vergleichstabellen. Nur so, zur Unterhaltung. Praktischen Nutzwert seh ich da auch keinen. (  deathriskrankings)

]]> http://allaboutuni.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/top-computer-engineering-universities/ Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:59:52 +0000 allaboutuni http://allaboutuni.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/top-computer-engineering-universities/

List of Top Computer Engineering Universities

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Stanford University
3. Carnegie Mellon University
4. University of California–Berkeley
5. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
6. Georgia Institute of Technology
7. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
8. California Institute of Technology
9. Cornell University
10. University of Texas–Austin

For more information of Computer Engineering Universities,Engineering Universities,top Computer Engineering Universities,best Computer Engineering Colleges,top Computer Engineering Universities in USA.

My second week started with Managing Organizations class. In my first class we covered Decision Making & Decision Making Biases. The essence of the class was that we should not make decisions based on bias or hunch, instead rational decision making is the way to go. Some of the probability classes are really helpful to assign the weight-age to different outcomes during rational decision making process. Prof. Dan often has a hands on exercise to illustrate a point, then he explains where we went wrong. For example he asked us to participate in a bid, and after the bid was over he went over the decision biases topic and explained how we were biased in the bidding process. This makes the class very interesting. In the second class on Managing Organizations we covered Confidence & Leadership.

In Financial Accounting class we went over Income Statement, Revenue Recognition, and Adjustments. It was very interesting topic because “GAAP” allows companies and executives a lot of flexibility in revenue and expense recognition. As part of homework we read a case. It was followed by our first case analysis. I liked analyzing the case but hated the fact that we ran out of time.

In Probability & Decision making class it was time for Discrete random variables,Distribution functions, Expectation, Variance, Standard Deviation and Covariance. The second class covered Specific discrete distributions Bernoulli Binomial and Poisson. We worked on multiple complex problems on scheduling in Optimization & Decision Making class. Its amazing to see how linear programming could be applied to solve some really complex problem.

Interpersonal Managerial Communication class focused on behavioral interview technique. Some of the students have taken such an interview many times in their life while a few have never faced a behavioral interview. This class will really help the second category of students while rest of the folks can further refine their behavioral interviewing technique.

This weekend there was a Asian MBA Conference in New York and lot of my classmates decided to attend it. I am catching up on my studies and spending some quality time with my family over this long weekend.

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Declan McCullagh
CNet News
August 28, 2009

Read Full Article Here

Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed