Wall Street's Collapse May Be Computer Science's Gain

Computerworld (09/26/08) Thibodeau, Patrick; Weiss, Todd R.

The recent collapse on Wall Street may make a career in computer science or IT more attractive to students, who largely left those fields following the dot-com bust of 2001. Stanford University computer science department chairman William Dally says students are returning to computer science because they like the field and not necessarily because it can make them rich. Boston College professor John Gallaugher says he has already seen a change in student interest, with many students contacting Gallaugher and expressing an interest in switching from finance. Following the dot-com bust, computer science enrollment declined until it reached a low of 8,021 last year, down from 14,185 in 2003-2004, according to the Computer Research Association (CRA). Meanwhile, offshore outsourcing also scared students into avoiding technology careers. Now, companies are suffering from a shortage of technology professionals, and the looming baby boomer retirements will only add to the problem. CRA analyst Jay Vegso says economic conditions appear to impact the choice that students make when choosing a major, and students currently choosing majors may be looking for safer alternatives. Stevens Institute of Technology's Howe School of Technology Management associate dean Jerry Luftman says the major difference between today and the late 1990s is the type of student that businesses need. While technical skills are important, Luftman says companies also want students with management and industry training, strong communications abilities, and marketing and negotiations skills. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that IT jobs are among the fastest growing; openings for networks systems and data communications analysts are expected to reach 402,000 this year, up from 262,000 in 2006.

Mission ADR

One of the biggest achievement of my college life has been the project ADR i was part of. Here i'll be descibing how it all began....

Mission ADR(Autonomous Defence Robot) was started by 3 of our seniors Varun Jewalikar(2K6 COE), Chandan Kumar(2K6 Civil) and Ankit Agarwal(2K6 Production Engg.). The aim was to build the robot to take part in TechX challenge being organised by Defence Science and Technology Agency(DSTA), Singapore government in 2008. They had registered the team as 'Team DCE' and wanted team extension when we joined the college in August 2007. Interviews were held in the college on 6th september,2007. Candidates were interviewed by the three students and the faculty advisors D.S Nagesh sir and M. Kulkarni sir. The results came out on 24th September and me and my brother(Akhil) were amongst those selected. We were called to room no. IW-FF16 where we later set-up our CEAR(Center for Excellence in Advanced Robotics) lab. Ankit was responsible for Image Prosessing, Chandan for Mechanical Systems and Varun for Electronics and Computer Programming. We were to work with Varun.
The work started after our 1st sem mid-sem papers. Akhil and i were first given the task of studying Assembly language. We studied '8051 Microcontroller and Embedded Systems' by Mazidi. We started 8051 uC programming. Then we moved on to make Autonomous line follower. By October we had well settled in the team and the progress was good. I hope to follow this up with more on subsequent posts.

Answers

So here are the answers of the puzzles. I hope u don't need them as u solve them urself!

Puzzle 1
1- 60 degrees Anti-clock-wise(ACW)
2- straight or 180 ACW
3- 120 Clockwise(CW)
4- 60 Clockwise
5- 120 ACW

Puzzle 2
Answer in the order from left-to-right, top first.

4 3 10 6 5 12 11 8 9 1 7 2

Bold numbers are the numbers which were already given in the problem.

Puzzle 3
Answer are given from left-to-right, in the order of increasing row numbers. '.' represents a blank white cell

1 0 . 1 0
0 . 0 1 1
1 0 1 0 .
. 1 0 0 1
0 . 0 1 1
1 0 1 0 .
. 1 0 0 1
1 0 . 1 0
0 1 1 . 0
0 1 1 . 0

Puzzle 4
Answer tells the directions of arrows in Clock-wise direction starting from the top-left arrow

SE SE S S W SW W NW NW N NE N E NE E SE

Puzzle 5
Answer tells the the number or the alphabet in the cell from left to right, starting from the first row till the last row

A C B 3 1 2
2 1 A C 3 B
1 A 2 B C 3
B 2 3 1 A C
C 3 1 2 B A
3 B C A 2 1

Puzzle 5

This one should be done quite quickly.

Rules are simple:

You need to fill the grid with numbers 1,2,3 and alphabets A,B,C.
Conditions are:

• 1,2,3 represents height of three distinct towers.
• Numbers outside the box shows the number of towers visible from that point(1 outside the box shows only tower 3 is visible from that point and other two shorter buildings are hidden behind that).
• Alphabets outside the box shows that same alphabet will appear first in the corresponding row or column.
• Each row and column should contain 1,2,3,A,B and C exactly once.

Puzzle 4

This one's a bit simpler :)

Rules are simple:

You need to fill the blank boxes with arrows.
Conditions are:

• All arrows should point towards the grid.
• The indexes written in the grid shows the total number of arrows pointing to them.
• The specified arrow directions are E(east), SE(south-east), S(south), SW(south-west), W(west), NW(north-west), N(north), NE(north-east).

Puzzle 3

This is another kakuro type puzzle.

Rules are simple:

Fill white cells with numbers 0 & 1
Conditions are:

• .Each row & column must have exactly two '0's & '1's
• The numbers outside the grid show the number of '0's (top number) and number of '1's(bottom number) in corresponding directions.
• Some white cells might be left blank.

Puzzle 2

Here's another puzzle i enjoyed solving.

Rules are simple:

You need to fill the following key board with numbers from 1 to 12.
Conditions are:

• Each of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 should appear exactly once.
• The number in shaded key equals either sum or difference of the neighboring white keys.
• Two inequalities should be satisfied.

Puzzle 1

Lately, i have developed a lot of interest in solving puzzles. So here i hope to share some of them.
This is the first puzzle.

Rules are simple:

Draw a path from starting to finish point(represented by DOTS) .
Conditions are:

• The path must visit every node exactly once.
• Some of the nodes are marked. The path must make same moves at same numbered node(say your path should turn 60 degree clockwise whenever it encounters 2)
• For different marked nodes, moves must be different.

Try it. I found it to be very interesting. Hope u like it too.