Episode # 22 - If not STEM, where are bright students headed?

So what are the bright kids choosing to study?

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The eras with stable head coaches (Paul Brown, Blanton Collier, Sam Rutigliano etc.) and quarterbacks (Otto Graham, Frank Ryan, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar) were the winning teams. It's probably both cause and effect.

Is this what Hewlett Packard, with yet another CEO change, has in its future?

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I remember 10 years ago after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 that we were all looking for some way to help the victims. I received a message from a friend in New York who indicated that the emergency personnel were short on PC hardware because much was lost or damaged.

I brought this to the attention of the volunteers of Computers Assisting People (CAP) and we adapted the words of Flight 93 hero Todd Beamer and said 'Let's Roll.'

Listen to the Minute with the Great Lakes Geek and consider donating (any amount will help) to the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville PA. Who know how many lives those brave people saved.

Wow! First there was Hewlett-Packard announcing their plans for a dramatic business realignment which includes its intention to get out of the PC business. Then there was the news that Steve Jobs was stepping down as CEO of Apple Computer, presumably for health reasons.

Listen to this Minute with the Great Lakes Geek for the Geek's take.

The blessing of IBM transformed the PC from a hobbyist's machine into a business machine. Soon offices all over the country would have IBM PCs on their desk, often with a screen burn in of the rows and columns of a Lotus 123 spreadsheet on the green or amber monitor. The Great Lakes Geek reflects back.

Listen to this Minute with the Great Lakes Geek and wish him and the IBM PC a Happy Birthday.

Last week MS-DOS turned 30 years old. On July 27, 1981 Microsoft bought Q-DOS from Tim Patterson for $50,000. The onetime fee, as opposed to ongoing royalties, was a brilliant business move for Microsoft

Remember the rumors about Gary Kildall flying his plane when IBM came calling for CP/M? The Geek does.

Listen to this Minute with the Great Lakes Geek for a trip down memory lane.

Many Great Lakes cities have dwindling populations, high unemployment and a rust belt perception. One of the ways that cities have been able to increase population, job creation and vitality is by attracting immigrants.

But this is a very competitive arena that requires a sense of urgency. If we allow other cities to get further ahead of us in establishing themselves as an aggressively welcoming immigrant-friendly city, it will be much more painful, for a much longer period of time, than a Browns loss to the Steelers or Tribe loss to the Tigers.

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The smartphone/tablet generation may not appreciate IBM but the world, and the technology world in particular, owes a lot to this behemoth that just turned 100.

Remember the IBM PC, Prodigy, OS/2 Warp, Charlie Chaplin in the PC Jr. ads, (not to mention the infamous chiclet keyboard, the IBM Selectric, System 360, AS/400, RS6000 and many more. IBM created FORTRAN, the Floppy disk, the UPC barcode system and a slew of other standards. Check out their Top 100 IBM icons and Happy 100th birthday IBM.

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What's really behind Microsoft's purchase of Skype? And will consumers pay for Skype's services?

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Most of us will never be able to attend MIT and take classes there. But there is a program called MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) which is a web-based publication of virtually (pun intended) all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to anyone in the world.

MIT OpenCourseWare website.

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Cisco has decided to kill the Flip video camera line. They spent $590 million on the product a few years ago and now they aren't even trying to sell it? Why?

RIP Flip

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Lately I've been hearing people butcher the term - The Cloud, and related phrases like Private and Public Cloud. The Cloud will mean different things to different people but here's a simple way to explain it to non-geeks.

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Internet Explorer 6 is a ten year old product that has become insecure in the modern web world. The Great Lakes Geek is joining the effort to get people to upgrade to a more modern, secure browser.

Microsoft has an IE 6 Deathwatch countdown that will help Geeks like us spread the word. After all, friends don't let friends run IE6.

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Microsoft IE 6 Deathwatch page

March 14th is Pi Day because it is 3-14 and Pi, of course, begins with 3.14159265...

Pi has amazing properties and fun facts associated with it but is also extremely useful in math, science and engineering.

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There seems to be a lack of true programmers in the current Internet-centric scene. You need real back end developers besides the pretty front end stuff. And I don't care if you use the LAMP stack or Microsoft's platform or what - but you've got to be able to program, not just rearrange components from a library or tweak prewritten templates in order to be a true web developer.

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What does a classic comedy skit from Monty Python have to do with artificial intelligence and an IBM supercomputer?

Jeopardy contestants would know.

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A computer program determined that April 11, 1954 was the least interesting day of the last century. That reminded the Great Lakes Geek about a classic math puzzle.

Can you figure it out?

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When Egypt pulled the plug on January 28, 2011 it was historic.

How prepared are we to do business should a disaster happen? We are increasingly dependent on mobile connectivity and cloud-based software, apps and traditional, and data storage. What happens if the lights go out or the Net goes down?

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SONY is closing one of its two remaining CD-ROM plants. Future generations will have a difficult time in learning about our society because of the various outdated media they will discover - all requiring a special device to read the data. You need to refresh your important data to new and current media.

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What is it with geeks and cooking lately? We used to be content with over-caffeinated beverages or beer and pizza. Now I am faced with a book called Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food, Ghostbusters Stay Puft Caffeinated Marshmallows and the iGrill Bluetooth cooking thermometer.

Listen to the 3rd Minute with the Great Lakes Geek

I didn't make it to Vegas for CES this year but when I see the ubiquitous news blurbs about the crowds and new gadgets I can't help but remember that one trip in 2001 when several thousand of us sat in the hall with one eye watching Bill Gates and the other looking for the nearest emergency exit...

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There is so much going on in the tech, science and business worlds that the Great Lakes Geek lives in that it is hard to keep up with it all.

We all have stacks of paper and gigabytes of digital content to consume and may never catch up. So in 2011 we are going to add to our lengthier podcasts and video casts with a quickie weekly podcast.

If you have a minute (sure you do!) listen in each week. Listen to the first Minute with the Great Lakes Geek