Friday, July 24, 2009

Most lucrative college degrees

There is a somewhat interesting article talking about the Most lucrative college degrees on money.cnn.com. The data comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers so I guess that makes it legit. I thought it was interesting because when I was in school the top of the list looked like this:


1. Chemical Engineering
2. Electrical Engineering
3. Computer Science


Now the top of the list looks like this:


1. Petroleum Engineering
2. Chemical Engineering
3. Mining Engineering
4. Computer Engineering
5. Computer Science
6. Electrical Engineering


However, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering have such similar salaries that for all practical purposes they tied for fourth. Even so, that still means hat Mining and Petroleum bumped them out of the top three. I guess the world isn't as digital as we all though.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Android vs Chrome (OS)

I think there is a lot of confusion regarding google's decision to come out with another linux based operating system. You can read some of the debate here on gizmodo. I myself think it may have been a pretty dumb idea to call your OS the same thing you call your web browser... but hey. I will reserve judgement, maybe that is exactly what they wanted to do.

Also, I will offer this guess: The difference between Android and Chrome will be, by and large, the graphics pipeline/subsystem. Android's largest difference from normal linux is its use of a custom framebuffer instead of the X11R6 we all know and love. I predict that in the long term you will see Chrome and Android move close together, but Chrome will maintain X11R6. That's my guess and its worth what you paid for it.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

They just don't do movie trailers like they used to ...

... but maybe they should.

Please compare ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz86TsGx3fc

Mildly intriguing ... at least until you realize it's from the Dean/Emmerach team who've already bored us with blowing most of this stuff up many times before. The say "from the director of Independance Day and The Day After Tommorrow" CLEARLY like they think that's a good thing.

At least you can't say they didn't warn you first.

And now, for the awesome v1970's version.

http://vimeo.com/5463875

Now you kinda wanna see it anyway, don't you?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Wells Fargo competes for worst bank in the world

Just when JP Morgan Chase and Citi are being hounded for their credit card policies, it is good to see that Wells Fargo is keeping them honest.

The City of Baltimore and the NAACP have now filed suit against Wells Fargo for marketing sub-prime home loans to prime black borrowers. Because this is a law suit there are now sworn affidavits from people like Mr. Paschal who says:

They referred to sub-prime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as "mud people..." The company put "bounties" on minority borrowers. By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market sub-prime loans in minority communities.


The New York Times conducted their own study and found that in the city of New York, 16.1% of black borrowers making at least $68k per year had a sub-prime home loans while only 2% of white owners in the same income bracket had sub-prime loans. The New York Times quoted Beth Jacobson, Wells Fargo's top producing sub-prime loan officer, as saying:

We just went right after them. Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out sub-prime loans.


That's right, Wells Fargo aggresively marked sub-prime loans to black people at their churches. You can read more here.