Online: Ideas for Web

Bemuseument-like piece for web:

Top 5 or 10 Jokes/References Computing Students Should Know

  1. “The internet is a series of tubes”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes). And a follow up might be “the , uh, internets” which was a George W. Bush-ism.
  2. “Nobody knows you’re a dog”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you’re_a_dog
  3. Q: Why do programmers always mix up Halloween and Christmas? / A: Because Oct 31 == Dec 25! [Shawn]
  4. “There are only 10 kinds of people in this world: those who know binary and those who don’t.” [Shawn] Variation: (courtesy of familysimpson on Twitter) How many COmp Sci students does it take to change a lightbulb? 10. One to change the bulb, one to explain binary notation.
  5. Q. How do you tell an introverted computer scientist from an extroverted computer scientist? A. An extroverted computer scientist looks at your shoes when he talks to you. [James]
  6. P!=NP? Why keep problems open, put N=1. [Malay]
  7. “Salami slicing” aka “Floating Point Currency Fraud,” especially as satirized in the movie Office Space, wherein hackers get bank accounts to round up decimals for fractions of money, and the programmers steal the bulk over time. [JD]
  8. XYZZY (courtesy of alfredtwo on Twitter) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xyzzy
  9. hanks_b on Twitter: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None! It’s a hardware problem.
  10. http://www.buchanan1.net/soft_eng_joke.shtml

Series of Tutorials/How-To articles, related to being a computing student:

These articles should be SHORT, like 400-600 words. Links to resources (“pointers”) and sidebars would be GREAT additions.

  • how to create a research poster
  • how to submit to peer-reviewed journals
  • how to pitch a conference talk
  • how to deliver a conference talk
  • how to decline an opportunity graciously (when you’re too busy to take on anything more!)
  • how to demo your code samples to potential employers
  • how to manage and take advantage of your personal network (jobs, conferences, interns

Testimonials about school-related experiences

  • testimonial about a particular school, department, contest, moment of academic life (e.g., defense)
  • include 1 thing that went right and 1 thing that went wrong
  • 400 words each – every short!
  • could ask previous XRDS editors to write these, people who are our “alumni”

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