And the blog post (no transcript): http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=442
One can avoid running PowerPoint by viewing them through the Google Docs Viewer:
https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottaaro...
Of the ~50 or so coders I've hired over the years for my co, the best were always ones with domain knowledge from another field. They weren't the best coders from a technical point of view, but were the best at being able to deliver working software to clients faster. More often than not the ones without extra knowledge were unable to grasp the domain problems, and their solutions always needed rejigging.
Edit: By being unable to grasp, I mean that the distance from their solution to the optimal solution was always quite large. More often than not their design, while designed for extensibility was flexible in a dimension that didn't move towards the optimal solution. So the extra engineering time was wasted.
I don't know that I would hire a pure CS grad again, and all the interns I have now I strongly recommend they concurrently study other fields. Computers are a means to an end. I suggest studying both the means and the end.
Seems like recently theres been a lot of news on why its not relevant or unnecessary - which isn't optimistic news for me since thats what I'm going to be studying at University later this year!
Domain knowledge! Get some!
But the audio quality is poor. It seems like when someone high profile (like MIT TechTV) goes to the effort of recording and posting video, they could spend a few more bucks and put a microphone on the speaker (or hook in to whatever audio system that handheld mic was hooked up to).
As a general rule, using the build in mic of a video camera at the back of a room will yield tolerable audio only in very rare conditions (a room that's "dead" acoustically, and a very quiet or nonexistent audience).
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/llimllib/the-future-of-comp...
