# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

It does not make sense to become a programmer. [...] I think the trend of pure programming jobs will continue to go offshore, because in many ways, our computers and communications technologies enable that to happen. [...]

The key is big-picture design--what you would call system architecture or system design. It's understanding end-user needs and translating them into the detailed specifications, designs and architectures that can and will be shipped offshore.

It's what we call the user-facing, or customer-facing, aspects of computing, which is sometimes characterized as "computing plus X." We are emphasizing a lot more with our students that they need to understand something besides computing--like business, biology, chemistry, mapping, geography, information retrieval or history. Like anything in addition to computing, because the big win with computing is that you use computers to do things. And to be a creative computer architect or computing systems architect, you need to understand "X" as well as computing.