The subtle differences between various Computer related majors are confusing, especially at the age when one makes their University choices. 6 Degrees of Computer Science is a good place to start, but the choice is not always clear. Some delegate the choice of their program to luck -- apply to all, and see which one they are accepted at from the University of their choice. This does not necessary work if ones academic performance is well enough to earn multiple offers. Now what?

There is this perception that a typical programming job involves being locked away in a grey cubicle at some LargeCorp Inc., buried in mediocre tasks, and rarely seeing the light of day. While this grim illustration is not exactly the case, there is some motive to such stereotype.

So we’ll be going on an adventure through on-site programming positions that are anything but typical.

Martin Kess, one of the founding members of CompSci.ca, has been busy working on a fantastic looking game for the BlackBerry platform: Addictive Tower Defense. This isn't the first of the quality games to come from the CompSci.ca community members, but it certainly raises the bar once again.

I caught up with Martin to talk about the game.

I’m often asked about available jobs for Computer Science students. More so in light of the recent economic downturn. A new trend that I’m observing, since 2 years ago, is that there is a substantial increase of job postings from much smaller start-up companies.

Economic hardship breeds innovation. It puts large corporations into a compromised position, and that opens up an opportunity for small, agile, smart, inexpensive, but super-productive startups to come into play and compete with established corporations.

While a lot of people scream that RIAA/MPAA are not keeping up with the times and technology, we are not really any closer to having an entertainment distribution system that takes advantage of available technology to make it convenient for consumers and one which fairly compensates the industry that creates the said content. So I propose starting a discussion, by presenting a scheme that pulls p2p technology and current copyright laws closer together.

Byte Club TV's take on University of Toronto's Computer Science. CS... in video... with pink hippos.

Greg: “One of the things that I think the department has to do, is a better job at reaching out to people to get that message across; is that almost anybody who can program well is pretty much guaranteed an interesting job, that actually does something useful to society.”