Blu-ray did it?

The first time I heard about Blu-ray was from Sony. 2 or 3 years ago, I first heard them trying to "sell" the world a new format for high definition video, during the early stages of the Playstation 3's inception, while marketing their Blu-ray players. At the same time, Toshiba's HD DVD format looked more attractive to most people and even companies.
Although I'm still uncertain if the format "war" is already over or not, as of the 4th of January 2008, Sony seems to have won the competition after Warner Bros' public announcement: the company will drop support for HD DVD in favor or Blu-ray. If all the other major film producers follow Warner Bros' steps, in favor of a more globalized/generalized format, what will Toshiba do?
Can we say this war is over?

Update (08 Jan, 2008):

It was surprising for me how quickly this happened, but as of today Paramount Pictures, another major film production company, announced in the Financial Times that it is "poised to drop support of the HD DVD", in favor of the Blu-ray format, 4 days after Warner Bros announced their decision. It's unquestionable that Paramount Pictures made up their mind, in order to compete in the market with the same standards, even after once having signed an exclusivity agreement with the HD-DVD consortium, dropping Blu-Ray format.
More updates are sure to come!

Update (10 Jan, 2008):
According to Variety, it seems that Universal's exclusivity contract to backing HD-DVD format has ended. This and the fact that Paramount had found a clause in their contract with the HD-DVD consortium that allows them to escape the exclusivity obligation, could mean that the outcome of the "high definition video format war" may be already as good as over, since the Blu-ray backers are already too much and too powerful.

Update (17 Feb, 2008):
The death of HD-DVD was made official, after Wal-Mart decided it would no longer carry HD-DVD media. Although it seems that the winner of this "battle" was Sony, it is still questionable wether Blu-Ray will be successful or not...

Recruiting processes for internships at Portugal

I don't know much about the rest of the world concerning internships for university students (though I'm a bit curious about it) but here at Europe, and Portugal in particular, most (?) "integrated master" programmes in Engineering specify a requirement for students before they can get their master's degree: to write a thesis or to apply to a company/organization's project and make an internship. When taking the latter into consideration, the "funny" part comes when the companies implement their respective recruiting process, in order to recruit students for internships. That's what I'm going to talk about, here, after what I've experienced, and after what I've seen happening with friends and colleagues of mine.
Some of the things that happened were simply ridiculous, others ironic, most of them just regular, and just one of them I can call it simply "splendid". Obviously, I will not spoil any companies' names here, but rather draw out some conclusions and personal opinions about the maturity and efficiency of the recruiting processes and also take the companies' reputation into account.
All started a month before (If I'm not mistaken) the list of projects for internships came out, when there were already a couple of companies that were trying to recruit students for internship programmes. From the beginning, the first of those companies was very professional: they sent several emails to students, made phone calls, sent letters, offered flight tickets to Lisbon and payed lodgings expenses for students who went there to apply for an exam, in order to be able to join the internship programme of that company. The students that couldn't pass the test also heard the "why" and "what could be better" from the persons who interviewed them. I admit this was one of the companies that was highly regarded as very professional, and was far much better than my expectations. At the same time, there was also a huge company (also as in famous) whose recruiting process standards and maturity levels didn't live up too much for my expectations: first they didn't personally contact the students to announce themselves like "We're from _company here_"; second, they made their recruiting process solely based on the students' resumes, this means no interviews, no tests, nothing; and, finally, they didn't spend 15 minutes writing an email to the students who were not selected. Absolutely ridiculous. The last one of the companies that started recruiting a little before the lists came out, made a big show off at the presentation to the students, as it is regarded as a very powerful international company. Students were happy to think they had the chance to apply for that company, but that company made a big mistake in my opinion: they pressed the students too much. They demanded a YES/NO from the students who were selected by them and asked them to immediately start working 1 month before the internship is supposed to initiate, when students are preparing for exams. To the students who were refused, they sent a poorly written email stating something like "I'm sorry you were not huuuuh.... selected. Sincerely, _signature here_". The students asked them for a delay, but the company said that they were going on Christmas vacations and they couldn't wait any longer (1 week before the lists with all the companies came out). Most of the students said no, and few said yes. The 3rd of January, 2008 I found out they are still looking for students. After watching most of my friends saying "NO", who happen to be great students and very competent in my opinion, I doubt that this "technique" that the company enforced had any positive effect at all! Guess what? Most of those students already selected the company where they're going to work, which does not have the same reputation but shows much more expertise than these so called "big international companies". There were some companies who sent emails to the students stating something like "You'll have to be present at the interview at 9 o'clock AM at _Cú-de-Judas_" instead of asking them if that's fine for them by phone, since email may not always be the fastest way to contact someone during the Christmas' and New Year's period. I don't know the best equivalent expression for "Cú-de-Judas" (in Portuguese) but it's like a place/location no one ever heard of, not even the postman knows where it is (as in far and unknown)!
All of this just to say that (just my opinion), from what I could experience, the "big" and "famous" factors for companies do not actually mean they employ a professional recruiting process. It's not a matter of 1+1=2.

"The Top 10 Reasons: The Ruby Programming Language : Sucks!"

Today, while I was surfing the web, I came across one of the most interesting presentations I ever found, as far as I can remember (don't trust my memory, please). Not just because it's about the Ruby programming language, which I really like very much, but also due to the design and sarcasm that was put into the presentation.
The presentation is from RubyConf 2003, by Yukihiro Matsumoto (a.k.a "Matz") - the creator of Ruby - and can be found at slideshare:

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