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I started out with punch-cards on the HP-2000 in the mid-1970s... Yes, I remember! ;-)

At the time the AT-style keyboard connector was put on PCs (early 1980s), nobody ever dreamed we'd be having roomfuls of these things all cabled up to a single monitor/keyboard/mouse.

But the AT-style ("old" style) keyboard ports were hot-swappable.

(Again, this was back in the days when IBM did something and everybody followed.)

No. The PS/2 came out in the late-1980s if memory serves. But the industry standard remained "old style" keyboard plugs up until just a few years ago... say 96~97. By that time, IBM was just another player in the commoditized PC industry.

No, the industry-wide switch did NOT happen just because IBM came out with the PS/2. It happened a decade later. I bought my last "old-style" motherboard in 1998, which was just about the time when they were starting to get scarce (well, here in Taiwan anyway). (And I bought it specifically because I already had a KVM switch for the old-style keyboard (w/ serial mouse) and had a couple of machines still in service that didn't even have PS/2 ports.

The kind of switching talked about here just wasn't envisioned, and in fact, would have been considered insane.

Hmm... no, when the changeover actually occurred (late 1990s) this kind of switching was already commonplace. And the price of any serial device had already dropped more-or-less to commodity levels. (Hell, by that time we didn't even have to ask whether or not it had a 16550A chip!)

Actually, the most sensible explanation I've heard so far is that RS-232 is half-duplex and PS/2 is full-duplex. But I don't even know if this factoid is accurate... let alone why it would make a significant difference with stuff like kbds and mice...

But eventually technology catches up, and the marriage of USB with keyboard/mouse permits the right thing to happen.

Yes, I'm planning to buy a USB kbd and KVM soon. I need to upgrade my systems anyway, now that the new Debian is out... just busy with other shit lately...

Frankly, by the time this "sea-change" occurred, there was plenty of reason to anticipate losing the connection to any given input device, and yet nobody ever thought to upgrade the PS/2 protocol to make it hot-swappable. That's what always made me wonder what those motherboard designers were smoking... ;-)

Anyway, what's done is done. Just gotta deal with it... I'm just curious about the motivation behind it. And I still don't have a satisfactory answer... :-/

--jrd

PS: Here's some info on PS/2 ports that might be of interest to folks who know more about electronics that I do...

How many replies here say "they want to throw H1-Bs out, they want to throw H1-Bs out". I haven't seen any serious proposal to throw H1-Bs out, nor does Congressional Representative Tancredo's bill have to do with this. 195,000 H1-Bs can come in every year, a cap that was raised just recently, and many people want to lower that number at least to what it was a few years ago, especially with so many experienced people having their wages cut or being unemployed. Legally, H1-Bs must be the prevailing rate, but every study has shown they are paid below the prevailing rate, even the government reports say this - thus they are lowering the bill rate even though legally this is not supposed to happen. Also, the money paid for an H1-B visa is supposed to go for worker training but Bush wants to use the money instead to bring in more H1-Bs and have their paperwork done faster. This is not about the H1-Bs who are here, this is about the H1-Bs the ITAA wants to come in tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and next year.

I should also note that Harris Miller of the ITAA who is mentioned in the article is pure evil. Since this all affects my WALLET I pay very close attention to this. A lot of posters here admit they are H1-Bs. For some reason they feel compelled to fight against us to keep the door open for more H1-Bs. I don't know why they want to do this as it just lessens their chance for getting a green card, I really can't perceive why they're doing it at all, but it does make me understand why some people want to throw them all out. At least many of the people were honest that they were H1-Bs, thus, a lot of the comments you see here and moderation has a big agenda behind it. As does mine - I'm looking out for my interests, who isn't? I don't know why they're obsessed with keeping the H1-B visa cap high since they're already in, as it just pisses us off against all H1-Bs and lowers their chance for a green card. Maybe they're just stupid.

H1-Bs aren't the only issue of importance although it's up there. FLSA, section 1706, there are many issues which we should be thinking about. Doctors and Lawyers are smart, they have professional associations like the AMA and ABA, virtually every profession is organized in some fashion, with IT workers though, I guess everyone prefers playing Warcraft III and thinking they're a supergenius. When they survive the first and maybe second round of layoffs, they say those people were dead wood and all of this doesn't matter to them, the world's greatest programmer. But then the profession-wide salary and hourly bill rate drops. Suddenly those 60 hour weeks and 24/7 oncall are for less money - factoring in inflation, a bit less. The ITAA has been fighting to drive down our wages for years and they don't even know it, dumbasses like them will have to learn the hard way. They think the only people who worry about this are people who were paid $100k to write HTML, the reality is that the people most concerned about this are usually very competent in their particular field. Only an idiot doesn't worry about their bill rate and lets themselves get walked all over by the ITAA (funded by Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.)

In closing, as usual I find many of the postings regarding this issue sickening and repugnant. At least most of the posters admit they are H1-Bs, the fact that their side is posted so much and modded up so high is testament to how large this problem is. Read Norm Matloff's "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage" to learn more, it covers all the bases. And as I said, H1-B is not the only issue - FLSA, section 1706, there's a lot of things to think about.

Here's my web page on these topics. Reading the replies here has me nauseated, BUT, there are a mass of people who think as I do, and we communicate and are helping organize things like discussed in this article, so knowing that gives me hope. We need every person on board to help us move this forward. The ITAA is coming to take money out of your pocket, only by joining together and organizing can we fight this. Also, people usually reply to my posts replying to things I never said, when I say organize they start listing why they don't like unions. Where did I say unions? I said organize together and fight for your own common interests like every other damned profession. The ITAA (Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.) are an organization attacking us, so what's so odd about organizing to defend ourselves from the ITAA, if we're all alone and isolated they'll just pick us off one at a time. Organize means organize how YOU want to - if you want a guild, join a guild, if you want a union, join Washtech/CWA, if you want a professional association, join a good one, or join IEEE and stir up a ruckus in their old-line, do nothing, corporate-sponsored meetings. A lot of people are stupid - they don't want to be in a union so they get up and shout that no IT person is allowed to be in a union. Uh, no, that means that's what you don't want in your particular situation right now. I personally do not want a union, I like the professional associations and guilds more, but I'm not going to be a little sycophantic lapdog for my manager and condemn unions - if someone wants to be try to form a union, more power to them - right now, telecommunications, government and aerospace has a lot of unionized IT people and I would personally love to see it spread to BODY SHOPS. But by and large, aside from body shops, I am going for the association/guild route. But I am not going to condemn anyone who wants a union, I only condemn the lapdogs and sycophants for the ITAA.

It's a global market, folks - if you want to keep your jobs and their 80K salaries, you've got to be better at something than your international competition, just like a steel manufacturer or anybody else who competes in the global economy.

The problem is that you may have that special something that ought to set you apart from the other workers, but the HR departments won't take notice. They'll think, "okay, this guy says he can do X, but we'd have to pay him more. I'm sure this other guy from Ovbranistan can learn to do it just as well as he could, and we only have to pay him 66% of the normal wage.

HR is so narrow-minded these days that generally the things that make a good programmer aren't even factored into the decision process.

This article is what got me all riled up about not just the H1B situation, but industry hiring practices in general. It's worth a read.

Due to an extensive public relations campaign orchestrated by an industry trade organization, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a rash of newspaper articles have been appearing since early 1997, claiming desperate labor shortages in the information-technology field. Frantic employers complain that they cannot fill many open positions for computer programmers.

[...]

Yet readers of the articles proclaiming a shortage would be perplexed if they also knew that Microsoft only hires 2% of its applicants for software positions, and that this rate is typical in the industry. Software employers, large or small, across the nation, concede that they receive huge numbers of re'sume's but reject most of them without even an interview. One does not have to be a ``techie'' to see the contradiction here. A 2% hiring rate might be unremarkable in other fields, but not in one in which there is supposed to be a ``desperate'' labor shortage. If employers were that desperate, they would certainly not be hiring just a minuscule fraction of their job applicants.

The hidden agenda of the ITAA public relations campaign which began in 1997 turned out to be to leverage Congress to increase the yearly quota of H-1B work visas, under which employers were importing tens of thousands of programmers to the U.S. each year. The campaign succeeded, with President Clinton signing the increase into law in October 1998. Yet in 1999 the industry started calling for even further increases in the visa quota, which it attained in October 2000.

It's funny, politicians had basically the same idea in mind for this country, too. The idea was that, if only we could teach all those f#$%ing people in the slums and ghettoes how to be software engineers, we could cure poverty!

Then the NASDAQ went to hell and people finally started to get a clue: gee, maybe there isn't actually demand for IT workers out there!

1. http://www.zazona.com
2. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
3. http://www.nasscom.com

See, the problem with using "modern farming methods" is that they end up causing an upward cycle of utilization. It gets to a point that you end up spending more to produce than you are getting back.

But modern farming methods include crop rotation and the practice of leaving land fallow for a cycle to allow it to regenerate.

The problem with your statement is that you are assuming that the only way a modern farmer can increase crop yields is by increasing the levels of fertilizer. Simple practices like crop rotation and leaving land fallow have been show to 'recharge' the land. Google for details.
It has also been show to reduce weeds.

I did this myself a couple years ago. I found it not nearly as hard as it seemed back when I was 20, mostly because I did the homework. :)

The best advice I can give you is to get the book "How to Ace Calculus" and follow the advice therein. The book is enlightening, engaging, and even funny.

... for anyone thinking of entering the IT industry as a life-long career:

Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage by Dr. Norman Matloff.

If you still want to get into IT after reading that (warning: it's very long), then you can continue with the programming courses.

Nathan

This is the third question Norm Matloff answers in his very well-researched paper

"Debunking the Myth of a Software Labor Shortage", I'll just cut and paste from that -

Question: The industry claims that if it cannot bring H-1B workers to the U.S., it will be forced to move software operations to where the workers are overseas. Is this true?

This is a bogus threat, an obvious contradiction: Why does the industry want to bring Indian programmers to the U.S. as H-1Bs in the first place? Why not just employ those programmers in India? The answer is that it is not feasible to do so.

The fact is that, although a small amount of work is done abroad (largely old mainframe software), this will not escalate to become the major mode of operation of the industry. The misunderstandings caused by long-distance communication, the problems of highly-disparate time zones and so on result in major headaches, unmet deadlines and a general loss of productivity.

Just look at Silicon Valley. This is the most ``wired'' place in the world, yet those massive Silicon Valley freeway traffic jams arise because very few programmers telecommute. They know that face-to-face interaction is crucial to the success of a software project.

See
Section 9.5 for a more indepth answer.

This is the third question Norm Matloff answers in his very well-researched paper

"Debunking the Myth of a Software Labor Shortage", I'll just cut and paste from that -

Question: The industry claims that if it cannot bring H-1B workers to the U.S., it will be forced to move software operations to where the workers are overseas. Is this true?

This is a bogus threat, an obvious contradiction: Why does the industry want to bring Indian programmers to the U.S. as H-1Bs in the first place? Why not just employ those programmers in India? The answer is that it is not feasible to do so.

The fact is that, although a small amount of work is done abroad (largely old mainframe software), this will not escalate to become the major mode of operation of the industry. The misunderstandings caused by long-distance communication, the problems of highly-disparate time zones and so on result in major headaches, unmet deadlines and a general loss of productivity.

Just look at Silicon Valley. This is the most ``wired'' place in the world, yet those massive Silicon Valley freeway traffic jams arise because very few programmers telecommute. They know that face-to-face interaction is crucial to the success of a software project.

See
Section 9.5 for a more indepth answer.

Never forget that:

• Over 80% of the American public opposed expansion of the H1-B program [ucdavis.edu].
• The H1-B program was expanded by 40% last year, in the middle of a tech recession [imdiversity.com].

These are the same people who said that 450,000 jobs went >unfilled last year because there were not enough qualified technical people. Let's get some truth on the scene here (previously linked from slashdot here, here, and here). The ITAA is an industry spokes-puppet which is trying to spread a misconception that there is no jobs shortage, and that there is no unemployment, so that the industry can beg Congress for more slave labor force called H-1B. And I'm not referring to merely having more people than there are jobs. The real danger of the H-1B program the ITAA is constantly promoting is the fact that employees under this program:

• are forced to work longer hours
• are forced to work unusual conditions
• are treated badly and with disrespect
• cannot complain for fear of being deported
• cannot change jobs for better conditions or higher pay

That last one is especially sinister because it means that the usual market forces, supply and demand, and competition for skills, is NOT allowed to function for H-1B workers, giving employers a windfall of what is essentially cheap slave labor. They are hired into jobs the employers claim require extended skills, and paid only the average programmer salary (not the near double amounts such skills would normally draw) because the H-1B law only requires the average to be paid based on all programmers (not specifically those with the required skills).

In other words, what the ITAA is spouting is a bunch of crock.

At the time, it was pretty darn cool. But soon we laughed hard at the people who bought one.

See Osborne History

Everyone and their brother has free speech as an issue.

What "geeks" need right now is to know how to make a point about the fact that:

• Over 80% of the American public opposed expansion of the H1-B program.
• The H1-B program was expanded by 40% last year, in the middle of a tech recession.

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  If you permit your computer and a UC Davis network connection to be used for unauthorized commercial use, such use will be a violation of the campus acceptable use policy (PPM 310-16, Exhibit A). We advise you to respond negatively to a Kazaa, or Kazaa affiliate request to use your computer and UC Davis network connection for commercial use that has not been authorized by the University of California.

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Why not have public patents?

Sorry, allow me to clarify. We would be happy to support a Solaris machine getting connected, and configuring any software that you might like to use with it. However if you seriously think that I would support Oracle for you...well you are almost correct. I would be happy to help you find resources such as UCDavis, Kennesaw, and Oracle-Tutorial to help you out. However if you think that supporting Internet Software and doing full out support for Programming/Database Management can be confused, then you're never going to have an Internet connection because there is no ISP that will be right for you. I have helped customers figure out faults in their webpages, etc before, and I am sure I will do it again, however I think you may have taken my posting a little too far out of context :)

LLNL has been researching micropower impulse radar to 'image' the vocal chords, mainly for speech recogonition. The main site seems down, but you can get to it with google cache. Also check out ucdavis

The unpopular expansion of the H1-B program has caused massive dislocation in the tech industry with little popular debate.

Over 80% of the American public opposed expansion of the H1-B program. Still, the program was expanded last year, in the middle of a tech recession. White House sources available to this correspondent indicate that there is starting to be considerable dissent among personnel in the Bush administration on whether the expansion of the H1-B program should be continued. Bush has been a strong supporter of the H1-B program(McCain and Gore also supported the H1-B program- Leiberman was unusual in that he was one of four senators that abstained from or opposed the major Senate vote around H1-B expansion).

Does this pic do anything for you?

OpenGL 2.0 will doubtfully ever take a major stake of the market, since DirectX/Wintel clusters are marketed as "cheaper." There's a giant rendering farm at LLNL that is all DirectX, mainly because of the lack of availability of Linux/Unix Nvidia stereoscopic rendering drivers. They've been sitting on them for a while, but as you know, Nvidia is in bed w/ micro$oft (Xbox). It sucks when a great os such as Linux can't get decent drivers. Shame on you Nvidia!

My school's CIPIC lab has a immersive workbench, but requires proprietary OpenGL hooks for syncing w/ the shutter glasses.

1. That's "Debussy" not "Debussey"
2. I believe Pictures at an Exhibition is Mussorgsky, not Debussy.

The Associated Press reports that "U.S. companies and other groups applied for 342,035 H-1B work visas in 2001, up 14 percent from 2000, before the economy tumbled.", "The number accepted also rose by 40 percent..." and "About half ... are for computer related jobs." The article cites research by UC Davis Professor Norman Matloff saying that "wages of computer programmers and engineers working in the U.S. on the visas are 15 percent to 33 percent lower than those of U.S. citizens".

Mark Shevitz of VisaNow is quoted as saying, "I think it surprised everyone. All that you hear about in the media is these huge layoffs and the tech industry is just shedding workers."

Finally, the article reports "Bay Area companies Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel and Sun Microsystems were among the top users of the program in 2000, as were universities such as Harvard and Yale. The INS did not have numbers available on how many applications the companies filed last year amid layoffs.

----

BTW: It is illegal to use the H-1B program to lower wages from the rates prevailing in the absence of the program.

Here's information posted by an anti-H-!B activist at another site:

Additional information provided by an h1b activist (although I encourage people to avoid political action, there are far more effective things they can do with technology to deconstruct the edifice that did this to us because it is, after all, in existence because of technologists -- the real ones, not the Wired magazine ones):

80% of the US public opposed H1-B expansion. Part of what makes the bill increasing H1-B Visas so unusual is that it was so unpopular and was passed with very, very little debate.

Zazona is the most comprehensive site on the H1-B issue. Corrective legislation is now in a US congressional Committee. The philosophy of HR 3222 has been supported by a diverse group that includes Buchanan Supporters, Nader Supporters, and the National Urban League. HR 3222 is a compromise-it roles the level of new H1-B Visas back to 1998 levels and puts in place an unemployment adjustment mechanism.

H1-B Visa expansion was advocated by the ITAA. Organized opposition to H1-B includes:the AEA and the Programmers Guild.

You can Look at H1-B applications by company,state,city. You can write your Congressional representatives if you have a problem with the current H1-B situation. You can also write your state representatives. The only aspect of the H1-B issue that is in state jurisdiction is use of H1-B labor at state institutions. However, state representatives are influential in their parties-if your state representative writes a letter to congress it could mean a lot.

The Associated Press reports that "U.S. companies and other groups applied for 342,035 H-1B work visas in 2001, up 14 percent from 2000, before the economy tumbled.", "The number accepted also rose by 40 percent..." and "About half ... are for computer related jobs." The article cites research by UC Davis Professor Norman Matloff saying that "wages of computer programmers and engineers working in the U.S. on the visas are 15 percent to 33 percent lower than those of U.S. citizens".

Mark Shevitz of VisaNow is quoted as saying, "I think it surprised everyone. All that you hear about in the media is these huge layoffs and the tech industry is just shedding workers."

Finally, the article reports "Bay Area companies Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel and Sun Microsystems were among the top users of the program in 2000, as were universities such as Harvard and Yale. The INS did not have numbers available on how many applications the companies filed last year amid layoffs.

----

BTW: It is illegal to use the H-1B program to lower wages from the rates prevailing in the absence of the program.

Here's information posted by an anti-H-!B activist at another site:

Additional information provided by an h1b activist (although I encourage people to avoid political action, there are far more effective things they can do with technology to deconstruct the edifice that did this to us because it is, after all, in existence because of technologists -- the real ones, not the Wired magazine ones):

80% of the US public opposed H1-B expansion. Part of what makes the bill increasing H1-B Visas so unusual is that it was so unpopular and was passed with very, very little debate.

Zazona is the most comprehensive site on the H1-B issue. Corrective legislation is now in a US congressional Committee. The philosophy of HR 3222 has been supported by a diverse group that includes Buchanan Supporters, Nader Supporters, and the National Urban League. HR 3222 is a compromise-it roles the level of new H1-B Visas back to 1998 levels and puts in place an unemployment adjustment mechanism.

H1-B Visa expansion was advocated by the ITAA. Organized opposition to H1-B includes:the AEA and the Programmers Guild.

You can Look at H1-B applications by company,state,city. You can write your Congressional representatives if you have a problem with the current H1-B situation. You can also write your state representatives. The only aspect of the H1-B issue that is in state jurisdiction is use of H1-B labor at state institutions. However, state representatives are influential in their parties-if your state representative writes a letter to congress it could mean a lot.

100BaseTX uses 2 pairs. However there were some earlier 100 Mbit technologies (100BaseT4, 100BaseVG) that did use 4 pairs. I found a bit of info here.

Hi, I currently work in the UC Davis sec lab (current project(s): HACQIT).

The basic problem with all IDS is in the confidence level of determining if something is an attack or just random garbage. Also, IDS have to be fast. If there's too much traffic (if you've been /.'d), you may not be able to check all attacks. Some methodogies start from the approach that deviating from a set of known safe operations is considered suspect. Other IDSes approach it from checking against a known-attack database. We're currently working on genetic algorithms and expert systems to correlate sensors and systems to detect and respond to attacks. The best approach I've seen is a complete kernel-level instrumentation of all system calls that's transparent and mostly undetectable. It would probably be DoS-able as well. The main prob is that you realy gotta have another comp to offload IDS checking.

Right now, nearly all IDSes are extremely primitive and consist of nothing more than snort rules and Perl scripts that call ipchains or something.

Btw, I went to RAID 2001 this year (hosted at UCD), it was fairly interesting.

Hi, I currently work in the UC Davis sec lab (current project(s): HACQIT).

The basic problem with all IDS is in the confidence level of determining if something is an attack or just random garbage. Also, IDS have to be fast. If there's too much traffic (if you've been /.'d), you may not be able to check all attacks. Some methodogies start from the approach that deviating from a set of known safe operations is considered suspect. Other IDSes approach it from checking against a known-attack database. We're currently working on genetic algorithms and expert systems to correlate sensors and systems to detect and respond to attacks. The best approach I've seen is a complete kernel-level instrumentation of all system calls that's transparent and mostly undetectable. It would probably be DoS-able as well. The main prob is that you realy gotta have another comp to offload IDS checking.

Right now, nearly all IDSes are extremely primitive and consist of nothing more than snort rules and Perl scripts that call ipchains or something.

Btw, I went to RAID 2001 this year (hosted at UCD), it was fairly interesting.

There have been several remarks say that you should continue to code. It is probably not a bad idea to continue coding, however, being a good leader/manager DOES NOT mean that you need to be a great coder. It helps to win the engineer's respect, but if you follow sports, you know that the best coaches were not necessarily great athletes in the sports they coach (e.g. Bela Karolyi in Women's Gymnastics) but they do have to understand both their people and the jobs that they do.

The most important thing is to ride out this current weakness in the economy and position yourself for a profitable and successful ride in the upswing. Don't get trapped into obscure or uninteresting technologies by chasing short term rewards.

There is a nice front end for the math articles in the arXiv. This FAQ has info about contributing math preprints to this well-run electronic preprint resource.

There is a nice front end for the math articles in the arXiv. This FAQ has info about contributing math preprints to this well-run electronic preprint resource.

The most preposterous thing about high-priced journals is that the "value-added" part of a journal is the peer review, which is done almost always for free. When an article is submitted it is sent out for review to someone whose research is close enough to understand the work. Getting an article to review is a chore; it can take many months to thoroughly review an article, many are poorly written and have annoying minor mistakes, and there is no recognition or pay associated to it. When it turns out that the journals are priced outrageously, that is the final straw for many. In general, reviewing articles is considered a nescessary public service, and since the editors of the highest-priced journals tend to be the super-big shots, it is not easy to refuse to review something. Hopefully, things will improve! The arXiv is great for preprints but the reviewing process is an important part of disseminating research so it will take more than that for things to get much better.

All the journals of the American Math. Society allow you to keep the copyright to your papers, and hence do anything you want with them. Of course, if you keep copyright you have to grant the AMS the right to publish your article. I know this is unusual, but I doubt it it totally unique.

There are numerous small journals which are not owned by conglomerates. In addition to those owned by professional societies like, AMS, SIAM, MAA, there are many which are "owned" by departments, e.g. Michigan Math Journal, Illinois Math. Jour., etc.

Good online versions are often lacking, I agree but, to a large extent, this need is met by the LANL preprint server (look here). If you post your article here at the same time you submit it for publication, it will be available for free to everyone in a variety of formats. Just make sure you submit to a journal which allows this.

This allows everyone access to your work and you still get the "kudos" when the paper is formally accepted and published.

In addition to my English course load, among the classes I took were calculus and chemistry (full year of each, mind you). I can't forget the physics, astronomy, and animal science courses, but the most enjoyable non-lit courses I took happened to belong to the Department of Engineering and Computer Science (as it was called then). Had I not needed to graduate and get a job quickly, I probably would've tried to squeeze in two last upper division ECS classes and take a minor in computer science as well.

Was I required to take all of those courses? No, of course not. Why did I take them? Genuine curiosity and interest. I felt that taking these particular courses would go a long way in making me a more well-rounded individual, both academically, personally, and professionally.

Where did all of that work get me? After working a few years in systems and network administration (of the *nix variety), I'm entering my second year teaching English at a high school here in Silicon Valley (and I'm the only English teacher at my school that incorpates math and science lessons into my literature curriculum).

Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be . . . Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.

I don't consider myself foremost a techie, and yet (sorry to toot my own horn) I'm more well-rounded than all of my techie/engineering friends working in industry.

The point of my babbling is this: be careful when saying techies are more well-rounded than non-techies. That's not always the case, and in my observations, is rarely the case.

In addition to my English course load, among the classes I took were calculus and chemistry (full year of each, mind you). I can't forget the physics, astronomy, and animal science courses, but the most enjoyable non-lit courses I took happened to belong to the Department of Engineering and Computer Science (as it was called then). Had I not needed to graduate and get a job quickly, I probably would've tried to squeeze in two last upper division ECS classes and take a minor in computer science as well.

Was I required to take all of those courses? No, of course not. Why did I take them? Genuine curiosity and interest. I felt that taking these particular courses would go a long way in making me a more well-rounded individual, both academically, personally, and professionally.

Where did all of that work get me? After working a few years in systems and network administration (of the *nix variety), I'm entering my second year teaching English at a high school here in Silicon Valley (and I'm the only English teacher at my school that incorpates math and science lessons into my literature curriculum).

Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be . . . Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.

I don't consider myself foremost a techie, and yet (sorry to toot my own horn) I'm more well-rounded than all of my techie/engineering friends working in industry.

The point of my babbling is this: be careful when saying techies are more well-rounded than non-techies. That's not always the case, and in my observations, is rarely the case.

In addition to my English course load, among the classes I took were calculus and chemistry (full year of each, mind you). I can't forget the physics, astronomy, and animal science courses, but the most enjoyable non-lit courses I took happened to belong to the Department of Engineering and Computer Science (as it was called then). Had I not needed to graduate and get a job quickly, I probably would've tried to squeeze in two last upper division ECS classes and take a minor in computer science as well.

Was I required to take all of those courses? No, of course not. Why did I take them? Genuine curiosity and interest. I felt that taking these particular courses would go a long way in making me a more well-rounded individual, both academically, personally, and professionally.

Where did all of that work get me? After working a few years in systems and network administration (of the *nix variety), I'm entering my second year teaching English at a high school here in Silicon Valley (and I'm the only English teacher at my school that incorpates math and science lessons into my literature curriculum).

Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be . . . Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.

I don't consider myself foremost a techie, and yet (sorry to toot my own horn) I'm more well-rounded than all of my techie/engineering friends working in industry.

The point of my babbling is this: be careful when saying techies are more well-rounded than non-techies. That's not always the case, and in my observations, is rarely the case.

This is old news. For those with a historical bent, there have been rugged, nasty, heavy portable computers for a long time.

Kaypro comes to mind, and you didn't have to worry about "sad mac" errors, StuffIT files, or all that jibber-jabber.

Plus, it weighed so much, if you dropped it on anything or anyone, it was destroyed, period. Try doing that with your neat little Photoshop laptop!

Seriously, this doesn't really seem to be too far away. Probably related to the fact that it's easier to see something closer. If I weren't so tired, I would probably be excited!

Nah, I walk to school. If I pass by you guys sitting in the gutter begging for spare change, I'll be sure to toss you some of my milk money.

You're wrong and way off topic... but I guess you knew that. Go here and see the comparison.

As another poster noted, there will be a record number or people posting without reading the article. Please read section 4: There Is No Desperate Shortage of Computer Programmers.

Human resources people are very picky about which resumes they forward to managers. If some script kiddie claims to be an expert in all the buzzwords, HR forwards their resume. If another applicant knows all the concepts upon which those buzzwords are based, their resume goes in the trash (HR doesn't know the difference).

I already took the one from the article, sorry.Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage

Note that by searching with it shortage+workers, you'll get:

3 Is There REALLY an IT Worker Shortage in the US? by Cliff on Saturday October 14, @06:20AM EST 535

3 H1B Tech Visa Workers Being Deported From U.S. by Hemos on Monday September 18, @09:52PM EST 1246

2 Management To Blame For IT Worker Shortage? by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 28, @02:15PM EST 396

2 The IT Labor Shortage by Hemos on Wednesday March 22, @03:22PM EST 531

2 H-1B Tech Workers May Be Severely Underpaid by Roblimo on Tuesday August 03, @06:23AM EST 310

2 Worker shortages: short-term and long-term by sengan on Sunday October 25, @09:19AM EST 191

2 Is There a Tech Labor Shortage? by CmdrTaco on Monday March 23, @08:04AM EST 48

2 Tech Labor Shortage Myth? by CmdrTaco on Thursday February 26, @05:13AM EST 31

(ad nauseum)

Cheers,

--fred

Congratulations, you're obviously in good shape. You're attending CMU, one of the best computer science schools in the country. You've interned for some of the most famous software companies in the world. You're obviously one of the brightest students out there, and your future is just as bright as you are.

But one thing I don't understand about bright people: they never seem to realize how bright they are and the perks that come with their intelligence. You'd think that, being bright, they would be able to figure this out. Maybe you haven't taken stats 101 at university yet?

Your personal experience in job market is just a piece of anecdotal evidence. It means nothing to the rest of the world. Not everyone has a CMU education, not everyone gets a job at Microsoft (only about 2% of people who apply to Microsoft actually get hired), and there are a lot of people out there who simply aren't as eligible as you are and aren't having the same success in the job market. That doesn't mean they don't exist, or that unemployment isn't a problem.

Again, I congratulate you on the success you have achieved already. You no doubt have a highly productive career developing software ahead of you. But you aren't being productive when you argue ridiculous propositions like "I have a job, therefore the job market isn't a problem".

I think leaving a DB wide open on the internet is akin to putting some very personal information in the garbage can outside your house, rather than in a locked safe as you meant.

Here are the laws of Texas, Massachusetts, and California for starters.
--

I graduated from University of California, Davis in the early 1990s, and had been using email for some five years up to that point. It was clear then that email was a preferred mode of communications, and it's only become more so.

I've been long stunned at the absolute lack of clue universities have had in not picking this up as a standard service. They already run services for thousands (or tens of thousands) of students, faculty, staff, and associated personnel. Keeping mail services open for alums wouldn't be much of an additional load, and, as a channel for communications and alumni donations, it should pay for itself many times over. Exceedingly short-sighted IMO.

And, no the Cal Aggie Alumni Association still lacks clue.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

Umm... no. There should be no confusion about the difference between permutations of the following (CS degree/no degree | hacker/cracker | self-taught/schooled). Just because people gravitate toward where the money is doesn't mean all geeks are equal. CS degreed geeks are certified geeks! CS degreed geeks are assumed to have intimate knowledge of computers at every level of detail; down to where the Physicists and Material Scientists take over. That's the whole idea behind accredited engineering degree programs. That's why I switched majors from CS to CSE
That's Computer Science.
NOT:

• CounterStrike
• a 6-week seminar, were everyone gets an "A"
• a For-Dummies (TM) book
• something you can find in a cereal box
• a Napster(TM) download

I know that people need something to pay the bills; so IT/Computer-related work seems to be the quick and easy solution. Pretty soon, geek jobs won't be cool and the mainstream (and money) will shift. I don't care, I'm in for the long-haul.

School is really my plan to avoid work. Maybe I should get into research! Then, I won't have to produce anything of marketable value!

Umm... no. There should be no confusion about the difference between permutations of the following (CS degree/no degree | hacker/cracker | self-taught/schooled). Just because people gravitate toward where the money is doesn't mean all geeks are equal. CS degreed geeks are certified geeks! CS degreed geeks are assumed to have intimate knowledge of computers at every level of detail; down to where the Physicists and Material Scientists take over. That's the whole idea behind accredited engineering degree programs. That's why I switched majors from CS to CSE
That's Computer Science.
NOT:

• CounterStrike
• a 6-week seminar, were everyone gets an "A"
• a For-Dummies (TM) book
• something you can find in a cereal box
• a Napster(TM) download

I know that people need something to pay the bills; so IT/Computer-related work seems to be the quick and easy solution. Pretty soon, geek jobs won't be cool and the mainstream (and money) will shift. I don't care, I'm in for the long-haul.

School is really my plan to avoid work. Maybe I should get into research! Then, I won't have to produce anything of marketable value!

I'm currently a soon-to-be-graduating fifth-year senior CS&E major at a UCD. I might be an exception, but prior to college I had extensive experience; however I do believe that many programmers in practice do not have CS degrees, and the ones that do are business oriented (only want to code). Coding to solve a math problem is cool, I've had a few classes where such is the case: in networks class we had to build a model and plot the result of a packet-based communication channel with noise, attenuation, inertia, buffering, and packet-loss; and in a statistics class, we had to run various Monte-Carlo methods on different distribution functions and plot the results. Fun stuff. Yeah, so, I'd like to not program *all* the time.

ProblemSolving = Good = Fun++;

Gimme a break, I'm taking modern physics and chemistry soon :)

(Maybe this is a bad place to do this, but I really need a job for the summer.)

I'm currently a soon-to-be-graduating fifth-year senior CS&E major at a UCD. I might be an exception, but prior to college I had extensive experience; however I do believe that many programmers in practice do not have CS degrees, and the ones that do are business oriented (only want to code). Coding to solve a math problem is cool, I've had a few classes where such is the case: in networks class we had to build a model and plot the result of a packet-based communication channel with noise, attenuation, inertia, buffering, and packet-loss; and in a statistics class, we had to run various Monte-Carlo methods on different distribution functions and plot the results. Fun stuff. Yeah, so, I'd like to not program *all* the time.

ProblemSolving = Good = Fun++;

Gimme a break, I'm taking modern physics and chemistry soon :)

(Maybe this is a bad place to do this, but I really need a job for the summer.)

I'm currently a soon-to-be-graduating fifth-year senior CS&E major at a UCD. I might be an exception, but prior to college I had extensive experience; however I do believe that many programmers in practice do not have CS degrees, and the ones that do are business oriented (only want to code). Coding to solve a math problem is cool, I've had a few classes where such is the case: in networks class we had to build a model and plot the result of a packet-based communication channel with noise, attenuation, inertia, buffering, and packet-loss; and in a statistics class, we had to run various Monte-Carlo methods on different distribution functions and plot the results. Fun stuff. Yeah, so, I'd like to not program *all* the time.

ProblemSolving = Good = Fun++;

Gimme a break, I'm taking modern physics and chemistry soon :)

(Maybe this is a bad place to do this, but I really need a job for the summer.)