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ROTC-Like Program for Nerds
ThatGuyAZ writes "President Clinton announced this morning that he's proposing to put $91 Million into supporting the college educations of computer science students.
I'm wondering how much this might be in response to criticism that too many foreigners were in sensitive positions during the Y2K bug-fix stage. But that's just my guess..."
I suppose somewhere, people are thinking along the lines of a cyberspace force, similar to our other defense services (army, navy, air force, ...) who's job it would be to defend and fight in cyberspace when called on. Manning, training, equipping such a force could easily go way past $91M ...
The federal government placed those individuals there intentionally. They're cheaper to employ, and they (the FAA) had a budget to meet.
Back ontopic...
The only thing I can see coming out of this 'grant' is more MCSE's, BS's, and AS's without a clue. All the marginally intelligent CS/IT/IS hopefuls are near-automatically guaranteed admission to college or employment on their merit alone; Do we really need to hand out CS scholarships to people that would not normally pursue it if not for the extra $?
.sig: Now legally binding!
The problem is in education, and education starts early.
These same funds would be better spent on the younger grades. If this spending was maintained for 20 years, The entire nation would be more educated on CS (and also well stocked with secutiry experts) and how use and apply what they've learned.
_________________________
91 mil in scholarships in exchange for future public service.
Ok, wouldn't it be simpler to take that 91 million and use it to hire US citizens away from the private sector?
Oh wait, that would provide instant results instead of dissappointing results during the next guy's term.
--Shoeboy
Hey, what a marvellous career path for a computer science major - the US. Army!
It has all the qualities that suit a hackor best:
*rigid command hierarchy
*formalized attire
*shitty pay
*no respect from the public
*9-5 workday
*guns! (thrown in for ESR, I'm guessing - that clever clinton!)
And on top of all this, you get to work against your ideals by squashing online insurgency! Wonderful! Where can I sign up?
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
the first thing that sprung to my mind before i read the article was an image of a shaved headed teenager in a uniform sitting in trembling attention at a terminal while being yelled at by a smokey the bear hat wearing mean guy about how he 'just kill -9'd his buddy' by not recompiling a kernel correctly.
91 million does not seem like allotfor a govornment program, but consider: Even if half of that goes to administrative overhead (unlikely) there is still enough money to give about 400 people a free ride to ivy league colleges or places like Berkly and Caltech.
Offten, these kinds of programs only pay for thinks like books and tuition, not room and board. so the actual number of people who can be funded is higher, probably arround 600+. And since not everyone is going to places that cost 30K a year. Some may be going to good public CS schools like U of MD or IL, the actual number of students benifiting from the money would be clooser to a thousand.
a pretty good number
-Mateorabi
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
// literacy
:) )
More funding to computer literacy can do potential good.
// "paranoia"
I remember when the Feds were really obsessed with the "crackers" (literally pirate groups that crack copy protection of software and warez them out) and did these huge and invasive crackdowns that led to the Steve Jackson raiding controversy.
And that small children (I was one of them) were offered cash per person that they would squeal on who is such a cracker. (FYI, I didn't turn anyone in.
Not that this is (or is it?) Clinton's idea.
I don't want to see a "Big Brother" state of teenage computer coders being financially encouraged to turn in and monitor their fellow coders (most of them innocent).
Much of coding is learning from each other and sharing information and understanding. This involves a lot of trust and friendship.
I would hate to see government actions accidentally harming this trust, or the programming community.
P.S. It is not if you are legal what are you afraid of? Government officials/FBI sometimes appear to be ignorant of technology issues, and paranoid of things they don't understand, and many innocent (but suspicious appearing) young children can be harmed by this.
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
Back when President Clinton was campaigning for his second term in office, he spent a lot of time "trying to reach" young people. When asked during an interview how appealing to adolescents and teens will help him win an election, he said "Because I don't want this to be the first generation in American history to do worse than their parents."
I think this fund is motivated by his views on youth in America - wanting to encourage the next generation to get involved in a very lucrative field, and not some conspiracy theory. Just my 2 cents.
I have seen too much brutal competition among the CS crowd. Imagine starting now and graduating in a recession. It might be better to diversify your talents to include a stronger foundation if that field dries up. Get an electrical engineering degree. You will have many more opportunities, especially if the CS field is saturated when you need a job the most.
Start with building blocks in electronics with a BSEE, where you will build your computer, first in simple sections from latches and logic gates, to real wire wrapped monsters, complete with 8 bit bus and NTSC video. Write the software in assembly and make a crude interface to control simple devices like stepper motors making something such as an electronic bartender.
I felt it was more fun starting from scratch with a new computer and having the intimate knowledge how to make it tick.
I am thinking back to my first-year computer science classes. There were 180 first-years, bright-eyed and anxious to tackle programming and design and all that associated stuff.
60% dropped out after the first semester.
There were 15 people graduated from the department (including me).
This was not a particularly hard program (there wasn't a lot of math, which frightens some people off). It's just that most people can't hack the program (pun intended).
Computer science was one of the smallest departments too. Why? Well, we may be revered by business, who pay us good salaries to do relatively little work (compared to, say, a bricklayer) because we are in such demand. But do you know what the average high school student's impression (especially a girl) of a computer programmer/engineer/etc. is? Nerd. Dweeb. Egghead. They don't want to be perceived as such, so they pursue other fields that don't have that stigma attached to them. They can take their philosophy, psychology, etc. courses and earn the degrees that will allow them to flip my burgers for the rest of their lives.
Enrollment is on the rise, but people are just beginning to overlook the usual social stigma of being a computer programmer and see that it is not like that and that they can make a lot of money doing it. It's sad--there are student in the program not for the love of doing it, but for the eventual cash.
And that, my friends, is why we will always have a job, even in the toughest recession. Watch the psychology students starve, 600 fighting for one sales position at J.C. Penney's, while we will have our pick of the jobs.
assuming all of that $91M gets dispersed to the students
That is a pretty big assumption. Given how the government usually works, I'd be surprised if even half that amount actually went to students, the other half would likely disappear into the black hole of Washington beaurocratic overhead and administrative overhead.
In short, is Clinton wittingly or unwittingly loading people into a channel that Microsoft has surreptitiously bought outright? Maybe it would be better if computer education got _less_ money so people would be forced to think about theory and write their own stuff instead of taking how-to courses on commercial products. The world doesn't start and end with programmers- huge percentages of the computer courses of the world are really "Using Microsoft Works" and the like. Do we want that to become federally subsidized?
he will propose on Feb. 7, will request $91 million from Congress for computer security as part of an overall $2 billion budget "to meet our security challenges."
91 million? This seems like an awful lot of money for a program like this. Not that it isn't important, but for a "start up" it sure seems like much of this will be dedicated to administrative overhead and not to paying the "consultants"
"I will continue to work equally hard to uphold the privacy rights of the American people as well as the proprietary rights of American businesses," he said.
His previous decisions and policy on privacy rights blows chucks, I hope whatever he introduces for business proprietary, and intellectual property rights is solid. Now there is way too much confusion, law suits, etc.
The scholarship program would be modeled after the military ROTC program, aides said. College students would receive education subsidies to develop computer-security skills if they agree to work for the government after graduation.
Lets see here. If I were a computer science major or some flavor of, and was looking for opportunities upon leaving school, what would I do?
1. Take a GS 4 job with uncle Sam and make 30K on the high end, or
2. Take a job in the private sector making substantially more than 30K and enjoy the flexibility that comes with it.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
See the following link from the President's web site containing the full executive summary of the plan. Page 28 specifically deals with the scholarship plans.
There is also mention of setting up "meaningful" internship programs for college and promising high school students (I noticed a comment somewhere about the need to start the process earlier in a childs academic career). Please remember that this is a proposal, no details have been made public (i.e. eligible schools, amounts of scholarship, years of service required, etc.). I think this is an admiriable idea, and we should support efforts like these. If you have strong feelings regarding the implementation of this plan, WRITE YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES!!!!!
For those of you outside the United States, if you think this plan would help out technology in your country, WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. For those of you living where your views will not be heard by the powers that be, MOVE/SEEK ASYLUM!!!!
-la
The government is finally realizing the importance of computer security. It is the infrastructure of the US now and needs protection. In response to this, they're going to recruit, and more than likely also train CS students on the field of information security.
Hey, if you're already in school, then stop complaining, it wasn't meant for you. For those who wouldn't get to college otherwise, spending 3 years in a government job getting 1/2 of what you wouldn't have had at all otherwise sounds damn good.
--
How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Tell him the next version of Windows will be faster, more reliable, and easier to use!
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
This is reminding me too much of the federal programmers in Snow Crash -- the coding sweatshops with ridiculous beaurocracy, etc. Is there any way for the Feds to create a working environment I wouldn't hate? Barring that, for how long would I agree to work for them? (maybe a guess based on ROTC -- does anyone know?)
I think I'd rather be tens of thousands in the hole when i get out of college than be committed to a job that might suck.
--Jack
Not suprising that Clinton would use 'hack' incorrectly... he's probably still struggling with what the definition of 'is' is.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I'm a CpE major, and this is exactly the reason. I've seen way to many "computer people" who can't use a saudering iron, let alone understand gate logic. If one is going to go into a geek field, ya might as well LEARN the stuff, rather than just how to use it.
I totally disagree with that. I've seen the exact opposite.
There are way too many engineers out there who don't understand proper coding skills (because all they learned in school was Fortran) well enough to be able to create a bug-free system. The demand for programmers is huge, and these people are getting these jobs, because they have some programming experience, when all they really know how to do is sauder a board together.
Now this is not universal. Some of the brightest guys I know are EE geeks. But the vast majority of people with an EE degree don't want to code, and yet that's the majority of the jobs out there for EE's. If you want to code, go CS as you'll learn a lot more theory, which is worth it in the long run. The EE stuff you may need to know is not hard to pick up, whereas it can be hard to pick up coding when all you know is fortran.
Computer Engineering is a good idea, but poorly implemented at a lot of schools. It's basically a cross between EE and CS, but not getting into any depth on either one. If you're undecided between the two, then it may be worth looking at. But the CpE's I know (admittedly very few) couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. One guy I know who graduated with a 3.5+ average in CpE (he had a 1.5- overall) is also one of the stupidest people I have ever met in my entire life. He would be one of those people who couldn't understand which way to plug in the power cord.
CS people do have a nasty habit of not being well rounded at all.
I admit this is true to a certain extent, at least upon graduation. But you could say this about most majors, IMNSHO. The thing that provides a person well-roundedness is job experience.
Well, that's just my take on the subject..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yes, it will add a liability cost to every OS purchase. OS vendors would need liability reserves and reinsurance. So? That's normal practice in other industries. The cost might be less than people spend on anti-virus programs.
It's time for computing to grow up. This is a necessary step, and a normal one in the progress of an industry. Railroads were forced to accept liability for their actions early in this century; auto companies were forced into it in the 1960s and 1970s. Computing is now pervasive enough it's time for computing to accept its responsibilities.
I have some concrete proposals circulating for peer review in this area, and I'll have more to say about that in future.
It is worth reflecting on the fact that an Internet military power can be gained for extremely small amounts of money by countries that would otherwise not be able to attack/disrupt the more conventional military powers.
So now we have:
- The US military talking about it in a warfare sense [http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,33443,00.html]
- The US President talking about it a civil corps sense.
- And the NSA continuing to hoard its mindshare, feeds, and databases, in the spy sense.
Of course we also have the "Techies Day" [http://www.techiesday.com/ 600_press/620_clips/index.html] stuff going on in parallel with Gore touting the need to US techies and pointing out the extreme techie shortage.My feeling is that all of this is good. It is better than just the news itself. It is very good that the US government has the foresight (gasp) in addressing these current and future problems.
This is an annoying policy which is designed to make Clinton LOOK like he's doing something, but which will a) not actually fix the problems and b) have bad side effects.
Firstly, you can bet that the majority of that 91 million is NOT going into scholarships. The 91 million pays for the entire set of programs being set up, the scholarships are just being trotted out as the poster boy.
Secondly, how exactly is it good to be doling out money for scholarships? Yes, it's nice to be giving bright-eyed young students money for college, but remember that the money that's being given away was collected from the other bright-eyed young students who are having to work their way through school. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Thirdly, the new Clinton program includes the establishment of a new federal beaurocracy that, as usual, will be accountable to NOONE. Like, say, OSHA, or the EPA, agencies who are not directly accountable to the voting public but whose decisions carry the force of law. This is a Bad Thing.
Lastly, it doesn't even address the major problem of technical education in the US, which is that the majority of students that enroll in technical majors get weeded out DELIBERATELY by the universities and colleges that are getting paid to teach them. If only 80% of the people who went into those program graduated from them, we'd double the supply of high-tech workers and researchers immediately! It infuriates me that the attitude (at Penn State, at least) is that "oh, well, 60% will drop out or become business majors, nothing we can do." That should be a mark of failure for the university! An airline which only delivered 40% of its passengers to the destination they desired would be out of business damn fast, let me tell you.
What would I do make the situation better? I'd make the funding given out to colleges and universities dependent on the percentage of people who graduate from the majors of their choice (ignoring voluntary changes of major, and maybe not even then if the voluntary changes aren't really voluntary). Make the institutions of learning have to KEEP their students to earn their suppers!
Polemically yours,
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Let me say right now that I have never put cheese on a poor white boy. Besides, I thought a "cracker" was someone who partakes of crack cocaine.
"Una piccola canzone, un piccolo ballo, poco seltzer giù i vostri pantaloni."
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Maybe you first heard it in the 80's, but I first heard it in the mid-70's being applied to clever computer users. ("Clever" does not imply "pretty", "professional", or "perfect", but sometimes it is none and sometimes it is all of those meanings, depending upon the situation.)
You really have to LIKE CS to be good at it, and be good whne you graduate. Those who are just in it for the money are easy to spot, both by us, and hopefully, by companies.
I was talking about this with one of my undergraduate professors. He said that CS class sizes have grown a lot over the past decade. With a larger population of CS students, you would expect more good students, but he saw that the number of really good CS students was constant.
cpeterso
OK, this could either turn into a Retief-style CDT experiment or it could be the GI Bill of the 21st Century. I'm hoping for the latter, but since politicians are setting it up, betting on the former.
I regret that I have but one rev to give to my country.
Will in Seattle
Alright, so I'm getting ready to go to college, and while doing a fastweb search for scholarships, I noticed that the NSA was offering an undergraduate training program for students planning on majoring in computer science, language, or mathematics. I hate the NSA as much as just about any other slashdotter, and so I probably won't be applying myself, but I thought it was still pretty interesting.
Check out the info page at http://www.nsa.gov:8080/programs/emp loy/utp.html
Pretty creepy stuff...
I sometimes think about attacking the security problem by creating red teams that deliberately, systematically damage sites with bad security. Advantages: we get a better market for security products. A particular vulnerability can be exposed gradually over time, instead of exploited everywhere at once by a real adversary. Disadvantages: it's a nutty idea.
Right on, man. Unfortunately it's just the same here in the UK. Too much political correctness and not enough education, for fear of making life too hard for the little dears. Everything my kids (aged 4.5 and 6) have learned so far they learned here at home up to a year before the school got around to it.
Your description of modern schooling as 8-3 daycare is spot on. What's the fucking use of it at all? The schools aren't run for the parent or the children any more, they're run to satisfy the "teaching" staff's political agenda.
Yet another sign of the decline of Western civilisation.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Get up at 5am on an aircraft carrier 3000 miles out in the ocean. Clean toilets. Spend 6 months at a time at sea surrounded by ex convicts and guys who never take a shower. You're better off just getting good grades in your CS program and getting a job which can pay off your loans. There's a direct correlation between GPA and happiness which no ROTC program or anything else can defeat.
Okay--so Mr. Clinton wants to revitalize American technology by providing a new generation of workers with the skills for the new millennium (I didn't hear it, I didn't read it, but I somehow just know he said it). So he's proposing $91 million bucks to achieve this. To paraphrase a certain sports announcer:
Let's go to the adding machine tape!
We can play with this math all we want: we might see this program provide a free four-year ride to a thousand students. Or the program might provide a $1400 stipend--once--to 39,000 Computer Science majors. But anyway you slice it, this doesn't amount to much more than a trivial gesture. If the nation has a "shortage" of 250,000 programmers no stipend, whether 1400 bucks or fourteen thousand bucks, is going to solve that problem.
Above and beyond that--this is dumb. You don't want kids taking up programming "just for the money" anymore than you want to be treated by a doctor who is "just in it for the money." The whole point of the med school hazing process is to weed those guys out. A lot of kids think they'll make bucks programming--they're the ones that disappear. The programmers who last--and who are invaluable--do it because they love the challenge, they love to use their brains, and they love the constant learning process. And more often than not, the best programmers were NOT Computer Science majors. (Truth in hiring time: I generally view a Computer Science major as a negative on a resume. I would vastly rather see a liberal arts major, business, or engineering coupled with a CS minor or a distribution in programming.)
Bottom line: this is a facile political gesture, from a president who has turned the facile political gesture into an art form.