Competition Fosters Next Generation Of Linux Talent

gollum123 writes "Yahoo reports that about 3,000 students from 75 countries registered for the 2004 IBM Linux Scholar Challenge before registration closed Oct. 31, the largest turnout in the competition's history. This year's winners will be revealed in January at LinuxWorld in Boston. Each entry consists of a 1,200-word essay that can describe the solution to one of 29 Linux-related challenges IBM poses as part of the competition. Entrants, who must be enrolled full time at an accredited university, aren't limited to these challenges and can suggest and solve their own problems. The IBM-provided challenges include asking entrants to identify deficiencies in Linux and propose solutions, describe how to build a high-availability application that would provide failover capability across multiple IBM servers, and improve boot time on a Linux-based IBM ThinkPad."

Comments

Requirements are lame

[superpulpsicle]

"full time at an accredited university"

That's just wrong. Some of the best programmers and computer folks I ever met, didn't even go to colleges.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

... and that's just wrong for so many reasons. You learn so much more at college where you're taught and learn from others about alternatives, formal methodology, etc. The days of high school IT men/women making any significant money is rapidly disappearing.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with that comma near, the end?

Re:Requirements are lame

[Omniscientist]

You are probably correct, I can see no harm in IBM accepting people who have little or no college experience but are damn good at Linux hacking and proposing some good new ideas. IBM is just limiting itself there.

Re:Requirements are lame

[greenreaper]

Guess what - if you're not at an accredited university, you don't count as a scholar! Maybe you learnt stuff in your spare time, but if you are hands-on rather than making a habit of it, it doesn't count. :-)

(OK, so people at high school get excluded, too, but I suspect if they managed to produce an adequate answer I suspect they'd let it slide, and probably sponsor him/her through univerersity as well)

Re:Requirements are lame

[MBCook]

It's a scollarship challenge.

If you don't go to school, you don't need a scollarship.

If you want to complain that it shouldn't be a scollarship challenge, that's one thing. But don't complain about a scollarship challenge requiring people to be students.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Ssssh. Communication skills aren't important! You don't need college!

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

It's for a scholarship, you dolt.

A. College. Scholarship.

Re:Requirements are lame

[JPriest]

Actually once you get in the door it is more about what you can do and less about what is on your resume.

Re:Requirements are lame

[kfg]

. . .if you're not at an accredited university, you don't count as a scholar!

scholar n.

1.
a. A learned person.

KFG

Re:Requirements are lame

[erick99]

It's not wrong because you don't like it. You may wish they had done it differently but it is their game and their money. Besides, it seems to be an academically oriented competition.

Re:Requirements are lame

[greenreaper]

. . .
2. One who attends school or studies with a teacher; a student.

IBM is using this definition. Which seems obvious when you regard how the competition is targeted - the article even mentions "to drum up enthusiasm among students"

Re:Requirements are lame

[erick99]

That is true enough. However, a lot of really nice corporate doors are closed to those without a college degree. I see a lot of jobs in the paper and online where a college degree is required to apply. I don't know if that is fair or not. I imagine this policy keeps some good people out, but, in the long wrong, it seems to meet their needs.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who has not availed himself of a good formal education past high school. You can't know what you are missing because you didn't go. My resume gets me into a lot more doors than one without a college degree. These days, it's even better to have some graduate degrees as well. Some I.T. jobs require a Masters. Why limit yourself like that??

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know many students looking for "scollarships"...

Re:Requirements are lame

[YoungBonzi]

Scholarship, my lad... scholarship. My new Fantasy site

Re:Requirements are lame

[nomadic]

It's not wrong because you don't like it. You may wish they had done it differently but it is their game and their money. Besides, it seems to be an academically oriented competition.

Yep, especially since it's an essay competition. How often does the self-trained student write essays?

Besides which, considering how many CS graduates are almost illiterate in English even after college, I shudder to think of what violations of the language programmers without any college would come up with.

Re:Requirements are lame

[kfg]

The definition I posted was suffcient to rebut the claim that one must be matriculated at an accredited university to be a scholar.

Some scholars are college students, some are not (one would hope, for instance, that college instructors were scholars).

Any other claims or definitions are irrelevant to the point addressed.

Furthermore, there is nothing in your profered definition that mentions accredited universities.

However, the fact that this is a contest restricted to college students is selfevident, hence the parent post, which would be meaningless otherwise, but I did not address his point.

KFG

Re:Requirements are lame

[zurab]

If you don't go to school, you don't need a scollarship.

Unless you can't go to college because you cannot afford it, or you were forced to drop out for financial reasons - then scholarship would be a lot of help.

Re:Requirements are lame

[greenreaper]

Not in IBM's eyes. I kinda thought that this context was obvious given the fact that the whole post was about IBM's competition. You're technically right that a scholar in general doesn't have to be, but so what? :-)

IBM would be unlikely to accept such a person into their competition, and that was my point - in their view, your definition of scholarship does not apply.

As for the accreditedness stuff, I would assume that's because they don't want people in your category saying "Oh, I'm from the University of DeFry" when they're really moonlighting as a programmer while working full-time at the local McDonalds. ;-)

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, actually you are sooooo wrong. You might get in the door, but contracts are negotiated and won with customers based on the reputation of employees, and it sounds a whole lot better to say you have a staff representated by PhD graduates of Stanford and MIT than MSCE's or even Linux/MS 'wannabe' experts.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Otter]

My guess would be that the group they're trying to exclude isn't "people who have little or no college experience" but rather experienced developers.

Re:Requirements are lame

[kfg]

You're technically right that a scholar in general doesn't have to be, but so what? :-)

. . .if you're not at an accredited university, you don't count as a scholar!

So it was the claim. You have now retracted the claim and I can go do something interesting.

KFG

Re:Requirements are lame

[greenreaper]

Well, you missed/ignored the bit about assumed context (add "to IBM" to the end of that sentance). Now, if you assume that all posts exist in isolation, that's right, but given that we were talking about . . .

. . . but what the heck, it's not worth arguing it, is it? You go do interesting stuff, and I can go to bed! (5am != good_time_to_sleep)

Re:Requirements are lame

[Frymaster]

You learn so much more at college where you're taught and learn from others about alternatives, formal methodology, etc.

you're both wrong.

what the i.t. world really needs is an apprenticeship programme.

an apprenticeship system would create a common, impartial body to set standards of skill and competence and provide a structured yet flexible on the job learning path to get i.t. people from basement geek to enterprise administrator.

it's not like the industry doesn't already run on this type of system in an informal way already. you get your degree, and then spend a year working as a "night operator" changing tapes. only once you've proven diligent enough to not screw up the back ups do you move on deployment, then troubleshooting, then planning and, finally, administration.

we should formalize the process so that real experience translates directly to accredation.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of these doors aren't really closed to those without degrees. They're just closed to those without enough confidence in their skills and experience to apply anyway.

I've been at a number of companies that, in an effort to cut down on the massive flood of resumes they receive, put their requirements fairly high. They usually listed a college degree in CS or something similar. However, when it came time to review the resumes, they didn't really care about the education listings -- just the experience, work examples, demonstration of skills, etc. Quite a few of those hired were without degrees.

I would suggest anytime someone sees a job listing and they think they'd be great for, but it says "college degree required", read it as "college degree or equivalent experience required". Everything is negotiable. In the end they're looking for the right person for the job, and the job listing is just the wishlist of everything at the company that could use doing.

Re:Requirements are lame

[KingPunk]

the issue is, somebody like me who cant be a student until next year is bound.
or what about high school kids?
im sure many high school kids could use a scholarship! if you're in school, kinda passes off the need for a scholarship, does it not?
...
also the other thing is, if they're trying to keep experienced
devlopers and stuff away from something like this,
what if they're in graduate school or something, doesn't that qualify too?
or do they have a list of schools that you must be in in order to "qualify" ?
--kingpunk

Re:Requirements are lame

[freeweed]

And remember, kids:

The plural of "anecdote" is still not "data".

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a scollarship challenge.

If you don't go to school, you don't need a scollarship."

I don't go to school, but thats because I dont have the money. By the way, arent scollarships by definition designed to help people overcome financial difficulties such as mine?

how about this one, "think before you post"

i say, if you are *already* in school, then you don't need a scollarship as bad as I do, because i can't afford to go in the first place.

Re:Requirements are lame

[DarkMantle]

If you don't go to school, you don't need a scollarship.

What if I need a scollarship to be able to afford to go to school? Such is the case with me. I want to go back to upgrade (update) My programming skills, and also take some 3D animation. But can't afford to.

Re:Requirements are lame

[davew2040]

Judging from my experience with network admins, I think there would be a serious problem with mentors scaring off the entire next generation of talented IT candidates.

Re:Requirements are lame

[prockcore]

Unless you can't go to college because you cannot afford it, or you were forced to drop out for financial reasons - then scholarship would be a lot of help.

No kidding. I dropped out 7 years ago because I couldn't afford it. Now that I'm married and kids are a very real prospect, I can't afford to finish my degree even though I'm making much more money now.

I'd like to finish my degree someday, but I can't justify the expense. (That and since I've already reached senior programmer at my work, the lack of degree isn't really holding me back.)

Re:Requirements are lame

[netsrek]

This is so true.

I've gotten jobs that described a Comp Sci degree as mandatory, and yet my undergraduate is in Philosophy.

If your resume is up to scratch, quite a lot of these places will accept you for an interview anyway.

(some of my worst tech support staff have been Comp Sci graduates, and some of the best have been artists...)

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, sometimes any ol' janitor will do in a pinch, even an uneducated slouch that just happens to come along at the right time.

Re:Requirements are lame

[ZorbaTHut]

And it's impossible to be taught and learn away from school?

I tried college twice. Miserable failure both times. I got sick of the glacially slow classes and the other students (and teachers!) that knew less than I did.

So I found smart people to chat with and got a job where I could be around people who knew what they were doing. That's how I learned, and I make very significant money.

(Which I'm going to give up to start my own company in a few years, but I never said I was smart, just intelligent.)

Re:Requirements are lame

[shufler]

That's just one of the tests. If you can get past the deviants administering a network, then you should be able to handle most things effortlessly.

Re:Requirements are lame

[krymsin01]

and then become the deviant yourself...

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

what the i.t. world really needs is an apprenticeship programme

Spoken like the true blue-collar worker that current high-school only IT programmers are limited to being without the more well-rounded experience that college/university education provides. Any degree is better than none as it's presumed you've demonstrated some aspirations beyond your fucking little geeky high-school/trade-school world and have learned something about other fields and people (believe it or not, the world does not revolve around IT), or at least some skills about learning.

we should formalize the process so that real experience translates directly to accredation.

Sounds a lot like a degree plan to me so be careful, some /. people will object to anything with any sense/hint of structure to it.

Re:Requirements are lame

[netsrek]

no, just that abstract problem solving doesn't depend on a computer science degree... and in some respects technically competent artists are better equipped for these kinds of roles.

i'm talking about first level tech support here...

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

It's for a scholarship, you dolt. A. College. Scholarship.

You know, many people can't go to College because they can not afford it. These are the people looking and should be granted scholarships.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Mycroft_VIII]

No kidding they're wish lists, sometimes even fairtales. I once saw a job listing that 'required' at least 15 years experience in web design and development. this was in about 8 years ago. Not mention they were also looking for a new head of thier corporate internet division, they specifically mentioned an impossible number of years of experience in writing rfc's and getting them adopted as 'critical internet standards'. By impossible number of years I mean experience in writing them that went back somthing like 10 years prior to the first one. Your best bet is to look at the job itself, not the requirements. If you can do the job, and especially if you have experience in the job, apply regardless of the 'required experience and training'. Sometimes the person writing the job posting/listing is an HR person or in general management and doesn't really understand the job well enough to set reasonable requirements. Mycroft

Re:Requirements are lame

[realdpk]

Exactly true. I'd probably be going to school right now if I didn't have to work full time.

But, it is IBM's game and they can play it by their rules. I'm not going to hold my breath for any college assistance (can't qualify).

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

I half agree...college may be necessary for getting a job...but at least at my college, it definitely doesn't encourage learning or innovation. So far, I'm a third year CS major, getting ready to graduate, and the only thing I've learned so far was two weeks' worth of assembly language that I didn't already know. So far all I've managed to do is stifle my desire to truly learn about programming and computers by being bored to tears with professors that seem to know so little about Java(the primary language at my school) it's scary.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

formal methodology

Which in the real world never, ever, get's used. Who the fuck has the time for formal methodolgies when you've got six months to fix a thousand bugs, add new features and ship the next version to your most important customer?

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mother was right, back in 1998. You shouldn't have switched majors from Law. You'd be working at a law firm now instead of a washed up dot-bomb ex-employee.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, many people can't go to College because they can not afford it. These are the people looking and should be granted scholarships.

Poor people can get to college - it's called loans. You can even go to a community college for pretty cheap (compared to a university) and transfer after you get your AA. If you don't want to invest the time and money into it, stop complaining. And if you are actually as poor as I am, you can apply for aid through the federal government and get Pell grants, etc.

Not mention the fact that there are privately-funded scholarships out there that are completely need-based. If for some reason your parents/guardians make too much money for you to qualify for need-based aid, you should be able to get Perkins loans too.

And when that fails, just defect to another country :-) I hear some are giving away college tuition for citizens.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

same zorbathut that was working on a solar winds clone and author of zidrav?.. just curious :)

Re:Requirements are lame

[ZorbaTHut]

Same one. Although they're both semi-dead - zidrav is open-source and rarely modified, and the solar winds clone was abandoned when I realized my code sucked horribly. Way overdesigned. Plus I got a job. :P

Re:Requirements are lame

[sejanus]

Really? So that 4-6 years that people I know were going to Uni each day, that 4-6 years I actually spent on the job, learning Unix & networking were wasted because I could have "learnt so much more"?

I basically went to high school, and then went straight into computers whilst those others went to Uni. By the time they came out of Uni I was earning 4 times as much as they were and had so much more knowledge and experience in the work related areas it was almost silly.

In addition, I've given (quite a few) job interviews to guys recently out of University for IT jobs (i.e. networking, unix style jobs). These guys are CLUELESS! I haven't met a good one yet. These kids really annoy me, they just turn up out of uni and expect to walk into a high paying job.

Why weren't they working their butt off at home learning unix at night like I was when I was doing crappy helpdesk jobs at the age of 18? They think Uni is their ticket, WRONG!!!

Re:Requirements are lame

[kistel]

That's right! Why do we need colleges and unis anyway? IT can be learned "on the job"!

But, wait a sec, why have high schools or primary schools either? You can learn the most important words (Google, slashdot, P2P, Dilbert, stc.) from the screen. as for writing, how many of us have used handwriting for real nowadays? That is also bullshit, since it is so much different form the TimesNewRoman! Unreadable!

Calculus is also unnecessary, Excel can do it way faster. Or BC, or expr.

Man, I wish I could spend all my study years in front of my PC... I'd be so much experienced and smart!

Re:Requirements are lame

[Seeker_350]

Yeah...and the amateurish construction of this countries IT Infrastructure reflects this fact. From so-called "Fast Access" that is years behind what is offered in Europe and Asia, to the overwhelmingly, bug-ridden software that forever costs us billions/year in wasted time and effort, the IT infrastructure we have is a complete mess: definitely not designed and implemented by anyone with a semblance of a formal education (i.e., FORMAL and STRUCTURED thought).

Jeez, why business keep investing in complex systems implemented by such uneducated, hyper-active morons just amazes me - all the while the God-Damned E-mail and File-Backup Systems still don't work reliably, and never freakin' did.

But...the idea that something as the design and implementation of IT infrastructure (Telephony included) should be to those who haven't at least a college degree is not surprising considering the fact that these same underpayed hackers are soon replaced by an even cheaper moronic alternative: the H1B or the Offshore Sweatshop Worker who's an ITT Graduate.

From College Degree, to Uneducated Hacker, to ITT Graduate: that's the endless cycle to push down wages. It's all about finding the cheapest labor (relatively unskilled), and the end result is that the perception (and skill levels) of IT workers is quickly and surely being lowered to the level of Janitors - well...at least Janitors have the title of "Maintenance Engineer". Seriously, is it's no small accident that so many Servers, Routers, PBXs and other IT equipment deployed in this country reside in closets which also house the Janitor's brooms, mops and slop buckets, while the IT - unlike the Janitor - guy doesn't even have a permanent job at the company!

So...go ahead and bash a College Education if you feel so compelled: it's your own epitaph you are writing. Business sees you as disposable geeks not even fit to have a permanent job, and it's why so many of you are chronically unemployed..

Now...tell me again how a College Degree doesn't matter.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Seeker_350]

what the i.t. world really needs is an apprenticeship programme......you get your degree, and then spend a year working as a "night operator" changing tapes. only once you've proven diligent enough to not screw up the back ups.....

You're a nutcase of the worst kind. Why the hell should any kid motivated enough to pursue a college-education want to start out doing a job we already pay Indians and the Uneducated to do?

Re:Requirements are lame

[sejanus]

if you find the time to come up with a proper reply rather than a moronic childish comparison, I'm all ears. Until then I'll keep doing what I'm doing - and doing it better than the guys who spent 25 years of their life getting educated.

Re:Requirements are lame

[segmond]

some of the "best" programmers and folks you know. maybe they are "best" to you, cuz they are better than you.

i dropped out of college to work full time, in my circles of friends and coworkers, i was the computer guru in pretty much anything, unix, coding, hardware, whatever. but i decided to go back to school, and when i started taking high level classes, i began to realize how clueless i was. sure enough, you can find a lot of non college educated programmers who understand generic data structures and algorithms and can pull off a lot of web app development. But when it comes to development of new efficient algorithms and technologies, they are lacking.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

The plural of "anecdote" is still not "data".

Maybe "anectota"?

Re:Requirements are lame

[Deliveranc3]

If I knew what the last generation knew that would be useful?

Apprenticeship offers hands on experience but that isn't useful in computers, if I know /bash and you know /bash then we know /bash.

Furthermore technology is changing so fast that almost no one can keep up with it, let alone people already in the workforce, and saddled with a pimply apprentice?

Not until there are standards which will stand for more than a week.

Re:Requirements are lame

[WompPetrovski]

Strange. I didn't go to uni. My friends didn't go to uni. And all of us are on $150k+ per year in IT jobs after 5 years out of school which is how long you'd be at uni for for any decent degree anyway. Besides, during those first five years it was a mere $20k, then $35k, then $45k, $55k, $100k. Will it ever stop? Go figure.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

jobs are good.. last I remembered you took off for oberlin college. didn't realize it didn't work out for you. Well at least you're still well, good to know the person who got me addicted to anime was able to find a job even without college.

Re:Requirements are lame

[ZorbaTHut]

Actually, after dropping out of Oberlin, I went off to a different college and dropped out of it also. ;)

Who is this anyway? :P

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU you idiot. Do you have such a small dick you have to try and wear down anyone who points out that your posts have no purpose? Your every response has been worthless. There was no ambiguity in the OP. Here's a word of advice: legitimacy doesn't just come from citing something in print. It comes from employing common sense as well. I'd call you pedantic but that would imply that, in some sense, you were right. Which you weren't in any way.

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have said earlier but I can't remember what my alias was at the time. But I remember you from efnet on #c++. I think it was ochysrabb but that could be wrong too. You sent me the slayers rms and kept saying I needed to see bakuretsu hunters. My current addiction is naruto.

Re:Requirements are lame

[ZorbaTHut]

Oh, neat, I remember you :) I always kinda wondered where you'd gone. :P

If you're still doing programming you should come back to #c++ ;) (If you ever were . . . I can't even remember now, heh.)

Re:Requirements are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

A great way for an employer to get a graduate without paying them a graduate's salary is to find someone who is willing to drop out of school several semesters short of a degree. This accomplishes several things for the employer. They know that they are basically getting a graduate for a lower salary, but they also know that this person will cost them less over time and that they are less likely to leave because their lack of a degree is a barrier.

Welcome to the job market.

Misread...

[HitByASquirrel]

Hah, at first glance all I picked up was "Fosters Linux" and I thought "huh, what will the Aussies do next?"

Re:Misread...

[virgil_attack]

That's not a bad idea. A linux distro based around beer would succesfully combine two of my favorite things!

Although if it was created by and Aussie it would more likely be called "VB Linux" or "XXXX Linux" as most Aussies actually don't drink Fosters (well none that I know).

Re:Misread...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linuxxxx, shirly.

Re:Misread...

[TheShadowHawk]

Yes you are correct, Fosters is the usual cat piss in Australia. But is apparently brewed better overseas (go figure)...

XXXX is only marginally better than Fosters mate. :)

Cascade or Boags Linux would have my vote. ;)

Re:Misread...

[virgil_attack]

I normally drink Carlton Draught (I can't afford all those fancy beers) but I was trying to appeal to the masses with the VB and XXXX.

Re:Misread...

[TheShadowHawk]

Tis cool. A lot of Qld'ers prefer XXXX, for reasons I cannot understand. *shrug* life goes on. :)

Re:Misread...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe that this was modded "offtopic"!

What could go together more than coding, Linux, beer and University?

You all have obviously never been to the Software Engineering department at a major Austalian university.

Re:Misread...

[lostchicken]

Thr phrase "VB Linux" is one of the most frightening things I have ever seen.

Re:Misread...

[virgil_attack]

Mmmm, a hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer!!

http://nachoism.org/vb-linux.png

Re:Misread...

[GileadGreene]

As I tell a lot of my friends in the US: Australians don't drink Fosters - they ship it all overseas, because they know Americans will drink anything

Sorry, pal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a contest that involves writing. Absolutely none of the one-dimensional, high-school-dipolma-only computer geeks I know can write for shit. It's appalling. A college education doesn't necessarily improve writing skills (just look at the people who post to Slashdot) because not everyone chooses to take advantage of the broad spectrum of educational options available at college, but for those who do, they are head and shoulders above people whose sole talent in life is programming.

Furthermore, I don't think it makes much sense to award a scholarship to someone who's not in college. Is that so unreasonable?

Re:Sorry, pal

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm not in college because I can't afford it? And BTW, I CAN write "for shit". I've had two short stories published.

Re:Sorry, pal

[luvirini]

Well, unfortunately it seems that the skill of being able to write in a clear manner is a lost art even among college graduates. One would think that atleast for something as simple as a CV a college graduate would succeed in actually expressing him/herself in a manner that is atleast somewhat gramatically correct and read through.

To quote one CV we got towards the end after the education and personal detail bulletpoints the person had actually managed to get quite well:
"Other intrests and activities:
Was involved with. Other intrests are, to read, jogging, do pottery. We do amateyr theater"

Re:Sorry, pal

[luvirini]

Well, writing works on different levels, scholastic writing is a very different skill from freeform writing.

Each type of writing has it's own requirements and actually changing from one style to other is quite hard. I work currently in management and consulting, the docments in those who area allready quite different in form, but then I do some storywriting on my own time and I do note that regardless of the atttempt to stay away from those two styles they keep creeping in. Reading back at stories I wrote back when I was in university, my stories seemed to have more scholastic language.

Re:Sorry, pal

[Anonymous Coward]

but for those who do, they are head and shoulders above people whose sole talent in life is programming.

"but those who do are head and shoulders".

(I guess that a college education doesn't necessarily improve writing skills.)

Re:Sorry, pal

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but honestly I don't want to hear your bitching about not being able to afford college. I had to take out $30k of loans to get through, and such things are readily available.

Also as was noted publication is actually relatively easy and says precious little about writing quality; with all but a few exceptions most publications are eager for decent content and they'll put up with the fact that you can't write to get it -- and then send in their hoard of butchers, err, editors.

who must be enrolled full time..

[[cx]]

"who must be enrolled full time at an accredited university"

what a load of crap, i cant believe they would limit so many great linux programmers/enthusiasts from entering this competition. im sure there are lots employed in ibm that never went to an "accredited university".

[cx]

Re:who must be enrolled full time..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen too many good programmers shut out because they didn't go to college. These guys didn't seem to understand that they would get some necessary skills in college (such as technical writing) that they need to be competitive. I would not encourage a young person to skip college.

Re:who must be enrolled full time..

[Anonymous Coward]

and its still an invalid point.

Re:who must be enrolled full time..

[jshriverWVU]

I think it should be opened to people who *want* to go to college but need the $$ first. I'm sitting out of college now, (over a year) because I can't afford it and the best job I can find around here is $5.15. Not trolling, but if it's a scholarship, they should make it a rule that rewards are for now or future college use.

Re:who must be enrolled full time..

[Zemplar]

G.I. Bill!

The G.I. Bill helped pay my way through a very good (and expensive) private university. Hell, I be anyone can at least get into the Air Force or Coast Guard! [ducks]

Semper Fi

And happy 229th Marines!

Sample Problems

[MBCook]

After a little searching, I found a list of 29 possible challenges for the students to solve. It's a PDF: Linux Challenge Options.

Second, I can't wait to see the results of this. Should be interesting to see how some of these are solved, and what other interesting challenges people come up with to try to solve.

Re:Sample Problems

[stoborrobots]

Another interesting point - IBM actually runs Lotus WordPro internally. (The source file name for that PDF is LinuxChallenge-final 07.21.04.lwp)... While in an of itself that may not seem surprising, as IBM owns Lotus, it is interesting to not that this is a giant organisation which needs interoperability with thousands of other organisations, and they can still run an alternate office-suite...

Re:Sample Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

as IBM owns Lotus, it is interesting to not that this is a giant organisation which needs interoperability with thousands of other organisations, and they can still run an alternate office-suite...

... and yet still haven't ported it to Linux. Maybe this can be the next challenge for students...

Re:Sample Problems

[LordNimon]

Don't get too excited about that. I've worked at IBM for a number of years. First, everyone who uses WordPro hates it. Second, the only people who use it don't depend on interoperability with outside groups. Third, WordPro is being phased out for MS Word across the entire company, it's just taking a lot longer than it should.

Re:Sample Problems

[grcumb]

"WordPro is being phased out for MS Word across the entire company, it's just taking a lot longer than it should."

So... what you're saying is that there is a value for infinity plus one?

Re:Sample Problems

[marafa]

so? ibm also runs lotus domino server and lotus notes clients. note that lotus notes is only available on windows. which means that all workstations and laptops that need to use any function of domino other than mail requires windows to be installed.

thank you thank you thank you, you may now mod me as a troll

High School Students?

[Anonymous Coward]

Im a full time jr in high school and I know more then most about Linux. I probably could of solved at least the thinkpad problem(im writing this on a T40). I will soon be going into college and I could use some extra help from big blue.

Re:High School Students?

[Stevyn]

When I was in high school, I also felt I knew a lot about computers. Now I realize I knew shit. I still believe I still know shit, just a lot more shit than I used to.

One of the main reasons for college is to teach you how to learn. High school won't do that, so they make college a requirement because you'll keep building on that.

I'm not saying college is required or you won't do well if you don't go to college. Certainly not, but there are benefits to college besides what your teacher tests you on.

Re:High School Students?

[Iluvatar]

"When you finish college, you think you know everything.
When you finish your MS, you realize you don't know anything.
When you finish your PhD, you realize you don't know anything, but neither does your advisor."
-- popular wisdom

Re:High School Students?

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably could of solved

No, you couldn't.

Re:High School Students?

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably could of solved

"could have".

Re:High School Students?

[barrkel]

I can't agree with you. I spent 10 years (11yo to 21yo) learning about:

* programming: everything from machine code on the Z80 through C/C++/Pascal/Delphi/Java/C# to functional programming with Haskell.

* computer science, almost entirely from Knuth's Art of Computer Programming I got on my 18th birthday.

* software lifecycle: from waterfall through spiral-like iteration through agile methods such as extreme programming.

* hardware: from 2's complement binary subtraction, and adder circuits, to empirical understanding of cache hierarchy effects.

* maths: from stuff in what would be American high school (differential & integral calculus, applied mathematics) to matrices as used in 3D software.

I was just conferred with a first class honours degree last Friday. I didn't study at all in college, and I learned absolutely nothing. It was a waste of time. The job I'm in now (software engineer) is entirely about C# and internal library stuff, and nothing in college prepared me for any of it.

-- Barry

Re:High School Students?

[segmond]

ditto!

in short, when i meet young people who are so cocky. i throw a few challenges their way.

show them some algorithms and ask them to calculate their complexity.

show them a simple function/loop and ask them to prove the correctness.

ask them to write a parser, small compiler or interpreter.

ask them to write a simple device driver.

ask them to port their code to run parallel on machines.

ask them to have their code embed another language as a scripting engine.

ask them to implement a server/client according to some RFC specs.

I dropped out of college to make money, and the best decision I have made is to go back! On pure coding, I can outcode alot of my professors, so I use to think I was smarter, but when it boils down to experience and intution, they smack me down. Case in point, I had a very complex problem bothering me for a commerical project I am currently undertaking. So I stop one of my professors who's focus is in Application Research. I spend 6 minutes describing said problem, when I was done. He continues, "Oh, that's easy, I will do foo and bar, I am teaching a class next semester on it, perhaps you should come take it!" I was enlightened! I ran to the library, grabbed some books on said topics and immediately realized a way to take a crack at my problem. Without an experienced mind like that, I could have wasted a lot of time writing code that does nothing or at best reinventing the wheel.

Re:High School Students?

[barrkel]

ask them to write a parser, small compiler or interpreter.

ask them to have their code embed another language as a scripting engine.


Funny. My life between ages 14 to 16 existed only to write compilers!

-- Barry

Re:High School Students?

[GileadGreene]

The problem is that very few people are self-motivated to learn to the degree that you apparently are, and even fewer have the necessary skills to learn new stuff.

You will forget most of the facts and trivia that you learned in college, unless you use them on a daily basis. But they aren't the important part anyway. College teaches you two things:

1. The fundamental principles of your chosen field, which provides a framework or conetxt for new knowledge, and
2. How to learn, which helps you to understand how to fit new knowledge into the framework you have been building

Yes, college will not prepare you directly for the workplace, in the sense that they will teach you C# programming. What it will teach you is how to learn the stuff that you need to once you are in the workplace, and how to fit it into your growing knowledge base. Sounds like you already had those skills, so perhaps college was a waste of time for you. That doesn't make it a waste of time for everyone else.

I'm all for self-study (and do a lot of it myself). But I beleive there are some benefits to the college environment. Some of the other (IMHO) benefits of college that you can't get by self-study are:

• You are exposed to material that you wouldn't necessarily have been even vaguely interested in otherwise, often to find that it's far more interesting than it looekd from the outside.
• You have access to resources that are simply not available to a lone student: clusters, labs, industrial-strength software .
• You can interact both with your peers, and with the professors, in a face to face fashion. In both cases I have ended up with extremely valuable insights that I wouldn't have otherwise discovered. The workplace is fine for peer interaction, but my experience is that people there are much more focussed on getting the job done "the way it's always been done", rather than thinking about new ways to tackle the problem. That's fine, because in a commercial environment you can't afford to be too experimental. But that's why college is valuable. It's an environment where you can play with new ideas, and be exposed to lots of other folks playing with new ideas - which can spark even more new ideas. Ofetn the insights gained from looking at a problme from multiple perpesectives give a you a much deeper understanding of the problem and of potential solutions. Admittedly, this tends to be more true at the graduate level than during undergrad. (aside: you could probably get the same environment at places like Bell Labs or PARC, but college is a lot easier to get into).

Disclaimer: I'm now back in school for the third time (PhD this time) after my most recent stint in industry. Obviously I wouldn't keep going back if I didn't see any value there...

Re:High School Students?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, grammar isn't one of your strong points.

Re:High School Students?

[fitten]

Like other posters, when I left high school, I thought I was the shiznit as well. I knew more about computers than anyone else in my school, even the teachers. The first thing that hit me when I arrived at college was that I was *maybe* average compared to some of the friends I made. Over the next few years, I learned a whole lot, mostly I learned how to learn and how to research and how to approach and solve problems. Discipline, technique, and work ethic are also important things to learn.

One of the first things you will learn is that you cannot base decisions on exception cases. While there are some folks who never had formal education in CS and the like, these folks are the exceptions to the rule, not the norm. Of course, we all like to think that we are exceptions to the rules but that is just ego.

I've met many, many more programmers who I consider to be "good" or "great" programmers who were formally educated than those who were self-taught.

Re:High School Students?

[brsmith4]

Well, since you _can't_ enter anyway, how would you do it? Yeah, it sounds like a simple problem (and IBM themselves already released a spec for "parallelizing" your start up sequence), BUT I highly doubt that without a solid background in at least some upper level C.S. theory (e.g. algorithms, data structures, something) that you could do any better than the college applicants (granted, I've met some college students that were, um, lacking).

I've implemented this before on my Dell laptop while maintaining backward compat. with the admin tools like chkconfig and service by rewriting the rc.sysinit and other files (this was a while ago) to skip all the software raid config (most of it is skipped via 'if' statements, but who has software raid on a laptop???) and loads drivers more efficiently (in parallel while non dependent services are also starting). Dependent services are scheduled accordingly and started in parallel if possible. I cut my boot time from 19 sec (i was pretty stripped down service-wise to begin with) to a measly 9 sec (from BIOS to GDM login).

Even all THIS work is probably not exactly what Big Blue had in mind. They are probably looking for something even lower-level (though I could be wrong).

ooh I got it

[nomadic]

Each entry consists of a 1,200-word essay that can describe the solution to one of 29 Linux-related challenges IBM poses as part of the competition...d to these challenges and can suggest and solve their own problems. The IBM-provided challenges include asking entrants to identify deficiencies in Linux and propose solutions

Uninstall Linux and install FreeBSD.

Oops, wait, that's only 5 words. Need another 1,195 to pad it out. Any suggestions?

Re:ooh I got it

[whiteranger99x]

Uninstall Linux and install FreeBSD.

Oops, wait, that's only 5 words. Need another 1,195 to pad it out. Any suggestions?

Try copying and pasting a "BSD is dead" post, but replace references of BSD with Linux. That'll add enough words to your paper :P

Re:ooh I got it

[drinkypoo]

Netcraft confirms: Humor on slashdot is dying.

Re:ooh I got it

[Anonymous Coward]

How appropriate.

Free Labor

[slinky259]

Improving boot time on a ThinkPad...

Does IBM own the essays, though? This was mentioned with Google's CodeJam thing too - Google stated that they pretty much owned whatever code was submitted and used to solve the problems. ~stephen

Cheap labor?

[discontinuity]

Funny thought: isn't this a great way for IBM to get students to do work for free?

Seriously though, the project list reads very much like a wish list of the things they'd like to have but don't want to spend the money on doing themselves.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing (espectially if it leads to some students landing jobs with them). Just struck me as humorus in that "everything's a conspiracy / everyone has a hidden agenda" sort of way.

Re:Cheap labor?

[Tufriast]

While it is cheap labor, it does give a student a step up in the real world. Suppose one student proposes an idea that changes the face of Linux so that it can take the Redmond Beast to the cleaners? If IBM wanted to grab ideas for free, there are certainly less philanthropic ways of doing so. Regardless, the person who wins will get a lot more than just a scholarship from other universities and respect. His career could be pole vaulted into the history books. And to boot, this isn't the first time they have done it. It's a contest held each year. I'm hoping some brainchild of the likes of Ben Goodger drops a bomb.

Re:Cheap labor?

[ICA]

Things like this are actually already commonplace in many internships, especially those in technology fields such as Engineering.

I know specifically, that many of my classmates in Engineering college worked for IBM on projects. It is actually beneficial to both sides in my opinion. IBM gets a task accomplished, and the individual learns and gets to pad their resume.

IBM is going with a trade-off in the internship case. They are getting relatively cheap labor, but at the potential cost of having the final product not be of the highest quality.

I agree the tinfoil hat crowd probably sees this as a problem though.

Re:Cheap labor?

[spisska]

They already have a system to get students to work for free -- its called internship, and there's plenty of students willing not only to work for free, but to pay their respective institutions for the privilege (and the course credit).

On the other hand, this is an excellent way for IBM to do some university recruiting without having to pore over thousands of resumes.

Re:Cheap labor?

[sh1ftay]

Erm.. isn't most linux development essentially done for free anyway?

Re:Cheap labor?

[automatix]

Hmm, Students don't tend to end up doing "work for free" - there are more mistakes, less documentation, less understanding and experience of security, portability, and less foresight for future possibilities/developments [in general!]. All this requires other people to review it, document it, approve it, modify it. While maybe not costing as much as for a professional to do it, it certainly isn't free.

Rob :)

Re:Cheap labor?

[PrettyGoodPersonage]

How should/do we come to grips with the fact that XYZ entity has $$$ to give, to encourage this kind of student activity? In a perfectly open-sourced society, people will have to work due to internal incentive (e.g., make the world a better place); so what do we do with people who are lazy or unmotivated to contribute (e.g., parasites)? Or are people only selectively parasitic? Would a total tech n00b be an expert surgeon or cook?

Re:Cheap labor?

[JThundley]

They'd be doing free work for me and everyone else who owns a Thinkpad. I just bought one, the real challenge is to buy a Thinkpad from IBM without and operating system, this is the actual reply I got from them:

Dear J.T,
Thank you for contacting IBM.
Please be advised, it is not possible to ship out an IBM ThinkPad or Desktop without an Operating System.
We apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced.

I haven't even received the laptop yet, but I guess they know that I'll be inconvenienced when it's recieved :(

Re:Cheap labor?

[Anonymous Coward]

"what do we do with people who are lazy or unmotivated to contribute"
Let them starve.

Re:Cheap labor?

[Darren Winsper]

I worked a couple of summers at BT's Group Engineering Services division and they use summer internships primarily for two things:
1) Pie-in-the-sky projects that may or may not pay off. It's cheaper to have a few students investigate something that fails to be useful than it is for fully paid staff
2) A means of recruiting. If you perform well, it's likely they'll offer you a job when you graduate.

Re:Cheap labor?

[segmond]

It is not the case that IBM is lacking in funds to do it. It is the case that students who tend to think out of the box might hold the key to better solutions than industry vets.

Re:Cheap labor?

[iabervon]

It's not like 1200-word essays will actually solve the major problems. What entrants do for free is demonstrate that they have ideas about how to solve the problems. The major effort is actually putting those ideas into practice, which is likely to be done either by IBM employees or by the students who get scholarships; in either case, with funding from IBM.

Re:Cheap labor?

[ivan256]

When I was an intern for IBM/Lotus Development between 1998 and 2000, I made $20 an hour. If I wanted credit for the work I did have to turn around and give my school $900 a quarter for it, but I'd still have come out signifigabtly in the positive if I had chosen to do that.

Re:Cheap labor?

[PrettyGoodPersonage]

Yes but I said maybe they have a good reason to not participate?

Who are we to say they are "lazy?"

I just use the term "lazy" to indicate an external condition. They might have valid psychological disorders, or not aspire to be brick layers.

PGP

Re:I cant beleive this

[erick99]

I don't see how that attitude and position would help the typical young person who wants a rewarding career. I have two boys that will finish their secondary education in the next few years and I could never tell them that some of the brightest people never went to college so don't worry too much about going. My college and graduate degrees have opened doors for me that would have otherwise been closed.

They better hurry up

[Anonymous Coward]

Webdav support in the Kernel needed to be implimented a year+ ago.

Re:They better hurry up

[simcop2387]

Webdav support in the Kernel needed to be implimented a year+ ago.

for those that don't know, [WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. (shamelessly taken from http://www.webdav.org/)].

there is a tool that will deal with this, and let you use one, its a bit out of date (dang close to a year now) but i had some mixed success (didn't have a use for it then), http://dav.sourceforge.net/

Re:They better hurry up

[Anonymous Coward]

And why in XUL's name does WebDAV need to be in the kernel?

Re:They better hurry up

[Anonymous Coward]

- there is a nfs server in the kernel.
- there is a http server in the kernel.

why not webdav?

Re:They better hurry up

[Darren Winsper]

Because the trend is away from putting things in the kernel that don't need to be. There are perfectly functional WebDAV servers outside the kernel, so there's no need for it to be in the kernel.

Re:I cant beleive this

[Anonymous Coward]

well you can beleive what ever you want.

I on the other hand will believe that it is for a scholarship.

Re:I cant beleive this

[whiteranger99x]

I too believe that you don't always need a college degree to have commanding intelligence. However, I am aware of the real world expectations of the "job market", among other things, and having that degree determines whether artificial barriers are lifted or fortified.

And sometimes it's a shame that someone who can otherwise think on their feet and do the job 10 times around without faltering are constricted, but that's how it goes.

Bad choice

[xbsd]

and can suggest and solve their own problems

Uninstall Linux and install FreeBSD.
Oops, wait, that's only 5 words. Need another 1,195 to pad it out. Any suggestions?

Well, seems like you chose option b: "suggest your own problem". Unfortunately that one needs more than 1,195 words to solve it.

Re:I cant beleive this

[ICA]

In most cases I think the people who were able to succeed without secondary education did so by forging their own path. They went out, started their own business, and pursued a dream.

If your boys end up with the same desires and skills, they will likely go the same route and not need their secondary education. However, I think you are doing right in directing them to that education until the stroke of genius occurs.

Patent question

[debrain]

Not all the hard questions in Linux's future are technical.

To IBM challengees/anyone:

How would you reconcile the need for innovation in Linux and the growing number of patents owned by a smaller and smaller group of large corporations, where these patents undermine the capacity to innovate?

IBM, being the largest patent filer in the United States, probably has a unique perspective on this. Though I am grateful for their support of, and happy for their benefit from, Linux, I must concede that I wonder what will happen when their patent interests conflict with their Linux interests.

Re:Patent question

[Nailer]

I read recently, I think on LWN, that IBM now earn more revenue from Linux than they do from their IP licensing (and yes, they make huge revenue from IP licensing).

I can't be bothered looking it up. You do it.

Re:Patent question

[Peyna]

I can't be bothered looking it up. You do it.

If only they would have passed for my footnotes on my research paper. [FN1]

[1] - I can't be bothered looking it up. You do it.

Re:Patent question

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us hope that IBM's revenues with Linux remain high, and that their upper management will never become fickle or sell-out Linux to their IP.

Patents last 20 years. That is a lot of opportunity for IBM to change direction. Maybe not so long for a behemoth corporation, though; it has a lot of momentum.

Nice "competition"

[DogDude]

I'm starting a new competition. I'm "challenging" 3000 college students to see who can clean my floors the best! The winner gets $20!! Competition my ass.

Re:I cant beleive this

[darkewolf]

And quite a few very very smart people did go to college (well university).

Re:I cant beleive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Very well put.

Re:I cant beleive this

[erick99]

Alot is not a word. The correct usage is "a lot."

Re:I cant beleive this

[Anonymous Coward]

"I cant beleive this"

Alot of the smartest people in history didn't even go to college.

I know, becuase I didn't.

No kidding...

alot = a lot

beleive = believe

cant = can't or cannot

becuase = because

That is a lot of errors for such a brief post.

hmm

[Zinoc]

What a great way of getting someone to solve your business programming problems on the cheap. :)

Re:hmm

[Zemplar]

"What a great way of getting someone to solve your business programming problems on the cheap. :)"

Exactly!

Who said big blue was stupid?

Re:I cant beleive this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod this up as funny if I could; however, at the same time it's so true and consequently, sad.

Bummer ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As one who met all the eligibility requirements for this competition, I think it would have been nice to have found out about it before the deadline... Maybe next year /. can run an article on it before the fact.

Re:Bummer ...

[Mignon]

You can be pretty sure there will be another dupe^H^H^H^Hmention of this competition on Slashdot.

Solution:

[SHEENmaster]

Study a bit more grammar, tell your principal to fuck off in front of several hundred witnesses, and enter college rather than waste a fourth year in high school.

It worked for me. I ended up with a PowerBook and a free ride while my high school friends were being taught history by Bill and Ted.

Let IBM write their own code

[superuser001]

The beauty behind linux is that it is open, light years ahead of other os's... I will imagine that those who do enter will find their ideas stripped from them and tossed out with the morning garbage. Lets keep the magic of linux alive and out of the hands of the corporations...before they turn it into something corrupted....

hey!! i remember this!

[onestickybit]

I was one of the winners in 2001. I actually like the idea. For those who are ranting about how IBM is getting work done for free and so on, i got to intern at the Linux Technology Center and had a blast there, it was worth it(and yea, the thinkpad was useful too).

Re:hey!! i remember this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I am sure that the slashdot editors read your considered reminder, and immediately get in touch with the contest organizers to check out when the next competition is held. Then the editors put a note in their calendar so that they contact IBM again well in time for next years competition, and then they will check out what the next year's rules are like, discuss the issue with a few people at IBM, and post an informative article about it in the appropriate section on slashdot.

Or, instead of going to all that trouble, they might just play Halo 2 all night. We all wait with bated breath... they are going to make the choice any moment now...

Re:hey!! i remember this!

[Glove d'OJ]

Dude, so wait...

Your reward for doing some free work was to do some more free work?

Do you paint houses? I mean, competitively.

How to make IBM laptop boot faster?

[boudie]

Put the kernel in the bios. It's quite doable, so why aren't they doing it? http://www.linuxbios.org/

Re:How to make IBM laptop boot faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are embedded Linux systems, for example, many routers, appliances, etc. One of the problems with putting Linux in bios is having to flash the bios for discovered problems/security issues... not everyone wants to take the chance of trashing a motherboard if something goes wrong during the flash (speaking from prior experience in the embedded/motherboard world). For a decent kernel in a general purpose computer, the bios would have to be a pretty decent size, on the order of 8-12 MB; that's quite a bit to chance a flash-write to. And just because you do get a kernel into a bios, doesn't mean it will be super fast to boot. The OS still needs to do a few rudimentary sanity checks (for example, the aformentioned routers take a few seconds to reboot).

Re:How to make IBM laptop boot faster?

[boudie]

I'm sure it would still greatly reduce the time it takes to boot up now, which is well over a minute.

Re:How to make IBM laptop boot faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

So would taking out everything but what is essential to boot; but the point is not only to make it boot faster, but to still have it be VIABLE AFTERWARDS.

Re:How to make IBM laptop boot faster?

[gre_1]

Then it wouldn`t be called bios = basic input-output ...(something), would it?

College isn't for all programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Formal methodology just turns a good programmer into a mindless drone churning out software for the likes of microsoft.

Lets split a few small hairs..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alot is not a word. The correct usage is "a lot.""(sic)

Actually, the word "usage" as used in the statement above is incorrect, because it refers to the mispelled word "Alot" that appears in the previous sentance. There is no correct usage of "Alot" because it is mispelled, therefor your usage of the word usage, is incorrect. If you had use the word "term" instead of "usage" your sentance would be more correct.

If you are going to nitpick on spelling, get your grammar right or STFU.

(btw, dont bother continuing this thread by pointing out any errors that I may have made, because honestly i dont care, i just wanted to put this prick in his place.)

Mods, i only ask that i recieve equil karma to the parent of this post.

Re:Lets split a few small hairs..

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to correct but not be corrected? I think that makes YOU a prick. Here is something for your prison cell wall: It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt."

Re:Lets split a few small hairs..

[steeviant]

"It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt."

Surely you meant "than to speak up"?

Re:Lets split a few small hairs..

[MarkRose]

"It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt."

Surely you meant "than to speak up"?

Surely he meant what he wrote. If he didn't, than it wouldn't have been so funny.

Re:Lets split a few small hairs..

[steeviant]

Yes that's true. If I wasn't such a humourless pedant, I might have noticed. :|

Re:Lets split a few small hairs..

[MarkRose]

It's all in good fun :)

Students

[hkht]

The best way to get young people really intrested in linux is to have games which work hands down better on the linux platform.

Re:Students

[rsklnkv]

Or (from a software engineering standpoint) have them actually program the games themselves. I've found (in my own experience) game programming and the study of game programming to be one of the best methods for learning to program. Granted, this is far from a tried and true technique (AFAIN), but game programming can be an easy way to introduce differenet languages to children. 1.It keeps them interested longer than 'hello world!'. 2.It has interactive, intensive beta-testing (there's always that guy that plays just to find bugs). 3.Someone will try and modify it and cheat, therefore revealing yet undiscovered bugs/exploits. Though these things are all kinda common to standard application development, I think the younger folks find it a bit more accessible. This comes from someone who doesn't program for a living, but does enjoy the occassional weekend of hair-pulling and bug-hunting.

Re:Students

[bakawally]

If someone got the balls to make a killer Linux exclusive game that would prolly do it as well.

Re:Students

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the shitty things XFree86 and GLX are around, there will be no such developments for Linux. Linux needs to realize that the industry has chosen DirectX and embrace that choice instead of trying to be different just for the sake of it.

Re:Students

[Anonymous Coward]

No really.. it would just be ignored.. do you know many people who would switch to Linux if Mozilla wouldn't run microsoft windows ?

Re:Students

[_undan]

You make a great point, one which I think some companies are realising. Doom 3 binaries for GNU/Linux? QED.

What we really need is support from ATI and nVidia to get drivers out there that are as good as the ones available for Windows/OS X.

The unfortunate catch-22 is that they're not going to play nice until there's a market... and there's not much of a market because there's no good, up-to-date drivers.

Nobody's willing to take the gamble just yet, because it looks like alternative operating systems aren't going anywhere.

But the thing to remember is that GNU/Linux _is_ growing. The problem is that in today's society, if we don't see a quick turnaround, something is immediately dismissed as a failure. If we keep evangelising, working, submitting patches, talking about it, using it, etc etc etc, GNU/Linux WILL become a viable alternative to Windows.

Re:Students

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd just go back to use IE; the inconveniece of IE in no way compares to the inconvenience of installing Linuz.

Re:Students

[segmond]

rubbish.

when i discovered linux in 94 at 10th grade, it had nothing to do with games. It was sheer curiosity. A lot of windows game geeks do nothing but play games, period. they are not interesting in exploring and learning, all they are interested is simply playing games.

a young person discovering linux today, most likely will have to do so by theirself of through friends because their parents are definitely not going to be the source of introduction...

Re:Students

[Deliveranc3]

Linux game.

Linux already has a game, it's called Dependencie Rundown.

In the game you have to find countless dependencies which are scattered around the internet. Time runs out when you get to irritated to continue and switch back to Windows.

It's in the tradition of Myst with crytic problems which the game refers to as "error messages".

Unlike other games the rewards come out step by step, after a while you can do all new moves, like play mp3's or Xvid's run LICQ or any of the heap of other tasks Linux is theoretically capable of, just not out of the box.

Ohhh I'm going to play right now, I'm at a boss!

Re:Students

[hkht]

You are the exception. You are right, some gamers do nothing but game, and they really don't care what the OS is. If the OS of choice were Linux for games, then by sheer popularity Linux would become better known and more used amongst the young people. A guy at at Circuit City said "hey if u want to play Doom3, dump ur P3 and get a new P4, running XP". more accurately he said "get a P4 with XP so u can run Doom3." Spend $2000.00 for the $50.00 dollar game? It was so funny because I would'nt get a new PC for my business and hate to pay $50.00 for printer ink and here is this kid telling me to upgrade to P4 for the game. Know any Linux people willing to buy a whole new box just to run a Linux game? I love Xboard and all but a new box for it? I'm running SUSE 8.1 professional right now on a P3 600 because the (XP disk crashed ) and it's sweet for the OS and speed. It suits my purpose but it has no real games except those shipped with SUSE. When the kids are around they will demand XP, so I've got get it up and running for the games and of course STEAM so Linux here looses out with the younger folks. My ultimate point is if Linux became a premier gaming platform then by sheer popularity it would be more possible some kid gamer out there may be the guy Torvalds some day passes the torch to....it was a 14 year kid who told me how to down load Valve's STEAM (no Linux support) and gave me a history lesson on how STEAM came about, but he new nothing about Linux, I got STEAM (Day of Defeat rules!) he got exposed to Linux...who was the winner here?

Re:Students

[segmond]

when I was running linux on a 486 100mhz in 96. I had doom, and gameboy emulator. my sister was 10 at that time. i taught her quickly how to login to the system, and some basic unix commands, and she would get on to play with gameboy emulator. Really, there are lots of quality games with emulators...

Re:Students

[hkht]

totally great! once again ur an exception and was ahead of ur time. how many people even know about emulators? i was hooked the moment i saw the os booting up, it was like a life changing moment. if it were the gamers platform of choice, you would have more kids saying things like "for sure linux is da bomb, or "absolutley" sick and it's free......." (if that's the kind of thing they are saying these days anyway)! in this case getting the young people impressed is the key to "really" spreading the word. p.s i still have a 486 laptop running suse on it for the "fun" of it! running lynx and broadband...still fast!

Umm a little late...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the last date for registration is Oct.31
What's the point?
See here's the lovely link that SHOULD have be hunted down by the editor: http://www.developer.ibm.com/university/students/c ontests/linux/
I mean I don't ask for much but if all you have is a spartan story on a contest you could at least type: "IBM Contest" into Google.
Sheesh, your job is to filter the news. That's it.

Re:I cant beleive this

[MmmDee]

I second the notion expressed by someone else, "very well put." I suspect those that go to college do so because of encouragement, personal desire, financing and opportunity. Fortunately, any one or two of these is often enough to make it happen.

essay this....

[pioSko]

Each entry consists of a 1,200-word essay that can describe the solution to one of 29 Linux-related challenges IBM poses as part of the competition.

like... "How to install ATi drivers" ??

Already being done

[pkphilip]

I am already doing this in my company - it is at a very early stage of implmentation.

The primary premise is that software development is similar to artisanship - where an "artisan" joins work in a fairly junior grade and then learns the ropes from seniors and mentors who actively train their juniors on actual projects - all work is closely supervised with the express aim of maturing the skills of the juniors.

All programmers join as apprentices and have to work their way up by earning the respect of their peers. All code is to be reviewed by seniors/mentors and peers and based on their review, the programmers will advance in grade.

Everyone needs to know programming as well as an additonal skill - be it housekeeping, administration, finance etc so they can take on other roles if needed. In addition to programming, everyone will be associated with one of the additional roles they choose - for instance, you might be a programmer, but you could also be incharge of housekeeping responsibilities.

Everyone is given an opportunity to choose the role in which they would like to work - for instance, people showing interest in marketing will be given the option of joining the marketing team as long as the marketing team is convinced that the person fits that role.

Programmers are taken only based on references from others already in the organization - ofcourse, all this means that the company grows very slowly, but the advantages are that the skill levels are kept very high and people can move to a different division/department at short notice.

Also, everyone in the organization interacts much more with each other and this helps team dynamics.

I guess the work ethic and the general work philosophy is a bit like in a kibutz.

Would like to hear what you guys think of this.

Re:Already being done

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doing this at my place of work, too. It's a fairly time-tested concept, too.

Having a 3-level AFSC, I'm expected to learn my job through coursework (Career Development Courses, or CDCs) and OJT-- On-the-Job Training. As long as I'm working on these tasks-- both hands-on and academic-- my title will be " Apprentice". "Computer Programming Apprentice", "HF Radio Apprentice", "Fuel Systems Apprentice". Whatever my AFSC is.

After finishing the required tasks, I'll be granted the title of "Journeyman" along with my 5-level. Following that, if I'm still in the Air Force, I can go for a 7-level-- which involves more coursework, more experience. More mentoring from senior personnel.

In addition to that, I get to take on additional duties-- work group manager (computer stuff), HAZMAT/HAZCOM monitor, mobility manager, training monitor-- whatever I'm assigned, I take on that additional job and the responsibilities associated with it.

The apprenticeship program is a good idea, if you ask me. Now, the Air Force doesn't always implement everything properly, but by and large-- the apprenticeship/mentorship program works out very well. A good training manager with a motivated trainee can produce beyond-phenomenal results under the apprenticeship program.

Re:Already being done

[Anonymous Coward]

The second skill concept doesn't seem appealing to me at all. As a student I already want to develop other skills in job related areas (I'm thinking more blue collar though, skilled labor is in shortage and a good backup job) and do not want to spend extra effort learning more paper pushing jobs (marketing, I hate marketing, and cleaning toilets is not my idea of a good complement to a programming career). My evenings and weekends are for me. I want to focus on one thing intensely while at work and another at home.

Website for Linux Challenge

[LordMyren]

has anyone found a website for the linux challenge?

i've gotten 10 dead links to places it may once have been, but still nothing for the challenge itself.

ps: pathetic.

Re:Website for Linux Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

They heard that /. was running a story and shut them down. Nooooooooooooooooo our server.....Nooooooooooooooooo

nothing like free consulting like in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Outsourcing haven't been enough to cut costs and yet the big ibm dinosaur keeps kicking to stay alive... what better than take unexperienced/naive minds to solve problems IBM's bureaucracy would take millions to do them... really how long since the last IBM product you bought.

Give it a rest IBM give it a rest.

To any of the guys willing to participate, solve the problems and don't give the answers away get your own comapany or patent your solution, you can thank me later on.

Linux on recent Thinkpads

[ttys00]

I'd improve Linux on Thinkpads by releasing bloody drivers for all the obscure subsystems in them!

Boot time?

[Entropius]

The best way to do that, something that Windows has had for a while:

Working suspend-to-disk.

The best way to minimize boot time is to never have to do it.

Re:I cant beleive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Unversity shows to a prospective employer they are willing to make an investment in themselves, and not focussed on short term goals immediate money / car / holidays / weekends etc which is what is implied when you leave highschool to get a job.

It is for the most part a class / attitude differential, which playing the law of averages is actually justified.

Individual cases are different of course but no one has time for that - you have to take an overall picture......

note this is the UK where univ doesn't cost much and the difference in salary of Univ vrs non univ is marginal.

College/University is beneficial

[DanteLysin]

Even if you do not pursue a Computer Science degree, attending a college or university exposes you to a wide range of different philosophies and people. For the IT professional, good people skills is a benefit. As one who works in the systems engineering field, the knowledge and experience I learned in medical school gives me some advantages over my peers. If not but for the experience, college/university is worth it.

fuck "assumed context"

[Anonymous Coward]

kfg was right; you were wrong.
Get over it.

Self-learner

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fact that self-learners and motivated people are much more competent than people who just go inside something because the money that they can get.

How many developers are without an IT degree?

100% true

[Anonymous Coward]

In this days most of the people go to university not to learn but to get a job.

Re:I cant beleive this

[segmond]

commanding intelligence for the most part is almost independent of college. By high school, those that have commanding intellignece have pretty much established the fact that they do. college is about exposure. It is not just about exposure to professors and their experiences but real knowledge. A high school dropout in the real world is usually limited to silly books at borders. The sheer amount of books and journals that I obtain from my science and engineering library is definitely something to envy for a curious mind without access to them.

January?

[devkM]

Has anyone noticed that the author says LinuxWorld Boston in January? The LinuxWorld Expo in Boston will be taking place February 14th-17th.

Of course, I'm assuming this is what the autor is actually referring to.

-kM

Re:I cant beleive this

[SunPin]

Spelling errors don't really register with me anymore until some loser starts to talk about intelligence, structured programming or, in this case, the value of attending a university.

Forget being AC. It's open season on these idiots as far as I'm concerned.

Where is your Company?

[Laebshade]

And when can I start work? Seriously, I like this idea.

Re:Where is your Company?

[pkphilip]

In India :) yes, seriously. I am based out of Madras, India. http://www.songbirdtech.com.

Free Ideas from College Students...

[Glove d'OJ]

" IBM created its program in 2001 to drum up enthusiasm among students worldwide in Linux and open-source software."

It sounds like some of these "theoretical" challenges may be issues that they have in-house, and are looking for some free help to solve.

In 2001, post-bubble, I went on a job interview with a large, not-to-be-named corporate entity and was asked how I would approach / solve a few issues that they were having at the time. Wanting the job, I foolishly gave a couple insightful replies.

Did I get the job? No. Were the solutions implemented? A friend of mine who works in that group said that the hiring manager (he with whom I interviewed) suddenly had some great insight on their current problems, and proposed solutions that sounded quite a bit like my interview replies.

The bastard. My fault, though, for giving away the milk and not having them require that the cow at least be rented.

Is IBM doing the same with these kids? Dunno. Looking at the 2004 Official Rules, however, section 8 of the agreement reads:

By submitting entries, entrant grants the sponsors and their agents of this contest the right to publish, use, adapt, sell, edit and/or modify such entry in any way, in commerce, and in any and all media worldwide, including but not limited to the Internet, without limitation and without compensation to the entrants. Entrant also grants sponsors worldwide irrevocable, nonexclusive and royalty free right and license to use, have used, copy, reproduce, transfer, modify and/or display any information contained in their entry in
whole or part and in any form without compensation.

Things that make you go "tsk tsk." If I read this correctly, it means that they would own your idea as submitted, and can not only use it, but also sell it and / or patent it as their own.

It gets even more fun, in section 9:

At the sponsor's discretion, entrants may be required to submit source code to substantiate
results reported in the entry.

Bastards.

---

wwjd? jwrtfm!

Mod that up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I like learning. I'm a big self-studyier, and always have been. But college is really a totally different thing.

I know I could've gotten by just fine without it, but I'm a much more knowledgable and well-rounded person because I did.

You are exposed to material that you wouldn't necessarily have been even vaguely interested in otherwise, often to find that it's far more interesting than it looked from the outside.

This is a very important thing. I personally found out at the university, that the courses I expected to be fun, were rather boring. And a course I thought was going to be totally boring turned out to be my favorite.

I'm now myself getting a PhD in a subject I never would've known I liked, had I not had a mandatory basic course on the subject.

Re:Mod that up!

[gujo-odori]

I know I could've gotten by just fine without it, but I'm a much more knowledgable and well-rounded person because I did.

You should have logged in and collected some mod points, that really hits the nail on the head :-)

Nearly all of my 20 or so years of full-time work has been spent in IT (I went into teaching for a while, but found that the negatives outweighed the positives for me and went back to commputers), and the skills for that are all things I picked up on my own and/or learned on the job. In college, I didn't study computers at all, I went instead for something that really fascinated me: linguistics. I still love linguistics, although I never seem to have time to even read anything about it anymore, but your point is spot-on: college makes you more well-rounded than you would otherwise be.

If you love software or hardware, taking mandatory writing classes may seem like total drudgery, but they are worth a lot. I probably wouldn't be a manager today if I couldn't communicate well in writing.

History might seem boring too, but you can learn some really interesting things there. One of the most fascinating classes I took in college was modern Chinese history (covered late 1800s through the Cultural Revolution or so).

To me, the well-roundedness aspect was the single greatest thing about going to college. It was wonderful. If I were rich enough to not have to work, I'd go back to school for the rest of my life and just study interesting things.

I worked my ass off

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea of formalizing a process for people to get their foot in the door and progress into more interesting work and higher pay.

However, what I don't like is a system by which people aren't self-motivated. RTFM would have to be a serious pillar of such an effort for me to support it.

I put in more work on my own learning *nix/networking/security than people who went and got their Masters degree in college in whatever subject matter.

I know you people know what I'm talking about. Spending 12 - 18 hours per day reading books, hacking on code, learning new OSes inside and out, doing shit just to do it. The thirst for knowledge, not a paycheck -- but it did pay off didn't it? Damn skippy it did, but didn't start from the 'oh yeah let me get some of dat bling bling' mentality -- not for me anyway.

That's the world I came from ( doing things heavily since about 1994 ) and truth be told, the best people I've worked with in the systems/networking/security world have been the self-starters without fancy degrees.

Re:Cheap labor? (Nah)

[jskelly]

The costs incurred to run the contest are much much greater than any benefit real or imagined that IBM might get out of students' solutions.

Why so black and white?

[ccoakley]

I am a bit confused. You seem to think that it is impossible to be both a student and carry a job. I used to work for a company that regularly hired undergraduate students part time. They were cheap labor and we were willing to work around their hours. We certainly gave them work that is better than helpdesk tasks.

A friend of mine, Murat Karaorman, now head of the CS department of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB, started the program as a graduate student. He was a student (PhD), an instructor (Lecturer), and he worked full time at Panasonic. Add to that the fact that he had two teenage daughters.

I currently know quite a few people who are simultaneously students and professionals. In the end, they typically have more doors opened for them than either the Uni-only or the crap-job-ladder-only individuals.

Timing

[ripcrd]

Just curious, but wouldn't this have been a better story topic if it were BEFORE the deadline of the contest? Maybe even with enough time to actually complete and hand in an answer so you could qualify for it. I know, it's a silly request. I guess you aspiring scholars can get ready for next year. Doh!

IBM PLEASE READ THIS !!

[The MESMERIC]

If you are serious about Linux doing well on the desktop also.
PLEASE sponsor Linux game companies.
PLEASE give award to Linux game companies and porting.

Understand that Compatibility / Multi-Media / Games are the 3 areas to get working - if Linux is to be a serious Desktop competitor.

If Mary can't edit her keyboard music on Linux.
If Joe can't get his game pad Nostromo to work.
If Billy can't have more proper decent games.
Why should they change?

No sane person would want to switch. Virus, hackers, trojans and all.

I guess I am insane.

Oh and PS: Stop ringing my company trying to sell your shitty $10,000 "Middleware" technologies - even they don't work.

InstallShield? hahaha - pathetic