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Bill Gates to Finally Receive His Harvard Degree
coondoggie writes "It's not like he needs it to beef up his résumé, but the world's richest college dropout finally is getting his degree. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, will speak at Harvard University's commencement ceremony in June and, like all commencement speakers, will receive an honorary degree from the institution. It's hard to guess if Gates, the wealthiest person in the world and co-founder of a company that brought in $44 billion in revenue last year, cares. But the programming whiz who once dropped out of Harvard will likely feel some sense of satisfaction."
I tend to view the bachelors degree as the high school diploma of the 21st century...
so I guess that makes the honorary degree something akin to a rich man's GED.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It was the holiday season. She and her husband had decided to attend a performance of King Lear. It was their first night out together in months. During the second act one of the performers became ill. The manager of the theater walked onto the stage, and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?" Her husband stood up, and shouted, "I have an honorary degree from Anderson College!" It was at that moment when she decided not to get him anything for Christmas.
--Snoopy
Bill Gates has already received honorary degrees from several other institutions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Awards_and _recognition
Yawn!!!
It's hard to guess if Gates, the wealthiest person in the world and co-founder of a company that brought in $44 billion in revenue last year, cares.
Well, he certainly must care, as he's obviously not doing it for the money.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
his company makes him seem like an asshole, but i have the impression he was/is actually very good.
doesn't count! He'll never be able to get a CS job with that!
Oh! Please! If he was one Windows would have been better. THe idea that you would compliment him on his programming is offensive to those that do program. Did you ever see any of his code?
"Suckers!"
I though that was the usual honourary gift to the successful.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
now maybe he could get past the resume screeners and get a job at Google? It's good to see him do something with his life now.
In other news, Harvard University has just been granted 10,000 honorary Vista licenses and 10,000 Office 2k7 licenses...
Looks like the site has been slashdotted. Lol. I've mirrored the article here if anybodies having trouble getting it.
- gates-to-finally-receive.html
http://www.douginadress.com/news/2007/032207-bill
Ace
Finally his parents will get off his back to go back to school and do something with his life!
Hardly. He was just the whiny wannabe PHB who wanted to get paid. Allen did all the work originally; the rest was ripped from Gary Kildall (RIP).
Maybe I'm cynical, but Gates isn't getting any younger or any poorer and the $22 billion endowment Harvard has doesn't mean they would turn down a "1% to my beloved alma mater" line item in his will.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Next he will become an honorary East Indian.
The submitter blurbs have always been horrible but calling Gates a programming whiz really takes the cake on the worst ones I've seen recently.
Did it come with an overly restrictive EULA?
Sure, going to college for 4 (or more) years can teach a person some good information. But the skills learned from life experience are usually much more important!
I have no degree but take college courses (adult continuing education) that interest me. At some point in most of them, the prof will usually add a remark like: "...but of course we know that's not how it works in the real world."
I'm not saying that they're teaching the wrong things in college, just that the average 18 year old will be learning mostly best-case theory. Most of the actual skills are learned during the early years in the workplace.
Seems like it would be a better process to work in your desired field for a few years, then go for the degree. Or, at least participate heavily in an apprentice program. But I do realize that some career fields are not compatible with this paragraph.
Maybe he got this one on the web. You know the ones, "no prior study required, degree based on your current achievements, just give us all your personal details and and send in $100".
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Love or hate the guy, he's certainly earned degree equivalency. Business Administration, most likely; they said in the article that Harvard doesn't announce which subject in advance.
If it's computing science, then I'd probably have a few words to say.
I think you've swapped Dershowitz and Said. Said's academic claim to fame was his stupid book on Orientalism, which revealed his ignorance of the history and scholarship of the Arab world. His political claim to fame was his defense of terrorism and bigotry. Dershowitz on the other hand is a distinguished civil libertarian as well as one who has told the truth about Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East.
Nader is a curious case. He did indeed do some great work in exposing corporate misbehaviour, but I lost respect for him when his hopeless runs for President took votes away from the Democratic candidates that might have saved us from Bush.
At Bently College, when we gave Jerry from "Ben and Jerry's" ice cream and honorary degree, he brought with him a truck of free ice cream. So much so that every student and proffessor willing had a freezer stuffed with the stuff afterwards... What will Gates do, give all the students copies of WIndows Vista? Thats a bit like someone dousing the students with STD infected blood...
Now who should get an honorary Harvard degree is Hugh Heffneir, for his buisness empire... Maybe he would pass the bunnies around...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
... Degrees being handed out without the work! Like it's... an entitlement or something...
:-) )
I say make him sit through those droning lectures! Force him through those assignments that will actually make him a decent programmer.
This just cheapens the BS degree for everyone else...
Okay, so it took me 10 years to get my degree (interrupted by a military stint, working full time, getting married and having 4 kids under 8 by the time I finished up)
I just think we'd be denying Bill a proper sense of accomplishment if he received it without all the work. Wouldn't that truly put hair on his chest? (which he probably needs, too.
Today, family and friends ask me to not mention any of this to their kids finishing high school/starting college. Go figure.
I think you labeled some things backwards. Half of the people haven't even been charged with a crime in a competent court let alone convicted. And when I say competent, I mean one with jurisdiction not some protest court trying to make a political argument.
Or is this just one of those just for fun things the other generations end up seeing and take for fact?
Half of the people haven't even been charged with a crime in a competent court let alone convicted.
It's nice that you assume that the Administration is innocent until proven guilty. I just wish they would return the favor and practice due process with their victims instead of engaging in rendition, torture, indefinite detention, disappearances, and etc all before any legal trial. I'd rather live in a republic than a junta.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Remember Microsoft Bob?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Let's not forget that while Bill Gates is a shining example to college dropouts everywhere, he still did not get to where he is today by his wits and ruthless business strategies alone. He also had to stand on the shoulders of the engineers and programmers that wrote Windows, MS Office, etc. and most of those people were precisely the type of nose-in-the-air snoots with a college degree who didn't follow his example and drop out. Now you can probably defend your self by pointing to the quality of Windows, MS Office and other Microsoft products, which is perceived to be rather low in some quarters and argue that Bill hasn't been well served by those programmers and engineers anyway. I'd say that any shortcomings in Microsoft products are probably more the fault of Microsoft's management and it's history of practicing an approach to development and product testing schedules where marketing issues outweigh quality and proper development practices (i.e. Just develop it really fast... And who needs thorough software testing anyway?? It burns up to much time and drives up costs.) than they are the fault of the programmers and engineers who have to abide by them. I can remember what Windows 3.x and 98 used to be like, I can see how much of an improvement Windows XP and Vista are today. Neither is perfect mind you, my chief complaints with Windows 98 for example used to be: stability, lousy security and a UI that almost drove me insane with useless questions and endless 'Apply' buttons followed by far to many obligatory reboots. Microsoft has now more or less tackled the stability issue, they seem to be getting mildly serious about security but their UI still sucks although there are fewer reboots these days which is a plus. So Micosoft's management has learned quite a few painful lessons about the importance of professionalism and discipline in software development over the years since Windows 3.x and 98 came out, they have learned it the hard way and they seem to be learning mostly by falling on their faces.
</rant>
That would be kewl....
"We notice you've made a lot of money and are therefore wise. We also notice you're not getting any younger, and you're giving away money. If you see anything you'd like to endow, please be in touch."
People who never went to university almost invariably always miss the point. You do not go to a challenging school to learn direct skills you would need to do any particular job, and that is true even for ultra specialist disciplines like a pediatrics.
It is comparable to saying why go to a gym and work out every other day, lifting weights in some prescribed motion and good form, when you know that loading up a truck will never use those same motions.
Replace muscle above with brain and you get the idea. You go to a challenging school to do gymnastics of the brain, to learn to think, to learn to do your own research, to discover, to grow, to become better than just the skills a corporation may want today.
I went for a degree in pure math, and subsequently masters in pure math as well. Will I ever actually use any of that skill in my job (software developer)? Not in a million years. But, did I ever encounter a problem that I felt my brain just wasn't ready to cope with and could not think of a solution in my daily job? No, never. Actually, programming itself is absolutely un-challenging compared to math study.
What about all the people who put in long hours and hard work EARNING their degree?
I'll admit that Mr. Gates is a successful man, but I'd be willing to bet that he couldn't make it through a degree program the way the rest of us would have to.
It's not the dot-com era anymore, companies aren't going to hire 17 year old dropouts as sysadmins. Your case was a complete one off, you may as well advise people to buy lottery tickets for a living.
He doesn't need it for his resume. Last I heard Mr Gates had started his own company.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You forgot the Kennedys. Joe Kennedy Sr, Joe Jr, JFK, RFK, and EMK attended the college at some point in their lives.
Support the Chagossians
An honorary degree in "programming whiz"/CS, business/economics or what he actually enroled for, law?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Then maybe he'd have a better understanding of Ethics.
-R
From this page everything becomes limpid: http://www.siel.harvard.edu/2003/about/tour/classr ooms/maxw.jsp
: "The Maxwell Dworkin building was built with funds donated by Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates III and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both members of the Class of 1977, in memory of their mothers, Mary Maxwell Gates and Beatrice Dworkin Ballmer. Maxwell Dworkin building opened in 1999 and, with its extensive office and laboratory space, will allow Harvard to double the size of its computer science faculty over the next several years."
(Slide of Bill Gates' inbox comes up, showing "Ref1nance your morgage!").
However, sometimes they hit just by random chance.
(Next message in inbox is about "U.N.I.V.E.R.S.I.T.Y.D.I.P.L.O.M.A.S").
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
- George Washington
- Marquis de Lafyette
- James Monroe
- Andrew Jackson
- Winston Churchill
- Nelson Mandela
That's real company.Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
> But the programming whiz who once dropped out of Harvard will likely feel some sense of satisfaction.
The "programming whiz" part of Bill Gates resume is pure padding.
Yup. Saddam was also reelected with a 98% majority before US invaded.
The fact that you are not convicted is not a case you are not guilty.
Enron's ex-CEO's conviction was overturned once he died between appeals.
Does that mean he was as innocent as a feather?
Does it mean all the people who he led down the drain were figments of their imaginations?
Is lying to your own people about reasons for a war and then justifying it with a lame excuse OK for you?
And don't go countering "oh, so removing a dictator is not good?" , because SA has a king, who is not even elected. Did we do a "regime-change?"
Heck closer, NKorea has known dictator. What did we do to him? Paid him $25 million to "probably" destroy his nukes....
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Few years ago, education system in our country changed. Students after graduating from high school had to work for 2 years in order to be eligible for college application. Exteremely low rate of students getting job without degree resulted to de-motivation of high-schoolers. Who would want to study if you're not eligible for college application and it's so hard to get job?
Thank god they removed that restriction this year.
Just great...now asian parents all over the world have another reason to push their kids overseas into the American education system...
"Because the world's richest man also got a degree from Harvard."
Watch as cheating on the SATs rises exponentially from South-Eastern Asia.
I never said anything about the administration. You listed people outside this administration too. And I don't speak for them either. But if it is due process you are looking for, due process is what they are giving. It just isn't the same due process your or I would expect.
I'm going to go on a limb here and assume you are talking about the enemy combatant issue. There is a process for review that determines if they are who we think they are, it determines if the are enemy combatants in accordance with the Geneva conventions that we are signatory to, And if they are not, then they go threw the regular criminal justice system. IF they are, then they are treated as such according to the same treaty that we are a signatory too. And in case your wondering, We didn't sign onto the last version or two.
Due process is guaranteed in the constitution. However, nowhere does it define what that due process is. And the idea of due process today is definitely different then when the constitution was made and during our history in between. The constitution left it up to the courts and congress to determine how due process is defined. Basically, anything congress employ though regular law could become due process at any time. There are some exceptions were it might infringe upon other rights protected by the constitution.
You may not like any redefinition of due process. You may not like the suspension of habeas corpus. But it is legal and the way the country was set up to run. Your statement of I just wish they would return the favor and practice due process with their victims Would be more accurate if it said something to the effect of I just wish they would return the favor and practice the same due process they enjoy with their victims.
However, I'm not here to argue on their behalf or start another war of words over something that has been settled time and time again. I could if you wish, change your list to more accurately describe a centralist/moderate view instead of a hard sided political one if you wish. I have no problem calling a spade a spade (which is a reference to a card game- no racial inference at all). But I object falsities to further a political point. If you cannot win support on the truth then you deserve no support. And yes, I'm not limiting this to supporters on the democrat or republican sides or to politics in general. A lie is a lie without regard to who told it or why it was told. IF you cannot say anything without concocting something then do exactly that: not say anything at all.
Even though it's an honorary degree, a nice way of saying a degree you did not really earn, I don't think he deserves even that. To me he will be the most contributing factor in stifling technology in human history. An being such I don't think he should receive any fame, he has assured his place in history in the infamous catalog and that's where he belongs.
The one thing good about him getting it from Harvard is that Harvard is not an accredited university. So, to some point this is fitting that at least he doesn't have an accredited degree. I'm sure he could have gave the University of Phoenix some Vista licenses and gotten a degree from there.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Yet further proof that business ethics is an oxymoron, and one that business schools are at best one to pay lip service to? It would have been a more powerful statement had they considered him and refused to give him a degree based on how he has profited on his organization's unethical accomplishments. Not that I expect any other publicly traded company to be in it for the good will of the people, but Microsoft has certainly been rather flagrant about its practices. Apparently these are the values that Harvard holds up for all of its students to esteem to achieve.
My company was recently found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, and now Europe is currently, and has been, trying to impose penalties on my companies behavior. Oh, thanks for the honorary degree Harvard.
What skills are involved in admining boxes?
Things I learned in college
1. algebra
2. calculus
3. data structures
4. algorithms [sorting, searching, etc]
5. compiler theory
6. numerical analysis
7. and a host of practical courses, etc.
And what do I do for a living? Software developer in the field of cryptography. So I need the math, algorithms, etc, etc. Yeah, granted I too taught myself a lot of my skills [like crypto], but to say college was a total waste because I had to sit through a "intro to C" class is ignorant.
Maybe if you had a job that required talent you'd be talking differently. I'm sorry, but setting up servers, changing network settings, etc, isn't exactly a skilled labour. I mean it's a job, but don't pretend you're some tech god because you can make Apache start and host a page.
Sorry for knocking you off your high horse, but you're advice is ignorant and misleading.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
conan o'brien
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes: Open, locks, whoever knocks!
Please explain this one a little more. Maybe some factual sites would be helpfull too? lol.. I don't know what your talking about again. Who is SA? and who is the king? And who isn't elected? Are you suggesting we goto war with NKorea instead? I have a better idea, Stop monday night armchair quarterbacking and run for office. Then you can change everything to your liking and will never have anything to wine about again. HOw does that sound?
And in case your wondering, the problem with going to war with North Korea isn't North Korea. It is the standing Chinese military that handed us our asses when we got too close to them the last time we played that game. Maybe your too young to know that. Maybe your to young to pick up a book about it. Maybe when you get older you can look for one in the history or reference sections of the library, the fiction sections only get you upset about stuff that isn't true. Then when you know a little more about it, why don't you come back and talk.
I never finished college (changed majors too many times to have enough credits for any one of them) yet my position lists an MIS and/or MBA as 'required'. It's called being good at what you do and working your way to the top.
Went back to collage under a pseudonym and got his own damned degree.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The problem with things like 'war crimes' is that they tend to be international level problems. So you can almost always write off those attempting to prosecute as 'protest courts' and say they have a political bias. You may well be correct, but the question becomes whether they're more or less interested in 'justice' than the alternatives.
Let me clarify a few details: Enron's CEO was not acquitted BECAUSE he was innocent. He was acquitted because of a technicality that if you die between appeals, the law allows you to be removed of all convictions, much like annulment of a marriage. So he was not innocent.
SA= Saudi Arabia. You should really stop watching only Fox news.
We invaded saddam's Iraq because none of our oil majors could get a cut like the europe's oil companies. And we could not do another S.Arabia against them (using their own oil to build roads at inflated cost). Have U noticed any EU major company bidding and winning major contracts in SA? (You should read the books "Corporation" and "Confessions of an economic hit-man")
As regards the intelligence, it is well known cheney and his cronies delibrately twisted intelligence to claim a white lie that saddam HAD nukes capable of launching in 30 mins, even when EU intelligence agents did not say so.
Why did we withdraw our motion to the UN Sec Council to invade Iraq? Because bush feared it would be vetoed and attacking a nation after a UN veto would mean violating laws locally (See US laws).
Do you remember companies like halliburton claiming Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction? A country which had the most advanced infrastructure (roads, telephones, hotels, museums, etc) before 1991, which were built by EU companies which rankled US corporations a lot. An advanced modern society where girls wore short skirts before 1991 and even christians prayed freely (unlike SA).
In fact cheney even lied (lies now) that saddam had a link in 9/11. However the truth was a SA charity linked to an SA princess of the ruling family had donated substantial amounts to it, and that charity was used to fund 9/11 (read the 9/11 comissions' report).
Even today why do all rebuilding contracts go to US companies only? Do EU companies have no ability? Why can't iraq's constitution allow open bidding where EU companies to win bids to reconstruct.
Bush claimed he liberated the people. In truth he liberated them from one dictator to a group of corp dictators.
NKorea: We very well knew they were far more dangerous than saddam since they had already sold missiles to other countries. If we were so hell-bent on cleansing this world of dictators, we should have attacked them first. And don't give reasons about China. Are we a bully that can't fight an equally armed adversary? Are we so fragile that a mighty army which defeated the SS Waffen cant rid the world of another dictator?
I may not be old, and i may not be well read, but i do know we once had a mighty army which fought against equals and not against a weakened ragtag band of poor guys.
Since our prez (president) seems to be guided by hand of God and actually "talks" to God (both candidates for being declared mentally ill), then the God should have told him to fight like a man, and attack an equal.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
What, couldn't you find a 9/11 Truther for your list of heroes?
Asshole.
Take the Geneva convention, There are countries that have signed on during the later revision that we didn't adopt. They would not have competent jurisdiction. Also, any country attempting to use current language that we did not adopt wouldn't be either. This is of course working under the assumption that no other country can take judicial rule over a sovereign nation unless that nation has made provision for it or a war presided them with jurisdiction. And Iraq as well as Yugoslavia were members of the Geneva treaties.Not if there is a system or mechanism already in place. International level problem have international level fixes. They are usually called treaties but often entertain and resemble war. The ones attempting to prosecute and are protest courts are the courts that are taking local laws with no other basis or provisions of international treaties they have signed but the US hasn't and going with them. Holding another country liable for a crime they did not agree to abide by can only be enforces if that other countries sovereignty has been compromised or they are in agreement with the law.
I believe congress has taken a look at these accusations and received several opinions to the fact that the claims of war crimes are being touted over treaties we never signed or enacted. If this is true, then the only recourse would to be engage in war and subject us to their system or remain protest court with political objective..
These honorary degrees are nothing but another PR stunt. Hey, maybe this is troll material, but having Bill Gates as a potential wealthy donor on your side never hurt anyone. Give him the honorary degree, make him feel very good, and donations, donations, donations. Had Bill Gates not risen to become the chairman of Microsoft, Harvard would have paid him no more mind than a fly on the wall. As other slashdotters have pointed out, Steve Wozniak went back to college and earned his degree.
...will speak at Harvard University's commencement ceremony in June and, like all commencement speakers, will receive an honorary degree from the institution... Not quite. There is still one place where you have to earn your degree.
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
"At the same ceremony Harvard honored Steve Balmer's Contributions by giving him a Chair."
Yes, but never finishing college isn't the same as never attending.
I have yet to finish school, and I've been working in a "degree required" position for 10 years. My current position states "Master's degree required" and pays me well. I got my job based on my experience and my connections, but I never would have gotten started if I hadn't done some college.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Wow...so here we go yet again. Honorary degree's for people worthless in their field. Bill Gates is an excellent marketeer, monopolist, and theif. He is trash in IT. He makes the most innane "predictions" and MS products are constantly playing catchup in terms of innovation (well, maybe not catchup, so much as embrace, extend, extinguish).
Let us not forget...Bush got his from Yale. Ahh...Once again excellent business and legislative skills have earned him a pretty ticket. Well, if you count absolute contempt and disregard for the law. War, wiretaps, refusal to answer to any kind of subpoenas and the like. Ahh...
These colleges seem to be getting more and more worthless and just sucking in big name people to prop their notoriety up. Fact is people are getting excellent educations in the real world and non brand name colleges.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
there are many sub fields within it and I do not doubt he would qualify for many.
it isn't all about algorithms and considering what some schools teach in CS these days...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you are using calculus to admin boxes, you are doing it wrong.
This is going to come back to haunt me in 20 years, I can feel it...
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
So why should he want a computer science degree. He has already
claimed that he is an engineer.
Lots of reasons:
The GP didn't give advice but rather related a set of personal facts.
The GP fully admits to be working towards a degree - for his own personal betterment ("for fun").
This raises the question, why does your reading comprehension suck so much ass?
*Doctor of Geekiness
to be the gentleman who warmly congratulates Bill and Melinda in the back room on their magnificent accomplishments, particularly in the philanthropic field.... then looks Bill in the eye and asks for a $400 million donation?
Hence "pretty much everything".
I am not happy. That's my alma mater. (Well, not so alma, and not so mater either, if you get right down to it.) I'm glad that's not my graduation year. Imagine having to sit there and listen to this guy gas on about the value of hard work while he's kneecapping as many companies as he can get at, pushing for as many cheap H1-B workers as it'll take to put those nice little Harvard grads right out of a job, and generally just being Bill Gates.
(I'll admit the Gates Foundation does good philanthropic work, but for that I credit his wife. I never heard of him doing that stuff before he got married.)
Which I suppose is the way it goes really. There's not really any 'international justice' just people you're more afraid of than others. If you're lucky, the guy with the most firepower and enthusiasm is also the one who's interested in 'high standards' in terms of war crimes and human rights.
Hmm, never really thought of it that way. Declaring (as a nation) that you've found someone under a different jurisdiction to be a war criminal, I suppose it _is_ a protest. One which they might acknowledge and do something about, but ... well if the government does 'back' whoever's found as a criminal, then you fall back to the other options, of hoping they come to visit, and kidnap them, or letting rip with the war machine.
Ain't RealPolitik fun?
And oh boy, did this get offtopic :)
The other day my bf B. was telling me about a low-level tech candidate he had interviewed for some support work in his department. The guy had a great-looking resume that consisted mainly of "in-the-industry" experience. He "implemented" this, "organized" that...B. asked him about 20 questions in all. Mix-n-match. From very basic, to very complex issues, and no theoretical, textbook stuff. You had to be there to fix it. It was appropriate, given that this dude ws claiming most of his qualifications from field experience.
He managed to answer from 20, oh, about one question. He got stumped on 19 other problems that he was supposed to be at least familiar with. His resume was a hoax. The "implementation" entries apparently meant that he carried PCs around for some project. No, really.
It's hard to properly qualify this type of candidate. This is how sometimes morons get hired into companies, and end up being a drain of resources and a problem waiting to happen, that most often their peers or boss will have to fix. Morons get stuck into jobs in the next cube beside people like you and me and they entail an ugly and exhausting cycle of damage control. All this to say, a college degree will at least indicate that the candidate is not a bum-off-the-street building a CV on fabrications, trickery and subterfuge. Saves time for most employers IMO. And if the person has proved that they can learn in school, they can likely learn and train to do well on the job.
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
Yeah, he's doing a degree "for fun". Right. Or maybe he sees the writing on the wall. Not saying admining isn't a good job. But let's not pretend that you're some creative genius or have lots of room to grow [intellectually and career-wise].
It's the sort of job that exists, for the most part, because people are too busy/lazy to do it themselves.
In general, I find people who tell the "I dropped out of school at 16/17 and look how I turned out" fall into one of two camps. Those who are already fairly smart, have an aptitude to learn on their own [and do so]. Then there are those who set the bar just a bit lower than others. But usually the "I'm above schooling" attitude is a sign of someone who really isn't worth talking about, maybe 1 of every 100K dropouts is actually cracked up to be a somebody in their respective fields. The rest work retail or other sorts of jobs.
Which, I should add, aren't bad, but just don't pretend like you're living the high life thumbing your nose at everyone else.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Dershowitz on the other hand is a distinguished civil libertarian
Distinguished as a civil libertarian who justifies torture. I guess that would be a fairly distinguishing trait among civil libertarians.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
He set neural network research back 20 years for starters.
One scientist said that no significant paradigm change can occur in a science until the previous generation of researchers die off. It certainly appears that little progress will be made in AI until Minsky retires.
You're right there is not a strong correlation between a having college degree and not being an idiot. I was convinced, having received a BS in Computer Science in 1987, that someone with enough people skills could obtain a similar degree, at least where I went to University, which was Virginia Tech, without being able to code his way out of a wet paper bag.
After 20 more years of the dumbing down of our education system, where a CS degree in at least some cases is merely training in Java programming, I can only imagine that it's worse.
Although many of my CS classes were very good, the most valuable classes I took in college were often not even CS, or even technical. I tried to round myself out by taking non-technical things that interested me, as much as possible. In fact, I wasn't too far from an English minor or a psychology minor. I also took a year of Music Theory and Spanish. While these don't necessary help me as a code monkey in any way, I do believe they contributed significantly to me as a whole person. Actually, the Spanish came in handy when working with some folks in Mexico a few years ago. I can't exactly talk or listen well in Spanish, but I was told that my written grammar was excellent.
This is the part of a university degree that people need, as much or more than the "training" in their particular field. While I feel like I barely got a well-rounded education in the Arts & Sciences department, at least at the time, it would have been almost impossible in Engineering. Education is not training and training is not education. I think real "education" contributes more in the long-term than how to write C or Java programs. BTW, at the time we worked mostly in Pascal, a language I've never used on the job, but that never caused me any problems.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It's difficult to make judgments based on one perspective. I think it all depends on the CS program you are in and the professors you have. I started my own business in High School but left it and still continued to obtain my BS in CS. I then worked for a couple of different companies as a programmer and absolutely hated it each one. Now, I'm teaching CS at the secondary level where I think the greatest need lies. The other skills obtained by earning your BS are more important in the long run. There are too many people in the tech field without solid social and communicating skills.
Our stories differ slightly then. My first IT job was repairing PC's ages ago, which at the time required no degree at all (still doesn't since it's actually an order of magnitude easier these days). I can say I learned a lot of interesting things in college over my on and off years attending, but nothing applied to or helped me get my start in the industry. In my case I started building with and coding on Z80's when I was about 9 or 10 though, so the knowledge I took into my career was self taught long before graduating from high school.
Just think what he could have accomplished if he had actually gotten his degree! ;-)
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
you seem to miss the point in college...
;-)
It's not preparation for "the real world" - that would be apprenticeship
college is for _science_...
you see - there are for example pretty good algorithms that work very well in practice - but cases exist where these algorithms are very slow or might even not terminate at all... those cases are rare, you don't stumble upon them in practice, therefore you just ignore them in practice ("...but of course we know that's not how it works in the real world."), but they EXIST - and thats what we are dealing with... we are not satisfied with "it works pretty well most of the time", we want to know more and we want a proof
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The machine that Gates designed the emulator on was a DARPA-sponsored PDP-10. There was a story going around at the time that he got into some trouble for using a machine paid by the federal government for private commercial work.
I was there at the time, but never got to know Gates.
BTW, Harvard has one of his original code listings on display.
I think you need to learn more about Dershowitz. Perhaps this little blurb from Beyond Chutzpah will suggest itself as useful reading.
It sounds to me that with phrases like "Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East" that you have an agenda on this issue. Further, anytime you paint an entire group with the same brush (with the possible exception of groups that are defined solely by bigotry - which is not the case with Arabs), you yourself are being a bigot.
I don't have an agenda. I can see that both Arabs and Jews are doing terrible things that should stop. I also recognize that there is a huge difference in power - with Israel getting U.S. military support and apparently applying the same standards of morality (that it is okay for the U.S. or Israel to commit acts of terrorism because they are really defending themselves from the terrorism of others). I'm sorry but that dog won't hunt.
algebra? compiler theory? numerical analysis?
How about no.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's a shame: Lunis Torballs didn't have a degree from Harvard, either.
Guess this is yet another way Lunis will be chasing Bill's tail lights.
Somewhat different, true. I still believe that, while college degrees are overly hyped in the US they definitely can be a help. I think the problem is the emphasis on the degree instead of capability. The degree proves you can learn, that's all. If you've proven that through experience and a resume that got you an interview and you did well on the interview, odds are you'll do fine in the job. Problem is, these days, unless you have a huge amount of experience or know someone inside, most companies won't look at you except for very low level positions at crap wages. We've been trained over the last couple of generations to think we're "above" low level positions and crap wages though, which points at a whole other socio-economic issue, and why jobs are leaving.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
"Programming whiz"? I've heard others say this also, but what exactly was Billy boy so good at (besides sending nasty letters to early innovators)?
I'm under the impression that he made his mark by announcing vaporware and then coming up with something quick (primarily using someone else's work), before showing it off to potential buyers (e.g. QDOS, Altair BASIC interpreter).
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
A college degree under the strictest definition is not useless, and even in some fields is quite beneficial, however, in IT this is not always the case. The biggest issue is the Computer Science field itself. To put it bluntly, it's too broad. Under the heading of Computer Science you have everything from network engineers, to web developers, to programmers, and even some IT managers. I'm not even saying that all of these fields don't require some sort of education, just that none of them are properly being served by a Computer Science degree. The problem with Computer Science is that it takes a little bit from all of these various fields, and then sprinkles it heavily with some advanced maths, which is really not meeting the needs of any of these. Computer Science needs to be more finely broken down. The way things are now, it's as if you lumped Chemistry, Physics, Metalurgy, and Astronomy all under something like a Bachelors of Physical Sciences degree. Sure it would probably help a little with all of those, but it wouldn't provide all the knowledge any one of them needed, and would probably frustrate the hell out of all of them.
The second issue that compounds all of this is the opinion that HR seems to promote whenever possible that the type of degree a person has is the primary determination in the salary that individual is worth. A piece of paper is all well and good when trying to decide who you should interview, but in terms of salary what a person knows and can do should count for much more. Unfortunatly that's not usually the case, all HR cares about is making sure everyone with X degree in field Y makes about the same amount, otherwise in their eyes it wouldn't be fair.
This is why college degrees here arn't thought of well, not because they are bad on their own, but because the IT field is so terribly represented by the degrees that can be had today.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I would probably react to an honorary degree with a big fuck you.
Mr. Gates has a similar disdain and reaction to those who endorse his products by purchasing them. His PR team will be able to keep him in check and force him to say something nice and his customers get the same kind of glad handling.
Take what it gives and you will be happier. No one ever has to do anything for you. When they do, take it for what it's worth. Gratitude does not require servility.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1. Proper usage of the contraction "you're"
Sry, couldn't resist ;)
Harvard does NOT consider one a dropout if you have passing grades (Which he did; he did quite well actually). I'm in the same boat. When you have passing grades and you leave you are officially on a leave of absence. (I guess they can't fathom that anyone with passing grades would ever drop out of their venerable institution)
Oh and on all the comments about him being a lousy coder: I call bullshit on that. I have worked on PDP11's, CPM machines etc... Virtually non-existent documentation, cosing in assembly, extreme memory constraints etc... This is the guy who rewrote a basic interpreter on the plane to his customer using paper and pen....
You might not like the guy (I wonder why, I've never met him so I'm fairly neutral on the whole thing; Also how many people do you know giving billions of dollars to charity?). but one does not become that wealthy by being an idiot!
Hajo
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
ya I noticed that 4 seconds after I posted it. Oddly enough, writing wasn't a big part of my college program. [maybe it should have been hehehe].
:-(
Only thing I can do well in the morning [when I posted that] is Piano. I guess if I had a lady friend I'd switch majors...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I hope Mr. Gates understands that life is difficult for recent graduates. His first job post-degree will likely be an entry-level position without glamour or sufficient compensation. The dog-eat-dog world of corporate America isn't for everyone. Perhaps he won't get too put off by the whole thing.
According to a university professor that once taught Bill Gates in Harvard, he did not drop out of school. Instead, he was *kicked* out of school for going over his computer usage time. He later paid Harvard to fix that record to say that he dropped out. And no, this is not a joke.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Today, family and friends ask me to not mention any of this to their kids finishing high school/starting college. Go figure.
Unlike the other response to you, I'm not going to berate you or belittle your accomplishments. If you've done well for yourself, then that's something to be proud about. On the same token, it's legitimate for family and friends to ask you not to give their children the impression that your path is something they should explicitly follow.
At the end of the day, a college degree is a very useful tool for starting out in life. It doesn't make you or break you, but it does give you more opportunities than you would have if you didn't hold a degree. Simply because you didn't utilize that tool to build your life doesn't mean that it's not extremely valuable for your younger family members. It also doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been a useful tool for you, either.
Having a CS degree from a reasonably prestigious university, I can attest that it has opened many doors for me which would otherwise have been closed. The same is true of many friends who graduated with me.
Oh I didn't mean to imply that degrees are worthless; I just meant that they are not the absolute requirement some think they are. It takes a lot of luck on top of a certain amount of talent and a *lot* of hard work to get anywhere without one in many fields.
as in ``programming wizard'' as opposed to ``to take a ...''?
A good college education enables you to push the state of your field, either by preparing you to get a PhD or giving you the knowledge to extend the tools and techniques used in industry. I would want to hire both experienced programmer and experienced computer scientists for most projects, but the experienced computer scientists are harder to find == higher salary == glad they studied up in college.
Where are you from? If you don't mind me asking.
Le français vous intéresse?
Well, I got all of that in high school (Industrial Electronics). In my last 2 years of high school, I learned programming PIC's, microprocessors in ASM, C and some high-level educational programming language as well as PID regulators (Integral and Differential regulators), logic ports etc. etc. practical applications, I studied and improved a commercial solar panel setup (research version from a local energy company)
.com business while I was earning money to learn the good way to do it (as programmers do) as well as the quick way to do it (as managers like you to do) and you were paying money to learn how you theoretically could apply that to a real situation.
I also need maths and algorithms as a developer, but I also learned the real-life lessons of programming and
Thus I have now more than 6 years of experience and making over 60k, not a college degree, but learned enough in High School and learned even more during 2 year 'schooling' as a Support Engineer, managing every single object you can find in a datacenter as well as planning to build a new one. In the mean time, you have some type of degree and merely 2 or 3 years of entry-level experience.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
A degree from Harvard: the universal center of plagiarizers and pretentious assholes.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
That's a pretty hard case to make, and requires a good amount of luck, both personal and with the job market, in addition to the usual hard work.
of course, if they offered me one, i'd accept. would make my mom happy.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Mike Lazarids is the founder of Research in Motion. He was enrolled as an undergraduate student in U of Waterloo. He founded RIM after securing a contract from General Motors and dropped out, just two months before he graduate. In 2000 he was given an honorary Doctorate of Engineering in UW and is now the chancellor.
I'm sorry but I strongly believe that degrees should be earned in the classroom.
My whole point was that if you're sufficiently intelligent, a college degree is unnecessary. Will it help? Depends. I interviewed at Google to run part of their infrastructure, and they scuffed that I didn't have a degree. They also would have only payed me a third of what I'm making now.
At the end of the day, your intelligence and adaptably is what will carry you.
You'd think it would be sort of a slap in the face to everybody in the audience who'd actually spent four years *working* for their diplomas. Yes, Gates did all this cool stuff, but he didn't actually complete the requirements of a single major, did he? Well, maybe computer science, one would hope, in terms of how much he learned over the years. Still... a slap in the face, really.
Except, of course, that a good set of the kids at Harvard are smart enough to realize that a diploma's just a piece of paper, and I'm sure that the graduating students have already been asked to donate to the school, so they're not all caught up in the illusion that the school's above giving honorary diplomas to rich drop-outs.
"In all fairness to Mr. Mellon, it was a very big check." --Dean (of the college) Martin, Back to School
Watching the likes of Bill Gates receiving his honorary degree is ridiculous.
A university in Louisiana gave Tim McGraw one and he was a college dropout. They even limited the number of attendees to the graduation to ONLY 2 or 3 immediate family members as I understand it.
I think the idiots need to go through the program just like the rest of us to get the f*cking degree. I don't care if they are successful or not. Seems like a slap in the face for the rest of us.
In the end, who gives a sh*t.
It's actually a pretty decent plan if it's phrased right. Someone with a background in technology looking to get an entry level technology job is going to expect a lower salary than a college graduate, increasing the probability of finding a job. Someone just out of high school would not be disserved by getting some real world experience to see if they really enjoy the field before committing to spending 20+ years working in it, or even going to college for 4+ years to get a degree.
Someone going to a community college part time while trying to learn on the job would probably be in the best position to try this. How many employers are going to consider working your way through school to be a bad thing? That's basically what I did, but I didn't end up finishing college. Not having a degree may have closed off some options for me, but since I started working as a programmer in high school, a lot of professional experience is compelling to those who want to see a degree. At this point, I don't find anyone asking me why I don't go back and get my degree to supplement my 19 years of professional experience.
It was for stealing time on someone else's account. He had racked up a five figure bill before they caught him. This was in the seventies when that was a lot of computer time and really a lot of money. He should admit it now and tell the whole story. It would help to humanize him and make him a more sympathetic figure to the public. Covering up his youthful misdeeds is bad public relations.
Why do this when Microsoft can just acquire Harvard, rename it "Microsoft Office Live University", and print off degress by the thousands using a niffty template and spell-checker?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
'what exactly was Billy boy so good at'
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Innovating Windows by analysing the Mac system
'we should be analysing the Mac system as it evolves and improves and innovating what makes sense'
Innovating the NetPC, by copying it
was Re:Programming whiz? 'We go nuclear and release our own WBT spec, press release with our own OEMs, and directly counter the Intel spec'
Innovating Iexplorer by cloning Netscape
I think we should have to do even more cloning (esp. LiveScript) of Netscape
Innovating msOffice by stealing features from ClarisWorks
Our biggest competitor. We should remove all reasons anybody might have for sticking with this product rather than upgrade to Office. What features do we need to steal?
davecb5620@gmail.com
One of the most scariest effects might be the loss of the ability to negotiate terms of surrender, or terms of peace. It would revert our clean wars to older kill'em all wars were the only way to win is to destroy the conflicting idealism completely and force change by placing a person in fear of losing their life. I could see an action like this being one of the few means to justify using Nukes. Not that using Nukes with the knowledge we know now is justifiable, but this could be the one exception to anyone who is sitting over them.
And yes, It is sort of fun. And yes, it did go off topic. Sorry about dragging you along on this journey.
Harvard is no different than Phoenix University Online that sells degrees.
If Gates is such a great coder, he should release the source to prove it!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
If you don't get a degree then how do you get a job? You won't have any experience because you haven't got the job in the first place.
Guess they give one to anyone these days.