wow... i just took a look at the course descriptions for this major. Its kind of the exact opposite of what you described in many ways... sure, all of the technical courses are designed to teach you recent flavors and there are actualy courses on COM and such but what is more interesting is the truly fluffy shit.
http://www.northface.edu/public/programs/courseD es criptions.htm
first off... for some reason they end up teaching a semester of Physics (wtf?) so that the students will understand forces and energy and shit... ok....
check out world culture... thats a usefull technical course... psycology and social history may be interesting but do you realy need them to write code? how about life sciences and healthy living (alright so some of us could probably use those courses)
I can give them a pass on the business courses... the math classes that people should have taken in highschool and other such shit but it looks like this degree is filled with a bunch of the Fluffy stuff that you were so against in your post.
well lets face it, there will always be a need for people with quick and dirty degrees like this to work in corprate programming. there is money to be made and people to fill the positions if they get a decent amount of training. this is what ITT tech has been doing for years.
what Computer Science needs is some way to differentiate themselves from this group. Every time someone from a program like this gets hired into a position that is over their heads it will reflect badly on people who worked their way through a real CS degree and actualy know something about how computers realy work.
there are more than enough 4 year colleges where you can get an excelent computer science degree without taking a single liberal arts class. that certainly isnt my problem with this university.
my problem is that what they are doing is offering a degree in Programming and calling it a degree in computer science.
Now its not that i dont think that there is some value to a 2 year degree in programming... and there are many people who could use that and go happily foreward in their carrer, but Computer science != Programming. there is alot more to it than just programming and in fact, as we used to say, any programming you learn along the way is purely incidental.
they dont even have a structures and algorithims course as a requirement!
I have no problem with tech only colleges, I simply have a problem with teaching basic programming and a few certifications and then calling it computer science... it isnt the same thing.
these kids are going to come out of school with a CS degree and very little of the knowledge that a COMPUTER SCIENTIST should have.
Now Im not saying that there isnt a place for a 2 year degree that is focused on programming for corprate america. corprate america needs more programmers, especialy ones that have been custom made for the type of work that corps need, but to call them CS majors? I have a hard time beliving that they will realy learn much of the science side of CS in 2 years, while also training in 2 certifications.
Perhaps Im wrong and this cariculum will teach excelent data structure usage, and algorithim analysis and AI and compiler design and low level architecture. But at this point i kind of doubt it.
I took a few years off from posting here with any regularity. but there are plenty of us still around. perhaps we should have a poll to see how many of the low user IDs are still active.
ok, so i bought my bike right before the crunch started in earnest... just before!
still, if you are carefull and you want a harley anyone who makes middle to upper middle class money can probably work it out if they want it enough to make it work.
me, I just got a good deal on a (very slightly) used lowrider:)
the fact of the matter is that except for the absolutely most abnoxious pipes you realy cant hear your exaust and engine noise over the wind noise while on the highway.
try sticking your head out the window of your car and listening to your engine. hell, try to listen to the 18 wheelers engine next to you.
quote: doing things like performing surgery, fixing broken teeth, and suing teenagers for necking during the advertisements at the beginning of a movie.
I wouldnt expect them to licence to microsoft either. but you are certainly right... it is unlikely that Real will be any significat competition for them, but microsoft may very well be.
i wouldnt expect them to licence to anyone that they compete with in any of thier other business though, in this case, the codec business. licencing to real means that there is a chance that more people will install their software, which will likely include real player and its codecs... apple wants people to use quicktime so its bad for them if anyone installs reals software for any reason.
thats the reason I wansnt surprised when the didnt licence it to real in the first place, even though licencing the DRM could grow the market for the ipod.
that is also a distinct possibility (thats why I said intentionaly or not). And well within apples rights.
Infact I expect apple would try to break this quickly so that people would not start to count on these files working, only to have they stop working when apple changes something for their own reasons. It makes more sense for Apple to be proactive so that they do not get stuck with customer complaints that their (leagaly purchaced) songs dont work on their iPod anymore.
remember, if a bunch of ipod owners start downloading music from real and from the ITMS they wont remember what songs they bought from where, but if 2 years from now apple does something that breaks reals hack then these people will be up in arms that half their collection stopped working.
Im sure apple is thinking about this senario and I wouldnt be surprised if they did something up front to prevent it.
It would also be interesting if Apple decided to licence their DRM to other online music stores that arent run by people that compete with them in other areas (codecs) and start a huge PR campaign with a nice "works with your iPod" logo just to stick it to Real (who, of course would be forever locked out)
This assumes that the end result of reals harmony is a perfectly formed DRM'd ACC music file that is in every way indistinguishable from one from the apple store.
If there are any differences then the songs could easily be broken, intentionaly or not. You dont expect apple to have their QA department testing against Reals files do you?
there are alot of ipod owners out there... some of whom are in countries that apple does not yet have distribution rights to. I dont know if there are countries that reals store sells to that apples does not but that is one potential market.
Also, the sheer fact that there are many many ipod owners out there indicates to me that at least some of them will go over and try out reals service... some people are just like that.
care to back that up with some financial data from apple? they are publicly traded after all. just how much did the itunes music store make last quarter?
here is the transcript from a financial call just a few months ago
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/04/29.9. sh tml
and a quote:
Arik Hesseldahl: Hi, Steve. Always concerned about -- not concerned, I guess, but wondering -- one of the previous questions was about revenue. I'm wondering if iTunes has reached the break even point yet.
Steve Jobs: Yes. The iTunes music store had a small profit this past quarter.
yea... they are cleaning up... maybe they should stop making ipods and mac entirely and just sell music for $.99 a pop. they sell 140 million songs a year... now if that was all proffit then they would be making a ton of money, but it isnt. there are licencing costs, development costs, maintanence costs, bandwith costs, hardware costs...
when I was writing this comment I couldnt remember who it was. i thought the person in question had died as well... so I looked it up on google and I found the keith richards story. As soon as i read your post I knew that that was the story I was thinking of.
If I recall correctly keith richards was nearly killed by something like this. he touched a mike stand while touching his guitar and because they were improperly wired he ended up getting electricuted.
of course anyone else would likely have been killed by this but because keith richards is nearly physicaly indestructable (hes a zombie you know... thats why hes still moving) he kept ticking.
canada would if the jays or the expoes could get to the world series.
come to think of it... with the expoes moving out of montreal, the only major leage team in canada will be the blue jays.... wow... its a shame that monreal couldnt produce enough revinue to run a team.
if we could just get better trans pasific jets then we MLB could expand into japan. I belive that this will eventualy happen.
What the military does do is work with civilian contractors. That's where the decision will be made.
you are absolutely wrong on this... the military has total controll over the methods and means that a government contractor uses to produce the product... down to the lowest level. the military (aka DOD) has alot more controll than you seem to know about.
no, linux isnt stable, its always changing, but if you bothered to read my post you would realize that I said they would have to branch any open source code, probably from a few versions back to ensure that it had been througouly used (ya know, you wouldnt install the latest unstable release of the linux kernal on your compaines mission critical servers would you) and then lock it down and audit the code, just like they do with all the code that is produced internaly.
this process could be done on a number of levels, the most efficent of which is probably the DOD doing it themselves to produce a number of libraires and utilities that are to be used in many different projects. Of course, given DOD consent the same thing could be done by a single contractor, but the pay off isnt as good.
Is it possible that some known and trusted employee could make a subtle mistake that goes uncaught and results in a buffer overflow.
the answer to that is an unqualified yes.
military source goes through review and testing the likes of which is seen in few industries (perhaps medical/lifesupport systems... cant think of any other) this will always be the case, and infact must be the case no matter who is writing the code.
thats why you do testing and code reviews. its not like these people are downloading new kernals in the field, any code that goes into a government project requires immense testing and code review... PERIOD. I dont care who wrote it.
if the military wanted to use open source software they would likely take the source and lock it down, producing a branch, for them that would be secured and standardized after a large review. if they wanted to bring in new functionality from the "public" branch it would mean a new verion of their "secure and approved" branch which would have to go through the same review process again.
Its not like they dont have to do this anyway with the code they produce now... sure they arent expecting people to try an sabotage them but you can do that without intention simply by making a coding error. Testing & code review is essential to the process.
this isnt that much differnt that what the military does with hardened versions of comercial processors... sure they lag behnind their comercial counterparts because they have to be hardend and tested heavily, but then they work, and they are able to leverage the initial design work and testing done when the hardware was being developed for comercial purposes.
certainly sounds like this would be a civil matter... since he wasnt charging for the downloads... I didnt see any other stipulations under criminal copyright code that he seems to be violating.
maybe Im missing something... but this look like it should be civil matter.
what should realy piss you off is that the FBI is spending their time investigating copyright infringement... a civil matter, not a criminal one. At a time when the country is supposed to be on high alert and tom ringe is talking about a possible terror attack around the elections.
hell theyve been at this for over 3 years... just about since 9/11
dont you think they could be spending our money a little more efficently?
Re:They score some points with me on a first skim.
on
Securing Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Funny
there is nothing healthy about having a collection of pre-G3 Macs..
not that I dont have one too... but its certainly not healthy.:)
Re:They score some points with me on a first skim.
on
Securing Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
well, ill have to take your words for it for now. I have never seen Norton Anti virus catch a windows virus but maybe that is pure conicidence.
I never would have thought that anti-virus software would bother with viruses that dont effect the client machine. I do wonder how they can be sure that the patterns they are matching to dont have a legitimate use on the platform (like say, a datafile) and only happen to have the same binary values in the right places to also be a windows virus.
still... not much of an argument for running mac anti virus software, even in an office environment. you should realy be scanning for email viruses on the email server and never let it get down to the client. shelling out for anti-virus software for the mac and for windows seems like a waste when simply running the windows versions would cost less and be just as effective.
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wow... i just took a look at the course descriptions for this major. Its kind of the exact opposite of what you described in many ways... sure, all of the technical courses are designed to teach you recent flavors and there are actualy courses on COM and such but what is more interesting is the truly fluffy shit.
D es criptions.htm
http://www.northface.edu/public/programs/course
first off... for some reason they end up teaching a semester of Physics (wtf?) so that the students will understand forces and energy and shit... ok....
check out world culture... thats a usefull technical course... psycology and social history may be interesting but do you realy need them to write code? how about life sciences and healthy living (alright so some of us could probably use those courses)
I can give them a pass on the business courses... the math classes that people should have taken in highschool and other such shit but it looks like this degree is filled with a bunch of the Fluffy stuff that you were so against in your post.
I guess it wont make either of us happy...
well lets face it, there will always be a need for people with quick and dirty degrees like this to work in corprate programming. there is money to be made and people to fill the positions if they get a decent amount of training. this is what ITT tech has been doing for years.
what Computer Science needs is some way to differentiate themselves from this group. Every time someone from a program like this gets hired into a position that is over their heads it will reflect badly on people who worked their way through a real CS degree and actualy know something about how computers realy work.
there are more than enough 4 year colleges where you can get an excelent computer science degree without taking a single liberal arts class. that certainly isnt my problem with this university.
my problem is that what they are doing is offering a degree in Programming and calling it a degree in computer science.
Now its not that i dont think that there is some value to a 2 year degree in programming... and there are many people who could use that and go happily foreward in their carrer, but Computer science != Programming. there is alot more to it than just programming and in fact, as we used to say, any programming you learn along the way is purely incidental.
they dont even have a structures and algorithims course as a requirement!
I have no problem with tech only colleges, I simply have a problem with teaching basic programming and a few certifications and then calling it computer science... it isnt the same thing.
these kids are going to come out of school with a CS degree and very little of the knowledge that a COMPUTER SCIENTIST should have.
Now Im not saying that there isnt a place for a 2 year degree that is focused on programming for corprate america. corprate america needs more programmers, especialy ones that have been custom made for the type of work that corps need, but to call them CS majors? I have a hard time beliving that they will realy learn much of the science side of CS in 2 years, while also training in 2 certifications.
Perhaps Im wrong and this cariculum will teach excelent data structure usage, and algorithim analysis and AI and compiler design and low level architecture. But at this point i kind of doubt it.
and some of us go on short tears of posting.
I took a few years off from posting here with any regularity. but there are plenty of us still around. perhaps we should have a poll to see how many of the low user IDs are still active.
ok, so i bought my bike right before the crunch started in earnest... just before!
still, if you are carefull and you want a harley anyone who makes middle to upper middle class money can probably work it out if they want it enough to make it work.
me, I just got a good deal on a (very slightly) used lowrider
the fact of the matter is that except for the absolutely most abnoxious pipes you realy cant hear your exaust and engine noise over the wind noise while on the highway.
try sticking your head out the window of your car and listening to your engine. hell, try to listen to the 18 wheelers engine next to you.
quote: doing things like performing surgery, fixing broken teeth, and suing teenagers for necking during the advertisements at the beginning of a movie.
and writing code dont for get that!
I wouldnt expect them to licence to microsoft either. but you are certainly right... it is unlikely that Real will be any significat competition for them, but microsoft may very well be.
i wouldnt expect them to licence to anyone that they compete with in any of thier other business though, in this case, the codec business. licencing to real means that there is a chance that more people will install their software, which will likely include real player and its codecs... apple wants people to use quicktime so its bad for them if anyone installs reals software for any reason.
thats the reason I wansnt surprised when the didnt licence it to real in the first place, even though licencing the DRM could grow the market for the ipod.
that is also a distinct possibility (thats why I said intentionaly or not). And well within apples rights.
Infact I expect apple would try to break this quickly so that people would not start to count on these files working, only to have they stop working when apple changes something for their own reasons. It makes more sense for Apple to be proactive so that they do not get stuck with customer complaints that their (leagaly purchaced) songs dont work on their iPod anymore.
remember, if a bunch of ipod owners start downloading music from real and from the ITMS they wont remember what songs they bought from where, but if 2 years from now apple does something that breaks reals hack then these people will be up in arms that half their collection stopped working.
Im sure apple is thinking about this senario and I wouldnt be surprised if they did something up front to prevent it.
It would also be interesting if Apple decided to licence their DRM to other online music stores that arent run by people that compete with them in other areas (codecs) and start a huge PR campaign with a nice "works with your iPod" logo just to stick it to Real (who, of course would be forever locked out)
This assumes that the end result of reals harmony is a perfectly formed DRM'd ACC music file that is in every way indistinguishable from one from the apple store.
If there are any differences then the songs could easily be broken, intentionaly or not. You dont expect apple to have their QA department testing against Reals files do you?
yea... and nobody would ever run a service at a small proffit in order to sell hardware at a tidy proffit...
or the other way around....
you saying its so doesnt make it so.
there are alot of ipod owners out there... some of whom are in countries that apple does not yet have distribution rights to. I dont know if there are countries that reals store sells to that apples does not but that is one potential market.
Also, the sheer fact that there are many many ipod owners out there indicates to me that at least some of them will go over and try out reals service... some people are just like that.
care to back that up with some financial data from apple? they are publicly traded after all. just how much did the itunes music store make last quarter?
here is the transcript from a financial call just a few months ago
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/04/29.9
and a quote:
Arik Hesseldahl: Hi, Steve. Always concerned about -- not concerned, I guess, but wondering -- one of the previous questions was about revenue. I'm wondering if iTunes has reached the break even point yet.
Steve Jobs: Yes. The iTunes music store had a small profit this past quarter.
yea... they are cleaning up... maybe they should stop making ipods and mac entirely and just sell music for $.99 a pop. they sell 140 million songs a year... now if that was all proffit then they would be making a ton of money, but it isnt. there are licencing costs, development costs, maintanence costs, bandwith costs, hardware costs...
this isnt the money maker you think it is.
holy shit your right!
when I was writing this comment I couldnt remember who it was. i thought the person in question had died as well... so I looked it up on google and I found the keith richards story. As soon as i read your post I knew that that was the story I was thinking of.
the yardbirds... of course!
If I recall correctly keith richards was nearly killed by something like this. he touched a mike stand while touching his guitar and because they were improperly wired he ended up getting electricuted.
of course anyone else would likely have been killed by this but because keith richards is nearly physicaly indestructable (hes a zombie you know... thats why hes still moving) he kept ticking.
quote: Wow...A 4 digit /. account....
They arent entirely unheard of you know.
canada would if the jays or the expoes could get to the world series.
come to think of it... with the expoes moving out of montreal, the only major leage team in canada will be the blue jays.... wow... its a shame that monreal couldnt produce enough revinue to run a team.
if we could just get better trans pasific jets then we MLB could expand into japan. I belive that this will eventualy happen.
What the military does do is work with civilian contractors. That's where the decision will be made.
you are absolutely wrong on this... the military has total controll over the methods and means that a government contractor uses to produce the product... down to the lowest level. the military (aka DOD) has alot more controll than you seem to know about.
no, linux isnt stable, its always changing, but if you bothered to read my post you would realize that I said they would have to branch any open source code, probably from a few versions back to ensure that it had been througouly used (ya know, you wouldnt install the latest unstable release of the linux kernal on your compaines mission critical servers would you) and then lock it down and audit the code, just like they do with all the code that is produced internaly.
this process could be done on a number of levels, the most efficent of which is probably the DOD doing it themselves to produce a number of libraires and utilities that are to be used in many different projects. Of course, given DOD consent the same thing could be done by a single contractor, but the pay off isnt as good.
Is it possible that some known and trusted employee could make a subtle mistake that goes uncaught and results in a buffer overflow.
the answer to that is an unqualified yes.
military source goes through review and testing the likes of which is seen in few industries (perhaps medical/lifesupport systems... cant think of any other) this will always be the case, and infact must be the case no matter who is writing the code.
thats why you do testing and code reviews. its not like these people are downloading new kernals in the field, any code that goes into a government project requires immense testing and code review... PERIOD. I dont care who wrote it.
if the military wanted to use open source software they would likely take the source and lock it down, producing a branch, for them that would be secured and standardized after a large review. if they wanted to bring in new functionality from the "public" branch it would mean a new verion of their "secure and approved" branch which would have to go through the same review process again.
Its not like they dont have to do this anyway with the code they produce now... sure they arent expecting people to try an sabotage them but you can do that without intention simply by making a coding error. Testing & code review is essential to the process.
this isnt that much differnt that what the military does with hardened versions of comercial processors... sure they lag behnind their comercial counterparts because they have to be hardend and tested heavily, but then they work, and they are able to leverage the initial design work and testing done when the hardware was being developed for comercial purposes.
certainly sounds like this would be a civil matter... since he wasnt charging for the downloads... I didnt see any other stipulations under criminal copyright code that he seems to be violating.
maybe Im missing something... but this look like it should be civil matter.
what should realy piss you off is that the FBI is spending their time investigating copyright infringement... a civil matter, not a criminal one. At a time when the country is supposed to be on high alert and tom ringe is talking about a possible terror attack around the elections.
hell theyve been at this for over 3 years... just about since 9/11
dont you think they could be spending our money a little more efficently?
there is nothing healthy about having a collection of pre-G3 Macs..
not that I dont have one too... but its certainly not healthy.
well, ill have to take your words for it for now. I have never seen Norton Anti virus catch a windows virus but maybe that is pure conicidence.
I never would have thought that anti-virus software would bother with viruses that dont effect the client machine. I do wonder how they can be sure that the patterns they are matching to dont have a legitimate use on the platform (like say, a datafile) and only happen to have the same binary values in the right places to also be a windows virus.
still... not much of an argument for running mac anti virus software, even in an office environment. you should realy be scanning for email viruses on the email server and never let it get down to the client. shelling out for anti-virus software for the mac and for windows seems like a waste when simply running the windows versions would cost less and be just as effective.