You cannot predict the future. Do whatever is appropriate for your current needs and then...
After the framing is done, before any drywall is up, spend a few hours in the house picturing how it is going to be used. No matter how well you plan, you're always going to want to run something new. The best places (after you're living there) are up and down inside walls, through ductwork (cold air returns are best), along the basement ceiling and across the attic.
Work out a couple of runs from basement to attic and make sure you have easy access to them at both ends. Cold air returns work better than trying to run between studs. Studs usually have fire blocks between floors.
Figure out a way to get access to each room of the house from basement or attic. Take pictures and notes before the drywall is in place. Drill a few strategic holes and consider leaving some flexible wire in place to use in pulling more wires later.
Seriously consider having the electrician put an electrical box with cover somewhere in every room -- they will never be cheaper to put in than now. He/she can suggest a location with access to future wire runs. Your electician may no nothing about networks, but he knows lots about running wires.
Lets spend just a minute thinking about how important this really is. When Bobby Java is sitting in Starbucks, using their wireless connection, what is he likely to be doing? Deleting the 12 e-mails he got last night offering him a low rate mortgage and greater sexual prowess? Browsing the New York Times?/.? Making a lunch date or dinner reservations? Reading Doonesberry? I'm sure there will be eight or 10 people cruising the streets of Seattle trying to pick that important information out of the air.
My US Mail is left every day in a box, on a pole, by the curb, next to the street. No lock. No encryption. I can't remember worrying about someone getting in and stealing my weekly discount shopper coupons or my bank statement or my VISA bill.
Actually, in the $(x-y) term, y includes not just the profit, but also many costs such as support, marketing, warranties etc.
Also, where the software is "free and customizable" it is unlikely that the number of 'sales' will be the same as the for the software that is not free and customizable. Given the same price, the sales volume will be different based on how much the market values the features (customizable, support etc) of each product.
Finally, in the open model, which programmers are getting paid? And where is this pay coming from? I thought the software was free.
In an effort to cash in on the apparent success of the news service, known as Slashdot, c|net has copied the writing style of noted spaghetti coder Rob Malda. It has been reported that Mr. Malda adopted his writing style from his years of free form software development. "I don't document my code", Mr. Malda said, "It just speaks for itself. However, I do code my documents."
Mr. Malda feels that journalists should begin their careers by studying classical latin. That way, "It becomes easier to read since the verb, at the end of the sentence always is."
It is rumored that Mr. Malda is developing an object oriented style of writing. That way, he simply keeps a supply of common phrases and paragraphs which he then calls from the body of his article. However, early versions (tested at the local print newspaper) didn't compile well causing the reader to repeatedly refer to the phrase list on page 17 of the newspaper while reading front page stories.
"What the heck." Mr. Malda is reported to have said, "Its open source, let someone else fix it. I've got more important stuff to do."
Careful, this is a C|net article. It never claims to be a thorough and complete reporting of what the man said. In fact, it looks more like flame bait than reporting.
Next, we'll have to register our name, address, telephone number and credit card numbers every time we mail a letter. No more anonymously dropping your electric bill payment in the convenient corner mailbox. Or maybe those perverts don't use the US Mail any more.
33 arrests and just 12 convictions in over two years of operation? I don't know how may people are working on this, but it seems like either the problem is vanishingly small or the police working on it are completely inept.
There was a time when that disease was rampant, slow to surface and expensive to treat. It's clearly sexually transmitted so they deserve whatever they get.
Of course, man will never walk on the moon, polio will continue to kill and cripple kids and computers will be too expensive to be used by anyone but the military.
You've been given the opportunity to head up a group of 20 engineers developing a very interesting, complex, cutting edge product. The schedule calls for product to be shipped in 24 months. Eighteen months into the project, 10 members of your team tell you that they just got this great offer from Mega Code down the street. Better pay. Signing bonus. Sorry. They really liked working here, but they've gotta go for the money.
Your schedule, product and possibly company just walked out the door.
How do you keep that from happening? Pay more? How much more? Employment contract? Options? Free sodas? Non-compete?
Hospitals generate data for diagnosis of disease and utilize this information to provide treatment.
The systems used lag far behind those that developed and launched the Edsel. The potential for improved care and reduced cost is huge. Hospitals have computerized the Hotel Functions, billing and individual devices but the concept of a unified patient database with up to date, useful information is still a long way off.
And its gonna take more than the internet to change it.
And in the continuum of intellects between Stephen Hawking and a cockroach, where would YOU put the cutoff?
While no user interface (or ballot design) is perfect, the vast majority of voters got it right. Lets focus on them while we work to make every ballot a little better than the last one.
Or we could just blame all those non-mainstream candidates. If there had been just two, the fancy, two page, two column ballot would not have been necessary, there would have been less confusion, and there would have been no Buchannan to vote for in error.
The purpose of any for-profit media service (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Slashdot)is to attract paying advertisers. This is done by convincing a sufficiently large number of readers/viewers/listeners that are attractive to advertisers. This may be done with slapstick comedy, dirty pictures, high-integrity news or sloppy journalism. Journalistic integrity is not needed as long as lots of desireable people read whatever is written.
When I was just learning about different economic systems, I was impressed that the Scandanavians paid over 50% of their annual income in taxes. I sure didn't want to live in one of those socialist countries. I was proud to be an American, living in the land of the free, the home of the brave and the last bastion of low taxes.
Some years later, I found out that the top US marginal tax rate was 70% or so. Whoops!
Many years and several tax reforms later, we still have marginal tax rates over 50% (State, Federal, Local plus Sales Tax and on and on).
If people had to write a check to the IRS every month, instead of having the money withheld, we would be making do with a much smaller government.
If these companies had made a bazillion dollars last year and put it in the bank, they would have been criticized for: ripping off the masses, ripping off their employees, ripping off society and on and on and on. But they would have paid taxes to our favorite uncle. And we all know how wisely he would have spent it.
Instead, they paid all the profits out to employees (who paid taxes on that money) and these same employees get to spend it any way they want. Now MSFT and CSCO get raked over the coals for not paying any taxes.
Does anyone out there have any *constructive* criticism?
Yes m'am. This is an extremely useful automobile. It starts every morning, gets you and three friends wherever you want to go in climate controlled comfort. The sound system is excellent and a five year, 60,000 mile warranty is standard. But first, you need to learn how the internal combustion engine works, how an automatic transmission works, write a 12 page report on three different types of differential mechanisms and demonstrate your ability to repair minor body damage.
Most of business and a lot of life is a balancing act between stability and boredom on one hand and innovation and excitement on the other. The Brooklyn Bridge, DC-3 and Latin are very stable, useful tools. Fortunately, we have created alternatives to each. Development was challenging, interesting and sometimes scarey, but I'm glad it happened.
Things that have been created that we can't control: viruses, dinosaurs, grizzly bears, lightning, volcanos, Idi Amin, spontaneous combustion and the religious right. Although that last one might be the one that finally does us in.
While we're talking about former companies, MY former company exported all kinds of electronic stuff to countries all over the world. Each required an export license. Lots and lots of paperwork. Nothing that could really be used to figure out how the stuff worked. Mainly we answered questions about imbedded processors, patents and stuff like that. From where I sat, it looked like a bunch of clerical people filling in forms, filing forms and losing forms.
The only things we couldn't export were PCs. No problem. The customers bought them in Japan.
I saw no conspiracy there. Just bureaucratic foolishness.
Here, I see only paranioa and people trying to sell books, articles and speaking engagements.
You're right. I'll go down in the basement and dig out my Franklin Planner and my rotary phone which are stored in what used to be the coal bin. Then, I'll get into my 1967, V8 Ford Galaxy 500 and drive down to the library and work on my term paper. Of course, I'll be up all night typing it -- especially the footnotes and bibliography. But at least I'll have had a healthy meal of pot roast, gravy, and mashed potatoes (no veggies, they're out of season).
But first, you have to tell us what you want to do with your CS degree. Describe to us the job you expect to get upon graduation. What do you expect your job to look like five years after graduation? Is your BS-CS a step to graduate school? Do you want to be a coder, translating specifications into programs and products? Do you think you will be designing games? Writing code to control automobile fuel injection systems? Inventing the algorythms that make graphics boards fly? Writing Drivers? Maybe you are confusing Computer Science with creating Web Pages, installing/maintaining networks or creating MS Office applications.
From some of the answers, it's clear that the colleges and universities have different opinions on what a CS degree should be; what a successful graduate should know. And they're not giving you the real information you need to make the decisions.
My suggestion is to find people who are doing now, what you want to do upon graduation. They'll tell you what is important and what is not. They will also give you the straight scoop about their job and what it is about -- and what the future holds. Contact Human Resources (or personnel) at a company you think you'd like to work for. The will be glad to get you in to see some real engineers. Maybe it will give them a leg up on hiring you at the end of your four years of higher education.
There are two important facts about viruses to remember when using them in an economic model.
1. If the virus is so successful that it wipes out its host, it too disappears forever.
2. The continued success of viruses depends on their ability to change. This is called evolution and is good. It is carried out by individual viruses, not whole populations. It is not centrally orchestrated, but happens by chance.
Viral (as well as bacterial) diseases tend to wax and wane in response to outside factors. They seldom kill all hosts or go away completely. The hardest to eradicate are the ones that keep changing -- the common cold, HIV.
You're going to confuse the issue with facts. In the late 1700s, more than 90% of the population was devoted to producing food. Now its less than 3%. Something to do with technology and efficiency. This has given us time and manpower to produce automobiles, airplanes, computers and great works of art.
No we don't. One of the great things about moving is that you lose TONS of junk mail. It builds up again over time, but for several months, its great to go to the mailbox and find only important (bills) and useful (magazines) stuff there.
Yes, if you move every time your lease is up, getting the important notifications out is a pain, but so is reviewing every piece of crap you get that looks like a check or bill to make sure it isn't a check or bill.
Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with disease, famine, birth defects, mentally deficient and ugly inhabitants. But here we are.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot predict the future. Do whatever is appropriate for your current needs and then ...
After the framing is done, before any drywall is up, spend a few hours in the house picturing how it is going to be used. No matter how well you plan, you're always going to want to run something new. The best places (after you're living there) are up and down inside walls, through ductwork (cold air returns are best), along the basement ceiling and across the attic.
Work out a couple of runs from basement to attic and make sure you have easy access to them at both ends. Cold air returns work better than trying to run between studs. Studs usually have fire blocks between floors.
Figure out a way to get access to each room of the house from basement or attic. Take pictures and notes before the drywall is in place. Drill a few strategic holes and consider leaving some flexible wire in place to use in pulling more wires later.
Seriously consider having the electrician put an electrical box with cover somewhere in every room -- they will never be cheaper to put in than now. He/she can suggest a location with access to future wire runs. Your electician may no nothing about networks, but he knows lots about running wires.
Good luck.
Lets spend just a minute thinking about how important this really is. When Bobby Java is sitting in Starbucks, using their wireless connection, what is he likely to be doing? Deleting the 12 e-mails he got last night offering him a low rate mortgage and greater sexual prowess? Browsing the New York Times? /.? Making a lunch date or dinner reservations? Reading Doonesberry? I'm sure there will be eight or 10 people cruising the streets of Seattle trying to pick that important information out of the air.
......
My US Mail is left every day in a box, on a pole, by the curb, next to the street. No lock. No encryption. I can't remember worrying about someone getting in and stealing my weekly discount shopper coupons or my bank statement or my VISA bill.
Come to think of it
Actually, in the $(x-y) term, y includes not just the profit, but also many costs such as support, marketing, warranties etc.
Also, where the software is "free and customizable" it is unlikely that the number of 'sales' will be the same as the for the software that is not free and customizable. Given the same price, the sales volume will be different based on how much the market values the features (customizable, support etc) of each product.
Finally, in the open model, which programmers are getting paid? And where is this pay coming from? I thought the software was free.
In an effort to cash in on the apparent success of the news service, known as Slashdot, c|net has copied the writing style of noted spaghetti coder Rob Malda. It has been reported that Mr. Malda adopted his writing style from his years of free form software development. "I don't document my code", Mr. Malda said, "It just speaks for itself. However, I do code my documents."
Mr. Malda feels that journalists should begin their careers by studying classical latin. That way, "It becomes easier to read since the verb, at the end of the sentence always is."
It is rumored that Mr. Malda is developing an object oriented style of writing. That way, he simply keeps a supply of common phrases and paragraphs which he then calls from the body of his article. However, early versions (tested at the local print newspaper) didn't compile well causing the reader to repeatedly refer to the phrase list on page 17 of the newspaper while reading front page stories.
"What the heck." Mr. Malda is reported to have said, "Its open source, let someone else fix it. I've got more important stuff to do."
Careful, this is a C|net article. It never claims to be a thorough and complete reporting of what the man said. In fact, it looks more like flame bait than reporting.
Next, we'll have to register our name, address, telephone number and credit card numbers every time we mail a letter. No more anonymously dropping your electric bill payment in the convenient corner mailbox. Or maybe those perverts don't use the US Mail any more.
33 arrests and just 12 convictions in over two years of operation? I don't know how may people are working on this, but it seems like either the problem is vanishingly small or the police working on it are completely inept.
We should probably give up on syphilis too.
There was a time when that disease was rampant, slow to surface and expensive to treat. It's clearly sexually transmitted so they deserve whatever they get.
Of course, man will never walk on the moon, polio will continue to kill and cripple kids and computers will be too expensive to be used by anyone but the military.
Lets just look at the other side for a minute.
You've been given the opportunity to head up a group of 20 engineers developing a very interesting, complex, cutting edge product. The schedule calls for product to be shipped in 24 months. Eighteen months into the project, 10 members of your team tell you that they just got this great offer from Mega Code down the street. Better pay. Signing bonus. Sorry. They really liked working here, but they've gotta go for the money.
Your schedule, product and possibly company just walked out the door.
How do you keep that from happening? Pay more? How much more? Employment contract? Options? Free sodas? Non-compete?
Hospitals generate data for diagnosis of disease and utilize this information to provide treatment.
The systems used lag far behind those that developed and launched the Edsel. The potential for improved care and reduced cost is huge. Hospitals have computerized the Hotel Functions, billing and individual devices but the concept of a unified patient database with up to date, useful information is still a long way off.
And its gonna take more than the internet to change it.
And in the continuum of intellects between Stephen Hawking and a cockroach, where would YOU put the cutoff?
While no user interface (or ballot design) is perfect, the vast majority of voters got it right. Lets focus on them while we work to make every ballot a little better than the last one.
Or we could just blame all those non-mainstream candidates. If there had been just two, the fancy, two page, two column ballot would not have been necessary, there would have been less confusion, and there would have been no Buchannan to vote for in error.
The purpose of any for-profit media service (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Slashdot)is to attract paying advertisers. This is done by convincing a sufficiently large number of readers/viewers/listeners that are attractive to advertisers. This may be done with slapstick comedy, dirty pictures, high-integrity news or sloppy journalism. Journalistic integrity is not needed as long as lots of desireable people read whatever is written.
When I was just learning about different economic systems, I was impressed that the Scandanavians paid over 50% of their annual income in taxes. I sure didn't want to live in one of those socialist countries. I was proud to be an American, living in the land of the free, the home of the brave and the last bastion of low taxes.
Some years later, I found out that the top US marginal tax rate was 70% or so. Whoops!
Many years and several tax reforms later, we still have marginal tax rates over 50% (State, Federal, Local plus Sales Tax and on and on).
If people had to write a check to the IRS every month, instead of having the money withheld, we would be making do with a much smaller government.
If these companies had made a bazillion dollars last year and put it in the bank, they would have been criticized for: ripping off the masses, ripping off their employees, ripping off society and on and on and on. But they would have paid taxes to our favorite uncle. And we all know how wisely he would have spent it.
Instead, they paid all the profits out to employees (who paid taxes on that money) and these same employees get to spend it any way they want. Now MSFT and CSCO get raked over the coals for not paying any taxes.
Does anyone out there have any *constructive* criticism?
Its not. I suggest "Business Accounting for Dummies" or maybe third grade math.
You don't understand what you're reading, but you comment anyway. Plus, you can't spell.
Please finish the course before commenting.
Yes m'am. This is an extremely useful automobile. It starts every morning, gets you and three friends wherever you want to go in climate controlled comfort. The sound system is excellent and a five year, 60,000 mile warranty is standard. But first, you need to learn how the internal combustion engine works, how an automatic transmission works, write a 12 page report on three different types of differential mechanisms and demonstrate your ability to repair minor body damage.
Most of business and a lot of life is a balancing act between stability and boredom on one hand and innovation and excitement on the other. The Brooklyn Bridge, DC-3 and Latin are very stable, useful tools. Fortunately, we have created alternatives to each. Development was challenging, interesting and sometimes scarey, but I'm glad it happened.
Does the word "Evolution" ring any bells.
Things that have been created that we can't control: viruses, dinosaurs, grizzly bears, lightning, volcanos, Idi Amin, spontaneous combustion and the religious right. Although that last one might be the one that finally does us in.
While we're talking about former companies, MY former company exported all kinds of electronic stuff to countries all over the world. Each required an export license. Lots and lots of paperwork. Nothing that could really be used to figure out how the stuff worked. Mainly we answered questions about imbedded processors, patents and stuff like that. From where I sat, it looked like a bunch of clerical people filling in forms, filing forms and losing forms.
The only things we couldn't export were PCs. No problem. The customers bought them in Japan.
I saw no conspiracy there. Just bureaucratic foolishness.
Here, I see only paranioa and people trying to sell books, articles and speaking engagements.
You're right. I'll go down in the basement and dig out my Franklin Planner and my rotary phone which are stored in what used to be the coal bin. Then, I'll get into my 1967, V8 Ford Galaxy 500 and drive down to the library and work on my term paper. Of course, I'll be up all night typing it -- especially the footnotes and bibliography. But at least I'll have had a healthy meal of pot roast, gravy, and mashed potatoes (no veggies, they're out of season).
But first, you have to tell us what you want to do with your CS degree. Describe to us the job you expect to get upon graduation. What do you expect your job to look like five years after graduation? Is your BS-CS a step to graduate school? Do you want to be a coder, translating specifications into programs and products? Do you think you will be designing games? Writing code to control automobile fuel injection systems? Inventing the algorythms that make graphics boards fly? Writing Drivers? Maybe you are confusing Computer Science with creating Web Pages, installing/maintaining networks or creating MS Office applications.
From some of the answers, it's clear that the colleges and universities have different opinions on what a CS degree should be; what a successful graduate should know. And they're not giving you the real information you need to make the decisions.
My suggestion is to find people who are doing now, what you want to do upon graduation. They'll tell you what is important and what is not. They will also give you the straight scoop about their job and what it is about -- and what the future holds. Contact Human Resources (or personnel) at a company you think you'd like to work for. The will be glad to get you in to see some real engineers. Maybe it will give them a leg up on hiring you at the end of your four years of higher education.
There are two important facts about viruses to remember when using them in an economic model.
1. If the virus is so successful that it wipes out its host, it too disappears forever.
2. The continued success of viruses depends on their ability to change. This is called evolution and is good. It is carried out by individual viruses, not whole populations. It is not centrally orchestrated, but happens by chance.
Viral (as well as bacterial) diseases tend to wax and wane in response to outside factors. They seldom kill all hosts or go away completely. The hardest to eradicate are the ones that keep changing -- the common cold, HIV.
You're going to confuse the issue with facts. In the late 1700s, more than 90% of the population was devoted to producing food. Now its less than 3%. Something to do with technology and efficiency. This has given us time and manpower to produce automobiles, airplanes, computers and great works of art.
No we don't. One of the great things about moving is that you lose TONS of junk mail. It builds up again over time, but for several months, its great to go to the mailbox and find only important (bills) and useful (magazines) stuff there.
Yes, if you move every time your lease is up, getting the important notifications out is a pain, but so is reviewing every piece of crap you get that looks like a check or bill to make sure it isn't a check or bill.
Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with disease, famine, birth defects, mentally deficient and ugly inhabitants. But here we are.