Odinlake is quite right. I would probably move item three up a ranking - between good funding and an interested supervisor, and great funding with a distracted supervisor - the former is far preferable. I too have seen many people in my field (organic chemistry) languish and ultimately perish. I think that in many cases, however, it is the student who loses interest first. Therefore, a good supervisor will be capable of pushing their students through. Consider your own level of preparedness in approaching PhD studies - if you are self-directed you can get away with a bigger boss (more funding, less face time) - but if you are not yet ready to manage your own projects, you'd better look for someone with more time (and less money) on their hands.
Use ISI Web of Knowledge. Search for the terms you are interested in. Find papers. Sort by date. Who's publishing in your field these days? This is who you want to talk to.
I name my constructs like certain aboriginal cultures name people: based on the first thing I see around my work desk when I decide to assign something to the variable, or what I will be doing when I decide to use my construct again.
I am not a professional programmer though; I mainly do scientific modeling work and use scripting languages wrapped around C++ libraries.
the same people that keep the lightbulbs changed, the warehouse shipping and the driveway plowed.
That makes sense, assuming "setting an employee up with a computer" to be comparable to "setting employee up with a desk". I've seen some companies where IT operates under the Finance department. I've never really understood why, except maybe because early computer use in many companies was limited to accounting, and it stuck in Finance for legacy reasons. I've seen other companies where there's a dedicated IT department that traces up to the CIO, and it kind of runs independently.
I think it depends on the company, but a lot of companies miss out by failing to integrate IT very well. They treat the IT support guy like a handy-man who is completely divorced from the company's strategy, and meanwhile the entire business is running on computers. Not that I object to the comparison between support personnel and a handy-man, but if the productivity of your company depends of effective and efficient use of computers, then you might want to involve some people in your strategic decision-making who understand computers really really well. I've seen companies ask employees to spend hours going through a process that a computer could automatically complete in minutes, just because they never bothered to ask the IT guy if there was a better way to go about things.
That's intentional. Do you know how many people's careers depend on there being a job doing something that a computer could do? It's like charity, but the recipient gets paid better and thinks that they are important.
You're suggesting it's a balance of one person's life versus another person's life.
However, the balance is between the former's life, and the latter's luxury. If you believe living without luxury is equivalent to death, then you ought to be given the choice as soon as possible.
That's a weak point. I work 70 hours a week and come home to screaming brats most of the time. I wouldn't have life otherwise, though. Maybe it's not relevant, but I had my first child at 19.
It's a big temptation to go back to China because job opportunities for PhDs are few and far between - and it's getting worse. On the other hand, the standard of living in China is always rising and they ALWAYS employ their best and brightest with good jobs.
Meritocracy vs Plutocracy
Diggit?
This is hardly a new idea. Businesses have been giving special deals to their "local customers" (who do work-of-mouth advertising) forever. Take {some shop} ; they have great deals, and they have rip-off deals. If you know what a good deal looks like, you'll shop there and boast of the great deal you got at {some shop}. Your friends will wander in and fall for the $100 "setup fee" sales pitch. {some shop} will keep getting your sheep-y friends' business as long as you keep taking advantage of their bifurcated price scheme. So, we see it implemented in e-commerce too. What a shock!
I look for school teachers, librarians and other highly educated women. I don't think I could stand to be seen in public with someone who lacks a certain amount of intelligence, or at least an intelligent air about her.
Schoolteachers and librarians are highly educated?
In my experience, these are the people who value intelligence highly but don't have much of it.
This is silly.
Good scientists are hard workers, not necessarily the smartest thinkers. Accumulating experience and data is a tedious and painstaking effort, and one which is fraught with self-doubt. It is a selfless pursuit which, while offering a small reward (learning something new) at the end, is mostly motivated by a desire to make a real and meaningful contribution to the world and the state of human existence.
Science does not offer adequate living wages. I think that everyone should make around $50,000. I argue that we need to cut the salaries that marketing, advertising, and salespeople make. If competition in the marketplace means playing meaningless games to distract customers while their pockets are picked, what can be said for the number of business graduates churned out?
Thanks to client-side applications with interdevice synchronization, keeping a decent address book without sharing it with a marketing company is easy too.
It takes no strech of the imagination to see that a company in the business of collecting data has the implicit goal of selling that data.
No, a degree would not be worthless even if anyone and everyone could obtain one. It would only lose more value as an indicator of ability (which has already eroded). The degree (not the piece of paper which is awarded) would still provide its recipient with the array of skills, knowledge, and wisdom which the degree was really intended to provide in the first place.
When you refer to drug companies, what aspect of them do you think of that you can personnify with the characteristic of "liking things?"
The people I know in pharmaceutical research (me included) are a cynical bunch who dearly hope to invest their lives in helping other people live happier lives.
If the contractor can't figure out what is needed, they shouldn't bid on the project. What is so wrong with this system? Oh yeah, no penalty for cost-overruns.
Slashdot Mirror
Odinlake is quite right. I would probably move item three up a ranking - between good funding and an interested supervisor, and great funding with a distracted supervisor - the former is far preferable. I too have seen many people in my field (organic chemistry) languish and ultimately perish. I think that in many cases, however, it is the student who loses interest first. Therefore, a good supervisor will be capable of pushing their students through. Consider your own level of preparedness in approaching PhD studies - if you are self-directed you can get away with a bigger boss (more funding, less face time) - but if you are not yet ready to manage your own projects, you'd better look for someone with more time (and less money) on their hands.
Use ISI Web of Knowledge. Search for the terms you are interested in. Find papers. Sort by date. Who's publishing in your field these days? This is who you want to talk to.
This is exactly the reason not to use encryption on your own wireless network.
How can we obtain information on who got the contracts and the services they provided? It seems like it should fall under freedom of information laws.
I name my constructs like certain aboriginal cultures name people: based on the first thing I see around my work desk when I decide to assign something to the variable, or what I will be doing when I decide to use my construct again. I am not a professional programmer though; I mainly do scientific modeling work and use scripting languages wrapped around C++ libraries.
the same people that keep the lightbulbs changed, the warehouse shipping and the driveway plowed.
That makes sense, assuming "setting an employee up with a computer" to be comparable to "setting employee up with a desk". I've seen some companies where IT operates under the Finance department. I've never really understood why, except maybe because early computer use in many companies was limited to accounting, and it stuck in Finance for legacy reasons. I've seen other companies where there's a dedicated IT department that traces up to the CIO, and it kind of runs independently.
I think it depends on the company, but a lot of companies miss out by failing to integrate IT very well. They treat the IT support guy like a handy-man who is completely divorced from the company's strategy, and meanwhile the entire business is running on computers. Not that I object to the comparison between support personnel and a handy-man, but if the productivity of your company depends of effective and efficient use of computers, then you might want to involve some people in your strategic decision-making who understand computers really really well. I've seen companies ask employees to spend hours going through a process that a computer could automatically complete in minutes, just because they never bothered to ask the IT guy if there was a better way to go about things.
That's intentional. Do you know how many people's careers depend on there being a job doing something that a computer could do? It's like charity, but the recipient gets paid better and thinks that they are important.
You're suggesting it's a balance of one person's life versus another person's life. However, the balance is between the former's life, and the latter's luxury. If you believe living without luxury is equivalent to death, then you ought to be given the choice as soon as possible.
XP was only available for so long due to the credible threat posed by the oncoming Year of Linux on the Desktop
Lower the first-world's standard, starting with luxuries and working your way down to necessities if necessary (it's not).
That's a weak point. I work 70 hours a week and come home to screaming brats most of the time. I wouldn't have life otherwise, though. Maybe it's not relevant, but I had my first child at 19.
But when did the practicing physician enter the room?
A diploma in Europe is often the equivalent of a Master's degree, not a two-year associate diploma.
It's a big temptation to go back to China because job opportunities for PhDs are few and far between - and it's getting worse. On the other hand, the standard of living in China is always rising and they ALWAYS employ their best and brightest with good jobs. Meritocracy vs Plutocracy Diggit?
This is hardly a new idea. Businesses have been giving special deals to their "local customers" (who do work-of-mouth advertising) forever. Take {some shop} ; they have great deals, and they have rip-off deals. If you know what a good deal looks like, you'll shop there and boast of the great deal you got at {some shop}. Your friends will wander in and fall for the $100 "setup fee" sales pitch. {some shop} will keep getting your sheep-y friends' business as long as you keep taking advantage of their bifurcated price scheme. So, we see it implemented in e-commerce too. What a shock!
Wrong. I am a scientist and hate writing in my note book. I much prefer digital multimedia documentation of my experiments.
I look for school teachers, librarians and other highly educated women. I don't think I could stand to be seen in public with someone who lacks a certain amount of intelligence, or at least an intelligent air about her.
Schoolteachers and librarians are highly educated? In my experience, these are the people who value intelligence highly but don't have much of it.
This is silly. Good scientists are hard workers, not necessarily the smartest thinkers. Accumulating experience and data is a tedious and painstaking effort, and one which is fraught with self-doubt. It is a selfless pursuit which, while offering a small reward (learning something new) at the end, is mostly motivated by a desire to make a real and meaningful contribution to the world and the state of human existence. Science does not offer adequate living wages. I think that everyone should make around $50,000. I argue that we need to cut the salaries that marketing, advertising, and salespeople make. If competition in the marketplace means playing meaningless games to distract customers while their pockets are picked, what can be said for the number of business graduates churned out?
Your experience is not typical of the study habits required to get good grade in the hard sciences.
Yeah, that's funny. And subtle. But maybe a little too subtle for /. - this isn't a science community, it's a computer nerd community.
Thanks to client-side applications with interdevice synchronization, keeping a decent address book without sharing it with a marketing company is easy too. It takes no strech of the imagination to see that a company in the business of collecting data has the implicit goal of selling that data.
No, a degree would not be worthless even if anyone and everyone could obtain one. It would only lose more value as an indicator of ability (which has already eroded). The degree (not the piece of paper which is awarded) would still provide its recipient with the array of skills, knowledge, and wisdom which the degree was really intended to provide in the first place.
When you refer to drug companies, what aspect of them do you think of that you can personnify with the characteristic of "liking things?" The people I know in pharmaceutical research (me included) are a cynical bunch who dearly hope to invest their lives in helping other people live happier lives.
Thanks for the troll. It has long fuzzy hair and a nice rotund belly.
You might want to consider posting that anywhere but here.
If the contractor can't figure out what is needed, they shouldn't bid on the project. What is so wrong with this system? Oh yeah, no penalty for cost-overruns.