"My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've just signed legislation that will outlaw VeriChip Corporation forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
I also teach at a community college for the past 4 years. The students need a LOT of help (you'll be flabbergasted) -- enrollment is down 50% in the last few years all over the country, administrators tell me students are "scared" of programming, etc.
Here's what I do. Get the best book you can find and work lockstep with that book. Do the same in class as they'll be seeing in the book. They don't have the capacity to learn multiple environments and compare & contrast mentally.
For me, I fell in love with Lewis & Loftus "Java Software Solutions". It comes with a CD with all the code, SDK, and free jGRASP IDE (and very good supplemental materials). So that's what I use; students just install everything on the CD and they're good to go.
Having my materials all strongly synchronized is more important than any particular ideology to me. If the book emphasized command-line work I'd do that. (I do have a single handout describing command-line development which more advanced students might wish to pursue.)
[H]aving worked with both, I'd choose a British Literature major who does programming on her own, just for fun, over a Computer Science major who hates computers, but just wants a high paying job.
Let me applaud that beautiful little insight. My day feels brighter already!:-)
I agree with the grandparent poster. In fact, I even agree with your italicized scare-argument -- and I have a Master's degree in Mathematics! Accounting has nothing to do with a Math degree, and I bet the number of accountants with college Math degrees is diminishingly small. If it were the same for network administrators, that would be all right.
Part of the problem is that colleges don't advertise their programs honestly. They should be promoting "a liberal arts education that makes you a more rounded person and more deeply educated". Instead, the advertising is "we get you jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, specific placement with specific companies", etc., and that's kind of fraudulent. Now, I appreciate my liberal education and it's exactly what I wanted. But truthfully I haven't used my math training in any job I've worked (simulation software engineer, community college math lecturer) dating after my junior year of high school.
Actually, I have a pretty funny recollection from college when a counselor came and gave a talk to math majors about all the wonderful things math majors could do for jobs. "You can do anything! Anything!" she said. "Give us an example?" we asked. "Well... anything! Absolutely anything with a math degree!" She couldn't come up with a single specific example, which distressingly is semi-accurate.
Colleges should be more honest up front about the difference between "computer science" and "software engineer", etc., and what the expectations are for each. You can complain about students going into college programs for the wrong reasons, but if they were given incomplete information, it's not their fault. If the grandparent poster knew what he wanted, saw exactly where get it, and made his move, then I salute him. He's further ahead than I am most days.
The last business owner I saw say something like that here turned out to be offering minimum wage, for high-end IT support, somewhere lost in the rural Midwest:
Well, yeah, no kidding. Since when did the "public interest" pay AOL for anything? Unless there is a law which says AOL cannot filter its "own" servers, too bad. It is AOL's right to do anything like this it wants to.
Of course, the logical conclusion to your argument is that we can't expect to have common standards for anything, ever. Apparently any company will break those standards when it's short-term profitable to do so, and those situations will occur frequently. Therefore we can't expect to maintain open standards for intercommunication, or data formats, or even standardized screws or sockets.
If companies are as free and likely to damage the public interest as you claim, then the only response is... apparently we need to pass some new laws to prevent that. Too bad, I would've preferred corporate entities to continue doing business like good corporate citizens.
We can't find good workers... For those who know, most of my employees work at minimum wage with a large project bonus (up to 80%), and I have enough people looking to work for us that it isn't the pay structure that isn't helping me find good help.
You should rethink that. A lot.
Actually, let me help by being perfectly honest with you. When I read the end of your post, having gone on bitching about the high cost of living on the coast, and then at the end reveal "my employees work at minimum wage"... You gotta be kidding me!
I'm working on a theory that says anyone who runs a business is required to be batshit fucking crazy. You're another data point, frankly.
Hell, why not announce an 800 Quadrillion dollar fine? That'll show the public we're serious! Of course, you're off the hook if you can cough up $5,000 or so...
Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media - from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) - to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy.
Again I'll point out that games and stories are opposite ends of a continuum. Either you're telling a linear, narrative story, or you're setting up a set of rules where arbitrary, unplanned activities can take place; they are not the same.
So there's no point in contending that games can be like Shakespeare; they can't, and you don't want them to be. To make a game like what Shakespeare does, narratively, is to cripple what makes a game worthwhile.
Ebert says "video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic." Would he say the same about sports or athletics? He might be right -- but the counter is not to say that games do the same, it's to say that "watching TV or a movie represents a loss of time that could be spent becoming better problem-solvers, to practice reacting to different challenges, to become more proactive in our approach to the world". And we'd be right.
The Slashdot crowd cares about things like security, stability ("uptime"), system integrity ("backups"), accessibility, open formats, etc.
Some books have lasted physically for hundreds of years. Some eBooks have been around for, what, some number of months? With no guarantee to be accessible after 5-10 years pass?
Game makers have said that they are going to be developing for consoles like the Xbox or Playstation, first.
As a former games programmer, I'll respond to this. Games firms always start out on the open PC platform, then try to graduate into the more profitable and high-end console business. It's deceptive, because at the same time there are new games developers popping up to add other PC games.
It's like interviewing college students, finding that they all want to graduate and get a job, and concluding that soon no one will be attending college.
Making stories and making games are on opposite ends of the creative continuum. I predict failure. And more failures as long as traditional story-based entertainment conglomerates continue to think they can cross over into games without seeing the radical differences.
Google specifically warned shareholders when they went public that this sort of short-term action was expected in their stock price. And that's why they set up dual-shares such that public shareholders have practically no say over how the company gets run. So if anyone doesn't like it, tough -- go invest in a company that doesn't keep it's word.
From the NY Times:
Wall Street loves Google, but the feeling isn't mutual.
That is the message permeating nearly every page of the public offering statement that Google Inc., the Web search engine company, filed yesterday. In a frank and provocative statement, the company's leaders argued that companies cannot manage for the long term unless investors and analysts have limited say in the way they are run.
In this, they are responding to a widespread belief that investor pressure for predictable short-term earnings growth led many publicly traded companies to engage in accounting gimmickry and business improprieties in the 1990's. Google says that it will not offer quarterly earnings guidance and that it expects shareholders to understand even if it makes unprofitable short-term investments.
"A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half-hour," Larry Page, one of Google's co-founders, wrote in a "Letter From the Founders." The letter, which appeared at the front of the statement, was signed by Mr. Page and his fellow founder, Sergey Brin.
Many institutional investors may cheer that attitude. But another part of the company's strategy will draw some criticism. Google aims to insulate its executives somewhat from shareholder demands. The company will have dual classes of stock that will give company insiders much more voting power than public investors to elect directors. The company's disdain for the traditional stock offering process is also evident. Instead of selling a small number of shares at a predetermined price, which often stokes demand for the stock when it begins trading, Google will auction its shares to the highest bidders. In that way, the windfall profits from the offering will go to the company and its private shareholders, not to favored customers chosen by Wall Street investment banks. In its registration statement, Google explicitly warns investors not to buy the offering in the hope of making a short-term profit by flipping their shares.
That's some pretty good sleuthing. However, I think it's true that most reality show participants & game show contestants are in actuality actors looking to bulk up their demo reel. The shows identify them with some other (possibly their part-time gig) job to not make it so obvious that everyone is a wannabe actor.
Call any business help line that uses those voice-activated help menu systems. They're the biggest, most frustrating, useless, unbelievable piece of $@!# I've ever encountered. That's how close we are. And yet someone's making a good living going around and selling this garbage to corporate executives.
Beyond that, let's keep in mind there is no right to privacy in the US constitution beyond the fourth amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.
The Supreme Court first recognized an independent right of privacy within the 'penumbra' (fringe area) of the Bill of Rights in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). In this case, a right of marital privacy was invoked to void a law prohibiting contraception. Later cases expanded upon this fundamental right, and in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) the right of privacy was firmly established under the due process clauseof the 14th Amendment (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut ion.amendmentxiv.html). The court classified this right as fundamental, and thus required any governmental infringement to be justified by a compelling state interest.
....the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year -- all while 20,000 software developers are supported to work specifically on open source projects.
Huh? Seems like your math doesn't work out at all. Exactly how do I recover my $500,00 in campaign donations? I mean, c'mon guys, be serious.
Slashdot Mirror
"My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've just signed legislation that will outlaw VeriChip Corporation forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
You see, to a Republican, working is purely optional.
I also teach at a community college for the past 4 years. The students need a LOT of help (you'll be flabbergasted) -- enrollment is down 50% in the last few years all over the country, administrators tell me students are "scared" of programming, etc.
Here's what I do. Get the best book you can find and work lockstep with that book. Do the same in class as they'll be seeing in the book. They don't have the capacity to learn multiple environments and compare & contrast mentally.
For me, I fell in love with Lewis & Loftus "Java Software Solutions". It comes with a CD with all the code, SDK, and free jGRASP IDE (and very good supplemental materials). So that's what I use; students just install everything on the CD and they're good to go.
Having my materials all strongly synchronized is more important than any particular ideology to me. If the book emphasized command-line work I'd do that. (I do have a single handout describing command-line development which more advanced students might wish to pursue.)
As Nelson would say: "Haa-Ha".
[H]aving worked with both, I'd choose a British Literature major who does programming on her own, just for fun, over a Computer Science major who hates computers, but just wants a high paying job.
:-)
Let me applaud that beautiful little insight. My day feels brighter already!
I agree with the grandparent poster. In fact, I even agree with your italicized scare-argument -- and I have a Master's degree in Mathematics! Accounting has nothing to do with a Math degree, and I bet the number of accountants with college Math degrees is diminishingly small. If it were the same for network administrators, that would be all right.
Part of the problem is that colleges don't advertise their programs honestly. They should be promoting "a liberal arts education that makes you a more rounded person and more deeply educated". Instead, the advertising is "we get you jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, specific placement with specific companies", etc., and that's kind of fraudulent. Now, I appreciate my liberal education and it's exactly what I wanted. But truthfully I haven't used my math training in any job I've worked (simulation software engineer, community college math lecturer) dating after my junior year of high school.
Actually, I have a pretty funny recollection from college when a counselor came and gave a talk to math majors about all the wonderful things math majors could do for jobs. "You can do anything! Anything!" she said. "Give us an example?" we asked. "Well... anything! Absolutely anything with a math degree!" She couldn't come up with a single specific example, which distressingly is semi-accurate.
Colleges should be more honest up front about the difference between "computer science" and "software engineer", etc., and what the expectations are for each. You can complain about students going into college programs for the wrong reasons, but if they were given incomplete information, it's not their fault. If the grandparent poster knew what he wanted, saw exactly where get it, and made his move, then I salute him. He's further ahead than I am most days.
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182701&thr eshold=3&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=15100874
I'm wondering exactly what you're offering for what job? Usually that clears up this "cosmic mystery" real, real fast.
Well, yeah, no kidding. Since when did the "public interest" pay AOL for anything? Unless there is a law which says AOL cannot filter its "own" servers, too bad. It is AOL's right to do anything like this it wants to.
Of course, the logical conclusion to your argument is that we can't expect to have common standards for anything, ever. Apparently any company will break those standards when it's short-term profitable to do so, and those situations will occur frequently. Therefore we can't expect to maintain open standards for intercommunication, or data formats, or even standardized screws or sockets.
If companies are as free and likely to damage the public interest as you claim, then the only response is... apparently we need to pass some new laws to prevent that. Too bad, I would've preferred corporate entities to continue doing business like good corporate citizens.
We can't find good workers... For those who know, most of my employees work at minimum wage with a large project bonus (up to 80%), and I have enough people looking to work for us that it isn't the pay structure that isn't helping me find good help.
You should rethink that. A lot.
Actually, let me help by being perfectly honest with you. When I read the end of your post, having gone on bitching about the high cost of living on the coast, and then at the end reveal "my employees work at minimum wage"... You gotta be kidding me!
I'm working on a theory that says anyone who runs a business is required to be batshit fucking crazy. You're another data point, frankly.
There was an AP investigation a few weeks back about how frequently the state & federal governments publicly announce huge fines that they have no intention of collecting -- http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060326/BUSINESS/603260365/1003
Hell, why not announce an 800 Quadrillion dollar fine? That'll show the public we're serious! Of course, you're off the hook if you can cough up $5,000 or so...
And elections?
But, will it be less sucky and shitty?
"Thanks, Mr. Simpson. Because of you, we're all taking golden showers! [offstage laughter] What?"
"Political platform" = "Here's what we propose to do if you put us in power."
Note that we are in an election year.
So there's no point in contending that games can be like Shakespeare; they can't, and you don't want them to be. To make a game like what Shakespeare does, narratively, is to cripple what makes a game worthwhile.
Ebert says "video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic." Would he say the same about sports or athletics? He might be right -- but the counter is not to say that games do the same, it's to say that "watching TV or a movie represents a loss of time that could be spent becoming better problem-solvers, to practice reacting to different challenges, to become more proactive in our approach to the world". And we'd be right.
The Slashdot crowd cares about things like security, stability ("uptime"), system integrity ("backups"), accessibility, open formats, etc.
Some books have lasted physically for hundreds of years. Some eBooks have been around for, what, some number of months? With no guarantee to be accessible after 5-10 years pass?
As a former games programmer, I'll respond to this. Games firms always start out on the open PC platform, then try to graduate into the more profitable and high-end console business. It's deceptive, because at the same time there are new games developers popping up to add other PC games.
It's like interviewing college students, finding that they all want to graduate and get a job, and concluding that soon no one will be attending college.
Making stories and making games are on opposite ends of the creative continuum. I predict failure. And more failures as long as traditional story-based entertainment conglomerates continue to think they can cross over into games without seeing the radical differences.
From the NY Times:
http://www.uazuay.edu.ec/bibliotecas/conectividad
I suggest loser pays min(Plaintiff fees, Defendant fees).
That's some pretty good sleuthing. However, I think it's true that most reality show participants & game show contestants are in actuality actors looking to bulk up their demo reel. The shows identify them with some other (possibly their part-time gig) job to not make it so obvious that everyone is a wannabe actor.
So it still could possibly go either way.
Call any business help line that uses those voice-activated help menu systems. They're the biggest, most frustrating, useless, unbelievable piece of $@!# I've ever encountered. That's how close we are. And yet someone's making a good living going around and selling this garbage to corporate executives.
"Star Wars is cooler than Warcraft, why aren't we rich?"
I get the impression that's been the general thought process behind every Star Wars game ever made.
Perhaps that's true if the Constitution is narrowly interpreted. But, Supreme Court precendents have not taken a narrow interpretation. As described on http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Personal
....the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year -- all while 20,000 software developers are supported to work specifically on open source projects.
Huh? Seems like your math doesn't work out at all. Exactly how do I recover my $500,00 in campaign donations? I mean, c'mon guys, be serious.
- Lobbyist for Some Big Company, Esq.