Well, the guy's original question gripe was that, despite his CS degree, he has no idea on how to even start writing an emulator. I'm just saying that a different type of CS degree would prepare him for that.
The argument that engineering skills make for more useful employees is kind of a tangent. You're right, though, that it depends on the type of employee to some extent.
At a school large enough to have computer science degrees through both a college of arts and sciences, and through a college of engineering, there actually is a difference. You are correct that the majority of classes are the same. But the BA people don't get things like engineering finance and engineering project management, among other things.
At a school like yours, it sounds like the "CIS" program would fall somewhere in the middle of the CIS and CSE programs at my school.
The general philosophies and disciplines of Engineering make for better programming than one would learn through traditional CIS. Engineers learn project management, finance, and loads of other things CIS people don't get. In my experience, those CIS people opt for easy classes rather than graduate-level classes with their extra freedoms.
Also, while a CIS person might have more chance to specialize in something like AI, only a CSE person would be of value on an embedded system project, or something else equally electronic. So you are right that CIS people might be better prepared for/some/ types of programming, but they would be worse for others.
And, again, engineering is a discipline which is extremely useful when applied to software systems. The best software people all understand engineering, whether they learned it in school or through years of making mistakes:-)
Unfortunately, I'm in more of an IT/management role right now. But hopefully I'll get on something more stimulating one of these days.
# Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering (BS CSE). # Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science (BS CIS). # Bachelor of Arts in Computer and Information Science (BA CIS).
The BS CSE is the uberGeek degree I have. It is from the college of engineering. The other two degrees are from the college of arts and sciences. Personally, I don't think art and science belongs in the same college, but many schools do it that way for historical reasons.
Most people who want to write software probably should be looking for a degree from a college of engineering with a name like "BS Software Engineering" or "BS Computer Engineering with specialization in Software Systems." Unfortunately, the universities of the world tend to be a good bit behind the actual job market with it comes to high-tech.
I got a recent degree and know exactly how to start writing an emulator.
At most schools, Computer Science is mostly the study of algorithms. My school, however, had a degree called "Computer Science and Engineering." In this program, students learned not only algorithms, but also digital logic, electronics, and computer architecture. Students had to design an entire computer using basic digital logic components (by first building multiplexers, decoders from and/or/not gates). Then we had to write an emulator for a simple computer. Finally, we wrote a compiler/linker for the emulator.
FYI, the BSCS&E is a significantly harder program than the B.Arts in CS program. While we were taking extra physics and EE courses, the CS people were taking French, Theatre, and other easy courses that had real, live girls in them. We got the better education, sure, but I'm not sure it was worth it:-)
Most humans have a tendency to form "them" and "us" groups mentally. We care about us, but screw them. This causes racism, nationalism, and lots of religious groups. It is not a unique attribute of Americans.
One of my greatest hopes is for people to start thinking of themselves as citizens of humanity, rather than citizens of whichever country they are randomly born to. We have the technology and resources to feed and educate(=grow the local economy of) the entire world. But we don't to that now, because it isn't so much "our" problem. End nationalism--it's as bad as racism.
You know, in a lot of companies, management thinks from the gut, not from careful analysis. In such places, the word "truthiness" can fit well. It's not exclusively applicable to Texan politicos.
On top of that, if I had a real social safety net, I would be more likely to take on more risky business ventures and really innovate. A social safety net is good for the economy because it encourages people to take business risks!
Religion is fundamentally dogmatic, and science is fundamentally empirical (in the modern definition of the term). It shouldn't be surprising that these totally different epistemological philosophies are not often found in the same person.
Study after study has found an inverse relationship between religiosity and education, religiosity and IQ, etc. Because scientists certainly are near the high end on both education and IQ scales, it shouldn't seem strange if this trend holds.
Don't speculate about "bias" in the NAS with absolutely nothing to back you up.
Well, I guess we can't know for sure whether life-and-death motivation is essential for a functioning economy. But as it stands, many people must work or die (or at least risk death). As long as someone is given a choice where death is the alternative, that person is not free. In a truly free society, "work or die" is not the choice anyone is given.
We have the technology and the resources to give everyone that freedom while using increasingly smaller amounts of taxation. Robotics and genetics are making basic life-requirements incredibly inexpensive.
As far as education goes, I don't think we run the risk of overeducation. For most jobs, university-level education isn't needed. In addition to providing free training, we could provide salary and demand expectations. That would allow for a more realistic marketplace of skillsets. If your computer screen says "Demand for plumbers predicted to rise! Salaries are very high!" then people might actually spend a few months studying plumbing instead of spending four years studying physics, like they did in Ukraine.
Also, I hate living under the realization that at any moment, through no fault of my own, I could go bankrupt. Everything I've worked for could be gone. The.ca system seems much better in that respect.
But maybe you're right. Maybe our economy would fail if our lowest class was not motivated to work by fear of death. Even if that is the case today, I think with advancing automation technology, an economy that doesn't require this lack of freedom becomes increasingly more feasible.
Basic cameras are cheap now. Even wireless cameras are $70ish. Like $25-cheap. TV tuner cards are also dirt cheap. My advice to you is to set up a Linux server with a bunch of tuners. Put cameras all over the house. Install the program "motion." Set it to email your phone when it see something.
I did not mean to imply that a passive RFID tag is not a radio transponder. I only intended to point out that battery-powered radio transponders are common and uninteresting. RFID is interesting and uniquely useful only because of passive RFID.
Understanding computer and network architecture is useful in the art of penetration. Understanding discrete math, probability, and counting is ESSENTIAL for being able to pick the right attack vector. I imagine a professionally-employed hacker will want to be able to tell his boss "it will take 27 days to have a 50% chance of defeating this password based on their password policy." Most people can't do that stuff without a college education.
I can honestly tell you that I could get access to most business's databases within 2 weeks. I won't do it, but I could.
I work in the security industry for a company that does financial software. Despite all our efforts, at best we can only stop poorly-funded, poorly-motivated attackers. And our security is much better than most.
Most people, even those in IT, have NO FREAKIN IDEA how complicated information security is.
The only thing remarkable about RFID technology is the battery-free property. Anything which needs power might as well be called a "radio transmitter" and not RFID.
Ah. Here's your Hi Rez (that isn't a common expression in the states, or at least not my area)
According to a recent survey, belief in a god that is "in intellectual and affective communication with humankind" and belief in "personal immortality" are most popular among mathematicians and least popular among biologists. In total, about 60% of scientists in the United States expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of deities in 1996. This percentage has been fairly stable over the last 100 years. Among leading scientists defined as members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93% expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of a personal god in 1998.[10]
If you want an actual copy of Nature, shell out your $400/year...
I believe it was Dr. Dawkins who recently claimed that he knows exactly zero eminent scientists (and he probably knows as many eminent scientists as anyone!) who have confidence in the existence of the supernatural... I don't have a citation for that so don't hold me to it. But I hope my hi rez has corrected your misconceptions.
Once very computer comes with a smart-card reader (very inexpensive) you could keep a smart card in your wallet! They're credit card sized. You could store your keys for multiple financial services on the same card. It wouldn't cost much at all, it would just take a little bit of cooperation between the banks.
Routers don't know protocols. These days, every new application tunnels over HTTP. Routers can't prioritize VoIP-over-HTTP at the expense of Filesharing-over-HTTP.
Being a theist is a barrier for accepting scientific knowledge for some people. It is not a barrier for others. It all depends on their brand of theism. I wrote that to illustrate why being a theist is a barrier for some people.
You are correct that both of us used ambiguous language. We sold have used words like "all," "necessarily," and "for some," but we didn't.
I have heard multiple people reject scientific knowledge based on their brand of theism. These are the same people who vote on how to spend public money. These are not people most would call "zealots." If you intended to say "for some number of people, some scientific knowledge can be accepted while accepting some brand of theism" then nobody can argue with you. But your general sentiment seemed to be along the lines of "theism isn't bad for science." There are many documented, compelling cases that are directly at odds with that sentiment.
I read you. Canada seems to be much closer to a poverty-free society than the US, yet you have a functioning economy. That lends some pretty good support to my ideas. In the US, I know many people who have no medical care available to them.
I would say that, to reach the ideal society where there is no poverty, we do this: 1) provide stamps (not money) for food, shelter, utilities, clothes and medicine for EVERYONE, regardless of income. make it the exact same amount for all (the bare minimum). 2) create a proactive government program to predict economic demand for various skill sets and to commission the authorship of Free, interactive training courses and texts for the most in-demand skills. provide OLPC-style terminals (or something similar) to EVERYONE to access these courses and texts. provide government-funded job-search services on the terminals. 3) enact unrestricted capitalism (except for basic anti-trust and fraud laws). no capital gains tax, for instance. people would have the ability to start businesses without being bogged down with regulations and legal requirements.
In such a society, everyone would be able to afford everything they actually need. Most people would choose to work to have some luxuries. Those people would fund the society with consumption or income/property tax (much like now. the poor pay almost no tax). But nobody would ever have to worry about losing his job and going bankrupt on medical bills.
The value of, say housing stamps, would be tied to the location in which someone claims residency. The "stamp" (actually a card) would have photo ID and address on it, so it could only be used in the local economy. In order to discourage the truly lazy from sucking up funds in high-value areas, perhaps the offer of free travel or other incentives to low-value areas should be offered. Highly efficient, bare-minimum living quarters could be erected for cases of very high land value.
There. Now YOU never have to worry about dieing of disease/hunger if you lose your job. We have an established baseline for everyone. Also, we have more education opportunities. We have fewer people spending welfare money on booze, etc..
Any idea why this would not work? It is very similar, though more indirect, to what you have in Canada right now. And it totally eliminates poverty.
I know many people in college or with college educations who can not afford medical care here in the USA. Just look at the statistics for people without insurance! And have you seen the number of grad students who have serious malnutrition because they eat nothing but ramen?
Food stamps, shelter/utility stamps, medical insurance cards, clothing stamps, and a new sort of study-at-home library/career program should be provided to EVERYONE as a baseline regardless of employment status. Applications and approvals should not be required. People who want more luxurious lifestyles than these stamps provide could have the option to buy that with the money they earn in the (slightly-more-taxed) capitalist economy. We don't have that in the US, but we could. And then, only the legitimately insane would squalor in poverty.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the guy's original question gripe was that, despite his CS degree, he has no idea on how to even start writing an emulator. I'm just saying that a different type of CS degree would prepare him for that.
The argument that engineering skills make for more useful employees is kind of a tangent. You're right, though, that it depends on the type of employee to some extent.
@OSU? No foreign languages are required for any engineering degree at OSU...
At a school large enough to have computer science degrees through both a college of arts and sciences, and through a college of engineering, there actually is a difference. You are correct that the majority of classes are the same. But the BA people don't get things like engineering finance and engineering project management, among other things.
At a school like yours, it sounds like the "CIS" program would fall somewhere in the middle of the CIS and CSE programs at my school.
The general philosophies and disciplines of Engineering make for better programming than one would learn through traditional CIS. Engineers learn project management, finance, and loads of other things CIS people don't get. In my experience, those CIS people opt for easy classes rather than graduate-level classes with their extra freedoms.
/some/ types of programming, but they would be worse for others.
:-)
Also, while a CIS person might have more chance to specialize in something like AI, only a CSE person would be of value on an embedded system project, or something else equally electronic. So you are right that CIS people might be better prepared for
And, again, engineering is a discipline which is extremely useful when applied to software systems. The best software people all understand engineering, whether they learned it in school or through years of making mistakes
Unfortunately, I'm in more of an IT/management role right now. But hopefully I'll get on something more stimulating one of these days.
# Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering (BS CSE).
# Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science (BS CIS).
# Bachelor of Arts in Computer and Information Science (BA CIS).
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/ugrad/index.shtml
The BS CSE is the uberGeek degree I have. It is from the college of engineering. The other two degrees are from the college of arts and sciences. Personally, I don't think art and science belongs in the same college, but many schools do it that way for historical reasons.
Most people who want to write software probably should be looking for a degree from a college of engineering with a name like "BS Software Engineering" or "BS Computer Engineering with specialization in Software Systems." Unfortunately, the universities of the world tend to be a good bit behind the actual job market with it comes to high-tech.
I got a recent degree and know exactly how to start writing an emulator.
:-)
At most schools, Computer Science is mostly the study of algorithms. My school, however, had a degree called "Computer Science and Engineering." In this program, students learned not only algorithms, but also digital logic, electronics, and computer architecture. Students had to design an entire computer using basic digital logic components (by first building multiplexers, decoders from and/or/not gates). Then we had to write an emulator for a simple computer. Finally, we wrote a compiler/linker for the emulator.
FYI, the BSCS&E is a significantly harder program than the B.Arts in CS program. While we were taking extra physics and EE courses, the CS people were taking French, Theatre, and other easy courses that had real, live girls in them. We got the better education, sure, but I'm not sure it was worth it
Most humans have a tendency to form "them" and "us" groups mentally. We care about us, but screw them. This causes racism, nationalism, and lots of religious groups. It is not a unique attribute of Americans.
One of my greatest hopes is for people to start thinking of themselves as citizens of humanity, rather than citizens of whichever country they are randomly born to. We have the technology and resources to feed and educate(=grow the local economy of) the entire world. But we don't to that now, because it isn't so much "our" problem. End nationalism--it's as bad as racism.
You know, in a lot of companies, management thinks from the gut, not from careful analysis. In such places, the word "truthiness" can fit well. It's not exclusively applicable to Texan politicos.
On top of that, if I had a real social safety net, I would be more likely to take on more risky business ventures and really innovate. A social safety net is good for the economy because it encourages people to take business risks!
Comedy Central news is a better form of infotainment than Fox, CNN, and NBC--but it is also more factually accurate, as strange as that sounds.
Ha! I couldn't tell whether this was meant seriously or as colbert-style satire until I got to the communist stuff. Thanks for the laugh :-)
Religion is fundamentally dogmatic, and science is fundamentally empirical (in the modern definition of the term). It shouldn't be surprising that these totally different epistemological philosophies are not often found in the same person.
Study after study has found an inverse relationship between religiosity and education, religiosity and IQ, etc. Because scientists certainly are near the high end on both education and IQ scales, it shouldn't seem strange if this trend holds.
Don't speculate about "bias" in the NAS with absolutely nothing to back you up.
Well, I guess we can't know for sure whether life-and-death motivation is essential for a functioning economy. But as it stands, many people must work or die (or at least risk death). As long as someone is given a choice where death is the alternative, that person is not free. In a truly free society, "work or die" is not the choice anyone is given.
.ca system seems much better in that respect.
We have the technology and the resources to give everyone that freedom while using increasingly smaller amounts of taxation. Robotics and genetics are making basic life-requirements incredibly inexpensive.
As far as education goes, I don't think we run the risk of overeducation. For most jobs, university-level education isn't needed. In addition to providing free training, we could provide salary and demand expectations. That would allow for a more realistic marketplace of skillsets. If your computer screen says "Demand for plumbers predicted to rise! Salaries are very high!" then people might actually spend a few months studying plumbing instead of spending four years studying physics, like they did in Ukraine.
Also, I hate living under the realization that at any moment, through no fault of my own, I could go bankrupt. Everything I've worked for could be gone. The
But maybe you're right. Maybe our economy would fail if our lowest class was not motivated to work by fear of death. Even if that is the case today, I think with advancing automation technology, an economy that doesn't require this lack of freedom becomes increasingly more feasible.
Basic cameras are cheap now. Even wireless cameras are $70ish. Like $25-cheap. TV tuner cards are also dirt cheap. My advice to you is to set up a Linux server with a bunch of tuners. Put cameras all over the house. Install the program "motion." Set it to email your phone when it see something.
I did not mean to imply that a passive RFID tag is not a radio transponder. I only intended to point out that battery-powered radio transponders are common and uninteresting. RFID is interesting and uniquely useful only because of passive RFID.
Understanding computer and network architecture is useful in the art of penetration. Understanding discrete math, probability, and counting is ESSENTIAL for being able to pick the right attack vector. I imagine a professionally-employed hacker will want to be able to tell his boss "it will take 27 days to have a 50% chance of defeating this password based on their password policy." Most people can't do that stuff without a college education.
I can honestly tell you that I could get access to most business's databases within 2 weeks. I won't do it, but I could.
I work in the security industry for a company that does financial software. Despite all our efforts, at best we can only stop poorly-funded, poorly-motivated attackers. And our security is much better than most.
Most people, even those in IT, have NO FREAKIN IDEA how complicated information security is.
The only thing remarkable about RFID technology is the battery-free property. Anything which needs power might as well be called a "radio transmitter" and not RFID.
Ah. Here's your Hi Rez (that isn't a common expression in the states, or at least not my area)
_ religion_and_science
h tml
According to a recent survey, belief in a god that is "in intellectual and affective communication with humankind" and belief in "personal immortality" are most popular among mathematicians and least popular among biologists. In total, about 60% of scientists in the United States expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of deities in 1996. This percentage has been fairly stable over the last 100 years. Among leading scientists defined as members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93% expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of a personal god in 1998.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between
If you don't trust wikipedia, here's the Nature article cited:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.
If you want an actual copy of Nature, shell out your $400/year...
I believe it was Dr. Dawkins who recently claimed that he knows exactly zero eminent scientists (and he probably knows as many eminent scientists as anyone!) who have confidence in the existence of the supernatural... I don't have a citation for that so don't hold me to it. But I hope my hi rez has corrected your misconceptions.
Once very computer comes with a smart-card reader (very inexpensive) you could keep a smart card in your wallet! They're credit card sized. You could store your keys for multiple financial services on the same card. It wouldn't cost much at all, it would just take a little bit of cooperation between the banks.
You are about as good at telling jokes as a clown fish.
Routers don't know protocols. These days, every new application tunnels over HTTP. Routers can't prioritize VoIP-over-HTTP at the expense of Filesharing-over-HTTP.
Being a theist is a barrier for accepting scientific knowledge for some people. It is not a barrier for others. It all depends on their brand of theism. I wrote that to illustrate why being a theist is a barrier for some people.
You are correct that both of us used ambiguous language. We sold have used words like "all," "necessarily," and "for some," but we didn't.
I have heard multiple people reject scientific knowledge based on their brand of theism. These are the same people who vote on how to spend public money. These are not people most would call "zealots." If you intended to say "for some number of people, some scientific knowledge can be accepted while accepting some brand of theism" then nobody can argue with you. But your general sentiment seemed to be along the lines of "theism isn't bad for science." There are many documented, compelling cases that are directly at odds with that sentiment.
I read you. Canada seems to be much closer to a poverty-free society than the US, yet you have a functioning economy. That lends some pretty good support to my ideas. In the US, I know many people who have no medical care available to them.
I would say that, to reach the ideal society where there is no poverty, we do this:
1) provide stamps (not money) for food, shelter, utilities, clothes and medicine for EVERYONE, regardless of income. make it the exact same amount for all (the bare minimum).
2) create a proactive government program to predict economic demand for various skill sets and to commission the authorship of Free, interactive training courses and texts for the most in-demand skills. provide OLPC-style terminals (or something similar) to EVERYONE to access these courses and texts. provide government-funded job-search services on the terminals.
3) enact unrestricted capitalism (except for basic anti-trust and fraud laws). no capital gains tax, for instance. people would have the ability to start businesses without being bogged down with regulations and legal requirements.
In such a society, everyone would be able to afford everything they actually need. Most people would choose to work to have some luxuries. Those people would fund the society with consumption or income/property tax (much like now. the poor pay almost no tax). But nobody would ever have to worry about losing his job and going bankrupt on medical bills.
The value of, say housing stamps, would be tied to the location in which someone claims residency. The "stamp" (actually a card) would have photo ID and address on it, so it could only be used in the local economy. In order to discourage the truly lazy from sucking up funds in high-value areas, perhaps the offer of free travel or other incentives to low-value areas should be offered. Highly efficient, bare-minimum living quarters could be erected for cases of very high land value.
There. Now YOU never have to worry about dieing of disease/hunger if you lose your job. We have an established baseline for everyone. Also, we have more education opportunities. We have fewer people spending welfare money on booze, etc..
Any idea why this would not work? It is very similar, though more indirect, to what you have in Canada right now. And it totally eliminates poverty.
I know many people in college or with college educations who can not afford medical care here in the USA. Just look at the statistics for people without insurance! And have you seen the number of grad students who have serious malnutrition because they eat nothing but ramen?
Food stamps, shelter/utility stamps, medical insurance cards, clothing stamps, and a new sort of study-at-home library/career program should be provided to EVERYONE as a baseline regardless of employment status. Applications and approvals should not be required. People who want more luxurious lifestyles than these stamps provide could have the option to buy that with the money they earn in the (slightly-more-taxed) capitalist economy. We don't have that in the US, but we could. And then, only the legitimately insane would squalor in poverty.