Pretty sure they could have made a 8" 1024x768 if they wanted to when they released the first iPad. It could also have been bigger than 10".
10" was a choice. Just like 3.5" was on the iPhone.
An 8" screen would seem quite plausible. The iPad had a lower ppi than the iPhone, using the higher ppi of the iPhone would get us from 10" to 8". While such a screen may very well have exited there may have been problems with respect to cost, manufacturing yield, quality, etc. 10" may have been more practical, not a design requirement in and of itself.
The goal was really 1024x768 resolution. A resolution that is quite standard and would allow very effective viewing of regular web pages. It didn't hurt that a lot of PC/Mac developers already had artwork for that resolution and it would make porting to iPad that much easier. 10 inches was just the size required for a display of that resolution.
However the retina type displays change that size requirement. That 1024x768 resolution can be offered in a smaller device. A device that could be entirely compatible, no changes required, with iPad and iPad2 devices from a developers perspective.
I never got a degree, mostly due to ending up studying the wrong area (electronics) and eventually falling out and not getting a degree. I'm quite curious to the actual worth of the degree, if all you're interested in inherent interests. I have a job as a software developer, so it isn't a personal question, just curious. I imagine there are also people who end up getting a non-CS degree, but have an inherent interest in software development.
A CS/CIS/etc degree is not required. It is quite plausible to study all the topics covered in a degree program on your own. The problem is that very few people who embark on that self-taught path will study all the necessary topics. It is too tempting to cherry pick the interesting topics and pass on the less interesting. The problem is that some of the less interesting topics can be quite important. "Less interesting" varies from person to person.
A formal degree program has the advantage that a person will be coerced into study all the relevant topics, "interesting" or not. Most people can benefit from that sort of formality. Add to all of this that one can get access to some pretty cool hardware at a university that one would not get access to otherwise. Plus there is the environment of being surrounded by others of similar interest and abilities. What you and your fellow students learn from each other complements what you get out of class. Some professors, but not all, can also teach valuable lessons not normally covered in class.
I have worked with some great programmer who never got a degree. I would be happy to work with many of them again. However they probably could have been even better with the formal training. Self study, practical experience and formal training are all good things. Each complementing the other and taking a person a little bit farther.
As for inherent interest, that is something entirely different from training or experience. IMHO a person who lacks an inherent interest in software development is unlikely to become one of the better developers.
I don't think it is intellectualism, its really whether the developer has an inherent interest in software development. Some people get a degree in CS because they have an inherent interest in developing software. Others get the degree because a parent or guidance councilor told them it was a good career path. A B student with the inherent interest will most likely be a far better contributor to your team than the A student who is on the career path.
The question is how to recognize the person with the inherent interest. Its a judgement call but I like to see what sort of stuff they wrote for their own personal amusement or curiosity. I don't really care how trivial or useful such code was. If a person has only written code for school or work projects that may be a warning sign.
I'd like to emphasize that what works varies from person to person, not just from group to group. That despite what the currently in vogue development model tells you, best practices are not necessarily universal. Two highly skilled developers may have radically different best practices. That forcing a single set of practices upon a team may adversely affect the performance of a particular individual. The team leader needs to recognize such situations. For example one agile/scrum school of thought may advocate breaking work into very small tasks that are somewhat randomly assigned, a particular developer may bounce around different parts of the program from task to task. This works for some, not for others. Some skilled developers are far more efficient if they get the chance to specialize in a particular area for a while. Others may get bored doing so and prefer the bouncing around the project. Others may be indifferent. Don't fight against what works best for the individual. And make sure you communicate why some are working in one manner and others in a different manner, that its a matter of their individual styles not some sort of favoritism.
I think a more general statement would be to be flexible not dogmatic. To realize the agile is just the buzz word of the day. Like all the processes/methods that preceded it, it has both good and bad ideas. That the best practices touted by all of these processes/methods are sometimes pretty specific to the environment/tasks/workflow that the authors worked in. That the best practices suggested are probably not universally applicable.
Experiment, keeps what works, discard what doesn't.
It's a vicious cycle to an extent. The poorest people like to go to Walmart and pay the lowest possible prices for cheaply made Chinese manufactured products.
Yes and no. Walmart originally was stocked with largely US made goods. Their lower prices were through volume purchases, better distribution, etc. Walmart was actually an IT pioneer. They wired up their cash registers and stores in the 1970s, sent near real time sales data to headquarters to track sales and improve distribution and stocking, reduce inventory, etc. They opened their near real time data to manufacturers in order to get these manufacturers to participate in Walmart's pioneering digit purchase order and restocking programs. Walmart did data mining to further improve distribution and stocking, to respond to seasonal trends and news driven events (ex. weather).
Walmart going nearly entirely imported goods came after all this. And again, it was guided by consumer preference. As Walmart experimented with lower priced imported goods its customers abandoned the domestic goods. So even in the Walmart case offshoring was driven by consumer preferences.
You are correct that there is a feedback loop, but at its core the consumer still drives the system. I am a bit skeptical that Google's experiment is a good one but if more corporations conducted such experiments there is the opportunity to move things in the opposite direction. Especially with respect to goods that are not necessities needed to "get by".
People excoriate execs and companies who move parts of their businesses offshore (often rightly, and also often without questioning the policies that contribute to it often being cheaper and easier to employ people thousands of miles away in other countries).
Its more consumer behavior than policies. People's preference for a lower price, people's indifference for where a product is made. Offshoring is *not* some law of nature that will inevitably arise. Offshoring is a result of consumer behavior, the willingness to trade "local" manufacture for a lower price. Some people like to say that corporations will always seek the lowest cost of production, however they are only stating the first part of the "rule" and leaving off the "all other things being equal" caveat. In truth corporations meet consumer demand. If consumers are indifferent to where production takes place then corporations will outsource. If consumers show a consideration to where something is manufactured then corporations will be less inclined to outsource. Outsourcing is just a tool. If it negatively affects sales it will be discarded by corporations.
Google is correct that it could be an interesting experiment. However now we are back to the "all other things being equal" caveat. The functionality has to be comparable. The price difference can not be too large. Otherwise the experiment is flawed.
The user interface of mobile, whether specialized mobile pages or an app, tend to be inferior to the regular web page. The larger screens of tablets often do not help much with respect to mobile pages or apps, they are too often just scaled up versions of the phone oriented page/app. Screen size really does help in that it makes use of the regular web pages practical.
It doesn't happen as often, but back in the day id coded games cross-platform, and certainly beyond casual games.
"Native code" has two interpretations. One is native code from the CPU's perspective, as opposed to Java-like code which targets a virtual machine not the actual CPU(1). Such native code is a necessity for many non-casual games. This is the perspective I was mostly commenting on.
The other interpretation is from the Operating System / Platform API perspective. Here too native code has an advantage. When used appropriately in your user interface code you get the expected look and behavior for the platform. This makes users happy. This sort of native code is not used in the bulk of the game's code, at least when games are properly written(2), hence the ease of porting. BTW, I am quite familiar with the porting process. I have also seen reviews improved by relatively small and modest appearances of platform native things in the UI. It really does help when used judiciously.
(1) Yes there can be another conversion from the VM to the CPU's binary but this does not yield the full efficiency of compiling from source code directly to the CPU's binary as is done in the native code scenario.
(2) This gets complicated. Sometimes it is best to included code for multiple platforms. For example you might target both Direct3D and OpenGL. Today even the folks at id admit that modern Direct3D has its advantages.
... if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development.
Mobile phones, not mobile in general. Regular web pages work pretty well on tablets and personally I often find myself preferring a site's web page to the site's mobile app when using a tablet.
Ask any Mobile Developer, simultaneously writing for iOS and Android.
The need for the Android NDK (Native Development Kit) answered that question. Java-like approaches are fine for certain classes of apps but for many classes native is better.
in all of history, the number of extinction level asteroid impacts are very few and far between.
Events far below extinction level are a major threat. Think of how fragile society is. A severe disruption of the power or transportation networks could impact delivery of food to cities. Millions could die from that alone.
Because one of the things that contribute to bigger less efficient combustion engines remaining popular is performance. The electric car vendors are merely pointing out that high performance cars do not need to make loud vroom vroom noises. Its an important part of marketing to educate the public that electric vehicles can be "race cars", that going green does not necessarily mean sacrificing performance and fun.
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me.
Actually its more complicated than that. The car may be worth significantly more or less than the amount paid to an individual person. The car itself may only be worth $40,000 to a person but something else, say greening their image, may be worth $10,000+. One the other hand the car may be worth significantly more than $50,000 to an extremely environmentally conscious person, so this person essentially thinks its a deal. Yet another person may also think it is worth significantly more because they added up the price of the components and found a higher number, appreciate the taxpayer subsidy, and want to purchase now before that subsidy goes away - say due to a change of political administration.
In short, prices do not always match a person's willingness to pay, a more technical phrase for what its worth to person. A price generally needs to be at or below that willingness to pay. Apple sold a bunch of iPhones at $600 when it was introduced. Those people who thought an iPhone was worth $600 paid less than that when newer more capable models were introduced at $500 and then $400.
Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
Again, that depends. Back to that government subsidy. If the subsidy is removed and the price for a new car goes up then the used car may retain its value to some degree.
Tell that to everyone who scores in the 1% across the board on aptitude tests but isn't in the 1% economically.
Aptitude is one thing. Being able to follow through and deliver a working product is something entirely different. Not everyone possesses both qualities. More importantly many of the 1% in aptitude are not actively working towards getting into the 1% economic demographic. So not getting into that demographic is hardly a meaningful statistic. But most important of all. For those who do get into that demographic, not all of them get into it on their first attempt. Rejection is not a permanent state. Failure is part of the learning curve.
U.S. States that are currently a hub/center for some particular industry were not alway so. American history is full of migrations from one state to another to follow jobs. Why is it all of sudden wrong to do so?
I am not sure your tragedy of the commons argument applies here. Some state governments have become terribly inefficient and somewhat parasitic of their traditional industries, California may be an example. Why should some company or industry be forced to stay put to prop up such a mismanaged local government? Implicit in your argument is the "all other things being equal" caveat, but things are not equal. Some states will have an inherent advantage due to access to transportation and distribution systems, access to natural resources, access to energy sources, access to a trained work force, access to universities, an appealing climate, etc.
Good government seems to rely on a system of checks and balances. I think we need to have company mobility to some degree as a check/balance against the mismanagement of local government. A lack of competition between states may be just as bad as too much competition.
I hate to burst the bubble of any CS students... We all sit in the same cubicles churning through millions of lines of legacy Java code, filling in our change requests and putting cover sheets on TPS reports.
No, we do not all do that. Some of us went into CS because we actually had an inherent interesting in coding, not because a parent or guidance councilor told us it was a good career path. Because we had an inherent interest in building things. An inherent curiosity regarding puzzles, practical or academic. We appreciated the theory presented in many classes because it better prepared us to design new things. And many of us matching the preceding sit in our cubes designing and developing new things, not maintaining old things.
Mild protest.
I went the same path, and sit in my cubicle maintaining old things.
2/3 of it is boring -- but there's 1/3 which is highly exciting and requires talent, good judgement and all kinds of
problem-solving skills.
Developing new things is *not* what a programmer's work is about.
Developing new things while improving/securing the old things is.
Dealing with the consequences of your mistakes, i.e. handle customer problems, is.
I did not mean to imply that you ship a product and move on to something else leaving others to maintain it. Of course as the designer/developer you do maintenance to some degree. And yes I would agree that new things does not necessarily require a brand new product or project. That there is a line somewhere where an addition has sufficient size/scope/complexity that one has crossed from maintenance to design/development.
So you can't pat you head, rub your stomach, and hold a conservation at the same time?
That is not multitasking. That is a serialized activity. Setting up a repeating event and then engaging in a conversation. In mid conversation try changing the event. For example go from pat head and rub stomach to rub... uh... cranium and pat stomach in the middle of the conversation.
I hate to burst the bubble of any CS students... We all sit in the same cubicles churning through millions of lines of legacy Java code, filling in our change requests and putting cover sheets on TPS reports.
No, we do not all do that. Some of us went into CS because we actually had an inherent interesting in coding, not because a parent or guidance councilor told us it was a good career path. Because we had an inherent interest in building things. An inherent curiosity regarding puzzles, practical or academic. We appreciated the theory presented in many classes because it better prepared us to design new things. And many of us matching the preceding sit in our cubes designing and developing new things, not maintaining old things.
I'm sure someone who came up through an IS program can probably make a similar observation.
What you end up doing has a high correlation to what your inherent interests are and to how seriously your took your degree program, CS or IS. I would not trust most of my fellow CS grads to design and develop new things, however these individuals typically were just in class to get a piece of paper to get a higher salary.
"He is doing stuff now that a lot of people I graduated with (I was a CS major) could not do when they had a bachelor's degree"
When I was in the IS program, the CS students would come over from the math building and take our courses so they could learn to write code that actually does something.
Like learn how to program in COBOL?;-) At my university the CS department had classes that used C, FORTRAN, Pascal, Lisp... but no COBOL. One had to go take a class in the IS department for that. We laughed at the two guys who did that. They laughed years later when the Y2K updates were underway and they were charging outrageous fees.
Joking aside, you are entirely correct that CS is designed to be the more theoretical degree program. For example you will study the theory and design of operating systems in class, but you are expected to learn to program UNIX, MS Windows, etc on your own time. In general you will study the theory and mathematics of 3D graphics in class, but you are expected to learn OpenGL, Direct3D, etc on your own time (maybe a TA will help in a discussion session). The logic was that class time is spent on the theory, designs and mathematics that will persist as we migrate from one operating system to another, from one graphical environment to another, etc.
Can anyone zoom in enough to spot the price sticker? I reckon the charge to upgrade for existing users isn't going to go down too well...
The price sticker will probably say "Free".
Probably right, that is unless the upgrade is unavailable for your device (i.e. older iPhones), or breaks it.
Under those circumstances, I contend the upgrade price will be the price of whatever phone Apple is pimping at the time of iOS 6's release.
Today Apple is offering an iPhone 3GS 8GB for "free" (with an AT&T plan) and it runs the more recent version of iOS. There will probably be a similar plan for iOS 6.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 6 supports the 3GS. The 3GS is basically using the same CPU and GPU architectures as the more modern phones, unlike the discontinued 3G. So unless they want to go pure Retina display there isn't much reason to pass on the 3GS. Now if Apple does go the pure Retina display route then as an iPhone 5 is released the original 4 will probably become the "free" phone and offer iOS 6.
Can anyone zoom in enough to spot the price sticker? I reckon the charge to upgrade for existing users isn't going to go down too well...
The price sticker will probably say "Free".
Apple used to charge iPod touch users for some upgrades due to regulatory/accounting regulations. iPhone users were not subject to this regulation and were not charged. Apple wants people to upgrade iOS, they want as few barriers as possible to upgrades. They are actually somewhat aggressive in pushing users to the most recent version. They don't really want people out there running older versions.
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Pretty sure they could have made a 8" 1024x768 if they wanted to when they released the first iPad. It could also have been bigger than 10". 10" was a choice. Just like 3.5" was on the iPhone.
An 8" screen would seem quite plausible. The iPad had a lower ppi than the iPhone, using the higher ppi of the iPhone would get us from 10" to 8". While such a screen may very well have exited there may have been problems with respect to cost, manufacturing yield, quality, etc. 10" may have been more practical, not a design requirement in and of itself.
The goal was really 1024x768 resolution. A resolution that is quite standard and would allow very effective viewing of regular web pages. It didn't hurt that a lot of PC/Mac developers already had artwork for that resolution and it would make porting to iPad that much easier. 10 inches was just the size required for a display of that resolution.
However the retina type displays change that size requirement. That 1024x768 resolution can be offered in a smaller device. A device that could be entirely compatible, no changes required, with iPad and iPad2 devices from a developers perspective.
I never got a degree, mostly due to ending up studying the wrong area (electronics) and eventually falling out and not getting a degree. I'm quite curious to the actual worth of the degree, if all you're interested in inherent interests. I have a job as a software developer, so it isn't a personal question, just curious. I imagine there are also people who end up getting a non-CS degree, but have an inherent interest in software development.
A CS/CIS/etc degree is not required. It is quite plausible to study all the topics covered in a degree program on your own. The problem is that very few people who embark on that self-taught path will study all the necessary topics. It is too tempting to cherry pick the interesting topics and pass on the less interesting. The problem is that some of the less interesting topics can be quite important. "Less interesting" varies from person to person.
A formal degree program has the advantage that a person will be coerced into study all the relevant topics, "interesting" or not. Most people can benefit from that sort of formality. Add to all of this that one can get access to some pretty cool hardware at a university that one would not get access to otherwise. Plus there is the environment of being surrounded by others of similar interest and abilities. What you and your fellow students learn from each other complements what you get out of class. Some professors, but not all, can also teach valuable lessons not normally covered in class.
I have worked with some great programmer who never got a degree. I would be happy to work with many of them again. However they probably could have been even better with the formal training. Self study, practical experience and formal training are all good things. Each complementing the other and taking a person a little bit farther.
As for inherent interest, that is something entirely different from training or experience. IMHO a person who lacks an inherent interest in software development is unlikely to become one of the better developers.
I don't think it is intellectualism, its really whether the developer has an inherent interest in software development. Some people get a degree in CS because they have an inherent interest in developing software. Others get the degree because a parent or guidance councilor told them it was a good career path. A B student with the inherent interest will most likely be a far better contributor to your team than the A student who is on the career path.
The question is how to recognize the person with the inherent interest. Its a judgement call but I like to see what sort of stuff they wrote for their own personal amusement or curiosity. I don't really care how trivial or useful such code was. If a person has only written code for school or work projects that may be a warning sign.
I'd like to emphasize that what works varies from person to person, not just from group to group. That despite what the currently in vogue development model tells you, best practices are not necessarily universal. Two highly skilled developers may have radically different best practices. That forcing a single set of practices upon a team may adversely affect the performance of a particular individual. The team leader needs to recognize such situations. For example one agile/scrum school of thought may advocate breaking work into very small tasks that are somewhat randomly assigned, a particular developer may bounce around different parts of the program from task to task. This works for some, not for others. Some skilled developers are far more efficient if they get the chance to specialize in a particular area for a while. Others may get bored doing so and prefer the bouncing around the project. Others may be indifferent. Don't fight against what works best for the individual. And make sure you communicate why some are working in one manner and others in a different manner, that its a matter of their individual styles not some sort of favoritism.
I think a more general statement would be to be flexible not dogmatic. To realize the agile is just the buzz word of the day. Like all the processes/methods that preceded it, it has both good and bad ideas. That the best practices touted by all of these processes/methods are sometimes pretty specific to the environment/tasks/workflow that the authors worked in. That the best practices suggested are probably not universally applicable.
Experiment, keeps what works, discard what doesn't.
It's a vicious cycle to an extent. The poorest people like to go to Walmart and pay the lowest possible prices for cheaply made Chinese manufactured products.
Yes and no. Walmart originally was stocked with largely US made goods. Their lower prices were through volume purchases, better distribution, etc. Walmart was actually an IT pioneer. They wired up their cash registers and stores in the 1970s, sent near real time sales data to headquarters to track sales and improve distribution and stocking, reduce inventory, etc. They opened their near real time data to manufacturers in order to get these manufacturers to participate in Walmart's pioneering digit purchase order and restocking programs. Walmart did data mining to further improve distribution and stocking, to respond to seasonal trends and news driven events (ex. weather).
Walmart going nearly entirely imported goods came after all this. And again, it was guided by consumer preference. As Walmart experimented with lower priced imported goods its customers abandoned the domestic goods. So even in the Walmart case offshoring was driven by consumer preferences.
You are correct that there is a feedback loop, but at its core the consumer still drives the system. I am a bit skeptical that Google's experiment is a good one but if more corporations conducted such experiments there is the opportunity to move things in the opposite direction. Especially with respect to goods that are not necessities needed to "get by".
People excoriate execs and companies who move parts of their businesses offshore (often rightly, and also often without questioning the policies that contribute to it often being cheaper and easier to employ people thousands of miles away in other countries).
Its more consumer behavior than policies. People's preference for a lower price, people's indifference for where a product is made. Offshoring is *not* some law of nature that will inevitably arise. Offshoring is a result of consumer behavior, the willingness to trade "local" manufacture for a lower price. Some people like to say that corporations will always seek the lowest cost of production, however they are only stating the first part of the "rule" and leaving off the "all other things being equal" caveat. In truth corporations meet consumer demand. If consumers are indifferent to where production takes place then corporations will outsource. If consumers show a consideration to where something is manufactured then corporations will be less inclined to outsource. Outsourcing is just a tool. If it negatively affects sales it will be discarded by corporations.
Google is correct that it could be an interesting experiment. However now we are back to the "all other things being equal" caveat. The functionality has to be comparable. The price difference can not be too large. Otherwise the experiment is flawed.
The user interface of mobile, whether specialized mobile pages or an app, tend to be inferior to the regular web page. The larger screens of tablets often do not help much with respect to mobile pages or apps, they are too often just scaled up versions of the phone oriented page/app. Screen size really does help in that it makes use of the regular web pages practical.
It doesn't happen as often, but back in the day id coded games cross-platform, and certainly beyond casual games.
"Native code" has two interpretations. One is native code from the CPU's perspective, as opposed to Java-like code which targets a virtual machine not the actual CPU(1). Such native code is a necessity for many non-casual games. This is the perspective I was mostly commenting on.
The other interpretation is from the Operating System / Platform API perspective. Here too native code has an advantage. When used appropriately in your user interface code you get the expected look and behavior for the platform. This makes users happy. This sort of native code is not used in the bulk of the game's code, at least when games are properly written(2), hence the ease of porting. BTW, I am quite familiar with the porting process. I have also seen reviews improved by relatively small and modest appearances of platform native things in the UI. It really does help when used judiciously.
(1) Yes there can be another conversion from the VM to the CPU's binary but this does not yield the full efficiency of compiling from source code directly to the CPU's binary as is done in the native code scenario.
(2) This gets complicated. Sometimes it is best to included code for multiple platforms. For example you might target both Direct3D and OpenGL. Today even the folks at id admit that modern Direct3D has its advantages.
... if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development.
Mobile phones, not mobile in general. Regular web pages work pretty well on tablets and personally I often find myself preferring a site's web page to the site's mobile app when using a tablet.
Ask any Mobile Developer, simultaneously writing for iOS and Android.
The need for the Android NDK (Native Development Kit) answered that question. Java-like approaches are fine for certain classes of apps but for many classes native is better.
Re:Ask any grey beard. Native code is _always_ better.
Ask any game developer, well those working on anything beyond the simple casual game segment.
Is there also a mysterious layer of ash for the year 793? That year the chronicle has "fiery dragons flying across the firmament".
And how might the people of that time and place describe near-miss asteroids that enter the atmosphere but do not impact the earth?
Perhaps the word "dragon" was not meant to be taken literally and was merely used as a metaphor, a literary device?
in all of history, the number of extinction level asteroid impacts are very few and far between.
Events far below extinction level are a major threat. Think of how fragile society is. A severe disruption of the power or transportation networks could impact delivery of food to cities. Millions could die from that alone.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time?
Because one of the things that contribute to bigger less efficient combustion engines remaining popular is performance. The electric car vendors are merely pointing out that high performance cars do not need to make loud vroom vroom noises. Its an important part of marketing to educate the public that electric vehicles can be "race cars", that going green does not necessarily mean sacrificing performance and fun.
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me.
Actually its more complicated than that. The car may be worth significantly more or less than the amount paid to an individual person. The car itself may only be worth $40,000 to a person but something else, say greening their image, may be worth $10,000+. One the other hand the car may be worth significantly more than $50,000 to an extremely environmentally conscious person, so this person essentially thinks its a deal. Yet another person may also think it is worth significantly more because they added up the price of the components and found a higher number, appreciate the taxpayer subsidy, and want to purchase now before that subsidy goes away - say due to a change of political administration.
In short, prices do not always match a person's willingness to pay, a more technical phrase for what its worth to person. A price generally needs to be at or below that willingness to pay. Apple sold a bunch of iPhones at $600 when it was introduced. Those people who thought an iPhone was worth $600 paid less than that when newer more capable models were introduced at $500 and then $400.
Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
Again, that depends. Back to that government subsidy. If the subsidy is removed and the price for a new car goes up then the used car may retain its value to some degree.
Life is a meritocracy.
Tell that to everyone who scores in the 1% across the board on aptitude tests but isn't in the 1% economically.
Aptitude is one thing. Being able to follow through and deliver a working product is something entirely different. Not everyone possesses both qualities. More importantly many of the 1% in aptitude are not actively working towards getting into the 1% economic demographic. So not getting into that demographic is hardly a meaningful statistic. But most important of all. For those who do get into that demographic, not all of them get into it on their first attempt. Rejection is not a permanent state. Failure is part of the learning curve.
U.S. States that are currently a hub/center for some particular industry were not alway so. American history is full of migrations from one state to another to follow jobs. Why is it all of sudden wrong to do so?
I am not sure your tragedy of the commons argument applies here. Some state governments have become terribly inefficient and somewhat parasitic of their traditional industries, California may be an example. Why should some company or industry be forced to stay put to prop up such a mismanaged local government? Implicit in your argument is the "all other things being equal" caveat, but things are not equal. Some states will have an inherent advantage due to access to transportation and distribution systems, access to natural resources, access to energy sources, access to a trained work force, access to universities, an appealing climate, etc.
Good government seems to rely on a system of checks and balances. I think we need to have company mobility to some degree as a check/balance against the mismanagement of local government. A lack of competition between states may be just as bad as too much competition.
I hate to burst the bubble of any CS students ... We all sit in the same cubicles churning through millions of lines of legacy Java code, filling in our change requests and putting cover sheets on TPS reports.
No, we do not all do that. Some of us went into CS because we actually had an inherent interesting in coding, not because a parent or guidance councilor told us it was a good career path. Because we had an inherent interest in building things. An inherent curiosity regarding puzzles, practical or academic. We appreciated the theory presented in many classes because it better prepared us to design new things. And many of us matching the preceding sit in our cubes designing and developing new things, not maintaining old things.
Mild protest. I went the same path, and sit in my cubicle maintaining old things. 2/3 of it is boring -- but there's 1/3 which is highly exciting and requires talent, good judgement and all kinds of problem-solving skills.
Developing new things is *not* what a programmer's work is about. Developing new things while improving/securing the old things is. Dealing with the consequences of your mistakes, i.e. handle customer problems, is.
I did not mean to imply that you ship a product and move on to something else leaving others to maintain it. Of course as the designer/developer you do maintenance to some degree. And yes I would agree that new things does not necessarily require a brand new product or project. That there is a line somewhere where an addition has sufficient size/scope/complexity that one has crossed from maintenance to design/development.
So you can't pat you head, rub your stomach, and hold a conservation at the same time?
That is not multitasking. That is a serialized activity. Setting up a repeating event and then engaging in a conversation. In mid conversation try changing the event. For example go from pat head and rub stomach to rub ... uh ... cranium and pat stomach in the middle of the conversation.
I hate to burst the bubble of any CS students ... We all sit in the same cubicles churning through millions of lines of legacy Java code, filling in our change requests and putting cover sheets on TPS reports.
No, we do not all do that. Some of us went into CS because we actually had an inherent interesting in coding, not because a parent or guidance councilor told us it was a good career path. Because we had an inherent interest in building things. An inherent curiosity regarding puzzles, practical or academic. We appreciated the theory presented in many classes because it better prepared us to design new things. And many of us matching the preceding sit in our cubes designing and developing new things, not maintaining old things.
I'm sure someone who came up through an IS program can probably make a similar observation.
What you end up doing has a high correlation to what your inherent interests are and to how seriously your took your degree program, CS or IS. I would not trust most of my fellow CS grads to design and develop new things, however these individuals typically were just in class to get a piece of paper to get a higher salary.
CS is not IT
"He is doing stuff now that a lot of people I graduated with (I was a CS major) could not do when they had a bachelor's degree" When I was in the IS program, the CS students would come over from the math building and take our courses so they could learn to write code that actually does something.
Like learn how to program in COBOL? ;-) At my university the CS department had classes that used C, FORTRAN, Pascal, Lisp ... but no COBOL. One had to go take a class in the IS department for that. We laughed at the two guys who did that. They laughed years later when the Y2K updates were underway and they were charging outrageous fees.
Joking aside, you are entirely correct that CS is designed to be the more theoretical degree program. For example you will study the theory and design of operating systems in class, but you are expected to learn to program UNIX, MS Windows, etc on your own time. In general you will study the theory and mathematics of 3D graphics in class, but you are expected to learn OpenGL, Direct3D, etc on your own time (maybe a TA will help in a discussion session). The logic was that class time is spent on the theory, designs and mathematics that will persist as we migrate from one operating system to another, from one graphical environment to another, etc.
Can anyone zoom in enough to spot the price sticker? I reckon the charge to upgrade for existing users isn't going to go down too well...
The price sticker will probably say "Free".
Probably right, that is unless the upgrade is unavailable for your device (i.e. older iPhones), or breaks it. Under those circumstances, I contend the upgrade price will be the price of whatever phone Apple is pimping at the time of iOS 6's release.
Today Apple is offering an iPhone 3GS 8GB for "free" (with an AT&T plan) and it runs the more recent version of iOS. There will probably be a similar plan for iOS 6.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 6 supports the 3GS. The 3GS is basically using the same CPU and GPU architectures as the more modern phones, unlike the discontinued 3G. So unless they want to go pure Retina display there isn't much reason to pass on the 3GS. Now if Apple does go the pure Retina display route then as an iPhone 5 is released the original 4 will probably become the "free" phone and offer iOS 6.
Can anyone zoom in enough to spot the price sticker? I reckon the charge to upgrade for existing users isn't going to go down too well...
The price sticker will probably say "Free".
Apple used to charge iPod touch users for some upgrades due to regulatory/accounting regulations. iPhone users were not subject to this regulation and were not charged. Apple wants people to upgrade iOS, they want as few barriers as possible to upgrades. They are actually somewhat aggressive in pushing users to the most recent version. They don't really want people out there running older versions.