The college I attend is mostly open to students' needs. It employs students managers and technicians for student support as well as faculty and staff support. Sure, its cheap labor but at the same time students gain valuable communications skills as well as some technical abilities.
There is a handful of students that attenend the college that are prefectly capable of running the IT department here. They already have the experience and might be willing to work in the position, if you pay them enough. Fortunately, the IT Dept. is willing to listen to their concerns, advice, and request when dealing with network infrastructure, firewalls, and servers (sometimes).
Then there is the Student Computing Society, wired one the first dorm network (Appletalk) on campus by running phone cables through the windows of student's rooms. "Approximately 32 Macintoshes on 4 floors were on the network, as was one heavy-duty laser printer. Gobs of time was spent diagnosing the many network outages that occurred on an almost-daily basis (usually due to cables being clamped by window frames) but it was fun. Of course, this was two years before the College network came into being..."
With *nix, we've not only helped our selves, but are slowly forming a user's group to help other students get started usuing a powerful multitasking, multiuser OS. Besides that the Computing Society provides students with webspace, as well as digital video equiptment, shell accounts, a *nix mail account, and much more services.
The IT Dept. along with one of the academic IT spokeperson, have decided to start a program where students would be trained in various IT related fields so that the students could "become more of an asset to the faculty" at the college. Quite possibly conflicting with the IT Dept's own practices of hiring students.
Then there are the Computer Science Department, and Engineering Dept.. The CS Dept. hires student sys admins to help administer *nix (Solaris) accounts for students taking CS courses. These students also help plan purchases, server setup, server administration, an get the opportunity to attend LISA conferences and much more. However, there have been instances, where the Engin Dept. hires student admins who really don't know how to administer and botch the entire operation, only for the Dept. Faculty, and the IT Dept., to clean up after the mess.
This brings up the problem of turnover rates. The average student attends college for a 4 year period. Groups that have it together, plan in advance and usually will employ sophomores or freshmen to participate and learn so that the organization can function in the future. If IT Depts were to employ students, then there would have to be some way of making sure there would always be some small handful of qualified student staff available to run the core IT services, as well as be able to maintain their 3.0.
I'm trailing off now... I believe that in some instances Student-Run IT Depts would be feasible, in other, well it would probably require a mix of Staff positions as well as student positions. Depending on the academic nature of the college, some of the administration may not want students to sacrifice their time to learn useful hands-on type skills. The feeling at this college is that students are here to get a top notch education, not work and develop their skills. There here for there academics not the job skills. This is a liberal arts school, not a technical school.
Then I wish they can tell some of my friends what they are supposed to do with their double major in Philosophy and Classics...
This is just my intrepretation of the situation I seemingly see here. YMMV
I agree with the idea that the traditional camera is not dead, however due to the convenience of the digital camera, its end may be near.
Its true enough that some artists and professional photographers will still stick to traditional media, therefore the traditional film camera may still have its place. However, with conventional photographers becoming more and more depended on manipulating their images they might as well go digital.
Although, you may not get the urge to take your nice $400 Mavica into the mosh pit; there is no way in hell I'm gonna take a $700 Olympus w/ its wide-angle lens. So disposable cameras may still be around to pollute whatever little of the environment we have left.
Is it the medium? It matters whether you shell out a couple of bucks for a memory stick / compact HD, or a couple cents for a floppy. If you buy a good camera you're gonna get some decent pictures, regardless if you're not Mr. Adams...
Even now with those big budget filmmakers who can afford to go all digital for the next film, traditional skills will still be needed. As digital cameras get more and more sophisticated we all assume we'll remember the point and shoot method.
I'm not sure if film will ever die out. It may end up being like tape cassettes, BETA tapes. It may even resurrect itself to a collector's item like Atari, or may just become something old and archaic that only art hobbyist will enjoy and marvel at...
Slashdot Mirror
[begin rant here]
The college I attend is mostly open to students' needs. It employs students managers and technicians for student support as well as faculty and staff support. Sure, its cheap labor but at the same time students gain valuable communications skills as well as some technical abilities.
There is a handful of students that attenend the college that are prefectly capable of running the IT department here. They already have the experience and might be willing to work in the position, if you pay them enough. Fortunately, the IT Dept. is willing to listen to their concerns, advice, and request when dealing with network infrastructure, firewalls, and servers (sometimes).
Then there is the Student Computing Society, wired one the first dorm network (Appletalk) on campus by running phone cables through the windows of student's rooms. "Approximately 32 Macintoshes on 4 floors were on the network, as was one heavy-duty laser printer. Gobs of time was spent diagnosing the many network outages that occurred on an almost-daily basis (usually due to cables being clamped by window frames) but it was fun. Of course, this was two years before the College network came into being..."
With *nix, we've not only helped our selves, but are slowly forming a user's group to help other students get started usuing a powerful multitasking, multiuser OS. Besides that the Computing Society provides students with webspace, as well as digital video equiptment, shell accounts, a *nix mail account, and much more services.
The IT Dept. along with one of the academic IT spokeperson, have decided to start a program where students would be trained in various IT related fields so that the students could "become more of an asset to the faculty" at the college. Quite possibly conflicting with the IT Dept's own practices of hiring students.
Then there are the Computer Science Department, and Engineering Dept.. The CS Dept. hires student sys admins to help administer *nix (Solaris) accounts for students taking CS courses. These students also help plan purchases, server setup, server administration, an get the opportunity to attend LISA conferences and much more. However, there have been instances, where the Engin Dept. hires student admins who really don't know how to administer and botch the entire operation, only for the Dept. Faculty, and the IT Dept., to clean up after the mess.
This brings up the problem of turnover rates. The average student attends college for a 4 year period. Groups that have it together, plan in advance and usually will employ sophomores or freshmen to participate and learn so that the organization can function in the future. If IT Depts were to employ students, then there would have to be some way of making sure there would always be some small handful of qualified student staff available to run the core IT services, as well as be able to maintain their 3.0.
I'm trailing off now... I believe that in some instances Student-Run IT Depts would be feasible, in other, well it would probably require a mix of Staff positions as well as student positions. Depending on the academic nature of the college, some of the administration may not want students to sacrifice their time to learn useful hands-on type skills. The feeling at this college is that students are here to get a top notch education, not work and develop their skills. There here for there academics not the job skills. This is a liberal arts school, not a technical school.
Then I wish they can tell some of my friends what they are supposed to do with their double major in Philosophy and Classics...
This is just my intrepretation of the situation I seemingly see here. YMMV
--Raf
I agree with the idea that the traditional camera is not dead, however due to the convenience of the digital camera, its end may be near.
Its true enough that some artists and professional photographers will still stick to traditional media, therefore the traditional film camera may still have its place. However, with conventional photographers becoming more and more depended on manipulating their images they might as well go digital.
Although, you may not get the urge to take your nice $400 Mavica into the mosh pit; there is no way in hell I'm gonna take a $700 Olympus w/ its wide-angle lens. So disposable cameras may still be around to pollute whatever little of the environment we have left.
Is it the medium? It matters whether you shell out a couple of bucks for a memory stick / compact HD, or a couple cents for a floppy. If you buy a good camera you're gonna get some decent pictures, regardless if you're not Mr. Adams...
Even now with those big budget filmmakers who can afford to go all digital for the next film, traditional skills will still be needed. As digital cameras get more and more sophisticated we all assume we'll remember the point and shoot method.
I'm not sure if film will ever die out. It may end up being like tape cassettes, BETA tapes. It may even resurrect itself to a collector's item like Atari, or may just become something old and archaic that only art hobbyist will enjoy and marvel at...
There is more to this, i'm sure...