I'm a CpE major, and this is exactly the reason. I've seen way to many "computer people" who can't use a saudering iron, let alone understand gate logic. If one is going to go into a geek field, ya might as well LEARN the stuff, rather than just how to use it.
I totally disagree with that. I've seen the exact opposite.
There are way too many engineers out there who don't understand proper coding skills (because all they learned in school was Fortran) well enough to be able to create a bug-free system. The demand for programmers is huge, and these people are getting these jobs, because they have some programming experience, when all they really know how to do is sauder a board together.
Now this is not universal. Some of the brightest guys I know are EE geeks. But the vast majority of people with an EE degree don't want to code, and yet that's the majority of the jobs out there for EE's. If you want to code, go CS as you'll learn a lot more theory, which is worth it in the long run. The EE stuff you may need to know is not hard to pick up, whereas it can be hard to pick up coding when all you know is fortran.
Computer Engineering is a good idea, but poorly implemented at a lot of schools. It's basically a cross between EE and CS, but not getting into any depth on either one. If you're undecided between the two, then it may be worth looking at. But the CpE's I know (admittedly very few) couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. One guy I know who graduated with a 3.5+ average in CpE (he had a 1.5- overall) is also one of the stupidest people I have ever met in my entire life. He would be one of those people who couldn't understand which way to plug in the power cord.
CS people do have a nasty habit of not being well rounded at all.
I admit this is true to a certain extent, at least upon graduation. But you could say this about most majors, IMNSHO. The thing that provides a person well-roundedness is job experience.
I don't want to see a "Big Brother" state of teenage computer coders being financially encouraged to turn in and monitor their fellow coders (most of them innocent). Much of coding is learning from each other and sharing information and understanding. This involves a lot of trust and friendship. I would hate to see government actions accidentally harming this trust, or the programming community.
Well, it doesn't really look like that type of a program..
First off, forget any mention of ROTC. That only leads one to think of the "military", which is not what they're getting at. The only similarity to ROTC, AFAICS, is "we give you money now, you work for us later".
Mainly the program sounds like it's targeted at getting more people into the computer security field.
Computer security isn't primarily about "turning in your fellow coders"... It's mainly about preventing your fellow coders from being able to do anything worth turning them in for. The government may not realize that (I'm sure they don't in fact), but the people getting these jobs and money will.
P.S. It is not if you are legal what are you afraid of? Government officials/FBI sometimes appear to be ignorant of technology issues, and paranoid of things they don't understand, and many innocent (but suspicious appearing) young children can be harmed by this.
I totally agree. That's why this program is good, in that it helps to educate people to do this type of thing correctly. The government doesn't "need to know" these things, but the people who work for the government and implement the policies do.
91 mil in scholarships in exchange for future public service. Ok, wouldn't it be simpler to take that 91 million and use it to hire US citizens away from the private sector? Oh wait, that would provide instant results instead of dissappointing results during the next guy's term.
Well, I kinda agree with you, but on the other hand I think it's a good idea to get more people into a computer science degree program, type-of-thing..
On an unrelated note, why is it that no AC ever wants to see ME naked and petrified?
Well, if you insist... SH03B0Y N4K3D 4ND P3TR1F13D! (my hax0r speek is not quite what it used to be)
I did some math to check his claim of the earth being full by 2600, and it's quite funny -- the population density (following only the exponential condition that was given) would be one person per 0.78 m^2!
True. But, many of these guys keep me up on the inside info every now and then.. Nothing on this though.. Most of them are a bit pissed at the latest Mars missions..
``No one on our side knew that canyon was there,'' the Lockheed source told the Post. ``All of the sudden, two weeks later, we got this MOLA data'' -- topographical maps and images -- ``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''
You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...
Anyway, here's some links to various stories for those who never saw them:
I've seen a bunch of anti-ecommerce news recently: that this Christmas season, etailers had bunchs of problems delivering product and that customers were less than happy with their online experiences.
I saw some stuff like this on the local news after Xmas.. wasn't a large deal though, mainly just said that etoys.com sucked.:-)
Also, I saw one tonight attacking ebay for allowing too much fake stuff available. It is amazing. There are lawyers representing large corps with call centers full of people going to ebay and searching for fake stuff and going after the sellers (looks like they'd really like to go after ebay too!).
I saw that on Dateline or 20/20 or one of those news shows last night.. Pretty interesting. No one will ever nail ebay for it though. If they did, they'd have to nail every single newspaper in the world that has a classified ads section.
Anyway, I think people are starting to realize that the main thing e-commerce does is to improve choice. The big thing that will happen to give e-commerce a shot in the arm is a "trust" system. People don't trust the internet. My parents are paranoid about giving any personal info online. Which is fine, but they have no problem giving info to people in stores, over the phone, etc... They don't trust the 'net because they don't understand it.
A lot of the problem is the viewpoint of the internet as an entity in itself, when it is not. People seem to think that once you put something "on the 'net" it's instantly available to anyone.. They see the 'net as a big evil thing, rather than as a network to allow people to interact with other people...
But anyway, it does look the the hype is FINALLY dying down. Thank God. Now we may resume the Information Age!!
The hype has just begun dude.. sorry, but it will get more intense before it dies down.
Your comment was based on little or no knowledge, powered by ignorance...I wonder on what you base your assumption that Apple makes crap computers.
Well, it's actually very simple. I sit down in front of a Mac. I try to use it. It's slow, annoying, and lacking a disk drive. I therefore exclaim loudly, "This computer sucks!" and go about my business.
Now, admittedly, this takes the computer as a whole into consideration. That is, OS, computer, annoying ugly case (I find the whole color thing to be quite nasty looking, but that's just me. I'd much prefer a marbleized finish, or matte black).
No, I haven't tried to run LinuxPPC on one. I wouldn't buy one in order to run LinuxPPC on it.
The system may be superior hardware. I'll give it that. But the MacOS is so bad, IMNSHO, that it prevents me from buying the hardware to find out. I simply don't care enough about the hardware to go there.
BTW, claiming a person to be ignorant when you disagree with their opinion is a rather stupid thing to do. It not that I don't know about the system, it's that I don't like it in a major way.
It's essentially a Mastercard number, with a limit set at the actual amount you have in the certificate.
Example: I deposit $100 into a webcertifcate. Now I can use that number online (or somewhere where I just need to write a number down) for up to $100 worth of charges. If someone queries on it, anything less than $100 will be okay (until that amount goes down by actually being charged).
They come in very handy for paying something online where you don't want to be ripped off. Deposit a given amount that will cover what you wish to buy. They CAN'T charge you any more than that.. Pretty nifty.
As I understand it, ATM Deposits are not allowed across state lines due to some law somewhere. At least, my old bank told me that. Not that I couldn't do it (I did try it a couple of times and it worked okay), but they said I wasn't supposed to do it.
Since the bank must be based somewhere, you'd probably be crossing state lines.
Of course, I moved to Alabama a few months ago, and as far as I can tell, ATM deposits aren't allowed at all in this state. Haven't found out why yet..
A new "Think Different" campaign will feature directors of the movie industry, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, presumably because of the movie-making capabilities of the DVD iMacs.
I like Hitchcock and Kubrick, damnit.. Don't use them to sell Macs! That just pisses me off.. Let them rest in peace for crying out loud.. argh.. It was bad enough to use HAL to sell crap computers, but to use Kubrick himself is horrible.
OS X will be completely open source, like the popular Linux operating system, with Quartz, Open GL and QuickTime all built in.
Sounds like the whole shebang is gonna be OSS. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it.
If you try to go directly to the page it just shows the introduction page for some strange reason.. Looks like it's playing HTTP-Referrer tricks..
Fastest way to get there, AFAICS, is to go to the intro, click "Benchmark results" down and the bottom, which puts you on page 8.. then keep clicking to the next page until you get to page 14...
Whenever a legal question comes up on slashdot, I see most posts arguing what should or should not happen in this particular case. Very few posters seem to want to get to grips with what the law actually says.
If what _should_ happen does not happen because the law says so, the law is wrong. Simple.
The law is flexible. It can be changed. Laws can be overturned. Lawyers can be shot.:-)
A few tidbits: First, it's a code which is interpreted by the box to send an e-mail to anywhere, automatically. It's intentional. Essentially, it's an e-mail reciept system that has WAY too much power. Quote: "The code, which is being embedded in posts in WebTV's alt.discuss newsgroups, emails and web pages, directs any WebTV box that loads the page to send an email message to an address set in the code. The code executes "in the background;" users who have sent the mail do not see any indication of mail being sent, and only find out about it if they receive a reply or look in their Sent Mail folders. "
Since WebTV treats everything as a web page (dumb) it runs this thing every time you look at the page.. Some of these e-mails use another code to keep people from forwarding the e-mail using the webtv box.
In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature.. The feature from hell.:-) ---
Maybe the poster was trying to help slashdot become a better place. If we don't point out their errors and pretend they don't exist, then the quality of the website will deteriorate - we obviously don't want that to happen.
True, but in point of fact, it's posts like these ("Hemos posts bad articles" or "this is old news") that are the primary causes of the deterioration of the system, at least in my view. Many others have expressed the same feelings.
Maybe the reason you don't see why "why people post stupid things" is because you're not understanding the poster's point - it isn't stupid to them. Everyone has the same thinking; if you don't agree with something or don't understand it, you assume it's wrong or ill-intentioned. I'm sure that the original poster had a reason completely different from what you suspect for posting their comment.
Perhaps. I don't know his intentions. I don't assume intentions. I see results. The result was that he made himself look like he was stupid.:-) (no offense). However, I do know "why people post stupid things". It's usually because they are stupid. Ahh well...
Read my sig. This may give insight into my character.:P
Well then I might as well submit a new story saying that the Pentium II has been sent to distributers. The reason slashdot is so great is because it focuses on TODAY'S news, not news from several months ago.
Perhaps, but my point actually was that it's pointless to post a comment saying "hey, this is old news" or anything useless like that. If you knew it already, fine, just go on and read the "new" news then.
I've tried to see why people post stupid things that are completely pointless and waste everyone's time, including the posters, but I can't. I can't sink my mind to that level. It's beyond me. Maybe it's just me, but I post when I think I have something of value to add to the conversation, or something to respond to directly. I just can't see why anyone would do otherwise.
Somehow I feel that Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide wouldn't make a good movie.
While I'm not sure that I like it, Hollywood seems to have come to the conclusion that a sci-fi movie = an action movie. Those two stories are pretty darn far from action movies.
Ender's Game is nearly an action movie already. There's stuff blowing up other stuff, which is all an action movie requires.:) Card sounds like he's cut the non-action stuff out for the picture.
Slashdot Mirror
But, if you preview your message, they will turn back into less than and greater than marks in the submission box, so be careful..
---
I'm a CpE major, and this is exactly the reason. I've seen way to many "computer people" who can't use a saudering iron, let alone understand gate logic. If one is going to go into a geek field, ya might as well LEARN the stuff, rather than just how to use it.
I totally disagree with that. I've seen the exact opposite.
There are way too many engineers out there who don't understand proper coding skills (because all they learned in school was Fortran) well enough to be able to create a bug-free system. The demand for programmers is huge, and these people are getting these jobs, because they have some programming experience, when all they really know how to do is sauder a board together.
Now this is not universal. Some of the brightest guys I know are EE geeks. But the vast majority of people with an EE degree don't want to code, and yet that's the majority of the jobs out there for EE's. If you want to code, go CS as you'll learn a lot more theory, which is worth it in the long run. The EE stuff you may need to know is not hard to pick up, whereas it can be hard to pick up coding when all you know is fortran.
Computer Engineering is a good idea, but poorly implemented at a lot of schools. It's basically a cross between EE and CS, but not getting into any depth on either one. If you're undecided between the two, then it may be worth looking at. But the CpE's I know (admittedly very few) couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. One guy I know who graduated with a 3.5+ average in CpE (he had a 1.5- overall) is also one of the stupidest people I have ever met in my entire life. He would be one of those people who couldn't understand which way to plug in the power cord.
CS people do have a nasty habit of not being well rounded at all.
I admit this is true to a certain extent, at least upon graduation. But you could say this about most majors, IMNSHO. The thing that provides a person well-roundedness is job experience.
Well, that's just my take on the subject..
---
I don't want to see a "Big Brother" state of teenage computer coders being financially encouraged to turn in and monitor their fellow coders (most of them innocent).
Much of coding is learning from each other and sharing information and understanding. This involves a lot of trust and friendship.
I would hate to see government actions accidentally harming this trust, or the programming community.
Well, it doesn't really look like that type of a program..
First off, forget any mention of ROTC. That only leads one to think of the "military", which is not what they're getting at. The only similarity to ROTC, AFAICS, is "we give you money now, you work for us later".
Mainly the program sounds like it's targeted at getting more people into the computer security field.
Computer security isn't primarily about "turning in your fellow coders"... It's mainly about preventing your fellow coders from being able to do anything worth turning them in for. The government may not realize that (I'm sure they don't in fact), but the people getting these jobs and money will.
P.S. It is not if you are legal what are you afraid of? Government officials/FBI sometimes appear to be ignorant of technology issues, and paranoid of things they don't understand, and many innocent (but suspicious appearing) young children can be harmed by this.
I totally agree. That's why this program is good, in that it helps to educate people to do this type of thing correctly. The government doesn't "need to know" these things, but the people who work for the government and implement the policies do.
---
91 mil in scholarships in exchange for future public service.
Ok, wouldn't it be simpler to take that 91 million and use it to hire US citizens away from the private sector?
Oh wait, that would provide instant results instead of dissappointing results during the next guy's term.
Well, I kinda agree with you, but on the other hand I think it's a good idea to get more people into a computer science degree program, type-of-thing..
On an unrelated note, why is it that no AC ever wants to see ME naked and petrified?
Well, if you insist... SH03B0Y N4K3D 4ND P3TR1F13D! (my hax0r speek is not quite what it used to be)
:-)
---
I did some math to check his claim of the earth being full by 2600, and it's quite funny -- the population density (following only the exponential condition that was given) would be one person per 0.78 m^2!
Hmmm.. standing room only indeed...
---
True. But, many of these guys keep me up on the inside info every now and then.. Nothing on this though.. Most of them are a bit pissed at the latest Mars missions..
Ahh well. No biggie, just my $0.000000002...
---
I used my real name and got "Inebriated Assistant".
Kinda true, except for the Assistant part.
---
My favorite quote:
r ch/index.html - Aerial search turns up no trace of Mars Polar Lander, CNN
r ess/index.html - European Mars mission looks for lessons in polar lander loss, CNN
``No one on our side knew that canyon was there,'' the Lockheed source told the Post. ``All of the sudden, two weeks later, we got this MOLA data'' -- topographical maps and images -- ``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''
You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...
Anyway, here's some links to various stories for those who never saw them:
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/31/mars.sea
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/29/mars.exp
---
I've seen a bunch of anti-ecommerce news recently: that this Christmas season, etailers had bunchs of problems delivering product and that customers were less than happy with their online experiences.
:-)
I saw some stuff like this on the local news after Xmas.. wasn't a large deal though, mainly just said that etoys.com sucked.
Also, I saw one tonight attacking ebay for allowing too much fake stuff available. It is amazing. There are lawyers representing large corps with call centers full of people going to ebay and searching for fake stuff and going after the sellers (looks like they'd really like to go after ebay too!).
I saw that on Dateline or 20/20 or one of those news shows last night.. Pretty interesting. No one will ever nail ebay for it though. If they did, they'd have to nail every single newspaper in the world that has a classified ads section.
Anyway, I think people are starting to realize that the main thing e-commerce does is to improve choice. The big thing that will happen to give e-commerce a shot in the arm is a "trust" system. People don't trust the internet. My parents are paranoid about giving any personal info online. Which is fine, but they have no problem giving info to people in stores, over the phone, etc... They don't trust the 'net because they don't understand it.
A lot of the problem is the viewpoint of the internet as an entity in itself, when it is not. People seem to think that once you put something "on the 'net" it's instantly available to anyone.. They see the 'net as a big evil thing, rather than as a network to allow people to interact with other people...
But anyway, it does look the the hype is FINALLY dying down. Thank God. Now we may resume the Information Age!!
The hype has just begun dude.. sorry, but it will get more intense before it dies down.
---
NASA seems to be having a lot more difficulty lately. I realize that now they've got serious budget problems, but come on...
For $600+ megabucks total you'd think they could get something to land in a functional state..
BTW, I live near Huntsville, AL and know one hell of a lot of guys over at NASA, though nobody on this project...
---
Time to bunker down if the c/hackers in the US military release a program called WinNuke!
:-)
What, you run it, and suddenly Redmond, WA becomes a steaming pile of ashes?
---
Your comment was based on little or no knowledge, powered by ignorance...I wonder on what you base your assumption that Apple makes crap computers.
Well, it's actually very simple. I sit down in front of a Mac. I try to use it. It's slow, annoying, and lacking a disk drive. I therefore exclaim loudly, "This computer sucks!" and go about my business.
Now, admittedly, this takes the computer as a whole into consideration. That is, OS, computer, annoying ugly case (I find the whole color thing to be quite nasty looking, but that's just me. I'd much prefer a marbleized finish, or matte black).
No, I haven't tried to run LinuxPPC on one. I wouldn't buy one in order to run LinuxPPC on it.
The system may be superior hardware. I'll give it that. But the MacOS is so bad, IMNSHO, that it prevents me from buying the hardware to find out. I simply don't care enough about the hardware to go there.
BTW, claiming a person to be ignorant when you disagree with their opinion is a rather stupid thing to do. It not that I don't know about the system, it's that I don't like it in a major way.
---
Use a webcertificate. www.webcertificate.com
It's essentially a Mastercard number, with a limit set at the actual amount you have in the certificate.
Example: I deposit $100 into a webcertifcate. Now I can use that number online (or somewhere where I just need to write a number down) for up to $100 worth of charges. If someone queries on it, anything less than $100 will be okay (until that amount goes down by actually being charged).
They come in very handy for paying something online where you don't want to be ripped off. Deposit a given amount that will cover what you wish to buy. They CAN'T charge you any more than that.. Pretty nifty.
---
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=3.
So it's Overrated Funny Flamebait? Heh.
I dunno if it was flamebait.. Troll maybe, but not Flamebait...
Ahh well. Just more proof the moderators are insane today.
---
No ATM deposits for some reason.
As I understand it, ATM Deposits are not allowed across state lines due to some law somewhere. At least, my old bank told me that. Not that I couldn't do it (I did try it a couple of times and it worked okay), but they said I wasn't supposed to do it.
Since the bank must be based somewhere, you'd probably be crossing state lines.
Of course, I moved to Alabama a few months ago, and as far as I can tell, ATM deposits aren't allowed at all in this state. Haven't found out why yet..
---
A new "Think Different" campaign will feature directors of the movie industry, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, presumably because of the movie-making capabilities of the DVD iMacs.
I like Hitchcock and Kubrick, damnit.. Don't use them to sell Macs! That just pisses me off.. Let them rest in peace for crying out loud.. argh.. It was bad enough to use HAL to sell crap computers, but to use Kubrick himself is horrible.
OS X will be completely open source, like the popular Linux operating system, with Quartz, Open GL and QuickTime all built in.
Sounds like the whole shebang is gonna be OSS. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it.
---
If you try to go directly to the page it just shows the introduction page for some strange reason.. Looks like it's playing HTTP-Referrer tricks..
Fastest way to get there, AFAICS, is to go to the intro, click "Benchmark results" down and the bottom, which puts you on page 8.. then keep clicking to the next page until you get to page 14...
What an annoying site.
---
I put up a quick mirror of the article at http://sam.wood.tripod.com/mcconnell_01.htm
:-)
The site is under some heavy traffic or something.. Anyway, there's 4 pages in the article, and I've got the first 3.. working on the fourth..
Sorry about it being tripod.. I know tripod sucks (that popup is annoying as hell), but it's quick, easy, and free.
---
Whenever a legal question comes up on slashdot, I see most posts arguing what should or should not happen in this particular case. Very few posters seem to want to get to grips with what the law actually says.
:-)
If what _should_ happen does not happen because the law says so, the law is wrong. Simple.
The law is flexible. It can be changed. Laws can be overturned. Lawyers can be shot.
---
This could be entertaining..
Modify the code to forward all the messages from a users mail folders to an account.
Stick the code in a web page.
Bam, any WebTV user visits your page, and you get all their e-mail.
Nasty.
---
I dunno if you read the link from that news site, but here's a direct link with more info:
:-)
http://net4tv.com/voice/story.cfm?StoryID=1823
A few tidbits:
First, it's a code which is interpreted by the box to send an e-mail to anywhere, automatically. It's intentional. Essentially, it's an e-mail reciept system that has WAY too much power.
Quote:
"The code, which is being embedded in posts in WebTV's alt.discuss newsgroups, emails and web pages, directs any WebTV box that loads the page to send an email message to an address set in the code. The code executes "in the background;" users who have sent the mail do not see any indication of mail being sent, and only find out about it if they receive a reply or look in their Sent Mail folders. "
Since WebTV treats everything as a web page (dumb) it runs this thing every time you look at the page.. Some of these e-mails use another code to keep people from forwarding the e-mail using the webtv box.
In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature.. The feature from hell.
---
Maybe the poster was trying to help slashdot become a better place. If we don't point out their errors and pretend they don't exist, then the quality of the website will deteriorate - we obviously don't want that to happen.
:-) (no offense). However, I do know "why people post stupid things". It's usually because they are stupid. Ahh well...
:P
True, but in point of fact, it's posts like these ("Hemos posts bad articles" or "this is old news") that are the primary causes of the deterioration of the system, at least in my view. Many others have expressed the same feelings.
Maybe the reason you don't see why "why people post stupid things" is because you're not understanding the poster's point - it isn't stupid to them. Everyone has the same thinking; if you don't agree with something or don't understand it, you assume it's wrong or ill-intentioned. I'm sure that the original poster had a reason completely different from what you suspect for posting their comment.
Perhaps. I don't know his intentions. I don't assume intentions. I see results. The result was that he made himself look like he was stupid.
Read my sig. This may give insight into my character.
---
Well then I might as well submit a new story saying that the Pentium II has been sent to distributers. The reason slashdot is so great is because it focuses on TODAY'S news, not news from several months ago.
Perhaps, but my point actually was that it's pointless to post a comment saying "hey, this is old news" or anything useless like that. If you knew it already, fine, just go on and read the "new" news then.
I've tried to see why people post stupid things that are completely pointless and waste everyone's time, including the posters, but I can't. I can't sink my mind to that level. It's beyond me. Maybe it's just me, but I post when I think I have something of value to add to the conversation, or something to respond to directly. I just can't see why anyone would do otherwise.
---
Somehow I feel that Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide wouldn't make a good movie.
:) Card sounds like he's cut the non-action stuff out for the picture.
While I'm not sure that I like it, Hollywood seems to have come to the conclusion that a sci-fi movie = an action movie. Those two stories are pretty darn far from action movies.
Ender's Game is nearly an action movie already. There's stuff blowing up other stuff, which is all an action movie requires.
Ahh well.. Just rambling..
---
I didn't know about it, so it's news to me. If you knew about it, good for you. Let those who had no idea learn the facts too, okay?
---