Not to be flippant, but from this passage it kind of sounds like it sucks.
Actually, this is quite true. I found the CS program to be pretty awful. The reason I picked the school was because going into it I was planning on majoring on mechanical engineering, but I at least had the sense to realize I'd probably change my major at some point, so I picked a school that had a wide variety of courses and majors. Unfortunately, as I said, I found the CS program to suck. I believe the full pricetag for my school was in the $32,000 / year range (I was only able to attend with a hefty financial aid package) and probably 1/3 to 1/2 of my CS classes were taught by "visiting professors" from schools like SUNY Albany, or University of Maryland. While I have nothing against either of these schools, if I wanted to be taught by a SUNY prof, I would have attended a SUNY school and as a resident of NY state gone basically for free. Actually, for a school that prides itself so much on its teachers, I probably only had 2 or 3 good profs in my CS classes. Looking back, Dartmouth was probably a big mistake, but hindsight is always 20/20. I had also been accepted to Columbia University's engineering school, and I can only wonder how things would have turned out if I had gone there.
This whole passage was pretty off topic, I know, but this was one of the reasons I even responded to this guy's question at all. As someone who went through (IMHO) a pretty crappy CS program I thought I could offer some advice that would prevent someone else from doing the same.
Well, I, too, attended every class, worked an average of 8 hrs/week, learned PHP, Apache, MySQL, Oracle, Perl, VBScript, ASP, and IIS in my spare time, had/have a long-term girlfriend who lived 400 miles away, and my sport was driving the 400 miles to see her. I learned what I felt was of value, but like I said in another post, the CS professors made it sound like Java was a dead-end language and there was no reason to learn it, and so when it came time to find a summer internship there was nothing.
Also, the fact that your school even had "information systems" as a program indicates how much different your school was than mine. Such a program would quickly be deemed "too vocational" and nixed before it was even begun, as many other programs are. May I ask what school you attended?
For god's sake, why is everybody harping on this one line!
I can't believe for a moment that one learns "lame ANIS C," for real, then goes on to find Java difficult to master. I mean, by no means is it simple, and the strategy for using that is different, but Jesus - grab a few books and crank out some code if you want a Java job.
It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school. I applied to several internships and was turned down for most of them because I didn't know Java. This is not to say that I couldn't learn java, it means that I didn't know Java at the time I applied for the internships. If a school is only teaching students programming in MIPS assembler, does that also mean they instinctively know Java as well?
In 1999, after I ended up getting a job answering phones at a real estate office because I couldn't get an internship, I browsed through the want-ads and surprise! Very few people looking for C programmers, and Surprise! tons of people looking for Java programmers. And please, don't tell me Java and C are identical. You might be able to make a case for Java and C++, but the only real relation between Java and C is that they're both procedural languages, and they have constructs like for(), while() etc.
In any case, if your idea of a freshman CS course would be to have them write a kernel patch, then please let me know where you teach so I'll know to never allow anyone I know to come within 10 miles of the place. I mean really, that's a completely ridiculous idea. Maybe for a senior-level or grad-level class, but most freshmen barely learn linked lists and arrays. Within 2 courses of completing my CS major I still had not had a single class that even mentioned threading. Forking? Never heard of it. We didn't deal with networking or sockets until Junior year. You expect these people to write a kernel patch? Or even understand what a kernel is? Regardless, you didn't attend my school and so you really have no way to judge the CS program there or my assessment of it.
In any case, while you may not agree, and I'm sure you can cite famous users of the language to me for hours on end, I will continue to assert that C is indeed lame, and most of the arguments why it should still be used would also apply equally well to why we should be writing everything in assembler.
Your rant makes you sound like you have a chemical imbalance and you may need to see a psychiatrist.
I was responding to someone who asked "what questions should I ask of a prospective college's CS department?" I responded that you might want to check whether or not they give credit for internships. This, to me, allows you to see the mindset of the school itself, how much they value real-world experience as compared to classroom experience. Any school that values only one and not the other is dysfunctional, in my opinion.
And quite frankly, knowing the language du jour is incredibly valuable, and picking up Java, or any other language, in your "spare time" in college is so preposterous that it only serves to make you look foolish for even suggesting it.
Also, I find it somewhat amusing, and a bit said, that you follow this: Your excitement over how "large" a software company is, and the "worth" that being associated with said company should project, is reminiscent of those who associate Microsoft Windows, or any other common application, with high quality, simply because it is nearly omnipresent. with this: I quit high school a year early, haven't gone to college, and I picked up every language I know on my own, well enough to get hired by Sun Microsystems. So big-named companies don't mean anything -- except those for which you've worked?
To make my point absolutely clear, I do not care how good a programmer you are. If you are taught to program in VBasic, you probably won't be able to pick up Java in 24.2 hours or whatever the book is entitled today; and that's irrelevant anyway. Someone asked how to find the CS program that best suits him. I offered him some advice. You seem to have taken this as an opportunity to extol the virtues of dropping out of high school and learning programming from books. I won't bother to address this argument itself, but the fact that you responded so vehemently and with such an off-topic rant indicates to me (definitely not a professional) that you really do need some psychiatric help in dealing with your anger.
One thing I ran up against at my college (Dartmouth College) was that you get no credit at all for summer internships. This might be something to take into consideration, as with CS, or really any field, you get lots of valuable experience from actually doing some of the stuff. If the school doesn't give you credit for summer internships it may be a sign that they don't value the same kinds of things you do. I know in my case I was extremely pissed to find out that an internship at Computer Associates, one of the world's largest software companies (which I didn't even get, btw) is worthless in their eyes.
Also, you may want to ask basic stuff like what language the various classes use. During orientation (in 1997) I asked the CS department if they taught any classes in Java. The answer was a forceful "NO", they "don't just pick every new language that comes along." 2 years later, all intro classes are apparently taught in Java, and I was left not knowing Java, only lame ANSI C. I got turned down for several internships for simply not knowing Java.
Questions like that should be common sense anyhow.
It's also worth noting that AOTC's "opening weekend" was 2 days longer than that of Spider-Man, and had an automatic audience regardless of the quality of the film...
I'm sure this is why Lucas opened Starwars on practically a wednesday night. That way they can say he had a huge opening weekend, when in reality he had 4 days to make the same amount as Spider-Man did in 2. Considering that Spider-Man's money was actually related to the quality of the film itself, rather than being some sort of a lame nerd cult with an automatic audience, I think Spider-Man will be the one remembered long after this year. Remember, Phantom Menace did well at the box office too, and that was an awful movie.
I, too, have enjoyed Slashdot more since blackholing chrisd. I get to miss real gems like Minor Earthquake in California!. Will we be running weather reports from LaGuardia anytime soon? Same category.
Honestly, while chris dibona may be a nice guy, I find most of his "work" on Slashdot to be severely lacking, and had been contemplating blocking him for a long time. The downside to blocking any of the editors is that you don't know which one is going to post a decent story, so you might be missing out. Of course, anything important will be elsewhere as well. But the Lone Gunmen thing really clinched it for me. Not really because of the giving away of the big secret (I haven't watched X-Files in about 4 years) but because of chris's attitude towards the ordeal - like his refusal to change the headline at all because "I really don't like doing that." Anyhow, fortunately I don't have to see anything from him anymore.
Imagine how hard it would be to include an image of the Lone Gunmen from a previous X-Files episode! Since that's so difficult, clearly it must mean that they're bringing them back to life!
When I was a freshman in college, my roommate had (I think) a Performa 6100. Every once in a while, the thing would just start blasting music for no apparent reason. We realized eventually that it was due to our other roommate using the remote control to his Sony CD player. When he pushed play on the remote, apparently the Performa, which had an IR port right in the front, intercepted the signal.
Once we realized this, we had lots of fun tormenting each other by setting roommate #1's speakers all the way up and playing his CD at full volume while he was doing stuff. Nothing like hearing Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies at max volume at 3 am!
Unemployment will get you at least a 6 months buffer in any humane US state as well.
I was making $65,000 / year at my previous job, and when my employment there ended, I applied for unemployment. I was denied unemployment because I made too much money. Apparently, if you gross over $600 / week in New York State, you are ineligible for unemployment. I listed my position as "programmer" and they denied me because "executive, administrative and professional employees earning over $600 a week are exempt from the wage payment provisions of the labor law." I'm curious: does that mean I didn't pay into the unemployment system, since I had no hope of getting anything out?
Actually, for a 128-bit Cert, you need to pay Verisign $895 now. A complete scam. Next time my company is in the market for a cert, we'll be trying GeoTrust which I believe acquired Equifax's Certificate division, and has FAR more reasonable prices.
Oracle is not the company with which California has/had the deal. It's some reseller called Logicon, and they have said all along that CA can cancel the order if it wants. They are simpluy unaware that the offer has been accepted.
Most of the reason that people of Gates's wealth setup these "foundations" is so they can get massive tax breaks. Because the rich are taxed so "heavily" in the US, most extremely wealthy individuals establish a charity foundation to do good works on their behalf, while they get huge tax writeoffs. Everybody wins. One of the big problems with Bush's tax cut, which immensely favors/favored the rich (Dick cheney saves about $1 Million a year in tax now; average american saves close to $500), is that the rich have much less incentive to create these foundations, and society as a whole loses out.
I read a few weeks ago that New York City's request for more of these cameras (they currently have 50 in manhattan, IIRC) was denied by some court. So what they did while appealing the ruling was they setup tons of fake, nonfunctioning cameras. So you don't know which is the real camera and which is the fake. I guess it's one way to keep people honest that's somewhat less evil than the cameras-everywhere initiatives that are currently underway in NYC.
When you buy a Mac, it comes with iTunes, and a Sampler of about 10-20 MP3s from bands such as the B-52s, Living End, and some others. At least, my friend's did.
A company I work for has hosting at Globix in Manhattan. I was told, when they gave my ID/access card, that the fingerprint scanner will only work if the machine detects a pulse. I was told this because I joked that somebody would cut off my index finger to gain access, and was politely told that that wouldn't work. I'm sure in 007 land that wouldn't be too tough, but for mere mortals I think it's sufficient.
There is no such thing as the DCMA. If you are referring to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the acronym is DMCA. While I realize that CmdrTaco likes these errors, they make the poster, the site, and its readers appear ignorant.
Well, that's somewhat true, but he could have easily edited the story as it was posted on the site -- something which he admitted but said he was "loathe to do", IIRC. He could have saved some people some grief, but chose not to. I can see defending him the first time, but how do you explain the second? It seems to show disregard for your customers -- some of whom are now paying customers. While I'm sure that doesn't really mean anything, the fact is he could have fixed his error but chose not to, which makes this even more offensive. His response was that it is "just tv," which, while true, is a callous attitude to take.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be flippant, but from this passage it kind of sounds like it sucks.
Actually, this is quite true. I found the CS program to be pretty awful. The reason I picked the school was because going into it I was planning on majoring on mechanical engineering, but I at least had the sense to realize I'd probably change my major at some point, so I picked a school that had a wide variety of courses and majors. Unfortunately, as I said, I found the CS program to suck. I believe the full pricetag for my school was in the $32,000 / year range (I was only able to attend with a hefty financial aid package) and probably 1/3 to 1/2 of my CS classes were taught by "visiting professors" from schools like SUNY Albany, or University of Maryland. While I have nothing against either of these schools, if I wanted to be taught by a SUNY prof, I would have attended a SUNY school and as a resident of NY state gone basically for free. Actually, for a school that prides itself so much on its teachers, I probably only had 2 or 3 good profs in my CS classes. Looking back, Dartmouth was probably a big mistake, but hindsight is always 20/20. I had also been accepted to Columbia University's engineering school, and I can only wonder how things would have turned out if I had gone there.
This whole passage was pretty off topic, I know, but this was one of the reasons I even responded to this guy's question at all. As someone who went through (IMHO) a pretty crappy CS program I thought I could offer some advice that would prevent someone else from doing the same.
Well, I, too, attended every class, worked an average of 8 hrs/week, learned PHP, Apache, MySQL, Oracle, Perl, VBScript, ASP, and IIS in my spare time, had/have a long-term girlfriend who lived 400 miles away, and my sport was driving the 400 miles to see her. I learned what I felt was of value, but like I said in another post, the CS professors made it sound like Java was a dead-end language and there was no reason to learn it, and so when it came time to find a summer internship there was nothing.
Also, the fact that your school even had "information systems" as a program indicates how much different your school was than mine. Such a program would quickly be deemed "too vocational" and nixed before it was even begun, as many other programs are. May I ask what school you attended?
For god's sake, why is everybody harping on this one line!
I can't believe for a moment that one learns "lame ANIS C," for real, then goes on to find Java difficult to master. I mean, by no means is it simple, and the strategy for using that is different, but Jesus - grab a few books and crank out some code if you want a Java job.
It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school. I applied to several internships and was turned down for most of them because I didn't know Java. This is not to say that I couldn't learn java, it means that I didn't know Java at the time I applied for the internships. If a school is only teaching students programming in MIPS assembler, does that also mean they instinctively know Java as well?
In 1999, after I ended up getting a job answering phones at a real estate office because I couldn't get an internship, I browsed through the want-ads and surprise! Very few people looking for C programmers, and Surprise! tons of people looking for Java programmers. And please, don't tell me Java and C are identical. You might be able to make a case for Java and C++, but the only real relation between Java and C is that they're both procedural languages, and they have constructs like for(), while() etc.
In any case, if your idea of a freshman CS course would be to have them write a kernel patch, then please let me know where you teach so I'll know to never allow anyone I know to come within 10 miles of the place. I mean really, that's a completely ridiculous idea. Maybe for a senior-level or grad-level class, but most freshmen barely learn linked lists and arrays. Within 2 courses of completing my CS major I still had not had a single class that even mentioned threading. Forking? Never heard of it. We didn't deal with networking or sockets until Junior year. You expect these people to write a kernel patch? Or even understand what a kernel is? Regardless, you didn't attend my school and so you really have no way to judge the CS program there or my assessment of it.
In any case, while you may not agree, and I'm sure you can cite famous users of the language to me for hours on end, I will continue to assert that C is indeed lame, and most of the arguments why it should still be used would also apply equally well to why we should be writing everything in assembler.
Your rant makes you sound like you have a chemical imbalance and you may need to see a psychiatrist.
I was responding to someone who asked "what questions should I ask of a prospective college's CS department?" I responded that you might want to check whether or not they give credit for internships. This, to me, allows you to see the mindset of the school itself, how much they value real-world experience as compared to classroom experience. Any school that values only one and not the other is dysfunctional, in my opinion.
And quite frankly, knowing the language du jour is incredibly valuable, and picking up Java, or any other language, in your "spare time" in college is so preposterous that it only serves to make you look foolish for even suggesting it.
Also, I find it somewhat amusing, and a bit said, that you follow this: Your excitement over how "large" a software company is, and the "worth" that being associated with said company should project, is reminiscent of those who associate Microsoft Windows, or any other common application, with high quality, simply because it is nearly omnipresent. with this: I quit high school a year early, haven't gone to college, and I picked up every language I know on my own, well enough to get hired by Sun Microsystems. So big-named companies don't mean anything -- except those for which you've worked?
To make my point absolutely clear, I do not care how good a programmer you are. If you are taught to program in VBasic, you probably won't be able to pick up Java in 24.2 hours or whatever the book is entitled today; and that's irrelevant anyway. Someone asked how to find the CS program that best suits him. I offered him some advice. You seem to have taken this as an opportunity to extol the virtues of dropping out of high school and learning programming from books. I won't bother to address this argument itself, but the fact that you responded so vehemently and with such an off-topic rant indicates to me (definitely not a professional) that you really do need some psychiatric help in dealing with your anger.
One thing I ran up against at my college (Dartmouth College) was that you get no credit at all for summer internships. This might be something to take into consideration, as with CS, or really any field, you get lots of valuable experience from actually doing some of the stuff. If the school doesn't give you credit for summer internships it may be a sign that they don't value the same kinds of things you do. I know in my case I was extremely pissed to find out that an internship at Computer Associates, one of the world's largest software companies (which I didn't even get, btw) is worthless in their eyes.
Also, you may want to ask basic stuff like what language the various classes use. During orientation (in 1997) I asked the CS department if they taught any classes in Java. The answer was a forceful "NO", they "don't just pick every new language that comes along." 2 years later, all intro classes are apparently taught in Java, and I was left not knowing Java, only lame ANSI C. I got turned down for several internships for simply not knowing Java.
Questions like that should be common sense anyhow.
It's also worth noting that AOTC's "opening weekend" was 2 days longer than that of Spider-Man, and had an automatic audience regardless of the quality of the film...
I'm sure this is why Lucas opened Starwars on practically a wednesday night. That way they can say he had a huge opening weekend, when in reality he had 4 days to make the same amount as Spider-Man did in 2. Considering that Spider-Man's money was actually related to the quality of the film itself, rather than being some sort of a lame nerd cult with an automatic audience, I think Spider-Man will be the one remembered long after this year. Remember, Phantom Menace did well at the box office too, and that was an awful movie.
I, too, have enjoyed Slashdot more since blackholing chrisd. I get to miss real gems like Minor Earthquake in California! . Will we be running weather reports from LaGuardia anytime soon? Same category.
Honestly, while chris dibona may be a nice guy, I find most of his "work" on Slashdot to be severely lacking, and had been contemplating blocking him for a long time. The downside to blocking any of the editors is that you don't know which one is going to post a decent story, so you might be missing out. Of course, anything important will be elsewhere as well. But the Lone Gunmen thing really clinched it for me. Not really because of the giving away of the big secret (I haven't watched X-Files in about 4 years) but because of chris's attitude towards the ordeal - like his refusal to change the headline at all because "I really don't like doing that." Anyhow, fortunately I don't have to see anything from him anymore.
Don't slashdot editors check these stories before posting them?
Nope
Imagine how hard it would be to include an image of the Lone Gunmen from a previous X-Files episode! Since that's so difficult, clearly it must mean that they're bringing them back to life!
When I was a freshman in college, my roommate had (I think) a Performa 6100. Every once in a while, the thing would just start blasting music for no apparent reason. We realized eventually that it was due to our other roommate using the remote control to his Sony CD player. When he pushed play on the remote, apparently the Performa, which had an IR port right in the front, intercepted the signal.
Once we realized this, we had lots of fun tormenting each other by setting roommate #1's speakers all the way up and playing his CD at full volume while he was doing stuff. Nothing like hearing Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies at max volume at 3 am!
Unemployment will get you at least a 6 months buffer in any humane US state as well.
I was making $65,000 / year at my previous job, and when my employment there ended, I applied for unemployment. I was denied unemployment because I made too much money. Apparently, if you gross over $600 / week in New York State, you are ineligible for unemployment. I listed my position as "programmer" and they denied me because "executive, administrative and professional employees earning over $600 a week are exempt from the wage payment provisions of the labor law." I'm curious: does that mean I didn't pay into the unemployment system, since I had no hope of getting anything out?
Actually, for a 128-bit Cert, you need to pay Verisign $895 now. A complete scam. Next time my company is in the market for a cert, we'll be trying GeoTrust which I believe acquired Equifax's Certificate division, and has FAR more reasonable prices.
Unless these are the same ten?
Oracle is not the company with which California has/had the deal. It's some reseller called Logicon, and they have said all along that CA can cancel the order if it wants. They are simpluy unaware that the offer has been accepted.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-900786.html
Most of the reason that people of Gates's wealth setup these "foundations" is so they can get massive tax breaks. Because the rich are taxed so "heavily" in the US, most extremely wealthy individuals establish a charity foundation to do good works on their behalf, while they get huge tax writeoffs. Everybody wins. One of the big problems with Bush's tax cut, which immensely favors/favored the rich (Dick cheney saves about $1 Million a year in tax now; average american saves close to $500), is that the rich have much less incentive to create these foundations, and society as a whole loses out.
I read a few weeks ago that New York City's request for more of these cameras (they currently have 50 in manhattan, IIRC) was denied by some court. So what they did while appealing the ruling was they setup tons of fake, nonfunctioning cameras. So you don't know which is the real camera and which is the fake. I guess it's one way to keep people honest that's somewhat less evil than the cameras-everywhere initiatives that are currently underway in NYC.
You can read PDF without Acrobat.
e / ord_Processors/PDF/?tc=1
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
Also, http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Softwar
Hi, Microsoft already did something quite like this!
This has been tried before, and IIRC it failed miserably.
e fund+day%22
http://www.linuxmall.com/refund/
Also:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22windows+r
When you buy a Mac, it comes with iTunes, and a Sampler of about 10-20 MP3s from bands such as the B-52s, Living End, and some others. At least, my friend's did.
A company I work for has hosting at Globix in Manhattan. I was told, when they gave my ID/access card, that the fingerprint scanner will only work if the machine detects a pulse. I was told this because I joked that somebody would cut off my index finger to gain access, and was politely told that that wouldn't work. I'm sure in 007 land that wouldn't be too tough, but for mere mortals I think it's sufficient.
There is no such thing as the DCMA. If you are referring to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the acronym is DMCA. While I realize that CmdrTaco likes these errors, they make the poster, the site, and its readers appear ignorant.
I'm not totally clear on what she wants here, but check out Intermapper. It's sort of cool even if it's not what you're looking for.
and you can't un-say things.
Well, that's somewhat true, but he could have easily edited the story as it was posted on the site -- something which he admitted but said he was "loathe to do", IIRC. He could have saved some people some grief, but chose not to. I can see defending him the first time, but how do you explain the second? It seems to show disregard for your customers -- some of whom are now paying customers. While I'm sure that doesn't really mean anything, the fact is he could have fixed his error but chose not to, which makes this even more offensive. His response was that it is "just tv," which, while true, is a callous attitude to take.