I've struggled with this over the years - the IT department at a lot of Universities is completely separate from any college or program.
Bingo. We've got a hybrid system where I work; infrastructure like wireless and wired Ethernet is provided by the university, while I serve as a "departmental" IT person running servers and doing user support along with the odd bit of scripting. The university I work for pays lip service to Macs and Linux, but it really is Windows-centric. That being said, I offer as much support as I can to anybody no matter what they're running. Since we're a grad school we frequently get adults who have worked in the private sector, and one of the students I worked with was a bank employee who ran OpenBSD on his laptop. That made me smile!
The problem is companies like Red Hat that spread a lot of FUD about Xen and tell everyone to use KVM instead, which makes about as much sense as telling them to use bash instead of vim.
Wish I had mod points.. this and your previous two post on the topic are gold.
What else did you expect? What is CS but math and logic? I have seriously no idea what people expected from studying CS when they complain about having to "dig through" a lot of math. What did they expect? Learning how to program?
I do agree with you nowadays, but back when I was in school (late 80s) it was still unclear at a lot of universities what computer science was exactly. Some departments marketed themselves as programming factories, others as an adjunct to the math department, and still others got it right. As an uninformed high schooler back in the day it was easy to believe that programming == CS.
If I could do it all over again, I'd have gone to a school with a very strong MIS program and minored in computer science. I think this would work for a lot of business developers as you'd get enough about how the machine works along with domain specific knowledge. The major nowadays that rankles me is "Information Technology," which evidently (where I live) means "drag and drop shit into Visual Studio then connect it via ADO.Net to SQL Server". I view that program as basically the equivalent to a BS in "Data Processing" from the 70s.
Cramming 150 kids into a lecture hall with a "mathematician" who wasn't smart enough for the math department, who has never written software for a living and doesn't natively speak the language of most of his student body, and who disappears at the end of the class, shoving his students towards some grad students when they have questions..
While not exactly the same thing, my issue was that when I took two courses in discrete mathematics that it was taught by a statistics professor who had never written code in his life nor studied computer science. The particular courses in question were indeed the "CS" math courses and not a course for math majors, and as such I completed the course having no idea what I should have learned in preparation for some of our more theoretical CS courses that came later.
The comp sci department actually got so irritated with the math department that they nixed the discrete math requirement and brought it into the CS department under a different title that skirted the math department having any control or say over the matter. It really was for the best, since our department is like many in that quite a few computer science faculty have a heavy duty math background. The Comp Sci folks still require calc, linear algebra, and stats through the math department though.
Furthermore you hear celebrities talking about how they had a "hard life" because the other kids were sometimes mean, you don't hear the stories of every john smith out there who never gets famous and never gets a chance to tell you.
The military is also setup in a way that makes continued and regular advancement relatively easy, if not required.
Even though it's not directly relevant to the topic at hand, anybody with technical inclinations and aspirations who does not want to lead others needs to know this before the joining the military.
I pulled a six year active duty hitch as an electronic intelligence systems repair tech in the army. I loved the training, liked the job, and thought about staying in. The issue here is that at one point decades ago ranks such as Specialist 5 (same pay grade as sergeant) and Specialist 6 (pay grade the same as a staff sergeant) existed, and you could get away with being a senior technician. Now you'd better be ready for hard stripes (in other words, to get to those pay grades you must be an NCO), and the pain in the ass that it entails. I decided that herding other soldiers for an additional couple hundred bucks a month wasn't worth it and got out via ETS. I'd rather be a sysadmin and play with electronics on my free time.
As a caveat, YMMV in the Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was the one I should have checked into but didn't.
And, as the parent said, if you don't make rank every couple of years you're out. In addition, you get to see quite a few examples of the Peter Principle in action.
It turns out that the people who like to hack the copy protection and share the game aren't the real gamers.
Exactly. Breaking the protection is the game.
Some of the guys back in the day were super hard core; I felt like a wuss for using Omnimon on my Atari. ML Monitor? Disassembler? We don't need no steenkin' disassembler! We'll just read hex code right out of the boot sector and grok it in our head.
Its true people writing those comments are probably safer than Joe Public with his OEM crap ware laden Windows XP installation, out of date virus defs, and default Windows firewall configuration, 3000 never applied updates waiting, and logged in as an Administrator, but that is pretty low bar to be above!
Just remember, when we're being chased by a bear, I don't have to out run the bear... I just have to out run you.
Cue v.bad Soviet Russia joke..
Ok, so let's make a computer science degree exclusively about "computer science" as opposed to "computer programming".
At a local university they pride themselves on having a "computer science degree with an emphasis on software engineering," followed up closely by "our courses are taught by computer scientists, NOT engineers." Yikes.
Perhaps we need more software engineering programs?
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo. We've got a hybrid system where I work; infrastructure like wireless and wired Ethernet is provided by the university, while I serve as a "departmental" IT person running servers and doing user support along with the odd bit of scripting. The university I work for pays lip service to Macs and Linux, but it really is Windows-centric. That being said, I offer as much support as I can to anybody no matter what they're running. Since we're a grad school we frequently get adults who have worked in the private sector, and one of the students I worked with was a bank employee who ran OpenBSD on his laptop. That made me smile!
Wish I had mod points.. this and your previous two post on the topic are gold.
Yeah, but it's Texas.
Sparkchaser in training...
How about an interactive map?
I do agree with you nowadays, but back when I was in school (late 80s) it was still unclear at a lot of universities what computer science was exactly. Some departments marketed themselves as programming factories, others as an adjunct to the math department, and still others got it right. As an uninformed high schooler back in the day it was easy to believe that programming == CS.
If I could do it all over again, I'd have gone to a school with a very strong MIS program and minored in computer science. I think this would work for a lot of business developers as you'd get enough about how the machine works along with domain specific knowledge. The major nowadays that rankles me is "Information Technology," which evidently (where I live) means "drag and drop shit into Visual Studio then connect it via ADO.Net to SQL Server". I view that program as basically the equivalent to a BS in "Data Processing" from the 70s.
While not exactly the same thing, my issue was that when I took two courses in discrete mathematics that it was taught by a statistics professor who had never written code in his life nor studied computer science. The particular courses in question were indeed the "CS" math courses and not a course for math majors, and as such I completed the course having no idea what I should have learned in preparation for some of our more theoretical CS courses that came later.
The comp sci department actually got so irritated with the math department that they nixed the discrete math requirement and brought it into the CS department under a different title that skirted the math department having any control or say over the matter. It really was for the best, since our department is like many in that quite a few computer science faculty have a heavy duty math background. The Comp Sci folks still require calc, linear algebra, and stats through the math department though.
Crikey!
Eminem comes to mind...
I wonder how difficult it is to get all of the chemicals needed by the Golden Book...
Have you tried something like VMware ThinApp? I think they still offer a free demo.
All those gigabytes will be lost in time... like tears in rain.. or an RL01 drive platter, meeting my belt sander...
Even though it's not directly relevant to the topic at hand, anybody with technical inclinations and aspirations who does not want to lead others needs to know this before the joining the military.
I pulled a six year active duty hitch as an electronic intelligence systems repair tech in the army. I loved the training, liked the job, and thought about staying in. The issue here is that at one point decades ago ranks such as Specialist 5 (same pay grade as sergeant) and Specialist 6 (pay grade the same as a staff sergeant) existed, and you could get away with being a senior technician. Now you'd better be ready for hard stripes (in other words, to get to those pay grades you must be an NCO), and the pain in the ass that it entails. I decided that herding other soldiers for an additional couple hundred bucks a month wasn't worth it and got out via ETS. I'd rather be a sysadmin and play with electronics on my free time.
As a caveat, YMMV in the Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was the one I should have checked into but didn't.
And, as the parent said, if you don't make rank every couple of years you're out. In addition, you get to see quite a few examples of the Peter Principle in action.
Annnnnd when they get a 64 bit spin going I'll think about it. I do think it's a nice distro though.
Exactly. Breaking the protection is the game. Some of the guys back in the day were super hard core; I felt like a wuss for using Omnimon on my Atari. ML Monitor? Disassembler? We don't need no steenkin' disassembler! We'll just read hex code right out of the boot sector and grok it in our head.
Just remember, when we're being chased by a bear, I don't have to out run the bear... I just have to out run you. Cue v.bad Soviet Russia joke..
And with XFCE 4.8 it's compatible with menu editors like alacarte, which was my one gripe.
Exactly. Also, since it will be "required", just how much will they water it down to ensure that the masses are able to make the grade?
I thought it was "All Hitler, all the time..."
At a local university they pride themselves on having a "computer science degree with an emphasis on software engineering," followed up closely by "our courses are taught by computer scientists, NOT engineers." Yikes. Perhaps we need more software engineering programs?