Same old finger will continue to cover the speaker.
I've got digital cameras that already click when I take a picture. A finger over the speaker usually mutes it to next to nothing.
Anyone actually wanting to commit a crime will find it stupidly easy to circumvent. Everyone else will just get the joys of even more noise polution as every teenager that doesn't give a damn about people around them clicks endlessly at their friends.
The head likes the idea of moving to a thin client solution, with the same one room per department plan, as he see the cost benefits. However, I have seen tablet PCs used to great effect, with every single classroom having 20-30 units which the students use as 'electronic workbooks,' for want of a better phrase.
So, you've identified that the head's criteria is: "What is cost effective?"
Assuming three rooms per department, 10 departments in the school...
His solution: 20-30 machines x ~£250 per department (£6,250 per department, £62,500 for the whole school).
Your solution: 30 machines x 3 rooms x ~£1,000 per department (£90,000 per department, £900,000 for the whole school).
His criteria is cost efficiency.
Your solution is to spend more per department than he would for the entire school, on machines that kids pick up and drop vs. his more firmly mounted options that therefore need far more regular replacement.
I think I see where you're going to lose this one.
It's absolutely true, better resources will ensure the students do better. Assigning them one teacher per student would have even more amazing results... but also the same kind of exponential cost increase. So would assigning every child an after school tutor to help with their homework. But, as none of it is cost efficient, within the limited budgets, the head isn't going to agree to any of them... just as he's not going to agree to your wonderful, lavish, but equally unrealistic solution.
If you look at Age Of Conan, it had a large beta and then flopped.
Yes, and if you look at EverQuest, it has a large beta and was so successful as to be synonymous with the genre for years. World of Warcraft also had a large beta and did massively well.
So far, all we've established is that MMOs have large betas.
Without the level of game balancing and bug testing that can only come from vast numbers of people doing stupid things, exploiting systems, trying something creative, an MMO without a beta would launch only to get destroyed in reviews as it utterly failed to handle these things.
Conan struggled, from everything I hear, primarily because it had a great concept (let's actually make an MMO for grown ups) but didn't manage the breadth of execution that something like WoW has. As a result, it's a huge amount of fun for a short period of time.
Yes, a beta coincides with that but, even without a beta, it would have had great three month figures, average six month figures and weak one year figures. At least with a beta, people are more forgiving as they know it's not final and they're not paying. They'd have just left quicker from the final paying service.
So, sure, you can selectively pick a tiny data set, that happens to coincide with great single premises but no longevity, in order to support the conclusion. But the whole point is the data set is so limited and contrived you could select a similar data set to [fail to] "prove" just about anything.
When lay offs come, assuming you don't have the connections/get lucky and get in to one of the diminishing supply of equal or better jobs, what do you do?
Do you hold out, unwilling to sacrifice any of that seniority on your resume, hoping to get just as good a job - but losing money and gaining a big "unemployed" hole on your resume while you do?
Or do you suck it up, take whatever's paying, cash in some of your seniority for easily out competing everyone else for a more junior job that pays now and doesn't leave that hole?
Or there's always the third option: Leave the industry.
Quite a lot of people do leave. Quite a few have enough savings that they'll try holding out for as long as they can. But a lot will be taking that step down in exchange for still being able to make their mortgage payment, keep their kids in school, pay rent, etc. That means, in any recession, you're not just competing against your fellow graduates, you're competing against last year's graduates who can't get out of the positions and are still clinging on and the more experienced folk who're doing whatever it takes to survive.
So, yes, there are always some jobs - but less of them with dramatically stronger competition.
So, bad news: It's going to be tough.
Good news: In five years, we'll be out of this slump and the opposite circumstances will apply. There'll be less qualified people and anyone with qualifications and experience, being in desperate demand, will profit hugely from it.
Honestly, there's no better time to be poor than as a recent graduate. It sucks, sure. But it sucks far less than being poor again once you've got used to money and have a wife and kids who expect you to support them too plus a mortgage you now can't pay.
The trick is to weather the next several years as effectively as possible. No, you almost certainly won't be as well off as you imagined when you enrolled in that course. But, if you suck it up, if you do whatever you need to now, you'll be exceptionally well placed when the industry recovers.
Along those lines: Get that experience on your resume. If you can't get it as paid experience, donate your time as a sys admin to a charity, a community group, whatever. You want to know what's worse than being a graduate with no experience? Someone who graduated a year ago and still has no experience. If you can't sell your time, donate it - in exchange for that donation, you're getting experience that you can parlay in to a paying job later. Do whatever it takes, keep working even if it doesn't pay or doesn't pay as well as you like. Because, five years later, when the economy does recover as it always does, those few with the experience get to make a lot of money again.
Although there have been many studies that show no correlation between WiFi and health issues
More or less studies than have shown cigarettes are awesome for you and everyone should smoke them?
Or that global warming doesn't exist?
That Microsoft operating systems has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux?
That DDT, Agent Orange and Thalidamide are all totally safe?
To be fair to the hippies, there is a fairly long history of things being repeatedly investigated and found to be safe... right up until they were found not to be.
Unless you live in the state of California - where everything, including reading this post, can give you cancer and needs to carry a warning message, just to be on the safe side.
It does, however, remain true that a Guiness a day will, indeed, keep the doctor away.
Will tweets become like email, with two out of every three just worthless spam?
With systems for auto following everyone you're interested in, long articles on how to simply repost everyone else's tweets in order to draw attention to your narcisistic but utterly unoriginal self, auto notifying, auto responding, auto tweet^H^H^H^H^H drivelling...
How on earth can you say twitter will become worthless spam? Give it credit. It's already worthless spam. Just dressed up in the guise of content that's deperately recycled from everyone else.
So, non Microsoft leaves us with 53.4% of the market... Meaning Firefox already commands 80%+ of the non Microsoft share.
Gaining two out of every three - 67% of users quitting Microsoft - when it already has 80%+ of the non Microsoft share - implies its popularity is dropping not gaining amongst non Microsoft users.
Safari's stayed pretty constant for the last few months - as has Firefox, crawling up at a very slow rate. Chrome jumped from 0 to 3% pretty much immediately but has then barely moved in three months. Opera has actually gained proportionally the quickest (2% to 2.3% is a 15% improvement for them in three months).
So, I realize it was intended as a "Yay Firefox" claim - but, if you look deeper at the numbers - less of the new Anti-MS crowd are adopting it than have in the past.
"The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer."
No. The app has thousands of games and other applications that display 480x320 which looks great on a 3.5 inch screen.
At 163ppi, they look great.
Run those same resolutions on a screen with 2x (7 inch) or 2.5x (9 inch) resolution and you're looking at 60-80ppi of massively pixelated crap.
A 9 inch touchscreen with iPhone/iPod touch style OS-X and the same 163ppi resolution makes for a really interesting alternative to the netbook market. Stop hobbling the bluetooth so you can use their bluetooth keyboard when you want to type a lot and it's a fascinating package.
But the app store's catalog remains completely useless unless they come up with a way for resolution to upscale. Granted, I've not written anything for it, but I'm guessing most apps are written with a 480x320 assumption and no scaling, no multi-resolution icons, graphics, etc. bundled in to the downloads, etc. Apple would need to get the means for updating apps to support that out to developers way in advance of a larger Touch release if they wanted the app store to carry any value beyond to show off how bad apps could look... something that would harm the reputation of the device far more than help it.
If you work three days a week - 60% of the time...
Your computer doesn't cost 60%.
Your software licenses aren't 60% either.
That desk you use didn't cost 60% as much.
The office space to put your desk in doesn't cost 60% as much.
The HR department doesn't only do 60% of the work for you.
Your health insurance doesn't only cover 60% of you - you either insure or don't insure a person.
And so on.
As a rule of thumb, most employees cost their companies 2-4 times the cost of their full time salary. Take a hypothetical $50,000/year salary. Cost to the company may well be around $200,000 a year. You take a pay cut to $30,000 in exchange for working 40% less, that $200,000 cost has just dropped to $180,000 or only 10% less. They're paying 10% less to get 40% less value out of you. Hardly a good deal. Admittedly, many costs do scale - 401k matching only matches what you pay, taxes are relative to salary, etc. Still, those that don't ensure the argument's not in your favor.
Worked in reverse, it makes it painfully obvious why companies like EA so famously loved forcing overtime, especially when they could get it unpaid, out of workers. Health insurance doesn't cost them any more for a 100 hour week than it does for a 40 hour week. Office space costs no more. Hardware and software costs no more. On purely mercenary terms, efficiencies come in with more hours, not less. You're asking them to do the opposite.
Check Add Or Remove Programs to confirm it's used regularly.
Confirm no Anti Virus or Anti Malware software is installed.
Confirm OS install is at least six months old.
Under the UK's recent draconian porn laws, you can pretty safely assume at least some of the popups and other junk users have been forced constitute illegal activity.
The odds of an older IE install not having downloaded something illegal under British law are slimmer than the odds of a U.S banknote not having minute traces of cocaine. Theoretically possible, highly improbably, and great for the police to abuse.
"However, it seems that all broadband access providers have this stipulation, that an internet customer must first have a basic phone or cable TV service in order to sign on for the internet service."
1. Sign up for landline service with someone else. 2. Sign up for internet. 3. Cancel the phone service.
That's if I'm reading you right that they're simply demanding you have a landline because they want less people loading their networks with Skype, etc. and then bitching when they don't get the level of service a telco promises on an internet connection.
Alternatively, if your issue is they'll only sell you all three (Phone/TV/Internet) together, I'm guessing you're probably not reading their advertising correctly. Just because they'd like to sell you all three together and their ads focus on that, it doesn't mean unbundled isn't available if you ask for it.
Time Warner desperately wants to sell me all three together, especially as I used to have Time Warner cable TV but, when confronted with the simple reality I don't want to watch TV, they give in and accept the $29.99 a month they can at least get for selling me something.
Even better, their robodialer isn't very intelligent and will call you for all deals once you're in it for any reason. Every time they're selling individual packages, the idiots call me up and ask if I'd like cable internet for $29.99 for 12 months (as opposed to the $39.99 it defaults to). I agree. They realize I'm already a customer and aren't allowed to offer that but their sale agents are allowed to give me six months at the lower rate as an apology. Given they do this every six months or so, my internet bill is generally 25% cheaper.
Now if I could just get off AT&T U-verse's robodialer (repeated requests don't seem to have helped much). No matter what they try to tell me, one HD stream at a time, disconnecting any other HD stream you might be watching, is not true HD to up to four TVs around your home.
Please don't get me wrong: I totally agree they've sunk to pretty terrible depths, time and again.
But, just like I object to hyperbole in their part, when they claim piracy cost statistics by assuming every copy would have been a sale or that it all funds terrorism, I object to hyperbole on the other side too, starting a post with, "Just when you think they've reached rock bottom, it seems the RIAA always finds room to sink a little lower." - describing them as sinking even lower for something that didn't have malice of forethought in this case and, sucky as it may be, isn't any lower than - as you, yourself say - they've gone time and again before.
The tragic thing about the whole debate is that, like so many arguments, both sides have got so entrenched in their rhetoric and pointing out the obvious holes in the other side's rhetoric, going for cheap victories rather than really debating the points, most of America has just shrugged and turned its back on it.
What sucks is that, with both sides so entrenched, only willing to discuss the outrageous examples of the other side, no one's any closer to a reasonable solution after ten years of this and a whole hell of a lot of innocent people have got caught in the crossfire - be that musicians that can't find work from labels who only bet on safe bets or people who've never heard of filesharing getting sued.
The original article was written by and for one side in the debate, paraphrased to appeal to a community that tends to jump firmly on one side of it too. Pretty much any argument can be taken that way. It just tends not to do a great job of getting anyone any closer to a sane middle ground that stops dragging the rest of the world in to it. That, to me, is a shame.
I know it's an easy heart string to yank on but since when did being sick entitle you to ignore the law?
Yes, it's very tragic. But, to have got to this point she had to have:
Probably shared the files in question (yes, some people are falsely accused).
Ignored the initial letter demanding payment.
Not bothered to protest (I'm assuming here but it would be mentioned in the article if she'd tried telling them they had the wrong person).
Ignored any letters in the lead up to being taken to court.
Not bothered to get a lawyer to defend herself. Not bothered to seek a pro bono one which she managed to find pretty quickly once she realized she'd screwed up.
Ignored the summons.
Not bothered to communicate with the court in any way.
As she says in the article,
"I just want them to know that I have to go through enough stress in my life with my sickness and my family, and I don't think that they should go after people just because they want money for something that's not even fair to us."
I don't think it's fair that a Ferrari costs several hundred grand. I don't think it's fair that the cops'll track me down and arrest me if I steal one from a forecourt. I don't think it's fair that I'll be required to go to court. I don't think it's fair that they'll sentence me in abstentia if I don't bother to show up.
How sick do I need to be for it to be OK to just ignore all of that? I mean, sure, a Ferrari is worth more than ten songs (though not on the $250k damages argument).
Whilst I realise "pancreatitis" and needing an "islet transplant" sound terrible, as though she's got some crazy, near fatal, cancer or leukemia, etc.... An islet transplant is a procedure used to get type one diabetics off insulin. The pancreatitis part? Most commonly caused by gallstones, second most common cause is alcohol poisoning. Sure, it's quite possible she has a herreditary autoimmune disease - but what little they actually say is also a big scary word way of saying, "She's a type 1 diabetic with gallstones who has to regularly go in to hospital for treatment."
So, if being sick, yes, tragically so, lets you ignore her set of legal predicaments... how sick do I need to get to be allowed to steal that Ferrari? Cancer's got to be good for that one, right?
I get it: She's sick, it's tragic. She got sued for stealing something many people think should be free, that's tragic too. But it doesn't meet the basic criteria of, "Which part of this would an intelligent person without a massive sense of entitlement think is OK?"
As for the RIAA sinking to new lows? It was most likely a totally form prosecution. Had she bothered, in any way, to try and defend herself, to tell them how sick she was, sure, we can accuse them of sinking to new lows. But the total disregard for her own defense implies they likely never knew. From the communications they got, she was just another self-entitled brat who thought she could ignore the [fair or otherwise] legal system. Which she was - just a sick one.
I just went to sybian.com. From the looks of it, it's a perfect fit for AT&T, designed to screw you almost as much as their rate plans and patchy 3G coverage do.
Legal right isn't what wins in the US judicial system. The ability to afford to argue your case is.
If you're lucky, the moment you challenge them, they don't care enough to pay the cost of defending their case and they'll back down.
If you're unlucky, they'll see it as precedent setting and be determined to do whatever it takes to beat you so they can keep on profiting from all of the other software that's developed. At that point, all they need to do is keep you tied up in appeals until you can't afford to keep paying the lawyer to press your side. For a typical research student, my guess is that's around the second hour. What's worse, they likely know that too, know it won't take much to beat you and so are even more likely to fight on principle because they know your breaking point comes cheaply for them.
But, honestly, at the end of the day: Let it go.
You've probably got about 40 more years of writing code. You're going to write a vast number of programs. Most of those are going to be signed away to employers too. In the scheme of things, unless this is something truly amazing that you're convinced will make you rich, it's most likely something pretty trivial.
If it'll make you that rich, cling to the rights, abandon academia, make your millions, donate a new library, have them grant you whatever piece of paper you abandonned. If it's not going to make you rich, is it worth jeopardising what you've been working on. Moreso, is it worth pissing off the department over - as they're the ones who'll be writing your references for this chunk of time. As I said, most likely, if you take a step back, it's pretty trivial - let it go.
Once upon a time, computers were the size of rooms and could only be afforded by governments and very large corporations.
Yet, after half a century of investment by the British at places like Bletchley, the US on ENIAC and the Third Reich on IBM products... plus things like the government funded ARPANET, we now have computers for everyone, internet for everyone, medical and scientific research advancing as people are capable of helping fold proteins or search the stars in their own homes.
Yes, right now, a Tesla roadster costs a lot of money. But, by investing in the technology, by establishing a market, by drawing interest, it won't do in ten or twenty years time.
Pretty much every invention that's improved human life or reduced our burden on the planet has been expensive at first. But that's never yet been a good reason not to help advance things up front, knowing it'll trickle down many times over, over time.
Put a well calibrated, great TV with an SD feed next a budget TV with out-of-the-box calibration playing an HD feed and I'm guessing it would be WAY over 18%.
Given most cable companies will bump $10/month on for HD, another $10/month for an HD DVR... That several hundred you saved by getting the budget model is invalidated within a year or two of lousy quality HD experiences.
That's before you drop $200 for a Blu-ray player and $20-30/movie for the discs vs. weekly $4.99 DVD sales at Best Buy.
HD is a great thing... when displayed on a well calibrated, great set. But the guys I saw lining up already outside BestBuy, along with a hell of a lot of other consumers, aren't buying great sets. They're buying the cheapest thing with an HD label slapped on it that they can find. They're then blowing many times the price difference, over the life of the TV, on feeding it with something that ends up looking worse than SD on the great set their money would've been better spent on. Plus that great set can always display HD when you've got the money to spare again.
Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.
But police actions, anti terrorism actions and a broadly, ill defined war on a noun like "terror" or "drugs" are all fair game.
Splitting hairs, they're different to "declaring war." In practice, they're all ways presidents have ensured they can declare quagmires, I mean wars, without actually needing to stop and ask congress.
It's kind of like asking a child, "Did your brother hit you?" Crying, "Yes!" Brother, "Ha! I only kicked you. You're wrong!"
My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?'
It is illegal to discriminate against anyone over the age of 40. (For the US. Differs elsewhere.)
A question like that demonstrates, clearly, that you see age as a factor.
You see it in terms of encouraging older applicants.
People who don't get what they want are often somewhat bitter and tend to remember things differently.
They are going to simply see, "He openly voiced an issue with age. I'm over 40. I didn't get it. I'm suing."
Lawsuits aren't about who's right and wrong. They're about how much it costs you to defend yourself even when you are right. Your company may settle, even though you know you're in the right, to avoid court costs. They may win but still be out the tens of thousands it cost to defend themselves. Either way, you're the idiot who asked a stupid question and cost them a fortune.
Don't put age in to any question. Don't put gender in. Don't put marital status in. Don't put sexuality in. Don't put race in. Just leave them alone.
If you really want to give older people a chance, ask a question that's so removed from "age", no one can sue you over it. Try, "We've talked about specific experiences. What do you think the benefit of your culmulative experience is?" Then the guy who's got 20 years of it can be guided to what you're looking for.
But mention age, sex, race, sexuality, marital status, etc. and you're begging to get hurt.
You'd never ask, "I've got a male coming in next. Tell me how your being a female gives you an advantage he doesn't." or "I've got a white guy coming in next, tell me how the experience of growing up black in America helps give you the edge." Don't be stupid enough to do the same thing with age.
The problem with all forms of affirmative action at college level is: They completely fail to address underlying problems.
Without picking on any given demographic, if child A is raised in an environment where parents are unsupportive of study, where other kids of group A mock child A for scholastic achievement... You're going to get less students of group A competing at the same level as other students for the college courses that come at the end of that. That doesn't make the colleges [whatever]-ist or [whatever]-phobic.
Worse, affirmative action, lowering the barrier of entry so that you can get "appropriate" ratios of As to other groups just succeeds in putting As in classes they can't pass. So you end up being accused of being -ist/-phobic in your grading. Continuing the same flawed methods, you then have to lower your grading for As to ensure they keep passing in the same ratios. Only now, you've created a stigma for any rational person after college: As are now known to graduate "easy" and no one wants to hire them. This completely screws the members of group A who could compete on their own merits. Their 4.0 is devalued thanks to all As 4.0s being devalued. It's a lose-lose situation.
Then there's group B. In terms of academic culture, they study just fine. They're just, broadly speaking, not interested in your subject. A misguided sense that their "should" be more of group B means you beat yourselves up over something that's got nothing to do with your actual school. You lower requirements, offer incentives, eventually claw your numbers up by offering enough to get even the disinterested to apply. And then, disinterested, they fail out just as badly as those As who don't have the scholastic background. So you make the same mistakes as with the As, get the Bs out "somehow" then wonder why they all quit the profession within a few years.
You want to get more As or Bs in to a subject? You need to tackle it WAY before college level. Beating up colleges for broad societal trends is ridiculous and only manages to foster more resentment and more distrust. Instead, how about spending that affirmative action money on making more triple-A games that appeal to younger members of your desired demographic, getting their interest up in computing earlier? How about working with toy makers to make more science based toys for that demographic? Build the interest from the ground up, de-stigmatise it for your desired demographic, encourage study in it at all levels, that's how you'll truly change these things.
As for why gender roles are dropping now? Look at the economy, stoopid.
Comp sci is a traditionally male nerd subject - whether for right or wrong. Money is traditionally something that everyone wants, regardless of other interests. When the economy booms, when it's perceived there's a ton of money in comp sci, you'll swing towards gender neutral desire for money. When it sucks, when the perceived money's not there, you'll swing back to the defaults. Again, you want to change that, change the underlying defaults. It'll take a couple of decades to truly affect but it's doable. Just don't wring your hands at how bad colleges are for something WAY outside their realm to influence.
Saying a college is bad because of broad socioeconomic conditions that lead up to it having less students of type X is just as ignorant as saying people of type X are all criminals because broad socioeconomic conditions push that grouping in to crime. It's not the end of the system you need to look at and judge.
Slashdot Mirror
New Law Will Require Camera Phones To "Click"
Same old finger will continue to cover the speaker.
I've got digital cameras that already click when I take a picture. A finger over the speaker usually mutes it to next to nothing.
Anyone actually wanting to commit a crime will find it stupidly easy to circumvent. Everyone else will just get the joys of even more noise polution as every teenager that doesn't give a damn about people around them clicks endlessly at their friends.
The head likes the idea of moving to a thin client solution, with the same one room per department plan, as he see the cost benefits. However, I have seen tablet PCs used to great effect, with every single classroom having 20-30 units which the students use as 'electronic workbooks,' for want of a better phrase.
So, you've identified that the head's criteria is: "What is cost effective?"
Assuming three rooms per department, 10 departments in the school...
His solution: 20-30 machines x ~£250 per department (£6,250 per department, £62,500 for the whole school).
Your solution: 30 machines x 3 rooms x ~£1,000 per department (£90,000 per department, £900,000 for the whole school).
His criteria is cost efficiency.
Your solution is to spend more per department than he would for the entire school, on machines that kids pick up and drop vs. his more firmly mounted options that therefore need far more regular replacement.
I think I see where you're going to lose this one.
It's absolutely true, better resources will ensure the students do better. Assigning them one teacher per student would have even more amazing results... but also the same kind of exponential cost increase. So would assigning every child an after school tutor to help with their homework. But, as none of it is cost efficient, within the limited budgets, the head isn't going to agree to any of them... just as he's not going to agree to your wonderful, lavish, but equally unrealistic solution.
If you look at Age Of Conan, it had a large beta and then flopped.
Yes, and if you look at EverQuest, it has a large beta and was so successful as to be synonymous with the genre for years. World of Warcraft also had a large beta and did massively well.
So far, all we've established is that MMOs have large betas.
Without the level of game balancing and bug testing that can only come from vast numbers of people doing stupid things, exploiting systems, trying something creative, an MMO without a beta would launch only to get destroyed in reviews as it utterly failed to handle these things.
Conan struggled, from everything I hear, primarily because it had a great concept (let's actually make an MMO for grown ups) but didn't manage the breadth of execution that something like WoW has. As a result, it's a huge amount of fun for a short period of time.
Yes, a beta coincides with that but, even without a beta, it would have had great three month figures, average six month figures and weak one year figures. At least with a beta, people are more forgiving as they know it's not final and they're not paying. They'd have just left quicker from the final paying service.
So, sure, you can selectively pick a tiny data set, that happens to coincide with great single premises but no longevity, in order to support the conclusion. But the whole point is the data set is so limited and contrived you could select a similar data set to [fail to] "prove" just about anything.
When lay offs come, assuming you don't have the connections/get lucky and get in to one of the diminishing supply of equal or better jobs, what do you do?
Do you hold out, unwilling to sacrifice any of that seniority on your resume, hoping to get just as good a job - but losing money and gaining a big "unemployed" hole on your resume while you do?
Or do you suck it up, take whatever's paying, cash in some of your seniority for easily out competing everyone else for a more junior job that pays now and doesn't leave that hole?
Or there's always the third option: Leave the industry.
Quite a lot of people do leave. Quite a few have enough savings that they'll try holding out for as long as they can. But a lot will be taking that step down in exchange for still being able to make their mortgage payment, keep their kids in school, pay rent, etc. That means, in any recession, you're not just competing against your fellow graduates, you're competing against last year's graduates who can't get out of the positions and are still clinging on and the more experienced folk who're doing whatever it takes to survive.
So, yes, there are always some jobs - but less of them with dramatically stronger competition.
So, bad news: It's going to be tough.
Good news: In five years, we'll be out of this slump and the opposite circumstances will apply. There'll be less qualified people and anyone with qualifications and experience, being in desperate demand, will profit hugely from it.
Honestly, there's no better time to be poor than as a recent graduate. It sucks, sure. But it sucks far less than being poor again once you've got used to money and have a wife and kids who expect you to support them too plus a mortgage you now can't pay.
The trick is to weather the next several years as effectively as possible. No, you almost certainly won't be as well off as you imagined when you enrolled in that course. But, if you suck it up, if you do whatever you need to now, you'll be exceptionally well placed when the industry recovers.
Along those lines: Get that experience on your resume. If you can't get it as paid experience, donate your time as a sys admin to a charity, a community group, whatever. You want to know what's worse than being a graduate with no experience? Someone who graduated a year ago and still has no experience. If you can't sell your time, donate it - in exchange for that donation, you're getting experience that you can parlay in to a paying job later. Do whatever it takes, keep working even if it doesn't pay or doesn't pay as well as you like. Because, five years later, when the economy does recover as it always does, those few with the experience get to make a lot of money again.
Hmmm, interesting priorities. I, for one, would rather get stoned and laid than shot and killed...
In Iran, getting laid can lead to you getting stoned and killed. That's three to both your nations' half hearted two.
Although there have been many studies that show no correlation between WiFi and health issues
More or less studies than have shown cigarettes are awesome for you and everyone should smoke them?
Or that global warming doesn't exist?
That Microsoft operating systems has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux?
That DDT, Agent Orange and Thalidamide are all totally safe?
To be fair to the hippies, there is a fairly long history of things being repeatedly investigated and found to be safe... right up until they were found not to be.
Unless you live in the state of California - where everything, including reading this post, can give you cancer and needs to carry a warning message, just to be on the safe side.
It does, however, remain true that a Guiness a day will, indeed, keep the doctor away.
Will tweets become like email, with two out of every three just worthless spam?
With systems for auto following everyone you're interested in, long articles on how to simply repost everyone else's tweets in order to draw attention to your narcisistic but utterly unoriginal self, auto notifying, auto responding, auto tweet^H^H^H^H^H drivelling...
How on earth can you say twitter will become worthless spam? Give it credit. It's already worthless spam. Just dressed up in the guise of content that's deperately recycled from everyone else.
"What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
I realize this was written with the intent of saying, "What a great victory for our hero, Mozilla!"
But let's look at the numbers...
Browser share for November 2008 per w3schools:
IE7: 26.6%
IE6: 20%
Chrome: 3.1%
Firefox: 44.2%
Mozilla: 0.4%
Safari: 2.7%
Opera: 2.3%
So, non Microsoft leaves us with 53.4% of the market... Meaning Firefox already commands 80%+ of the non Microsoft share.
Gaining two out of every three - 67% of users quitting Microsoft - when it already has 80%+ of the non Microsoft share - implies its popularity is dropping not gaining amongst non Microsoft users.
Safari's stayed pretty constant for the last few months - as has Firefox, crawling up at a very slow rate. Chrome jumped from 0 to 3% pretty much immediately but has then barely moved in three months. Opera has actually gained proportionally the quickest (2% to 2.3% is a 15% improvement for them in three months).
So, I realize it was intended as a "Yay Firefox" claim - but, if you look deeper at the numbers - less of the new Anti-MS crowd are adopting it than have in the past.
"The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer."
No. The app has thousands of games and other applications that display 480x320 which looks great on a 3.5 inch screen.
At 163ppi, they look great.
Run those same resolutions on a screen with 2x (7 inch) or 2.5x (9 inch) resolution and you're looking at 60-80ppi of massively pixelated crap.
A 9 inch touchscreen with iPhone/iPod touch style OS-X and the same 163ppi resolution makes for a really interesting alternative to the netbook market. Stop hobbling the bluetooth so you can use their bluetooth keyboard when you want to type a lot and it's a fascinating package.
But the app store's catalog remains completely useless unless they come up with a way for resolution to upscale. Granted, I've not written anything for it, but I'm guessing most apps are written with a 480x320 assumption and no scaling, no multi-resolution icons, graphics, etc. bundled in to the downloads, etc. Apple would need to get the means for updating apps to support that out to developers way in advance of a larger Touch release if they wanted the app store to carry any value beyond to show off how bad apps could look... something that would harm the reputation of the device far more than help it.
If you work three days a week - 60% of the time...
Your computer doesn't cost 60%.
Your software licenses aren't 60% either.
That desk you use didn't cost 60% as much.
The office space to put your desk in doesn't cost 60% as much.
The HR department doesn't only do 60% of the work for you.
Your health insurance doesn't only cover 60% of you - you either insure or don't insure a person.
And so on.
As a rule of thumb, most employees cost their companies 2-4 times the cost of their full time salary. Take a hypothetical $50,000/year salary. Cost to the company may well be around $200,000 a year. You take a pay cut to $30,000 in exchange for working 40% less, that $200,000 cost has just dropped to $180,000 or only 10% less. They're paying 10% less to get 40% less value out of you. Hardly a good deal. Admittedly, many costs do scale - 401k matching only matches what you pay, taxes are relative to salary, etc. Still, those that don't ensure the argument's not in your favor.
Worked in reverse, it makes it painfully obvious why companies like EA so famously loved forcing overtime, especially when they could get it unpaid, out of workers. Health insurance doesn't cost them any more for a 100 hour week than it does for a 40 hour week. Office space costs no more. Hardware and software costs no more. On purely mercenary terms, efficiencies come in with more hours, not less. You're asking them to do the opposite.
"flows like toothpaste"
So, your wife's going to leave all your bone stuck in one end?
That suddenly seems much more pornographic than I intended it.
The odds of an older IE install not having downloaded something illegal under British law are slimmer than the odds of a U.S banknote not having minute traces of cocaine. Theoretically possible, highly improbably, and great for the police to abuse.
"However, it seems that all broadband access providers have this stipulation, that an internet customer must first have a basic phone or cable TV service in order to sign on for the internet service."
1. Sign up for landline service with someone else.
2. Sign up for internet.
3. Cancel the phone service.
That's if I'm reading you right that they're simply demanding you have a landline because they want less people loading their networks with Skype, etc. and then bitching when they don't get the level of service a telco promises on an internet connection.
Alternatively, if your issue is they'll only sell you all three (Phone/TV/Internet) together, I'm guessing you're probably not reading their advertising correctly. Just because they'd like to sell you all three together and their ads focus on that, it doesn't mean unbundled isn't available if you ask for it.
Time Warner desperately wants to sell me all three together, especially as I used to have Time Warner cable TV but, when confronted with the simple reality I don't want to watch TV, they give in and accept the $29.99 a month they can at least get for selling me something.
Even better, their robodialer isn't very intelligent and will call you for all deals once you're in it for any reason. Every time they're selling individual packages, the idiots call me up and ask if I'd like cable internet for $29.99 for 12 months (as opposed to the $39.99 it defaults to). I agree. They realize I'm already a customer and aren't allowed to offer that but their sale agents are allowed to give me six months at the lower rate as an apology. Given they do this every six months or so, my internet bill is generally 25% cheaper.
Now if I could just get off AT&T U-verse's robodialer (repeated requests don't seem to have helped much). No matter what they try to tell me, one HD stream at a time, disconnecting any other HD stream you might be watching, is not true HD to up to four TVs around your home.
>>....we can accuse them of sinking to new lows.
>I know of many other stories like that.
Please don't get me wrong: I totally agree they've sunk to pretty terrible depths, time and again.
But, just like I object to hyperbole in their part, when they claim piracy cost statistics by assuming every copy would have been a sale or that it all funds terrorism, I object to hyperbole on the other side too, starting a post with, "Just when you think they've reached rock bottom, it seems the RIAA always finds room to sink a little lower." - describing them as sinking even lower for something that didn't have malice of forethought in this case and, sucky as it may be, isn't any lower than - as you, yourself say - they've gone time and again before.
The tragic thing about the whole debate is that, like so many arguments, both sides have got so entrenched in their rhetoric and pointing out the obvious holes in the other side's rhetoric, going for cheap victories rather than really debating the points, most of America has just shrugged and turned its back on it.
What sucks is that, with both sides so entrenched, only willing to discuss the outrageous examples of the other side, no one's any closer to a reasonable solution after ten years of this and a whole hell of a lot of innocent people have got caught in the crossfire - be that musicians that can't find work from labels who only bet on safe bets or people who've never heard of filesharing getting sued.
The original article was written by and for one side in the debate, paraphrased to appeal to a community that tends to jump firmly on one side of it too. Pretty much any argument can be taken that way. It just tends not to do a great job of getting anyone any closer to a sane middle ground that stops dragging the rest of the world in to it. That, to me, is a shame.
I know it's an easy heart string to yank on but since when did being sick entitle you to ignore the law?
Yes, it's very tragic. But, to have got to this point she had to have:
As she says in the article,
"I just want them to know that I have to go through enough stress in my life with my sickness and my family, and I don't think that they should go after people just because they want money for something that's not even fair to us."
I don't think it's fair that a Ferrari costs several hundred grand. I don't think it's fair that the cops'll track me down and arrest me if I steal one from a forecourt. I don't think it's fair that I'll be required to go to court. I don't think it's fair that they'll sentence me in abstentia if I don't bother to show up.
How sick do I need to be for it to be OK to just ignore all of that? I mean, sure, a Ferrari is worth more than ten songs (though not on the $250k damages argument).
Whilst I realise "pancreatitis" and needing an "islet transplant" sound terrible, as though she's got some crazy, near fatal, cancer or leukemia, etc.... An islet transplant is a procedure used to get type one diabetics off insulin. The pancreatitis part? Most commonly caused by gallstones, second most common cause is alcohol poisoning. Sure, it's quite possible she has a herreditary autoimmune disease - but what little they actually say is also a big scary word way of saying, "She's a type 1 diabetic with gallstones who has to regularly go in to hospital for treatment."
So, if being sick, yes, tragically so, lets you ignore her set of legal predicaments... how sick do I need to get to be allowed to steal that Ferrari? Cancer's got to be good for that one, right?
I get it: She's sick, it's tragic. She got sued for stealing something many people think should be free, that's tragic too. But it doesn't meet the basic criteria of, "Which part of this would an intelligent person without a massive sense of entitlement think is OK?"
As for the RIAA sinking to new lows? It was most likely a totally form prosecution. Had she bothered, in any way, to try and defend herself, to tell them how sick she was, sure, we can accuse them of sinking to new lows. But the total disregard for her own defense implies they likely never knew. From the communications they got, she was just another self-entitled brat who thought she could ignore the [fair or otherwise] legal system. Which she was - just a sick one.
I just went to sybian.com. From the looks of it, it's a perfect fit for AT&T, designed to screw you almost as much as their rate plans and patchy 3G coverage do.
"Hell, we could have pre-salted potato chips!"
STOP! Stop right there. Let this line of thought go before we think too much about the manure they're grown in.
Though it does explain plain dorritos.
Legal right isn't what wins in the US judicial system. The ability to afford to argue your case is.
If you're lucky, the moment you challenge them, they don't care enough to pay the cost of defending their case and they'll back down.
If you're unlucky, they'll see it as precedent setting and be determined to do whatever it takes to beat you so they can keep on profiting from all of the other software that's developed. At that point, all they need to do is keep you tied up in appeals until you can't afford to keep paying the lawyer to press your side. For a typical research student, my guess is that's around the second hour. What's worse, they likely know that too, know it won't take much to beat you and so are even more likely to fight on principle because they know your breaking point comes cheaply for them.
But, honestly, at the end of the day: Let it go.
You've probably got about 40 more years of writing code. You're going to write a vast number of programs. Most of those are going to be signed away to employers too. In the scheme of things, unless this is something truly amazing that you're convinced will make you rich, it's most likely something pretty trivial.
If it'll make you that rich, cling to the rights, abandon academia, make your millions, donate a new library, have them grant you whatever piece of paper you abandonned. If it's not going to make you rich, is it worth jeopardising what you've been working on. Moreso, is it worth pissing off the department over - as they're the ones who'll be writing your references for this chunk of time. As I said, most likely, if you take a step back, it's pretty trivial - let it go.
Once upon a time, computers were the size of rooms and could only be afforded by governments and very large corporations.
Yet, after half a century of investment by the British at places like Bletchley, the US on ENIAC and the Third Reich on IBM products... plus things like the government funded ARPANET, we now have computers for everyone, internet for everyone, medical and scientific research advancing as people are capable of helping fold proteins or search the stars in their own homes.
Yes, right now, a Tesla roadster costs a lot of money. But, by investing in the technology, by establishing a market, by drawing interest, it won't do in ten or twenty years time.
Pretty much every invention that's improved human life or reduced our burden on the planet has been expensive at first. But that's never yet been a good reason not to help advance things up front, knowing it'll trickle down many times over, over time.
Put a well calibrated, great TV with an SD feed next a budget TV with out-of-the-box calibration playing an HD feed and I'm guessing it would be WAY over 18%.
Given most cable companies will bump $10/month on for HD, another $10/month for an HD DVR... That several hundred you saved by getting the budget model is invalidated within a year or two of lousy quality HD experiences.
That's before you drop $200 for a Blu-ray player and $20-30/movie for the discs vs. weekly $4.99 DVD sales at Best Buy.
HD is a great thing... when displayed on a well calibrated, great set. But the guys I saw lining up already outside BestBuy, along with a hell of a lot of other consumers, aren't buying great sets. They're buying the cheapest thing with an HD label slapped on it that they can find. They're then blowing many times the price difference, over the life of the TV, on feeding it with something that ends up looking worse than SD on the great set their money would've been better spent on. Plus that great set can always display HD when you've got the money to spare again.
"
Shouldn't we stop fund raising for prostate cancer because it only affects men!
"
No. We should stop fund raising for it because it kills people. Let's, instead, start fundraising for its cure.
Never could figure out why people keep trying to raise money for cancer.
"
Can we expect anyone who followed a warrantless wiretap from the Bush administration to also be fired then?
"
I believe that's called "an election."
So yes then.
Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.
But police actions, anti terrorism actions and a broadly, ill defined war on a noun like "terror" or "drugs" are all fair game.
Splitting hairs, they're different to "declaring war." In practice, they're all ways presidents have ensured they can declare quagmires, I mean wars, without actually needing to stop and ask congress.
It's kind of like asking a child, "Did your brother hit you?"
Crying, "Yes!"
Brother, "Ha! I only kicked you. You're wrong!"
My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?'
It is illegal to discriminate against anyone over the age of 40. (For the US. Differs elsewhere.)
A question like that demonstrates, clearly, that you see age as a factor.
You see it in terms of encouraging older applicants.
People who don't get what they want are often somewhat bitter and tend to remember things differently.
They are going to simply see, "He openly voiced an issue with age. I'm over 40. I didn't get it. I'm suing."
Lawsuits aren't about who's right and wrong. They're about how much it costs you to defend yourself even when you are right. Your company may settle, even though you know you're in the right, to avoid court costs. They may win but still be out the tens of thousands it cost to defend themselves. Either way, you're the idiot who asked a stupid question and cost them a fortune.
Don't put age in to any question. Don't put gender in. Don't put marital status in. Don't put sexuality in. Don't put race in. Just leave them alone.
If you really want to give older people a chance, ask a question that's so removed from "age", no one can sue you over it. Try, "We've talked about specific experiences. What do you think the benefit of your culmulative experience is?" Then the guy who's got 20 years of it can be guided to what you're looking for.
But mention age, sex, race, sexuality, marital status, etc. and you're begging to get hurt.
You'd never ask, "I've got a male coming in next. Tell me how your being a female gives you an advantage he doesn't." or "I've got a white guy coming in next, tell me how the experience of growing up black in America helps give you the edge." Don't be stupid enough to do the same thing with age.
The problem with all forms of affirmative action at college level is: They completely fail to address underlying problems.
Without picking on any given demographic, if child A is raised in an environment where parents are unsupportive of study, where other kids of group A mock child A for scholastic achievement... You're going to get less students of group A competing at the same level as other students for the college courses that come at the end of that. That doesn't make the colleges [whatever]-ist or [whatever]-phobic.
Worse, affirmative action, lowering the barrier of entry so that you can get "appropriate" ratios of As to other groups just succeeds in putting As in classes they can't pass. So you end up being accused of being -ist/-phobic in your grading. Continuing the same flawed methods, you then have to lower your grading for As to ensure they keep passing in the same ratios. Only now, you've created a stigma for any rational person after college: As are now known to graduate "easy" and no one wants to hire them. This completely screws the members of group A who could compete on their own merits. Their 4.0 is devalued thanks to all As 4.0s being devalued. It's a lose-lose situation.
Then there's group B. In terms of academic culture, they study just fine. They're just, broadly speaking, not interested in your subject. A misguided sense that their "should" be more of group B means you beat yourselves up over something that's got nothing to do with your actual school. You lower requirements, offer incentives, eventually claw your numbers up by offering enough to get even the disinterested to apply. And then, disinterested, they fail out just as badly as those As who don't have the scholastic background. So you make the same mistakes as with the As, get the Bs out "somehow" then wonder why they all quit the profession within a few years.
You want to get more As or Bs in to a subject? You need to tackle it WAY before college level. Beating up colleges for broad societal trends is ridiculous and only manages to foster more resentment and more distrust. Instead, how about spending that affirmative action money on making more triple-A games that appeal to younger members of your desired demographic, getting their interest up in computing earlier? How about working with toy makers to make more science based toys for that demographic? Build the interest from the ground up, de-stigmatise it for your desired demographic, encourage study in it at all levels, that's how you'll truly change these things.
As for why gender roles are dropping now? Look at the economy, stoopid.
Comp sci is a traditionally male nerd subject - whether for right or wrong. Money is traditionally something that everyone wants, regardless of other interests. When the economy booms, when it's perceived there's a ton of money in comp sci, you'll swing towards gender neutral desire for money. When it sucks, when the perceived money's not there, you'll swing back to the defaults. Again, you want to change that, change the underlying defaults. It'll take a couple of decades to truly affect but it's doable. Just don't wring your hands at how bad colleges are for something WAY outside their realm to influence.
Saying a college is bad because of broad socioeconomic conditions that lead up to it having less students of type X is just as ignorant as saying people of type X are all criminals because broad socioeconomic conditions push that grouping in to crime. It's not the end of the system you need to look at and judge.