Yes, there's a point of diminishing returns. Absolutely. I hit that wall myself many times in college.
And yes, course loads can get down-right evil. And commuting time can be a killer for some.
I'll gladly concede that your second year left you no free time. But what about 1,3 and 4? Summer terms? While you obviously had far less free time than most, are you saying you had 80+ hour weeks every week for four solid years?
I may appear to a bit dismissive to time concerns, but I've always been leery of people who claim they have no time. I heard that a lot in college from folks who were out partying every night and most weekends. Who made trips home every other week, and spent entire summers on vacation. I hear "I have no time" and it immediately translates in my head to "I'd rather be doing something other than X."
Personally, I squandered many opportunities for personal projects in college. But it wasn't because I didn't have the time to do them, it was because I wanted to do something else more (sleeping, drinking, dating, playing Frisbee etc.). Most people aren't honest with themselves over the difference between "time" and "priorities"
*sigh* As I've pointed out in follow-up comments, it's not about working beyond 40 hours. It's a bare minimum mentality that is possibly hinted at by a college grad who did nothing beyond their coursework. It's the unwillingness to extend themselves beyond what is absolutely required. Getting through college with just a set of grades but no personal projects, no extracurriculars, no volunteer work, nothing beyond the paper is a potential red flag that the person might not be interested in going above and beyond.
The most effective, amazing developer I know gets his shit done in 40 hours a week. But sometimes when things go off the rails, he puts in the extra hours needed to get everything back on track. When the need arises, he puts in the extra work. My issue isn't with effective 40hr/wk developers, my issue is with any worker who hits 40 hours and won't go an inch beyond. Getting to 22/23/24 (or whenever you graduate) as a programmer then going out into the world to find work, and not having anything except classwork to talk about, does not show well.
If you're a new coder with limited experience, you do need to "show" more. You don't have the resume to impress people, so you need to come up with something else.
It's not about working insane hours. It's about the strict 9-5 mentality and what it shows. Yes, there are some devs who can turn out pure gold in 8hrs a day and go home exactly on time. But they're pretty rare from what I've seen.
The mentality is more the "I am going to do the minimum required of me" that causes problems.
And remember, we're talking about developers with little to know professional experience. This is different than the guy who's been a developer for 20 years and worked on dozens of products/projects.
Young, inexperienced devs need to show they're willing to go the extra mile sometimes. Just doing what's required isn't always a good thing.
It's not about success or failure of the app that's important really, it's the fact that it exists that tells people something.
Fact is, everyone fails. A lot. In fact, I am more leery of hiring someone who has never failed over someone who has. That first crash is the hardest, and the later it comes the more disastrous to the person it can be. You learn more from failing than from succeeding etc.
It's about saying "I did this!" It doesn't have to sell a single unit. The existence of the thing shows effort, initiative, and experience outside of the classroom.
I think a lot of comments are lashing out at the "Don't Hire Inexperienced Developers" concept without really thinking about what's being said in the rest of the article.
What the author is really saying is "Don't hire developers fresh out of school who have nothing to show for themselves except coursework."
Why is this so important? It's important because it shows two things: 1) The developer only has theoretical, academic knowledge of programming 2) The developer isn't passionate about developing.
The first is a huge problem for any company hiring said developer. I don't know a single instance where what I have encountered in the working world matched closely at all to how my textbooks or professors told me things "should be". The mental shift required between school and work is large and can be very difficult to overcome for many.
The second point is a critical thing to consider especially if you're a small company or a startup. A-level developers and other IT folks are passionate about what they do. They have side projects. They have little tools and such that they create to help solve whatever task they're focusing on at the moment. Coming out of school with absolutely nothing beyond class assignments is a strong indicator that the developer is only interested in the bare-minimum requirements to get by. That's not to say they're not talented, just that they're looking for a 9-5 job where they're in at 9:00 and out at 5:00 and aren't interested in going the extra mile. These guys are terrific coders for large companies where there's a lot of maintenance type work to be done. They're productivity vampires though for small companies that need every member of the team to be highly efficient and high producing.
The article points out how easy it is to have side projects. To turn out a little app on a website or on a mobile platform that you can point back to and say "I did this."
To those who argue that there's just no time in a 4 year degree to do side projects like that... Where the hell did you go to school? Did you have a full-time 40hr/wk job totally outside of CS/IT during the same period that left you with only enough time outside of class to sleep? If MIT students can get through in 4 years and manage massively complex pranks, contribute to OSS projects and still graduate with high grades, what's everyone elses excuse?
Ok, Microsoft is found guilty of abusing its position of controlling the currently most popular PC OS on the market. Through bundling and anti-competitive practices they're nailed for being a monopoly.
The media player gets stripped out per an earlier EC case.
Now, in 2007, Opera complains about the browser bundling, saying that it gives Microsoft an unfair advantage in the browser wars. The EC says "Yeah, you're right! Ok MS, take out the bundled browser"
Microsoft complies, stripping out the IE user application from copies of Windows 7 to be distributed in Europe.
Opera and the EC, faced with getting exactly what they asked for, are now mad again because what they REALLY wanted Microsoft to do was to bundle a competing product with the base OS. They don't want a level playing field, they want to tip the scales in their favor (specifically to Opera).
I'm sorry, but there is a line being crossed here where we went from semi-valid to out-right ridiculous. Strip down the OS, fine. Let the OEMs decide what browser to install on a system. Let retailers sell $5 CDs containing Firefox, Opera, Safari etc with their copies of Windows 7. If you want the OS to be a neutral platform for applications, then it has to be just that. If you try to mandate what browser IS bundled, you're defeating the whole point and just creating a new monopoly for whoever the lucky guy is whose browser you choose (likely Opera).
Considering current browser usage statistics, I think the entire browser monopoly concept is antiquated. With IE currently holding around 41% of the total market, and Firefox with 47% (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) it's pretty clear that a) it's not a monopoly anymore and b) bundling is not hurting other browsers.
What this really feels like is Opera is tired of being in last place (and probably especially pissed that up-start Chrome blew past them in just a month or two) and instead of capturing marketshare with a more compelling product, they're going to try and legislate themselves into a stronger market position.
I think it depends on how tech and web savvy the company that you're applying to is. If you're applying for a job with an insurance company, bank, or other massive mega corp (even if they're a tech shop) it would probably hurt more than help since you have no way of knowing if the HR drone reading it knows the difference between a Mac and a PC. When you go to list a handle on your resume, you're depending on the person reading to know a) what it is and b) what to do about it. It's a big risk.
Now, if you're applying to a smaller company, one that is extremely tech savvy, I think it could help a lot.
I landed my current job in large part to the name I've built for myself online over the last decade. Of course, the job is all about online and community presence, so that's a bit of a different story, but it would have helped me with this company no matter the specific job.
The best idea I saw in the discussion was to go around yourself, collect all your favorite "Me" links from Google and then put together an online portfolio of sorts on a personal website. That way you can provide the link on your resume, and then very directly control what information they see if they look you up that way. It's all about controlling your virtual image, and this may be the best way to do it.
Unfortunately, the overall Mac community is spoiled by the vocal minority. The same thing happens to religious people in the US when crazy evangelicals start screaming from street corners.
The vocal minority sets the tone and is how the majority becomes seen by outsiders.
A common gripe I have with the Mac OS community is this seeming insistence that everything that is cool or nifty, or even useful, is somehow a rip-off of something Apple did first. If you look at articles like this one, you'd think Apple invented the on-desktop search bar (Google), or widgets/gadgets (DesktopX, Konfabulator).
Apple often does things *better* than other companies (with the exception of Dashboard) but they usually don't do it FIRST. This makes the claim that everyone rips off their stuff from Apple pretty silly.
Lets look at some of these claims in the article regarding what Microsoft is "stealing" from Apple:
1. Glowing Min/Max/Close Buttons Ugh, I'm sorry, but this is not an Apple first thing. I've seen this in Windows custom UIs (WindowBlinds for example) for a good long while now, not to mention game UIs and a bunch of Flash applications. This is a very nice design element, and yes Apple did it well, but they didn't do it first.
2. "Instant Search" Yes, I know... you're trying to compare it to Spotlight and the traditional Sherlock tool. Guess what though, well before Spotlight there was Google Desktop which gave you the in-frame search box. I like Spotlight a lot, it makes navigating files on my system a hell of a lot easier, but it's not new, and all similar search systems aren't instantly copycats of it.
3. Sidebar and Gadgets/Widgets Like I said before, the Gadget/Widget thing has been around a LOT longer than Apple fans like to think. Dashboard was the first attempt to integrate them straight into the OS as a bundled feature, but it was pretty poorly implemented. Apple in this regard was several years late to the party. The MS Sidebar is also a fairly poor implementation... so I guess if anything you can accuse MS of stealing some of Apple's own bad design work.
4. The bundled apps "Photo Library" "DVD Maker" "Chess Titans" etc... Umm... ok... I'll give you Apple folks this one. With the way MS broke apart the Outlook features into individual apps is a little too close to the iCal, Address Book, Mail.app scheme. This one is probably a straight-rip from the Apple playbook.
5. Flip3D a poor man's Expose Bull. Flip3D is a cheesy way to show off the 3D capabilities in the desktop layer. It has nothing to do with Expose and the multiple ways to display everything currently running. I think Expose does things way better. Flip3D is a gimmick, nothing more. If MS wanted to ape the Expose design, they could have easily done it better.
There are a lot of things Apple does well, and the article does admit that Apple borrows, often even from Windows, to get its feature set. However, the claim that these features were taken from Apple as opposed to being taken from wherever Apple themselves snagged them is presumptuous.
NWN Multiplayer, and the associated accounts through Bioware were ALWAYS free, there was never anything even approaching monthly charges from Bioware or Atari. Certain Persistant World networks might have tried to charge a fee, but that's the same as someone charging you for access to a private Battlefield 2 server.
The only thing you lose for not having the hard drive is saving, but for that you just get a memory card. It will play on a standard TV like all 360 games, but of course looks best in high def.
Listing "specs" for a console review is kind of pointless.
His M.O worked because it's entertaining for those who agree, and those who disagree watch because he pisses them off so much. Howard Stern perfected the method. Rush Limbaugh has people listening to him just so they can "know what the morons are saying" etc. Pissing people off is a great way to high ratings.
Like it or not, hate O'Reilly or not, there is a piece of truth to what he's saying.
People now are more separated than they are connected. Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there. This is pretty much the norm.
What were they doing instead? Video games, TV, movies etc.
Look around you at most of the people you may work with in IT. How many of them are social creatures, going out and partying on weekends etc? Yes, it's a bad stereotype, that computer geeks are antisocial misfits, but all stereotypes come from truth.
Look around a college campus during class change. How many of those people have a phone attached to their head, completely ignoring all the real people around them? Sure they're connected to another person at that moment, but they're cut off from the physical world they're walking through almost entirely.
Gamers, especially hardcore MMO players, are notorious for spending days if not weeks doing little more than playing their games. I've known several people to flunk out of college, lose jobs, lose significant others, over their singular obsession to their games.
None of this is the fault of technology, because technology is a neutral medium that people choose how to use. What it does do however is make it easier for people who would seal themselves off from the world, to do so. You can get groceries over the net, there are dating services to avoid having to pick people up in person, heck you don't even need to go to the video store anymore with services like NetFlix. Technology has made it increasingly easy to avoid interacting with other people. When was the last time you sat on your porch and chatted with a neigbor? Used to be that was the main form of evening entertainment, now it's becoming increasingly rare as people venture out of their house less and less.
This isn't a comment on "these people are lame!" because it's not one particular group that is falling victim to this. It's the "cool" kids too now that they're getting hooked on text messaging, IMs, console gaming etc. It's a growing problem that is hard for lots of people here to recognize because we're in the middle of it. We don't like to think that maybe we're less social or less connected with the outside world than we should be.
While poorly worded, O'Reilly actually has a point burried beneath his typical inflamatory rhetoric.
Yes, doing tech support is probably ranked lower on your overall list of potential jobs than BestBuy Sales Monkey, but I think TS is an incredibly valuable and overlooked wrung on the IT ladder. But you say you want to be a coder and that helping users fix their PCs by turning the power on isn't going to get you towards that goal. It's not a direct path, no, but it will teach you essential skills you'll find very useful in your career.
Problem Solving While most problems will be simple, no-brainers, others will be devilishly tricky, especially when you're working under all sorts of odd restrictions (reformatting is actually a last-resort effort, most users will not accept this as a method of fixing). It's about giving sound advice with limited information (they'll never tell you what they did that broke the machine) as quickly as possible.
People Skills Some users are just dumb. What makes some of these people worse is they don't realize it, and will proceed to ignore everything you tell them, go do something else, break it worse, then come back to blame you. This will be especially common since you're 17 and people will discount you for your age. If you can learn to handle these people gracefully, you will have gained possibly the most valuable job skill there is; dealing with difficult people
Wider range of experience/exposure Tinkering with your home PC is one thing, having to work on a variety of systems ranging from Windows98 to Linux to MacOS (depending on where you work) and soon Vista will expose you to systems and issues you might not have otherwise encountered. Also, you don't have first-hand knowledge of how the system was setup, so you'll be forced to learn quickly what is going on, on a given system. This will force you to have a much broader understanding of operating systems from a user and support perspective.
Practical knowledge Many of the folks I went to college with who were coders, or who I've worked with since college have great theoretical knowledge of systems. They know how things SHOULD work, but toss a wrench in the gearbox by installing some software on a system they weren't counting on, and you can throw some of them for quite a loop. Working in the trenches will give you a very practical understanding of the user environment that will be very helpful when you start coding applications for that environment.
Tech Support is an entry-level job that a high school kid can get without college or too much experience. You'll learn a great deal very quickly that will provide you with a strong base of skills (both technical and inter-personal) that will help make subsequent jobs much easier to get. Don't turn your nose up at it just because it's not as glamorous as creating applications (depending on where you eventually end up, coding can be extremely mundane). Everyone has to start somewhere.
I'm not counting services (XBL, a MMO subscription) or software in the cost. I'm talking about core costs to having a gaming device. Online gaming is not yet completely central to gaming. It's still optional.
To start, I'm primarily a PC gamer. I like the genres more, I like the controls more, and I like having the best looking visuals. However, not for a second can I delude myself into thinking that PC gaming is cheaper than modern console gaming. A lot of people here seem to be railing on PC gaming being cheaper with the argument that you have to get completely new hardware every 4-6 years.
A modern, well-equipped gaming PC will run you at the moment probably close to $1,000. A modern console will average you about $500 with extra controllers and addon-bits (I'm averaging from the Wii to the PS3).
We're not going to include the cost of a TV (high def or otherwise) into the cost of the console, since many people would have one regardless of their console purchase.
Ok. So you spend $500 every 4 years when your new console iteration comes out. Now, what happens if you don't upgrade that PC for 4 years? Chances are the games in year 4 won't run. PC gamers need to continually feed cash into their systems to be able to play current games. The console will play games released for it the same at year 1 as year 4. For the sake of argument, I'm going to say that PC gamers will try to be frugal and just upgrade their video card yearly, and they'll be price conscious about it and buy one card behind current bleeding edge. Those run you about $250.
So, in terms of hardware, after 4 years the spending looks something like this: Console gamer: $500. PC Gamer: $2,000. ($1000 PC + $250/yr)
And that's a very conservative estimate for the PC gamer. I know I put way more into my PC yearly. RAM, video cards, and then every four years or so you probably need to do such a fundamental upgrade for new tech (AGP -> PCIe, the move to 64bit, whatever) that you'll essentially buy a new PC again.
The console is clearly the cheapest gaming option. That doesn't make it "better" by any means, it just simply is cheaper.
nvidia's drivers have always been the better of the two, but they've typically been a version or two behind the Windows drivers, and without a lot of other X tweaks, still run sluggish. Getting Linux optimized for gaming is too much work to make it a viable alternative to Windows in this instance.
Usable for gamers... except for the fact that most games don't run under Linux period, and those that do through Cedega are often hit-and-miss and not "supported" until months if not years after release. Oh, and 3D card drivers tend to suck horribly for Linux... So aside from there not being any games really, and drivers not fully working, yeah, it's just fine for gamer use.
It's not DRM. At no point does the game become unplayable. Entering your sereal key to your account merely allows you to download updates and fixes beyond 1.0x, which was pretty stable and full-featured for a release version of a game.
So actually, there's no DRM. It's not added in a patch. Your game isn't rendered unplayable, you just have to register with Stardock to get further updates.
And here I am, just outside of the network over in Wayne County (right next door practically). Maybe other counties in the state will start picking this up. It's not a rival to telcos since it's so much slower than broadband offerings, but it would be nice to sit outside away from my own WAP and get some net connectivity:)
For years my sister was the same way. She'd have botched up her PC to the point of it needing to be reformatted at least once every few months. I told her she couldn't install all those P2P apps, explorer toolbars and things like WeatherBug on her PC anymore because they load a ton of shit that kills her PC. She retorted with "It's my computer and I'll install anything I want on it!" To which I said OK, but I've told you how to not break your computer, so if you do it again, I'm not fixing it.
Ignorance of computers is one thing, and I can understand it to some extent. But when that ignorance becomes INTENTIONAL, that's where I draw the line.
There's a certain line that has to be drawn at some point where an OS feature isn't considered a monopolistic move. A web browser is a bundled application. A media player is a bundled application. DirectX is an API. It is a set of instructions on how the OS should talk to video hardware. Personally, I think this is a valid component to an Operating System. If someone decides they want to write a new sound device API, or a new input device API, should Microsoft then remove those core pieces from their OS for fear of being called on antitrust issues?
Also, OpenGL isn't a commercial entity as far as I know. SGI sort of helps guide the project now, but it's turned into a community work more than a corporate one.
Another bit is that it remains up to the developers which API to use. Many developers actually consider DirectX to be the superior of the two, easier to work with, and better supported. Some developers make OGL games and do quite well too (iD engine games), so obviously DX doesn't yet qualify as a monopolistic move.
Now, in Vista, the entire model for the OS is changing. How hardware is handled, everything. For a time, this means that everyone's going to be trying to catch up and release new versions of their code to work with Vista. OpenGL will have to do the same. OpenGL 2.1 will come out to work equivalently under Vista eventually. It is not Microsoft's responsibility to work with everyone in the entire computing world to make sure their code isn going to work on the next version of Windows.
There's nothing monopolistic in this case. It's an API for talking to hardware, which squarely belongs in the realm of the OS maker.
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Yes, there's a point of diminishing returns. Absolutely. I hit that wall myself many times in college.
And yes, course loads can get down-right evil. And commuting time can be a killer for some.
I'll gladly concede that your second year left you no free time. But what about 1,3 and 4? Summer terms? While you obviously had far less free time than most, are you saying you had 80+ hour weeks every week for four solid years?
I may appear to a bit dismissive to time concerns, but I've always been leery of people who claim they have no time. I heard that a lot in college from folks who were out partying every night and most weekends. Who made trips home every other week, and spent entire summers on vacation. I hear "I have no time" and it immediately translates in my head to "I'd rather be doing something other than X."
Personally, I squandered many opportunities for personal projects in college. But it wasn't because I didn't have the time to do them, it was because I wanted to do something else more (sleeping, drinking, dating, playing Frisbee etc.). Most people aren't honest with themselves over the difference between "time" and "priorities"
*sigh* As I've pointed out in follow-up comments, it's not about working beyond 40 hours. It's a bare minimum mentality that is possibly hinted at by a college grad who did nothing beyond their coursework. It's the unwillingness to extend themselves beyond what is absolutely required. Getting through college with just a set of grades but no personal projects, no extracurriculars, no volunteer work, nothing beyond the paper is a potential red flag that the person might not be interested in going above and beyond.
The most effective, amazing developer I know gets his shit done in 40 hours a week. But sometimes when things go off the rails, he puts in the extra hours needed to get everything back on track. When the need arises, he puts in the extra work. My issue isn't with effective 40hr/wk developers, my issue is with any worker who hits 40 hours and won't go an inch beyond. Getting to 22/23/24 (or whenever you graduate) as a programmer then going out into the world to find work, and not having anything except classwork to talk about, does not show well.
If you're a new coder with limited experience, you do need to "show" more. You don't have the resume to impress people, so you need to come up with something else.
It's not about working insane hours. It's about the strict 9-5 mentality and what it shows. Yes, there are some devs who can turn out pure gold in 8hrs a day and go home exactly on time. But they're pretty rare from what I've seen.
The mentality is more the "I am going to do the minimum required of me" that causes problems.
And remember, we're talking about developers with little to know professional experience. This is different than the guy who's been a developer for 20 years and worked on dozens of products/projects.
Young, inexperienced devs need to show they're willing to go the extra mile sometimes. Just doing what's required isn't always a good thing.
It's not about success or failure of the app that's important really, it's the fact that it exists that tells people something.
Fact is, everyone fails. A lot. In fact, I am more leery of hiring someone who has never failed over someone who has. That first crash is the hardest, and the later it comes the more disastrous to the person it can be. You learn more from failing than from succeeding etc.
It's about saying "I did this!" It doesn't have to sell a single unit. The existence of the thing shows effort, initiative, and experience outside of the classroom.
I think a lot of comments are lashing out at the "Don't Hire Inexperienced Developers" concept without really thinking about what's being said in the rest of the article.
What the author is really saying is "Don't hire developers fresh out of school who have nothing to show for themselves except coursework."
Why is this so important? It's important because it shows two things:
1) The developer only has theoretical, academic knowledge of programming
2) The developer isn't passionate about developing.
The first is a huge problem for any company hiring said developer. I don't know a single instance where what I have encountered in the working world matched closely at all to how my textbooks or professors told me things "should be". The mental shift required between school and work is large and can be very difficult to overcome for many.
The second point is a critical thing to consider especially if you're a small company or a startup. A-level developers and other IT folks are passionate about what they do. They have side projects. They have little tools and such that they create to help solve whatever task they're focusing on at the moment. Coming out of school with absolutely nothing beyond class assignments is a strong indicator that the developer is only interested in the bare-minimum requirements to get by. That's not to say they're not talented, just that they're looking for a 9-5 job where they're in at 9:00 and out at 5:00 and aren't interested in going the extra mile. These guys are terrific coders for large companies where there's a lot of maintenance type work to be done. They're productivity vampires though for small companies that need every member of the team to be highly efficient and high producing.
The article points out how easy it is to have side projects. To turn out a little app on a website or on a mobile platform that you can point back to and say "I did this."
To those who argue that there's just no time in a 4 year degree to do side projects like that... Where the hell did you go to school? Did you have a full-time 40hr/wk job totally outside of CS/IT during the same period that left you with only enough time outside of class to sleep? If MIT students can get through in 4 years and manage massively complex pranks, contribute to OSS projects and still graduate with high grades, what's everyone elses excuse?
Ok, Microsoft is found guilty of abusing its position of controlling the currently most popular PC OS on the market. Through bundling and anti-competitive practices they're nailed for being a monopoly.
The media player gets stripped out per an earlier EC case.
Now, in 2007, Opera complains about the browser bundling, saying that it gives Microsoft an unfair advantage in the browser wars. The EC says "Yeah, you're right! Ok MS, take out the bundled browser"
Microsoft complies, stripping out the IE user application from copies of Windows 7 to be distributed in Europe.
Opera and the EC, faced with getting exactly what they asked for, are now mad again because what they REALLY wanted Microsoft to do was to bundle a competing product with the base OS. They don't want a level playing field, they want to tip the scales in their favor (specifically to Opera).
I'm sorry, but there is a line being crossed here where we went from semi-valid to out-right ridiculous. Strip down the OS, fine. Let the OEMs decide what browser to install on a system. Let retailers sell $5 CDs containing Firefox, Opera, Safari etc with their copies of Windows 7. If you want the OS to be a neutral platform for applications, then it has to be just that. If you try to mandate what browser IS bundled, you're defeating the whole point and just creating a new monopoly for whoever the lucky guy is whose browser you choose (likely Opera).
Considering current browser usage statistics, I think the entire browser monopoly concept is antiquated. With IE currently holding around 41% of the total market, and Firefox with 47% (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) it's pretty clear that a) it's not a monopoly anymore and b) bundling is not hurting other browsers.
What this really feels like is Opera is tired of being in last place (and probably especially pissed that up-start Chrome blew past them in just a month or two) and instead of capturing marketshare with a more compelling product, they're going to try and legislate themselves into a stronger market position.
I think it depends on how tech and web savvy the company that you're applying to is. If you're applying for a job with an insurance company, bank, or other massive mega corp (even if they're a tech shop) it would probably hurt more than help since you have no way of knowing if the HR drone reading it knows the difference between a Mac and a PC. When you go to list a handle on your resume, you're depending on the person reading to know a) what it is and b) what to do about it. It's a big risk.
Now, if you're applying to a smaller company, one that is extremely tech savvy, I think it could help a lot.
I landed my current job in large part to the name I've built for myself online over the last decade. Of course, the job is all about online and community presence, so that's a bit of a different story, but it would have helped me with this company no matter the specific job.
The best idea I saw in the discussion was to go around yourself, collect all your favorite "Me" links from Google and then put together an online portfolio of sorts on a personal website. That way you can provide the link on your resume, and then very directly control what information they see if they look you up that way. It's all about controlling your virtual image, and this may be the best way to do it.
Unfortunately, the overall Mac community is spoiled by the vocal minority. The same thing happens to religious people in the US when crazy evangelicals start screaming from street corners.
The vocal minority sets the tone and is how the majority becomes seen by outsiders.
A common gripe I have with the Mac OS community is this seeming insistence that everything that is cool or nifty, or even useful, is somehow a rip-off of something Apple did first. If you look at articles like this one, you'd think Apple invented the on-desktop search bar (Google), or widgets/gadgets (DesktopX, Konfabulator).
Apple often does things *better* than other companies (with the exception of Dashboard) but they usually don't do it FIRST. This makes the claim that everyone rips off their stuff from Apple pretty silly.
Lets look at some of these claims in the article regarding what Microsoft is "stealing" from Apple:
1. Glowing Min/Max/Close Buttons
Ugh, I'm sorry, but this is not an Apple first thing. I've seen this in Windows custom UIs (WindowBlinds for example) for a good long while now, not to mention game UIs and a bunch of Flash applications. This is a very nice design element, and yes Apple did it well, but they didn't do it first.
2. "Instant Search"
Yes, I know... you're trying to compare it to Spotlight and the traditional Sherlock tool. Guess what though, well before Spotlight there was Google Desktop which gave you the in-frame search box. I like Spotlight a lot, it makes navigating files on my system a hell of a lot easier, but it's not new, and all similar search systems aren't instantly copycats of it.
3. Sidebar and Gadgets/Widgets
Like I said before, the Gadget/Widget thing has been around a LOT longer than Apple fans like to think. Dashboard was the first attempt to integrate them straight into the OS as a bundled feature, but it was pretty poorly implemented. Apple in this regard was several years late to the party. The MS Sidebar is also a fairly poor implementation... so I guess if anything you can accuse MS of stealing some of Apple's own bad design work.
4. The bundled apps "Photo Library" "DVD Maker" "Chess Titans" etc...
Umm... ok... I'll give you Apple folks this one. With the way MS broke apart the Outlook features into individual apps is a little too close to the iCal, Address Book, Mail.app scheme. This one is probably a straight-rip from the Apple playbook.
5. Flip3D a poor man's Expose
Bull. Flip3D is a cheesy way to show off the 3D capabilities in the desktop layer. It has nothing to do with Expose and the multiple ways to display everything currently running. I think Expose does things way better. Flip3D is a gimmick, nothing more. If MS wanted to ape the Expose design, they could have easily done it better.
There are a lot of things Apple does well, and the article does admit that Apple borrows, often even from Windows, to get its feature set. However, the claim that these features were taken from Apple as opposed to being taken from wherever Apple themselves snagged them is presumptuous.
NWN Multiplayer, and the associated accounts through Bioware were ALWAYS free, there was never anything even approaching monthly charges from Bioware or Atari. Certain Persistant World networks might have tried to charge a fee, but that's the same as someone charging you for access to a private Battlefield 2 server.
The only thing you lose for not having the hard drive is saving, but for that you just get a memory card. It will play on a standard TV like all 360 games, but of course looks best in high def.
Listing "specs" for a console review is kind of pointless.
His M.O worked because it's entertaining for those who agree, and those who disagree watch because he pisses them off so much. Howard Stern perfected the method. Rush Limbaugh has people listening to him just so they can "know what the morons are saying" etc. Pissing people off is a great way to high ratings.
Like it or not, hate O'Reilly or not, there is a piece of truth to what he's saying.
People now are more separated than they are connected. Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there. This is pretty much the norm.
What were they doing instead? Video games, TV, movies etc.
Look around you at most of the people you may work with in IT. How many of them are social creatures, going out and partying on weekends etc? Yes, it's a bad stereotype, that computer geeks are antisocial misfits, but all stereotypes come from truth.
Look around a college campus during class change. How many of those people have a phone attached to their head, completely ignoring all the real people around them? Sure they're connected to another person at that moment, but they're cut off from the physical world they're walking through almost entirely.
Gamers, especially hardcore MMO players, are notorious for spending days if not weeks doing little more than playing their games. I've known several people to flunk out of college, lose jobs, lose significant others, over their singular obsession to their games.
None of this is the fault of technology, because technology is a neutral medium that people choose how to use. What it does do however is make it easier for people who would seal themselves off from the world, to do so. You can get groceries over the net, there are dating services to avoid having to pick people up in person, heck you don't even need to go to the video store anymore with services like NetFlix. Technology has made it increasingly easy to avoid interacting with other people. When was the last time you sat on your porch and chatted with a neigbor? Used to be that was the main form of evening entertainment, now it's becoming increasingly rare as people venture out of their house less and less.
This isn't a comment on "these people are lame!" because it's not one particular group that is falling victim to this. It's the "cool" kids too now that they're getting hooked on text messaging, IMs, console gaming etc. It's a growing problem that is hard for lots of people here to recognize because we're in the middle of it. We don't like to think that maybe we're less social or less connected with the outside world than we should be.
While poorly worded, O'Reilly actually has a point burried beneath his typical inflamatory rhetoric.
There are 7 people aside from myself in my office who got Wiis on launch day.
I've been having a blast so far, and no update problems yet!
- Problem Solving
- People Skills
- Wider range of experience/exposure
- Practical knowledge
Tech Support is an entry-level job that a high school kid can get without college or too much experience. You'll learn a great deal very quickly that will provide you with a strong base of skills (both technical and inter-personal) that will help make subsequent jobs much easier to get. Don't turn your nose up at it just because it's not as glamorous as creating applications (depending on where you eventually end up, coding can be extremely mundane). Everyone has to start somewhere.While most problems will be simple, no-brainers, others will be devilishly tricky, especially when you're working under all sorts of odd restrictions (reformatting is actually a last-resort effort, most users will not accept this as a method of fixing). It's about giving sound advice with limited information (they'll never tell you what they did that broke the machine) as quickly as possible.
Some users are just dumb. What makes some of these people worse is they don't realize it, and will proceed to ignore everything you tell them, go do something else, break it worse, then come back to blame you. This will be especially common since you're 17 and people will discount you for your age. If you can learn to handle these people gracefully, you will have gained possibly the most valuable job skill there is; dealing with difficult people
Tinkering with your home PC is one thing, having to work on a variety of systems ranging from Windows98 to Linux to MacOS (depending on where you work) and soon Vista will expose you to systems and issues you might not have otherwise encountered. Also, you don't have first-hand knowledge of how the system was setup, so you'll be forced to learn quickly what is going on, on a given system. This will force you to have a much broader understanding of operating systems from a user and support perspective.
Many of the folks I went to college with who were coders, or who I've worked with since college have great theoretical knowledge of systems. They know how things SHOULD work, but toss a wrench in the gearbox by installing some software on a system they weren't counting on, and you can throw some of them for quite a loop. Working in the trenches will give you a very practical understanding of the user environment that will be very helpful when you start coding applications for that environment.
I'm not counting services (XBL, a MMO subscription) or software in the cost. I'm talking about core costs to having a gaming device. Online gaming is not yet completely central to gaming. It's still optional.
To start, I'm primarily a PC gamer. I like the genres more, I like the controls more, and I like having the best looking visuals. However, not for a second can I delude myself into thinking that PC gaming is cheaper than modern console gaming. A lot of people here seem to be railing on PC gaming being cheaper with the argument that you have to get completely new hardware every 4-6 years.
A modern, well-equipped gaming PC will run you at the moment probably close to $1,000.
A modern console will average you about $500 with extra controllers and addon-bits (I'm averaging from the Wii to the PS3).
We're not going to include the cost of a TV (high def or otherwise) into the cost of the console, since many people would have one regardless of their console purchase.
Ok. So you spend $500 every 4 years when your new console iteration comes out.
Now, what happens if you don't upgrade that PC for 4 years? Chances are the games in year 4 won't run. PC gamers need to continually feed cash into their systems to be able to play current games. The console will play games released for it the same at year 1 as year 4. For the sake of argument, I'm going to say that PC gamers will try to be frugal and just upgrade their video card yearly, and they'll be price conscious about it and buy one card behind current bleeding edge. Those run you about $250.
So, in terms of hardware, after 4 years the spending looks something like this:
Console gamer: $500.
PC Gamer: $2,000. ($1000 PC + $250/yr)
And that's a very conservative estimate for the PC gamer. I know I put way more into my PC yearly. RAM, video cards, and then every four years or so you probably need to do such a fundamental upgrade for new tech (AGP -> PCIe, the move to 64bit, whatever) that you'll essentially buy a new PC again.
The console is clearly the cheapest gaming option. That doesn't make it "better" by any means, it just simply is cheaper.
nvidia's drivers have always been the better of the two, but they've typically been a version or two behind the Windows drivers, and without a lot of other X tweaks, still run sluggish. Getting Linux optimized for gaming is too much work to make it a viable alternative to Windows in this instance.
Optimized OS, set hardware profiles, little to no multi-tasking... do you mean like an XBox?
Usable for gamers... except for the fact that most games don't run under Linux period, and those that do through Cedega are often hit-and-miss and not "supported" until months if not years after release. Oh, and 3D card drivers tend to suck horribly for Linux... So aside from there not being any games really, and drivers not fully working, yeah, it's just fine for gamer use.
It's not DRM. At no point does the game become unplayable. Entering your sereal key to your account merely allows you to download updates and fixes beyond 1.0x, which was pretty stable and full-featured for a release version of a game.
So actually, there's no DRM. It's not added in a patch. Your game isn't rendered unplayable, you just have to register with Stardock to get further updates.
And here I am, just outside of the network over in Wayne County (right next door practically). Maybe other counties in the state will start picking this up. It's not a rival to telcos since it's so much slower than broadband offerings, but it would be nice to sit outside away from my own WAP and get some net connectivity :)
For years my sister was the same way. She'd have botched up her PC to the point of it needing to be reformatted at least once every few months. I told her she couldn't install all those P2P apps, explorer toolbars and things like WeatherBug on her PC anymore because they load a ton of shit that kills her PC. She retorted with "It's my computer and I'll install anything I want on it!" To which I said OK, but I've told you how to not break your computer, so if you do it again, I'm not fixing it.
Ignorance of computers is one thing, and I can understand it to some extent. But when that ignorance becomes INTENTIONAL, that's where I draw the line.
There's a certain line that has to be drawn at some point where an OS feature isn't considered a monopolistic move. A web browser is a bundled application. A media player is a bundled application. DirectX is an API. It is a set of instructions on how the OS should talk to video hardware. Personally, I think this is a valid component to an Operating System. If someone decides they want to write a new sound device API, or a new input device API, should Microsoft then remove those core pieces from their OS for fear of being called on antitrust issues?
Also, OpenGL isn't a commercial entity as far as I know. SGI sort of helps guide the project now, but it's turned into a community work more than a corporate one.
Another bit is that it remains up to the developers which API to use. Many developers actually consider DirectX to be the superior of the two, easier to work with, and better supported. Some developers make OGL games and do quite well too (iD engine games), so obviously DX doesn't yet qualify as a monopolistic move.
Now, in Vista, the entire model for the OS is changing. How hardware is handled, everything. For a time, this means that everyone's going to be trying to catch up and release new versions of their code to work with Vista. OpenGL will have to do the same. OpenGL 2.1 will come out to work equivalently under Vista eventually. It is not Microsoft's responsibility to work with everyone in the entire computing world to make sure their code isn going to work on the next version of Windows.
There's nothing monopolistic in this case. It's an API for talking to hardware, which squarely belongs in the realm of the OS maker.