There are plenty of guys on the football team that I knew who also did well in math, physics, english, etc. We called them "student athletes" and some were quite good at doing both. To say that people excelled at sports at the expense of other activities/knowledge opportunities is somewhat disingenuous and almost reeks of geek elitism.
However, you are correct in identifying the pedestal that we seem to place our sports heroes on. Ace your SAT/ACTs in high school? So what. Catching the winning touchdown, scoring the last second basket to win the game? Perceived Immortality and admiration from peers and the "hottest" girls in school. In reality, you end up like the uncle in Napoleon Dynamite, stuck in a cubicle somewhere trying to relive your glory days.
I don't think nerdom is necessarily at the expense of outside activities, it just ends up being easier to do so. Bullies (invariably linked to the jock class, although the worst bullies I had were 1) preppy rich kids 2) kids who wanted to be preppy rich kids so they imitated their idols and 3) just ignorant thugs) are not to be worried about in the confines of home and it's easiest to just stay home and lose yourself in computing. Before computers, I suppose we had the same kind of folks who lost themselves in books, or art?
But, how exactly does one cheer/support a kid who's not into "easy to metric" things? For example, in football, you can objectively identify strengths and weaknesses and work to support your athlete in over-coming deficiencies. But what if your kid is a nerd? My dad had no idea what I was doing on my commodore 64 all those years ago, and truth be told, neither did I. I was fucking around on the computer, finally discovered BBSs, PBX codes, 800-scanning, etc on my own. I mean, what can a parent do? "Did you scan your 800 block today?" I suppose there's a disconnect between technologically savvy students and their children, and thus seem to get lost in the shuffle.
As for educational priorities, I can see how it works: The best and brightest (the nerds.. and not all nerds are computer nerds. I was a biology/computer nerd) find their passions and go to town. The rest? The guy that lived and breathed football but couldn't make it to the next level? What's he to do? Car salesman? Middle Management (sometimes upper management)? A lot of them end up as football coaches. Since no high-school that I can think of has full-time coaches (as in, that's all they do.. I could be wrong... Texas and Florida take their football seriously, I've heard), they also have to teach a few classes. Math, Civics, Sociology, Spanish, or whatever "fluff course" they can throw them into. These guys end up becoming very cliquish. A coach clique. They want the best for their athletes and the principal, who may have also been an athlete, allocates funds to buy new uniforms and pads for the team and the biology class doesn't get scalpels to cut up cats. (true story in my case).
Personally, I view sports as kind of an anathema to education. School should be a place to learn how to learn, not just throw a ball around. Granted, through sports many kids get a chance at college scholarships that might otherwise not be available to them. Remember, for many colleges, sports programs are profitable to run and alumni donations can be tracked over time based on how well the team performs. I'm not sure I'm happy with that, but it's their money, right?
Anyway, in my perfect world, kids go to school to learn how to learn. Sports should be an encouraged activity, but the emphasis should always be on education, not sports. Now, could there be a sports education curriculum? Sure! Applying math/statistics is one way to do it. Imagine biological systems studies for the swim team or even track and field for learning how to apply physics (water & air dynamics) to those sports, and computer nerds could develop software for modeling/analyzing data (might be over their heads, but I think with sufficient motivation they could do it). If somehow, the nerds could be brought into the fold as PARTICIPANTS and rewarded as such, then perhaps the mentality will change.
Why is it that out of the 4 calls I've made to Lenovo that I've gotten 2 "atlantans" with heavy indian accents? Interesting.
I must say, though, the scripts they use still suck. I had to order "recovery product CDs" for my thinkpad X31. They arrived DIRTY (fingerprints all over them) and one was scratched and couldn't be read. I managed to get an old, black-sounding man who insisted that my discs were fine, and then proceeded to tell me that I could not install the OS from an external optical drive and hung up on me when I called him out on that. (Some of you x-series fans will note the ridiculousness of the assertion that I must use the built-in optical drive to install the OS).:: sigh:: Anyway, I got another guy who noted the file it failed on (both on the external drive and also when I tried to copy the contents of the CD to my hard-drive on two other computers), but they ended up sending me the wrong CDs.. I eventually just said fuck it and installed an OEM XP copy that fails WGA, but passes activation (has to do with the IBM "big seven" issue), and that's good enough for me. I was > close to just installing OS X on it again.:P
I don't know why HUDs haven't been more widely adapted, especially in the realm of motorcycles. Granted, my motorcycle doesn't have a windscreen, but for the highway cruisers and and what-not, I would think it invaluable to keep all the important information a rider needs available without having to take eyes off the road (a split second can kill). Now integrate with gps mapping, etc and we'd have a winner.
Exactly. Windows 7 is good enough to keep me using Windows if I buy another Windows machine. I was running the RC on my old Thinkpad and it actually had decent performance. Unfortunately, I reinstalled Win XP and, well, I don't care what anyone claims, XP is still faster on older hardware (and yes, I turned off all the eye-candy stuff on the thinkpad). However, if I bought a new machine today and it came with 7, I'd keep it, unlike Vista.
/* Wait, how does comparing a music player to a cell phone (and the very different consumers of each) actually help here? */
It's the commodity, consumer electronics market. If you don't see the similarities between the markets and this, well, you're being obtuse. Android presents the exact same sort of situation that "playsforsure' introduced to the market in an attempt to capture marketshare from Apple. How well did that go? I imagine it will be Apple leading the way here, and everyone else fighting for the scraps./* And yet, you can take it from me only from my cold, dead fingers... */
No one gives a shit about what *the geeks* think. Unless you plan to buy 10 million phones, it means nothing to the consumer market./* Android is no-cost to the manufacturers.*/ Linus is no-cost to the manufacturers. Other than a few niches, I'd say we can learn that cost isn't the major deciding facter in the production of consumer hardware. I will say that I find it ironic that Android will be more instrumental in advancing Linux in the consumer space than any other initiative thus far. Go Android. But then again, OS X was able to do what Linux still hasn't been able to do: UNIX on the average user's desktop. OS X isn't exactly reknowned for "choice", either./* Its a "win-win" for the phone makers. */
Only potentially. If it devolves into a million forks that have to be independently maintained by each manufacturer, then it could become the nail that cements iPhone as "the" phone.
I will be highly, albeit pleasantly, surprised if Android overtakes the market the way iPhone has in the manner that you suggest.
As I mentioned in another post, choice is over-rated for this sort of market. There's a billion "choices" in the Portable Media market that's not iPod: From Creative, to Sony, the korean brands Cowon and iRiver, Sansa, to the hundreds of shitty little chinese knock-offs, there's plenty of choice, all fighting to be a better iPod than iPod. And yet, iPod is still king. Even with the industry move to 256kb/s mp3s, with no DRM, why does iPod still hold sway over the market? I personally think my Cowon D2 is head and shoulders above the last gen iPod (when I purchased it) in terms of features, customization, and audio quality, but Cowon is a less than a niche brand here in America.
Choice can hurt.
Start listing a giant checklist of features and most consumers' eyes just glaze over. Then they just go with the iPod.
Open-source is a non-issue, as well. Look how awesome it's done for Linux on the desktop. I.e., not at all. If anything, Open Source apps have done more to advance Open Source than Linux has, the OS is pretty much irrelevant (witness, say, Audacity's succes on Windows, OS X and Linux) to most consumers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Android. I've got plans to pick up a next-gen Android phone (the G1 was lacking quite a bit when I was shopping for phones), and if I had to do any sort of phone dev right now, it'd be android over iphone. But never underestimate the power of having a single, controlled platform. Sometimes Freedom From Choice is a good thing, especially in the consumer market.
Look at the iPod. There's hundreds of competitors, all fighting for the tiny slice of pie that isn't iPod. I can go down to the bodega down the street and buy a $15 mp3 player, and yet iPod still has the lion's share of the market.
Choice in and of itself is over-rated. You have to have a compelling product (or brand, even) to get people to notice.
(I have a Cowon D2 as my PMP, btw. People look at me like I'm retarded when I pull it out. "It's not an iPod?")
I was about to make the exact same suggestion. Good one.
I'm working through some Processing stuff right now, gonna add arduino later and finally tie it all together and do some interactive a/v work with my music live show. I'm pretty stoked. I gave up developing software years ago, but for the first time in a long while, I'm actually excited again.
You're deluding yourself. Employers don't give a shit about breadth of education in most cases. They don't care about learning subjects outside of "core competencies". That might be the excuse they're vomiting out of some seminar or business theory textbook, but I've yet to meet an employer (and I've had many) who actually believed or practiced this to any degree. I've found most employers (and perhaps your experiences are different) care more about: Are you clean? Will you show up? Can you do the work in a satisfactory manner so I won't have to continuously check in and leave me to talking about golf with my buddies?
Seriously, that's some fairyland bullshit. I wish we could say that we lived in a world where outside interests and capacity for outside learning was encouraged, but that resides in the same place true "meritocracies" reside: In your imagination.
/* however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. */
If you're going to a party, thinking about math, you're doing it wrong. Very, very wrong. Dork.
Your advice is dependent on how you self-identify.
Are you a programmer?
Or are you that happens to know how to write programs to apply them to problems to support ?
I'd rather be the latter. I currently work with audio encoding and production. My "programming" is basically limited to supporting this role. When people ask what I do, I don't say I'm a programmer.
Same with other fields. If I decided to be a Biologist, I'd be a biologist. I'd be able to leverage my tech skills to produce applications to support my needs as a biologist (statistical/data analysis, data management, etc etc).
This is what I think the GP was going for. The need for a "programmer" is lessening and instead employers are looking for s that also can write programs that directly support the needs of the other s and can more quickly produce results because you don't have to spend several days trying to describe the business to the generic programmer because you do that work, every day.
Perhaps that's why we have to work with so many shitty applications out there. Ask for X, but programmer doesn't really understand X, and person writing the specs doesn't really understand how to describe X, so you get a program that sorta meets the requirements for X, and everyone just puts up with it because no one knows how to just write it themselves because they've got other shit to do.
Well... Judging by my daily 6 mile walk home from work.. the sidewalks are amazingly empty of both adults and teens. It's really interesting to see a city of, what, 10 million? (Los Angeles) and the sidewalks are a fucking ghost-town with the exception of the "corner mexican crews" that gather after work to drink and piss on the building...
It's the same head-in-the-sand people that try and say "but but but.. bit-torrent is used for legal purposes!" and ignore that 99% of the bit-torrent traffic out there is "copyright infrigment activities". Yes, the other poster and his 12 internet buddies only use it for legitimate purposes, but the other million people (including myself) pirate the fuck out the games.
/* Would you rather have 50 people buy your album at $10/pop, or have a song uploaded to youtube, have 5,000 people watch it for free (potentially $50,0000 in lost sales, according to the RIAA), and have 250 people buy the album? */
I can't see why either of these is mutually exclusive.
I have a few records, we've sold a few hundred. It's probably been downloaded 10x that. At the very worst, it fucks up our estimations on how many to press and we sit on unsold copies until we're 70. At best, the pressed CDs become a commodity and sell for $$$ on eBay. Well, that's what happens these days with extreme short run 7" (vinyl) pressings in the Indie World. Either way, I'd prefer everyone buy the record, from a strictly financial standpoint, simply because my band is unable to tour regularly. We all have day jobs, and hell, I live 2000 miles away from the band right now. But, at the end of the day, if it comes down to download vs. non-purchase/obscurity, I'll be happy that someone cared enough to download it. It's a similar thing with our shows: We never turn anyone away if money's an issue. So, you can't pay for my band's CD? Fucking download it, wear it out, come see us live and buy a T-Shirt.
Granted, it was post-basic and he was in Korea, and this is my interpretation of his story:
"We need a starter for that truck and we need that done today."
Hrm... we have no starters. Well, the Army uses the same truck, I wonder if they have any.
*phone call verifies they have them*
Drives over to the canteen "I need a side of beef and 2 cases of beer for Col So and So." "Col. so and so? Shit, here you go!" Drives over to Army base and meets with supply sergeant "I need a dozen starters for the truck" "Man, I can't do that, let me call the captain." Captain: "Man what are you doing on my base asking me for starters? Don't you Air force guys have any? ho ho ho ho" "Ha ha ha, you're right. But you know, I've got this side of beef here and 2 cases of beer, when's the last time you guys had a base barbeque?" "How many you need?" "12" "I'll give you 6" "Deal!" (even though he only needed... 1)
It's amazing how much you can apply this to the "real world" as well.
I called and mentioned this to my dad, an Air Force veteran (vietnam, Panama, Gulf War I) and he just chuckled.
Basically, he said part of basic training, at least when he was in, was to teach you how to beg, borrow and steal. He can't count the times he was given a "mission" with no tools (for example: Mop this floor, but with no bucket, mop or cleaning agents.. or more nefariously "We need a new $PART for that truck over there, today" with no $PART in stock with a 6 week procurement time.. With some clever bartering with the Canteen and then with the Army base down the road (Air Force has better food), he'd "procure" 6 starters and get the job done.) and part of your "training" was to figure out how to locate, negotiate, or steal what you needed from someone else. They don't hand you everything in a war, some times you gotta figure it out yourself. If your buddy was truly not given any ammo in Camp Victory, a place filled with ammo, and couldn't figure out how to barter for it, well, according to my dad, maybe he's not cut out for military life. Then again, maybe things have changed since then.
What about launching an expanding foam/gel to create a large block of "debris catcher", say the size of a half-football field. The concept is similar to what bow hunters use to practice on, and in indoor shooting ranges. Launch a canister into a trajectory to intercept a swath of debris, deploy foam/gel, absorb the impact and embed the debris. Ensure that the trajectory will either take the debris out of earth orbit or fall back into the atmosphere over an ocean. At the very least, you get a large block that could be pushed back into the atmosphere later in a future mission...
Hrm, maybe that could be a way to capture satellites, as well. Launch a big foam deployment capsule that engulfs/envelopes a satellite with enough mass to pull it from orbit, then recover the remains on the ground for examination...
Come on Amazon. It still looks like a plastic toy. For god's sakes, team up with Sony or Apple (kidnap Jonathon Ives). Alternatively, license out your DRM tech so Sony can build a reader compatible with your service.
Frankly, I can't wait until someone figures out a way to make a digital version of the public library. Make it like O'Reilly's Safari: Monthly subscription, X amount of titles on your "shelf" at any given time (tiered subscription?), with the option to "buy it" for permanent downloads (or just buy it outright and skip the sub-shelf), etc. I'd gladly pay $15/month for something like this, much like I already do with Napster To Go.
There's a saying in the industry: Physical Dollars, Digital Pennies. And it's unfortunately true.
This is also why you see the emergence of these obnoxious 360 deals because the labels are desperately trying to keep their cash flows up by dipping their hands into areas that used to be the domain of the artist: live shows, merchandise, etc.
Anyone thinking anyone is getting rich off of digital distribution other than the hosting companies is seriously deluding themselves. The "Industry" for the most part hates digital downloads, hates iTunes and Steve Jobs, and hates the internet.
As I'm also an independent artist, I make as much money digitally as I did physically, which is exactly zero, so I stand to gain quite a bit from the digital revolution. The dinosaurs will adapt or die, but I have a feeling that the next "big labels" are already in existence, trying to figure out how to make the numbers work.
Actually, when compared to humans, it's not that great. A human could've crossed that 12 miles in a day. Humans can scale that "mountain" and the "crater" in a matter of minutes. Basically, a Human team could've done the entire 5 year mission (so far) in less than a couple days. In fact, with a geologist on board, they probably could've done even more science as other opportunites presented themselves.
I worked my ass off through college. Two jobs, school, and I don't remember any of it due to sleep deprivation. The insult to injury is I didn't even get my degree after 10 years.
I'd say the plan is perfect if you know exactly what you want to do with your life and go full-bore. But I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I was trying to use college to figure out what my actual interests were. If I had it to do all over again, I'd have taken out the student loans in the beginning of my college career and not worked so much. Much of what you get out of college are in the people you meet and the experiences you share (trying not to sound like a Hallmark card). I wish I had partied more, and fucked more girls, because the guys that did that? Yeah, they're my bosses now. I thought I was being responsible but it ended up with: $30k in student loans and nothing to show for it.
When my kids go to college, while I want them to learn the benefits of working, I also want them to take time to enjoy life while they explore their options for the future. I compare it to the plight of a single, teen mother. Yep, at that point, most of her life's dreams are out the window: She's a single mom and that's that. Time to forget about having fun, time to grow up. She might get to resume her "life" at age 40 when her kid turns 18, but effectively, that's it.
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There are plenty of guys on the football team that I knew who also did well in math, physics, english, etc. We called them "student athletes" and some were quite good at doing both. To say that people excelled at sports at the expense of other activities/knowledge opportunities is somewhat disingenuous and almost reeks of geek elitism.
However, you are correct in identifying the pedestal that we seem to place our sports heroes on. Ace your SAT/ACTs in high school? So what. Catching the winning touchdown, scoring the last second basket to win the game? Perceived Immortality and admiration from peers and the "hottest" girls in school. In reality, you end up like the uncle in Napoleon Dynamite, stuck in a cubicle somewhere trying to relive your glory days.
I don't think nerdom is necessarily at the expense of outside activities, it just ends up being easier to do so. Bullies (invariably linked to the jock class, although the worst bullies I had were 1) preppy rich kids 2) kids who wanted to be preppy rich kids so they imitated their idols and 3) just ignorant thugs) are not to be worried about in the confines of home and it's easiest to just stay home and lose yourself in computing. Before computers, I suppose we had the same kind of folks who lost themselves in books, or art?
But, how exactly does one cheer/support a kid who's not into "easy to metric" things? For example, in football, you can objectively identify strengths and weaknesses and work to support your athlete in over-coming deficiencies. But what if your kid is a nerd? My dad had no idea what I was doing on my commodore 64 all those years ago, and truth be told, neither did I. I was fucking around on the computer, finally discovered BBSs, PBX codes, 800-scanning, etc on my own. I mean, what can a parent do? "Did you scan your 800 block today?" I suppose there's a disconnect between technologically savvy students and their children, and thus seem to get lost in the shuffle.
As for educational priorities, I can see how it works: The best and brightest (the nerds.. and not all nerds are computer nerds. I was a biology/computer nerd) find their passions and go to town. The rest? The guy that lived and breathed football but couldn't make it to the next level? What's he to do? Car salesman? Middle Management (sometimes upper management)? A lot of them end up as football coaches. Since no high-school that I can think of has full-time coaches (as in, that's all they do.. I could be wrong... Texas and Florida take their football seriously, I've heard), they also have to teach a few classes. Math, Civics, Sociology, Spanish, or whatever "fluff course" they can throw them into. These guys end up becoming very cliquish. A coach clique. They want the best for their athletes and the principal, who may have also been an athlete, allocates funds to buy new uniforms and pads for the team and the biology class doesn't get scalpels to cut up cats. (true story in my case).
Personally, I view sports as kind of an anathema to education. School should be a place to learn how to learn, not just throw a ball around. Granted, through sports many kids get a chance at college scholarships that might otherwise not be available to them. Remember, for many colleges, sports programs are profitable to run and alumni donations can be tracked over time based on how well the team performs. I'm not sure I'm happy with that, but it's their money, right?
Anyway, in my perfect world, kids go to school to learn how to learn. Sports should be an encouraged activity, but the emphasis should always be on education, not sports. Now, could there be a sports education curriculum? Sure! Applying math/statistics is one way to do it. Imagine biological systems studies for the swim team or even track and field for learning how to apply physics (water & air dynamics) to those sports, and computer nerds could develop software for modeling/analyzing data (might be over their heads, but I think with sufficient motivation they could do it). If somehow, the nerds could be brought into the fold as PARTICIPANTS and rewarded as such, then perhaps the mentality will change.
Hrm, I'm wandering off point.
Why is it that out of the 4 calls I've made to Lenovo that I've gotten 2 "atlantans" with heavy indian accents? Interesting.
I must say, though, the scripts they use still suck. I had to order "recovery product CDs" for my thinkpad X31. They arrived DIRTY (fingerprints all over them) and one was scratched and couldn't be read. I managed to get an old, black-sounding man who insisted that my discs were fine, and then proceeded to tell me that I could not install the OS from an external optical drive and hung up on me when I called him out on that. (Some of you x-series fans will note the ridiculousness of the assertion that I must use the built-in optical drive to install the OS). :: sigh :: Anyway, I got another guy who noted the file it failed on (both on the external drive and also when I tried to copy the contents of the CD to my hard-drive on two other computers), but they ended up sending me the wrong CDs.. I eventually just said fuck it and installed an OEM XP copy that fails WGA, but passes activation (has to do with the IBM "big seven" issue), and that's good enough for me. I was > close to just installing OS X on it again. :P
I don't know why HUDs haven't been more widely adapted, especially in the realm of motorcycles. Granted, my motorcycle doesn't have a windscreen, but for the highway cruisers and and what-not, I would think it invaluable to keep all the important information a rider needs available without having to take eyes off the road (a split second can kill). Now integrate with gps mapping, etc and we'd have a winner.
Exactly. Windows 7 is good enough to keep me using Windows if I buy another Windows machine. I was running the RC on my old Thinkpad and it actually had decent performance. Unfortunately, I reinstalled Win XP and, well, I don't care what anyone claims, XP is still faster on older hardware (and yes, I turned off all the eye-candy stuff on the thinkpad). However, if I bought a new machine today and it came with 7, I'd keep it, unlike Vista.
bah, formatting. And I meant Linux, not Linus. I'm sure he's a freed-man by now.
/* Wait, how does comparing a music player to a cell phone (and the very different consumers of each) actually help here? */
It's the commodity, consumer electronics market. If you don't see the similarities between the markets and this, well, you're being obtuse. Android presents the exact same sort of situation that "playsforsure' introduced to the market in an attempt to capture marketshare from Apple. How well did that go? I imagine it will be Apple leading the way here, and everyone else fighting for the scraps. /* And yet, you can take it from me only from my cold, dead fingers... */
No one gives a shit about what *the geeks* think. Unless you plan to buy 10 million phones, it means nothing to the consumer market. /* Android is no-cost to the manufacturers.*/ /* Its a "win-win" for the phone makers. */
Linus is no-cost to the manufacturers. Other than a few niches, I'd say we can learn that cost isn't the major deciding facter in the production of consumer hardware. I will say that I find it ironic that Android will be more instrumental in advancing Linux in the consumer space than any other initiative thus far. Go Android. But then again, OS X was able to do what Linux still hasn't been able to do: UNIX on the average user's desktop. OS X isn't exactly reknowned for "choice", either.
Only potentially. If it devolves into a million forks that have to be independently maintained by each manufacturer, then it could become the nail that cements iPhone as "the" phone.
I will be highly, albeit pleasantly, surprised if Android overtakes the market the way iPhone has in the manner that you suggest.
As I mentioned in another post, choice is over-rated for this sort of market. There's a billion "choices" in the Portable Media market that's not iPod: From Creative, to Sony, the korean brands Cowon and iRiver, Sansa, to the hundreds of shitty little chinese knock-offs, there's plenty of choice, all fighting to be a better iPod than iPod. And yet, iPod is still king. Even with the industry move to 256kb/s mp3s, with no DRM, why does iPod still hold sway over the market? I personally think my Cowon D2 is head and shoulders above the last gen iPod (when I purchased it) in terms of features, customization, and audio quality, but Cowon is a less than a niche brand here in America.
Choice can hurt.
Start listing a giant checklist of features and most consumers' eyes just glaze over. Then they just go with the iPod.
Open-source is a non-issue, as well. Look how awesome it's done for Linux on the desktop. I.e., not at all. If anything, Open Source apps have done more to advance Open Source than Linux has, the OS is pretty much irrelevant (witness, say, Audacity's succes on Windows, OS X and Linux) to most consumers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Android. I've got plans to pick up a next-gen Android phone (the G1 was lacking quite a bit when I was shopping for phones), and if I had to do any sort of phone dev right now, it'd be android over iphone. But never underestimate the power of having a single, controlled platform. Sometimes Freedom From Choice is a good thing, especially in the consumer market.
I disagree.
Look at the iPod. There's hundreds of competitors, all fighting for the tiny slice of pie that isn't iPod. I can go down to the bodega down the street and buy a $15 mp3 player, and yet iPod still has the lion's share of the market.
Choice in and of itself is over-rated. You have to have a compelling product (or brand, even) to get people to notice.
(I have a Cowon D2 as my PMP, btw. People look at me like I'm retarded when I pull it out. "It's not an iPod?")
I was about to make the exact same suggestion. Good one.
I'm working through some Processing stuff right now, gonna add arduino later and finally tie it all together and do some interactive a/v work with my music live show. I'm pretty stoked. I gave up developing software years ago, but for the first time in a long while, I'm actually excited again.
You're deluding yourself. Employers don't give a shit about breadth of education in most cases. They don't care about learning subjects outside of "core competencies". That might be the excuse they're vomiting out of some seminar or business theory textbook, but I've yet to meet an employer (and I've had many) who actually believed or practiced this to any degree. I've found most employers (and perhaps your experiences are different) care more about: Are you clean? Will you show up? Can you do the work in a satisfactory manner so I won't have to continuously check in and leave me to talking about golf with my buddies?
Seriously, that's some fairyland bullshit. I wish we could say that we lived in a world where outside interests and capacity for outside learning was encouraged, but that resides in the same place true "meritocracies" reside: In your imagination.
/* however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. */
If you're going to a party, thinking about math, you're doing it wrong. Very, very wrong. Dork.
So....
you admit to being one of the people that fucked it up for everyone else?
Congratulations. You're a fucking douchebag. I hope you get cancer and die.
Your advice is dependent on how you self-identify.
Are you a programmer?
Or are you that happens to know how to write programs to apply them to problems to support ?
I'd rather be the latter. I currently work with audio encoding and production. My "programming" is basically limited to supporting this role. When people ask what I do, I don't say I'm a programmer.
Same with other fields. If I decided to be a Biologist, I'd be a biologist. I'd be able to leverage my tech skills to produce applications to support my needs as a biologist (statistical/data analysis, data management, etc etc).
This is what I think the GP was going for. The need for a "programmer" is lessening and instead employers are looking for s that also can write programs that directly support the needs of the other s and can more quickly produce results because you don't have to spend several days trying to describe the business to the generic programmer because you do that work, every day.
Perhaps that's why we have to work with so many shitty applications out there. Ask for X, but programmer doesn't really understand X, and person writing the specs doesn't really understand how to describe X, so you get a program that sorta meets the requirements for X, and everyone just puts up with it because no one knows how to just write it themselves because they've got other shit to do.
Well... Judging by my daily 6 mile walk home from work.. the sidewalks are amazingly empty of both adults and teens. It's really interesting to see a city of, what, 10 million? (Los Angeles) and the sidewalks are a fucking ghost-town with the exception of the "corner mexican crews" that gather after work to drink and piss on the building...
It's the same head-in-the-sand people that try and say "but but but.. bit-torrent is used for legal purposes!" and ignore that 99% of the bit-torrent traffic out there is "copyright infrigment activities". Yes, the other poster and his 12 internet buddies only use it for legitimate purposes, but the other million people (including myself) pirate the fuck out the games.
/* Would you rather have 50 people buy your album at $10/pop, or have a song uploaded to youtube, have 5,000 people watch it for free (potentially $50,0000 in lost sales, according to the RIAA), and have 250 people buy the album? */
I can't see why either of these is mutually exclusive.
I have a few records, we've sold a few hundred. It's probably been downloaded 10x that. At the very worst, it fucks up our estimations on how many to press and we sit on unsold copies until we're 70. At best, the pressed CDs become a commodity and sell for $$$ on eBay. Well, that's what happens these days with extreme short run 7" (vinyl) pressings in the Indie World. Either way, I'd prefer everyone buy the record, from a strictly financial standpoint, simply because my band is unable to tour regularly. We all have day jobs, and hell, I live 2000 miles away from the band right now. But, at the end of the day, if it comes down to download vs. non-purchase/obscurity, I'll be happy that someone cared enough to download it. It's a similar thing with our shows: We never turn anyone away if money's an issue. So, you can't pay for my band's CD? Fucking download it, wear it out, come see us live and buy a T-Shirt.
Actually, you're not far off.
Granted, it was post-basic and he was in Korea, and this is my interpretation of his story:
"We need a starter for that truck and we need that done today."
Hrm... we have no starters. Well, the Army uses the same truck, I wonder if they have any.
*phone call verifies they have them*
Drives over to the canteen
"I need a side of beef and 2 cases of beer for Col So and So."
"Col. so and so? Shit, here you go!"
Drives over to Army base and meets with supply sergeant
"I need a dozen starters for the truck"
"Man, I can't do that, let me call the captain."
Captain: "Man what are you doing on my base asking me for starters? Don't you Air force guys have any? ho ho ho ho"
"Ha ha ha, you're right. But you know, I've got this side of beef here and 2 cases of beer, when's the last time you guys had a base barbeque?"
"How many you need?"
"12"
"I'll give you 6"
"Deal!"
(even though he only needed... 1)
It's amazing how much you can apply this to the "real world" as well.
I called and mentioned this to my dad, an Air Force veteran (vietnam, Panama, Gulf War I) and he just chuckled.
Basically, he said part of basic training, at least when he was in, was to teach you how to beg, borrow and steal. He can't count the times he was given a "mission" with no tools (for example: Mop this floor, but with no bucket, mop or cleaning agents.. or more nefariously "We need a new $PART for that truck over there, today" with no $PART in stock with a 6 week procurement time.. With some clever bartering with the Canteen and then with the Army base down the road (Air Force has better food), he'd "procure" 6 starters and get the job done.) and part of your "training" was to figure out how to locate, negotiate, or steal what you needed from someone else. They don't hand you everything in a war, some times you gotta figure it out yourself. If your buddy was truly not given any ammo in Camp Victory, a place filled with ammo, and couldn't figure out how to barter for it, well, according to my dad, maybe he's not cut out for military life. Then again, maybe things have changed since then.
What about launching an expanding foam/gel to create a large block of "debris catcher", say the size of a half-football field. The concept is similar to what bow hunters use to practice on, and in indoor shooting ranges. Launch a canister into a trajectory to intercept a swath of debris, deploy foam/gel, absorb the impact and embed the debris. Ensure that the trajectory will either take the debris out of earth orbit or fall back into the atmosphere over an ocean. At the very least, you get a large block that could be pushed back into the atmosphere later in a future mission...
Hrm, maybe that could be a way to capture satellites, as well. Launch a big foam deployment capsule that engulfs/envelopes a satellite with enough mass to pull it from orbit, then recover the remains on the ground for examination...
Come on Amazon. It still looks like a plastic toy. For god's sakes, team up with Sony or Apple (kidnap Jonathon Ives). Alternatively, license out your DRM tech so Sony can build a reader compatible with your service.
Frankly, I can't wait until someone figures out a way to make a digital version of the public library. Make it like O'Reilly's Safari: Monthly subscription, X amount of titles on your "shelf" at any given time (tiered subscription?), with the option to "buy it" for permanent downloads (or just buy it outright and skip the sub-shelf), etc. I'd gladly pay $15/month for something like this, much like I already do with Napster To Go.
(I work in the Digital Music Industry)
There's a saying in the industry: Physical Dollars, Digital Pennies. And it's unfortunately true.
This is also why you see the emergence of these obnoxious 360 deals because the labels are desperately trying to keep their cash flows up by dipping their hands into areas that used to be the domain of the artist: live shows, merchandise, etc.
Anyone thinking anyone is getting rich off of digital distribution other than the hosting companies is seriously deluding themselves. The "Industry" for the most part hates digital downloads, hates iTunes and Steve Jobs, and hates the internet.
As I'm also an independent artist, I make as much money digitally as I did physically, which is exactly zero, so I stand to gain quite a bit from the digital revolution. The dinosaurs will adapt or die, but I have a feeling that the next "big labels" are already in existence, trying to figure out how to make the numbers work.
Actually, when compared to humans, it's not that great. A human could've crossed that 12 miles in a day. Humans can scale that "mountain" and the "crater" in a matter of minutes. Basically, a Human team could've done the entire 5 year mission (so far) in less than a couple days. In fact, with a geologist on board, they probably could've done even more science as other opportunites presented themselves.
I'll add my voice to yours. Abortion should be free, readily available, and encouraged.
I'm going to have to disagree.
I worked my ass off through college. Two jobs, school, and I don't remember any of it due to sleep deprivation. The insult to injury is I didn't even get my degree after 10 years.
I'd say the plan is perfect if you know exactly what you want to do with your life and go full-bore. But I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I was trying to use college to figure out what my actual interests were. If I had it to do all over again, I'd have taken out the student loans in the beginning of my college career and not worked so much. Much of what you get out of college are in the people you meet and the experiences you share (trying not to sound like a Hallmark card). I wish I had partied more, and fucked more girls, because the guys that did that? Yeah, they're my bosses now. I thought I was being responsible but it ended up with: $30k in student loans and nothing to show for it.
When my kids go to college, while I want them to learn the benefits of working, I also want them to take time to enjoy life while they explore their options for the future. I compare it to the plight of a single, teen mother. Yep, at that point, most of her life's dreams are out the window: She's a single mom and that's that. Time to forget about having fun, time to grow up. She might get to resume her "life" at age 40 when her kid turns 18, but effectively, that's it.
Huh? Name a time in history where this wasn't true? The best and brightest have been getting dumped on since time immemoriam (sp?).