"mostly civilian casualties are probably in the low thousands" in Afghanistan?
Ahem, BULLSHIT!
The casualties were combatants, and thats where the bombs were dropped: on AL Qaeda and Taliban operational locations. And unliek the GW, PGM's were used for a vast majority of strikes. There were at most a dozen reported (from credible sources) "missed" strikes that resulted in civilian casulties, number less than 1000 as a direct action by US forces.
Cite your sources. Or else admit that you are making the numbers up in an attmept to back your very biased anti-American position
Now is when the open source community should be working hard - to be ready to quickly launch an "open kazaa" type system, with the supernodes p2p searching and indexing, etc. The old protocol has already been reverse engineered. Its a proven protocol, and it works well enough. Just use that protocol and the old giFT client as a starting point.
All that is needed is a "keyless" client and a solid "Windows" version of the client. Why Windows platforms first? To paraphase the alleged Willie Sutton quote, "because thats where the files are". Remember, its the mass of users and files that make this work, so a technically solid and professional looking Windows client must come first, for maximum user gain. This is in additon to the usual and inevitable multiple Linux versions. The replacement client must be made to install and use the files and directories that already exist on the windows users' computers, and to use a similar user interface - so it is instant changeover, apparently seamless and painless - and it will look as if they never "left" the old p2p service except for the centralized login.
Finally, the forgotten element in the Open Source community, "publicity", must be revved up to get this client into the hands of a lot of people so it can be switched to as soon as Kazaaa/Morpheus et al are shut down. Linux users will take care of themselves, but the Windows herd usually needs to be led, at least initially. A question for the Slahsdot crowd,
How do you "publicize" things to the non-geek Windows crowd without a budget?
Ok, nows the time to step up to the plate - this is a golden opportunity to put into place a open p2p net that cannot be stopped at a central source, that can permanently rip control out of the hands of centralauthorities for file-sharing, that will quickly adapt to overcome countermeasures, and a system that will make moot the DMCA and other US-centric bad laws. The question in front of the community now is:
Can Open Source people do things pre-emptively - plan and act in advance to scatch an itch we know is coming, instead of waiting for the itch to appear?
This is certainly a good test case to see if the Open Source community is what we enthusiasts always claim that it can be.
Basically, get some PVC code-approved conduti big enough to hold some RG6 coax (for the cable TV), puls a coupel strands at the end of cat5e and leave extra room to pull anything else.
Thisd way, when/if fiber becomes pratical, you just pull the old cat5 out, and using a pull-lead pull new "fiber" in. Nearther to the main runs and the junction/swithc, you change to a larger pipe/conduit, to hold more cables. Also, if you use PVC, it waterproofs against any potential water exposure (borken pipe, kid overflowing the tub and leaking intot he wall, etc).
Think about it - no ugly (exposed) wires/cables along the baseboard like with an external install, and you can upgrade easily and selectively with the latest and greatest medium without having to tear up your walls.
Hyperlinking, hidden pages via links, etc. All explicitly demonstrated on this video, dated 1968, 9 years before they filed. That pretty much settles it - BT is full of shit. How could their lawyers have missed this one?
I have been working in the CTI-IVR (Computer Telephony Integration - Interactive Voice response) business for a decade, and a huge amount of the patents are blatently obvious to practioners of the art (me). There is even prior art for some of this. For example:
US Patent 6,035,275: Method and apparatus for executing a human-machine dialogue in the form of two-sided speech as based on a modular dialogue structure
Published 2000-03-07 on behalf of inventors Brode, et al. Assignee: Philips
Abstract:
In a dialogue structure outputting speech items interrogating an access call while examining subsequently received human speech items for ascertaining an actual transaction instance further outputting speech in accordance with the ascertaining until either attaining a positive transaction result, or otherwise exiting the dialogue in case of failure. In particular, the dialogue is constructed from hierarchically arranged and callable subdialogues constituting respective mutually independent building blocks, which are arranged for generating a particular outcome if a positive result is attained by the subdialogue in question. The subdialogues offer interfaces for mutual coupling with a hierarchically superior subdialogue, so that the overall structure is formed as based on a selection of subdialogues and exclusively based on required partial results by each of the subdialogues in the structure.
This completely describes any typical IVR scripting engine that has been around since the late 1980's (AT&T's Conversant IVRs on Unix systems come to mind). Visual Voice products that I used to create an IVR chat system, back in mid 1990's would do exactly the above - and since it was VB based, I could even pull up web pages for data (which I did just to provide a wather report option to feed to the TTS engine as a secret test menu option, as well as Tuxedo screen scraping of a virtual 3270 hooked to big iron). The patent quoted was applied for after that time. Its clearly bogus.
The prompt element includes an announcement to be read to the user. The input element includes at least one input that corresponds to a user input. A method in accordance with the present invention includes the steps of creating a markup language document having a plurality of elements, selecting a prompt element, and defining a voice communication in the prompt element to be read to the user. The method further includes the steps of selecting an input element and defining an input variable to store data inputted by the user."
This is more of the same fomr a differnt patent. Liek I said, this is all obvious and common practice for IVR script writers, and anyone that has a few brain cells going. Furthermore, "input variables" and things like that are not inventions, they are common sense. Its just not that hard.
Damnit, how do they get away with patenting what are commonn practices? the patent examiners must be total f**king morons.
Document interchange with our customers had to be in WOrd, so thats what we got stuck with eventhough we initially started off in the direction you are heading.
I thought to check the Yahoo stock message boards and hit them in the wallet (the only place a big company really listens), and it looks like someone beat me to the punch. You may want to mention the economic side of things if you write to Investor Relations as well as the PR people. The addresses are there in the referenced post:
The use of an OTDR can find irregularities that woudl be cause by splices. If the cable companies do scans routinely for differentials against baseline (for preventative maintenance), the splices by No Such Agency will show up.
Re:BZZZZT! Go back to Economics 110 and try again.
on
New Fiber Development
·
· Score: 1
Nope - there is one comapny that is plaaning to cut prices 50% every year for a decade for long haul data. Its Level 3 Communications - I know some folks who work there. Its nto PRICE cuts that hurt, its MARGIN cuts that the old companies are afraid of. Newer companies have lower cost infrastructures, are set up to use IP instead of SONET and ATM, and are dropping their costs with new fiber and optics. Thats why the big guys are scared now. There is no glut of bandwidth - just a shortfall of cost-effective lit fiber. The old opanies cant afford to light it, and hte new ones are just now coming on line. Watch the market shake out HARD and kill the BT's and AT&T's of the world. Fossils.
Becasue the cost to LIGHT fiber is about 8 to 20 times the cost to dig and lay it.
You'll see it a month after it goes commercial!
on
New Fiber Development
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· Score: 1
One company DID think ahead. Its called Level 3 Communications. http://www.level3.com
They actually run multiple conduits through their entire fiber optice network all over the US, so they can upgrade and pull new fiber easily with each new generation. You want the newest fiber, go to Level 3 - they are pulling and lighting LEAF3 from Corning right now, and it just became available to the market a month ago. All IP (no SONET or ATM), and all Glass (no Copper!)
I'll tell you right now at least one set of folks whowill use it: Aircraft Avionics and Powerplant maint techs. Those guys could use a "flip down" PC instead of having to climb back to the computer, etc. There are a lot
So the price point isnt for you college/. slackers, nor for coders. Tts for people who work for a living away from a desk.
Not that hard - back in the Gulf war 10 years ago, the tank I was in was doing 40 MPH over the bumpy sands dunes, and getting first-shot kills at 2000M on Iraqi T-72's. The end of the 120MM Smoothbore Canaon was so steady you could have placed a teacup on it and not spilled a drop from vertical or horizontal motion (discounting relative the wind from our speed)
This happened in Boulder CO, a firm bastion of the looney left and its PC Police.
Colorado Political Landscape for those who dont live here: Boulder leans far left and houses the Political Correctness Nazis, Denver is purely Authoritarian (Herr Webb and his Do-no-wrong Polizei), and Colorado Springs has Focus On The Family and other religious righties.
Most of Colorado is pretty libertarian and want to be left the hell alone by all those meddling jackasses.
I was with NewsDatacomm (a subsidiary of Newscorp, Ruert Murdoch's gang) when DirecTV was first setting up the system. The fab plants in Mexico with Thompson, and we handled the crypto on servers that sit inthe racks for each uplink channel in the Castle Rock Colorado facility (its south of Denver). Very high tech, and high security - but at the time, nothing but a long dirt road winding back into the woods east of I-25 past the 7-11, the first winter was a fun one, security sometimes patrolled the road to rescue people who got stuck in snowstorms, or to thelp the Hughes guys in the Sat Control station "next door". There was a nice kitchen and everything in the crypto office downstairs (we got DTV all channels naturally, great for late shift folks), some good HP workstations, and the linkage to the cust care sites in Minn (at the time) and Texas, as well as the standby stuff in LA. Anyway, thats enough background to prove to anyone that works there that I was there way back when.
Due to stupid US laws in place at the time, the crypto work had to be done overseas. It was handled by Adi Shamir and his team in the Weizmann Institute in Israel. So now you know who the crackers were up against - and why the crackers lost.
I left after a less than a year they went live (development is fun, deployment too, but day-to-day operations is boring). Were the so-called "hackers" the same Irish bunch all along?
Dish Net has NO restrictions for mode shut downs on their boxes, and has nearly identical content. I used to work at DirecTV in Castle Rock Colorado (actually back in the woods behind there) at their uplink facility - and you must remember that GM and Hughes pull the strings there.
Almost from the beginning, the IPCC operated under the assumption that human use of fossil fuels was having a measurable impact on the Earth's climate.
But this assumption needed the scientific community's imprimatur if it was to motivate the United States and other developed countries to curb their carbon emissions. So computer models were ginned up to "prove" that if the nations of the world continued to produce more carbon dioxide, a potentially catastrophic planetary warming would occur.
There was, however, a huge problem with the models -- they were wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the models on which the Kyoto Protocol are based predicted that the planet's temperature should have risen by as much 2.3 degrees since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when major greenhouse gas emissions began. In reality, the Earth's temperature has risen only about a third of what the models forecast.
Yet, despite the unreliability of atmospheric models, despite evidence that actually contradicts the dire warnings of global warming (like global satellite technology and data showing that, over the past 18 years, there actually has been a global cooling of.09 degrees Celsius), the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continue to misinform the public that there is "no scientific dispute" that global warming is under way and that human beings are the culprit.
In short, the IPCC was tasked with assuming global warming was the huamnity's fault, and then proving it. Pretty easy to do so when you lie and the press doesnt expose you as a liar. Just like Al Gore's endorsement of junk science. The press is so taken in by the bull that they dont even metnion that there are 15,000 scientists who oppose the "positons" the IPCC has chosen on global warming- and make no doubts, its a CHOICE by the IPCC, not a conclusion of honest research.
I'd no sooner trust the IPCC opinon on climatological research than I would the Catholic Churche's research on effect contraception.
http://www.junkscience.com/news2/medianom.htm
Try VoiceStream - they have national GSM coverage in the US, and my 8290 works quite well - I can SMS part of my team in Europe just fine from a ski-lift in Colorado. My company just bought 8890's for those who have to travel overseas a lot (both directions), and those work well too on VoiceStream's US network and in Hong Kong and London (so far).
He was almost Clintonesque in his responses. Answered without supplying anything truly substantial.
For example
Carnivore is used in sensitive criminal and foreign intelligence investigations. The need for confidentiality in such investigations long has been recognized by the Congress and Supreme Court of the United States. It is not unreasonable for the Justice Department to assure that the details of confidential criminal investigations or of foreign intelligence methods and procedures will not disclosed to the public.
This is a dodge - he was asked to address why the secrescy about the functioning of the device, not its actual in-operation placement. Let "regular" people see the source - the system is effective by its placement not by its function.
q:will a sniffing expert be analyzing the packet reassembly and protocol analysis part of the source code in order to validate that Carnivore captures all the data authorized by the court order, but no additional data?
And the answer?
A number of members of the review team are quite familiar with sniffing technology. Sniffers are routinely used as network management tools.
Yes, we know that about sniffer - anyone here that has run Network General product to diagonose packet problems is aware that they are used routinely.
Dont talk down to us, we probably know more than you do!
Are your team members going to ensure that it captures only the authorized intercepts and not infringing on the innocent? We are still waiting for a clear and definite answer on that one
After reading his evasive and non-responsive answers, its pretty obvious that Mr Perrit (or should I say "Mr Parrot") appears to be a shill, a disengenuous legal weasel, and is quite obviously comfortable at being kept firmly in the government's pocket.
I got more out of my enlisted military service in SIGINT/Crypto than I did out of my university education.
Right now, if I were to state the ideal candidate for almost any IT job that I hire for, I would say 2 year degree to give a bit of technical depth, 2 years military (in a tech specialty or else in the Cavalry - you really have to think there as a Cavalry Scout), and one year on-the-job consulting in a couple of assignments.
I've found that the skills they learn in 2 years is enough to get them started as coders or net techs, the 2 years military gives them perspectives on what hard work *really* is (plus teaches resiliency, independence, teamwork and leadership), and the one year consulting gives them a bit of depth in terms of working in the IT world.
Thats a lot better than the 4 year grads who often come equipped with academic skills but are absoulte morons when it comes to business pratices, work ethic or ability to function without being "managed".
Slashdot Mirror
"mostly civilian casualties are probably in the low thousands" in Afghanistan?
Ahem, BULLSHIT!
The casualties were combatants, and thats where the bombs were dropped: on AL Qaeda and Taliban operational locations. And unliek the GW, PGM's were used for a vast majority of strikes. There were at most a dozen reported (from credible sources) "missed" strikes that resulted in civilian casulties, number less than 1000 as a direct action by US forces.
Cite your sources. Or else admit that you are making the numbers up in an attmept to back your very biased anti-American position
Now is when the open source community should be working hard - to be ready to quickly launch an "open kazaa" type system, with the supernodes p2p searching and indexing, etc. The old protocol has already been reverse engineered. Its a proven protocol, and it works well enough. Just use that protocol and the old giFT client as a starting point.
All that is needed is a "keyless" client and a solid "Windows" version of the client. Why Windows platforms first? To paraphase the alleged Willie Sutton quote, "because thats where the files are". Remember, its the mass of users and files that make this work, so a technically solid and professional looking Windows client must come first, for maximum user gain. This is in additon to the usual and inevitable multiple Linux versions. The replacement client must be made to install and use the files and directories that already exist on the windows users' computers, and to use a similar user interface - so it is instant changeover, apparently seamless and painless - and it will look as if they never "left" the old p2p service except for the centralized login.
Finally, the forgotten element in the Open Source community, "publicity", must be revved up to get this client into the hands of a lot of people so it can be switched to as soon as Kazaaa/Morpheus et al are shut down. Linux users will take care of themselves, but the Windows herd usually needs to be led, at least initially. A question for the Slahsdot crowd,
How do you "publicize" things to the non-geek Windows crowd without a budget ?
Ok, nows the time to step up to the plate - this is a golden opportunity to put into place a open p2p net that cannot be stopped at a central source, that can permanently rip control out of the hands of central authorities for file-sharing, that will quickly adapt to overcome countermeasures, and a system that will make moot the DMCA and other US-centric bad laws. The question in front of the community now is:
Can Open Source people do things pre-emptively - plan and act in advance to scatch an itch we know is coming, instead of waiting for the itch to appear?
This is certainly a good test case to see if the Open Source community is what we enthusiasts always claim that it can be.
Basically, get some PVC code-approved conduti big enough to hold some RG6 coax (for the cable TV), puls a coupel strands at the end of cat5e and leave extra room to pull anything else.
Thisd way, when/if fiber becomes pratical, you just pull the old cat5 out, and using a pull-lead pull new "fiber" in. Nearther to the main runs and the junction/swithc, you change to a larger pipe/conduit, to hold more cables. Also, if you use PVC, it waterproofs against any potential water exposure (borken pipe, kid overflowing the tub and leaking intot he wall, etc).
Think about it - no ugly (exposed) wires/cables along the baseboard like with an external install, and you can upgrade easily and selectively with the latest and greatest medium without having to tear up your walls.
Hypertext in 1968
(Real Media) Video Clip from 1968 Stanford
Hyperlinking, hidden pages via links, etc. All explicitly demonstrated on this video, dated 1968, 9 years before they filed. That pretty much settles it - BT is full of shit. How could their lawyers have missed this one?
Meals Rejected by Ethiopians is what we called them when they first came out. the worst was that freeze dried pork patty. ACCKK!
This completely describes any typical IVR scripting engine that has been around since the late 1980's (AT&T's Conversant IVRs on Unix systems come to mind). Visual Voice products that I used to create an IVR chat system, back in mid 1990's would do exactly the above - and since it was VB based, I could even pull up web pages for data (which I did just to provide a wather report option to feed to the TTS engine as a secret test menu option, as well as Tuxedo screen scraping of a virtual 3270 hooked to big iron). The patent quoted was applied for after that time. Its clearly bogus.
This is more of the same fomr a differnt patent. Liek I said, this is all obvious and common practice for IVR script writers, and anyone that has a few brain cells going. Furthermore, "input variables" and things like that are not inventions, they are common sense. Its just not that hard.
Damnit, how do they get away with patenting what are commonn practices? the patent examiners must be total f**king morons.
Until then, Legos still rule the roost
Intelligence sources over in London say he was predicting a big attack today. Time to nuke Afghanistan.
And corewars before that was the great-granddaddy.
Crobots original page
Document interchange with our customers had to be in WOrd, so thats what we got stuck with eventhough we initially started off in the direction you are heading.
Good luck taking on the Microsoft Monster.
I thought to check the Yahoo stock message boards and hit them in the wallet (the only place a big company really listens), and it looks like someone beat me to the punch. You may want to mention the economic side of things if you write to Investor Relations as well as the PR people. The addresses are there in the referenced post:
Yahoo TRID stock message board
The use of an OTDR can find irregularities that woudl be cause by splices. If the cable companies do scans routinely for differentials against baseline (for preventative maintenance), the splices by No Such Agency will show up.
Nope - there is one comapny that is plaaning to cut prices 50% every year for a decade for long haul data. Its Level 3 Communications - I know some folks who work there. Its nto PRICE cuts that hurt, its MARGIN cuts that the old companies are afraid of. Newer companies have lower cost infrastructures, are set up to use IP instead of SONET and ATM, and are dropping their costs with new fiber and optics. Thats why the big guys are scared now. There is no glut of bandwidth - just a shortfall of cost-effective lit fiber. The old opanies cant afford to light it, and hte new ones are just now coming on line. Watch the market shake out HARD and kill the BT's and AT&T's of the world. Fossils.
Becasue the cost to LIGHT fiber is about 8 to 20 times the cost to dig and lay it.
One company DID think ahead. Its called Level 3 Communications. http://www.level3.com
They actually run multiple conduits through their entire fiber optice network all over the US, so they can upgrade and pull new fiber easily with each new generation. You want the newest fiber, go to Level 3 - they are pulling and lighting LEAF3 from Corning right now, and it just became available to the market a month ago. All IP (no SONET or ATM), and all Glass (no Copper!)
I'll tell you right now at least one set of folks whowill use it: Aircraft Avionics and Powerplant maint techs. Those guys could use a "flip down" PC instead of having to climb back to the computer, etc. There are a lot
/. slackers, nor for coders. Tts for people who work for a living away from a desk.
So the price point isnt for you college
Not that hard - back in the Gulf war 10 years ago, the tank I was in was doing 40 MPH over the bumpy sands dunes, and getting first-shot kills at 2000M on Iraqi T-72's. The end of the 120MM Smoothbore Canaon was so steady you could have placed a teacup on it and not spilled a drop from vertical or horizontal motion (discounting relative the wind from our speed)
Sabot UP!
This happened in Boulder CO, a firm bastion of the looney left and its PC Police.
Colorado Political Landscape for those who dont live here: Boulder leans far left and houses the Political Correctness Nazis, Denver is purely Authoritarian (Herr Webb and his Do-no-wrong Polizei), and Colorado Springs has Focus On The Family and other religious righties.
Most of Colorado is pretty libertarian and want to be left the hell alone by all those meddling jackasses.
I was with NewsDatacomm (a subsidiary of Newscorp, Ruert Murdoch's gang) when DirecTV was first setting up the system. The fab plants in Mexico with Thompson, and we handled the crypto on servers that sit inthe racks for each uplink channel in the Castle Rock Colorado facility (its south of Denver). Very high tech, and high security - but at the time, nothing but a long dirt road winding back into the woods east of I-25 past the 7-11, the first winter was a fun one, security sometimes patrolled the road to rescue people who got stuck in snowstorms, or to thelp the Hughes guys in the Sat Control station "next door". There was a nice kitchen and everything in the crypto office downstairs (we got DTV all channels naturally, great for late shift folks), some good HP workstations, and the linkage to the cust care sites in Minn (at the time) and Texas, as well as the standby stuff in LA. Anyway, thats enough background to prove to anyone that works there that I was there way back when.
Due to stupid US laws in place at the time, the crypto work had to be done overseas. It was handled by Adi Shamir and his team in the Weizmann Institute in Israel. So now you know who the crackers were up against - and why the crackers lost.
I left after a less than a year they went live (development is fun, deployment too, but day-to-day operations is boring). Were the so-called "hackers" the same Irish bunch all along?
Dish Net has NO restrictions for mode shut downs on their boxes, and has nearly identical content. I used to work at DirecTV in Castle Rock Colorado (actually back in the woods behind there) at their uplink facility - and you must remember that GM and Hughes pull the strings there.
Almost from the beginning, the IPCC operated under the assumption that human use of fossil fuels was having a measurable impact on the Earth's climate. But this assumption needed the scientific community's imprimatur if it was to motivate the United States and other developed countries to curb their carbon emissions. So computer models were ginned up to "prove" that if the nations of the world continued to produce more carbon dioxide, a potentially catastrophic planetary warming would occur. There was, however, a huge problem with the models -- they were wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the models on which the Kyoto Protocol are based predicted that the planet's temperature should have risen by as much 2.3 degrees since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when major greenhouse gas emissions began. In reality, the Earth's temperature has risen only about a third of what the models forecast. Yet, despite the unreliability of atmospheric models, despite evidence that actually contradicts the dire warnings of global warming (like global satellite technology and data showing that, over the past 18 years, there actually has been a global cooling of .09 degrees Celsius), the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continue to misinform the public that there is "no scientific dispute" that global warming is under way and that human beings are the culprit.
In short, the IPCC was tasked with assuming global warming was the huamnity's fault, and then proving it. Pretty easy to do so when you lie and the press doesnt expose you as a liar. Just like Al Gore's endorsement of junk science. The press is so taken in by the bull that they dont even metnion that there are 15,000 scientists who oppose the "positons" the IPCC has chosen on global warming- and make no doubts, its a CHOICE by the IPCC, not a conclusion of honest research.
I'd no sooner trust the IPCC opinon on climatological research than I would the Catholic Churche's research on effect contraception.
http://www.junkscience.com/news2/medianom.htm
"in the US we don't use GSM"
Wrong - I use GSM every day. Its part of Voicestream's network - and they are upgrading my local area to GPRS next spring.
Try VoiceStream - they have national GSM coverage in the US, and my 8290 works quite well - I can SMS part of my team in Europe just fine from a ski-lift in Colorado. My company just bought 8890's for those who have to travel overseas a lot (both directions), and those work well too on VoiceStream's US network and in Hong Kong and London (so far).
For example
This is a dodge - he was asked to address why the secrescy about the functioning of the device, not its actual in-operation placement. Let "regular" people see the source - the system is effective by its placement not by its function.
And the answer?
Yes, we know that about sniffer - anyone here that has run Network General product to diagonose packet problems is aware that they are used routinely.
- Dont talk down to us, we probably know more than you do!
Are your team members going to ensure that it captures only the authorized intercepts and not infringing on the innocent? We are still waiting for a clear and definite answer on that oneAfter reading his evasive and non-responsive answers, its pretty obvious that Mr Perrit (or should I say " Mr Parrot ") appears to be a shill, a disengenuous legal weasel, and is quite obviously comfortable at being kept firmly in the government's pocket.
I got more out of my enlisted military service in SIGINT/Crypto than I did out of my university education. Right now, if I were to state the ideal candidate for almost any IT job that I hire for, I would say 2 year degree to give a bit of technical depth, 2 years military (in a tech specialty or else in the Cavalry - you really have to think there as a Cavalry Scout), and one year on-the-job consulting in a couple of assignments. I've found that the skills they learn in 2 years is enough to get them started as coders or net techs, the 2 years military gives them perspectives on what hard work *really* is (plus teaches resiliency, independence, teamwork and leadership), and the one year consulting gives them a bit of depth in terms of working in the IT world. Thats a lot better than the 4 year grads who often come equipped with academic skills but are absoulte morons when it comes to business pratices, work ethic or ability to function without being "managed".