I completely agree with you, but did you know that many high school students these days are taking college courses (for full college credit) during their Senior, and sometimes their Junior, year of high school? I would have loved to have done this in my day! (which was about 12 years ago, and my school was a private one so it would've been different anyways) My little sister, and my younger sisters-in-law have both done just that and go into their college years having already finished the repeats of English 101, Calc 101, and History 101 courses.
I am in a similar, and yet worse, situation than the submitter of this Ask Slashdot. While he has already obtained one undergraduate degree and is considering another, I am still working on my first. I will thankfully be graduating at the end of this October, but I will then be turning 30 two weeks later.
First off, I would argue that you're never too old to go back to school. I too thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do straight out of high school and went to a prestigious school in Florida to do just what I thought I'd be doing. Long story short, I ended up back in the city I grew up in, and began working full-time for a technology related company as a customer service rep. I was at the bottom of the corporate ladder. I began working my way up, and on the way up I decided it was finally time to get that undergrad degree. I went back to school, and spent 5 years doing school part-time, in the evenings to get my Computer Engineering Technology degree. Now I'm considering pursuing a Master's in Statistics after I graduate, which leads me to my second point:
Secondly, consider the possibility of obtaining a Master's degree. Certain master's programs will allow you to "make up" some of the courses you would need to get a Master's in a field that is wholly unlike your undergrad experience, BUT this would give you more specialized, more informative information on technology than a simple undergrad in Comp Sci or Eng. will be able to do. Plus, since you're already working at a college, you could probably take classes there or at a nearby college for potentially much less than any of us in the "real world" could.
All this babbling of mine is to merely show you that indeed, you're not too old yet. I'm even further behind than you as far as educational achievements, but I'm doing it, and I am glad that I have stuck it out this long to do it. (I wouldn't be able to consider going on to get a Master's if I hadn't!) Go for it, dude!
For members of IEEE with a subscription to IEEE Computer Society's Transactions on Software Engineering, the last issue (April) has a very interesting article related to this stuff titled: Interactive Fault Localization Techniques in a Spreadsheet Environment. Basically, the article explains how they have worked to develop and test techniques that allow "end-user programmers" (people who create formulas in spreadsheets and such) to use automated fault localization testing tools to help debug their "applications" (spreadsheets) at runtime. Pretty interesting stuff that they found in their analysis. (It's easier for you to just go read it than for me to attempt to summarize it at the end of my work week.;)
Look, the SanDisk MP3 player is just like all the other non-iPod players: it doesn't have a "scrollwheel" hardware UI. This is absolutely the #1 reason why the iPod is winning. Someone at Apple caught on to the simple fact a while ago that a simplistic dial is a better interface to "dial-in" your next mp3 or playlist for listening, just like the original transistor radios had a simple knob controlling the mechanical pot that adjusted the frequency of the radio - thereby changing what music you listened to.
I am currently working on a senior project where we're hacking away at Rockbox code, and we've tried several different mp3 players and they all suck for actual mp3 playing goodness compared to an iPod simply because of the means of hardware UI. Navigation buttons just don't cut it.
IMHO, this whole idea is dead in the water for SanDisk until they can pry the whole "scrollwheel" idea out of trademark (or copyright) hell. (I forget which type of laws that innovation falls under at the moment.) Apple will continue to have their government approved monopoly on the iPod scrollwheel, and will continue to profit heavily from it, which, for once, is how it's supposed to be. (Not that I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm just saying that this is what trademarks and copyright are intended to do, in general.)
He laughed because I would estimate that 100% of all legalese is designed to mitigate the risk of "user error", and as we all know in computing, "user error" is the one thing you cannot truly design around to completely mitigate all risk in the system. Being a lawyer and writing legal documents is more akin to playing with statistics than it is writing computer code. In other words, there's always that 0.01% chance that a hole could be poked somewhere in the legalese, no matter how well-written the legal document is. The trick is to shrink that chance as much as possible with good legal language, and some lawyers and politicians are better than that than others - hence the reason we have crap laws like the DMCA.
I don't know what the child post is ranting about - it's incoherent compared to what you said - but I did want to jump on the bandwagon here and say: "Me too!"
I heard somewhere recently that the unionized autoworker in America is quite capable of making >$60k/yr with overtime, PLUS they have outstanding health and retirement benefits. That's more than I make, and my job requires far more creativity, high levels of stress at times, and NO overtime pay because I work in the IT world! I'm not a programmer, but I'm close enough to IT that if they off-shored it I could potentially be a casualty of the job wars. So why am I still working in IT? 1) Because there is far more possibility for me to earn more and 2) there's more opportunity (if I pursue it) to earn more than a factory worker ever could doing just a unionized factory worker job.
What I'm saying is that unions, in general, suck. Why is it that Toyota and Honda are continuing to be profitable and wildly popular in the marketplace? Because their cars aren't built like crap by workers who are just trying to get their cards punched, and because they can cut back as needed on workers to keep costs in check. I'm not claiming that all employees at Ford or GM are lazy - in fact, I'm sure many work hard, but the fact of the matter is that it's far easier to half-ass it in a union than it is without one. Don't feel like working that hard today? Oh well, it'll take an act of God to get me fired. But at Honda, I believe you get one or two warnings before getting fired just for showing up even 1 minute late to work. That's not the environment I want to work in, sure, but it also means the workforce is a motivated and hard-working one regardless, not just a bunch of friends of friends who managed to weasle their way into the union even though they're NOT always hard workers.
And unions in the IT sector will never work. If you're into IT, most likely you've learned it on your own or in college at least, which means you're generally a good worker and interested in pursuing the understanding of somewhat difficult concepts. OR you're at least intelligent enough to fake it and get into a cushy IT job so you can screw off for life. Either way, why would such types of people want to allow the "lowest common denomitor" style of worklife? They're NOT the lowest common denominators of society, (they generally make more than the factory worker, and are more highly educated) so why pull themselves down to that level?
Lastly, is it really necessary to bemoan the insecurity of IT jobs? Living paycheck to paycheck is what 99.9% of Americans do, and yet we all complain about outsourcing and the lack of jobs. Let's quit complaining and consider moving, changing jobs for a time, or even working more than one job to make ends meet if we lose our jobs - after all, it's not like any of us were saving for the potential rainy day. Just remember: "It's nobody's fault but mine."
"Your post is so full of exaggerations and assumptions ("complete 100% correct answer", "ABSOLUTELY NO WAY", etc.) that your message got a little confused."
Good work on pulling those snippets of phrases right out of the context in which I used them. The better explanation that you are looking for is that to claim that science OR faith based understanding can provide a 100% understanding of truth is completely ridiculous. And so when I refer to the evolutionists that like to call "hypocrit" on the Christians who won't accept other religions for potentially being an alternate pathway to God, it is because I view those evolutionist's claims (that somehow THEY know better than those crazy Christians how to be tolerant of other viewpoints) as proved false by their own equal reliance on the correctness of Evolutionary theories over any kind of "Intelligent Design" theories - and so much so that they are afraid that teaching such additional theories somehow constitutes non-seperation of church and state, reliance on faith, etc. Noooo, it's just as simple as teaching an alternative theory about the origins of the universe; which, like I stated before, none of us can empirically measure and prove.
Put another way: You can't place God in a box called 'gravity' when God created such a thing as 'gravity' in the first place. If he is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then the question simply becomes NULL for lack of a describable or definable context that could actually limit such an all-encompassing God.
Exactly! And so just labeling something "scientific" makes it true?? That's absurd, but all you staunch evolution believers act that way. Oh wait, I forgot, all that fossil evidence and carbon dating and blah blah blah "SCIENCE" proves you to be correct, right?! Stupid me.
But oh wait, that's called studying the past by relying on the present to prove your hypotheses about the past. I personally think it's quite retarded for both the ID'ers AND the Evolutionists to believe that they have a complete 100% correct answer for everything in the distant past that we 1) have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of recording because we either a) didn't exist, or b) were still apes with ape brains; and 2) assume all behaved the way we currently measure the earth and life on it to behave according to physical laws of nature. Either way you can't definitively prove Intelligent Design or Evolution.
Get over yourselves and let's learn about both viewpoints. I wonder just how many people that think Intelligent Design is poppy-cock also think Christians are hypocritical for not accepting other religions to be as valid as Christianity. Seems rather hypocritical, don't you think?
Smartwool socks - I would pay $50 a pair for these socks, they are THAT good. Go for the Trekking style instead of the lighter-weight ones. I promise you you're feet won't get hot and sweaty enough to ever be uncomfortable with them on. (I hiked with a pair of Trekking socks on, with full leather hiking boots in the middle of 95+ degree, HUMID weather in Columbus, OH for about 2 miles downtown and back up to the OSU campus area once and didn't so much as get hot spots on my toes. These things are incredible!
Inova Microlight LED flashlight or a similar device is a great accessory. Keep it small and lightweight. I highly recommend red LED's as they illuminate the best in pitch black conditions.
Are you that guy that I keep seeing featured in Forbes and Fortune and the like who started his own pharmaceutical company? Your story seems awfully familiar to me from what I've read in those mainstream magazines. In any case, I applaud your foresight to know what makes you tick, and how best to use your talents to make a company grow.
I'm torn on this Ask Slashdot because I can see it from both sides. Personally, I think I would make a good CIO or CTO or maybe an executive level IT Project Manager, but I'm not the "tech guy." Yes, I love working in the computer field, I love reading about and expirementing with new computer programming techniques, Photoshop techniques, etc. but I'm just not that focused of a person to thoroughly enjoy the nitty-gritty work involved in writing software code. I prefer painting those broad strokes as you mentioned like a finance or CEO type would do.
On the other hand, I know *enough* about computer technology that if I were to start my own company and do the detailed work, I fully believe that my vision for how that company should run and what technologies to support would be a great asset to a fledgling, tiny company of my own. So perhaps the computer guy should name himself CEO since it was his idea in the first place. After all, the finance guy could focus more then on getting the company out there in the public domain, selling their services, and painting in broad strokes the wonders of their company to potential customers and investors.
Either way, those two need to make up their own minds. While I agree with you on the investor concerns about dual-CEO-ship, I think they could make it through the early stages of their business quite well as a 50/50 partnership. Maybe they should start out as a 50/50 partnership, and write-up a 5yr strategy for evolving into a more heirarchically structured business?
Now if only I could find a small business willing to 1) trust me to be CEO/CIO/CTO, and 2) PAY me enough to leave the safety and security of a big-corp job with health and retirement benefits...;)
Well, I didn't mean actually putting the *speakers* in the walls, just the wiring and outlets. I noticed this poor grammar choice on my part AFTER posting my dang post. Doh!
As for a server closet... I don't have any great ideas, although in the house I *WAS* building (deal fell through - long story - and had to back out and buy a used house instead) I was planning on using some of those metal wire racks that you can get from Lowe's or Home Depot for about $40 to put all the server equipment on in a corner of the basement near where I was going to terminate all the networking and electrical. Then, I'd add one of those small window A/C units or even just a fan and pipe all the hot air outside via some sort of duct system below my deck. Maybe use one of those clothes dryer vent hoods that goes on the side of the house to keep outside critters from crawling into the fan blade or something like that. Of course, this would be enclosed in a sound insulated "closet" within a room that I would build for my 'workspace' in this magical finished basement that would take me years to actually build.
This A/V and computer closet idea is close to what I'd want, but perhaps a bit too much. Instead, I think the biggest thing I'd want "built-in" would be a QUALITY terminal area in the basement (or I guess it could be a closet) that would provide for a central monitoring and connection termination station for power, telephone, cable, and internal networking. Don't just slap stuff on a couple of plywood boards - design it to be built around, not just hidden in a wall, and make it accessible to future homeowners so they can revise, upgrade, and overhaul as needed for future generations.
Following that, a 5.1 surround system in-wall in the entertainment or family room, and an absolute MUST is cable, Cat5e (minimum, Cat6 if they have money to burn), and telephone (both landline AND VoIP connections from the main termination point in the basement) to EVERY bedroom, family room, office, living room, and workroom/basement (with 2-3 outlets for this in the area I'm going to "set up shop") - optionally in the kitchen as well. Make sure there are at least TWO Cat5 terminals at every jack. You never know where a server might end up! One thing that would be a "nice to have" would be an internal video-cam system that can offload the recordings to an offsite server every hour or so. No need to spy on everyone outside the house really - that just gives away the fact that you have a security system. Make the security system powerful INSIDE the house/office to catch the crooks once they've broken in. Maybe pre-wiring for an "external" server that resides somewhere near the electric box in the back of the building so that the typical moron burglers don't know that just ripping off all the computer equipment inside the house will spare them from being "caught on tape" since you're actually piping the video feeds to an inconspicuous server just outside the building.
As for geek asthetics: none of the Best Buy stereo equipment setups just blurting out: "Hey, look how awesome I am with my cool giant stereo system!" - hide it. Details and understated expensive upgrades are what make a house a home... not giant stereo cabinets and huge plasma TV's.
Not to be a slashbot, but can't you see how easily that will translate right over to video games, media players for video over the web, etc? I mean, how long until EA figures out it can quit losing a few million a year in sales by converting every single game it distributes over to the new DRM'd DVD format discs?
As others have said in the past: the wild west days of the Internet and computing in general are quickly coming to an end.
I think you underestimate the "good" Ms. Abdala did for herself in the legal profession. Remember, these are people who are paid to give the verbal and written smack down to the lawyer across the table on a daily basis. If anything, other lawyers that know of her and practice in her area will now know that she is potentially more competent and a better advocate for herself and her clients than that guy she turned down. This could result in a job offer, or at least, more "street cred" during negotiations with the other party. Now for some IT geek going off to someone in industry, that behavior would probably equal near career death because IT geeks need to be able to do IT work, but communicate with others in a sociable manner. Lawyers don't get paid to be sociable; they get paid to win, as do salesmen and entreprenaurs (sp?) as TFA stated.
Well this Maslow guy sounds like a bit of a 'tard. How many of us would prefer to NOT be at work right now, but instead, sitting at home watching TV, drinking, playing a sport, taking vacations, playing computer games, surfing the Internet (anyone reading this from 9-5 is most certainly ALREADY doing that, to the detriment of their job most likely), or basically being lazy? Yes, I want to contribute to society and do *some* "work", but not as much of it as I currently do.
So why do I work so hard you ask? Well, 1) I have a wife and myself to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for - that requires some money, hence a job; 2) I like to do the extra-curricular activities listed above from time to time, some more frequently than others, and ALL of them require some amount of money to participate in; and 3) because I like to live with "comfortable" items rather than the bare necessities of life. So, Maslow, you can shove your philosophical BS up your arse, because it simply doesn't make sense in this world. Sure, in a utopia such philosophical purity of 'life' would be the norm, but in this world we're not living in a utopia, so we have to do crap we specifically DON'T want to be doing all the time so that we can do the things we want to be doing at least some of the time.
According to internet sources this passage is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
I have to say that i am probably the most anti-religious person that you will ever meet in your life but i do have to admit that this phrase (minus the G-d part), has a lot of merit to it.
OK, so *without* the "G-d part" as you so eloquently put it, where does that leave that phrase?
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of..."
So, are you doing it for the glory of yourself? Cause if you are, I don't think you're doing a very good job because I have no idea who you are, and therefore you're not glorifying yourself very well. Or are you doing it for the glory of others? Well, I also don't know who they are, so you seem to not be doing a very good job at that either. And if you're doing it for the glory of being "happy", aren't you again, just glorifying yourself in which case I would again say "so what?" because I have no concept of anyone who is known the world over for being the happiest person alive all the time, so you're clearly not fulfilling that role very well either.
My point is, I simply cannot respect you for finding a passage of the Bible as "inspirational" when you take 100% of the meaning out of the passage that you find "inspirational." The ENTIRE point of that passage is to glorify God, and not just any god, or whomever you decide is your god, or even a character trait that you view as approaching godhood, but THE GOD of the Bible. Call me a religious nut, but only call me that for not being able to respect your logic in this matter.
Exactly. I'm thinking the communications companies are betting on one of two things happening, either of which is a 'win' for them:
1) Get tiered Internet pricing with big profits and big control over their customers. 2) Get regulated (again) by tons of government rules and tariffs about how much they're allowed to charge subscribers when constituents start bitchin' and whinin' to their congresscritters. Again, virtually guaranteed profits with less incentive to beat each other up constantly as they have to do in a deregulated marketplace.
In either case, the consumer gets screwed. On the one hand, competition continues to be cut-throat and tough amongst the big guys, but only the big players can continue to exist. (They can make it financially difficult for smaller telcos to enter markets.) On the other hand, competition disappears, but governmental regulations will help set guaranteed prices for these behemoths once again.
Unfortunately, unlike other regulated industries, the Internet doesn't have to exist solely via the transmission pipes owned by the big telcos. Wireless, Ethernet, and other technologies exist that could certainly begin to flourish if people get fed up enough with the telcos. Seems like an awfully large risk to take against your own customer base, but of course I'm not running those telco companies, so maybe I'm missing a big strategic piece of the puzzle.
The main problem, as a poster pointed out here on/. yesterday, is that this issue with Microsoft and Google is a GOVERNMENT problem, NOT a corporation's problem. I agree whole-heartedly, and being a rather odd mix of Republican/Libertarian/(slightly Democrat) person that I am, I can say that I have been whole-heartedly disappointed with President Bush, his policies, and his party's policies during this term in office.
Unfortunately, the only solution is to make sure the Senate, the House, and the Presidency are as split up politically as possible so that no one party has more control than the other. Capitol Hill, it seems, operates more efficiently, and for the greater good when they're too busy bickering with each other to be passing lame laws and bickering with their citizens. Where's a good tyrannical Caesar for the oligarchy to hate when you need him?
The closest thing I've found to a usable "mobile web experience" is downloadable car purchasing info from Edmunds.com and AvantGo for Palm's and their ilk. Even so, that info is something you download and transfer to your Palm Pilot, not a direct online connection via "mobile web" connection. Besides, why waste time with the very small screen real-estate of a Palm Pilot when you've got a laptop with a wireless USB keychain device? It's like getting a sip of water from a firehose.
Well, I personally think you're oversimplifying, but yes, as a general rule I think you're pretty close to the real issue. Add in the fact that shows marketed to teens, pre-teens, and even small children depict the "scientific" characters in white lab coats, big glasses, and sporting odd and peculiar behavior because they are so wrapped up in "the science" of whatever they're investigating on that particular episode of that particular show.
So a kid sees this type of charicature of a scientist in the media, repeated by their parents, teachers, and elders, and realize, "Hey, I'm not THAT nerdy/geeky/socially inept. I'm more like XXXX character." Experience this perception enough and the kids who might have a bent for the scientific, but aren't as geeky as "the scientist" is made out to be through our language, our media, and typical playground conversations, and those kids shy away from caring as much as they could about science.
However, as others have pointed out, I fully believe that trade schools and other "lesser" pursuits are perfectly warranted for a large portion of our populace. I myself, as much as I find the career of "scientist" alluring in a lot of ways know that I wouldn't be cut out for it. My mind just jumps around to different pursuits and interests often enough that I don't think I'd find the job of "scientist" quite as enjoyable as it seems to me from the outside looking in.
Agreed. Looks more like us on/. bashing michael and katz for their ranting and retarded "opinion" articles that are nothing but fluff and stupidity. Hopefully this DOES set a precedent for the major newspapers (along with the debacle regarding the recent misreporting of all 12 miners being ALIVE. OOooops!): hire REPORTERS, not regurgitation machines.
Sadly, as we have seen before, you can lie for 20yrs and still get promoted at even the largest newspapers in the country. Truth is not their forte. (Sorry, missing the accented 'e', I know.)
Well, personally I thought the definition of a "professional" was "someone who gets paid for their work." Doesn't matter if your paid to sit on a toilet and poop. If you get paid for it, you're a professional pooper!
Hence my beef with the unprofessionalism of PAID Slashdot editors. Does the quality of their work not matter to them? I guess I just don't get their attitude towards their profession.
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I completely agree with you, but did you know that many high school students these days are taking college courses (for full college credit) during their Senior, and sometimes their Junior, year of high school? I would have loved to have done this in my day! (which was about 12 years ago, and my school was a private one so it would've been different anyways) My little sister, and my younger sisters-in-law have both done just that and go into their college years having already finished the repeats of English 101, Calc 101, and History 101 courses.
Great letter...
except you made my eyes bleed... green. Please, for the love of the Internet tubes, lay off all the green.
I am in a similar, and yet worse, situation than the submitter of this Ask Slashdot. While he has already obtained one undergraduate degree and is considering another, I am still working on my first. I will thankfully be graduating at the end of this October, but I will then be turning 30 two weeks later.
First off, I would argue that you're never too old to go back to school. I too thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do straight out of high school and went to a prestigious school in Florida to do just what I thought I'd be doing. Long story short, I ended up back in the city I grew up in, and began working full-time for a technology related company as a customer service rep. I was at the bottom of the corporate ladder. I began working my way up, and on the way up I decided it was finally time to get that undergrad degree. I went back to school, and spent 5 years doing school part-time, in the evenings to get my Computer Engineering Technology degree. Now I'm considering pursuing a Master's in Statistics after I graduate, which leads me to my second point:
Secondly, consider the possibility of obtaining a Master's degree. Certain master's programs will allow you to "make up" some of the courses you would need to get a Master's in a field that is wholly unlike your undergrad experience, BUT this would give you more specialized, more informative information on technology than a simple undergrad in Comp Sci or Eng. will be able to do. Plus, since you're already working at a college, you could probably take classes there or at a nearby college for potentially much less than any of us in the "real world" could.
All this babbling of mine is to merely show you that indeed, you're not too old yet. I'm even further behind than you as far as educational achievements, but I'm doing it, and I am glad that I have stuck it out this long to do it. (I wouldn't be able to consider going on to get a Master's if I hadn't!) Go for it, dude!
For members of IEEE with a subscription to IEEE Computer Society's Transactions on Software Engineering, the last issue (April) has a very interesting article related to this stuff titled: Interactive Fault Localization Techniques in a Spreadsheet Environment. Basically, the article explains how they have worked to develop and test techniques that allow "end-user programmers" (people who create formulas in spreadsheets and such) to use automated fault localization testing tools to help debug their "applications" (spreadsheets) at runtime. Pretty interesting stuff that they found in their analysis. (It's easier for you to just go read it than for me to attempt to summarize it at the end of my work week. ;)
Look, the SanDisk MP3 player is just like all the other non-iPod players: it doesn't have a "scrollwheel" hardware UI. This is absolutely the #1 reason why the iPod is winning. Someone at Apple caught on to the simple fact a while ago that a simplistic dial is a better interface to "dial-in" your next mp3 or playlist for listening, just like the original transistor radios had a simple knob controlling the mechanical pot that adjusted the frequency of the radio - thereby changing what music you listened to.
I am currently working on a senior project where we're hacking away at Rockbox code, and we've tried several different mp3 players and they all suck for actual mp3 playing goodness compared to an iPod simply because of the means of hardware UI. Navigation buttons just don't cut it.
IMHO, this whole idea is dead in the water for SanDisk until they can pry the whole "scrollwheel" idea out of trademark (or copyright) hell. (I forget which type of laws that innovation falls under at the moment.) Apple will continue to have their government approved monopoly on the iPod scrollwheel, and will continue to profit heavily from it, which, for once, is how it's supposed to be. (Not that I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm just saying that this is what trademarks and copyright are intended to do, in general.)
He laughed because I would estimate that 100% of all legalese is designed to mitigate the risk of "user error", and as we all know in computing, "user error" is the one thing you cannot truly design around to completely mitigate all risk in the system. Being a lawyer and writing legal documents is more akin to playing with statistics than it is writing computer code. In other words, there's always that 0.01% chance that a hole could be poked somewhere in the legalese, no matter how well-written the legal document is. The trick is to shrink that chance as much as possible with good legal language, and some lawyers and politicians are better than that than others - hence the reason we have crap laws like the DMCA.
I don't know what the child post is ranting about - it's incoherent compared to what you said - but I did want to jump on the bandwagon here and say: "Me too!"
I heard somewhere recently that the unionized autoworker in America is quite capable of making >$60k/yr with overtime, PLUS they have outstanding health and retirement benefits. That's more than I make, and my job requires far more creativity, high levels of stress at times, and NO overtime pay because I work in the IT world! I'm not a programmer, but I'm close enough to IT that if they off-shored it I could potentially be a casualty of the job wars. So why am I still working in IT? 1) Because there is far more possibility for me to earn more and 2) there's more opportunity (if I pursue it) to earn more than a factory worker ever could doing just a unionized factory worker job.
What I'm saying is that unions, in general, suck. Why is it that Toyota and Honda are continuing to be profitable and wildly popular in the marketplace? Because their cars aren't built like crap by workers who are just trying to get their cards punched, and because they can cut back as needed on workers to keep costs in check. I'm not claiming that all employees at Ford or GM are lazy - in fact, I'm sure many work hard, but the fact of the matter is that it's far easier to half-ass it in a union than it is without one. Don't feel like working that hard today? Oh well, it'll take an act of God to get me fired. But at Honda, I believe you get one or two warnings before getting fired just for showing up even 1 minute late to work. That's not the environment I want to work in, sure, but it also means the workforce is a motivated and hard-working one regardless, not just a bunch of friends of friends who managed to weasle their way into the union even though they're NOT always hard workers.
And unions in the IT sector will never work. If you're into IT, most likely you've learned it on your own or in college at least, which means you're generally a good worker and interested in pursuing the understanding of somewhat difficult concepts. OR you're at least intelligent enough to fake it and get into a cushy IT job so you can screw off for life. Either way, why would such types of people want to allow the "lowest common denomitor" style of worklife? They're NOT the lowest common denominators of society, (they generally make more than the factory worker, and are more highly educated) so why pull themselves down to that level?
Lastly, is it really necessary to bemoan the insecurity of IT jobs? Living paycheck to paycheck is what 99.9% of Americans do, and yet we all complain about outsourcing and the lack of jobs. Let's quit complaining and consider moving, changing jobs for a time, or even working more than one job to make ends meet if we lose our jobs - after all, it's not like any of us were saving for the potential rainy day. Just remember: "It's nobody's fault but mine."
Good work on pulling those snippets of phrases right out of the context in which I used them. The better explanation that you are looking for is that to claim that science OR faith based understanding can provide a 100% understanding of truth is completely ridiculous. And so when I refer to the evolutionists that like to call "hypocrit" on the Christians who won't accept other religions for potentially being an alternate pathway to God, it is because I view those evolutionist's claims (that somehow THEY know better than those crazy Christians how to be tolerant of other viewpoints) as proved false by their own equal reliance on the correctness of Evolutionary theories over any kind of "Intelligent Design" theories - and so much so that they are afraid that teaching such additional theories somehow constitutes non-seperation of church and state, reliance on faith, etc. Noooo, it's just as simple as teaching an alternative theory about the origins of the universe; which, like I stated before, none of us can empirically measure and prove.
Put another way: You can't place God in a box called 'gravity' when God created such a thing as 'gravity' in the first place. If he is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then the question simply becomes NULL for lack of a describable or definable context that could actually limit such an all-encompassing God.
Exactly! And so just labeling something "scientific" makes it true?? That's absurd, but all you staunch evolution believers act that way. Oh wait, I forgot, all that fossil evidence and carbon dating and blah blah blah "SCIENCE" proves you to be correct, right?! Stupid me.
But oh wait, that's called studying the past by relying on the present to prove your hypotheses about the past. I personally think it's quite retarded for both the ID'ers AND the Evolutionists to believe that they have a complete 100% correct answer for everything in the distant past that we 1) have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of recording because we either a) didn't exist, or b) were still apes with ape brains; and 2) assume all behaved the way we currently measure the earth and life on it to behave according to physical laws of nature. Either way you can't definitively prove Intelligent Design or Evolution.
Get over yourselves and let's learn about both viewpoints. I wonder just how many people that think Intelligent Design is poppy-cock also think Christians are hypocritical for not accepting other religions to be as valid as Christianity. Seems rather hypocritical, don't you think?
Inova Microlight LED flashlight or a similar device is a great accessory. Keep it small and lightweight. I highly recommend red LED's as they illuminate the best in pitch black conditions.
Are you that guy that I keep seeing featured in Forbes and Fortune and the like who started his own pharmaceutical company? Your story seems awfully familiar to me from what I've read in those mainstream magazines. In any case, I applaud your foresight to know what makes you tick, and how best to use your talents to make a company grow.
;)
I'm torn on this Ask Slashdot because I can see it from both sides. Personally, I think I would make a good CIO or CTO or maybe an executive level IT Project Manager, but I'm not the "tech guy." Yes, I love working in the computer field, I love reading about and expirementing with new computer programming techniques, Photoshop techniques, etc. but I'm just not that focused of a person to thoroughly enjoy the nitty-gritty work involved in writing software code. I prefer painting those broad strokes as you mentioned like a finance or CEO type would do.
On the other hand, I know *enough* about computer technology that if I were to start my own company and do the detailed work, I fully believe that my vision for how that company should run and what technologies to support would be a great asset to a fledgling, tiny company of my own. So perhaps the computer guy should name himself CEO since it was his idea in the first place. After all, the finance guy could focus more then on getting the company out there in the public domain, selling their services, and painting in broad strokes the wonders of their company to potential customers and investors.
Either way, those two need to make up their own minds. While I agree with you on the investor concerns about dual-CEO-ship, I think they could make it through the early stages of their business quite well as a 50/50 partnership. Maybe they should start out as a 50/50 partnership, and write-up a 5yr strategy for evolving into a more heirarchically structured business?
Now if only I could find a small business willing to 1) trust me to be CEO/CIO/CTO, and 2) PAY me enough to leave the safety and security of a big-corp job with health and retirement benefits...
Well, I didn't mean actually putting the *speakers* in the walls, just the wiring and outlets. I noticed this poor grammar choice on my part AFTER posting my dang post. Doh!
As for a server closet... I don't have any great ideas, although in the house I *WAS* building (deal fell through - long story - and had to back out and buy a used house instead) I was planning on using some of those metal wire racks that you can get from Lowe's or Home Depot for about $40 to put all the server equipment on in a corner of the basement near where I was going to terminate all the networking and electrical. Then, I'd add one of those small window A/C units or even just a fan and pipe all the hot air outside via some sort of duct system below my deck. Maybe use one of those clothes dryer vent hoods that goes on the side of the house to keep outside critters from crawling into the fan blade or something like that. Of course, this would be enclosed in a sound insulated "closet" within a room that I would build for my 'workspace' in this magical finished basement that would take me years to actually build.
This A/V and computer closet idea is close to what I'd want, but perhaps a bit too much. Instead, I think the biggest thing I'd want "built-in" would be a QUALITY terminal area in the basement (or I guess it could be a closet) that would provide for a central monitoring and connection termination station for power, telephone, cable, and internal networking. Don't just slap stuff on a couple of plywood boards - design it to be built around, not just hidden in a wall, and make it accessible to future homeowners so they can revise, upgrade, and overhaul as needed for future generations.
Following that, a 5.1 surround system in-wall in the entertainment or family room, and an absolute MUST is cable, Cat5e (minimum, Cat6 if they have money to burn), and telephone (both landline AND VoIP connections from the main termination point in the basement) to EVERY bedroom, family room, office, living room, and workroom/basement (with 2-3 outlets for this in the area I'm going to "set up shop") - optionally in the kitchen as well. Make sure there are at least TWO Cat5 terminals at every jack. You never know where a server might end up! One thing that would be a "nice to have" would be an internal video-cam system that can offload the recordings to an offsite server every hour or so. No need to spy on everyone outside the house really - that just gives away the fact that you have a security system. Make the security system powerful INSIDE the house/office to catch the crooks once they've broken in. Maybe pre-wiring for an "external" server that resides somewhere near the electric box in the back of the building so that the typical moron burglers don't know that just ripping off all the computer equipment inside the house will spare them from being "caught on tape" since you're actually piping the video feeds to an inconspicuous server just outside the building.
As for geek asthetics: none of the Best Buy stereo equipment setups just blurting out: "Hey, look how awesome I am with my cool giant stereo system!" - hide it. Details and understated expensive upgrades are what make a house a home... not giant stereo cabinets and huge plasma TV's.
Not to be a slashbot, but can't you see how easily that will translate right over to video games, media players for video over the web, etc? I mean, how long until EA figures out it can quit losing a few million a year in sales by converting every single game it distributes over to the new DRM'd DVD format discs?
As others have said in the past: the wild west days of the Internet and computing in general are quickly coming to an end.
I think you underestimate the "good" Ms. Abdala did for herself in the legal profession. Remember, these are people who are paid to give the verbal and written smack down to the lawyer across the table on a daily basis. If anything, other lawyers that know of her and practice in her area will now know that she is potentially more competent and a better advocate for herself and her clients than that guy she turned down. This could result in a job offer, or at least, more "street cred" during negotiations with the other party. Now for some IT geek going off to someone in industry, that behavior would probably equal near career death because IT geeks need to be able to do IT work, but communicate with others in a sociable manner. Lawyers don't get paid to be sociable; they get paid to win, as do salesmen and entreprenaurs (sp?) as TFA stated.
Well this Maslow guy sounds like a bit of a 'tard. How many of us would prefer to NOT be at work right now, but instead, sitting at home watching TV, drinking, playing a sport, taking vacations, playing computer games, surfing the Internet (anyone reading this from 9-5 is most certainly ALREADY doing that, to the detriment of their job most likely), or basically being lazy? Yes, I want to contribute to society and do *some* "work", but not as much of it as I currently do.
So why do I work so hard you ask? Well, 1) I have a wife and myself to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for - that requires some money, hence a job; 2) I like to do the extra-curricular activities listed above from time to time, some more frequently than others, and ALL of them require some amount of money to participate in; and 3) because I like to live with "comfortable" items rather than the bare necessities of life. So, Maslow, you can shove your philosophical BS up your arse, because it simply doesn't make sense in this world. Sure, in a utopia such philosophical purity of 'life' would be the norm, but in this world we're not living in a utopia, so we have to do crap we specifically DON'T want to be doing all the time so that we can do the things we want to be doing at least some of the time.
According to internet sources this passage is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
I have to say that i am probably the most anti-religious person that you will ever meet in your life but i do have to admit that this phrase (minus the G-d part), has a lot of merit to it.
OK, so *without* the "G-d part" as you so eloquently put it, where does that leave that phrase?
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of ..."
So, are you doing it for the glory of yourself? Cause if you are, I don't think you're doing a very good job because I have no idea who you are, and therefore you're not glorifying yourself very well. Or are you doing it for the glory of others? Well, I also don't know who they are, so you seem to not be doing a very good job at that either. And if you're doing it for the glory of being "happy", aren't you again, just glorifying yourself in which case I would again say "so what?" because I have no concept of anyone who is known the world over for being the happiest person alive all the time, so you're clearly not fulfilling that role very well either.
My point is, I simply cannot respect you for finding a passage of the Bible as "inspirational" when you take 100% of the meaning out of the passage that you find "inspirational." The ENTIRE point of that passage is to glorify God, and not just any god, or whomever you decide is your god, or even a character trait that you view as approaching godhood, but THE GOD of the Bible. Call me a religious nut, but only call me that for not being able to respect your logic in this matter.
That's a stupid statement.
Better: "War is Hell!"
Exactly. I'm thinking the communications companies are betting on one of two things happening, either of which is a 'win' for them:
1) Get tiered Internet pricing with big profits and big control over their customers.
2) Get regulated (again) by tons of government rules and tariffs about how much they're allowed to charge subscribers when constituents start bitchin' and whinin' to their congresscritters. Again, virtually guaranteed profits with less incentive to beat each other up constantly as they have to do in a deregulated marketplace.
In either case, the consumer gets screwed. On the one hand, competition continues to be cut-throat and tough amongst the big guys, but only the big players can continue to exist. (They can make it financially difficult for smaller telcos to enter markets.) On the other hand, competition disappears, but governmental regulations will help set guaranteed prices for these behemoths once again.
Unfortunately, unlike other regulated industries, the Internet doesn't have to exist solely via the transmission pipes owned by the big telcos. Wireless, Ethernet, and other technologies exist that could certainly begin to flourish if people get fed up enough with the telcos. Seems like an awfully large risk to take against your own customer base, but of course I'm not running those telco companies, so maybe I'm missing a big strategic piece of the puzzle.
The main problem, as a poster pointed out here on /. yesterday, is that this issue with Microsoft and Google is a GOVERNMENT problem, NOT a corporation's problem. I agree whole-heartedly, and being a rather odd mix of Republican/Libertarian/(slightly Democrat) person that I am, I can say that I have been whole-heartedly disappointed with President Bush, his policies, and his party's policies during this term in office.
Unfortunately, the only solution is to make sure the Senate, the House, and the Presidency are as split up politically as possible so that no one party has more control than the other. Capitol Hill, it seems, operates more efficiently, and for the greater good when they're too busy bickering with each other to be passing lame laws and bickering with their citizens. Where's a good tyrannical Caesar for the oligarchy to hate when you need him?
The closest thing I've found to a usable "mobile web experience" is downloadable car purchasing info from Edmunds.com and AvantGo for Palm's and their ilk. Even so, that info is something you download and transfer to your Palm Pilot, not a direct online connection via "mobile web" connection. Besides, why waste time with the very small screen real-estate of a Palm Pilot when you've got a laptop with a wireless USB keychain device? It's like getting a sip of water from a firehose.
Well, I personally think you're oversimplifying, but yes, as a general rule I think you're pretty close to the real issue. Add in the fact that shows marketed to teens, pre-teens, and even small children depict the "scientific" characters in white lab coats, big glasses, and sporting odd and peculiar behavior because they are so wrapped up in "the science" of whatever they're investigating on that particular episode of that particular show.
So a kid sees this type of charicature of a scientist in the media, repeated by their parents, teachers, and elders, and realize, "Hey, I'm not THAT nerdy/geeky/socially inept. I'm more like XXXX character." Experience this perception enough and the kids who might have a bent for the scientific, but aren't as geeky as "the scientist" is made out to be through our language, our media, and typical playground conversations, and those kids shy away from caring as much as they could about science.
However, as others have pointed out, I fully believe that trade schools and other "lesser" pursuits are perfectly warranted for a large portion of our populace. I myself, as much as I find the career of "scientist" alluring in a lot of ways know that I wouldn't be cut out for it. My mind just jumps around to different pursuits and interests often enough that I don't think I'd find the job of "scientist" quite as enjoyable as it seems to me from the outside looking in.
Agreed. Looks more like us on /. bashing michael and katz for their ranting and retarded "opinion" articles that are nothing but fluff and stupidity. Hopefully this DOES set a precedent for the major newspapers (along with the debacle regarding the recent misreporting of all 12 miners being ALIVE. OOooops!): hire REPORTERS, not regurgitation machines.
Sadly, as we have seen before, you can lie for 20yrs and still get promoted at even the largest newspapers in the country. Truth is not their forte. (Sorry, missing the accented 'e', I know.)
Well, personally I thought the definition of a "professional" was "someone who gets paid for their work." Doesn't matter if your paid to sit on a toilet and poop. If you get paid for it, you're a professional pooper!
Hence my beef with the unprofessionalism of PAID Slashdot editors. Does the quality of their work not matter to them? I guess I just don't get their attitude towards their profession.