"Doctor of Jurisprudence; PhD equivalent == law school."
Actually, a J.D. is roughly equivalent to a master's degree. It is a terminal, professional degree. To earn a Ph.D., you have to contribute new knowledge to your field, but to earn a master's degree, you mainly just have to do coursework and projects. Ph.D.'s are training for research and scholarship; master's degree are training for professions. I think there is a "J.S.D." or something, which is the Ph.D. equivalent for legal scholars.
Dell 2000FP is a 20.1-inch LCD that does 1600x1200. It has four inputs: VGA, DVI, S-Video, and Composite. It can do picture-in-picture with the s-video and composite inputs. If you time it right (wait until Dell is having a 20% sale on peripherals, which they do often, and get a coupon code off the web) you can get one for around $1100. Regular price is $1500. Currently, it is 10% off. Viewsonic and Samsung also make similar LCD's, but I haven't seen them. The Dells are pretty nice. The pixel response time is a little slow for gaming -- the images split sometimes during movement and panning. For daily work, they are great. The only LCD I've actually seen that's better is the Apple HD Cinema display, but for $3500, you can buy THREE Dells.
My cable provider is AT&T "Broadband," and I've been calling them for six years asking for a cable modem. Actually, it was not always AT&T. It used to be TCI Cable. I asked them for a cable modem about once every six months. The people in the office didn't even know what I was talking about. They worked for the freakin' cable company, and they didn't even know what a cable modem was. Then AT&T "Broadband" bought TCI. Now, they understand what I'm talking about, but they still won't deliver. I don't know what they're waiting for. It's not like I live out the middle of nowhere -- I live in a suburb of Chicago. There are plenty of people here who would pay for the service. I've noticed that several of my neighbors have new antennae on their houses to get a 1-Mbit wireless internet connection from a local ISP. We're too far from the CO for DSL, and I guess they got tired of waiting for the cable monopoly to gear up.
Anyway, my point is, don't bother calling the nice folks at AT&T "Broadband." It's a waste of your time. They don't care.
"Yes, the Samsung 24T is 24-inch diagonal. Judging from another post below, I strongly suspect Sun re-markets it..."
I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung made the Apple HD display too, even though it's a slightly different size. It seems like there are many brands, but few actual manufacturers. For example, SGI designed the 1600SW flat panel (1600x1024 resolution, 17.3 inches), and Mitsubishi manufactured it. Then, Apple came out with the Cinema display (1600x1024, 22 inches), also made by Mitsubishi. Then, SGI came out with the F220 (1600x1024, 22 inches). I don't know for sure who manufactures it, but I can guess.
"Several current video cards will drive up through 2048x1536, including the nVidia ones."
Yeah, but only in analog mode over a VGA (HD15) connector, right? It seems silly to buy a digital computer with a digital graphics card and a digital flat panel monitor, and connect them together in analog. I have done this (digital-analog-digital conversion) on my SGI flat panel, and the quality is noticeably worse. I bought high-end ATI Radeons for my Dell 2000FP flat panels, because I wanted to be sure they could do 1600x1200 in digital mode (TMDS) over the DVI connector, and, at the time, all the reputable NVIDIA board manufacturers used cheap TMDS transmitters that couldn't go higher than 1280x1024. Are there any mainstram PC graphics cards that can do 1920x1200 in digital (TMDS/DVI) yet? ATI still stops at 1600x1200, but I haven't checked NVIDIA or Matrox lately.
"Being a poor man, I have never had the luxury to use an LCD monitor for a long time... just out of curiosity, how much more annoying are dead pixels compared to the two lines that are on an aperture grille monitor..."
It really depends. Before I switched to LCDs (my eyes are really sensitive to CRT refresh rates... result of a mis-spent youth, I suppose), I used a Sony trinitron monitor with the two lines in it. I've also used a lot of Silicon Graphics machines, and they use Sony Trinitrons too. At first, I noticed the lines a lot, but pretty soon I forgot about them completely.
Right now, I'm using a Dell 2000FP (I love it... just bought another one last weekend; Dell dropped the price $100 and had a temporary 20% sale). It has two stuck pixels. They are both a soft blue (or green, I can't really tell), and they are both within about 1 centimeter of the right edge of the screen near the bottom. The only time I can see them is when the screen is black or there is something black underneath. I'm picky about graphics, and they don't bother me.
On the other hand, I also have a Silicon Graphics 1600SW flat panel hooked up to my Linux box. It has only one stuck pixel, but it is stuck RED, and it is near the lower-left corner of the screen, about one inch up and two inches over. It drives me nuts. I bought the second Dell 2000FP to replace the SGI 1600SW.
My point is, how annoying a stuck pixel is depends on its color and location. I can't stand red stuck pixels, but blue and green ones bother me less. Also, some stuck pixels appear to get stuck brighter than others. If a pixel is just dead -- this is, always black -- it doesn't bother me at all. YMMV.
Well, I tried to answer the question by pointing out a few existing cases on the market that have that stuff built in to the front, but I got marked "-1, Redundant." A guy, who posted later than I did about adding a drive-bay plug ("$20 Solution") with the same ports as the case I mentioned, got marked "+5, Informative." Go figure.
If you're going to buy an SGI box anyway, SGI can sell you the software too. It sounds like you need something like SGI's StudioCentral software. It is a digital asset-management package that can run on SGI servers, and it supports Windows and Mac clients. You can extend it with C++ or Perl. It can do versioning and thumbnails.
One of the books I'm currently attempting to read in my Copious Free Time (in other words, I haven't read a word of it in months) is Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. What's your opinion of that book?
On the lighter side, a great book I found when I was in middle school is The Fourth Dimension by Rudy Rucker. It talks about the fourth dimension as another physical dimension (not time, or an abstract notion, or a "rolled-up" microdimension). I'm aware of the dubious nature of reasoning by analogy, but I thought it was fun thinking about the possibilities and trying to visualize four-dimensional objects. It's a quick, easy read; I recommend it.
ccg
A few notes on Pluto, MACHOs, Dark Matter, etc.
on
Planets Without Stars
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· Score: 3
A few people here are arguing that these new planets don't fit the definition of planets. However, the definition can change. In fact, there is an ongoing debate whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. Pluto is actually just a large lump of the Kuiper Belt, an icy belt of material extending from Pluto's orbit out to about 500AU. It is similar to the Oort Cloud, except that the Oort Cloud is distributed spherically.
Furthermore, Pluto has a moon, Charon, like many other planets in our solar system. Unlike the others, Pluto is the only one that is so small relative to its own moon that their orbital barycenter is above the planet's surface. When any two objects orbit each other, the smaller one does not orbit the exact center of the larger one. There is a single point between the two, called the barycenter, around which they both orbit. The greater the difference in mass, the closer the barycenter gets to the center of the more massive object. Incidentally, this is why massive planets can cause a detectable wobble in their host star, which is one way we can detect extrasolar planets.
Also, this planetary discovery sounds similar to the Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) proposed to explain dark matter. However, last I heard, the best estimates for the possible amount of MACHO mass still only accounted for a small percentage of the missing mass (the dark matter). I believe there is a search underway to detect MACHOs with gravitational lensing. Although the discovery of "local" planets without stars may provide legitimacy to the idea of MACHOs, it doesn't explain the missing matter. The missing matter is outside the visible disk of the galaxy, or at least at its edge, if I remember correctly. Adding more mass to the interior of the disk won't explain the high rotation rates at the edge. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
ccg
(the history graduate who wishes he were an astronomer)
Actually, pretty much any physical object above absolute zero produces light of some sort, unless you mean visible light. If you mean visible light, stars produce more than just visible light. It just so happens that our Sun's radiation *peak* is in the visible spectrum (and our atmosphere is most transparent to visible light, interesting coincidence...), but it obviously also produces infrared, UV, etc. It's beautiful in the X-ray spectrum. Other stars have peaks outside the visible spectrum. For example, red giants are red because their peak is in the infrared.
Stars act as almost perfect blackbodies, but even less-perfect objects like planets behave similarly. For example, your body is about 300K, which is why you emit infrared radiation. You are not a star, but you emit your own light.
ccg
Re:The 10th Planet - Our True Origin (Plain Text)
on
Planets Without Stars
·
· Score: 1
According to the article, the planets are 5 million years old. A star that could burn out in 5 million years would be absolutely massive! In other words, we'd have an easier time detecting the leftover black hole than its orbiting planets.:-) Besides, the supernova probably would have incinerated any planets left after the original star swelled into a supergiant.
It's true that you need stellar fusion to produce heavy elements, but there are heavy elements floating around the interstellar medium. The more massive a star, the shorter its life. Therefore, in the 15 or so billion years we've already had, there's been plenty of time for supernovae and planetary nebulae to dump these heavy elements into the ISM. I suppose, after a while, you'd have enough for it to congeal into a planet.
In fact, one of the ways stars in clusters are classified is by the presense or lack of heavy elements in the stars, which indicates whether or not they formed from heavy element-rich material.
"If I throw something in the trash, is it forever gone? Not a chance. It's perfectly legal for the cops to search my trash, same with electronic files."
I'm not so sure about that. I took a pre-law class, and I remember this issue came up. I believe the argument was that, since the defendant had put his trash in a sealed, opaque black trash bag, he had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, if the cops searched his trash without a warrant, it was an illegal search and seizure, and the evidence would be inadmissable. Unfortunately, I can't remember what the ultimate ruling was on this. Anyone know more about this?
I wrote my history thesis on an aspect of the Manhattan Project, and I remember looking through John von Neumann's papers at the Library of Congress. It looked like he was working on some interesting computer ideas while he was at Los Alamos. That wasn't the topic of my thesis, so I didn't really pay attention, except noting to myself that someday I want to look into it further.
Anyone know more about what von Neumann was working on? That also would have been the early-to-mid 1940's.
A quick glance at _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ by Richard Rhodes reveals this:
"Such work could not be done reliably by hand with desktop calculation machines. Fortunately the laboratory had already ordered IBM punchcard sorters to facilitate calculating the critical mass of odd-shaped bomb cores. The IBM equipment arrived early in April 1944 and the Theoretical Division immediately put it to good use running brute-force implosion numbers. Hydrodynamic problems, detailed and repetitious, were particularly adaptable to machine computation; the challenge apparently set von Neumann thinking about how such machines might be improved." (page 544)
Exactly! On the one hand, companies are bitching that they can't hire good people. On the other hand, they only want to hire people with years of experience, even for crappy computer babysitting jobs or boring programming jobs. Well, you can have one or the other, but not both.
I know this first-hand, because I graduated from Yale in May. The fact that I graduated from Yale, I thought, would prove that I'm pretty damn smart and that I work hard. I have a liberal-arts degree, so I adaptable and well-rounded, but I've also studied Computer Science, Economics, and Astrophysics, so I have no problem with technical or quantitative areas. In my spare time, I worked as a web coder and a Unix sysadmin, and I taught myself all sorts of Unix and programming stuff.
Nobody will even look at me, though, because I don't have years of experience.
Someone called me recently about some junior sysadmin job. When I explained my background, the recruiter's response was, "Oh. We were looking for someone with three-years of full time experience." And that was the end. I don't like people wasting my time, and my resume says right on it that I just graduated, but that's not the point. Why do you need three years of full-time experience to be a junior sysadmin? I've been a junior sysadmin, and most of the work is tedious and mind-numbing.
A better question is who, with three years of full-time experience, would WANT a job as a junior sysadmin? Get real.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that you get it; most people don't. I only hope you're a manager or someone in a position to make hiring decisions.
You are SO right! I remember I started programming an Intel 8086 in BASIC and Assembly Language when I was about 10 years old. I did it because I loved it. I did it despite what other people thought.
Back then, being a computer geek made you a pariah. Now, people perceive computer science as a trade-school-type path to wealth. Forty years ago, if you wanted to make money, you became a doctor or a lawyer. Now, you become a doctor or a lawyer or a techie.
Of course now, I can't find a job because no one cares that I am a real computer geek and that I learned all this stuff on my own. All they see is that I don't have a Computer Science degree (I went to frigging YALE, but apparently that doesn't mean anything to IT recruiters) and I don't have full-time experience (duh, I just graduated), so they ignore me, or offer me crap jobs, like night-shift NT babysitting for $16/hour.
The problem is, what are they going to do with that money-grubbing CS grad in two years when his list of skills becomes obsolete? They will wish they had hired a real geek like you or me -- someone who loves technology and is always learning something new for its own sake, not because it leads to more money -- but it will be too late. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just my own bitter bias.
Any tips on getting work like that in Germany? It sounds like you found a great job over there (too bad you couldn't take it).
For all the reasons you said, I would love to be able to work in Germany, even if only for a while. I've been looking for a way to spend time over there, but it's not easy. I never had time to be an exchange student, and now I have to find a Real Job(tm).
I've been to Germany a few times and I love it. I love Austria too. My German is getting rusty, but I always wanted to be fluent (I also want to learn Italian and Spanish eventually). Any hints would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
I'm working on a Hacker's Guide to Writing English. It should be online soon. Basically, I cover the most common spelling and grammatical mistakes and how to avoid them. For example, the word is "DEFINITELY," not "definately," "definitly," "defenetly," "defenatly," and so on.
As soon as it's online, I'll submit a link to Slashdot.
No. Normally I play singleplayer to avoid the lag. Sometimes I'll go to Open Battle.net if I want to ask about something or find someone else to play. My college friends and I at first would play in Open Battle.net, but now we just make our own TCP/IP games. Before, our connections were too unreliable to host, but now all my friends have DSL.
Anyway, the point is, I can reuse a character between singleplayer, Open Battle.net, and hosted games.
Well, I don't know about "little kids," but I play on Open Battle.net occasionally because I want to be able to play my character in Single-player when regular Battle.net crashes, which it inevitably does. Of course, whenever I use regular Battle.net, it also causes my computer to crash when I leave the game, but even if that were not true, I'd still avoid it. Too much lag for a modem luser like me.
I'm not sure which Adesso jwz was talking about (because jwz.org is currently slashdotted), but I own the plain Adesso TruForm keyboard. I got it because it had the best layout I'd seen: a big backslash key ABOVE the Enter key; no big, stupid, L-shaped Enter key; full-size navigational keys (ever use the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn pad on a smaller-size M$-Natural keyboard? It sucks.); and the keyboard "feet" could prop up the FRONT of the keyboard instead of the back. Honestly, I do not understand why everyone has to prop up the BACK end of a keyboard; if anything, that makes the ergonomics WORSE. Why? Because people have a tendency to rest their wrists on the table in front of the keyboard. Propping up the back of the keyboard means they have to pull up their hands and fingers up even further to type, which is bad. Do this sometime: Put your wrists on the table in front of you, pivot your hands up to about 45 degrees, and lift your fingers a little. See all that stuff popping out the top of your hand? I'm pretty sure that's not good for you.
Anyway, that Adesso keyboard is currently sitting unused in the corner of my room. The reason is that the quality is a big disappointment. In the first month I had that thing, the "D" keycap broke off. Since then, the "E" key, the "Ctrl" key, and the "Enter" keys have broken off. Be warned. I'm not so sure these bendy ergo keyboards do that much anyway. If you want to avoid hand/wrist pain, one major thing to do is just make sure you keep your hands and wrists above the table. Try to keep your wrists flat relative to your arms. My previous boss told my it's like playing the piano. This should help with typing on a normal keyboard.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL!
Thank you. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while.
Do you have a link to that deal?
Actually, a J.D. is roughly equivalent to a master's degree. It is a terminal, professional degree. To earn a Ph.D., you have to contribute new knowledge to your field, but to earn a master's degree, you mainly just have to do coursework and projects. Ph.D.'s are training for research and scholarship; master's degree are training for professions. I think there is a "J.S.D." or something, which is the Ph.D. equivalent for legal scholars.
ccg
Here's the link: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.a sp?customer_id=19&sku=320-4105
ccg
Oh sure, send in the network guys to get eaten by Shoggoths.
My cable provider is AT&T "Broadband," and I've been calling them for six years asking for a cable modem. Actually, it was not always AT&T. It used to be TCI Cable. I asked them for a cable modem about once every six months. The people in the office didn't even know what I was talking about. They worked for the freakin' cable company, and they didn't even know what a cable modem was. Then AT&T "Broadband" bought TCI. Now, they understand what I'm talking about, but they still won't deliver. I don't know what they're waiting for. It's not like I live out the middle of nowhere -- I live in a suburb of Chicago. There are plenty of people here who would pay for the service. I've noticed that several of my neighbors have new antennae on their houses to get a 1-Mbit wireless internet connection from a local ISP. We're too far from the CO for DSL, and I guess they got tired of waiting for the cable monopoly to gear up.
Anyway, my point is, don't bother calling the nice folks at AT&T "Broadband." It's a waste of your time. They don't care.
I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung made the Apple HD display too, even though it's a slightly different size. It seems like there are many brands, but few actual manufacturers. For example, SGI designed the 1600SW flat panel (1600x1024 resolution, 17.3 inches), and Mitsubishi manufactured it. Then, Apple came out with the Cinema display (1600x1024, 22 inches), also made by Mitsubishi. Then, SGI came out with the F220 (1600x1024, 22 inches). I don't know for sure who manufactures it, but I can guess.
"Several current video cards will drive up through 2048x1536, including the nVidia ones."
Yeah, but only in analog mode over a VGA (HD15) connector, right? It seems silly to buy a digital computer with a digital graphics card and a digital flat panel monitor, and connect them together in analog. I have done this (digital-analog-digital conversion) on my SGI flat panel, and the quality is noticeably worse. I bought high-end ATI Radeons for my Dell 2000FP flat panels, because I wanted to be sure they could do 1600x1200 in digital mode (TMDS) over the DVI connector, and, at the time, all the reputable NVIDIA board manufacturers used cheap TMDS transmitters that couldn't go higher than 1280x1024. Are there any mainstram PC graphics cards that can do 1920x1200 in digital (TMDS/DVI) yet? ATI still stops at 1600x1200, but I haven't checked NVIDIA or Matrox lately.
It really depends. Before I switched to LCDs (my eyes are really sensitive to CRT refresh rates... result of a mis-spent youth, I suppose), I used a Sony trinitron monitor with the two lines in it. I've also used a lot of Silicon Graphics machines, and they use Sony Trinitrons too. At first, I noticed the lines a lot, but pretty soon I forgot about them completely.
Right now, I'm using a Dell 2000FP (I love it... just bought another one last weekend; Dell dropped the price $100 and had a temporary 20% sale). It has two stuck pixels. They are both a soft blue (or green, I can't really tell), and they are both within about 1 centimeter of the right edge of the screen near the bottom. The only time I can see them is when the screen is black or there is something black underneath. I'm picky about graphics, and they don't bother me.
On the other hand, I also have a Silicon Graphics 1600SW flat panel hooked up to my Linux box. It has only one stuck pixel, but it is stuck RED, and it is near the lower-left corner of the screen, about one inch up and two inches over. It drives me nuts. I bought the second Dell 2000FP to replace the SGI 1600SW.
My point is, how annoying a stuck pixel is depends on its color and location. I can't stand red stuck pixels, but blue and green ones bother me less. Also, some stuck pixels appear to get stuck brighter than others. If a pixel is just dead -- this is, always black -- it doesn't bother me at all. YMMV.
ccg
ccg
One of the books I'm currently attempting to read in my Copious Free Time (in other words, I haven't read a word of it in months) is Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. What's your opinion of that book?
On the lighter side, a great book I found when I was in middle school is The Fourth Dimension by Rudy Rucker. It talks about the fourth dimension as another physical dimension (not time, or an abstract notion, or a "rolled-up" microdimension). I'm aware of the dubious nature of reasoning by analogy, but I thought it was fun thinking about the possibilities and trying to visualize four-dimensional objects. It's a quick, easy read; I recommend it.
ccg
A few people here are arguing that these new planets don't fit the definition of planets. However, the definition can change. In fact, there is an ongoing debate whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. Pluto is actually just a large lump of the Kuiper Belt, an icy belt of material extending from Pluto's orbit out to about 500AU. It is similar to the Oort Cloud, except that the Oort Cloud is distributed spherically.
Furthermore, Pluto has a moon, Charon, like many other planets in our solar system. Unlike the others, Pluto is the only one that is so small relative to its own moon that their orbital barycenter is above the planet's surface. When any two objects orbit each other, the smaller one does not orbit the exact center of the larger one. There is a single point between the two, called the barycenter, around which they both orbit. The greater the difference in mass, the closer the barycenter gets to the center of the more massive object. Incidentally, this is why massive planets can cause a detectable wobble in their host star, which is one way we can detect extrasolar planets.
Also, this planetary discovery sounds similar to the Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) proposed to explain dark matter. However, last I heard, the best estimates for the possible amount of MACHO mass still only accounted for a small percentage of the missing mass (the dark matter). I believe there is a search underway to detect MACHOs with gravitational lensing. Although the discovery of "local" planets without stars may provide legitimacy to the idea of MACHOs, it doesn't explain the missing matter. The missing matter is outside the visible disk of the galaxy, or at least at its edge, if I remember correctly. Adding more mass to the interior of the disk won't explain the high rotation rates at the edge. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
ccg
(the history graduate who wishes he were an astronomer)
Actually, pretty much any physical object above absolute zero produces light of some sort, unless you mean visible light. If you mean visible light, stars produce more than just visible light. It just so happens that our Sun's radiation *peak* is in the visible spectrum (and our atmosphere is most transparent to visible light, interesting coincidence...), but it obviously also produces infrared, UV, etc. It's beautiful in the X-ray spectrum. Other stars have peaks outside the visible spectrum. For example, red giants are red because their peak is in the infrared.
Stars act as almost perfect blackbodies, but even less-perfect objects like planets behave similarly. For example, your body is about 300K, which is why you emit infrared radiation. You are not a star, but you emit your own light.
ccg
Turned Saturn on its side? Don't you mean Uranus?
ccg
According to the article, the planets are 5 million years old. A star that could burn out in 5 million years would be absolutely massive! In other words, we'd have an easier time detecting the leftover black hole than its orbiting planets. :-) Besides, the supernova probably would have incinerated any planets left after the original star swelled into a supergiant.
ccg
It's true that you need stellar fusion to produce heavy elements, but there are heavy elements floating around the interstellar medium. The more massive a star, the shorter its life. Therefore, in the 15 or so billion years we've already had, there's been plenty of time for supernovae and planetary nebulae to dump these heavy elements into the ISM. I suppose, after a while, you'd have enough for it to congeal into a planet.
In fact, one of the ways stars in clusters are classified is by the presense or lack of heavy elements in the stars, which indicates whether or not they formed from heavy element-rich material.
ccg
"If I throw something in the trash, is it forever gone? Not a chance. It's perfectly legal for the cops to search my trash, same with electronic files."
I'm not so sure about that. I took a pre-law class, and I remember this issue came up. I believe the argument was that, since the defendant had put his trash in a sealed, opaque black trash bag, he had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, if the cops searched his trash without a warrant, it was an illegal search and seizure, and the evidence would be inadmissable. Unfortunately, I can't remember what the ultimate ruling was on this. Anyone know more about this?
ccg
I wrote my history thesis on an aspect of the Manhattan Project, and I remember looking through John von Neumann's papers at the Library of Congress. It looked like he was working on some interesting computer ideas while he was at Los Alamos. That wasn't the topic of my thesis, so I didn't really pay attention, except noting to myself that someday I want to look into it further.
Anyone know more about what von Neumann was working on? That also would have been the early-to-mid 1940's.
A quick glance at _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ by Richard Rhodes reveals this:
"Such work could not be done reliably by hand with desktop calculation machines. Fortunately the laboratory had already ordered IBM punchcard sorters to facilitate calculating the critical mass of odd-shaped bomb cores. The IBM equipment arrived early in April 1944 and the Theoretical Division immediately put it to good use running brute-force implosion numbers. Hydrodynamic problems, detailed and repetitious, were particularly adaptable to machine computation; the challenge apparently set von Neumann thinking about how such machines might be improved." (page 544)
Thanks,
ccg at aya dot yale dot edu
Exactly! On the one hand, companies are bitching that they can't hire good people. On the other hand, they only want to hire people with years of experience, even for crappy computer babysitting jobs or boring programming jobs. Well, you can have one or the other, but not both.
I know this first-hand, because I graduated from Yale in May. The fact that I graduated from Yale, I thought, would prove that I'm pretty damn smart and that I work hard. I have a liberal-arts degree, so I adaptable and well-rounded, but I've also studied Computer Science, Economics, and Astrophysics, so I have no problem with technical or quantitative areas. In my spare time, I worked as a web coder and a Unix sysadmin, and I taught myself all sorts of Unix and programming stuff.
Nobody will even look at me, though, because I don't have years of experience.
Someone called me recently about some junior sysadmin job. When I explained my background, the recruiter's response was, "Oh. We were looking for someone with three-years of full time experience." And that was the end. I don't like people wasting my time, and my resume says right on it that I just graduated, but that's not the point. Why do you need three years of full-time experience to be a junior sysadmin? I've been a junior sysadmin, and most of the work is tedious and mind-numbing.
A better question is who, with three years of full-time experience, would WANT a job as a junior sysadmin? Get real.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that you get it; most people don't. I only hope you're a manager or someone in a position to make hiring decisions.
ccg
You are SO right! I remember I started programming an Intel 8086 in BASIC and Assembly Language when I was about 10 years old. I did it because I loved it. I did it despite what other people thought.
Back then, being a computer geek made you a pariah. Now, people perceive computer science as a trade-school-type path to wealth. Forty years ago, if you wanted to make money, you became a doctor or a lawyer. Now, you become a doctor or a lawyer or a techie.
Of course now, I can't find a job because no one cares that I am a real computer geek and that I learned all this stuff on my own. All they see is that I don't have a Computer Science degree (I went to frigging YALE, but apparently that doesn't mean anything to IT recruiters) and I don't have full-time experience (duh, I just graduated), so they ignore me, or offer me crap jobs, like night-shift NT babysitting for $16/hour.
The problem is, what are they going to do with that money-grubbing CS grad in two years when his list of skills becomes obsolete? They will wish they had hired a real geek like you or me -- someone who loves technology and is always learning something new for its own sake, not because it leads to more money -- but it will be too late. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just my own bitter bias.
ccg
Any tips on getting work like that in Germany? It sounds like you found a great job over there (too bad you couldn't take it).
For all the reasons you said, I would love to be able to work in Germany, even if only for a while. I've been looking for a way to spend time over there, but it's not easy. I never had time to be an exchange student, and now I have to find a Real Job(tm).
I've been to Germany a few times and I love it. I love Austria too. My German is getting rusty, but I always wanted to be fluent (I also want to learn Italian and Spanish eventually). Any hints would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Chad Glendenin
I'm working on a Hacker's Guide to Writing English. It should be online soon. Basically, I cover the most common spelling and grammatical mistakes and how to avoid them. For example, the word is "DEFINITELY," not "definately," "definitly," "defenetly," "defenatly," and so on.
As soon as it's online, I'll submit a link to Slashdot.
Hope this helps,
ccg
No. Normally I play singleplayer to avoid the lag. Sometimes I'll go to Open Battle.net if I want to ask about something or find someone else to play. My college friends and I at first would play in Open Battle.net, but now we just make our own TCP/IP games. Before, our connections were too unreliable to host, but now all my friends have DSL.
Anyway, the point is, I can reuse a character between singleplayer, Open Battle.net, and hosted games.
Well, I don't know about "little kids," but I play on Open Battle.net occasionally because I want to be able to play my character in Single-player when regular Battle.net crashes, which it inevitably does. Of course, whenever I use regular Battle.net, it also causes my computer to crash when I leave the game, but even if that were not true, I'd still avoid it. Too much lag for a modem luser like me.
ccg
I'm not sure which Adesso jwz was talking about (because jwz.org is currently slashdotted), but I own the plain Adesso TruForm keyboard. I got it because it had the best layout I'd seen: a big backslash key ABOVE the Enter key; no big, stupid, L-shaped Enter key; full-size navigational keys (ever use the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn pad on a smaller-size M$-Natural keyboard? It sucks.); and the keyboard "feet" could prop up the FRONT of the keyboard instead of the back. Honestly, I do not understand why everyone has to prop up the BACK end of a keyboard; if anything, that makes the ergonomics WORSE. Why? Because people have a tendency to rest their wrists on the table in front of the keyboard. Propping up the back of the keyboard means they have to pull up their hands and fingers up even further to type, which is bad. Do this sometime: Put your wrists on the table in front of you, pivot your hands up to about 45 degrees, and lift your fingers a little. See all that stuff popping out the top of your hand? I'm pretty sure that's not good for you.
Anyway, that Adesso keyboard is currently sitting unused in the corner of my room. The reason is that the quality is a big disappointment. In the first month I had that thing, the "D" keycap broke off. Since then, the "E" key, the "Ctrl" key, and the "Enter" keys have broken off. Be warned. I'm not so sure these bendy ergo keyboards do that much anyway. If you want to avoid hand/wrist pain, one major thing to do is just make sure you keep your hands and wrists above the table. Try to keep your wrists flat relative to your arms. My previous boss told my it's like playing the piano. This should help with typing on a normal keyboard.
ccg