> Okay, sorry, that last one is the only real one. > But, really, I winced everytime that kid spoke. > In AotC, I winced every time Anakin was trying to > be smooth with Padme, but at least the action > sequences were wince-free.
were you asleep during the Mario inspired factory scene?
Don't get me started on the flying R2D2.. I'm still riled up about that.
of course Darth Vader has nothing to do with it, right?;o) (Given it's two actors that give him life instead of just one)
what made Han Solo so much more interesting as a hero was his unapologetic nature. His primary concern at the beginning of the movie was cold hard cash;o) The revisionist BS made him look like a choir boy with a broomstick stuck in his bum like P^HLuke..
Of course the Deathstar trench scene was THE chase scene to beat in its time. Otherwise, star wars is just another garden variety "buck rogers".
It was sad to see pimple face teenagers waving around lightsticks like idiots. It's absolutely vomit inducing to see the piimple face teenagers grow up to be rotund balding idiots waving light sticks about some crummy movies.. yech.
(and don't get me started on the fat ones that decides to dress up as Leia.. and I don't mean just the girls)
From my own experiences, I would highly recommend going to college and get your certification as well. As the market becomes more competitive due to the global focus (i.e. H1Bs), that'll be the difference between being able to find a job in a difficult economy or at least getting call backs from your job searches.
I've read so many articles lately (especially here) ranting and raving about H1Bs and mass produced trade school techs driving down the salaries for system administrators. Let's face it, it's just simple economics that people will want to flock to occupations that pays well and require a short time in training. How many other jobs right now can you expect to get a shot at an above national average salary by going through less than a year of training through trade schools?
On the job training can be hard to obtain in this tight economy, since all the junior position have evaporated. Unless you're willing to work as a non-paying interns, I'd doubt you'll be able to land a position especially in the valley. Depending entirely on on-the-job training also make it so easy to fall into the cookie cutter mode, where all you do is use other people's scripts and recipes. This makes you extremely replaceable as they can simply automate this process and cut you out of the loop. Remember back in '95, HTML "programmers" were commanding $50-$60 an hour. That job role no longer exists. Unfortunately, this is the type of jobs that trade schools are at their best churning out.
The difference between me and many of my coworkers is that my university education provides me with the fundamentals to understand technologies. If you learned the basic program paradigms and understand it well, you can catch up to speed very quickly on any buzzword "new" technology that comes along like Java, C# and other crap. The concept of compiler design hasn't really changed in 20 years and it's not really going to either. For system administration, understanding the parts of an operating system is critical. I've had so many coworkers who has 10+ years working in system admin roles (normally trained in military, trade schools or on-the-job, or state university schooling) that doesn't understand the basic parts of an operating system and how it all works together. It makes them very vulnerable to shifts in deployed technologies (like the short lived windoze server craze or the current linux craze). The way to build operating systems hasn't really changed much in the last 20 years either. Same with networking and the basic tcp/ip protocol design. There's been more features added in the last 20 years but very few true innovations. The current "hot" trends has always seems to pop out of nowhere, but they are very grounded in the idea of the past. For example, system and network security has all of a sudden been discovered in the last few years. The idea of not having a "root" account and session based logins have been solved by IBM mainframes long ago(for all those that suffered under the toil of "awfulvision", CMS, MVS) How often do you hear of mainframes being hacked? It's always the latest and greatest toy boxes that gets reamed in the real world.
anyways, I've been ranting on too long already. Get a university degree for the fundamentals, that'll keep you from being tossed in the cold when "new" technologies shows up. Meanwhile, you'll need certification, on-the-job training, and occasional trade school type classes to get into the field in the first place and to get all the finicky details of the latest buzzword technologies. If what you do can be taught to an intern with a trade school background in a month or two, you have a lot of reason to worry about your future. If you're not ready for a life time of learning, system administration is not for you. You'll either be tossed in the cold in the next downturn, or be tossed out right before your retirement when you're too set in your ways to learn anything new and too expensive to keep.
the best selling computer's best characteristics is the "fruity colors" and everyone else is trying to rip off this lame idea. I can comfort myself thinking that much in the behavior of fashion, this madness will pass and go the way of the dodos.
the old days of I/T department managed by drones with management degrees are numbered. This was possible in the old days where when something broke, you call somebody to fix what's broke under a service contract. Nowadays, the systems are getting too complex and with all the PCs, you'd better be ready roll up your sleeves and do some real work. Sys and network admin salaries are rising at an unbelievable rate these days and that won't change for quite a while.
anyways, if you think all those silly arcane sort routines/data structure/shortest path algorithms don't matter, think again. That's the difference between someone who's going to be stuck as a grunt code monkey and one that'll name their price in the job market.
a university education is what you make of it, much like anything else. That CS degree is good enough to get you a first job. After the first job, you're going to have to rely on your skills as most employers will focus on where you've worked rather than where you've went to school.
A pure CS education is suppose to teach you the fundamental ideas that allows you to adapt and learn quickly. I've found that the self-taught programmer often lack certain fundamentals that causes problems in a team environment. When there's a deadline involved, there's often no time to teach someone how a hash table works. Of course if someone decided to forget everything they learned in college getting that CS degree, then they're no better off.
The "Internet" and "Web" trend has also bred the "hack" mentality into todays projects where everyone is trying to throw something together as soon as possible and neglect "Software Engineering". It also teaches the new graduates to jump on the bandwagons for the newest buzzwords (Java, MCSE, etc).
Why does everyone here thinks that a CS degree automatically dooms you to be a code monkey? There are OTHER jobs in the technical field besides spewing out code. I keep the programmers working by providing the stable environment for them to work. There are also Application Engineers that are basically technical sales positions. It's really sad to see that even in this technical discussion environment, many still holds this type of myopic view. (appreciate your system and network admins, your work life will tend to improve dramatically that way).
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> Okay, sorry, that last one is the only real one.
> But, really, I winced everytime that kid spoke.
> In AotC, I winced every time Anakin was trying to
> be smooth with Padme, but at least the action
> sequences were wince-free.
were you asleep during the Mario inspired factory scene?
Don't get me started on the flying R2D2.. I'm still riled up about that.
of course Darth Vader has nothing to do with it,
right?
him life instead of just one)
what made Han Solo so much more interesting
as a hero was his unapologetic nature. His
primary concern at the beginning of the movie
was cold hard cash
made him look like a choir boy with a
broomstick stuck in his bum like P^HLuke..
Of course the Deathstar trench scene was THE
chase scene to beat in its time. Otherwise,
star wars is just another garden variety
"buck rogers".
It was sad to see pimple face teenagers waving
around lightsticks like idiots. It's absolutely
vomit inducing to see the piimple face teenagers
grow up to be rotund balding idiots waving
light sticks about some crummy movies.. yech.
(and don't get me started on the fat ones that
decides to dress up as Leia.. and I don't mean
just the girls)
oh that a good one...
star wars is more "mature" than
empire strikes back...
if it wasn't for empire strikes back,
I'm not sure the last 4 cinematic mess
could have been made.
one movie to tempt us.. the rest to bore us..
and Indy rules them all...
From my own experiences, I would highly recommend going to college and get your certification as well. As the market becomes more competitive due to the global focus (i.e. H1Bs), that'll be the difference between being able to find a job in a difficult economy or at least getting call backs from your job searches.
I've read so many articles lately (especially here) ranting and raving about H1Bs and mass produced trade school techs driving down the salaries for system administrators. Let's face it, it's just simple economics that people will want to flock to occupations that pays well and
require a short time in training. How many other jobs right now can you expect to get a shot at an above national average salary by going through less than a year of training through trade schools?
On the job training can be hard to obtain in this tight economy, since all the junior position have evaporated. Unless you're willing to work as a non-paying interns, I'd doubt you'll be able to land a position especially in the valley. Depending entirely on on-the-job training also make it so easy to fall into the cookie cutter mode, where all you do is use other people's scripts and recipes. This makes you extremely replaceable as they can simply automate this process and cut you out of the loop. Remember back in '95, HTML "programmers" were commanding $50-$60 an hour. That job role no longer exists. Unfortunately, this is the type of jobs that trade schools are at their best churning out.
The difference between me and many of my coworkers is that my university education provides me with the fundamentals to understand technologies. If you learned the basic program paradigms and understand it well, you can catch up to speed very quickly on any buzzword "new" technology that comes along like Java, C# and other crap. The concept of compiler design hasn't really changed in 20 years and it's not really going to either. For system administration, understanding the parts of an operating system is critical. I've had so many coworkers who has 10+ years working in system admin roles (normally trained in military, trade schools or on-the-job, or state university schooling) that doesn't understand the basic parts of an operating system and how it all works together. It makes them very vulnerable to shifts in deployed technologies (like the short lived windoze server craze or the current linux craze). The way to build operating systems hasn't really changed much in the last 20 years either. Same with networking and the basic tcp/ip protocol design. There's been more features added in the last 20 years but very few true innovations. The current "hot" trends has always seems to pop out of nowhere, but they are very grounded in the idea of the past. For example, system and network security has all of a sudden been discovered in the last few years. The idea of not having a "root" account and session based logins have been solved by IBM mainframes long ago(for all those that suffered under the toil of "awfulvision", CMS, MVS) How often do you hear of mainframes being hacked? It's always the latest and greatest toy boxes that gets reamed in the real world.
anyways, I've been ranting on too long already. Get a university degree for the fundamentals, that'll keep you from being tossed in the cold when "new" technologies shows up. Meanwhile, you'll need certification, on-the-job training, and occasional trade school type classes to get into the field in the first place and to get all the finicky details of the latest buzzword technologies. If what you do can be taught to an intern with a trade school background in a month or two, you have a lot of reason to worry about your future. If you're not ready for a life time of learning, system administration is not for you.
You'll either be tossed in the cold in the next downturn, or be tossed out right before your retirement when you're too set in your ways to learn anything new and too expensive to keep.
I'd never thought I live to see the day *sigh*
the best selling computer's best characteristics
is the "fruity colors" and everyone else is trying
to rip off this lame idea. I can comfort myself
thinking that much in the behavior of fashion,
this madness will pass and go the way of the
dodos.
the old days of I/T department managed by drones
with management degrees are numbered. This was
possible in the old days where when something
broke, you call somebody to fix what's broke
under a service contract. Nowadays, the systems
are getting too complex and with all the PCs,
you'd better be ready roll up your sleeves and
do some real work. Sys and network admin salaries
are rising at an unbelievable rate these days and
that won't change for quite a while.
anyways, if you think all those silly arcane sort
routines/data structure/shortest path algorithms
don't matter, think again. That's the difference
between someone who's going to be stuck as a
grunt code monkey and one that'll name their price
in the job market.
a university education is what you make of it,
much like anything else. That CS degree is
good enough to get you a first job. After
the first job, you're going to have to rely
on your skills as most employers will focus
on where you've worked rather than where you've
went to school.
A pure CS education is suppose to teach you
the fundamental ideas that allows you to adapt
and learn quickly. I've found that the self-taught programmer often lack certain fundamentals that causes problems in a team
environment. When there's a deadline involved,
there's often no time to teach someone how a
hash table works. Of course if someone decided
to forget everything they learned in college
getting that CS degree, then they're no better
off.
The "Internet" and "Web" trend has also bred
the "hack" mentality into todays projects where
everyone is trying to throw something together
as soon as possible and neglect "Software Engineering". It also teaches the new graduates
to jump on the bandwagons for the newest buzzwords (Java, MCSE, etc).
Why does everyone here thinks that a CS degree
automatically dooms you to be a code monkey? There are OTHER jobs in the technical field
besides spewing out code. I keep the programmers
working by providing the stable environment for
them to work. There are also Application Engineers that are basically technical sales
positions. It's really sad to see that even in this technical discussion environment, many still holds this type of myopic view. (appreciate your system and network admins, your work life will tend to improve dramatically that way).