Piffle. Come on, guys, give 'em a break. Microsoft has to find out what needs patching, decide where to put resources ( old OS patches? new OS patches? new OS development? ) based on information that changes daily (how many people have win95 vs win98, sales projections, etc. ), then they need to decide what to fix first, what and when to announce, what to release, etc. For example, do you fix the 50% of the worst bugs, and ship in April, or go for 100% and ship in... January '00? Is it even worthwhile patching Win95 if 90% of their users will abandon it by y2k anyway? Microsoft gets flamed plenty for "pre-announcing" software it doesn't ship for years, now they are getting flamed for not-announcing software they may or may not ship. Sheesh. As far as the charge of running up win98 sales goes, they may indeed be guilty of that, but planned obsolescence in the marketplace is not by any means restricted to Microsoft. Please bear in mind, as a general thing, that it is very easy to describe what someone (Bill Gates) DOES, but it is very tricky in general to infer what that same someone THINKS from those same deeds. We have RUMINT (rumour intelligence) that MS may or may not be shipping a win95 patch. That's very thin evidence for drawing any conclusions about MS' MOTIVES.
What would you prefer MS did? Offer no Win95 patch at all (they are forcing us to 98!) Develop a win95 patch, but don't announce it until nearly done (ditto) ? Develop a win95 patch, announce it months in advance (they are creating FUD by preannouncing, their old trick. Besides, what if development runs late?) ? Everything Microsoft does here could be construed as greed or guilt (not that MS is not greedy or guilty sometimes... )
Call me naive, but I would take Mr Jones' statement at face value until someone gave me EVIDENCE to the contrary.
What makes you think that someone with a degree will know more about OS, DBMS, and language theory and structure than someone you pull off the street? When I went to the University of Washington - a supposedly "good" E-skool - I found out that completing my coursework was giving me very little instruction in code writing, data structures, style, &c. Spend 2 weeks on something, hand it in, (you are forbidden to show it to peers, that's "cheating"), and wait a week. In the meantime, another STUDENT (not the prof!) spends about 60 seconds on it, scrawls some notations in the margin, writes a number on top, and hands it back - this is education? At work, I had experienced engineers examining my work very carefully, and had much more access to constructive criticism.
A tech degree is not a bad investment? Mmmmm... depends. Consider first of all the difference between a getting tech DEGREE and committing to major in a technical field: - Many people demotivate during their studies, and quit or switch. - There are skills required to getting-a-degree which are not applicable to working-as-an-engineer, meaning some people who would be good engineers flounder in skool - If you are NOT sure you want to be an engineer, skool is a very inefficient way to find out what working as an engineer is really like. Sitting in a classroom studying an engineering text is a lot like sitting in a classroom studying a law text, but being an engineer is not much like being a lawyer. This raises the risk that you could spend 4 years in school and graduate into a job that doesn't appeal to you. - There is a long lead time between starting a degree and finishing one, meaning that the market may have changed in the meantime. Cases in point : Geology grads were in great demand when oil prices were high in the late '70's, but within a few years the bottom had dropped out of the market; MBA's were the cat's jammies for awhile in the '80's, fell out of fashion about the time Milken reported to Federal Prison, and are now on the way back into vogue; people who finished the long road to doctor-hood in the last five years graduated into a job market dominated by HMOs, and not at all like the one they anticipated when they started their 12 YEARS of post-secondary education; physics and AeroE grads who started their majors during Reagantime graduated into a depressed defense market after the Wall came tumbling down. I could go on and on - the point is, the software market (in particular) changes so fast that anyone who STARTS a degree in 1999 thinking what he learns will still be topical when *he graduates in 2003 or 2004 is making a very risky bet. - A decision to obtain a degree means assuming a lot of costs and foregone opportunities, with no overall guarantee of success ( 1/3 of law school grads never practice law; 3/4 of architecture grads never see any of their designs built ).
In brief, students must decide on majors (or dropping out) before all the facts are in, and live with their decisions. If you take the advantages of ALREADY HAVING a degree and matching job, and match it against not having one, you are making an invidious comparison.
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Piffle. Come on, guys, give 'em a break. Microsoft has to find out what needs patching, decide where to put resources ( old OS patches? new OS patches? new OS development? ) based on information that changes daily (how many people have win95 vs win98, sales projections, etc. ), then they need to decide what to fix first, what and when to announce, what to release, etc. For example, do you fix the 50% of the worst bugs, and ship in April, or go for 100% and ship in ... January '00? Is it even worthwhile patching Win95 if 90% of their users will abandon it by y2k anyway? Microsoft gets flamed plenty for "pre-announcing" software it doesn't ship for years, now they are getting flamed for not-announcing software they may or may not ship. Sheesh. As far as the charge of running up win98 sales goes, they may indeed be guilty of that, but planned obsolescence in the marketplace is not by any means restricted to Microsoft.
... )
Please bear in mind, as a general thing, that it is very easy to describe what someone (Bill Gates) DOES, but it is very tricky in general to infer what that same someone THINKS from those same deeds. We have RUMINT (rumour intelligence) that MS may or may not be shipping a win95 patch. That's very thin evidence for drawing any conclusions about MS' MOTIVES.
What would you prefer MS did? Offer no Win95 patch at all (they are forcing us to 98!) Develop a win95 patch, but don't announce it until nearly done (ditto) ? Develop a win95 patch, announce it months in advance (they are creating FUD by preannouncing, their old trick. Besides, what if development runs late?) ? Everything Microsoft does here could be construed as greed or guilt (not that MS is not greedy or guilty sometimes
Call me naive, but I would take Mr Jones' statement at face value until someone gave me EVIDENCE to the contrary.
What makes you think that someone with a degree will know more about OS, DBMS, and language theory and structure than someone you pull off the street?
When I went to the University of Washington - a supposedly "good" E-skool - I found out that completing my coursework was giving me very little instruction in code writing, data structures, style, &c. Spend 2 weeks on something, hand it in, (you are forbidden to show it to peers, that's "cheating"), and wait a week. In the meantime, another STUDENT (not the prof!) spends about 60 seconds on it, scrawls some notations in the margin, writes a number on top, and hands it back - this is education? At work, I had experienced engineers examining my work very carefully, and had much more access to constructive criticism.
A tech degree is not a bad investment? Mmmmm ... depends. Consider first of all the difference between a getting tech DEGREE and committing to major in a technical field:
- Many people demotivate during their studies, and quit or switch.
- There are skills required to getting-a-degree which are not applicable to working-as-an-engineer, meaning some people who would be good engineers flounder in skool
- If you are NOT sure you want to be an engineer, skool is a very inefficient way to find out what working as an engineer is really like. Sitting in a classroom studying an engineering text is a lot like sitting in a classroom studying a law text, but being an engineer is not much like being a lawyer. This raises the risk that you could spend 4 years in school and graduate into a job that doesn't appeal to you.
- There is a long lead time between starting a degree and finishing one, meaning that the market may have changed in the meantime. Cases in point : Geology grads were in great demand when oil prices were high in the late '70's, but within a few years the bottom had dropped out of the market; MBA's were the cat's jammies for awhile in the '80's, fell out of fashion about the time Milken reported to Federal Prison, and are now on the way back into vogue; people who finished the long road to doctor-hood in the last five years graduated into a job market dominated by HMOs, and not at all like the one they anticipated when they started their 12 YEARS of post-secondary education; physics and AeroE grads who started their majors during Reagantime graduated into a depressed defense market after the Wall came tumbling down. I could go on and on - the point is, the software market (in particular) changes so fast that anyone who STARTS a degree in 1999 thinking what he learns will still be topical when *he graduates in 2003 or 2004 is making a very risky bet.
- A decision to obtain a degree means assuming a lot of costs and foregone opportunities, with no overall guarantee of success ( 1/3 of law school grads never practice law; 3/4 of architecture grads never see any of their designs built ).
In brief, students must decide on majors (or dropping out) before all the facts are in, and live with their decisions. If you take the advantages of ALREADY HAVING a degree and matching job, and match it against not having one, you are making an invidious comparison.