If you are concerned about your marketability, then put yourself on the market. Find out. Interview with some technical recruiters, or send your resume in for a few programming jobs. (You should have a few good recruiters in your network anyway -- the good ones are helpful). You don't have to actually accept the job unless it is better than what you currently do (yes, you need to be discreet about this with your current employer).
Employers are looking for people that can solve their business problems. They need people that can design, build and maintain their systems. The most convincing proof that you can do that is to have a track record of having done that before. Some employers may dismiss you, but it will be nowhere near 95%.
If the degree is a personal goal of yours, then go for it. But if it isn't, and you are just concerned about marketability, then I would make sure that the degree will indeed help with that. Also, keep in mind that careers take unexpected twists and may take you away from coding in years to come.
"You do the crime, you do the time. I can't wait to read the coming stories about how Lamo is assaulted and brutalized in prison."
If you do the crime you should do the APPROPRIATE amount of time. You should be sentanced by a judge that is not in a hurry to make an example of you. Your trial should be fair. Was the Patriot act really conceived to arrest people like Lamo?
There is very strong evidence to suggest that the Times inflated the damages that Lamo is said to have caused in an attempt to get him charged with a more serious set of charges than would otherwise have been leveled. Should this sort of behaviour be tolerated from the injured party?
I have trouble punishing what Lamo is alleged to have done with the sort of brutality that you are hoping to see him subjected to. His motives to me more resmble those of a mixed-up kid (who, if guilty, should be punished with restraint) than those of a terrorist.
Nevertheless, given the prevailing climate you may get your wish.
I won't name specific companies, but I can promise you that just about every large investment bank on Wall Street has million dollar VBA apps. I have built many of them. These banks have thousands of office users and every one of those employees perform repetitive tasks with the aid of VBA. The savings from the productivity can go up to the tens of millions.
The CIOs weigh the measurable and significant productivity increase against the EXTREMELY unlikely scenario that the financial industry will migrate to Open office in the next three years and they invest.
These CIOs are not intimidated by any means. They have no problem choosing JAVA over C#, or Oracle of SQL server, but in the office space (which they watch carefully) they do not yet see a clear alternative to Office.
This was my first thought as well. Does it use Tempered intonation? Should it? Does it try to correct expressive intonation? Does it raise the leading tone? Alter blue notes?
The article didn't say.
Not only is synthesized music sounding more and more like acoustical music, but now it seems that live music is sounding more like synthesized music.
The industry as a whole adapted and in some cases kept its traditional name as you pointed out. However every individual horse and buggy driver did not become a taxi driver. Every Hay and oats vendor did not open a gas station, and every blacksmith did not become a mechanic. People were dislocated by the change, however, the job opportunities created by automobiles exceeded the opportunities lost.
The article fails to acknowledge any similar possibilities for the changes the author forecasts will be brought about by automation.
Clearly there will be layoffs as jobs are automated, but the article fails completely to address the opportunities that automation creates. Of course it creates opportunity in the field of robot repair, but it also lowers the cost of entry to a number of businesses that require human labor. This means more businesses (and more jobs) can be started att less cost.
When I was a child growing up in Johnstown, PA, I watched the steel industry fall apart as steel manufacturing was done by people that could do it at less cost. With automation, the steel industry could conceivably come back.
About hundred years ago the automobile absolutely devastated the livery industry. Anyone whose job involved tending horses slowly watched their career prospects diminish. No one grieves for those jobs now.
I sent Senator Hillary Clinton's office a polite email of opposition to the latest extension of the copyright term (she may have been a candidate at the time). I got an autoreply asking for a campaign contribution. I never heard another word from her.
You personally probably shouldn't upgrade. However about six months after MSFT offers a new version, they take away their oldest one. So expect 2000 not to be supported in about a year or so (So bug fixes and exploits are not addressed as often)
Again, this is not an issue for you personally, but if O2K is the main app on 5000 boxes that you support, then you should at least consider the upgrade.
I won't deny that all of this is a good argument for open source, but if an organization has already decided that MSFT office is what they want, then many will feel that it pays not to get too far behind in their version.
The real problem comes when several different developers collaborate and each uses a different proportional font. What appears aligned on the originial developers screen is a twisted mess on another developers screen.
Hollywood will always throw its money at the formula. The formula may be blather, but it has a large, established audience. They can dilute the plot with unneeded elements that will bring in different demographics until the target audience is broad enough to bring the investment back. And since each star and threadbare plot device has a predictable audience, it is somewhat possible to model the film's future sales and attempt to estimate a break-even point.
Throwing $100 million at an original film like PI, for example, will never happen.
Broadway shows, by the way, are far worse. The recent theater prosperity is based almost entirely on derived works. I live in fear that somewhere in a studio a songwriting duo is hard at work cooking up 'Phantom Menace' the musical.
The question is relevant to me since it has big implications for whether or not we are alone in the cosmos. If life came from somewhere else then quite possibly we aren't, but if it sprang up here for the first time, then possibly we are.
Keep in mind that the existence of other life in the universe has really only been proven on Star Trek. The rest of us are still waiting eagerly for evidence.
What you dismiss as being only 'another layer' is pretty damn significant. Wouldn't ya say?
Agree with you about TW possibly benefitting from this. However, I think the benefit is more along the lines of solidifying their base. Lots of long time subscribers must recently be wondering whey they stay with AOL. This could serve to give them a reason to stay if done right.
(btw, AOL is more like $12-15 a month if the user provides the bandwidth. $23 is the cost for people that dial up to an AOL access point.)
I am confident that there will always be programmers.
However we are clearly moving in the direction of high-level and low-level programmers. That is to say there are low-level programmers that create the objects and high-level programmers that manipulate those objects to perform the needed functions. This sort of split is what allows languages like VB to be so useful.
What you are describing is a situation where the high-level programming is so simple that non-programmers can set it up. We are moving there, but someone will always be needed to provide the constructs that enable that abstraction.
We are also near the beginning of the long process of codifying best practices to handle the problems that we face. I think slowly a sort of orthodoxy will emerge that will allow more consistent quality of design. The fact that source code is proprietary slows this process down considerably. Most of us spend our professional lives reinventing work that others have done.
The problem is certainly not entirely unique to IM, but other media are more adept at clarifying the subject before communicating. Email has a subject line for that very purpose. ('RE:SMT/Hyperthreading', for example)
Perhaps this is only a challenge of the medium and not a fundamental flaw, still I would be reluctant to let something as important as a press announcement, or critical client communication go over this medium. It is too difficult to issue a careful IM.
I have had several serious misunderstandings with people when communicating over IM.
Instant messaging is a difficult medium. It as immediate as conversation, but without being as clear and concise as email or other forms of writing. With most writing you read back what you wrote to make sure that you didn't accidently write something that can be misunderstood. Since IMs happen in (almost) real time this sort of care is not generally used. Also people do not type at the same rate so the thread of the converstation is often lost.
If the subject is important I always use another medium.
I have been on similar projects (constantly changing requirements).
I am not an XP proponent (although it has some interesting ideas), but as I recall, XP suggests that developers make several small releases rather than a few large ones to address this very problem. This way, when the client sees the burning bush (or whatever) and the inevitable sweeping design changes come, you are not too far down the road to respond to the changes.
Of course this will not save all projects. Some are just doomed.
if they chose Wyoming, they would be just under 5% of the population. They would probably find that some of the local population agrees with them on some issues. MAYBE, they could effect a change.
However these sorts of quirky political ideas come up from time to time. They never amount to much. This will be like libertarianism itself -- interesting as a pure philosophy, but without any hope of functioning in the real world.
Certifications are useful for certifying breadth of knowledge -- not depth. There will never be a substitute for experience, nor should there be. And anyone that hires a potential employee based only on the fact that they passed a standardized test deserves whatever problems they get. Similarly, anyone that believes that a piece of paper with no experience makes them qualified is also decieving themselves.
It is very possible, however, to spend years as a systems engineer and never think about designing a network or about how DHCP works. It is possible to work with VB for years and never use it to build an activeX component.
Narrow experience without a broad overview of the possibilites can lead to bad decisions. Certification is one way (there are many) to get that overview, but certification by itself does not equal expertise.
We don't teach English in schools so that kids can simply communicate -- they can already do that. We teach them so that they can communicate convincingly. With any luck at all these students will one day have to convince a group of other people that their ideas are valid. Most likely these will be people that they don't already know, and that quite possibly will be from a different culture. Perhaps their audience will even be from another part of the world and English will be a second language that they learned in school. Such and audience will lack the cultural reference points necessary to understand slang.
It is common for subcultures to develop their own vocabulary. They do it sometimes for their own ease of communication, and and sometimes so that they can set themselves apart culturally from everyone else. Formal English is constantly changing to allow the more common of those words. I have no doubt that some chatroom and hacker slang will have become standard when we look back in a few years. Until then, however, these words will have limited usefulness when communicating formally.
The art of self-expression and the art of being convincing are both important goals of English classes. Both must be taught, but one should not be taught at the expense of the other.
Perhaps the author included it only to make his point, or perhaps it was placed there through the influence of a publicist out to place the name of the film in as many publications as possible.
Personally it read a little phoney to me -- like a product placement. It did not seem to fit organically into the article.
... Like Mel Gibson's character Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie "Signs," we want to feel that our lives are governed by a grand plan.
Was anyone else suspicious of the mention of this movie citation? this FULL citation, which they went WAY out of their way to make, and which mentions the full name of both the actor, the main character he portrays, and the director (with his spooky, stagey name) in addition to the title. It had everything except a hyperlink to Fandango and the Disney web site.
Exactly like the character in a much advertised movie, eh? What a surprising simile.
A real estate lawyer in NYC was telling me that in order to prove that NYC was not the primary residence of one of his clients, the opposing attorney issued a subpoena for his EZ pass records. No hacking or suggestion of terrorism was required.
In this case the opposing attorneys could see that he left the city every evening, and that he could not legitimately claim residency.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are concerned about your marketability, then put yourself on the market. Find out. Interview with some technical recruiters, or send your resume in for a few programming jobs. (You should have a few good recruiters in your network anyway -- the good ones are helpful). You don't have to actually accept the job unless it is better than what you currently do (yes, you need to be discreet about this with your current employer).
Employers are looking for people that can solve their business problems. They need people that can design, build and maintain their systems. The most convincing proof that you can do that is to have a track record of having done that before. Some employers may dismiss you, but it will be nowhere near 95%.
If the degree is a personal goal of yours, then go for it. But if it isn't, and you are just concerned about marketability, then I would make sure that the degree will indeed help with that. Also, keep in mind that careers take unexpected twists and may take you away from coding in years to come.
Agreed about the marketablility, but more often than not that marketability involves appearance.
How marketable do you imagine a 200 lb. Britney Spears would be?
"You do the crime, you do the time. I can't wait to read the coming stories about how Lamo is assaulted and brutalized in prison."
If you do the crime you should do the APPROPRIATE amount of time. You should be sentanced by a judge that is not in a hurry to make an example of you. Your trial should be fair. Was the Patriot act really conceived to arrest people like Lamo?
There is very strong evidence to suggest that the Times inflated the damages that Lamo is said to have caused in an attempt to get him charged with a more serious set of charges than would otherwise have been leveled. Should this sort of behaviour be tolerated from the injured party?
I have trouble punishing what Lamo is alleged to have done with the sort of brutality that you are hoping to see him subjected to. His motives to me more resmble those of a mixed-up kid (who, if guilty, should be punished with restraint) than those of a terrorist.
Nevertheless, given the prevailing climate you may get your wish.
>
I won't name specific companies, but I can promise you that just about every large investment bank on Wall Street has million dollar VBA apps. I have built many of them. These banks have thousands of office users and every one of those employees perform repetitive tasks with the aid of VBA. The savings from the productivity can go up to the tens of millions.
The CIOs weigh the measurable and significant productivity increase against the EXTREMELY unlikely scenario that the financial industry will migrate to Open office in the next three years and they invest.
These CIOs are not intimidated by any means. They have no problem choosing JAVA over C#, or Oracle of SQL server, but in the office space (which they watch carefully) they do not yet see a clear alternative to Office.
This was my first thought as well. Does it use Tempered intonation? Should it? Does it try to correct expressive intonation? Does it raise the leading tone? Alter blue notes?
The article didn't say.
Not only is synthesized music sounding more and more like acoustical music, but now it seems that live music is sounding more like synthesized music.
The industry as a whole adapted and in some cases kept its traditional name as you pointed out. However every individual horse and buggy driver did not become a taxi driver. Every Hay and oats vendor did not open a gas station, and every blacksmith did not become a mechanic. People were dislocated by the change, however, the job opportunities created by automobiles exceeded the opportunities lost.
The article fails to acknowledge any similar possibilities for the changes the author forecasts will be brought about by automation.
Clearly there will be layoffs as jobs are automated, but the article fails completely to address the opportunities that automation creates. Of course it creates opportunity in the field of robot repair, but it also lowers the cost of entry to a number of businesses that require human labor. This means more businesses (and more jobs) can be started att less cost.
When I was a child growing up in Johnstown, PA, I watched the steel industry fall apart as steel manufacturing was done by people that could do it at less cost. With automation, the steel industry could conceivably come back.
About hundred years ago the automobile absolutely devastated the livery industry. Anyone whose job involved tending horses slowly watched their career prospects diminish. No one grieves for those jobs now.
I sent Senator Hillary Clinton's office a polite email of opposition to the latest extension of the copyright term (she may have been a candidate at the time). I got an autoreply asking for a campaign contribution. I never heard another word from her.
Projectionist must be present at all times to jiggle the mouse every ten minutes during the feature.
You personally probably shouldn't upgrade. However about six months after MSFT offers a new version, they take away their oldest one. So expect 2000 not to be supported in about a year or so (So bug fixes and exploits are not addressed as often)
Again, this is not an issue for you personally, but if O2K is the main app on 5000 boxes that you support, then you should at least consider the upgrade.
I won't deny that all of this is a good argument for open source, but if an organization has already decided that MSFT office is what they want, then many will feel that it pays not to get too far behind in their version.
The real problem comes when several different developers collaborate and each uses a different proportional font. What appears aligned on the originial developers screen is a twisted mess on another developers screen.
Monospace font solves this problem.
Hollywood will always throw its money at the formula. The formula may be blather, but it has a large, established audience. They can dilute the plot with unneeded elements that will bring in different demographics until the target audience is broad enough to bring the investment back. And since each star and threadbare plot device has a predictable audience, it is somewhat possible to model the film's future sales and attempt to estimate a break-even point.
Throwing $100 million at an original film like PI, for example, will never happen.
Broadway shows, by the way, are far worse. The recent theater prosperity is based almost entirely on derived works. I live in fear that somewhere in a studio a songwriting duo is hard at work cooking up 'Phantom Menace' the musical.
Mod parent up.
Zero is just wrong.
The question is relevant to me since it has big implications for whether or not we are alone in the cosmos. If life came from somewhere else then quite possibly we aren't, but if it sprang up here for the first time, then possibly we are.
Keep in mind that the existence of other life in the universe has really only been proven on Star Trek. The rest of us are still waiting eagerly for evidence.
What you dismiss as being only 'another layer' is pretty damn significant. Wouldn't ya say?
[Mod parent up]
Agree with you about TW possibly benefitting from this. However, I think the benefit is more along the lines of solidifying their base. Lots of long time subscribers must recently be wondering whey they stay with AOL. This could serve to give them a reason to stay if done right.
(btw, AOL is more like $12-15 a month if the user provides the bandwidth. $23 is the cost for people that dial up to an AOL access point.)
I am confident that there will always be programmers.
However we are clearly moving in the direction of high-level and low-level programmers. That is to say there are low-level programmers that create the objects and high-level programmers that manipulate those objects to perform the needed functions. This sort of split is what allows languages like VB to be so useful.
What you are describing is a situation where the high-level programming is so simple that non-programmers can set it up. We are moving there, but someone will always be needed to provide the constructs that enable that abstraction.
We are also near the beginning of the long process of codifying best practices to handle the problems that we face. I think slowly a sort of orthodoxy will emerge that will allow more consistent quality of design. The fact that source code is proprietary slows this process down considerably. Most of us spend our professional lives reinventing work that others have done.
The problem is certainly not entirely unique to IM, but other media are more adept at clarifying the subject before communicating. Email has a subject line for that very purpose. ('RE:SMT/Hyperthreading', for example)
Perhaps this is only a challenge of the medium and not a fundamental flaw, still I would be reluctant to let something as important as a press announcement, or critical client communication go over this medium. It is too difficult to issue a careful IM.
I have had several serious misunderstandings with people when communicating over IM.
Instant messaging is a difficult medium. It as immediate as conversation, but without being as clear and concise as email or other forms of writing. With most writing you read back what you wrote to make sure that you didn't accidently write something that can be misunderstood. Since IMs happen in (almost) real time this sort of care is not generally used. Also people do not type at the same rate so the thread of the converstation is often lost.
If the subject is important I always use another medium.
I have been on similar projects (constantly changing requirements).
I am not an XP proponent (although it has some interesting ideas), but as I recall, XP suggests that developers make several small releases rather than a few large ones to address this very problem. This way, when the client sees the burning bush (or whatever) and the inevitable sweeping design changes come, you are not too far down the road to respond to the changes.
Of course this will not save all projects. Some are just doomed.
if they chose Wyoming, they would be just under 5% of the population. They would probably find that some of the local population agrees with them on some issues. MAYBE, they could effect a change.
However these sorts of quirky political ideas come up from time to time. They never amount to much. This will be like libertarianism itself -- interesting as a pure philosophy, but without any hope of functioning in the real world.
Certifications are useful for certifying breadth of knowledge -- not depth. There will never be a substitute for experience, nor should there be. And anyone that hires a potential employee based only on the fact that they passed a standardized test deserves whatever problems they get. Similarly, anyone that believes that a piece of paper with no experience makes them qualified is also decieving themselves.
It is very possible, however, to spend years as a systems engineer and never think about designing a network or about how DHCP works. It is possible to work with VB for years and never use it to build an activeX component.
Narrow experience without a broad overview of the possibilites can lead to bad decisions. Certification is one way (there are many) to get that overview, but certification by itself does not equal expertise.
Agreed.
We don't teach English in schools so that kids can simply communicate -- they can already do that. We teach them so that they can communicate convincingly. With any luck at all these students will one day have to convince a group of other people that their ideas are valid. Most likely these will be people that they don't already know, and that quite possibly will be from a different culture. Perhaps their audience will even be from another part of the world and English will be a second language that they learned in school. Such and audience will lack the cultural reference points necessary to understand slang.
It is common for subcultures to develop their own vocabulary. They do it sometimes for their own ease of communication, and and sometimes so that they can set themselves apart culturally from everyone else. Formal English is constantly changing to allow the more common of those words. I have no doubt that some chatroom and hacker slang will have become standard when we look back in a few years. Until then, however, these words will have limited usefulness when communicating formally.
The art of self-expression and the art of being convincing are both important goals of English classes. Both must be taught, but one should not be taught at the expense of the other.
Perhaps the author included it only to make his point, or perhaps it was placed there through the influence of a publicist out to place the name of the film in as many publications as possible.
Personally it read a little phoney to me -- like a product placement. It did not seem to fit organically into the article.
WSJ style choice is another matter.
Was anyone else suspicious of the mention of this movie citation? this FULL citation, which they went WAY out of their way to make, and which mentions the full name of both the actor, the main character he portrays, and the director (with his spooky, stagey name) in addition to the title. It had everything except a hyperlink to Fandango and the Disney web site.
Exactly like the character in a much advertised movie, eh? What a surprising simile.
What are the odds of THAT happening.
A real estate lawyer in NYC was telling me that in order to prove that NYC was not the primary residence of one of his clients, the opposing attorney issued a subpoena for his EZ pass records. No hacking or suggestion of terrorism was required.
In this case the opposing attorneys could see that he left the city every evening, and that he could not legitimately claim residency.
He lost his case.