I have BS in Information and Computer Science and I must say that my experience was remarkably similar to the parent's. One problem, IMHO, is that the major is called "computer science" when it should really be called "computational science" instead. People assume that the degree is all about computers and their use but this is a misnomer. It is more correct to say that "computer science" is a specialized study of mathematics as it relates to computation and its complexity with some practical high level computer engineering concepts thrown into the bargain; computers are merely the tools that we use to investigate the theories in practice. Almost everything that I actually use in my day to day software engineering jobs was learned after graduation through working. IMHO, It would do a better service, both to students and industry, if universities would break up the curriculum so that software engineering, "computer science", and computer engineering were more clearly distinct majors. There would be commonalities of course, particularly in the lower division courses, but right now too many students go into "computer science" without really understanding what they are getting themselves into before they have almost enough courses to minor.
This is yet more proof, as if any more was needed, of government incompetence and stupidity. How can people continue to believe that the government would do a good job running health care, or indeed anything else, in the face of repeated demonstrations to the contrary? For another example, take the stimulus (which btw has largely failed to create jobs). Are we supposed to be happy that 20 new jobs were created in New Jersey, which received 99 million in stimulus dollars, at a cost of approximately 5 million per job? The best defense that our intrepid leaders can muster is, "well, it would have been much worse if we hadn't done anything". Does anyone here honestly believe that the next three years are going to be any better? The Obama administration has failed and we are paying for their failure. The Dems don't understand business and the private sector; they don't understand what actually generates wealth in this country because they themselves are destroyers, not creators, of wealth. The best that can be hopped for is that the people learn a hard lesson these next three years and don't make the mistake of trusting the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who has almost zero business experience, ever again.
Seriously, what could have made the school district think that this was, in any way, a good idea?
Nothing. They are complete dumb asses. All of these years of "get tough on crime" and sex offender moral panics are now coming home to roost. Maybe if enough of the "wrong" people are punished in witch hunts, the legislatures will be forced to reconsider making CP the root password to their state constitutions.
then these same families will be able to vote themselves a new tax levy to pay for the damages awarded, plus the attorney fees of both sides.
maybe the public school district should go bankrupt. Then the parents can take their settlement money and re-found their local school as a charter school or send their kids to private school instead. As for the local government falling on hard times, most people probably wouldn't shed a tear about spending cuts; they already believe that government spending everywhere is out of control.
The answer? Private school. The public school teachers and administrators don't give a shit about parents. Why should they? They can treat you like crap and they will not be fired. The only answer to this is to pay out of pocket for your childrens' education with after tax dollars. At private school they take care of their customers (i.e. the parents) and don't create hassles. You have a problem? The private school wants to hear about it and will go out of their way to fix it because you are paying them cash money and money talks.
absent some kind of organized labor movement -- which programmers are notoriously, irrationally averse to
IMHO, this aversion is not as irrational as it might first appear. As you probably know well, many programmers are firm believers in meritocracy; those who can produce elegant solutions to complex problems with clear and concise code are both admired and respected by their peers while those who cannot are not. Contrast this with a common problem in organized labor, rewarding seniority regardless of merit, and you see the principal objection that most programmers have to unionization. If the union rewards members strictly on the basis of merit then it adds nothing worth paying dues for above and beyond the marketplace itself, which also rewards merit and not just seniority. In other words, how does a union benefit the best programmers who could do just as well in the free market?
Oh, and all schools should be charter. Your money follows your kids, whether the school is private or public, and public schools that do a poor job should be allowed to go out of business.
You are talking about school vouchers. Everyone knows that they have been extremely effective wherever they have been tried and that just about everyone wants the freedom of choice that vouchers bring, except the teachers' unions. School vouchers are anathema to the teacher's unions and their Democratic allies in the federal and state governments. It is the parents' right to chose what sort of education their children will have; provided that that education meets certain minimum standards subject to testing. The arguments of the teachers' unions against the rights of parents are self-serving and cynical in the extreme.
So use a false or constructed identity. This can be done to varying levels of quality and sophistication depending upon how much time and money you are willing to put into it. Will this prevent a determined adversary from penetrating your disguise? No, but it will make it too expensive for most commercial entities to consider and unless they have reason to doubt your credentials then it is likely that they will never see past the deception. This is the sort of basic tradecraft that intelligence agencies have been using for decades (i.e. unofficial cover). Learn the skills and techniques of the intelligence agency if you really want to protect your privacy; the search for good educational resources is left as an exercise for the reader.
and the security it gives you in terms of who you're talking to.
Which is to say: none. Does anyone here believe that Facebook wouldn't sell data mined from your logged chats down the river if they thought that it would make them a buck? I also have no doubt that they would roll over immediately if certain three letter agencies demanded their user data; heck, they would probably roll over for a phony DMCA notice. Facebook doesn't care about privacy; their founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said as much.
One point that has been missed so far in this discussion, IMHO, is that Microsoft's substantial Windows and Office revenues are not entirely disconnected from the addon effects of satellite products and services which help to preserve and enhance the profitability of the core franchises; even though individually those satellite products in services might only break even or even lose money. For example, do you believe that Microsoft Office would be nearly as valuable as it is today without the integration with SharePoint and other Microsoft products and business servers? A substantial part of the value proposition of Microsoft is in this "ecosystem" of products and servers which work well together in an enterprise setting ala Voltron or, if you like, the Borg.
As I listen to your wisdom, I am now beginning to understand why China is now able to spend about $145 billion dollars per year on high speed trains
When you treat most of your population as "slaves of the state" (the average Chinese still needs government permission to move from the countryside to the city, for example) then it frees up a lot of money for whatever else you might want to spend it on, but that doesn't make it right. There are hundreds of millions of working class Chinese who never ride these trains and never will, but their cheap labor greases the wheels of the Chinese economy and the Chinese state has an interest in keeping them in their places. They call it "social stability" (a nice term for do what the state demands or disappear).
while America struggles to complete its first such link between two Florida cities a little over a hundred miles apart by 2014
The small number of high speed rail links in the United States is not due to lack of knowledge or inability to build such links if we wanted to, but rather the fact that high speed rail is largely not competitive with regional airports which provide cheap flights between major and most medium sized cities (the sort that a high speed train would connect). The North American continent is bigger and more spread out than Japan or Europe where high speed rail makes more sense. There may be a few marginally cost effective routes in some regions, but planes are still cheaper and NIMBYs (who will file lawsuits to restrict train speed thereby eviscerating any advantage the train might have had over an airline ticket) will make the trains uncompetitive.
I agree, its time to stop spending money on pork in Alabama so that it can be funneled to foreign defense contractors, who grease the palms of Alabama senators.
I would like to less overall government spending, not equal spending but on different things. What makes you think that I want any savings from killing to the constellation program to go right back to the defense contractors? I would prefer that it be returned to the American taxpayers or used to pay down the exploding national debt instead.
By that definition, anyone who opposes the government holding them upside down and shaking until every cent falls out of their pockets is a loony. California needs another 50+ billion of debt for high speed rail (which btw most people will not be able to afford to ride without subsidies and more debt) like it needs a hole in the head.
Or we could, I don't know, cut the amount of taxes that we give to the federal government in the first place? Perhaps then the federal government could get back to its Constitutionally mandated functions instead of figuring out new ways to spend the remaining half of the national income that it doesn't already spend. Of course, such ideas border on blasphemy here on Slashdot where enlightened socialists set themselves up as philosopher kings and set themselves in judgment of how other people chose to spend their own hard earned money.
make the same type of humorous blanket commentary about the ignorance of any other ethnic group, and you'll immediately be branded a brown people-hating racist.
Which doesn't help the brown community. Although people might not say certain things anymore, everyone can see the hypocrisy of these communities and the double standards to which they hold others accountable but not themselves. In the end this doesn't change the way people think and act, so it makes little difference whether those things are said or not; the effect is the same. If those concerned about such things were serious about making progress then they would proscribe the use of such terms by their own people just as harshly as they do their use by others except they don't and therein lies the problem.
Don't know about the rest of you, but in my experience many programmers tend towards libertarianism or even objectivism due to the rigorous and logical nature of those political philosophies. IMHO, this was part of the reason why Ron Paul struck such a chord with software developers and other hardcore programming types (the real programmers, not the web designer latte liberal types who tend to lean left and have fewer levels in the geek prestige class) during the last presidential campaign.
Frankly, I would prefer that the government take half of my investment in taxes for the greater good of society at large than to continue to permit insiders like Madoff and McNeally walk away with essentially all of it because it is legal for them to do so.
An interesting position for a "shareholder". Precisely which companies do you own and how many shares? I have never heard anyone who actually owns shares say that they would prefer for the government to receive half "for the greater good of society at large". People with positions like that are very rarely owners of anything substantial; least of all stocks or bonds in my experience. I don't believe you when you say that you own shares with a position like that.
As for Bernard Madoff, I would never have been taken in by the likes of him because I have always managed my own accounts. I don't need to pay someone else to loose my money for me, I can do that well enough for myself (believe me) and if I do have gains then those are all mine too. I would remind you that Madoff was running a ponzi scheme as a "money manager"; he was not and never billed himself as an officer of any publicly traded corporation.
How many more Ken Lay's, Bernie Madoff, and Scott McNeally endure before people like you wake up to the reality of what the "its all socialism", and "reduce all regulation"
Let the buyer beware. If you don't like the quarterly reports or you aren't willing to take on risk, don't invest; it's that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
I have BS in Information and Computer Science and I must say that my experience was remarkably similar to the parent's. One problem, IMHO, is that the major is called "computer science" when it should really be called "computational science" instead. People assume that the degree is all about computers and their use but this is a misnomer. It is more correct to say that "computer science" is a specialized study of mathematics as it relates to computation and its complexity with some practical high level computer engineering concepts thrown into the bargain; computers are merely the tools that we use to investigate the theories in practice. Almost everything that I actually use in my day to day software engineering jobs was learned after graduation through working. IMHO, It would do a better service, both to students and industry, if universities would break up the curriculum so that software engineering, "computer science", and computer engineering were more clearly distinct majors. There would be commonalities of course, particularly in the lower division courses, but right now too many students go into "computer science" without really understanding what they are getting themselves into before they have almost enough courses to minor.
This is yet more proof, as if any more was needed, of government incompetence and stupidity. How can people continue to believe that the government would do a good job running health care, or indeed anything else, in the face of repeated demonstrations to the contrary? For another example, take the stimulus (which btw has largely failed to create jobs). Are we supposed to be happy that 20 new jobs were created in New Jersey, which received 99 million in stimulus dollars, at a cost of approximately 5 million per job? The best defense that our intrepid leaders can muster is, "well, it would have been much worse if we hadn't done anything". Does anyone here honestly believe that the next three years are going to be any better? The Obama administration has failed and we are paying for their failure. The Dems don't understand business and the private sector; they don't understand what actually generates wealth in this country because they themselves are destroyers, not creators, of wealth. The best that can be hopped for is that the people learn a hard lesson these next three years and don't make the mistake of trusting the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who has almost zero business experience, ever again.
At the core of the problem here is that we have an education system that is still stuck in the 19th century.
A few high-profile prosecutions and new sex offender registrations should shock them into the 21st century; welcome to the jungle people.
Seriously, what could have made the school district think that this was, in any way, a good idea?
Nothing. They are complete dumb asses. All of these years of "get tough on crime" and sex offender moral panics are now coming home to roost. Maybe if enough of the "wrong" people are punished in witch hunts, the legislatures will be forced to reconsider making CP the root password to their state constitutions.
then these same families will be able to vote themselves a new tax levy to pay for the damages awarded, plus the attorney fees of both sides.
maybe the public school district should go bankrupt. Then the parents can take their settlement money and re-found their local school as a charter school or send their kids to private school instead. As for the local government falling on hard times, most people probably wouldn't shed a tear about spending cuts; they already believe that government spending everywhere is out of control.
Who came up with this?! It boggles the mind.
Now you begin to see why these school teachers and administrators would never make it in the private sector.
The school officials here are completely insane.
The answer? Private school. The public school teachers and administrators don't give a shit about parents. Why should they? They can treat you like crap and they will not be fired. The only answer to this is to pay out of pocket for your childrens' education with after tax dollars. At private school they take care of their customers (i.e. the parents) and don't create hassles. You have a problem? The private school wants to hear about it and will go out of their way to fix it because you are paying them cash money and money talks.
Query: are you an independent contractor or an employee?
How can one have a geek card without having at least heard of Logan's Run? I think that even younger programmers will get the reference.
absent some kind of organized labor movement -- which programmers are notoriously, irrationally averse to
IMHO, this aversion is not as irrational as it might first appear. As you probably know well, many programmers are firm believers in meritocracy; those who can produce elegant solutions to complex problems with clear and concise code are both admired and respected by their peers while those who cannot are not. Contrast this with a common problem in organized labor, rewarding seniority regardless of merit, and you see the principal objection that most programmers have to unionization. If the union rewards members strictly on the basis of merit then it adds nothing worth paying dues for above and beyond the marketplace itself, which also rewards merit and not just seniority. In other words, how does a union benefit the best programmers who could do just as well in the free market?
Reversing the polarity of the inertial dampers should compensate for any excess tachyon radiation encountered when speeds exceed warp two.
Oh, and all schools should be charter. Your money follows your kids, whether the school is private or public, and public schools that do a poor job should be allowed to go out of business.
You are talking about school vouchers. Everyone knows that they have been extremely effective wherever they have been tried and that just about everyone wants the freedom of choice that vouchers bring, except the teachers' unions. School vouchers are anathema to the teacher's unions and their Democratic allies in the federal and state governments. It is the parents' right to chose what sort of education their children will have; provided that that education meets certain minimum standards subject to testing. The arguments of the teachers' unions against the rights of parents are self-serving and cynical in the extreme.
Of course they are scarier - they get multiple lives!
and they have secret codes, like up up down down left right left right b a, to get even more lives; plus, those bikers have nothing on those power glove, they're so bad!
and you have to do it in the open.
So use a false or constructed identity. This can be done to varying levels of quality and sophistication depending upon how much time and money you are willing to put into it. Will this prevent a determined adversary from penetrating your disguise? No, but it will make it too expensive for most commercial entities to consider and unless they have reason to doubt your credentials then it is likely that they will never see past the deception. This is the sort of basic tradecraft that intelligence agencies have been using for decades (i.e. unofficial cover). Learn the skills and techniques of the intelligence agency if you really want to protect your privacy; the search for good educational resources is left as an exercise for the reader.
After all, these businesses bring in major direct (income taxes)
The State of Washington, where Microsoft headquarters is located in Redmond, has no state income tax
and the security it gives you in terms of who you're talking to.
Which is to say: none. Does anyone here believe that Facebook wouldn't sell data mined from your logged chats down the river if they thought that it would make them a buck? I also have no doubt that they would roll over immediately if certain three letter agencies demanded their user data; heck, they would probably roll over for a phony DMCA notice. Facebook doesn't care about privacy; their founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said as much.
One point that has been missed so far in this discussion, IMHO, is that Microsoft's substantial Windows and Office revenues are not entirely disconnected from the addon effects of satellite products and services which help to preserve and enhance the profitability of the core franchises; even though individually those satellite products in services might only break even or even lose money. For example, do you believe that Microsoft Office would be nearly as valuable as it is today without the integration with SharePoint and other Microsoft products and business servers? A substantial part of the value proposition of Microsoft is in this "ecosystem" of products and servers which work well together in an enterprise setting ala Voltron or, if you like, the Borg.
As I listen to your wisdom, I am now beginning to understand why China is now able to spend about $145 billion dollars per year on high speed trains
When you treat most of your population as "slaves of the state" (the average Chinese still needs government permission to move from the countryside to the city, for example) then it frees up a lot of money for whatever else you might want to spend it on, but that doesn't make it right. There are hundreds of millions of working class Chinese who never ride these trains and never will, but their cheap labor greases the wheels of the Chinese economy and the Chinese state has an interest in keeping them in their places. They call it "social stability" (a nice term for do what the state demands or disappear).
while America struggles to complete its first such link between two Florida cities a little over a hundred miles apart by 2014
The small number of high speed rail links in the United States is not due to lack of knowledge or inability to build such links if we wanted to, but rather the fact that high speed rail is largely not competitive with regional airports which provide cheap flights between major and most medium sized cities (the sort that a high speed train would connect). The North American continent is bigger and more spread out than Japan or Europe where high speed rail makes more sense. There may be a few marginally cost effective routes in some regions, but planes are still cheaper and NIMBYs (who will file lawsuits to restrict train speed thereby eviscerating any advantage the train might have had over an airline ticket) will make the trains uncompetitive.
I agree, its time to stop spending money on pork in Alabama so that it can be funneled to foreign defense contractors, who grease the palms of Alabama senators.
I would like to less overall government spending, not equal spending but on different things. What makes you think that I want any savings from killing to the constellation program to go right back to the defense contractors? I would prefer that it be returned to the American taxpayers or used to pay down the exploding national debt instead.
we know they're a bunch of libertarian loonies
By that definition, anyone who opposes the government holding them upside down and shaking until every cent falls out of their pockets is a loony. California needs another 50+ billion of debt for high speed rail (which btw most people will not be able to afford to ride without subsidies and more debt) like it needs a hole in the head.
Or we could, I don't know, cut the amount of taxes that we give to the federal government in the first place? Perhaps then the federal government could get back to its Constitutionally mandated functions instead of figuring out new ways to spend the remaining half of the national income that it doesn't already spend. Of course, such ideas border on blasphemy here on Slashdot where enlightened socialists set themselves up as philosopher kings and set themselves in judgment of how other people chose to spend their own hard earned money.
make the same type of humorous blanket commentary about the ignorance of any other ethnic group, and you'll immediately be branded a brown people-hating racist.
Which doesn't help the brown community. Although people might not say certain things anymore, everyone can see the hypocrisy of these communities and the double standards to which they hold others accountable but not themselves. In the end this doesn't change the way people think and act, so it makes little difference whether those things are said or not; the effect is the same. If those concerned about such things were serious about making progress then they would proscribe the use of such terms by their own people just as harshly as they do their use by others except they don't and therein lies the problem.
Woosh! parent should be modded funny, not troll.
all those liberal-minded programmers
Don't know about the rest of you, but in my experience many programmers tend towards libertarianism or even objectivism due to the rigorous and logical nature of those political philosophies. IMHO, this was part of the reason why Ron Paul struck such a chord with software developers and other hardcore programming types (the real programmers, not the web designer latte liberal types who tend to lean left and have fewer levels in the geek prestige class) during the last presidential campaign.
Valerie: Ever since Prince Humperdinck fired him, his confidence has been shattered.
Miracle Max: Why'd you say that name? You promised me you would never say that name!
Valerie: What, Humperdinck?
Miracle Max: Aahaahh!
Valerie: Humperdinck! Humperdinck! Humperdinck!
Miracle Max: I'm not listening!
Frankly, I would prefer that the government take half of my investment in taxes for the greater good of society at large than to continue to permit insiders like Madoff and McNeally walk away with essentially all of it because it is legal for them to do so.
An interesting position for a "shareholder". Precisely which companies do you own and how many shares? I have never heard anyone who actually owns shares say that they would prefer for the government to receive half "for the greater good of society at large". People with positions like that are very rarely owners of anything substantial; least of all stocks or bonds in my experience. I don't believe you when you say that you own shares with a position like that.
As for Bernard Madoff, I would never have been taken in by the likes of him because I have always managed my own accounts. I don't need to pay someone else to loose my money for me, I can do that well enough for myself (believe me) and if I do have gains then those are all mine too. I would remind you that Madoff was running a ponzi scheme as a "money manager"; he was not and never billed himself as an officer of any publicly traded corporation.
How many more Ken Lay's, Bernie Madoff, and Scott McNeally endure before people like you wake up to the reality of what the "its all socialism", and "reduce all regulation"
Let the buyer beware. If you don't like the quarterly reports or you aren't willing to take on risk, don't invest; it's that simple.