I highly doubt she might have put it that way. Word choice is very heavily geared toward how things sound and flow in the Alice books, and "interestinger" sounds terrible. It chokes up the sentence.
The company, called RPX Corp., buys up patents to keep them from firms that might use them as the basis of lawsuits or to press for licensing payments. Companies that pay a fixed annual fee receive licenses to the patents purchased by RPX... (emphasis mine)
So they'll buy patents and try to sell you licenses to them, in order to prevent other firms from buying patents to try to sell you licenses to them?
Sounds to me like the only difference between this company and the nasty patent trolls is that they've embraced the One-Bill business model, a la Verizon. I wonder if that's patented...
The system in the U.S. is biased against creative, enthusiastic, good teachers. It drives them away with countless regulations, bizarre standards, dependency on test scores, threats of lawsuits, lack of funding, low pay, etc. There are a LOT of people who would make really great teachers that are driven away from the profession by the sheer headache caused by it all. They're not free to teach... some persevere in spite of it and try to sneak in actual good teaching when nobody is looking; others simply leave in frustration. The mediocre teachers don't seem to mind as much or have gotten used to it or like the job security, and stick it out for the long haul.
I agree with all of that except the homework (and the letter grades, which I imagine is a local phenomenon). I think kids would be a lot more attentive and enthusiastic in school if they weren't rewarded with MORE SCHOOL that they have to spend their free time on when they get home. Sure, sometimes it can be helpful, but by and large it seems to be a bunch of mindless busywork that is assigned out of habit more than out of need.
I'm reminded of reporters slamming Ron Paul for taking money from white supremacists. He defended the action, his rationale being along the lines of "better I use it for my message than them for their white supremacy."
From TFA: 1989 - The Wizard movie is released in the US. Starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Beau Bridges, it chronicles the story of a young boy with a talent for videogames who enters a Nintendo tournament in Florida. Nintendo uses it as a vehicle to promote the NES and unveil Super Mario Bros 3 in the West.
The tournament was in California (Universal Studios, Hollywood, to be precise), thank you very much. Hence the protagonist incessantly whining "California!" through half the film.
Yes, I saw it in theatres. The announcer's cry of "Super... Mario... Brothers... THREE!!!!" remains one of the more memorable moments of my childhood.
Shame they're tied to US$100 for this. If, instead, at the time they made the mandate for a laptop at US$100, they actually locked the price to the equivalent Euros or GBP, they'd have a much easier time at it.
Portable? Clean? Try mobile development some time. Maintaining a large handful of project files because of different screen sizes is a joy, not to mention interacting with different phone providers' frameworks, plus a buttload of special-case code strewn about to deal with the inconsistencies and quirks (including missing and misbehaving features) of each device's particular implementation of the VM. Languages like C have a preprocessor that allows such variables to be put in #ifdef blocks... no such luck with Java. All that, and the program will look like absolute crap on anything but a phone.
Portability is a nice word that Java people like to throw around, but in my experience, the program has to be set up separately for just about every target. You can do that just as well with C (Brew, as far as phones are concerned), and without a handful of different project files to include or not include target-specific files.
Not to mention that, on comparable phones, Java performace is abysmal compared to Brew. Not fast.
Java has its place, where its benefits can be well exploited. That place is, as far as I've seen, largely restricted to situations where the systems it'll be running on are not terribly diverse, e.g. Linux servers, where portability really isn't that much of a concern.
$50 says that they'll keep the key to the encrypted data on a post-it attached to the computer, or use "password" as the password, or have a file on the desktop called "key to encrypted data".
I think my problem was that I did indeed RTFM, but it was the wrong FM.
The machine started on RHEL4, which was set up to use up2date, pointed to a server with grossly outdated RHEL-4-compatible installs of pretty much everything. Wanting to use non-ancient versions of software (as I have been plagued with old-software-related problems), I (apparently naively) used the Windows method of installing software, which is to go to the software's website, download the software, and follow the instructions exactly as the documentation on the website says. This led to an absolute nightmare of./configure and make as I installed Apache, Subversion, etc., and all their metric crapload of dependencies, etc... all as (very vaguely) instructed in the documentation.
Not wanting to go through that nightmare again, I realized that I could upgrade to RHEL5, use yum to install packages, and, in theory, avoid much of the headache, and so I did, and so some of the headache has been relieved.
However, there is a lot of crap left over from a bunch of both successful and unsuccessful makes of all sorts of software, and, unfortunately, there is no "make uninstall" or similar command available on pretty much anything, at least not that I've been able to find, nor so much as a listing of what each program has put where on my system. I'm used to Windows, where installing a program over itself will overwrite anything it finds, in case some of it is crufty, but many Linux installs seem to have an "it's already there, so no need to put it there again" policy.
If I was just in 32-bit Linux, it probably would be less of a problem, but my system now has a significant portion of loose ends lying around that, for reasons unclear to me (though sometimes, I think, because install scripts have varying levels of path-hard-codedness), point to the wrong libraries, which, for reasons both my fault and the OS's, I seem to have plenty of versions of lying around.
Most of it is a case of "you did it wrong", but the remedies seem convoluded and nonobvious, compared to the common Windows solution of uninstall-reinstall or install-over-existing, or the OSX method of wipe-it-and-bring-a-new-copy.
I'm perfectly happy with my job. I'm unhappy with being at one place doing one thing, 40 hours a week, 49 weeks a year. Doesn't matter what the job is. It wears on me.
That's a good question. The answer is "kinda, but it does (as you noted) have some slight variations by distro)." But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because modern systems are smart enough to look for those files in multiple places. For instance, I can run/bin,/usr/bin, and/usr/local/bin commands by simply typing the name of the command, without having to give a path, because bash is smart enough to know that that's where the executables live.
It gets even more fun on 64-bit Linux. Any eccentricities with the system (perhaps I installed something with make instead of an RPM, or perhaps it had a Python installer, or perhaps I didn't properly remove a library I wasn't using) and all of a sudden, new apps I'm installing will occasionally try to call the wrong version of the same library. Perhaps it's calling the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit. Perhaps it's pointed to the wrong one of three different versions of the same library. Perhaps I have two different versions of the 64-bit library because I have two different programs that each want a different one (because I wanted a version of something that's newer than what my yum repository offers), but one isn't particularly vigilant about putting things in the right place.
Pretty soon, half of the things I install require me to rejigger who is pointing to what for libraries.
Yeah, it may well be that I did something improperly a while back (RTFM, and all that), but I don't think it's too much to ask for a freshly-installed app to bring with it the libraries (or at least the capability to find the libraries) that it needs to work properly without my intervention. I don't think it should matter whether or not I installed everything consistently with the same package manager.
As for/bin,/usr/bin, and/usr/local/bin (not to mention 64-bit duplicates), it's all fine and good until I have a different version of the same program in each and don't remember which of them I want to use.
It still boggles whenever I'm on OSX, how I can just drag lots of apps over and they work... no installer, registry entries, library dependencies. Or at least none that I'm aware of.
The volunteer aspect raises an interesting dynamic that I've seen in volunteer orchestras. I was in a troubled group a while back that was struggling to reach a higher standard. Many of the musicians were fairly inexperienced, and some of the non-musical leadership was woefully uneducated in the inner workings of a musical ensemble. The director lamented the lack of good clarinetists and bassoonists in the area, saying they just couldn't find any. I personally knew at least 20 decent clarinetists and 8 decent bassoonists in a 20-mile radius, and I know there were many more.
The problem was not with people capable to do the job. The problem was with people willing. The group had an extremely high turnover rate, as low standards drove off good players, thus contributing to the low standards.
The three ways a group like that tends to go are as follows:
1) Group dissolves; perhaps another takes its place after a few years, perhaps not.
2) Group maintains a barely-functioning status as some people stick around to be nice or because they have low standards. Audience is happy to have an orchestra, but bummed out that the music isn't of terribly good quality.
3) A particular individual or group of individuals decides to put all their effort into cutting the crap and instilling higher standards. This tends to end up with a) a better group, b) nobody giving a crap, revert to #2, or c) the individual(s) being politicked out of the group, revert to #2.
I happened to join the group just as 3c was happening.
I see lots of parallels between this and the state of Open Source projects. The biggest complaint of the director was that he couldn't find good musicians that would play for free. However, it wasn't the lack of pay that drove me off; it was the lack of standards and direction, and the politics. Being paid for it would have kept me around, and with enough good musicians sticking around, money is an easy catalyst for upping the standard, to a point. However, the same result could be achieved while maintaining a volunteer membership, if properly organized.
Hmmmmm... that brings up an interesting possibility. FOSS with bug-fix bounties. I want a bug fixed, I send $5 to an escrow account, tagged to the bug report. Others who see the bug and also want it fixed can add to the pot. Bug is fixed and confirmed, fixer gets the money.
Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless.
on
Linux Needs More Haters
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
On the contrary:
1) I consider the vacation time I get at work insufficient, so I often take unpaid time off (management is cool with that). If I were using a Linux system at home and were to spend a significant amount of time trying to fix it rather than doing the things I intended to with my time off, this is indeed time I could otherwise have been paid for.
2) I maintain a few Linux boxes at work. If I spend time debugging problems on them that commercial software would have fixed, this is company money spent on getting OSS to work. Perhaps a commercial product would cost the company $100 out-of-pocket, where debugging and configuring the OSS product would cost $500 of employee time.
3) I consider my free time much more valuable than money earned. I value a non-working Saturday more highly than a working Saturday with double overtime pay. Personally, I consider time-spent-at-my-discretion-at-a-reasonable-standard-of-living my baseline goal, rather than bank balance, with the money I earn at work serving as an enabler of that. If I get a raise, I consider it an opportunity to take a few more days off rather than to get a few more bucks. So, everything that costs me discretionary time, where I feel I'm not getting much out of it, is very detrimental to my bottom line. If it means that I'll spend 50 fewer hours configuring and debugging my system, I'll gladly plonk $200 for Windows at the stupidly cheap rate of $4/hour of free time.
Indeed. I think computer science departments should institute Juries, like music departments have. At the end of each semester, you appear before a panel of 2-5 professors for 10 minutes and play a piece of music you've been working on that semester (or show them what you've written, for composition majors). They listen to you, then give you comments and a grade. If you pass, you are allowed to continue to be a music major. If you fail, you are on probation for a semester and must pay for your own lessons. If you fail the next semester, you are booted from the department.
Through my undergrad, it was just kind of assumed that CS majors, especially the "good ones," are going on to be programmers. Any other options are sometimes regarded as "if you suck at it." Part of the culture, perhaps, more than the reality.
I have a BSci in Comp Sci and a BMusic in Composition. The plan was to work as a programmer for a while while I mulled over the possibility of going to grad school for music.
I was hired as a half programmer, half network admin, as that's the work that needed to be done at a place I already had a relationship with. I ended up liking the admin a lot more, and started finding a lot of things (including some sound- and music-related) around the company that I liked doing that needed doing, and that weren't part of anyone's actual job description.
So right now my job duties include a bit of programming, a bit of admin, a bit of organizational work, a bit of audio production, and a little bit of management. I'm not overloading on any one task (as I had before on programming... the real-world shock of moving from maybe 6 hours a week of it in academia to 40 at work hit me hard and made me want out), and doing all things I like to do in quantities that I like to do. Essentially, I find things that people want done, that I like to do, that nobody is doing, and I do them. People seem to appreciate that.
Perhaps my situation is rare, and I'm delighted to be able to do it. In any case, keep in mind that just because you're hired as a programmer, you don't necessarily need to stay as one. Get an in somewhere, find things that you like doing that need to be done, and eagerly volunteer to take them on (or just do them and ask forgiveness later, if the culture allows).
It also helps if you have a healthy dose of fearlessness. Since I came in with an exit strategy (i.e. grad school), I had little concern with the possibility of losing my job. This I've found very freeing, and led to going after things I might not have otherwise, and, oddly enough, to greater job security and job satisfaction.
I suppose my original post wasn't as clear as it should've been. My problem is primarily with computers being used inside the classroom, during class time. Outside of the classroom, as a resource, I agree they can be very effective, even indispensible.
Your problem seems to be more with memorization, which I agree, in many situations, is a bass-ackwards way of learning things.
Perhaps I just had different types of math classes than you, but the ones where I learned the most were ones where there wasn't a piece of electronic equipment in the room, save for pagers (late 90s), digital watches and perhaps the computer the teacher used solely to enter grades.
Heck, the history class that undid all the cute quasi-legend Americana for me and gave insight as to what really happened and likely why it happened didn't use so much as an overhead projector (OK, she did once, and almost broke it). Teacher. Pen. Paper. Of course, that assumes that you have a teacher that knows the material well enough to explain it thoroughly and effectively.
I think my problem may be with people having computers at their desk while in class. Available at the side? Sure. Your own usable during independent study time? Cool. Typing away while the teacher is talking and/or you might otherwise be interacting with the teacher and/or other students? That's where I have a problem. Granted, a lot of the time the situation is greatly compounded by ineffective teaching, but that's another topic.
Or maybe my problem is with shoddy teaching, and trying to apply computers to the problem, which, more often than not, makes things worse.
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I highly doubt she might have put it that way. Word choice is very heavily geared toward how things sound and flow in the Alice books, and "interestinger" sounds terrible. It chokes up the sentence.
The only ones who lose are the lawyers
And the businesses who don't care to pay the patent company's all-you-can-eat fees.
From TFA:
The company, called RPX Corp., buys up patents to keep them from firms that might use them as the basis of lawsuits or to press for licensing payments. Companies that pay a fixed annual fee receive licenses to the patents purchased by RPX...
(emphasis mine)
So they'll buy patents and try to sell you licenses to them, in order to prevent other firms from buying patents to try to sell you licenses to them?
Sounds to me like the only difference between this company and the nasty patent trolls is that they've embraced the One-Bill business model, a la Verizon. I wonder if that's patented...
The system in the U.S. is biased against creative, enthusiastic, good teachers. It drives them away with countless regulations, bizarre standards, dependency on test scores, threats of lawsuits, lack of funding, low pay, etc. There are a LOT of people who would make really great teachers that are driven away from the profession by the sheer headache caused by it all. They're not free to teach... some persevere in spite of it and try to sneak in actual good teaching when nobody is looking; others simply leave in frustration. The mediocre teachers don't seem to mind as much or have gotten used to it or like the job security, and stick it out for the long haul.
I agree with all of that except the homework (and the letter grades, which I imagine is a local phenomenon). I think kids would be a lot more attentive and enthusiastic in school if they weren't rewarded with MORE SCHOOL that they have to spend their free time on when they get home. Sure, sometimes it can be helpful, but by and large it seems to be a bunch of mindless busywork that is assigned out of habit more than out of need.
The current Ebay Market Rate for those is $10.
I'm reminded of reporters slamming Ron Paul for taking money from white supremacists. He defended the action, his rationale being along the lines of "better I use it for my message than them for their white supremacy."
This obviously only applies for those complex issues that come up a few times a week... not "what should I have for lunch today".
You obviously have never seen the lunch discussions at my office.
From TFA: 1989 - The Wizard movie is released in the US. Starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Beau Bridges, it chronicles the story of a young boy with a talent for videogames who enters a Nintendo tournament in Florida. Nintendo uses it as a vehicle to promote the NES and unveil Super Mario Bros 3 in the West.
The tournament was in California (Universal Studios, Hollywood, to be precise), thank you very much. Hence the protagonist incessantly whining "California!" through half the film.
Yes, I saw it in theatres. The announcer's cry of "Super... Mario... Brothers... THREE!!!!" remains one of the more memorable moments of my childhood.
Shame they're tied to US$100 for this. If, instead, at the time they made the mandate for a laptop at US$100, they actually locked the price to the equivalent Euros or GBP, they'd have a much easier time at it.
Portable? Clean? Try mobile development some time. Maintaining a large handful of project files because of different screen sizes is a joy, not to mention interacting with different phone providers' frameworks, plus a buttload of special-case code strewn about to deal with the inconsistencies and quirks (including missing and misbehaving features) of each device's particular implementation of the VM. Languages like C have a preprocessor that allows such variables to be put in #ifdef blocks... no such luck with Java. All that, and the program will look like absolute crap on anything but a phone.
Portability is a nice word that Java people like to throw around, but in my experience, the program has to be set up separately for just about every target. You can do that just as well with C (Brew, as far as phones are concerned), and without a handful of different project files to include or not include target-specific files.
Not to mention that, on comparable phones, Java performace is abysmal compared to Brew. Not fast.
Java has its place, where its benefits can be well exploited. That place is, as far as I've seen, largely restricted to situations where the systems it'll be running on are not terribly diverse, e.g. Linux servers, where portability really isn't that much of a concern.
Probably thought he was developing a new kind of hoax device.
$50 says that they'll keep the key to the encrypted data on a post-it attached to the computer, or use "password" as the password, or have a file on the desktop called "key to encrypted data".
What, so the Rugrats can say Libshitz on kids' TV, but Verizon finds it too racy for a name on a DSL account?
I think my problem was that I did indeed RTFM, but it was the wrong FM.
./configure and make as I installed Apache, Subversion, etc., and all their metric crapload of dependencies, etc... all as (very vaguely) instructed in the documentation.
The machine started on RHEL4, which was set up to use up2date, pointed to a server with grossly outdated RHEL-4-compatible installs of pretty much everything. Wanting to use non-ancient versions of software (as I have been plagued with old-software-related problems), I (apparently naively) used the Windows method of installing software, which is to go to the software's website, download the software, and follow the instructions exactly as the documentation on the website says. This led to an absolute nightmare of
Not wanting to go through that nightmare again, I realized that I could upgrade to RHEL5, use yum to install packages, and, in theory, avoid much of the headache, and so I did, and so some of the headache has been relieved.
However, there is a lot of crap left over from a bunch of both successful and unsuccessful makes of all sorts of software, and, unfortunately, there is no "make uninstall" or similar command available on pretty much anything, at least not that I've been able to find, nor so much as a listing of what each program has put where on my system. I'm used to Windows, where installing a program over itself will overwrite anything it finds, in case some of it is crufty, but many Linux installs seem to have an "it's already there, so no need to put it there again" policy.
If I was just in 32-bit Linux, it probably would be less of a problem, but my system now has a significant portion of loose ends lying around that, for reasons unclear to me (though sometimes, I think, because install scripts have varying levels of path-hard-codedness), point to the wrong libraries, which, for reasons both my fault and the OS's, I seem to have plenty of versions of lying around.
Most of it is a case of "you did it wrong", but the remedies seem convoluded and nonobvious, compared to the common Windows solution of uninstall-reinstall or install-over-existing, or the OSX method of wipe-it-and-bring-a-new-copy.
I'm perfectly happy with my job. I'm unhappy with being at one place doing one thing, 40 hours a week, 49 weeks a year. Doesn't matter what the job is. It wears on me.
That's a good question. The answer is "kinda, but it does (as you noted) have some slight variations by distro)." But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because modern systems are smart enough to look for those files in multiple places. For instance, I can run /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin commands by simply typing the name of the command, without having to give a path, because bash is smart enough to know that that's where the executables live.
/bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin (not to mention 64-bit duplicates), it's all fine and good until I have a different version of the same program in each and don't remember which of them I want to use.
It gets even more fun on 64-bit Linux. Any eccentricities with the system (perhaps I installed something with make instead of an RPM, or perhaps it had a Python installer, or perhaps I didn't properly remove a library I wasn't using) and all of a sudden, new apps I'm installing will occasionally try to call the wrong version of the same library. Perhaps it's calling the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit. Perhaps it's pointed to the wrong one of three different versions of the same library. Perhaps I have two different versions of the 64-bit library because I have two different programs that each want a different one (because I wanted a version of something that's newer than what my yum repository offers), but one isn't particularly vigilant about putting things in the right place.
Pretty soon, half of the things I install require me to rejigger who is pointing to what for libraries.
Yeah, it may well be that I did something improperly a while back (RTFM, and all that), but I don't think it's too much to ask for a freshly-installed app to bring with it the libraries (or at least the capability to find the libraries) that it needs to work properly without my intervention. I don't think it should matter whether or not I installed everything consistently with the same package manager.
As for
It still boggles whenever I'm on OSX, how I can just drag lots of apps over and they work... no installer, registry entries, library dependencies. Or at least none that I'm aware of.
The volunteer aspect raises an interesting dynamic that I've seen in volunteer orchestras. I was in a troubled group a while back that was struggling to reach a higher standard. Many of the musicians were fairly inexperienced, and some of the non-musical leadership was woefully uneducated in the inner workings of a musical ensemble. The director lamented the lack of good clarinetists and bassoonists in the area, saying they just couldn't find any. I personally knew at least 20 decent clarinetists and 8 decent bassoonists in a 20-mile radius, and I know there were many more.
The problem was not with people capable to do the job. The problem was with people willing. The group had an extremely high turnover rate, as low standards drove off good players, thus contributing to the low standards.
The three ways a group like that tends to go are as follows:
1) Group dissolves; perhaps another takes its place after a few years, perhaps not.
2) Group maintains a barely-functioning status as some people stick around to be nice or because they have low standards. Audience is happy to have an orchestra, but bummed out that the music isn't of terribly good quality.
3) A particular individual or group of individuals decides to put all their effort into cutting the crap and instilling higher standards. This tends to end up with a) a better group, b) nobody giving a crap, revert to #2, or c) the individual(s) being politicked out of the group, revert to #2.
I happened to join the group just as 3c was happening.
I see lots of parallels between this and the state of Open Source projects. The biggest complaint of the director was that he couldn't find good musicians that would play for free. However, it wasn't the lack of pay that drove me off; it was the lack of standards and direction, and the politics. Being paid for it would have kept me around, and with enough good musicians sticking around, money is an easy catalyst for upping the standard, to a point. However, the same result could be achieved while maintaining a volunteer membership, if properly organized.
Hmmmmm... that brings up an interesting possibility. FOSS with bug-fix bounties. I want a bug fixed, I send $5 to an escrow account, tagged to the bug report. Others who see the bug and also want it fixed can add to the pot. Bug is fixed and confirmed, fixer gets the money.
On the contrary:
1) I consider the vacation time I get at work insufficient, so I often take unpaid time off (management is cool with that). If I were using a Linux system at home and were to spend a significant amount of time trying to fix it rather than doing the things I intended to with my time off, this is indeed time I could otherwise have been paid for.
2) I maintain a few Linux boxes at work. If I spend time debugging problems on them that commercial software would have fixed, this is company money spent on getting OSS to work. Perhaps a commercial product would cost the company $100 out-of-pocket, where debugging and configuring the OSS product would cost $500 of employee time.
3) I consider my free time much more valuable than money earned. I value a non-working Saturday more highly than a working Saturday with double overtime pay. Personally, I consider time-spent-at-my-discretion-at-a-reasonable-standard-of-living my baseline goal, rather than bank balance, with the money I earn at work serving as an enabler of that. If I get a raise, I consider it an opportunity to take a few more days off rather than to get a few more bucks. So, everything that costs me discretionary time, where I feel I'm not getting much out of it, is very detrimental to my bottom line. If it means that I'll spend 50 fewer hours configuring and debugging my system, I'll gladly plonk $200 for Windows at the stupidly cheap rate of $4/hour of free time.
Indeed. I think computer science departments should institute Juries, like music departments have. At the end of each semester, you appear before a panel of 2-5 professors for 10 minutes and play a piece of music you've been working on that semester (or show them what you've written, for composition majors). They listen to you, then give you comments and a grade. If you pass, you are allowed to continue to be a music major. If you fail, you are on probation for a semester and must pay for your own lessons. If you fail the next semester, you are booted from the department.
Keeps out the riff-raff.
Through my undergrad, it was just kind of assumed that CS majors, especially the "good ones," are going on to be programmers. Any other options are sometimes regarded as "if you suck at it." Part of the culture, perhaps, more than the reality.
I have a BSci in Comp Sci and a BMusic in Composition. The plan was to work as a programmer for a while while I mulled over the possibility of going to grad school for music.
I was hired as a half programmer, half network admin, as that's the work that needed to be done at a place I already had a relationship with. I ended up liking the admin a lot more, and started finding a lot of things (including some sound- and music-related) around the company that I liked doing that needed doing, and that weren't part of anyone's actual job description.
So right now my job duties include a bit of programming, a bit of admin, a bit of organizational work, a bit of audio production, and a little bit of management. I'm not overloading on any one task (as I had before on programming... the real-world shock of moving from maybe 6 hours a week of it in academia to 40 at work hit me hard and made me want out), and doing all things I like to do in quantities that I like to do. Essentially, I find things that people want done, that I like to do, that nobody is doing, and I do them. People seem to appreciate that.
Perhaps my situation is rare, and I'm delighted to be able to do it. In any case, keep in mind that just because you're hired as a programmer, you don't necessarily need to stay as one. Get an in somewhere, find things that you like doing that need to be done, and eagerly volunteer to take them on (or just do them and ask forgiveness later, if the culture allows).
It also helps if you have a healthy dose of fearlessness. Since I came in with an exit strategy (i.e. grad school), I had little concern with the possibility of losing my job. This I've found very freeing, and led to going after things I might not have otherwise, and, oddly enough, to greater job security and job satisfaction.
I suppose my original post wasn't as clear as it should've been. My problem is primarily with computers being used inside the classroom, during class time. Outside of the classroom, as a resource, I agree they can be very effective, even indispensible.
Your problem seems to be more with memorization, which I agree, in many situations, is a bass-ackwards way of learning things.
Perhaps I just had different types of math classes than you, but the ones where I learned the most were ones where there wasn't a piece of electronic equipment in the room, save for pagers (late 90s), digital watches and perhaps the computer the teacher used solely to enter grades.
Heck, the history class that undid all the cute quasi-legend Americana for me and gave insight as to what really happened and likely why it happened didn't use so much as an overhead projector (OK, she did once, and almost broke it). Teacher. Pen. Paper. Of course, that assumes that you have a teacher that knows the material well enough to explain it thoroughly and effectively.
I think my problem may be with people having computers at their desk while in class. Available at the side? Sure. Your own usable during independent study time? Cool. Typing away while the teacher is talking and/or you might otherwise be interacting with the teacher and/or other students? That's where I have a problem. Granted, a lot of the time the situation is greatly compounded by ineffective teaching, but that's another topic.
Or maybe my problem is with shoddy teaching, and trying to apply computers to the problem, which, more often than not, makes things worse.