I just don't understand people who think that somehow there is DRM associated with the iPod. The iPod is a *player*. It will play mp3s with no DRM whatsoever. I don't have a single DRM-crippled song on my entire iPod right now.
I also have trouble sympathizing with "losing" music due to iTunes DRM. I buy albums from the iTunes Music Store from time to time, though not often. The first thing I do is burn an audio CD, and back up the AAC files. If I need to, I can rip the audio CD to mp3s, and there's no DRM anymore. It's called a backup, and something I can play on both audio CD players and computers that I might not want to authorize with my iTunes account. I did it today after buying an album on the iTunes store, and it took me all of 2 minutes to have my backup. Not exactly onerous.
Sure, no DRM at all would be better. So go buy from any of the numerous stores that sell good indie music on mp3 without DRM. Problem solved.
But make no mistake, this has absolutely nothing to do with the iPod itself.
The first computer I had access to was a DEC-20 as part of my town's rec dept program, which introduced me to BASIC programming, which I blame for my ongoing programming fascination. But in high school I took the money I'd saved for a car and bought an Apple ][+, springing for the 64k RAM package but not a floppy drive. My parents finally gave in to my whining about the cassette loading and bought me a drive. I used that computer for quite a while, and taught myself 6502, Pascal, and even C on it. Being a high-schooler in the early 80s, I learned all about 6502 and disk operating systems in the process of figuring out how to crack and copy games. Oddly enough, I probably owe a lot of my early programming education to the feeble copy protection schemes used back then (and the Apple's wonderful ROM-based disk bootstrapper).
Very true, and a very good point. I'm 41, and have been programming since I was 15. I've done a fair amount of management, but always hands-on, because I want to stay up on things. Not because it's a "smart" thing to do, but because of the original reason I got into software: because it's what I love to do. If you're reaching 40 and burning out, ask yourself why. Don't just go into management or get an MBA because it seems like the logical next step in a career. Do what you love doing. If you don't love programming, then you shouldn't be doing it, no matter how old you are. I constantly run into people who resist learning new things because it's too much work, or it might not be useful. Hell, learning new things is the fun part! Assembly language, Pascal, C, Java, Perl, Ruby... It's all interesting stuff, and I'm looking forward to what's next.
And the comment above about working for small companies: amen to that. Haven't worked for a company larger than 50 people in over 15 years (aside from occasional contracting), because you get locked in and don't get the chance to learn new things. I'm sure there are exceptions, of course, but the key is to continue growing, that's all.
First, imagine if a service such as iTunes became very successful. For example, 50% or more of all music sold was sold via iTunes. Now imagine you're a successful musician and it's time to resign to a label. Do you sign or do you get a marketer and simply sell your tunes on iTunes and keep the vast majority of the profits for yourself?
It's not quite that simple, but I do expect it will happen eventually and the results will be interesting. The thing is that the music industry as it exists now is to some extent predicated on having a number of extremely high-profile artists; these artists get the benefit of the massive promotional push that the labels put behind them. The other artists toil beneath the spotlight until their time comes or the labels drop them. (Obviously indie artists are part of a different industry)
What's interesting is to imagine the online stores leading artists to leave the labels. If that happens, the results will be catastrophic for:
Music magazines: no more sky-high ad prices paid by major labels
MTV: no more $100k videos gracing their airwaves
Record stores: no more high-priced endcap displays and, eventually, no more stores (some indies will likely survive, but Tower and Virgin?)
Because artists who are self-distributing and self-promoting obviously won't be paying for those things.
In reality, I expect the labels will adapt and perhaps fall back to the strategy of yesteryear, promoting singles and not albums. It's the distribution chain that will collapse, obviously -- Warner Music Group, for example, not only distributes their major product themselves, but also operates the ironically-named Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), which distributes pseudo-indie labels like 4AD, Matador, and Epitaph. They make plenty of money from that, I'm sure, and would like to keep doing so...
I feel completely the other way. I got an iPod mini because I don't need more than 4GB. My collection is over 300GB and I haven't ripped all of my CDs let alone converted all of my LPs. I don't need a *portable* device to hold my entire collection -- I want a device where it's really simple and quick to update it with what I want to have on it for the next few days or a week. The mini has been perfect for that; the Nano might be even better.
Speaking of backups, someone here might know the answer to this question: does Google provide any API for easily pulling down all of a user's messages, in order to create a local backup? While I realize that Google's backups are no doubt better than my own, I'm still leery of leaving emails on someone else's server. If I could write (or find) a simple little client to periodically pull down all of my mails from Google to back them up, I think that would be great. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible?
The Lisa was hugely influential. I was a major Apple-head back then, doing development on the Apple ][+, when the Lisa came out. It was responsible for my first real programming job (first paid one, anyway) by inspiring a couple of grad students to start a company. We were developing an integrated app suite like the Lisa's for the Apple ][, having to write a mouse driver, and a faster disk O/S to handle app swapping, and...all the stuff they'd done on the Lisa. I remember going on a company field trip to a nearby store to visit the Lisa and take notes!
Well, I went to check out celldweller's web site. As soon as I hit their site it took over my browser and resized it to full-screen. No, thanks. I closed the window. I still don't know what they sound like. Too bad. When will people learn.
Experience is definitely the key, but don't forget about the impression that someone makes coming straight out of school, potentially with no experience. At that point, the types of projects they've done in school is fairly important.
I've been hiring engineers for many years, and have never decided on a candidate based on where their degree was from -- or even whether their degree was in CS! Many of the best engineers I've had working for me had degrees in other disciplines. It's really based on what they've actually done, either while in school or since.
What I'd recommend more than transferring to another institution is to use your spare time wisely. Have you contributed to open-source projects? That's real, quantifiable experience that someone from a "prestigious" school might not have. Code in your spare time, become a contributor to a project you think is cool, write articles about some aspect of engineering that you care strongly about. That kind of real experience is incredibly important.
I've definitely hired people while basing more on the fact that they had a Linux box at home and did coding in their spare time than on where their degree was from.
And you know, if not having the right degree means that you don't get past the company's HR department, then it's not someplace you want to work anyway.
Absolutely. My first modem was a 300 baud acoustic coupler, but then I was ecstatic when I could afford a 1200 baud AppleCat modem for my Apple ][. Dialing up BBSes to trade software cracking tips was quickly replaced when I found a local publicly-accessible Unix system. I was in high school, and at 1200 baud dialup, I learned to use ed (no terminal emulator yet, so no vi!). I taught myself C and shell scripting all via 1200 baud dialup. When I became a sysadmin and had access to the 9600 baud console, I figured nothing could be any faster. Funny how times change.
This does remind me a bit of something I was involved in at an earlier company. At the beginning of the 90s the small company (~20 people) I was at was sold, and a new president came in. He quickly showed us that his business ideas were crazy, and the company wasn't going to last long with him in place. So we wrote up a letter to the company board of directors, with every employee signing it, stating that unless they replaced him, we were all walking. We FedExed copies of the letter to every member of the board. They called a meeting, and within a few weeks we had a new company president.
The key here is that we had specific complaints, specific solutions we wanted, reasons why those solutions were the right ones, and we also had sufficient numbers (well, the whole company) that they couldn't ignore the issue.
Make sure that you know your reasons for taking action. Make sure that you've identified the core problems, and that you've all tried to address them with management directly.
Then figure out what solutions you think will fix the problems. New managers? New company policies? What exactly would make your jobs enjoyable again, while still helping the company through its tough times?
Lastly, be careful before you make specific threats (i.e. you do what we ask or we're gone). Unless you really don't care about the company at all, I assume you don't want to really threaten -- you just want to make sure that they know you feel strongly about the problems, and that you will have to take action. Make sure you do in fact have sufficient numbers and sufficiently important roles in the company to back up any threats of action that you do make. If you just look like a few cranks, nobody will take you seriously.
But really, it comes down to looking as though you care, you want to work things out, and you just want to bring attention to the problems. Keep in mind that you're going to have to go over someone's head to reach people who can take action, and you may create some pretty bad feelings in the process. You may well end up making things worse, in fact, if you're not careful. But if you care about the job and the company, and you really think things are intolerable now, and you've made reasonable efforts talking to people one on one about the problems...well, then it's certainly time to do something about it.
I'd certainly recommend reading "True Names" by Vernor Vinge -- a fine foreshadowing of the use of avatars in chat rooms, 3-D representations of such, and online interactions between people. A very early example of this sort of thinking and a fine book as well.
I don't think I agree with everyone who seems so eager to tell you that probably you should just find something else. The important question is why you're not finding CS interesting anymore. Is it because of the curriculum? Is it because you've been doing it too intensely for too long? You need to find out whether you're really not interested in CS after all, or whether it's just the current situation you find yourself in that's causing you to lose interest.
When I was getting my CS degree, I was quite bored in almost every class too. But it was because of the classes, not because I had lost interest in programming. And over the years if I've felt that I was losing interest or getting bored, it meant that I needed to change my focus, reorient what I was doing at my job; I've only had to actually change jobs once for that reason, but if that's what it takes...
Or I'll find a small project to work on outside my job, just for myself, which will engage my curiosity again by learning something new.
What I do agree with from other comments is that having other interests is really important. Naturally, if your life is solely devoted to coding, then you'd damn well better love it. And even then you'll be lucky not to burn out.
Yes, there is the possibility that CS has turned out to be something you should consider a secondary skill, instead of your focus. Just don't give it up without really examining what's causing your current lack of interest.
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I just don't understand people who think that somehow there is DRM associated with the iPod. The iPod is a *player*. It will play mp3s with no DRM whatsoever. I don't have a single DRM-crippled song on my entire iPod right now.
I also have trouble sympathizing with "losing" music due to iTunes DRM. I buy albums from the iTunes Music Store from time to time, though not often. The first thing I do is burn an audio CD, and back up the AAC files. If I need to, I can rip the audio CD to mp3s, and there's no DRM anymore. It's called a backup, and something I can play on both audio CD players and computers that I might not want to authorize with my iTunes account. I did it today after buying an album on the iTunes store, and it took me all of 2 minutes to have my backup. Not exactly onerous.
Sure, no DRM at all would be better. So go buy from any of the numerous stores that sell good indie music on mp3 without DRM. Problem solved.
But make no mistake, this has absolutely nothing to do with the iPod itself.
The first computer I had access to was a DEC-20 as part of my town's rec dept program, which introduced me to BASIC programming, which I blame for my ongoing programming fascination. But in high school I took the money I'd saved for a car and bought an Apple ][+, springing for the 64k RAM package but not a floppy drive. My parents finally gave in to my whining about the cassette loading and bought me a drive. I used that computer for quite a while, and taught myself 6502, Pascal, and even C on it. Being a high-schooler in the early 80s, I learned all about 6502 and disk operating systems in the process of figuring out how to crack and copy games. Oddly enough, I probably owe a lot of my early programming education to the feeble copy protection schemes used back then (and the Apple's wonderful ROM-based disk bootstrapper).
And the comment above about working for small companies: amen to that. Haven't worked for a company larger than 50 people in over 15 years (aside from occasional contracting), because you get locked in and don't get the chance to learn new things. I'm sure there are exceptions, of course, but the key is to continue growing, that's all.
It's not quite that simple, but I do expect it will happen eventually and the results will be interesting. The thing is that the music industry as it exists now is to some extent predicated on having a number of extremely high-profile artists; these artists get the benefit of the massive promotional push that the labels put behind them. The other artists toil beneath the spotlight until their time comes or the labels drop them. (Obviously indie artists are part of a different industry)
What's interesting is to imagine the online stores leading artists to leave the labels. If that happens, the results will be catastrophic for:
- Music magazines: no more sky-high ad prices paid by major labels
- MTV: no more $100k videos gracing their airwaves
- Record stores: no more high-priced endcap displays and, eventually, no more stores (some indies will likely survive, but Tower and Virgin?)
Because artists who are self-distributing and self-promoting obviously won't be paying for those things.In reality, I expect the labels will adapt and perhaps fall back to the strategy of yesteryear, promoting singles and not albums. It's the distribution chain that will collapse, obviously -- Warner Music Group, for example, not only distributes their major product themselves, but also operates the ironically-named Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), which distributes pseudo-indie labels like 4AD, Matador, and Epitaph. They make plenty of money from that, I'm sure, and would like to keep doing so...
I feel completely the other way. I got an iPod mini because I don't need more than 4GB. My collection is over 300GB and I haven't ripped all of my CDs let alone converted all of my LPs. I don't need a *portable* device to hold my entire collection -- I want a device where it's really simple and quick to update it with what I want to have on it for the next few days or a week. The mini has been perfect for that; the Nano might be even better.
Speaking of backups, someone here might know the answer to this question: does Google provide any API for easily pulling down all of a user's messages, in order to create a local backup? While I realize that Google's backups are no doubt better than my own, I'm still leery of leaving emails on someone else's server. If I could write (or find) a simple little client to periodically pull down all of my mails from Google to back them up, I think that would be great. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible?
The Lisa was hugely influential. I was a major Apple-head back then, doing development on the Apple ][+, when the Lisa came out. It was responsible for my first real programming job (first paid one, anyway) by inspiring a couple of grad students to start a company. We were developing an integrated app suite like the Lisa's for the Apple ][, having to write a mouse driver, and a faster disk O/S to handle app swapping, and...all the stuff they'd done on the Lisa. I remember going on a company field trip to a nearby store to visit the Lisa and take notes!
Well, I went to check out celldweller's web site. As soon as I hit their site it took over my browser and resized it to full-screen. No, thanks. I closed the window. I still don't know what they sound like. Too bad. When will people learn.
I've been hiring engineers for many years, and have never decided on a candidate based on where their degree was from -- or even whether their degree was in CS! Many of the best engineers I've had working for me had degrees in other disciplines. It's really based on what they've actually done, either while in school or since.
What I'd recommend more than transferring to another institution is to use your spare time wisely. Have you contributed to open-source projects? That's real, quantifiable experience that someone from a "prestigious" school might not have. Code in your spare time, become a contributor to a project you think is cool, write articles about some aspect of engineering that you care strongly about. That kind of real experience is incredibly important.
I've definitely hired people while basing more on the fact that they had a Linux box at home and did coding in their spare time than on where their degree was from.
And you know, if not having the right degree means that you don't get past the company's HR department, then it's not someplace you want to work anyway.
But hey, nethack at 9600 baud was still kickass.
The key here is that we had specific complaints, specific solutions we wanted, reasons why those solutions were the right ones, and we also had sufficient numbers (well, the whole company) that they couldn't ignore the issue.
Make sure that you know your reasons for taking action. Make sure that you've identified the core problems, and that you've all tried to address them with management directly.
Then figure out what solutions you think will fix the problems. New managers? New company policies? What exactly would make your jobs enjoyable again, while still helping the company through its tough times?
Lastly, be careful before you make specific threats (i.e. you do what we ask or we're gone). Unless you really don't care about the company at all, I assume you don't want to really threaten -- you just want to make sure that they know you feel strongly about the problems, and that you will have to take action. Make sure you do in fact have sufficient numbers and sufficiently important roles in the company to back up any threats of action that you do make. If you just look like a few cranks, nobody will take you seriously.
But really, it comes down to looking as though you care, you want to work things out, and you just want to bring attention to the problems. Keep in mind that you're going to have to go over someone's head to reach people who can take action, and you may create some pretty bad feelings in the process. You may well end up making things worse, in fact, if you're not careful. But if you care about the job and the company, and you really think things are intolerable now, and you've made reasonable efforts talking to people one on one about the problems...well, then it's certainly time to do something about it.
I'd certainly recommend reading "True Names" by Vernor Vinge -- a fine foreshadowing of the use of avatars in chat rooms, 3-D representations of such, and online interactions between people. A very early example of this sort of thinking and a fine book as well.
When I was getting my CS degree, I was quite bored in almost every class too. But it was because of the classes, not because I had lost interest in programming. And over the years if I've felt that I was losing interest or getting bored, it meant that I needed to change my focus, reorient what I was doing at my job; I've only had to actually change jobs once for that reason, but if that's what it takes...
Or I'll find a small project to work on outside my job, just for myself, which will engage my curiosity again by learning something new.
What I do agree with from other comments is that having other interests is really important. Naturally, if your life is solely devoted to coding, then you'd damn well better love it. And even then you'll be lucky not to burn out.
Yes, there is the possibility that CS has turned out to be something you should consider a secondary skill, instead of your focus. Just don't give it up without really examining what's causing your current lack of interest.