There is no substitute for motivation and personal interest, but classes can provide direction and orientation. All the buzzwords tossed around like footballs by and large boil down to different ways of applying a relatively small number of basic ideas. They're called computer "languages" for a reason -- once you understand the structure of a spoken/written language and know how nouns, adjectives, verbs and other parts of speech relate, you can construct sentences.
What you're trying to do is somewhat akin to trying to understand paragraphs before you know how to construct a sentence or before you have an adequate vocabulary. An intro to CS class will provide the grammar and basic concepts that you can then apply to all these high level things.
I'm sure some anti-school posters will tell you just the opposite, but you should remember that schools are only as good as the teachers and your willingness to learn. CS classes developed to provide structure to what seemed, even in the 80s, like a vast quantity of unregulated knowledge. A year of classes at your local community college may provide more help than three years of wading through newsgroup postings and online tutorials you don't entirely understand.
Before you get too bent out of shape, remember that VAT is mandatory in the EU and adds 17.5% (IIRC) to every purchase. Imagine if every state with sales tax in the U.S. had to post the actual price instead of dinging you at the register and you'll be closer to the EU and British schemes.
I suspect the U.S. knows the numerous ways it and its allies have spied or sabotaged others. As such, the U.S. security measures border on paranoia because we know what we've done.
I agree with your general sentiment; still, I'd point out that if the company in question wants, say, a patch for a bug you're going to fix anyway, or an effort to port to another platform, or some other objective you ultimately wish to accomplish, it can be worthwhile.
I suspect a lot of people working on open source projects aren't thinking on a pay/hour basis, since they're getting $0. I also doubt anyone is going to try to make real money off this -- if they wanted to, they'd be working as an independent consultant, and people who work on big-deal open source projects by and large can find employment elsewhere anyway. The money aspect is probably just frosting for most people.
I also find it amusing they're offering a Microsoft project as an award -- but if they switch to the PS3 when it arrives, will they receive less grief on/. given Sony's recent CD malware debacle?
If one looks at what is capable in Final Cut Pro HD, it still falls in terms of output quality compared to what an SGI can handle.
How so? I was under the impression FCP has caught up with SGI -- if it hasn't, why have a fair number of Hollywood full-length films been made with FCP?
I'm not trying to flame -- I'm actually interested in how FCP falls short.
But even if the OP is correct and FCP still doesn't compare with SGI, FCP has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive. Every college student film type I know has FCP and and can use it effectively. When these people get in the industry, they'll use what they're familiar with. To my knowledge, FCP has been "good enough" for the past few years.
A similar thing happened in the PC industry: even if other OSes were technically superior to MS-DOS and later Windows, those OSes were the ones most people learned in the late 80's and early 90's. As a result, we're all still complaining about the MS near-monopoly.
Short version: Carbon Copy Cloner + external HD is awesome.
Long version: My PowerBook HD died about a month and a half ago, and although I have AppleCare, the HD died on a Thursday night. This means I'd probably not get the DHL package to send to Applecare until the next Monday and I might not get the machine back for a week to ten days, chiefly due to shipping delays. Regular backups came in handy: I went to an Apple store, bought a refreshed PPC Mac Mini for about $400 (I already have an external monitor, BTW) and booted from the external HD. As a result, I lost only a few days of e-mail and browser history and other minor stuff. I save active, essential files to an iPod every night. So I was back up and running within a few hours. Three cheers for external booting.
The Ars Technica Mac Achaia already has a discussion about the Aperture issue here, and the consensus seems to be that this is more likely a reorganization than a sign of Aperture becoming abandon-ware.
Before posting conspiracy theories and such, you may want to read what others have to say.
Although the grandparent can't know what game system will be "better" given that two haven't even come out, he's getting to the point that the PS3 will be a trogan horse for Blu-Ray. Regardless of which console "wins," every PS3 will be capable of playing Blu-Ray; this means every person who buys a PS3 for the games will also be able to play Blu-Ray discs, and many will probably buy them.
Back when the PS2 came out, DVDs still weren't all that popular, but the PS2 helped push the discs on the masses because people already had the player. The PS3 may function the same way for Blu-Ray discs, especially if stand-alone players still cost $500 or more. Why buy a standalone player when one can get a game machine AND a Blu-Ray player? That's why the grandparent, although poorly expressed, is still germane to the topic at hand.
Whether it's broadband Internet, or digital cable TV, or Chinese delivery in under five minutes, or even natural gas (not that anybody would want that, with the price lately), they're just functions of the environment and of costs and benefits.
I'd expand your comment about developing technical skills and solving interesting problems from the contemporary United States to all times and all places. Society has always needed intellectuals and workers in a variety of disiplines more than it needs layabouts and such.
As for declining student enrollment, I gave some of my thoughts here and in another comment here.
I think you might be missing some of the bigger picture, some of which I describe in this comment.
In addition, I think you underestimate the power of the superstars programmers, whose productivity can so vastly outstrip the rest of us mere mortals that they're extraordinarily valuable. Fred Brooks talks about them in The Mythical Man Month. In your example, it's possible that the $90K programmer does do twice or three times the work of the two $45K programmers. Anyhow, I suspect we're both just describing our experiences; still, I think most people would agree with me that CS does have some spectacularly productive people who are worth vastly more than a larger number of their less productive peers. Sadly, I seem to fall into the latter category.
One other thing to note is the *very* small duplication costs of software. Once it's written, copying the same software 1,000, 100,000 or 10,000,000 times makes only a marginal difference in cost. So I can leverage all $700M worth of Linux kernel development just by downloading it. In other words, it's not clear that we need linear or exponential scaling of programmers, because a relatively small number of people can produce software for everybody.
In addition, I'd wager that programming is becoming more of a secondary skill for a lot of people, like knowing a second language: you're primarily in something else, but if you can automate things with a scripting language or know how to set up a database, you're that much more valuable. There will always be a need for people whose primary skill in in CS or software engineering or programming, but for a lot of technically inclined people, programming is means to an end and not an end in and of itself.
but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen.)
The reality is that OS X and developers face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers won't target OS X until it has more users and OS X won't have more users until it has more uses in the form of programs. The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available. If enough people use OS X, developers will target it more -- we're already seeing that to some degree. Skype has an OS X client and most major OSS except OO.org target all three platforms.
The widespread belief in Apple's hardware capitation doesn't help the software issue, but Bootcamp might simply by making Mac hardware more attractive to people interested in OS X but leery of making the leap.
Corporate users probably have site licences and standard, customized desktops anyway. For the individual, the description for the GP is probably enough; the large organizations probably already have the infrastructure.
major developer of Mac software, when in truth all they really work on these days is Office.
Office alone makes Microsoft a major developer of Mac software. The two most important ISVs for Apple are Microsoft and Adobe. One argue which one is more important -- I see the views of both sides, though I think Adobe is more important because recreating Office would be easier than CS 2 -- but they're both essential to maintaining the vitality of the Mac platform.
Although it may not apply to you specifically, I strongly recommend you first read the Ph.D. Glut. You mention graduate school and I assume you mean you plan to get a Masters, but the article is still worth a look before you plunge into the pool.
Slashdot Mirror
What you're trying to do is somewhat akin to trying to understand paragraphs before you know how to construct a sentence or before you have an adequate vocabulary. An intro to CS class will provide the grammar and basic concepts that you can then apply to all these high level things.
I'm sure some anti-school posters will tell you just the opposite, but you should remember that schools are only as good as the teachers and your willingness to learn. CS classes developed to provide structure to what seemed, even in the 80s, like a vast quantity of unregulated knowledge. A year of classes at your local community college may provide more help than three years of wading through newsgroup postings and online tutorials you don't entirely understand.
Before you get too bent out of shape, remember that VAT is mandatory in the EU and adds 17.5% (IIRC) to every purchase. Imagine if every state with sales tax in the U.S. had to post the actual price instead of dinging you at the register and you'll be closer to the EU and British schemes.
I suspect the U.S. knows the numerous ways it and its allies have spied or sabotaged others. As such, the U.S. security measures border on paranoia because we know what we've done.
Many of the /. posts I read.
I suspect a lot of people working on open source projects aren't thinking on a pay/hour basis, since they're getting $0. I also doubt anyone is going to try to make real money off this -- if they wanted to, they'd be working as an independent consultant, and people who work on big-deal open source projects by and large can find employment elsewhere anyway. The money aspect is probably just frosting for most people.
I also find it amusing they're offering a Microsoft project as an award -- but if they switch to the PS3 when it arrives, will they receive less grief on /. given Sony's recent CD malware debacle?
They were going to use "Tom & Kat," until they realized there was already a preceding marketing trademark.
How so? I was under the impression FCP has caught up with SGI -- if it hasn't, why have a fair number of Hollywood full-length films been made with FCP?
I'm not trying to flame -- I'm actually interested in how FCP falls short.
But even if the OP is correct and FCP still doesn't compare with SGI, FCP has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive. Every college student film type I know has FCP and and can use it effectively. When these people get in the industry, they'll use what they're familiar with. To my knowledge, FCP has been "good enough" for the past few years.
A similar thing happened in the PC industry: even if other OSes were technically superior to MS-DOS and later Windows, those OSes were the ones most people learned in the late 80's and early 90's. As a result, we're all still complaining about the MS near-monopoly.
As Seen On TV? You're back. Lovely. I look forward to your future pronouncements.
Yeah! We don't even know which Tuesday the grandparent means -- it could be infinitely far away.
I gather you're not a Mac user.
There, fixed that for you.
Short version: Carbon Copy Cloner + external HD is awesome. Long version: My PowerBook HD died about a month and a half ago, and although I have AppleCare, the HD died on a Thursday night. This means I'd probably not get the DHL package to send to Applecare until the next Monday and I might not get the machine back for a week to ten days, chiefly due to shipping delays. Regular backups came in handy: I went to an Apple store, bought a refreshed PPC Mac Mini for about $400 (I already have an external monitor, BTW) and booted from the external HD. As a result, I lost only a few days of e-mail and browser history and other minor stuff. I save active, essential files to an iPod every night. So I was back up and running within a few hours. Three cheers for external booting.
Before posting conspiracy theories and such, you may want to read what others have to say.
Back when the PS2 came out, DVDs still weren't all that popular, but the PS2 helped push the discs on the masses because people already had the player. The PS3 may function the same way for Blu-Ray discs, especially if stand-alone players still cost $500 or more. Why buy a standalone player when one can get a game machine AND a Blu-Ray player? That's why the grandparent, although poorly expressed, is still germane to the topic at hand.
T, FTFY.
As for declining student enrollment, I gave some of my thoughts here and in another comment here.
In addition, I think you underestimate the power of the superstars programmers, whose productivity can so vastly outstrip the rest of us mere mortals that they're extraordinarily valuable. Fred Brooks talks about them in The Mythical Man Month. In your example, it's possible that the $90K programmer does do twice or three times the work of the two $45K programmers. Anyhow, I suspect we're both just describing our experiences; still, I think most people would agree with me that CS does have some spectacularly productive people who are worth vastly more than a larger number of their less productive peers. Sadly, I seem to fall into the latter category.
In addition, I'd wager that programming is becoming more of a secondary skill for a lot of people, like knowing a second language: you're primarily in something else, but if you can automate things with a scripting language or know how to set up a database, you're that much more valuable. There will always be a need for people whose primary skill in in CS or software engineering or programming, but for a lot of technically inclined people, programming is means to an end and not an end in and of itself.
The reality is that OS X and developers face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers won't target OS X until it has more users and OS X won't have more users until it has more uses in the form of programs. The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available. If enough people use OS X, developers will target it more -- we're already seeing that to some degree. Skype has an OS X client and most major OSS except OO.org target all three platforms.
The widespread belief in Apple's hardware capitation doesn't help the software issue, but Bootcamp might simply by making Mac hardware more attractive to people interested in OS X but leery of making the leap.
Corporate users probably have site licences and standard, customized desktops anyway. For the individual, the description for the GP is probably enough; the large organizations probably already have the infrastructure.
Office alone makes Microsoft a major developer of Mac software. The two most important ISVs for Apple are Microsoft and Adobe. One argue which one is more important -- I see the views of both sides, though I think Adobe is more important because recreating Office would be easier than CS 2 -- but they're both essential to maintaining the vitality of the Mac platform.
If they expected more, they wouldn't be using Windows.
It's a catch-22.
Although it may not apply to you specifically, I strongly recommend you first read the Ph.D. Glut. You mention graduate school and I assume you mean you plan to get a Masters, but the article is still worth a look before you plunge into the pool.
They just stole someone else's idea. Posers.
It's true, just for very large values of "about to."
I'd hate to see the buffer overflow when one tries to write beyond the 64-bit value to which Ballmer no doubt alludes...