Whoa, that looks quite suspect. I grew up in South Africa, and lived in the US, NZ and Australia. To say that e.g. SA has less than New Zealand ?? Or the US ? And Colombia and Papua New Guinea at position 52 / 53. These are not good measures to measure 'criminals'.
From the site:
Definition: Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence. Per capita figures expressed per 1000 population.
I guess that puts the figures into a better perspective.
In order to perform psychiatry, you'd need a model of mind for the robot. What is your approach to the problem of 'other minds' and the related symbol-grounding problem ?
I'd like to respond to all those commenting about CS and making money off programming. I'd say that the reason why you do CS is that you want to learn about the *science* of it, otherwise you would have attended a "become a coder in 21 days" diploma. There are many many code monkeys out there, and many of them I studied with. Remember that scarcity due to high demand means that any half-assed programmer could land a job. Now that demand outstrips supply, and, more importantly, technology advances and makes your skills obsolete, you need to show depth of understanding i.e. the science.
Any skill closely affiliated to a specialized market will be highly rewarded while is it rare. As computing becomes ubiquitious and your skill is common (lots of "IT" gimps about), it is of little surprise that cursory knowledge of the field is treated as commonplace. There are at least two solutions: increase your depth of understanding (again, a better understanding of the *science*) or combine abilities from another discipline to market a niche skillset.
There is also an art of programming (as a previous discussion on slashdot has highlighted) which is were you make extensive use of experience. This is what leads to the requirement of coding experience in many jobs. This is not really something that you can expect to get a lot of based on your college courses. Also don't expect your rudimentary courses to convey any extensive skillset - that's where your own endeavors come in. I know many graduates that are hopeless programmers. You need to distinguish yourself with knowledge which you can bring accross in your interview (when you manage to network your way into one). Also: very important is to show that you are a reasonably rounded person. Just being a smart geek is ofen not enough.
Lastly, create an environment where software design skills are valued. This means that the expectation that software should be cheap/free will hasten the downfall of the coders' marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
c>
Whoa, that looks quite suspect. I grew up in South Africa, and lived in the US, NZ and Australia. To say that e.g. SA has less than New Zealand ?? Or the US ? And Colombia and Papua New Guinea at position 52 / 53. These are not good measures to measure 'criminals'. From the site: Definition: Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence. Per capita figures expressed per 1000 population. I guess that puts the figures into a better perspective.
In order to perform psychiatry, you'd need a model of mind for the robot. What is your approach to the problem of 'other minds' and the related symbol-grounding problem ?
I'd like to respond to all those commenting about CS and making money off programming. I'd say that the reason why you do CS is that you want to learn about the *science* of it, otherwise you would have attended a "become a coder in 21 days" diploma. There are many many code monkeys out there, and many of them I studied with. Remember that scarcity due to high demand means that any half-assed programmer could land a job. Now that demand outstrips supply, and, more importantly, technology advances and makes your skills obsolete, you need to show depth of understanding i.e. the science. Any skill closely affiliated to a specialized market will be highly rewarded while is it rare. As computing becomes ubiquitious and your skill is common (lots of "IT" gimps about), it is of little surprise that cursory knowledge of the field is treated as commonplace. There are at least two solutions: increase your depth of understanding (again, a better understanding of the *science*) or combine abilities from another discipline to market a niche skillset. There is also an art of programming (as a previous discussion on slashdot has highlighted) which is were you make extensive use of experience. This is what leads to the requirement of coding experience in many jobs. This is not really something that you can expect to get a lot of based on your college courses. Also don't expect your rudimentary courses to convey any extensive skillset - that's where your own endeavors come in. I know many graduates that are hopeless programmers. You need to distinguish yourself with knowledge which you can bring accross in your interview (when you manage to network your way into one). Also: very important is to show that you are a reasonably rounded person. Just being a smart geek is ofen not enough. Lastly, create an environment where software design skills are valued. This means that the expectation that software should be cheap/free will hasten the downfall of the coders' marketplace.