This release contains improvements and bug fixes, including:
Fixes an issue in iOS 8.0.1 that impacted cellular network connectivity and Touch ID on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
On their new flagship phones for iOS8. If Apple devs were really that thorough, I doubt that would have passed the first round of tests. On the other hand, I've noticed patches on RHEL take longer to release than Ubuntu which take longer than other Linux distros. But I'm not sure OSX is delayed due to rigorous testing.
Because no linux distro ever releases a patch with bugs... right?;-)
Anyway. I said the process might have to be more rigorous. I didn't say it was flawless. And the whole 8.0.1 debacle only adds to my point. A patch can sometimes do more damage that what it's trying to fix. Better to take a couple extra days to get it right than to get it out as quickly as possible but screw it up.
It could simply be that considering that considering their user base, Apple puts any patches through a much more rigorous testing than a linux distro typically does.
Yeah, I was really pissed when RHEL released a patch for a kernel bug last week and it disabled the phone app on my iPhone. *#$^ing RedHat.
Not exactly sure what you're trying to say but let me clarify my statement. Apple's users require more hand holding than RHEL users. I'm very serious when I say that Redhat's patch testing process may not be as rigorous as Apple's and I will add that because of the differences in user base, it doesn't have to be.
I wasn't slamming RedHat or linux at all if that's what you thought.
Your first source sites a report from Trend Micro that barely mentions OS X. It shows a chart with the number of vulnerabilities by vendor but it doesn't make any effort to characterize the severity of the vulnerabilities or the likelihood of being affected by them.
Your second source is not a study or report at all but the opinion of a guy selling security software. I'm not saying his opinion isn't worth anything, only that he stands to gain by scaring OS X users into buying his software. And just as an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if more systems have been compromised in some way by anti-virus software than any single virus.
I'm sorry but I don't think comparing MS to RedHat is valid. They have a much different user base. The report you listed in your original post went as far as to say that MS was mostly patching client vulnerabilities (in browsers and such) that potentially affect huge numbers of systems many of which are operated by people who are less knowledgeable and more vulnerable to things like trojans. In those cases I agree you need to move quickly.
Something like Shellshock might potentially affect something like 2% of all Macs, (if not less) while a patch affects are large percentage of them. You'd better make sure you don't screw up something in that patch. The majority of Mac users are not like linux users who can easily recover from a bad patch.
- Your study is 6 years old.
- RedHat was the only linux distro in the survey that I saw
- The nature of the vulnerabilities that Microsoft typically patched was quite a bit different from those in the other operating systems studied.
I really doubt it's a difference in attitude. It could simply be that considering that considering their user base, Apple puts any patches through a much more rigorous testing than a linux distro typically does. They may (correctly) conclude that a rushed patch could do more harm in less time than most of the vulnerabilities that are identified.
What? People don't like to be called incompetent ? Who knew ?;)
The chance of an average American being in a car accident in the next 5 years is 1 in 4. 37,000 people die each year in car accidents and over 2 million are injured. Yet most of us still drive even though a lot of us have alternatives. Having your site compromised is bad but for most of us it's a lot better than being dead. My point is that life is full of risks and trade offs.
Using a CDN like googleapis to host some of your content can improve the performance of your site, especially in terms of latency which is often a bigger concern on mobile networks than bandwidth.
One has to weigh the risks of using a CDN against the benefits. If you understand the risks and decided that it's worth it in your case, it many not be incompetent at all.
It was related to our line of work. Don't know if this will help or not but when I'm hiring these are some things that I look for:
1. Competence and aptitude.
2. Demonstrated ability to learn and adapt quickly
3. Level of excitement about working for us and interest in what we do
4. How likely it is that you will stick around for awhile
5. What new skills can you bring to the table
6. Will you be happy with the position (related to #3 and #4)
I don't particularly like the hiring process or the time it takes to get a new employee up to speed. Therefore retaining staff is important to me and that starts with hiring people who I think will enjoy working here for a few years at least. There are other PhDs employed here so I wouldn't rule one out necessarily but it would over qualify you for any position that I'd personally be hiring for.
I agree with some of what he said and disagree with other parts. For example I think eating healthy and getting enough exercise will improve your quality of life into your 70s and beyond but I also see the point he is trying to make.
If you read the article you will see that he doesn't plan to die at age 75 and does recognize that he may well in fact have several years left of both enjoying his life and not being a burden to others. What he is saying that that after 75 if he is diagnosed with cancer for example, he won't try to beat it. That likely his best years are behind him anyway and fighting it would lengthen his life but to little benefit. He won't have a pacemaker put in and would avoid those kinds of major procedures in an effort to prolong his life.
My step dad lived into his 80's and was a vibrant person up until the last couple months before his death. He had had heart trouble since his 40's. He was a gift to my kids and his other grand children even though he wasn't making major contributions to society. I'd argue that lots of people never do so I don't know that that is a good measuring stick anyway. On the other hand, my mother was very healthy until 70, injured her back and then rapidly declined. She spent most of the last 7 years of her life in bed and was really unable to take care of herself for the last 5.
You have to be in demand for this technique to work but it can happen. I was offered compensation for the first time this past year to run a workshop at an out of town conference. Not nearly enough to cover the costs of going but every bit helps. And if you're a speaker it does offer a bit of free advertising/prestige for your employer (if you don't suck). The downside for you and your employer is that there is prep time involved which can take away from your normal duties.
What I would recommend is to start out by attending and presenting at local user groups on your own time. You will learn a lot and hone your presentation skills.
I don't know how your company deals with performance reviews and pay raises or bonuses but just like salary, bonuses, and vacation time you can negotiate for something beyond what's typically provided. And just like all of those things, it comes down to how much they want to keep you and how much money they can justify spending on you. Training could be an easy sell since the company stands to benefit.
You could say that you'd like to go to one national conference per year or every other year for the purposes of training and staying on top of industry trends. Or maybe rather than saying one conference, you'd like to them to be willing to spend a certain amount annually and anything beyond that would be on your dime.
The problem with traveling to many conferences is that they can be a very expensive way for a company to train employees vs an actual class or even setting aside a certain amount of time each week for employees to work on pet projects. I consider them something of a perk actually and if a company has cash flow issues, I would hope they'd be one of the first things to go.
If a company requires or clearly wants you to go to a conference or class, they should definitely pay. If you expect them to pay for training, they should have final say over which and how many conferences/classes you attend. There are grey areas of course. If I think a particular conference would be great for my career but doesn't have a particular application to my job, I'd not expect them to pay for that. If it's something I want for my career but also has some benefits to the company, then I would see if they'd pay, but would understand if they wouldn't and not leave the company if I were otherwise happy.
Are you sure these were people with actual computer science degrees and not graduates of some tech school or possibly software engineering (which is different from computer science)? If not it sounds like you've worked with some bad computer science grads.
I can't imagine anyone doing well in computer science without being very curious and willing to learn. It's been many years but to get my degree I did have a semester of technical writing on top of all english/lit courses I took in my first two years of college. I was required to give presentations and I also had a math class that was entirely about writing proofs. It was painful but forced you to be completely logical. I found it much harder than my English Comp classes that talked about logical fallacies and the like.
I agree that you can be very successful in a tech career without a CS degree but once in awhile you run into a situation where the CS grads will shine and those without will struggle. Often it has to do with wringing the most performance out of a system. I recently viewed a video about MongoDB internals that was immensely helpful. Those without a CS degree would have difficulty understanding most of it.
I've worked in union environments and non-union ones. Let's just say the union environments don't have the market cornered on dysfunction. In fact, probably the most dysfunctional place I ever worked as a programmer would never happen under a union.
I suppose it depends on your perspective though. If you like 18 hour days and being considered basically being unemployable by the time your 50, a job as a corporate programmer is an ideal career choice.
I did something similar for awhile but instead of a safe deposit box, I just left a drive at work. The only problem with this approach is that you have to remember to rotate the drives and any important content that's created between rotating the drives has the potential to be lost.
So now I have a mac mini (could be a PC or linux server though) that's hooked to our TV as a media server. It has a great big external drive that's used for time machine. Our laptop backs up to it as well. In addition I use CrashPlan to back things up to the cloud for offsite storage. You can schedule Crashplan to work when you want so it's not sucking up bandwidth that you might otherwise be using. You can also select what it backs up.
For me having something that runs automatically is much better than a process that depends on me to remember to do something.
I'm not telling anybody how to live, only telling people what's possible. If you live within 10 miles of work biking to work isn't really all that hard (winters excluded) assuming you don't have 1,000 feet of climbing to do and you have a reasonably safe route.
Vegas?
Average August high temp of 106 and humidity probably under 30% - Yeah, I could definitely do it and really most people could as long as they drink plenty of water and don't push it too hard. Think about it, you can walk outside right? Sure on a bike you might be putting in a little bit more effort but how much is really up to you, - plus you're generating a breeze. I've gone on 35 mile fast group rides in heat indexes higher than that. I'm sure that there are some days that it would be too dangerous just like riding in a thunderstorm or blizzard would be, but those days are the exception and not the rule.
What sort of clothes aren't safe to ride a bike in? There are such things as chain guards and skirt guards. And as long as you ride at a reasonable pace, you don't need to work up a sweat but it does depend on climate, the time of year, and how far you have to ride.
I have about a 6 mile trip into work. I ride year round in Minneapolis. I usually wear some sort of athletic clothes and shower at work, but a good chunk of the year I could get by with business attire in the morning (when it's cooler) if I was content to go a bit slower. I like to go fast though and have my commute double as a workout. Sometimes I'll add in some extra miles on the way home. Most of the year it's faster than driving since I'm not really affected by traffic congestion. Riding in the winter is harder and slower.
Even if you don't have a shower at work, there are ways to clean up to make yourself presentable (unscented baby wipes are popular but there are other means). Just bring a change of clothes or keep some at work. I generally bring my clothes in everyday but leave a pair of dress shoes under my desk.
If you have a small workspace, limited dexterity (find it hard to strip wires and shove the ends to small holes), and are just starting out in electronics, Snap Circuits are great.
Lego Mindstorms are good for understanding the basics of robotics and to a certain degree programming but out of the box don't teach a lot about electronics.
If you have some programming experience and at least a basic knowledge of electronics then Arduinos are a lot of fun but I think a lot would depend on the kind of facilities a VA Hospital would have for working on electronics. You would need a computer, a reasonably sized work surface, a place to store components, a soldering iron would be really nice to have, along with a set of tools like small screw drivers, wire strippers/cutters, etc.
That seems to be the question. Personally I'd rather have somebody with experience AND a CS degree.;)
I've been in the field awhile and have worked with many people who are self taught and either have no degree or a degree in another field. I've also worked with many CS grads. It's anecdotal but in my experience the CS grads in general will pretty quickly surpass the non grads in programming acumen, - all else being equal (and they seldom are). They often grasp concepts quicker and develop a larger set of tools to draw upon. There are many exceptions of course and I've hired and worked with good software developers that don't have a CS degree. It's not a pre-requisite for working for me but I consider it a strong plus.
It's not surprising to me that half the programmers in the US don't have a CS degree. That's partly because historically programmers have been in high demand. A more interesting statistic would be which group tends to be more successful in tech careers over the long haul.
I was kind of confused about the message and intent of the videos. If the goal is to give advice to those who want to continue programming as a career beyond their 40's and into their 60's, it might make more sense to interview somebody who has managed to do that. I guess the idea was to avoid doing what he did.
The advice seemed to come down to this: Take care of yourself and work for the government or just skip a career in programming altogether. The rest was made up of miscellaneous recollections.
I was curious enough to look at his blog. Though he's only posted sporadically, he does come across as a very intelligent guy with a graduate degree that still has something to give the industry, though I'm not sure in what capacity. He was a teacher for awhile and that seems to have been a good fit but it sounds like health issues ended that part of his career.
Outside of management, keeping ones career going all the way through to retirement can be a challenge in technical fields. Part of that is pure discrimination but I would also guess that in many cases companies get are getting more per dollar spent out of younger employees. How does one combat that as they age? Some do it successfully. Is becoming a consultant or moving into management the only way to go?
So what constitutes a small town vs a city? You talk about Ancient Athens and Sante Fe as if they aren't cities.
I live in a city of 400,000. I grew up in small town. It's population was about 2,000 when I was young. It's evolved/devolved into an outer ring suburb of about 30,000.
I went to college in a town of about 50,000. My wife grew up in what I consider to be a small city, - 80,000
For awhile we lived a suburb of about 30,000 in a metropolitan area of about 4.5 million.
So those are my reference points. My parents knew most of the people in our small town, but most of the socializing was done with extended family. I knew hardly any of my neighbors when I lived in the suburbs. You just never saw them. People drove from the street into their attached garages and went into the house without ever setting foot outside. By contrast I know my neighbors in the city very well.
Anyway, you have some long posts and I could pick at them point by point but I don't have time for that. For decades cities were losing population to the suburbs and that trend has reversed. Assume for the moment that many places in many cities are desirable places to live for a certain segment of the population. Given that, here is my challenge to you: Go to a city or especially a suburb and take a long look at how much infrastructure and space is devoted to the automobile. We don't notice because we are so used it. Look at how much space is devoted to roads and parking. Look at some modern suburban homes where the garage takes up 1/3 of footprint the whole structure. Is that really a good use of limited resources?
Then ask yourself if maybe Helsinki isn't on the right track, especially in a city where there are a number of good and healthier alternatives to climbing into a car.
I do. I have a yard and two dogs. Once in awhile we plant a garden. I can even play music. Plus I can walk to local bakeries, breweries, restaurants, hardware stores, beaches, parks, etc.
A lot of the time, between biking and walking your legs are the only transit you need. If not, there are buses, trains, taxis, and services like Car2go and ZipCar.
I understand that kind of lifestyle is not for everybody, but the worst thing we can do is spread out more. That has lead to all kinds of problems.
In my opinion, in order for Blackberry to succeed in the phone market as a unique platform (not another android device), they have to have hardware and software that is head and shoulders above Android and iOS. Their phones would have to have features that neither of the others have, nor are they likely to get in the near future, - something big enough to excite customers that would take competitors a couple of years to catch up to.
It would have to be long enough for developers to decide they can't wait for Apple and Google to catch up and would have to write apps for Blackberry.
I just don't see that happening. They may come up with a nice feature or two that the competition doesn't have yet, but it's unlikely to be enticing enough to lure many people away from all the apps available on iPhones and Androids. How long can Blackberry continue to sink large sums of money into R & D that doesn't result in enough sales to sustain it?
I think the market has pretty much abandoned them. They started the year with a market share of a few percentage points in the US, now it's less than.5 percent.
It's hard to survive as a platform if the market isn't big enough to justify 3rd party development. Yes I know it can run Android apps, - sort of. The reality simply may be that they can not get enough traction and sell enough units to justify the R&D it takes to turn out decent hardware and software. Lots of good PC operating systems died when Microsoft was dominating the PC market, - not because they weren't good but because developers didn't want to waste their time on a minuscule market.
Call it shifting focus if you want, but the writing is on the wall and has been for awhile. Now we are beginning to see the signs that BlackBerry knows it too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure it's wise bring Siri development in house but FWIW Apple's Maps has worked really well for a couple of years now.
I was making a reference to the recent Apple patch that disabled the phone on the iPhone. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL...?
This release contains improvements and bug fixes, including: Fixes an issue in iOS 8.0.1 that impacted cellular network connectivity and Touch ID on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
On their new flagship phones for iOS8. If Apple devs were really that thorough, I doubt that would have passed the first round of tests. On the other hand, I've noticed patches on RHEL take longer to release than Ubuntu which take longer than other Linux distros. But I'm not sure OSX is delayed due to rigorous testing.
Because no linux distro ever releases a patch with bugs... right? ;-)
Anyway. I said the process might have to be more rigorous. I didn't say it was flawless. And the whole 8.0.1 debacle only adds to my point. A patch can sometimes do more damage that what it's trying to fix. Better to take a couple extra days to get it right than to get it out as quickly as possible but screw it up.
It could simply be that considering that considering their user base, Apple puts any patches through a much more rigorous testing than a linux distro typically does.
Yeah, I was really pissed when RHEL released a patch for a kernel bug last week and it disabled the phone app on my iPhone. *#$^ing RedHat.
Not exactly sure what you're trying to say but let me clarify my statement. Apple's users require more hand holding than RHEL users. I'm very serious when I say that Redhat's patch testing process may not be as rigorous as Apple's and I will add that because of the differences in user base, it doesn't have to be.
I wasn't slamming RedHat or linux at all if that's what you thought.
Your first source sites a report from Trend Micro that barely mentions OS X. It shows a chart with the number of vulnerabilities by vendor but it doesn't make any effort to characterize the severity of the vulnerabilities or the likelihood of being affected by them.
Your second source is not a study or report at all but the opinion of a guy selling security software. I'm not saying his opinion isn't worth anything, only that he stands to gain by scaring OS X users into buying his software. And just as an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if more systems have been compromised in some way by anti-virus software than any single virus.
I'm sorry but I don't think comparing MS to RedHat is valid. They have a much different user base. The report you listed in your original post went as far as to say that MS was mostly patching client vulnerabilities (in browsers and such) that potentially affect huge numbers of systems many of which are operated by people who are less knowledgeable and more vulnerable to things like trojans. In those cases I agree you need to move quickly.
Something like Shellshock might potentially affect something like 2% of all Macs, (if not less) while a patch affects are large percentage of them. You'd better make sure you don't screw up something in that patch. The majority of Mac users are not like linux users who can easily recover from a bad patch.
- Your study is 6 years old.
- RedHat was the only linux distro in the survey that I saw
- The nature of the vulnerabilities that Microsoft typically patched was quite a bit different from those in the other operating systems studied.
I really doubt it's a difference in attitude. It could simply be that considering that considering their user base, Apple puts any patches through a much more rigorous testing than a linux distro typically does. They may (correctly) conclude that a rushed patch could do more harm in less time than most of the vulnerabilities that are identified.
What? People don't like to be called incompetent ? Who knew ? ;)
The chance of an average American being in a car accident in the next 5 years is 1 in 4. 37,000 people die each year in car accidents and over 2 million are injured. Yet most of us still drive even though a lot of us have alternatives. Having your site compromised is bad but for most of us it's a lot better than being dead. My point is that life is full of risks and trade offs.
Using a CDN like googleapis to host some of your content can improve the performance of your site, especially in terms of latency which is often a bigger concern on mobile networks than bandwidth.
One has to weigh the risks of using a CDN against the benefits. If you understand the risks and decided that it's worth it in your case, it many not be incompetent at all.
It was related to our line of work. Don't know if this will help or not but when I'm hiring these are some things that I look for:
1. Competence and aptitude.
2. Demonstrated ability to learn and adapt quickly
3. Level of excitement about working for us and interest in what we do
4. How likely it is that you will stick around for awhile
5. What new skills can you bring to the table
6. Will you be happy with the position (related to #3 and #4)
I don't particularly like the hiring process or the time it takes to get a new employee up to speed. Therefore retaining staff is important to me and that starts with hiring people who I think will enjoy working here for a few years at least. There are other PhDs employed here so I wouldn't rule one out necessarily but it would over qualify you for any position that I'd personally be hiring for.
I agree with some of what he said and disagree with other parts. For example I think eating healthy and getting enough exercise will improve your quality of life into your 70s and beyond but I also see the point he is trying to make.
If you read the article you will see that he doesn't plan to die at age 75 and does recognize that he may well in fact have several years left of both enjoying his life and not being a burden to others. What he is saying that that after 75 if he is diagnosed with cancer for example, he won't try to beat it. That likely his best years are behind him anyway and fighting it would lengthen his life but to little benefit. He won't have a pacemaker put in and would avoid those kinds of major procedures in an effort to prolong his life.
My step dad lived into his 80's and was a vibrant person up until the last couple months before his death. He had had heart trouble since his 40's. He was a gift to my kids and his other grand children even though he wasn't making major contributions to society. I'd argue that lots of people never do so I don't know that that is a good measuring stick anyway. On the other hand, my mother was very healthy until 70, injured her back and then rapidly declined. She spent most of the last 7 years of her life in bed and was really unable to take care of herself for the last 5.
You have to be in demand for this technique to work but it can happen. I was offered compensation for the first time this past year to run a workshop at an out of town conference. Not nearly enough to cover the costs of going but every bit helps. And if you're a speaker it does offer a bit of free advertising/prestige for your employer (if you don't suck). The downside for you and your employer is that there is prep time involved which can take away from your normal duties.
What I would recommend is to start out by attending and presenting at local user groups on your own time. You will learn a lot and hone your presentation skills.
I don't know how your company deals with performance reviews and pay raises or bonuses but just like salary, bonuses, and vacation time you can negotiate for something beyond what's typically provided. And just like all of those things, it comes down to how much they want to keep you and how much money they can justify spending on you. Training could be an easy sell since the company stands to benefit.
You could say that you'd like to go to one national conference per year or every other year for the purposes of training and staying on top of industry trends. Or maybe rather than saying one conference, you'd like to them to be willing to spend a certain amount annually and anything beyond that would be on your dime.
The problem with traveling to many conferences is that they can be a very expensive way for a company to train employees vs an actual class or even setting aside a certain amount of time each week for employees to work on pet projects. I consider them something of a perk actually and if a company has cash flow issues, I would hope they'd be one of the first things to go.
If a company requires or clearly wants you to go to a conference or class, they should definitely pay. If you expect them to pay for training, they should have final say over which and how many conferences/classes you attend. There are grey areas of course. If I think a particular conference would be great for my career but doesn't have a particular application to my job, I'd not expect them to pay for that. If it's something I want for my career but also has some benefits to the company, then I would see if they'd pay, but would understand if they wouldn't and not leave the company if I were otherwise happy.
Are you sure these were people with actual computer science degrees and not graduates of some tech school or possibly software engineering (which is different from computer science)? If not it sounds like you've worked with some bad computer science grads.
I can't imagine anyone doing well in computer science without being very curious and willing to learn. It's been many years but to get my degree I did have a semester of technical writing on top of all english/lit courses I took in my first two years of college. I was required to give presentations and I also had a math class that was entirely about writing proofs. It was painful but forced you to be completely logical. I found it much harder than my English Comp classes that talked about logical fallacies and the like.
I agree that you can be very successful in a tech career without a CS degree but once in awhile you run into a situation where the CS grads will shine and those without will struggle. Often it has to do with wringing the most performance out of a system. I recently viewed a video about MongoDB internals that was immensely helpful. Those without a CS degree would have difficulty understanding most of it.
I've worked in union environments and non-union ones. Let's just say the union environments don't have the market cornered on dysfunction. In fact, probably the most dysfunctional place I ever worked as a programmer would never happen under a union.
I suppose it depends on your perspective though. If you like 18 hour days and being considered basically being unemployable by the time your 50, a job as a corporate programmer is an ideal career choice.
I did something similar for awhile but instead of a safe deposit box, I just left a drive at work. The only problem with this approach is that you have to remember to rotate the drives and any important content that's created between rotating the drives has the potential to be lost.
So now I have a mac mini (could be a PC or linux server though) that's hooked to our TV as a media server. It has a great big external drive that's used for time machine. Our laptop backs up to it as well. In addition I use CrashPlan to back things up to the cloud for offsite storage. You can schedule Crashplan to work when you want so it's not sucking up bandwidth that you might otherwise be using. You can also select what it backs up.
For me having something that runs automatically is much better than a process that depends on me to remember to do something.
Studded bike tires: http://www.eriksbikeshop.com/n...
Ride year round in Minneapolis. -2 or -22.
I'm not telling anybody how to live, only telling people what's possible. If you live within 10 miles of work biking to work isn't really all that hard (winters excluded) assuming you don't have 1,000 feet of climbing to do and you have a reasonably safe route.
Vegas?
Average August high temp of 106 and humidity probably under 30% - Yeah, I could definitely do it and really most people could as long as they drink plenty of water and don't push it too hard. Think about it, you can walk outside right? Sure on a bike you might be putting in a little bit more effort but how much is really up to you, - plus you're generating a breeze. I've gone on 35 mile fast group rides in heat indexes higher than that. I'm sure that there are some days that it would be too dangerous just like riding in a thunderstorm or blizzard would be, but those days are the exception and not the rule.
Oh and if you work in a city as opposed to a suburb it's very likely you are on your own for parking, - often at significant expense.
What sort of clothes aren't safe to ride a bike in? There are such things as chain guards and skirt guards. And as long as you ride at a reasonable pace, you don't need to work up a sweat but it does depend on climate, the time of year, and how far you have to ride.
I have about a 6 mile trip into work. I ride year round in Minneapolis. I usually wear some sort of athletic clothes and shower at work, but a good chunk of the year I could get by with business attire in the morning (when it's cooler) if I was content to go a bit slower. I like to go fast though and have my commute double as a workout. Sometimes I'll add in some extra miles on the way home. Most of the year it's faster than driving since I'm not really affected by traffic congestion. Riding in the winter is harder and slower.
Even if you don't have a shower at work, there are ways to clean up to make yourself presentable (unscented baby wipes are popular but there are other means). Just bring a change of clothes or keep some at work. I generally bring my clothes in everyday but leave a pair of dress shoes under my desk.
If you have a small workspace, limited dexterity (find it hard to strip wires and shove the ends to small holes), and are just starting out in electronics, Snap Circuits are great.
Lego Mindstorms are good for understanding the basics of robotics and to a certain degree programming but out of the box don't teach a lot about electronics.
If you have some programming experience and at least a basic knowledge of electronics then Arduinos are a lot of fun but I think a lot would depend on the kind of facilities a VA Hospital would have for working on electronics. You would need a computer, a reasonably sized work surface, a place to store components, a soldering iron would be really nice to have, along with a set of tools like small screw drivers, wire strippers/cutters, etc.
That seems to be the question. Personally I'd rather have somebody with experience AND a CS degree. ;)
I've been in the field awhile and have worked with many people who are self taught and either have no degree or a degree in another field. I've also worked with many CS grads. It's anecdotal but in my experience the CS grads in general will pretty quickly surpass the non grads in programming acumen, - all else being equal (and they seldom are). They often grasp concepts quicker and develop a larger set of tools to draw upon. There are many exceptions of course and I've hired and worked with good software developers that don't have a CS degree. It's not a pre-requisite for working for me but I consider it a strong plus.
It's not surprising to me that half the programmers in the US don't have a CS degree. That's partly because historically programmers have been in high demand. A more interesting statistic would be which group tends to be more successful in tech careers over the long haul.
I was kind of confused about the message and intent of the videos. If the goal is to give advice to those who want to continue programming as a career beyond their 40's and into their 60's, it might make more sense to interview somebody who has managed to do that. I guess the idea was to avoid doing what he did.
The advice seemed to come down to this: Take care of yourself and work for the government or just skip a career in programming altogether. The rest was made up of miscellaneous recollections.
I was curious enough to look at his blog. Though he's only posted sporadically, he does come across as a very intelligent guy with a graduate degree that still has something to give the industry, though I'm not sure in what capacity. He was a teacher for awhile and that seems to have been a good fit but it sounds like health issues ended that part of his career.
Outside of management, keeping ones career going all the way through to retirement can be a challenge in technical fields. Part of that is pure discrimination but I would also guess that in many cases companies get are getting more per dollar spent out of younger employees. How does one combat that as they age? Some do it successfully. Is becoming a consultant or moving into management the only way to go?
So what constitutes a small town vs a city? You talk about Ancient Athens and Sante Fe as if they aren't cities.
I live in a city of 400,000. I grew up in small town. It's population was about 2,000 when I was young. It's evolved/devolved into an outer ring suburb of about 30,000.
I went to college in a town of about 50,000. My wife grew up in what I consider to be a small city, - 80,000
For awhile we lived a suburb of about 30,000 in a metropolitan area of about 4.5 million.
So those are my reference points. My parents knew most of the people in our small town, but most of the socializing was done with extended family. I knew hardly any of my neighbors when I lived in the suburbs. You just never saw them. People drove from the street into their attached garages and went into the house without ever setting foot outside. By contrast I know my neighbors in the city very well.
Anyway, you have some long posts and I could pick at them point by point but I don't have time for that. For decades cities were losing population to the suburbs and that trend has reversed. Assume for the moment that many places in many cities are desirable places to live for a certain segment of the population. Given that, here is my challenge to you: Go to a city or especially a suburb and take a long look at how much infrastructure and space is devoted to the automobile. We don't notice because we are so used it. Look at how much space is devoted to roads and parking. Look at some modern suburban homes where the garage takes up 1/3 of footprint the whole structure. Is that really a good use of limited resources?
Then ask yourself if maybe Helsinki isn't on the right track, especially in a city where there are a number of good and healthier alternatives to climbing into a car.
I'm pretty sure I know where I live. ;)
Cities aren't just downtown apartments and high rises.
Have you ever lived in a city?
I do. I have a yard and two dogs. Once in awhile we plant a garden. I can even play music. Plus I can walk to local bakeries, breweries, restaurants, hardware stores, beaches, parks, etc.
A lot of the time, between biking and walking your legs are the only transit you need. If not, there are buses, trains, taxis, and services like Car2go and ZipCar.
I understand that kind of lifestyle is not for everybody, but the worst thing we can do is spread out more. That has lead to all kinds of problems.
In my opinion, in order for Blackberry to succeed in the phone market as a unique platform (not another android device), they have to have hardware and software that is head and shoulders above Android and iOS. Their phones would have to have features that neither of the others have, nor are they likely to get in the near future, - something big enough to excite customers that would take competitors a couple of years to catch up to.
It would have to be long enough for developers to decide they can't wait for Apple and Google to catch up and would have to write apps for Blackberry.
I just don't see that happening. They may come up with a nice feature or two that the competition doesn't have yet, but it's unlikely to be enticing enough to lure many people away from all the apps available on iPhones and Androids. How long can Blackberry continue to sink large sums of money into R & D that doesn't result in enough sales to sustain it?
I think the market has pretty much abandoned them. They started the year with a market share of a few percentage points in the US, now it's less than .5 percent.
It's hard to survive as a platform if the market isn't big enough to justify 3rd party development. Yes I know it can run Android apps, - sort of. The reality simply may be that they can not get enough traction and sell enough units to justify the R&D it takes to turn out decent hardware and software. Lots of good PC operating systems died when Microsoft was dominating the PC market, - not because they weren't good but because developers didn't want to waste their time on a minuscule market.
Call it shifting focus if you want, but the writing is on the wall and has been for awhile. Now we are beginning to see the signs that BlackBerry knows it too.