I took an MBA, specialising in New Ventures. I didn't take it to be a better developer, and I doubt that it would help with that. I work on design and implementation of large-scale international telecoms programmes(*), which means that my job is more IT and system integration, with a fairly small part of custom development which I outsource with the exception of proof of concept demos. The MBA gives me some clout in arguing over what should go into the product, and helps in running the programmes - project management, finance etc.
Frankly, I'm probably too old to keep my edge as a C++ programmer (and the older I get, the better I was), but this way I can use my technical experience for something useful. Of course I now have to rely more on other people's technical judgement and sometimes they'll get it wrong where I'd get it right - that can be a bit frustrating.
The course itself can be a lot of fun. There's a lot more analytical work than you might expert. I found the most interesting bit to be the strategy case studies. Sometimes it's possible to come up with a solution which is demonstrably better than the "standard" one.
(*) "programme" in the sense of a group of related projects
Rubbish! Objects contain state (instance variables) and have a set of operations which can be performed on them (methods or member functions). Anything that just takes input and returns output is at best a function.
I use a Mac. There is no way to log in to root directly (no legal password), and sudo is used to work as root. That seems to offer as much security as the normal Linux way of having a separate administration account, while allowing a fair degree of convenience. Of course Linux systems could be set up this way, and I may do this in future.
Grandparent is not entirely accurate in the example given, but is basically correct. Fifteen years ago, white page telephone directories gave telephone numbers as the local number preceded by the name of the exchange. To get the dialing code for that exchange, one had to use a smaller book. This was because you would use a different code for nearby exchanges. I'm hesitant to call the codes STD (subscriber trunk dialing), as I'm not sure that trunk dialing was involved, and unlike grandparent's example, I don't think that the "semilocal" codes ever began with 0 - nevertheless the effect was that the area codes did depend on where you were dialing from.
Something I've found, and other people have agreed with me: depression is sometimes intelligent. It will persuade you to do things that will bring you down - play depressive music, speak badly to your friends to drive them away, sit in the dark rather than go out in the sun. Personally I think it's only a part of your own mind, but in fighting it, it can be useful to think of it as your own little devil, out to get you by any means it can. Anthropomorphising it into an external enemy can help in fighting it.
Good luck, and give it an extra kick in the guts from me.
Not the biggest program ever, but I once had to maintain some code from the Riso National Lab in Denmark. 6000 lines of Pascal, 600 globals, three local variables, and one comment: (* midlertidig *)
Hardware is good, but you also need a sw fw running on your computer unless you can be sure that no other computer behind the hardware fw could possibly have been corrupted. Unless it's your personal LAN, it's pretty unlikely that you can guarantee that. Even then it's useful to look for outbound traffic from unexpected applications (particularly spyware) - a hardware fw will not help with that.
No, you're wrong. Pick up a copy of the standards from WAPForum. WAP consists of several standards, e.g. WML (markup language), WTLS (secure transport), but it's all bearer independent. Oh, and you have an IP connection over both circuit-switched GSM and GPRS. incidentally, this is how I earned my living for several years, so I do know what I'm talking about.
True, but it would not be reasonable to conclude that there is less freedom in the UK. In the UK, "freedom of speech" is almost always interpreted as freedom of political speech, and in practical terms this probably exists to a greater degree than in the USA due to a less homogeneous press and the tension between the broadcasters (including the BBC) and the government. I've been thinking of counterexamples, and only two spring to mind: a) wearing of some political uniforms has been banned since the 1930's as a measure against the Blackshirts (UK equivalent of the Nazis); b) during the 1980s news of the IRA prisoner hunger strikes was not broadcast, i.e. we knew that terrorist prisoners were on hunger strike to be recognised as political prisoners, but we didn't get much news as to who had died after the first one. There is no censorship of organisations such as Sinn Fein which have direct links with terrorist organisations (the IRA in this case).
In contrast "free speech" in the UK has no implication of supporting dissemination of non-political information such as pornography, DeCSS, or spam. Arguments exist over these, of course, but they are not usually based on a prima facie right of free speech any more than debates on gun control are based on constitutional amendments.
In terms of other freedoms - well from the outside the USA looks a scary place, with the police likely to arrest you for jaywalking (the word and concept don't exist here, so I'm using your word) or the FBI seize your property on meagre grounds. We have had some erosions of rights under our current government, but not to the extent that you are suffering. I think it would be difficult to say which country is more free, but I feel more confident of liberty here.
Have you considered studying human factors (i.e. user interface design)? It's a small field, but when I've employed people for this they've really made a huge difference to the quality of my software. No coding is needed, but HTML is often required and it's sometimes useful to be able to craft a demo interface in a prototyping environment such as VB.
Yes, WAP is heavily used in Europe, but it's usually been branded as something else, e.g. T-Mobile's T-Zones or Vodafone Live. Calling it "WAP" now would be a marketing disaster, even though the various protocols are pretty good at their jobs. Blame the Nokia 7110 - that heap of second-hand silicon only implemented about half the standard, and the efforts of the early content providers to support it led to bad sites.
Of course we didn't want to be hasty about something so important. We started switching to decimal money in 1848 with the introduction of the florin, worth 2/- or 10p.
I think the requirement is to have no criminal record, and to be able to pay 5 (which used to require a certain prosperity). Sound mind is not a requirement! You must have no debts, at least at Oxford. One of the proctors walks around the Sheldonian (the place where the ceremony happens) and any tradesmen can tug on the tabs attached to sleeves of his gown to disclose an unpaid debt. It is rumoured that Blackwells bookshop employs someone for this purpose.
BTW, Oxford also has another odd custom. It doesn't formally recognise the degrees of other universities, which matters not a jot except that if you are in statu pupillari, i.e. without a degree, you must live within something like two miles of Carfax. To avoid this inconveniencing graduates of Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin, such people can choose to incorporate rather than matriculate - i.e. they get a free degree on joining the university.
2) what _is_ the best way to convert between mdir and mbox?
Set up an IMAP server and set it up as a service under Outlook. Copy the existing mail folders over to it (within Outlook). The same folders will be accessible in any mail client that uses IMAP, and it's possible to use multiple mail clients with the same folders, which may be useful if Outlook still has to be used for some reason. You can have mbox or mdir as the storage format, but unless you need to be compatible with mail (i.e. the Unix-type command-line utility) there may not be much point.
Apparently EU carriers haven't caught on. Someone should point out that in the US it was big bragging rights for years that there was no roaming costs, and even today a no roaming plan costs slightly more than a local plan. People will pay a little for the convince of not having to worry about it. Only sprint (which has the smallest coverage area) covers everything on their own, all the other carriers work out cross deals.
"Roaming" means using another network, and because "national roaming" (i.e. roaming to another network in your home country) is usually not permitted for licensing reasons in the EU, roaming effectively means international use. I would be surprised if retail tariffs covering international use are free in the USA.
I'm British, but I travel widely in the EU. I don't think I've ever seen a European use knife and fork to cut up a meal, then change to using the fork alone to eat it. Most people continue to hold knife and fork, or use the fork alone (in the right hand) for the whole dish. Where are you based?
(Or is this some odd right-handed thing that right-handers do? I still can't get over the fact that when you're eating and you put your knife down, you change the hand you have the fork in. That's just absurd. Why don't you have a fork/spoon/stabbing/shovel hand, and a cutting hand?)
That's a cultural thing, not a handedness thing. Europeans don't change hands.
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Frankly, I'm probably too old to keep my edge as a C++ programmer (and the older I get, the better I was), but this way I can use my technical experience for something useful. Of course I now have to rely more on other people's technical judgement and sometimes they'll get it wrong where I'd get it right - that can be a bit frustrating.
The course itself can be a lot of fun. There's a lot more analytical work than you might expert. I found the most interesting bit to be the strategy case studies. Sometimes it's possible to come up with a solution which is demonstrably better than the "standard" one.
(*) "programme" in the sense of a group of related projects
Rubbish! Objects contain state (instance variables) and have a set of operations which can be performed on them (methods or member functions). Anything that just takes input and returns output is at best a function.
I use a Mac. There is no way to log in to root directly (no legal password), and sudo is used to work as root. That seems to offer as much security as the normal Linux way of having a separate administration account, while allowing a fair degree of convenience. Of course Linux systems could be set up this way, and I may do this in future.
Thanks - seems to be a firewall problem at the ISP
I haven't been able to reach (HTTP, ping) www.macosxhints.com for a few weeks - thought it had gone down. Can you see it?
FWIW, IAATE (mobile, rather than fixed)
BT Exact offers a free IPv6 tunnel-broker service which I've found useful, so yes, I think they probably will use IPv6 internally.
Good luck, and give it an extra kick in the guts from me.
Not the biggest program ever, but I once had to maintain some code from the Riso National Lab in Denmark. 6000 lines of Pascal, 600 globals, three local variables, and one comment: (* midlertidig *)
Hardware is good, but you also need a sw fw running on your computer unless you can be sure that no other computer behind the hardware fw could possibly have been corrupted. Unless it's your personal LAN, it's pretty unlikely that you can guarantee that. Even then it's useful to look for outbound traffic from unexpected applications (particularly spyware) - a hardware fw will not help with that.
I use ZA - it does function as a firewall, which is not exactly surprising.
Source?
No, you're wrong. Pick up a copy of the standards from WAPForum. WAP consists of several standards, e.g. WML (markup language), WTLS (secure transport), but it's all bearer independent. Oh, and you have an IP connection over both circuit-switched GSM and GPRS. incidentally, this is how I earned my living for several years, so I do know what I'm talking about.
In contrast "free speech" in the UK has no implication of supporting dissemination of non-political information such as pornography, DeCSS, or spam. Arguments exist over these, of course, but they are not usually based on a prima facie right of free speech any more than debates on gun control are based on constitutional amendments.
In terms of other freedoms - well from the outside the USA looks a scary place, with the police likely to arrest you for jaywalking (the word and concept don't exist here, so I'm using your word) or the FBI seize your property on meagre grounds. We have had some erosions of rights under our current government, but not to the extent that you are suffering. I think it would be difficult to say which country is more free, but I feel more confident of liberty here.
Have you considered studying human factors (i.e. user interface design)? It's a small field, but when I've employed people for this they've really made a huge difference to the quality of my software. No coding is needed, but HTML is often required and it's sometimes useful to be able to craft a demo interface in a prototyping environment such as VB.
Yes, WAP is heavily used in Europe, but it's usually been branded as something else, e.g. T-Mobile's T-Zones or Vodafone Live. Calling it "WAP" now would be a marketing disaster, even though the various protocols are pretty good at their jobs. Blame the Nokia 7110 - that heap of second-hand silicon only implemented about half the standard, and the efforts of the early content providers to support it led to bad sites.
Of course we didn't want to be hasty about something so important. We started switching to decimal money in 1848 with the introduction of the florin, worth 2/- or 10p.
Did you ever pay for memory for a computer before it was standardised?
So? Plenty more where they came from!
Ok, I'll bite. What have you go against iostreams?
BTW, Oxford also has another odd custom. It doesn't formally recognise the degrees of other universities, which matters not a jot except that if you are in statu pupillari, i.e. without a degree, you must live within something like two miles of Carfax. To avoid this inconveniencing graduates of Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin, such people can choose to incorporate rather than matriculate - i.e. they get a free degree on joining the university.
Set up an IMAP server and set it up as a service under Outlook. Copy the existing mail folders over to it (within Outlook). The same folders will be accessible in any mail client that uses IMAP, and it's possible to use multiple mail clients with the same folders, which may be useful if Outlook still has to be used for some reason. You can have mbox or mdir as the storage format, but unless you need to be compatible with mail (i.e. the Unix-type command-line utility) there may not be much point.
"Roaming" means using another network, and because "national roaming" (i.e. roaming to another network in your home country) is usually not permitted for licensing reasons in the EU, roaming effectively means international use. I would be surprised if retail tariffs covering international use are free in the USA.
(IATE)
I'm British, but I travel widely in the EU. I don't think I've ever seen a European use knife and fork to cut up a meal, then change to using the fork alone to eat it. Most people continue to hold knife and fork, or use the fork alone (in the right hand) for the whole dish. Where are you based?
That's a cultural thing, not a handedness thing. Europeans don't change hands.