If I were an investor, I would be concerned that the most successful software company in the world has so few successful products, and that even fewer of those were initially developed internally.
Except that those that are successful are exceptionally successful. I believe that two products (Windows, Office) make up ~90% of Microsoft's revenue. 90% of a ~$30 billion/yr revenue is a hell of a lot of money.
3 - University of Waterloo
7 - Queen's University (and damn proud to be there, those guys worked their asses off to do this)
9 - McGill University
11 - University of Toronto(impressive, I heard their solar car was t-boned while in transit to a practice run)
We Canadian folk can compete with the kids down south.
I'm stuck with two Linksys cards, the 54g PCMCIA card and a WMP-11 rev 2.7 PCI card, that are both based on the Broadcom chipset. I'd like to help out an existing project on this, but I can't find one anywhere, and I fully expect Hell to call me to tell me to turn the heat back on before I get drivers from Broadcom or Linksys.
Anybody know of any projects out there for the Broadcom chipset?
It didn't help that people *flocked* to technical programs at universities, forcing excessive weed-out classes to reduce admissions numbers.
Students still flock to technical programs at universities.
I ended up ceasing to ccontinue with my CSE major not because I didn't want to learn the trade to do something that I liked, working with computers in newer, exciting ways, but because I didn't want to do group projects with people who had no idea what a spreadsheet was, and we all were to be basically graded on the performance of the lowest member of the group. (yes, I am bitter)
I understand your bitterness, there are a lot of underqualified CS/CE/SE/EE students out there. I've dealt with them a lot.
People flocked to the programs for the money. There's no money now, and there are a lot of trained people who are very upset about not being able to make a five year career on a four year education. This is one fad that died.
People still flock to these technical programs for the money. I still hear about CE/SE/EE/CS students who are there for the Benjamins in the future. And they're forced to think that way. Everyone who I tell that I'm in Computer Engineering says "Wow. You'll be making good money." The fad is not dead.
I believe that it'll level out again, and that suitable numbers of college-training-required technical jobs will come back, but hopefully this period of bust will be remembered, and the trend won't repeat for a long time.
I think so too, but it will take some time. And since we don't seem to learn from history, I think there will be a repeat of this.
The average user doesn't know the difference between Windows/Lindows, except the fact that there is no Word, Excel, Outlook (Express), etc yet. No one's heard of WordPerfect. Barely anyone I know uses Netscape. I would have to explain why Kazaa doesn't work...and they don't care about alternatives - its Kazaa or bust. Can't run MSN Messenger? Screw it. Even if Sim or Everybuddy or GAIM is better.
Most people who are buying a computer that cheap are buying it because it is that cheap. They don't care what's on it as long as it runs the games it needs without any extra work. I try to educate users about licensing, but explain to a 12 year old like I did this weekend the concept of copyright and licensing. It goes right over their heads. And since parents probably know less than their kids about computers, parents will ask "Is this what you want?", get an affirmative, and pull out the Visa.
Kids get to play their games, parents get rid of another headache.
Anyone looking to get good wireless card support (802.11b) should buy one with a prism2 chip or an Orinoco. I know many that have had good luck with these cards, and I know for a fact that the Orinoco cards are essentially plug and play in linux. Do NOT buy the TI chipsets (sometimes marketed as 22mbps 802.11b+) or the Broadcom chipsets; word on the street (heh) is that these companies have been less than forthcoming with specs so people can write proper drivers for them.
Easier said than done. D-Link and Linksys have discontinued their wireless cards that are NOT Broadcom based. Consequently, you cannot buy the D-Link DWL-520 or the Linksys WPC11 pre-2.7 cards. SMC cards have little or no support, and the 2602 model is impossible to find in Toronto. The only other option is Microsoft cards, which we all know won't work under Linux.
My advice: If you are starting out with wireless and Linux, forget it. For now.
Genetically modified humans are still just that: humans. They always apply. The only difference in rights between a genetically modified human and you and me are adjectives.
Check out the Software Engineering program at Queen's University.
Software Engineering and Computer Science are similar, but not the same. Software Engineering requires advanced first year math, physics, chemistry, etc, while I know 4th year CS students who do not know what a flip flop is . CS students do not know basic circuit theory at my school. Yet CS students call themselves software engineers. It drives me insane, so I explain tothem the fundamental difference. Really, how can you be an engineer, if you were never in an engineering program?!?
I'm not saying CS is easy, but my CS courses are a joke compared to my Eng courses. The only reason why I do worse in the CS courses is because I have to put off CS work to do my Eng projects.
No one likes an incessant whiner, but you can greatly improve morale by offering _good_ and _realistic_ suggestions that management can actually implement.
It will improve morale because it appears that managers listen and are implementing your suggestions, and management looks good because they have a happy work force.
Mod parent up. I couldn't have said it better myself.
There is too much emphasis on trying to make science "hip" and "cool" and to a certain extent, "l33t". This seems to work for a bit but ensures a kid's attention span is short.
Want kids to do better in school? Turn off the TV. Do homework as a family. Don't buy another console (I know a few people who have a few consoles.) Teachers need to care too. And lets face it, most role models for kids (Britney Spears, almost any rapper) suck as role models. All they really portray is that you can make money dropping out of school or almost never going. To put it simply, kill the distractions. Explain in no uncertain terms that you need to care in school in order to do something in life.
Best influence on my life is my father. He taught me to do math at a grade 1 level when I was in junior kindergarten, and moved up. He encouraged me to do math beyond his comprehension and offered to help, even if he didn't know what an integral is.
That's what Western (not just American) families need - a return to the fundamentals instead of a focus on becoming the next American Idol.
I'm not sure if I agree with you, but there are two things I really want to point out:
There's something most christians don't seem to understand.
Most Christians are non-practising Christians - they were baptized, did the First Communion and the Confirmation thing, but they don't actually practise the religion. Consider this: Most Christians don't go to Mass on Sunday. The Christians that get noticed are those who do and tell the world that they do. There's nothing wrong with that, but the amount of Christians that get noticed approaches zero when compared to the amount of Christians there are.
So, saying most Christians don't understand is actually a misnomer. Most practising Christians don't understand.
For those who will point out that I actually subbed in Roman Catholic for Christian, its only because I am a practising Roman Catholic.
Believing porn is evil and immoral is a fringe belief now.
Therefore it is morally acceptable?
Replace 'porn' with 'speeding'. Or 'piracy' (of any form). Or 'divorce'. Or 'contraception'.
I'm not going to get into a debate on if it those things are wrong, but keep something in mind: Morals are static. Values are not. Morals, therefore, cannot change. Values change with society, because values are what the society 'values' as its priorities or what the society will accept.
Think about it: values changed in the 60s. Values regarding these topics were more or less static until then and then they changed because someone decided they were wrong? Morals have remained the same. They always will be. That's why they're morals.
Re:The really interesting thing about dupes
on
IETF to Look at Spam
·
· Score: 1
The really interesting thing about dupes is that they tend to suggest that there are large numbers of readers who pay more attention to the site than the guys running it.
If I was running slashdot, I'd probably push the people who had the power to approve stories to read each and every story that gets approved. It seems like a reasonable minimal committment to the community even for volunteers, and presumably some of these guys are drawing actual paychecks for the work they do here.
The dupes show that the guys approving the stories don't really care enough to take the time to do that.
OK, I've been reading Slashdot for almost a year now, and I constantly see complaints about duplicates. Lets ask the Slashdot editors policy about duplicates.
So, eds, do you do it because you don't care? Or because some people miss a story and think the dupe may be the first time the story is posted? Or are daily readers of Slashdot too critical? Does it vary from editor to editor? Or from story to story?
Email me a reply or post a reply, I don't care. I want to know what the people who take all kinds of abuse about this think and why they think that way.
I've seen a few of these in my time applying for summer jobs. Since companies advertise their jobs to universities all over Southern Ontario, they need a quick and dirty method of filtering those who are underqualified. Consequently, I find (and I have plenty of experience with this) is that you have to know the hiring director or some senior vice president or something like that even if you are the most qualified. Since I don't know any senior VPs, I have to work my ass off twice as hard just to get an interview or pray the random number generator that picks resumes finds mine.
I've taken these tests and you never see the results of this test. But if you do badly, you never hear from the company ever again. That pisses me off. Personality tests from what I've seen are usually inaccurate, and there are two or three common ones so people memorize answers or know what they "should write".
A previous poster mentioned that its easy if you tell the test what it wants to hear. While that may be true in the long run, its still tough unless you know the environment you are applying to (everybody's a workaholic and truly volunteers unpaid overtime for the love of it or its laid back) since they need different personalities to fit into the individual company.
These tests should be dropped. If you can't figure out a person's personality in an interview, you're not interviewing properly.
You posted as AC. I had no evidence to believe that you were truly being sarcastic in your previous post. I had a hunch you were, and I had no way of knowing that you were from the Middle East.
I'm saying that while you thought it was funny, there are other Arabs or Middle Easterners out there who would have thought that that was a direct insult.
Remember that when you post, you have to think about how complete strangers would read it. It ain't easy, but it has to be done.
My university has been trying to not let P2P overload the network...Again.
When I was in first year (I'm in third), the IT people did a study. 99.85% of all ResNet traffic at the time was Napster. Downloads from Canadian sites sometimes were 2KB/sec at their best. I did better on the 28.8 baud I left behind.
No student cares. Until there is a mass crackdown or a Minority Report style prevention, I fully expect P2P to flood university networks. Maybe they should charge more. No one will pay to share files.
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
Microsoft does an ok job at Hotmail, but there is one thing that it misses - itself.
My mail is set to exclusive on Hotmail, meaning if you are not on my safe list, your mail gets dumped into my Junk Mail folder. Seven day old messages get erased from Junk Mail permanently. This applies to all emailers, except Microsoft, whose 75KB Hotmail ads trying to promote paying for more services show up in my Inbox, not Junk Mail. I have to manually delete these.
Two things I want changed at Hotmail: 1. Microsoft better learn how to filter itself. Properly. 2. Junk Mail should not contribute to my space usage on Hotmail. If I get a lot of spam, Hotmail sends me a message saying to erase it, flooding it further. God forbid I fet another ad. When you have 2MB of space, and Junk Mail counts towards it, 50KB hurts. It wouldn't hurt to make the initial page after logging in say in big red letters "Erase some mail, dammit!"
There's a mathematical probability for everything. We're going to have to live with that.
However, usually, when people say that things "MAY" have happened, they're saying that it is probable, (not plausible, because probable is a superset of plausible) that it actually DID happen.
As for you having sex with Liv Tyler, I hear Laetitia Casta is passing by my house tonight...
Life will suck for you around this time. Don't worry about it. Tough it out, but don't become extremely reclusive.
Your teachers at school will not help. Don't even try asking for them since they're more worried about keeping their jobs.
There are people in your life who do not want you to succeed. Ignore them. Only one will turn out to do something with their life. Stick to your principles. There are more assholes than good people in the world. Your job is to meet more good people. Unfortunately, you don't meet a lot of them until you reach high school.
Listen to your parents. As a matter of fact, you won't be listening to them when you are 21, like I am.
Don't give up piano. Continue to nurture your love of math and science. You will be asked if you like girls or books better repeatedly. Choose books. Girls aren't worth your time at that age. All of them at your school conspire against you, and you meet a few really nice ones in university. One will fall in love with you.
Ignore TV stereotypes. Fitting in is a waste of time. Create your own identity, but don't identify yourself with any mental trauma you experienced or you will become an excessively bitter person. Introversion is a good thing.
Challenge authority frequently. Don't subvert the chain of command, but do not be afraid to assert yourself. Do not wait to be screwed over in grade 12 to begin to get pissed off.
Keep that journal of your thoughts. Show it to no one. It will maintain your sanity.
If it sounds like I'm bitter, its because hindsight is 20/20 and I made mistakes I shouldn't have.
Dad will tell you that "you come first. no one else." Believe him. You will aspire to become him when you are my age.
...is the application of engineering principles to software design and computer science problems.
Software Engineering != Computer Science.
My university [which will remain nameless] supposedly got in trouble with Professional Engineers Ontario because its Computer Science grads were calling themselves "Software Engineers" when there was a Software Engineering program running. After that, computer science was forked into computer science and "Software Design".
In Ontario, its illegal to call yourself an engineer of any kind without going through an accredited program. MCSEs are allowed to call themselves "MCSEs", and not "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers".
Software Engineering != Programming.
The reason why it gets no respect is because its new, hence the earlier post that it is simply "akin to sanitary engineering" is just dead wrong. The argument that software engineers are sloppy "because if we built bridges the way we build software" is also useless for the same reason. Let the practice of Software Engineering mature.
Regulations are less than 10 years old. Imagine what Mechanical Engineering or Civil Engineering was when it began. Does anyone remember the building that twisted when subjected to wind?
Software Engineers != Programmers.
The bastards who wrote Slammer, Nimda, SirCam, Code Red, Klez (need I go on?) are programmers. Anybody who writes a program for release is a programmer. Software Engineers are obligated to produce good code (and other design documents) because they are subjected to a regulatory body (similar to the Bar for lawyers). This is at least true in Ontario.
So what is Software Engineering again? Take computer science, programming, engieering principles, legal obligations and ethics and combine them.
So can I use this to run two distributed computing projects at once? Or several instances of one?
The Folding@Home project keeps track of how many "active CPUs" that have responded in the last week. Does a hyperthreaded processor count as 2?
Engineers (of all kinds) are regulated. I cannot say I am an engineer until a governing body says I can. Software engineers got to university and then have to get licensed in order to call themselves software engineers. (Consequently, MCSEs are not "engineers" in the true sense in Ontario.)
Any other utilization of the word engineer that is not sanctioned can bring a lawsuit.
As for software engineering being simply programming, you have fallen into the stereotype that programming = software engineering. Software engineering includes programming, but branches beyond that. The fact that I don't like physics and didn't go to Mech does not preclude me from being an engineer. Many Mechs that I know think that way.
And finally, my being in a software engineering does allow me to "get a job in hundreds of different industries." Its up to me to decide which ones
Slashdot Mirror
If I were an investor, I would be concerned that the most successful software company in the world has so few successful products, and that even fewer of those were initially developed internally.
Except that those that are successful are exceptionally successful. I believe that two products (Windows, Office) make up ~90% of Microsoft's revenue. 90% of a ~$30 billion/yr revenue is a hell of a lot of money.
3 - University of Waterloo 7 - Queen's University (and damn proud to be there, those guys worked their asses off to do this) 9 - McGill University 11 - University of Toronto(impressive, I heard their solar car was t-boned while in transit to a practice run) We Canadian folk can compete with the kids down south.
The reason why I waited is because I wanted to check my contract with my employer to see if work I did at home is owned by the company.
It would suck if I contriubted code owned by someone else, wouldn't it?
I'm stuck with two Linksys cards, the 54g PCMCIA card and a WMP-11 rev 2.7 PCI card, that are both based on the Broadcom chipset. I'd like to help out an existing project on this, but I can't find one anywhere, and I fully expect Hell to call me to tell me to turn the heat back on before I get drivers from Broadcom or Linksys.
Anybody know of any projects out there for the Broadcom chipset?
It didn't help that people *flocked* to technical programs at universities, forcing excessive weed-out classes to reduce admissions numbers.
Students still flock to technical programs at universities.
I ended up ceasing to ccontinue with my CSE major not because I didn't want to learn the trade to do something that I liked, working with computers in newer, exciting ways, but because I didn't want to do group projects with people who had no idea what a spreadsheet was, and we all were to be basically graded on the performance of the lowest member of the group. (yes, I am bitter)
I understand your bitterness, there are a lot of underqualified CS/CE/SE/EE students out there. I've dealt with them a lot.
People flocked to the programs for the money. There's no money now, and there are a lot of trained people who are very upset about not being able to make a five year career on a four year education. This is one fad that died.
People still flock to these technical programs for the money. I still hear about CE/SE/EE/CS students who are there for the Benjamins in the future. And they're forced to think that way. Everyone who I tell that I'm in Computer Engineering says "Wow. You'll be making good money." The fad is not dead.
I believe that it'll level out again, and that suitable numbers of college-training-required technical jobs will come back, but hopefully this period of bust will be remembered, and the trend won't repeat for a long time.
I think so too, but it will take some time. And since we don't seem to learn from history, I think there will be a repeat of this.
Agree wholeheartedly.
The average user doesn't know the difference between Windows/Lindows, except the fact that there is no Word, Excel, Outlook (Express), etc yet. No one's heard of WordPerfect. Barely anyone I know uses Netscape. I would have to explain why Kazaa doesn't work...and they don't care about alternatives - its Kazaa or bust. Can't run MSN Messenger? Screw it. Even if Sim or Everybuddy or GAIM is better.
Most people who are buying a computer that cheap are buying it because it is that cheap. They don't care what's on it as long as it runs the games it needs without any extra work. I try to educate users about licensing, but explain to a 12 year old like I did this weekend the concept of copyright and licensing. It goes right over their heads. And since parents probably know less than their kids about computers, parents will ask "Is this what you want?", get an affirmative, and pull out the Visa.
Kids get to play their games, parents get rid of another headache.
Anyone looking to get good wireless card support (802.11b) should buy one with a prism2 chip or an Orinoco. I know many that have had good luck with these cards, and I know for a fact that the Orinoco cards are essentially plug and play in linux. Do NOT buy the TI chipsets (sometimes marketed as 22mbps 802.11b+) or the Broadcom chipsets; word on the street (heh) is that these companies have been less than forthcoming with specs so people can write proper drivers for them.
Easier said than done. D-Link and Linksys have discontinued their wireless cards that are NOT Broadcom based. Consequently, you cannot buy the D-Link DWL-520 or the Linksys WPC11 pre-2.7 cards. SMC cards have little or no support, and the 2602 model is impossible to find in Toronto. The only other option is Microsoft cards, which we all know won't work under Linux.
My advice: If you are starting out with wireless and Linux, forget it. For now.
These might apply to GM people.
[emphasis mine]
Might?!?
Genetically modified humans are still just that: humans. They always apply. The only difference in rights between a genetically modified human and you and me are adjectives.
True, but it seems like you force feeded OpenOffice down on your organizaion, which is the wrong way to advocate or implement OSS.
There are analogies, but I can't think of any.
Check out the Software Engineering program at Queen's University.
Software Engineering and Computer Science are similar, but not the same. Software Engineering requires advanced first year math, physics, chemistry, etc, while I know 4th year CS students who do not know what a flip flop is . CS students do not know basic circuit theory at my school. Yet CS students call themselves software engineers. It drives me insane, so I explain tothem the fundamental difference. Really, how can you be an engineer, if you were never in an engineering program?!?
I'm not saying CS is easy, but my CS courses are a joke compared to my Eng courses. The only reason why I do worse in the CS courses is because I have to put off CS work to do my Eng projects.
For a final opinion, check out this.
complain responsibly.
No one likes an incessant whiner, but you can greatly improve morale by offering _good_ and _realistic_ suggestions that management can actually implement.
It will improve morale because it appears that managers listen and are implementing your suggestions, and management looks good because they have a happy work force.
Mod parent up. I couldn't have said it better myself.
There is too much emphasis on trying to make science "hip" and "cool" and to a certain extent, "l33t". This seems to work for a bit but ensures a kid's attention span is short.
Want kids to do better in school? Turn off the TV. Do homework as a family. Don't buy another console (I know a few people who have a few consoles.) Teachers need to care too. And lets face it, most role models for kids (Britney Spears, almost any rapper) suck as role models. All they really portray is that you can make money dropping out of school or almost never going. To put it simply, kill the distractions. Explain in no uncertain terms that you need to care in school in order to do something in life.
Best influence on my life is my father. He taught me to do math at a grade 1 level when I was in junior kindergarten, and moved up. He encouraged me to do math beyond his comprehension and offered to help, even if he didn't know what an integral is.
That's what Western (not just American) families need - a return to the fundamentals instead of a focus on becoming the next American Idol.
I'm not sure if I agree with you, but there are two things I really want to point out:
There's something most christians don't seem to understand.
Most Christians are non-practising Christians - they were baptized, did the First Communion and the Confirmation thing, but they don't actually practise the religion. Consider this: Most Christians don't go to Mass on Sunday. The Christians that get noticed are those who do and tell the world that they do. There's nothing wrong with that, but the amount of Christians that get noticed approaches zero when compared to the amount of Christians there are.
So, saying most Christians don't understand is actually a misnomer. Most practising Christians don't understand.
For those who will point out that I actually subbed in Roman Catholic for Christian, its only because I am a practising Roman Catholic.
Believing porn is evil and immoral is a fringe belief now.
Therefore it is morally acceptable?
Replace 'porn' with 'speeding'. Or 'piracy' (of any form). Or 'divorce'. Or 'contraception'.
I'm not going to get into a debate on if it those things are wrong, but keep something in mind: Morals are static. Values are not. Morals, therefore, cannot change. Values change with society, because values are what the society 'values' as its priorities or what the society will accept.
Think about it: values changed in the 60s. Values regarding these topics were more or less static until then and then they changed because someone decided they were wrong? Morals have remained the same. They always will be. That's why they're morals.
The really interesting thing about dupes is that they tend to suggest that there are large numbers of readers who pay more attention to the site than the guys running it.
If I was running slashdot, I'd probably push the people who had the power to approve stories to read each and every story that gets approved. It seems like a reasonable minimal committment to the community even for volunteers, and presumably some of these guys are drawing actual paychecks for the work they do here.
The dupes show that the guys approving the stories don't really care enough to take the time to do that.
OK, I've been reading Slashdot for almost a year now, and I constantly see complaints about duplicates. Lets ask the Slashdot editors policy about duplicates.
So, eds, do you do it because you don't care? Or because some people miss a story and think the dupe may be the first time the story is posted? Or are daily readers of Slashdot too critical? Does it vary from editor to editor? Or from story to story?
Email me a reply or post a reply, I don't care. I want to know what the people who take all kinds of abuse about this think and why they think that way.
I've seen a few of these in my time applying for summer jobs. Since companies advertise their jobs to universities all over Southern Ontario, they need a quick and dirty method of filtering those who are underqualified. Consequently, I find (and I have plenty of experience with this) is that you have to know the hiring director or some senior vice president or something like that even if you are the most qualified. Since I don't know any senior VPs, I have to work my ass off twice as hard just to get an interview or pray the random number generator that picks resumes finds mine.
I've taken these tests and you never see the results of this test. But if you do badly, you never hear from the company ever again. That pisses me off. Personality tests from what I've seen are usually inaccurate, and there are two or three common ones so people memorize answers or know what they "should write".
A previous poster mentioned that its easy if you tell the test what it wants to hear. While that may be true in the long run, its still tough unless you know the environment you are applying to (everybody's a workaholic and truly volunteers unpaid overtime for the love of it or its laid back) since they need different personalities to fit into the individual company.
These tests should be dropped. If you can't figure out a person's personality in an interview, you're not interviewing properly.
That's not the point.
You posted as AC. I had no evidence to believe that you were truly being sarcastic in your previous post. I had a hunch you were, and I had no way of knowing that you were from the Middle East.
I'm saying that while you thought it was funny, there are other Arabs or Middle Easterners out there who would have thought that that was a direct insult.
Remember that when you post, you have to think about how complete strangers would read it. It ain't easy, but it has to be done.
cat landscape | grep 'arab' | fire --with-rocket
To some, that may be funny. But its sentiment like that that makes racism impossible to eliminate.
My university has been trying to not let P2P overload the network...Again.
When I was in first year (I'm in third), the IT people did a study. 99.85% of all ResNet traffic at the time was Napster. Downloads from Canadian sites sometimes were 2KB/sec at their best. I did better on the 28.8 baud I left behind.
No student cares. Until there is a mass crackdown or a Minority Report style prevention, I fully expect P2P to flood university networks. Maybe they should charge more. No one will pay to share files.
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
Microsoft does an ok job at Hotmail, but there is one thing that it misses - itself.
My mail is set to exclusive on Hotmail, meaning if you are not on my safe list, your mail gets dumped into my Junk Mail folder. Seven day old messages get erased from Junk Mail permanently. This applies to all emailers, except Microsoft, whose 75KB Hotmail ads trying to promote paying for more services show up in my Inbox, not Junk Mail. I have to manually delete these.
Two things I want changed at Hotmail:
1. Microsoft better learn how to filter itself. Properly.
2. Junk Mail should not contribute to my space usage on Hotmail. If I get a lot of spam, Hotmail sends me a message saying to erase it, flooding it further. God forbid I fet another ad. When you have 2MB of space, and Junk Mail counts towards it, 50KB hurts. It wouldn't hurt to make the initial page after logging in say in big red letters "Erase some mail, dammit!"
Quantum Skyline
There's a mathematical probability for everything. We're going to have to live with that.
However, usually, when people say that things "MAY" have happened, they're saying that it is probable, (not plausible, because probable is a superset of plausible) that it actually DID happen.
As for you having sex with Liv Tyler, I hear Laetitia Casta is passing by my house tonight...
Life will suck for you around this time. Don't worry about it. Tough it out, but don't become extremely reclusive.
Your teachers at school will not help. Don't even try asking for them since they're more worried about keeping their jobs.
There are people in your life who do not want you to succeed. Ignore them. Only one will turn out to do something with their life. Stick to your principles. There are more assholes than good people in the world. Your job is to meet more good people. Unfortunately, you don't meet a lot of them until you reach high school.
Listen to your parents. As a matter of fact, you won't be listening to them when you are 21, like I am.
Don't give up piano. Continue to nurture your love of math and science. You will be asked if you like girls or books better repeatedly. Choose books. Girls aren't worth your time at that age. All of them at your school conspire against you, and you meet a few really nice ones in university. One will fall in love with you.
Ignore TV stereotypes. Fitting in is a waste of time. Create your own identity, but don't identify yourself with any mental trauma you experienced or you will become an excessively bitter person. Introversion is a good thing.
Challenge authority frequently. Don't subvert the chain of command, but do not be afraid to assert yourself. Do not wait to be screwed over in grade 12 to begin to get pissed off.
Keep that journal of your thoughts. Show it to no one. It will maintain your sanity.
If it sounds like I'm bitter, its because hindsight is 20/20 and I made mistakes I shouldn't have.
Dad will tell you that "you come first. no one else." Believe him. You will aspire to become him when you are my age.
Signed,
A 21 year old Quantum Skyline
This from a guy whose every post gets instantly modded +5.
That's because whatever he posts really is insightful and interesting.
Keep up the good work, Wil.
...is the application of engineering principles to software design and computer science problems.
Software Engineering != Computer Science.
My university [which will remain nameless] supposedly got in trouble with Professional Engineers Ontario because its Computer Science grads were calling themselves "Software Engineers" when there was a Software Engineering program running. After that, computer science was forked into computer science and "Software Design".
In Ontario, its illegal to call yourself an engineer of any kind without going through an accredited program. MCSEs are allowed to call themselves "MCSEs", and not "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers".
Software Engineering != Programming.
The reason why it gets no respect is because its new, hence the earlier post that it is simply "akin to sanitary engineering" is just dead wrong. The argument that software engineers are sloppy "because if we built bridges the way we build software" is also useless for the same reason. Let the practice of Software Engineering mature.
Regulations are less than 10 years old. Imagine what Mechanical Engineering or Civil Engineering was when it began. Does anyone remember the building that twisted when subjected to wind?
Software Engineers != Programmers.
The bastards who wrote Slammer, Nimda, SirCam, Code Red, Klez (need I go on?) are programmers. Anybody who writes a program for release is a programmer. Software Engineers are obligated to produce good code (and other design documents) because they are subjected to a regulatory body (similar to the Bar for lawyers). This is at least true in Ontario.
So what is Software Engineering again? Take computer science, programming, engieering principles, legal obligations and ethics and combine them.
So can I use this to run two distributed computing projects at once? Or several instances of one? The Folding@Home project keeps track of how many "active CPUs" that have responded in the last week. Does a hyperthreaded processor count as 2?
You don't live in Ontario, Canada.
Engineers (of all kinds) are regulated. I cannot say I am an engineer until a governing body says I can. Software engineers got to university and then have to get licensed in order to call themselves software engineers. (Consequently, MCSEs are not "engineers" in the true sense in Ontario.)
Any other utilization of the word engineer that is not sanctioned can bring a lawsuit.
As for software engineering being simply programming, you have fallen into the stereotype that programming = software engineering. Software engineering includes programming, but branches beyond that. The fact that I don't like physics and didn't go to Mech does not preclude me from being an engineer. Many Mechs that I know think that way.
And finally, my being in a software engineering does allow me to "get a job in hundreds of different industries." Its up to me to decide which ones