Either you are female or gay:) Personally I enjoyed living in close quarters with girls who were young, exploring their new freedoms, and a little crazy.
Actually, I think you are right- it's the freedom and exposure to new things and the ability to plot your own destiny. I'm guessing you can make the same kind of social contacts in the military as well.
I'd think that very few people go to college for the "enjoyment" of it.
Are you serious? I highly recommend college just for the enjoyment part of it. I had more fun in college than at any other time in my life. Plus, the connections and friendships that I made there are extremely valuable.
Go there to learn, to learn how to learn, to learn skills (the easy part), and to socialize (the important part).
-ec
I think it's time you try to take a more objective look at yourself. If your resume is good enough, perhaps you are coming across poorly in interviews. Physical appearance, manners, diction, etc... all matter. It's all about attention to detail. Most important though, is projecting the right balance of confidence / humility. These are people skills anybody can nail.
Most employers do not see degrees as quaint. Experience rules for senior positions, but entry level positions are made for recent grads. A problem you are going to face is that you're graduation is becoming less recent all the time. I hope you are keeping up on your skills and continuing your education. Do some volunteer IT or try to make yourself visible on some open source projects.
Where I work, we turn away people with very good resumes all the time if we don't think the person would fit in. I'm not going to hire somebody unless I think I'm going to enjoy working with them. Think about it- you probably spend more time with people in your office than with your significant other.
We've also hired some people with unrelated degrees to do some of the most demanding work here (our network admin has a degree in german language).
Lastly, what are you doing to expand your people network? Often who you know is more important that what you know. I used to think this was awful, but now I think it's because people are very afraid of risk and the unknown. Find other nerds and find out what they are doing. Interview at their company after you have thoroughly researched whatever it is they do.
Back 25 or so years ago, I was doing the pretty much the same thing with my turntable and my two tape deck stero. I was making tapes of albums, recording radio, and making copies of other tapes for my friends and myself. Usually mix tapes, but occasionally just a straight copy. As I recall this was a rather popular thing to do.
I think it's awful that my kids who are now 3 and 4 years may not be able to do that with their friends in ten years.
In an attempt to try to beat the phone companies to the triple play (television, data, phone), the cable companies sank a lot of money into proprietary digital television systems (Motorola and Scientific Atlanta). The telephone companies have been researching alternate systems, and I figure that they'll be able to beat the cable companies based on cost alone.
You know what scares the crap out of the cable companies? As they race to score a triple play, they are finding that once fast data is there, the other two parts of the triple play are far from a sure thing. Digital tv and phone service are just more data.
Earlier this year, Comcast had a triple play going with my family. We had cable modem, digital tv and their phone service. Well, their phone service was unreliable as hell and we were unluck enough to get bad phone hardware from them, twice. So, we switched to Vonage and it has worked very well. About a month later the introductory offer wore off on the internet and tv and the +$100 Comcast bill and the shitty dvr made me look around for something different. I now have Dish and fairly happy with it (the dvr still sucks-- if they were going to infringe on Tivo's patents, they should have done a lot better job of it).
The last thing any of the cable (or phone) companies want, is to be commodity suppliers. Thus their fear of net neutrality regulations.
I don't think you understand why the iPod sells so well. Nobody is comparing the iPod features with its competitors and buying an iPod because it is more features for less money. If average people comparison shopped for music players, the iPod would be dead already.
I want something small, something that works, and something that I enjoy using (ie has exceptional industrial design). The iPod wins here. Why is Apple the only major consumer electronics company that seems to give a crap about good design? Beauty is subjective, but it would be hard to argue that Apple has failed with their product designs.
I definitely don't want a music player bundled with my phone (I have yet to see a phone that I consider well designed- the Moto Pebl, or whatever it's called, comes close). I do not want moving parts and definitely not something the size of a frickin' cd or dvd.
I currently have about a 10 GB audio collection and maybe 2-5% is music that I have copied from somewhere else. A big chunk of it is audio books and pod casts. Don't assume that all anybody uses their iPod for is music. If I could, I would probably have videos as well
I've been using PythonCard to wrap simple gui's around some of my simple scripts. It is build on top of the wxPython toolkit and makes python-based gui's incredibly simple. Maybe not quite as slick as HyperCard was, but it has definitely hit a sweet spot for me.
I'm pretty sure he's at Microsoft now. He was probably a bad example because I think he works on products, not in R&D. I just happen to be a fan of his.
I can't argue that Microsoft is very wealthy. I just don't see the innovation (MS has made me hate that word...) that I would hope for after making the kinds of investments they have made in R&D. Their main source of innovation seems to come from their M&A unit (although it's really just acquisitions- not a lot of merging going on).
My personal theory about the poor return on their investment is that they hire a lot of people who are or would normally be university professors. But Microsoft hires them and they now have a job without the requirement to publish or teach. Should be nirvana, but what happens when you take away publishing and teaching requirements from a professor? You get a grad student. And a grad student is just somebody who doesn't want to work.:)
I've heard MS Research described as a roach motel. They employ *lots* of extremely talented people. But it seems that once they check in, they never check out. You see them at conferences and the odd paper trickles out, but they definitely tend to drop off the radar.
I've always wondered what happens to these formerly incredibly productive people. Are they stuck in bureaucratic hell? Are they working on stuff so far into the theoretical that products are years off? Or is it the ultimate cushy job and they just get fat drinking free snapple behind their closed door?
It's true they do surface from time-to-time (like Anders Hejlberg) so you know they are working on something, but this happens so rarely you have to wonder what the hell is going on in there. Why do they get such a lousy return from their huge R&D budget?
A Gamecube is my only console. In March I probably played it for a total of maybe 5-10 hours. I didn't touch it in April.
So, by your reasoning, I'm a gamer. I'm also a golfer and a bowler because I have done those things in my life as well (as a matter of fact, I've golfed twice and bowled three times).
I will probably buy a Wii when I see a game on it that I really want to play. I got the Gamecube for Animal Crossing and Pikmin, but I also like Super Monkey Ball (1 and 2), and Resident Evil 4.
Wal-Mart is so big and powerful, that most companies have no leverage when trying to make a deal with them. Wal-Mart can dictate the terms of most contracts.
I've thought about this a little bit and it seems to me that it doesn't make sense to ask what started time. If something started time, then that implies that it existed before time started. By saying 'before' you are implying that time existed before time started and that doesn't make any sense.
There are a bunch of wiki's out there now with excellent wysiwyg interfaces. I've been playing with jot and I am very impressed with it.
Like you, I'd rather not have to remember yet another markup language and I don't really want to have to explain something like html to somebody either.
I don't think the point is that you are depriving them of future income. The point is that only the copyright owner can copy the work, or allow it to be copied. It's a right you don't have. Even if the rental price was $0, the legality of copying that video doesn't change. Is it less of a violation to copy something you borrow from a library?
It's a copyright violation, not a depriving-me-of-income violation.
I lived in Florida for a while and when I moved there I had no car but needed a Fla driver's license. All I had to do was sign a statement swearing that I don't own a car.
If somebody has bought a computer, then they almost certainly have a copy of Windows already. That wasn't necessarily the case in the Windows 3.1 days.
I would agree with you if OS's were an interchangeable commodity product, but they aren't.
Locate the office someplace interesting. Someplace amenable to discussions while taking a walk. My coworkers and I walk somewhere just about everyday (for lunch, coffee breaks, or just to get some air) and you would be amazed at how much a change in scenery can help you solve problems.
My office is in downtown Portland, OR and it is by far the best place that I have worked. Excellent book stores, street food vendors, coffee shops, and parks are very close.
Forget industrial parks and suburban strip malls. How boring.
The other interesting office I worked in was one that shared many office facilities among different businesses. There was a common secretary at the front door, common lunch areas, and common photocopiers and fax machines. There were many impromptu lunches and birthday gatherings that made the place an interesting place to spend your day.
If you are thinking about a better office, think socially rather than technologically.
If you want to lure them away from Windows, you have to offer them something better.
That something better changes depending on who you are talking to. To the majority of the users of desktop operating systems, better means: like Windows so it's familiar, but sell it for less. And make sure it just works. IMHO, OS X is there.
If you want to drag them away from Windows, then you are talking about people who have no choice in OS (i.e. employees). Make it familiar so retraining costs are minimized, make it work well, have a corporation behind it for support, and make it cheap.
I don't think anybody is just copying crap blindly. A familiar interface is not necessarily a bad thing.
So, unless there is a quantum leap (how ironic that quantum computing would indeed be a quantum leap) this is not some kind of Distributed project.
Of course, a quantum leap is a very small leap.
How does the big bang fit into this? The universe is just matter (or energy, they're equivalent, no?) that came from nowhere. Doesn't this violate what you were taught in thermo101?
Slashdot Mirror
Either you are female or gay :) Personally I enjoyed living in close quarters with girls who were young, exploring their new freedoms, and a little crazy.
Actually, I think you are right- it's the freedom and exposure to new things and the ability to plot your own destiny. I'm guessing you can make the same kind of social contacts in the military as well.
-ec
Are you serious? I highly recommend college just for the enjoyment part of it. I had more fun in college than at any other time in my life. Plus, the connections and friendships that I made there are extremely valuable.
Go there to learn, to learn how to learn, to learn skills (the easy part), and to socialize (the important part). -ec
I think it's time you try to take a more objective look at yourself. If your resume is good enough, perhaps you are coming across poorly in interviews. Physical appearance, manners, diction, etc... all matter. It's all about attention to detail. Most important though, is projecting the right balance of confidence / humility. These are people skills anybody can nail.
Most employers do not see degrees as quaint. Experience rules for senior positions, but entry level positions are made for recent grads. A problem you are going to face is that you're graduation is becoming less recent all the time. I hope you are keeping up on your skills and continuing your education. Do some volunteer IT or try to make yourself visible on some open source projects.
Where I work, we turn away people with very good resumes all the time if we don't think the person would fit in. I'm not going to hire somebody unless I think I'm going to enjoy working with them. Think about it- you probably spend more time with people in your office than with your significant other.
We've also hired some people with unrelated degrees to do some of the most demanding work here (our network admin has a degree in german language).
Lastly, what are you doing to expand your people network? Often who you know is more important that what you know. I used to think this was awful, but now I think it's because people are very afraid of risk and the unknown. Find other nerds and find out what they are doing. Interview at their company after you have thoroughly researched whatever it is they do.
-ec
Back 25 or so years ago, I was doing the pretty much the same thing with my turntable and my two tape deck stero. I was making tapes of albums, recording radio, and making copies of other tapes for my friends and myself. Usually mix tapes, but occasionally just a straight copy. As I recall this was a rather popular thing to do.
I think it's awful that my kids who are now 3 and 4 years may not be able to do that with their friends in ten years.
You know what scares the crap out of the cable companies? As they race to score a triple play, they are finding that once fast data is there, the other two parts of the triple play are far from a sure thing. Digital tv and phone service are just more data.
Earlier this year, Comcast had a triple play going with my family. We had cable modem, digital tv and their phone service. Well, their phone service was unreliable as hell and we were unluck enough to get bad phone hardware from them, twice. So, we switched to Vonage and it has worked very well. About a month later the introductory offer wore off on the internet and tv and the +$100 Comcast bill and the shitty dvr made me look around for something different. I now have Dish and fairly happy with it (the dvr still sucks-- if they were going to infringe on Tivo's patents, they should have done a lot better job of it).
The last thing any of the cable (or phone) companies want, is to be commodity suppliers. Thus their fear of net neutrality regulations.
I don't think you understand why the iPod sells so well. Nobody is comparing the iPod features with its competitors and buying an iPod because it is more features for less money. If average people comparison shopped for music players, the iPod would be dead already.
I want something small, something that works, and something that I enjoy using (ie has exceptional industrial design). The iPod wins here. Why is Apple the only major consumer electronics company that seems to give a crap about good design? Beauty is subjective, but it would be hard to argue that Apple has failed with their product designs.
I definitely don't want a music player bundled with my phone (I have yet to see a phone that I consider well designed- the Moto Pebl, or whatever it's called, comes close). I do not want moving parts and definitely not something the size of a frickin' cd or dvd.
I currently have about a 10 GB audio collection and maybe 2-5% is music that I have copied from somewhere else. A big chunk of it is audio books and pod casts. Don't assume that all anybody uses their iPod for is music. If I could, I would probably have videos as well
Not everything is orbiting in the same direction.
I've been using PythonCard to wrap simple gui's around some of my simple scripts. It is build on top of the wxPython toolkit and makes python-based gui's incredibly simple. Maybe not quite as slick as HyperCard was, but it has definitely hit a sweet spot for me.
I'm pretty sure he's at Microsoft now. He was probably a bad example because I think he works on products, not in R&D. I just happen to be a fan of his.
-ec
I can't argue that Microsoft is very wealthy. I just don't see the innovation (MS has made me hate that word...) that I would hope for after making the kinds of investments they have made in R&D. Their main source of innovation seems to come from their M&A unit (although it's really just acquisitions- not a lot of merging going on).
:)
My personal theory about the poor return on their investment is that they hire a lot of people who are or would normally be university professors. But Microsoft hires them and they now have a job without the requirement to publish or teach. Should be nirvana, but what happens when you take away publishing and teaching requirements from a professor? You get a grad student. And a grad student is just somebody who doesn't want to work.
I've heard MS Research described as a roach motel. They employ *lots* of extremely talented people. But it seems that once they check in, they never check out. You see them at conferences and the odd paper trickles out, but they definitely tend to drop off the radar.
I've always wondered what happens to these formerly incredibly productive people. Are they stuck in bureaucratic hell? Are they working on stuff so far into the theoretical that products are years off? Or is it the ultimate cushy job and they just get fat drinking free snapple behind their closed door?
It's true they do surface from time-to-time (like Anders Hejlberg) so you know they are working on something, but this happens so rarely you have to wonder what the hell is going on in there. Why do they get such a lousy return from their huge R&D budget?
-ec
A Gamecube is my only console. In March I probably played it for a total of maybe 5-10 hours. I didn't touch it in April.
So, by your reasoning, I'm a gamer. I'm also a golfer and a bowler because I have done those things in my life as well (as a matter of fact, I've golfed twice and bowled three times).
I will probably buy a Wii when I see a game on it that I really want to play. I got the Gamecube for Animal Crossing and Pikmin, but I also like Super Monkey Ball (1 and 2), and Resident Evil 4.
Wal-Mart is so big and powerful, that most companies have no leverage when trying to make a deal with them. Wal-Mart can dictate the terms of most contracts.
m l
For a great example, read http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.ht
Starbucks offers health care benefits for employees who work at least 20 hours per week.
I've thought about this a little bit and it seems to me that it doesn't make sense to ask what started time. If something started time, then that implies that it existed before time started. By saying 'before' you are implying that time existed before time started and that doesn't make any sense.
There are a bunch of wiki's out there now with excellent wysiwyg interfaces. I've been playing with jot and I am very impressed with it. Like you, I'd rather not have to remember yet another markup language and I don't really want to have to explain something like html to somebody either.
I don't think the point is that you are depriving them of future income. The point is that only the copyright owner can copy the work, or allow it to be copied. It's a right you don't have. Even if the rental price was $0, the legality of copying that video doesn't change. Is it less of a violation to copy something you borrow from a library?
It's a copyright violation, not a depriving-me-of-income violation.
-ec
I lived in Florida for a while and when I moved there I had no car but needed a Fla driver's license. All I had to do was sign a statement swearing that I don't own a car.
I bought a car a few weeks later.
-ec
If somebody has bought a computer, then they almost certainly have a copy of Windows already. That wasn't necessarily the case in the Windows 3.1 days.
I would agree with you if OS's were an interchangeable commodity product, but they aren't.
Locate the office someplace interesting. Someplace amenable to discussions while taking a walk. My coworkers and I walk somewhere just about everyday (for lunch, coffee breaks, or just to get some air) and you would be amazed at how much a change in scenery can help you solve problems.
My office is in downtown Portland, OR and it is by far the best place that I have worked. Excellent book stores, street food vendors, coffee shops, and parks are very close.
Forget industrial parks and suburban strip malls. How boring.
The other interesting office I worked in was one that shared many office facilities among different businesses. There was a common secretary at the front door, common lunch areas, and common photocopiers and fax machines. There were many impromptu lunches and birthday gatherings that made the place an interesting place to spend your day.
If you are thinking about a better office, think socially rather than technologically.
-ec
I think this has about as much chance killing the iPod (and other portable audio players) as portable DVD players have in killing portable CD players.
There's a market for it, but it's only a niche. "iPod killer" is just a bit of sensationalism to get you to read the article.
However, you believe we should discount a published study of 60 people with anecdotes from a very small number of people?
I almost agree with you.
If you want to lure them away from Windows, you have to offer them something better.
That something better changes depending on who you are talking to. To the majority of the users of desktop operating systems, better means: like Windows so it's familiar, but sell it for less. And make sure it just works. IMHO, OS X is there.
If you want to drag them away from Windows, then you are talking about people who have no choice in OS (i.e. employees). Make it familiar so retraining costs are minimized, make it work well, have a corporation behind it for support, and make it cheap.
I don't think anybody is just copying crap blindly. A familiar interface is not necessarily a bad thing.
-ec
So, unless there is a quantum leap (how ironic that quantum computing would indeed be a quantum leap) this is not some kind of Distributed project.
Of course, a quantum leap is a very small leap.
How does the big bang fit into this? The universe is just matter (or energy, they're equivalent, no?) that came from nowhere. Doesn't this violate what you were taught in thermo101?