For some Apple fanatics, Apple could sell them a kick in the balls and they'd stand in line for six days just to buy it.
Well let's be realistic. If it were Steve Jobs delivering the ball kicks himself, then ya there is a select group of fanatics that would stand in line. You have to admit it could be pretty cool. Imagine what you could shout right before he kicks you:
"OS9 sucked" POW
"I bought a mac just to run linux" POW
"IPad?! Come on, how stupid is that?" POW
Now if it were just some apple branded ball kicking machine, then no, who would want to line up for that? I'd just order mine online.
Maybe CS degrees have change since most of the people I work with got their degrees, but I don't think they got much in the way of data modeling theory.
It wasn't part of the core classes where I attended (though it should be). There were 3rd and 4th year courses that focused on modeling such as: object oriented design and development, and system analysis and design.
Depending on what a student decided to focus on it was possible to completely avoid any courses that involved modeling. I worked as business/system analyst while in school which got me interested in design and also the business side of software.
One of the cool things being pushed at the uni I attended (midway through my degree) was interdisciplinary and/or combined degrees (CS/Chem, CS/Physics, CS/health science, CS/Music). Pure CS doesn't leave you very well rounded. I didn't end up doing any of those programs however I ended up doing a minor in business and took some other courses to round my degree out (e.g. a GIS course offered by the geography faculty which ended up being quite useful).
As a recent CS grad (dec 2008, but that was "school 2 years", "break work in field 2 years", "school 2 years") I can attest to the lack of skill of some of the people who only retain information for the duration of the class they're in.
That is a great argument for cooperative studies. At the school I attended engineering students were forced to do "full coop" (4 terms of actually working in something related to their field). That wasn't a requirement for CS (despite being in the same faculty). I ended up doing a partial coop (2+ semesters) because I saw the value in it. I found that course work was significantly easier when I had some real world experience I could apply coursework to. Ideas stuck because I could immediately think of real world uses. Best part was I had a gov't contract job right out of university (the gov't agency I worked for during a coop term wanted to keep me on).
What was even more disturbing was in my graduating class (only 8 of us) the two of us with the most experience: academic, open source, professional full time work in the field were the LAST to get jobs.
How well do you interview? How are your communication skills? You may be a leg up experience wise, however you have to be able to express that in an interview and show you have the ability to clearly express yourself in day-to-day business. I was involved in hiring of some jr type positions and experience was not our first concern, ability to communicate well was. Experience can be gained on the job, and if they did well in school they will pick up the technical skills as needed, however communication skills aren't picked up as easily. If we found someone that did well in their technical writing courses, had a well prepared resume and conducted themselves well in an interview then experience was just the icing on the cake.
If you find a good cake you can always ice it yourself. Crappy cake is crappy cake regardless of how much icing is on top.
Experience helps, but if you don't have a foundation of theory you are going to start wrong in the first place.
The biggest issue is that the person doing the model knows there is actually a wrong way and that they want to seek the correct way of doing things. Yes there may be many correct solutions (each with their own trade-offs), but there are solutions that are just outright wrong. In my opinion not doing the wrong thing takes education and interest. Experience helps you choose the correct solution with the best trade-offs for your intended application the first time around.
There is no good widget set, there is no clear UI design guideline, and there is no good way to develop an app that doesn't end up feeling like a clunky mess. The iPhone, on the other hand, has a widget set that is reusable and has intuitive usage, there are very clear design guidelines, and most of all there are real artists who want to make apps for the platform.
To me this is the most important change required to make this successful. I dev for WinCE currently (not phones, but the product does have a UI and a small touch screen). The tools suck. MS doesn't have a nice widget set like Apple. You want anything pretty or intuitive that doesn't look like it's straight out of windows 2000 you either have to build it yourself or dish out and pay for a 3rd party kits (which would be fine if the pickings weren't so lean).
I've dabbled with xcode and what's available for the iphone (I have a mac and itouch, just limited time to play), and what's available is a world of difference. Plus they have UI guidelines which I see as a good thing since consistency is a very important part of HCI. The tools combined with the guidelines mean it's easy for a developer to create an application that looks and feels like it belongs on the iphone and doesn't clash with the metaphors of the initial interface. To me this makes the iphone and apps feel cohesive instead of an OS and Apps that you happen to throw on there. It's the cohesiveness that makes it better than previous offering in the arena.
If MS steps up to the plate and creates some great tools things could be interesting. Mobile tools haven't been release for VS2010 yet, so maybe this is why they have been delayed...
How about we just let them fail and have other more agile companies take their place?
Exactly. It's supposed to be survival of the fittest. Bailing out big companies is comparable is like keeping a comatose obese 89 year old man (who's just had his 3rd heart attack) alive on life support. At that point you're doing it for the warm fuzzies of making his family feel better.
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
However there can be benefits to storing coinage up your rectum.
If you were to say store unrolled rolls of pennies up your rectum then spend them at locations your boss visits then he would surely get some of that change when shopping there. Next time he goes to buy his kid an ice cream or take his wife out for coffee he's using money that has come from your rectum! You just can't buy that kind of superiority.
You think you're better than me? Oh, you're not better than me. You handle my ass pennies every day. You pick up my ass pennies for good luck. You throw my ass pennies in fountains and make wishes on them.
I'd have to agree. I have experienced it and have family and friends as well. I sought distraction in other ways (speeding on motorcycles and drinking) and they were definitely not the cause. When you feel like shit you seek ways to make yourself feel anything else. Numb is a step up from depressed.
I found anti-depressants (SSRIs, MAO inhibitors.. any kind I tried) numbing. Yes it made daily life more livable but I was stuck on 98%. I just wasn't quite there on the drugs. Life was better with drugs than without them at the time, but not quite as good as life prior w/o the drugs. Once I got off the anti-depressants I finally was able to have days where I felt 100%. I no longer feel slightly withdrawn from life (despite the fact I'm a software dev). Of course getting off antidepressants can be a bitch (withdrawal symptoms can be pretty bad).
Does anyone still type in HTML or CSS anymore? Don't you just bring up a WSYWIG designer and just publish your page?
I mean, Please! This is the 21st century wtf are we still typing for christ-sakes?!
This is why.
Dreamweaver is more aptly called nightmare weaver. Quick and dirty one up static page? Sure use WYSIWYG. Editing something existing with well thought out hand written CSS? Forget it, you are just going to screw things up.
Of course static hand created webpages in this day are the real WTF. For anything more complicated than a few pages it makes a lot more sense to run a CMS. Design the template once properly so it looks correct on the major browsers and let users change the content via the CMS. No luser should ever be FTPing anything to or from the site and the "web master" of past should not longer exist to shuffle changes on a website. It's not the 90's anymore. We have great (and free!) tools to manage creating, editing and publishing content on websites.
I worked for a retail store and we got a call from head office that the police were releasing some evidence from a previous theft and we should go pick it up. Apparently someone stole a few shipping boxes off the delivery truck.
I was nominated to go since I had a truck. I get down there and pick up two huge boxes, get back tot he store and open them up to find boxes of shoes from at least a decade prior. They had held the evidence for at least 10 years!
While in the evidence lockup there 3ft tall pile of marijuana on a pallet and a similar pallet of "shrooms". I bet those got processed a lot quicker.
Is there anything Rogers gets right? Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
While I agree rogers sucks, they aren't a monopoly. Canada does have a problem with cell providers though. There has to be collusion between the cell companies, that's the only explanation for the ridiculous rates canadians have to put up with. I've had a cell phone since '98 and comparable plans have not gotten cheaper since then. I've been on all the major canadian carriers as well and while coverage is acceptable now it still sucks. Best coverage and cost I ever had was in Vancouver with Fido before they were bought out by Rogers.
"High speed" internet is the same thing. It costs the same as I was paying in the 90's and I had better bandwidth then (no upload speed caps, much more consistent DL speeds). If I want higher upload rates I now have to pay a premium for them to up the cap. Awesome.
You have to jump through far more arbitrary hoops for a degree..
And at some universities they even light those hoops on fire!
Getting certification is more like a single hoop that is large and very close to the ground. Many people can just side step through it with little or no difficulty.
There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.
I think that stigma is disappearing. My wife graduated with a BSc in nursing a couple years ago. While there were "Murse" jokes nursing is definitely not considered female only. Plus there are more "manly" specializations you can do such as perioperative nursing (OR nurse).
I think part of the problem is that there is no push to get any males into the programs. I didn't even think of nursing as an option as it was never presented as one.
I graduated with a BSc in CSc (surprise surprise). At my school there was a "Women in Computer Science" program funded by the University, there were professional mentors (women in the computer industry) available to female students and recruiting programs to encourage female enrollment. This was said to be done because of the 90/10 split of males to females in the engineering/computer science faculty.
The Human Social Development faculty (the faculty which nursing is under) had a 10/90 split of males to females. They had 0 programs to get more males into that faculty.
I really don't understand this obsession with getting women into computer science. I've worked with some really good female developers and would like to see more, but at the same rate I don't really care what the sex of the people I'm working with is as long as they are competent.
The new boss, while same as the old, has changed his appearance. He appears to be "with it" and up on all the current fad politics. Universal health care? Sure we'll hang that carrot in front of you. Change is the big thing? We'll chant that for you at the top of our lungs. Change change change change!...
Whatever it takes to get you into the polling booth, so we can get into office and do the same thing as always...
Slashdot Mirror
Well to be honest I run win7 on my macbook to write WinCE apps in Visual Studio. I just use OSX to surf the web, I don't do any real work in it.
Of course that is too long to get into a short burst before being kicked in the nuts.
Then why is it a story?
I know. Why would anyone want to make the most popular smartphone (among business users) look bad? It just doesn't make sense.
For some Apple fanatics, Apple could sell them a kick in the balls and they'd stand in line for six days just to buy it.
Well let's be realistic. If it were Steve Jobs delivering the ball kicks himself, then ya there is a select group of fanatics that would stand in line. You have to admit it could be pretty cool. Imagine what you could shout right before he kicks you:
"OS9 sucked" POW
"I bought a mac just to run linux" POW
"IPad?! Come on, how stupid is that?" POW
Now if it were just some apple branded ball kicking machine, then no, who would want to line up for that? I'd just order mine online.
Maybe CS degrees have change since most of the people I work with got their degrees, but I don't think they got much in the way of data modeling theory.
It wasn't part of the core classes where I attended (though it should be). There were 3rd and 4th year courses that focused on modeling such as: object oriented design and development, and system analysis and design.
Depending on what a student decided to focus on it was possible to completely avoid any courses that involved modeling. I worked as business/system analyst while in school which got me interested in design and also the business side of software.
One of the cool things being pushed at the uni I attended (midway through my degree) was interdisciplinary and/or combined degrees (CS/Chem, CS/Physics, CS/health science, CS/Music). Pure CS doesn't leave you very well rounded. I didn't end up doing any of those programs however I ended up doing a minor in business and took some other courses to round my degree out (e.g. a GIS course offered by the geography faculty which ended up being quite useful).
As a recent CS grad (dec 2008, but that was "school 2 years", "break work in field 2 years", "school 2 years") I can attest to the lack of skill of some of the people who only retain information for the duration of the class they're in.
That is a great argument for cooperative studies. At the school I attended engineering students were forced to do "full coop" (4 terms of actually working in something related to their field). That wasn't a requirement for CS (despite being in the same faculty). I ended up doing a partial coop (2+ semesters) because I saw the value in it. I found that course work was significantly easier when I had some real world experience I could apply coursework to. Ideas stuck because I could immediately think of real world uses. Best part was I had a gov't contract job right out of university (the gov't agency I worked for during a coop term wanted to keep me on).
What was even more disturbing was in my graduating class (only 8 of us) the two of us with the most experience: academic, open source, professional full time work in the field were the LAST to get jobs.
How well do you interview? How are your communication skills? You may be a leg up experience wise, however you have to be able to express that in an interview and show you have the ability to clearly express yourself in day-to-day business. I was involved in hiring of some jr type positions and experience was not our first concern, ability to communicate well was. Experience can be gained on the job, and if they did well in school they will pick up the technical skills as needed, however communication skills aren't picked up as easily. If we found someone that did well in their technical writing courses, had a well prepared resume and conducted themselves well in an interview then experience was just the icing on the cake.
If you find a good cake you can always ice it yourself. Crappy cake is crappy cake regardless of how much icing is on top.
Experience helps, but if you don't have a foundation of theory you are going to start wrong in the first place.
The biggest issue is that the person doing the model knows there is actually a wrong way and that they want to seek the correct way of doing things. Yes there may be many correct solutions (each with their own trade-offs), but there are solutions that are just outright wrong. In my opinion not doing the wrong thing takes education and interest. Experience helps you choose the correct solution with the best trade-offs for your intended application the first time around.
That's so zen.
If you enjoyed that you should join the tautology club.
And a dollar for each hitler reference.
There is no good widget set, there is no clear UI design guideline, and there is no good way to develop an app that doesn't end up feeling like a clunky mess. The iPhone, on the other hand, has a widget set that is reusable and has intuitive usage, there are very clear design guidelines, and most of all there are real artists who want to make apps for the platform.
To me this is the most important change required to make this successful. I dev for WinCE currently (not phones, but the product does have a UI and a small touch screen). The tools suck. MS doesn't have a nice widget set like Apple. You want anything pretty or intuitive that doesn't look like it's straight out of windows 2000 you either have to build it yourself or dish out and pay for a 3rd party kits (which would be fine if the pickings weren't so lean).
I've dabbled with xcode and what's available for the iphone (I have a mac and itouch, just limited time to play), and what's available is a world of difference. Plus they have UI guidelines which I see as a good thing since consistency is a very important part of HCI. The tools combined with the guidelines mean it's easy for a developer to create an application that looks and feels like it belongs on the iphone and doesn't clash with the metaphors of the initial interface. To me this makes the iphone and apps feel cohesive instead of an OS and Apps that you happen to throw on there. It's the cohesiveness that makes it better than previous offering in the arena.
If MS steps up to the plate and creates some great tools things could be interesting. Mobile tools haven't been release for VS2010 yet, so maybe this is why they have been delayed...
How about we just let them fail and have other more agile companies take their place?
Exactly. It's supposed to be survival of the fittest. Bailing out big companies is comparable is like keeping a comatose obese 89 year old man (who's just had his 3rd heart attack) alive on life support. At that point you're doing it for the warm fuzzies of making his family feel better.
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
However there can be benefits to storing coinage up your rectum.
If you were to say store unrolled rolls of pennies up your rectum then spend them at locations your boss visits then he would surely get some of that change when shopping there. Next time he goes to buy his kid an ice cream or take his wife out for coffee he's using money that has come from your rectum! You just can't buy that kind of superiority.
I'd have to agree. I have experienced it and have family and friends as well. I sought distraction in other ways (speeding on motorcycles and drinking) and they were definitely not the cause. When you feel like shit you seek ways to make yourself feel anything else. Numb is a step up from depressed.
I found anti-depressants (SSRIs, MAO inhibitors.. any kind I tried) numbing. Yes it made daily life more livable but I was stuck on 98%. I just wasn't quite there on the drugs. Life was better with drugs than without them at the time, but not quite as good as life prior w/o the drugs. Once I got off the anti-depressants I finally was able to have days where I felt 100%. I no longer feel slightly withdrawn from life (despite the fact I'm a software dev). Of course getting off antidepressants can be a bitch (withdrawal symptoms can be pretty bad).
Does anyone still type in HTML or CSS anymore? Don't you just bring up a WSYWIG designer and just publish your page? I mean, Please! This is the 21st century wtf are we still typing for christ-sakes?! This is why.
Dreamweaver is more aptly called nightmare weaver. Quick and dirty one up static page? Sure use WYSIWYG. Editing something existing with well thought out hand written CSS? Forget it, you are just going to screw things up.
Of course static hand created webpages in this day are the real WTF. For anything more complicated than a few pages it makes a lot more sense to run a CMS. Design the template once properly so it looks correct on the major browsers and let users change the content via the CMS. No luser should ever be FTPing anything to or from the site and the "web master" of past should not longer exist to shuffle changes on a website. It's not the 90's anymore. We have great (and free!) tools to manage creating, editing and publishing content on websites.
I worked for a retail store and we got a call from head office that the police were releasing some evidence from a previous theft and we should go pick it up. Apparently someone stole a few shipping boxes off the delivery truck.
I was nominated to go since I had a truck. I get down there and pick up two huge boxes, get back tot he store and open them up to find boxes of shoes from at least a decade prior. They had held the evidence for at least 10 years!
While in the evidence lockup there 3ft tall pile of marijuana on a pallet and a similar pallet of "shrooms". I bet those got processed a lot quicker.
Is there anything Rogers gets right? Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
While I agree rogers sucks, they aren't a monopoly. Canada does have a problem with cell providers though. There has to be collusion between the cell companies, that's the only explanation for the ridiculous rates canadians have to put up with. I've had a cell phone since '98 and comparable plans have not gotten cheaper since then. I've been on all the major canadian carriers as well and while coverage is acceptable now it still sucks. Best coverage and cost I ever had was in Vancouver with Fido before they were bought out by Rogers.
"High speed" internet is the same thing. It costs the same as I was paying in the 90's and I had better bandwidth then (no upload speed caps, much more consistent DL speeds). If I want higher upload rates I now have to pay a premium for them to up the cap. Awesome.
You have to jump through far more arbitrary hoops for a degree..
And at some universities they even light those hoops on fire!
Getting certification is more like a single hoop that is large and very close to the ground. Many people can just side step through it with little or no difficulty.
If you want to take a dip in the gay pool...
Isn't that generally referred to as a "bath house"?
There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.
I think that stigma is disappearing. My wife graduated with a BSc in nursing a couple years ago. While there were "Murse" jokes nursing is definitely not considered female only. Plus there are more "manly" specializations you can do such as perioperative nursing (OR nurse).
I think part of the problem is that there is no push to get any males into the programs. I didn't even think of nursing as an option as it was never presented as one.
I graduated with a BSc in CSc (surprise surprise). At my school there was a "Women in Computer Science" program funded by the University, there were professional mentors (women in the computer industry) available to female students and recruiting programs to encourage female enrollment. This was said to be done because of the 90/10 split of males to females in the engineering/computer science faculty.
The Human Social Development faculty (the faculty which nursing is under) had a 10/90 split of males to females. They had 0 programs to get more males into that faculty.
I really don't understand this obsession with getting women into computer science. I've worked with some really good female developers and would like to see more, but at the same rate I don't really care what the sex of the people I'm working with is as long as they are competent.
Well I don't see how it's any of your business...
If the MPAA had its way you'd only get a 50% discount for not watching the movie.
FTA: ""Even my wife can see a reduction in picture quality and she's got cataracts," wrote one. "
They must have a pretty big screen if she can see that difference from the kitchen.
I hear cold flooring on bare feet and fetal related hormones increase visual acuity.
Nice haul on that one.
More like trawling than trolling...
I demand that you call it GNU\Linux\Chrome!
Richard Stallman, is that you?
Only if they run Linux and can render Natalie Portman covered in hot grits faster than my imagination already does....woohoo!
Your imagination must be quite primitive. Mine did that instantly upon reading your post.
Oh yeah. Well my imagination automatically made her naked and petrified in addition to being covered in grits.
Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss.
New haircut, new suit.
...
The new boss, while same as the old, has changed his appearance. He appears to be "with it" and up on all the current fad politics. Universal health care? Sure we'll hang that carrot in front of you. Change is the big thing? We'll chant that for you at the top of our lungs. Change change change change!
Whatever it takes to get you into the polling booth, so we can get into office and do the same thing as always...