I don't know, I was thinking about the army in 2002/early 2003 because the job market was terrible and I had just graduated college. I took some standard skills test and they said I could pick any specialty I wanted. There was only one real computer job there and it seemed like it involved mostly typing. I forget the specialty designation now. This was before Iraq when the army was just in Afghanistan.
I also got lots of things in the mail about becoming an officer because I had a college degree too, but it just seemed to be becoming an officer with no specialty.
Maybe you have to know someone or go in the back door to get a cool computer job? The officer who was interviewing me said most of their programs were made by private companies and stuff. I don't know how accurate that is. But it seemed like there were no possibilities in the computer field in the army. Now, with some of the Slashdot articles I have seen, it seems like in the air force there may be a path for people into computer security. But the army itself seems like a dead end.
Actually in voyager they also has fusion reactors because there was an episode where they were trapped in something and people were trying to steal their deuterium. I am not sure, but it seems like the warp drive runs on matter/anti-matter and a lot of the other systems run on normal fusion.
AT&T prior to their wireless division being bought by Cingular did not charge to receive text messages. Even after the buy, until I renewed my plan as a Cingular customer I received free text messages. Unfortunately, once I renewed the plan to a cingular plan text messages received were suddenly charged for. Now that Cingular is AT&T again, I see no plans to bring back free text message receiving.
As you can see, DB2 runs on at least Linux, Windows, and Solaris. It also runs on AIX, even though I didn't see it mentioned in a quick glance on the page. Please check your facts next time.
Amen, I graduated in 2002 and couldn't find a job for a year Once I did, the only job I could get was mostly DBAist so I took it. Now no one will hire me as a software developer because they see me as a DBA.
It seems the first job is not only hard to find, but sets the tone for your career.
At least you got CBT. My doctor insisted on only antidepressants, and even at that, he couldn't really be bothered to supervise or keep track of me. 2 Months and a few sample packs of Zoloft and then Wellbutrin later I stopped taking them and feel about the same. But from what I gather my doctor isn't the only pill pusher. The only odd thing is he never diagnosed me with depression...just sort of pushed the pills on me.
I think it would be cool if the world had a standard XML resume format. Companies could have applications and using the XML tags each company could only view the information they want. Also each company could reformat the resume so that whatever they want to see is emphasized and those details they do not care about are hidden. A nice web front end with AJAX and all that web 2.0 stuff would probably sell many higher vice presidents (unfortunately).
But a killer app would be a WYSIWYG resume builder that puts it into an XML format and the WYSIWYG resume reader that lets you pick what you want to read. It would make life even easier to submit the resume to monster too. Instead of rebuilding your resume 5 or 6 different times for each job site, you could build one and submit it over and over again (minimizing the chance of typos/etc.).
The variety problem would be solved because companies could put it into whatever format they want.
I agree with you 150% on job ads, I've seen many with typos/misspellings/wrong words/more years of experience in a technology then the technology has existed (I loved 5 years.NET a year after.NET came out). Other ads are vague or just totally wrong. A job interview and the ad are part of a two way process. As much as a company wants to screen me out and interview me I want to do the reverse.
In a lot of cases, people know languages/technologies very well that they do not use at their job. Basically, if you follow the procedure of only accepting technologies used on in the job history, once someone gets their first job that will define them for the rest of their career. Most computer science (and even other subjects that require programming) college graduates used C++ or Java while at college (in the past 10 or so years). In addition to using it for many years at school, they also use it on their own. Nevertheless, their job may be using VB/C#/something else.
Another good example is Linux. A lot of us use it at home but at our jobs we are stuck using Windows or some proprietary UNIX. Nevertheless when my last job got a Linux server to experiment I was there to install Linux, recompile the kernel with what we needed, and to show everyone how to navigate around the box. Now using your technique if I was applying for a job at some company using Linux I would have been screened out.
Another example I can think of is Ruby. There are many Ruby fanatics who use it all the time at home but just cannot use it at work. If you were looking for a Ruby programmer a lot of these people who use Ruby like crazy at home would be excluded because it is not in their work history.
Also, no matter what technology there is, your company will eventually probably switch technologies. Do you want to keep hiring people every time your company switches technologies? Probably you need someone who can grow and learn whatever technology they want. Also, even if you do not plan to switch technologies (which sounds questionable to me), the new employee will have to learn your system. I think the technical skills list provides a good basis for talking about what the candidate knows. If you see many technologies not interested in their work interest it may express a willingness and desire to learn new things. I think the best thing you could do (and I had a company do this) is to give a small assignment to all you candidates in whatever technology you are most interested in and see who succeeds.
I had a financial company do this to me one time (in a language J that me, and most of the people being hired, did not use). The task was ultimately easy but because it was a language that most people don't use it took time to use the language reference to look up the task. Ultimately, it narrowed the field of applications from hundreds (1.5-3 hundred I forget) to a handful for the interview (if only I didn't get lost finding the building I would probably have been working there).
This becomes even more important as you use less popular technologies. But also, if you hire people and they are only permitted to work with things in their past work history, the job is going to be boring. Personally if I don't learn anything new at all at a job, I'm going to be looking to leave.
What surprised me the most about the shootout is the comparison between Python and Perl. I consider Perl the scripting language benchmark to beat and Python does seem to present a fair alternative to Perl performancewise.
The worst thing about the ad is that it does not tell me anything about Open Office except that it is free, runs on windows/mac, and is an office suite. Firefox's Ad mentioned that it was faster/more stable than Internet explorer and it never made unsubstantiated claims of being the "best". Firefox just claimed to be an alternative which is why it worked so well. Furthermore, getting user experiences in the ad was also a good idea to appeal the reader on a personal level. The open office ad is kind of in your face, I am free, I am superior, download me. Personally the ad comes off as very arrogant; if I did not know what open office was I probably would not even bother giving it a try.
What is probably the worst thing of all is that Open Office is both slower and less stable than Microsoft Office. Really I'm not quite sure why anyone would switch other than price. If they advertise themselves now when the product is less than ready for full time, they risk leaving the public in general with the impression that Open Office is inferior to Microsoft Office and always will be. Whereas if they waited until the product was superior to office they would have a better chance at making/keeping converts.
One great example is text manipulation. A few lines of regular expression code in Perl/Python/Ruby can save hours of coding in C++ (well without a third party regular expression library). I'm not saying that this is the problem, but for complicated text parsing, the power of regular expressions is one big advantage of a scripting language over C++.
Actually in the article it mentions arguments against using just the identifier and destroying the sample. Something about limiting themselves to the "technology of today".
Maybe but do you really think that the US government would destroy the data from the profile/the sample? They may say they do, but I guarantee that at some point in time the NSA would have a requirement that all samples be sent directly to them. There may be an archive disk somewhere, or tracking the network. Plus if the profile is a 52 digit number, then who is to say that two or more people will not hash to the same thing. That could result in some real serious false charges that you would have no way of proving your innocence from. Low probability events do happen, even events that are 1 in a billion. When two different people's DNA hash to the same ID and one is a criminal, how does the other prove his innocence?
Many recruiters both internal to big companies and external staffing companies DO search monster. A lot of them will just spam mail you with job offers in fields other than your own or to jobs in areas that you do not want to transfer to. Nevertheless, some of them will contact you and are in with the local companies. I found my first job through this method, and a really great recruiter is helping me now to find another. Furthermore several big companies have contacted me through their recruiters farming my resume from monster. I think that I am about to get a job from one of these companies as well, but only time will tell. Without putting my resume out there I would not have any of these opportunities.
But if they advertise unlimited bandwidth and then do not deliver, even if it is buried deep in a contract, it is false advertising and fraud. The attorney generals would have a field day with this once they are made to understand the issue. Truthfully, they should not advertise unlimited bandwidth. Or at the end of commercial have to talk really fast saying that they would throttle the bandwidth/cancel and limit the account like many other commercials have to do.
Perhaps, but if you advertise a full 10 gig a month with no limits and then there is a limit put in, I'm sure an attorney general would love to go after you for fraud. If the model is not sustainable, stuff like that should be told up front. Just a "best effort" disclaimer is not good enough if you are advertising unlimited content. Also putting al traffic at BULK or just above bulk is ridiculous. However advertising a policy where all p2p traffic is made bulk for good or bad users is not ridiculous. As long as the policy is advertised I see no problems. But to do this without telling the consumer and advertising unlimited connections is fraud. And if any of these ISPs are in New York and the attorney general there is made to understand the issues, he will not hesitate to sue. He sued H&R block for selling misleading retirement accounts, where the terms were in the small print but the customer representatives and avertising misrepresented. I'm sure there would be a field day with the ISPs. Go Elliot Spitzer!!!!!
Yes spying and everything is wrong. But with the NSA having more power than ever and needing to acquire/sift through more and more information all the time, wouldn't it be a very cool place to work.
http://www.nsa.gov/careers/ has links to all the areas. The only thing I found extraordinarily interesting is that computer programming type skills (ie Software Engineering) is more under the Computer Engineering/Electrical engineering career track than the computer science one.
The only question is that if you should decide to leave the NSA or are fired, does termination extend to more than your employment? Although seriously it does seem like a very geek friendly place to work.
It is patented. You don't get all the details/modifications that google may have made but it is enough for an idea of how pagerank works and it is no doubt still in the same use but with more tweaks:
Patent 6,285,999
However pagerank itself is viewable by anyone with the technical knowhow to understand it.
It would be good if ICANN would create the.xxx domain on its own without the government. No country should be able to force a top level TLD and demand people use it.
However, if ICANN created the domain as an option! for pornographers and movement was voluntary for porn only sites, and the domain was made only for pornographers, then I am sure that many of these porn sites would automatically move there just to avoid trouble.
Most pornographers are just business people trying to make a buck, moving to a.XXX domain where they are automatically filtered from people who do not want them and getting the government/regulators off their back would probably spur many to just move on their own. And for those who do not want to move, nothing is lost. The situation is win win if ICANN would just create the domain on their own and not force everyone to move to it.
Instead of trying to take freedom away from people to use the domain they want, the focus should be on granting more options to people. Positive reinforcement works much better than punishments or negative reinforcement according to the psychology book. So anyone who moves to.XXX can be seen as automatically complying with stopping minors from getting to porn since it is trivial to filtler the.XXX domain and if parents don't see fit to install a filter (which is no substitute for parental supervision) then it is their problem.
I am very tired of the government wasting my tax money on a crusade against pornography trying to show off when they should be working on more important things like social security, the economy, health care, and investing in a lot of technology to make more jobs for me to work in and get overpaid by the government!!!!!!! Seriously it is pathetic how Iraq is getting their infrastructure rebuilt (and blown up/rebuild and blown up/rebuild...) with more modern technology than the US is using. Example: power system which last year (or the year before) caused a huge power outage from a mistake with one power plant. We should at least have better technology in our OWN! country than we use to rebuild other countries. I'm sure the war on porn costs enough to at least begin to upgrade our critical infrastructure!!!!
Note: I am not offering an opinion for or against the Iraq war here, I am just observing that we should at least upgrade our infrastructure to more modern state of the art technology.
This is ridiculous. Google.com is still available in Chinese and uncensored, if people want uncensored searches they can perform them on google.com. Google is only adding a service, since the Chinese government blocks the google cache and makes it so google runs slower, they are making a censored service for all those searches that are not censored. Furthermore as has been said, google discloses that it has censored items, so if the people want to see the uncensored version, they can just use google.com. However for the standard searches, the new service will be quicker and presumably have a working google cache. Also with disclosure of search results that are censored, those looking for that content will be more likely to use google.com or another search engine just to see what was censored.
Aside from the fact that opposites attract, the decision of north and south is quite arbitrary. Just like with rotational motion someone decided clockwise is negative and counterclockwise is positive, they could have just as easily have decided the other way. But the fact is that whatever your compass is labeled is the opposite of the way it is pointing (okay a confusing statement). But if you take two magnets and try to hold the two north poles together, they repel each other and it is quite difficult. Now if you hold the north and south together, they attract each other. The same is true with the earth. If the compass's north point is attracted to the earth's south point. Once the pole completely shifts the compass's north point will have a south magnetic pole because the earth's new magnetic north will be in the north pole, so the north point of the existing compasses will point towards the magnetic south which will be located in the south pole.
The real annoyance is for navigation, but as long as we use GPS we should be okay.
Well hmm according to http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience .html the earth's magnetic field does not cause mass surface life extinctions. If you would like to make an assertion like that, you really do have to back it up with something. In fact it will cause little change in the way things function, maybe a few thousand extra cases of cancer each year. Now if the field never came back and our atomosphere ionized, then we would be screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, I was thinking about the army in 2002/early 2003 because the job market was terrible and I had just graduated college. I took some standard skills test and they said I could pick any specialty I wanted. There was only one real computer job there and it seemed like it involved mostly typing. I forget the specialty designation now. This was before Iraq when the army was just in Afghanistan.
I also got lots of things in the mail about becoming an officer because I had a college degree too, but it just seemed to be becoming an officer with no specialty.
Maybe you have to know someone or go in the back door to get a cool computer job? The officer who was interviewing me said most of their programs were made by private companies and stuff. I don't know how accurate that is. But it seemed like there were no possibilities in the computer field in the army. Now, with some of the Slashdot articles I have seen, it seems like in the air force there may be a path for people into computer security. But the army itself seems like a dead end.
Actually in voyager they also has fusion reactors because there was an episode where they were trapped in something and people were trying to steal their deuterium. I am not sure, but it seems like the warp drive runs on matter/anti-matter and a lot of the other systems run on normal fusion.
AT&T prior to their wireless division being bought by Cingular did not charge to receive text messages. Even after the buy, until I renewed my plan as a Cingular customer I received free text messages. Unfortunately, once I renewed the plan to a cingular plan text messages received were suddenly charged for. Now that Cingular is AT&T again, I see no plans to bring back free text message receiving.
Please mod parent down. DB2 is not only for mainframes. I worked at a place which used a bunch of DB2 boxes running AIX.
While DB2 does run on mainframes, it also runs on many other operating systems, including Linux.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/9/
As you can see, DB2 runs on at least Linux, Windows, and Solaris. It also runs on AIX, even though I didn't see it mentioned in a quick glance on the page. Please check your facts next time.
Wow, the TI-994a was my first computer. I remember hunt the wumpus...not to mention Spacewar 7.
Amen, I graduated in 2002 and couldn't find a job for a year Once I did, the only job I could get was mostly DBAist so I took it. Now no one will hire me as a software developer because they see me as a DBA. It seems the first job is not only hard to find, but sets the tone for your career.
At least you got CBT. My doctor insisted on only antidepressants, and even at that, he couldn't really be bothered to supervise or keep track of me. 2 Months and a few sample packs of Zoloft and then Wellbutrin later I stopped taking them and feel about the same. But from what I gather my doctor isn't the only pill pusher. The only odd thing is he never diagnosed me with depression...just sort of pushed the pills on me.
I think it would be cool if the world had a standard XML resume format. Companies could have applications and using the XML tags each company could only view the information they want. Also each company could reformat the resume so that whatever they want to see is emphasized and those details they do not care about are hidden. A nice web front end with AJAX and all that web 2.0 stuff would probably sell many higher vice presidents (unfortunately).
.NET a year after .NET came out). Other ads are vague or just totally wrong. A job interview and the ad are part of a two way process. As much as a company wants to screen me out and interview me I want to do the reverse.
But a killer app would be a WYSIWYG resume builder that puts it into an XML format and the WYSIWYG resume reader that lets you pick what you want to read. It would make life even easier to submit the resume to monster too. Instead of rebuilding your resume 5 or 6 different times for each job site, you could build one and submit it over and over again (minimizing the chance of typos/etc.).
The variety problem would be solved because companies could put it into whatever format they want.
I agree with you 150% on job ads, I've seen many with typos/misspellings/wrong words/more years of experience in a technology then the technology has existed (I loved 5 years
In a lot of cases, people know languages/technologies very well that they do not use at their job. Basically, if you follow the procedure of only accepting technologies used on in the job history, once someone gets their first job that will define them for the rest of their career. Most computer science (and even other subjects that require programming) college graduates used C++ or Java while at college (in the past 10 or so years). In addition to using it for many years at school, they also use it on their own. Nevertheless, their job may be using VB/C#/something else.
Another good example is Linux. A lot of us use it at home but at our jobs we are stuck using Windows or some proprietary UNIX. Nevertheless when my last job got a Linux server to experiment I was there to install Linux, recompile the kernel with what we needed, and to show everyone how to navigate around the box. Now using your technique if I was applying for a job at some company using Linux I would have been screened out.
Another example I can think of is Ruby. There are many Ruby fanatics who use it all the time at home but just cannot use it at work. If you were looking for a Ruby programmer a lot of these people who use Ruby like crazy at home would be excluded because it is not in their work history.
Also, no matter what technology there is, your company will eventually probably switch technologies. Do you want to keep hiring people every time your company switches technologies? Probably you need someone who can grow and learn whatever technology they want. Also, even if you do not plan to switch technologies (which sounds questionable to me), the new employee will have to learn your system. I think the technical skills list provides a good basis for talking about what the candidate knows. If you see many technologies not interested in their work interest it may express a willingness and desire to learn new things. I think the best thing you could do (and I had a company do this) is to give a small assignment to all you candidates in whatever technology you are most interested in and see who succeeds.
I had a financial company do this to me one time (in a language J that me, and most of the people being hired, did not use). The task was ultimately easy but because it was a language that most people don't use it took time to use the language reference to look up the task. Ultimately, it narrowed the field of applications from hundreds (1.5-3 hundred I forget) to a handful for the interview (if only I didn't get lost finding the building I would probably have been working there).
This becomes even more important as you use less popular technologies. But also, if you hire people and they are only permitted to work with things in their past work history, the job is going to be boring. Personally if I don't learn anything new at all at a job, I'm going to be looking to leave.
Woah, Basic with pointers and dynamic memory allocation, now that is scarey!!!!!
What surprised me the most about the shootout is the comparison between Python and Perl. I consider Perl the scripting language benchmark to beat and Python does seem to present a fair alternative to Perl performancewise.
The worst thing about the ad is that it does not tell me anything about Open Office except that it is free, runs on windows/mac, and is an office suite. Firefox's Ad mentioned that it was faster/more stable than Internet explorer and it never made unsubstantiated claims of being the "best". Firefox just claimed to be an alternative which is why it worked so well. Furthermore, getting user experiences in the ad was also a good idea to appeal the reader on a personal level. The open office ad is kind of in your face, I am free, I am superior, download me. Personally the ad comes off as very arrogant; if I did not know what open office was I probably would not even bother giving it a try.
What is probably the worst thing of all is that Open Office is both slower and less stable than Microsoft Office. Really I'm not quite sure why anyone would switch other than price. If they advertise themselves now when the product is less than ready for full time, they risk leaving the public in general with the impression that Open Office is inferior to Microsoft Office and always will be. Whereas if they waited until the product was superior to office they would have a better chance at making/keeping converts.
One great example is text manipulation. A few lines of regular expression code in Perl/Python/Ruby can save hours of coding in C++ (well without a third party regular expression library). I'm not saying that this is the problem, but for complicated text parsing, the power of regular expressions is one big advantage of a scripting language over C++.
Actually in the article it mentions arguments against using just the identifier and destroying the sample. Something about limiting themselves to the "technology of today".
Maybe but do you really think that the US government would destroy the data from the profile/the sample? They may say they do, but I guarantee that at some point in time the NSA would have a requirement that all samples be sent directly to them. There may be an archive disk somewhere, or tracking the network. Plus if the profile is a 52 digit number, then who is to say that two or more people will not hash to the same thing. That could result in some real serious false charges that you would have no way of proving your innocence from. Low probability events do happen, even events that are 1 in a billion. When two different people's DNA hash to the same ID and one is a criminal, how does the other prove his innocence?
Many recruiters both internal to big companies and external staffing companies DO search monster. A lot of them will just spam mail you with job offers in fields other than your own or to jobs in areas that you do not want to transfer to. Nevertheless, some of them will contact you and are in with the local companies. I found my first job through this method, and a really great recruiter is helping me now to find another. Furthermore several big companies have contacted me through their recruiters farming my resume from monster. I think that I am about to get a job from one of these companies as well, but only time will tell. Without putting my resume out there I would not have any of these opportunities.
Speaking of stealing the golden arches, this reminds me so much of the movie "Coming to America" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094898/ starring Eddie Murphy/Arsenio Hall. They were working at McDowell's restaurant which did have a golden arch.= details&article_id=1634806 is a t-shirt to spoof the movie showing the arch.
http://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?op=article&ac
But if they advertise unlimited bandwidth and then do not deliver, even if it is buried deep in a contract, it is false advertising and fraud. The attorney generals would have a field day with this once they are made to understand the issue. Truthfully, they should not advertise unlimited bandwidth. Or at the end of commercial have to talk really fast saying that they would throttle the bandwidth/cancel and limit the account like many other commercials have to do.
Perhaps, but if you advertise a full 10 gig a month with no limits and then there is a limit put in, I'm sure an attorney general would love to go after you for fraud. If the model is not sustainable, stuff like that should be told up front. Just a "best effort" disclaimer is not good enough if you are advertising unlimited content. Also putting al traffic at BULK or just above bulk is ridiculous. However advertising a policy where all p2p traffic is made bulk for good or bad users is not ridiculous. As long as the policy is advertised I see no problems. But to do this without telling the consumer and advertising unlimited connections is fraud. And if any of these ISPs are in New York and the attorney general there is made to understand the issues, he will not hesitate to sue. He sued H&R block for selling misleading retirement accounts, where the terms were in the small print but the customer representatives and avertising misrepresented. I'm sure there would be a field day with the ISPs. Go Elliot Spitzer!!!!!
Yes spying and everything is wrong. But with the NSA having more power than ever and needing to acquire/sift through more and more information all the time, wouldn't it be a very cool place to work.
http://www.nsa.gov/careers/ has links to all the areas. The only thing I found extraordinarily interesting is that computer programming type skills (ie Software Engineering) is more under the Computer Engineering/Electrical engineering career track than the computer science one.
The only question is that if you should decide to leave the NSA or are fired, does termination extend to more than your employment? Although seriously it does seem like a very geek friendly place to work.
It is patented. You don't get all the details/modifications that google may have made but it is enough for an idea of how pagerank works and it is no doubt still in the same use but with more tweaks: Patent 6,285,999
However pagerank itself is viewable by anyone with the technical knowhow to understand it.
It would be good if ICANN would create the .xxx domain on its own without the government. No country should be able to force a top level TLD and demand people use it.
.XXX domain where they are automatically filtered from people who do not want them and getting the government/regulators off their back would probably spur many to just move on their own. And for those who do not want to move, nothing is lost. The situation is win win if ICANN would just create the domain on their own and not force everyone to move to it.
.XXX can be seen as automatically complying with stopping minors from getting to porn since it is trivial to filtler the .XXX domain and if parents don't see fit to install a filter (which is no substitute for parental supervision) then it is their problem.
However, if ICANN created the domain as an option! for pornographers and movement was voluntary for porn only sites, and the domain was made only for pornographers, then I am sure that many of these porn sites would automatically move there just to avoid trouble.
Most pornographers are just business people trying to make a buck, moving to a
Instead of trying to take freedom away from people to use the domain they want, the focus should be on granting more options to people. Positive reinforcement works much better than punishments or negative reinforcement according to the psychology book. So anyone who moves to
I am very tired of the government wasting my tax money on a crusade against pornography trying to show off when they should be working on more important things like social security, the economy, health care, and investing in a lot of technology to make more jobs for me to work in and get overpaid by the government!!!!!!! Seriously it is pathetic how Iraq is getting their infrastructure rebuilt (and blown up/rebuild and blown up/rebuild...) with more modern technology than the US is using. Example: power system which last year (or the year before) caused a huge power outage from a mistake with one power plant. We should at least have better technology in our OWN! country than we use to rebuild other countries. I'm sure the war on porn costs enough to at least begin to upgrade our critical infrastructure!!!!
Note: I am not offering an opinion for or against the Iraq war here, I am just observing that we should at least upgrade our infrastructure to more modern state of the art technology.
This is ridiculous. Google.com is still available in Chinese and uncensored, if people want uncensored searches they can perform them on google.com. Google is only adding a service, since the Chinese government blocks the google cache and makes it so google runs slower, they are making a censored service for all those searches that are not censored. Furthermore as has been said, google discloses that it has censored items, so if the people want to see the uncensored version, they can just use google.com. However for the standard searches, the new service will be quicker and presumably have a working google cache. Also with disclosure of search results that are censored, those looking for that content will be more likely to use google.com or another search engine just to see what was censored.
Aside from the fact that opposites attract, the decision of north and south is quite arbitrary. Just like with rotational motion someone decided clockwise is negative and counterclockwise is positive, they could have just as easily have decided the other way. But the fact is that whatever your compass is labeled is the opposite of the way it is pointing (okay a confusing statement). But if you take two magnets and try to hold the two north poles together, they repel each other and it is quite difficult. Now if you hold the north and south together, they attract each other. The same is true with the earth. If the compass's north point is attracted to the earth's south point. Once the pole completely shifts the compass's north point will have a south magnetic pole because the earth's new magnetic north will be in the north pole, so the north point of the existing compasses will point towards the magnetic south which will be located in the south pole.
The real annoyance is for navigation, but as long as we use GPS we should be okay.
Well hmm according to http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience .html the earth's magnetic field does not cause mass surface life extinctions. If you would like to make an assertion like that, you really do have to back it up with something. In fact it will cause little change in the way things function, maybe a few thousand extra cases of cancer each year. Now if the field never came back and our atomosphere ionized, then we would be screwed.