"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- Dijkstra
If you want to be a code-monkey, then some certifications might get you there. And maybe 80% of the world's programming jobs can be done by code-monkeys. However, it's rare to find someone who loves CS who is content to implement specifications, especially if they aren't interesting and challenging. That is what separates the men from the boys. So take your MCSE, A+, Cisco, Java, etc certifications, the jobs at the top require far more depth and breadth than you can get from them though.
If my company owns all of my ideas, then they get whatever I come up with, as long as I'm employed by them.
What if I came up with a really *bad* idea, one that got me into a lot of legal trouble? [a tivo reverse-engineered, some DMCA-style 'evil'] Would the company own the IP on that?
I agree. I would gladly pay $20 or $30 for a DVD containing the whole wikipedia. I'd probably not want a million printed pages, but an offline format would certainly be something you should consider.
I agree with you 100%. Same at my job. My girlfriend lives across the country, so this week, I get to work from their Tampa office. I am treated as a professional, and I act as a professional. To me this means neither of us bullshitting the other about a few hundred dollars a year. Sure, I wouldn't fly across the country on work and pick up the tab, but sometimes I don't expense books or meals-- in the long run, I feel better about my company, and when I ask to go to a $3000 conference, they don't give me a problem about it. It works out best, at least for me.
The storage industry is always too far behind, IMHO. By the time this technology gets affordable, it'll catch the back end of it's usefulness. When tapes were out, I needed 4 or 5 tapes to get my stuff backed up. Then I switched to CD-R, then to DVD-R, now to hard drives. I have around 300 GB to back up, but I refuse to pay for an autoloader or something crazy. If the format held a terabyte, then sure, I'd consider it, but 50 GB = 10 movies.
Also consider the cost of storage these days: as of right now, I'm seeing less than $0.50/gig for EIDE hard drives. Unless you're bringing gigabytes of data around with you in your pocket every day, you'd get more for your money with a cheap file server and a bunch of huge drives.
As far as the consumer/home market goes, what takes up 50 gig? Are they really going to release all six Star Wars on one 50 GB DVD? Hells no!
The only application I see for that is for "Season 1"-type packages, where you're getting 6 or 8 DVDs now anyway, but this technology will not be pervasive anytime soon.
Very good point, I thought so too, except that things are always changing. Would you rather spend your time writing to Microsoft and then have to update it when Microsoft either (a) changes functionality, or (b) starts to crack under the pressure and conform to actual standards?
I write business web apps in a 99% IE workplace, but I still don't write IE-only things (no active-x, no quirky behaviors, no filters, etc). Just the area that IE and Opera/Moz/Firefox all support.
Just my $0.02 though.
In other news.. PUBPAT received 414,600 applications for technical experts. PUBPAT is now soliciting technical expert application reviewers (pro bono).
I have a domain, and route *@mydomain to a "catchall" address. Whenever I post, give email address, etc, I use a unique email address, in the form nospam_companyurl@mydomain. That way, when I get V1Agr.a advertisements going to nospam_microsoftcom@mydomain, I know the msft sold my email addr. I suppose I could make it better by using a hash of the name and a lookup table, but I've cut down on my spam, and identified a few companies that have broken their own TOS in giving it out. I wonder if I can sue them...
I've got Fedora Core 1 and Win2k dual booting. I installed FC1+Lilo on HD0 and Win2k on HD1 (installed win2k first), then modded the lilo conf to include win2k. It worked fine. Perhaps these are just for same-drive partitions?
I've got a very strong education in both CS and Math, here are the courses it took to get me to where I am:
Undergraduate CS: ----------------- CS Fundamentals I/II Numerical Methods Computer Architecture Assembly Programming Operating Systems Algorithms & Data Structures Programming Languages Computational Modeling Automata Theory Computer Ethics Statistics Linear Programming Software Engineering
Undergraduate Math: ------------------- Calculus I, II, III Differential Equations Linear Algebra Abstract Algebra I, II Advanced Calculus Engineering Math Numerical Methods Financial Derivatives
Graduate CS: ------------ Compiler Construction + lab Computer Graphics + lab Information Discovery Natural Language Processing Computational Tools / Finance Machine Vision..and still I'm writing database-backed web applications...
Wouldn't building up such a huge patent arsenal actually work against their interests? This would seem to be pro-Linux in that if I, as a developer, want to make software that people can use, without fear of litigation, move to Linux. The relatively small number of Linux users is only growing, and sooner or later it will reach a critical mass where the "average" user will now see real competition with Microsoft in the consumer space. If I were a Linux PR guy, I would try to spin this as "Microsoft Bad For Innovation" or the like.
And once they know you're ignoring the, they'll make them flash pop-overs, etc until you're so angry you ALMOST won't use their service. Squeeze every last cent they can from you. Yay capitalism.
Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served--as shareholders and in all other ways--by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.
If Google were a woman, I would ask her to marry me.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't need a computer-related degree at all to be able to do any of these
You don't need a degree to write an operating system? You work for Microsoft, don't you!
"Computer science is
no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- Dijkstra
If you want to be a code-monkey, then some certifications might get you there. And maybe 80% of the world's programming jobs can be done by code-monkeys. However, it's rare to find someone who loves CS who is content to implement specifications, especially if they aren't interesting and challenging. That is what separates the men from the boys. So take your MCSE, A+, Cisco, Java, etc certifications, the jobs at the top require far more depth and breadth than you can get from them though.
Then why can't you just copy the glibc libraries into \winnt\system32?
</not-serious>
If my company owns all of my ideas, then they get whatever I come up with, as long as I'm employed by them.
What if I came up with a really *bad* idea, one that got me into a lot of legal trouble? [a tivo reverse-engineered, some DMCA-style 'evil'] Would the company own the IP on that?
$677 million, 5,000 person-years = ~$135,000/year/person.
I don't know any perl coders who make $135 a year, let alone $135,000!
(sorry, but it's true)
I agree. I would gladly pay $20 or $30 for a DVD containing the whole wikipedia. I'd probably not want a million printed pages, but an offline format would certainly be something you should consider.
I agree with you 100%. Same at my job. My girlfriend lives across the country, so this week, I get to work from their Tampa office. I am treated as a professional, and I act as a professional. To me this means neither of us bullshitting the other about a few hundred dollars a year. Sure, I wouldn't fly across the country on work and pick up the tab, but sometimes I don't expense books or meals-- in the long run, I feel better about my company, and when I ask to go to a $3000 conference, they don't give me a problem about it. It works out best, at least for me.
...still download pr0n in .gif format anymore?? What other use is there for .gifs?
The storage industry is always too far behind, IMHO. By the time this technology gets affordable, it'll catch the back end of it's usefulness. When tapes were out, I needed 4 or 5 tapes to get my stuff backed up. Then I switched to CD-R, then to DVD-R, now to hard drives. I have around 300 GB to back up, but I refuse to pay for an autoloader or something crazy. If the format held a terabyte, then sure, I'd consider it, but 50 GB = 10 movies. Also consider the cost of storage these days: as of right now, I'm seeing less than $0.50/gig for EIDE hard drives. Unless you're bringing gigabytes of data around with you in your pocket every day, you'd get more for your money with a cheap file server and a bunch of huge drives. As far as the consumer/home market goes, what takes up 50 gig? Are they really going to release all six Star Wars on one 50 GB DVD? Hells no! The only application I see for that is for "Season 1"-type packages, where you're getting 6 or 8 DVDs now anyway, but this technology will not be pervasive anytime soon.
Very good point, I thought so too, except that things are always changing. Would you rather spend your time writing to Microsoft and then have to update it when Microsoft either (a) changes functionality, or (b) starts to crack under the pressure and conform to actual standards? I write business web apps in a 99% IE workplace, but I still don't write IE-only things (no active-x, no quirky behaviors, no filters, etc). Just the area that IE and Opera/Moz/Firefox all support. Just my $0.02 though.
In other news.. PUBPAT received 414,600 applications for technical experts. PUBPAT is now soliciting technical expert application reviewers (pro bono).
son of a bitch!
When I was in grad school at Cornell, my O/S professor went on a rant about the evils of Akamai. No one believed him. Now we know he was right.
I remember running a Renegade board for a bit-- best free s/w that I ever found was "ViSiON-X"--
There are still many telnet-BBSs on the net, but parent is right-- they're dead--
I miss em.
321 Studios (Maker of DVDXCOPY)
I have a domain, and route *@mydomain to a "catchall" address. Whenever I post, give email address, etc, I use a unique email address, in the form nospam_companyurl@mydomain. That way, when I get V1Agr.a advertisements going to nospam_microsoftcom@mydomain, I know the msft sold my email addr. I suppose I could make it better by using a hash of the name and a lookup table, but I've cut down on my spam, and identified a few companies that have broken their own TOS in giving it out. I wonder if I can sue them...
we just /. Linux Today?
Seriously though, I think this is a problem. The people who *run* LT are obviously trying to make money, but this is a bit of a sell-out.
...I work at a gas station. $2.59/gallon is excellent for me! I ride my bike to work. Suckers!
I've got Fedora Core 1 and Win2k dual booting. I installed FC1+Lilo on HD0 and Win2k on HD1 (installed win2k first), then modded the lilo conf to include win2k. It worked fine. Perhaps these are just for same-drive partitions?
Mike
You made me waste 5 minutes reading that whole thing before it says that it's all fake.
I want my five minutes back!
I've got a very strong education in both CS and Math, here are the courses it took to get me to where I am:
..and still I'm writing database-backed web applications...
Undergraduate CS:
-----------------
CS Fundamentals I/II
Numerical Methods
Computer Architecture
Assembly Programming
Operating Systems
Algorithms & Data Structures
Programming Languages
Computational Modeling
Automata Theory
Computer Ethics
Statistics
Linear Programming
Software Engineering
Undergraduate Math:
-------------------
Calculus I, II, III
Differential Equations
Linear Algebra
Abstract Algebra I, II
Advanced Calculus
Engineering Math
Numerical Methods
Financial Derivatives
Graduate CS:
------------
Compiler Construction + lab
Computer Graphics + lab
Information Discovery
Natural Language Processing
Computational Tools / Finance
Machine Vision
Wouldn't building up such a huge patent arsenal actually work against their interests? This would seem to be pro-Linux in that if I, as a developer, want to make software that people can use, without fear of litigation, move to Linux. The relatively small number of Linux users is only growing, and sooner or later it will reach a critical mass where the "average" user will now see real competition with Microsoft in the consumer space. If I were a Linux PR guy, I would try to spin this as "Microsoft Bad For Innovation" or the like.
Seems like a big mistake to me to do this.
...the amazing innate ability to ignore ads
And once they know you're ignoring the, they'll make them flash pop-overs, etc until you're so angry you ALMOST won't use their service. Squeeze every last cent they can from you. Yay capitalism.
Your bad.
Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served--as shareholders and in all other ways--by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.
If Google were a woman, I would ask her to marry me.