I cant imagine this being a very successful company, when they have to use bribes and sex to encourage the employees to use a tool you've mandated.
Right, that's a good management style. Make unilateral, completely unpopular decisions with no effort to win people over or assuage their fears. Great management style. In general, having employees not hate management is a good thing. Especially since all it cost here was a couple of t-shirts and stuffed toys.
How about this approach... "Use the damned software!". Really, I dont know why people seem to think they should have complete freedom on a computer at work. The company owns the machine, and the company chooses the software... so long as the company involved the proper employees in evaluating which is the best software(s) to use... thats it, end of story. Employees really shouldnt have a choice one way or another.
Again, treating your employees like shit is a great way to kill morale and drive them away from the company. I'm assuming you're not a manager.
So instead, you get this boneheaded company in germany, that is now going to have a number of mail employee's that have no clue how to use the software, and thus loose productivity, because there ego refuses to let them be beat by a girl?!?!
Management wouldn't do it if they didn't think it was a good idea, and that's another issue. They were doing what they had to in order to overcome linux-phobias. And they did a great job.
Besides that point... does male ego really apply that much to intellectual persuits? I mean, do most people think men are better then women at using a computer because of genetics? I doubt the number is high.
Really? There's not a perception that males are better at computers than females? Because as it stands, 90+% of CS grads are male, for whatever reason. The old "no girls on/." joke is so old, yet true, that it's just taken for granted. Yes, many men are unwilling to admit a woman can do ANYTHING better than they can. And you'd be surprised, evidently, about their distribution - it's not all neanderthal plumbers, but doctors, lawyers, and computer engineers too.
Nowadays, some folks fearful of modern snake oils content themselves with their SUVs de jour... and the less said about the endowment of those who drive Hummers, the better...
Hey, I've seen lots of well-endowed women give hummers. It's not just the ugly chicks, honestly. You can get hot ones to do it too.
Why don't you try playing single player, or perhaps set up a LAN game filled with some bots while you bring yourself up to speed with the games?
Because you never get up to speed playing maybe a couple hours per week, like the guy in question does. You play that infrequently, and you still get your ass kicked.
Bottom line is he (and many of us!) want servers where one can be capabibility-matched, so as to have a fun and competitive game regardless of skill level. Basically the idea is to vent some real-life frustration without making the game a full-time job.
Well, that rather depends on your definition of near. I mean, I wouldn't throw a rope over one and try to climb up, especially when it's raining. Know what I mean?
The capsule is already in the smithsonian, so I think this is a bit overboard. Honestly, what is the advantage in saving the tower? If they pay for removing it and putting it somewhere else, then I say go for it. If it'll cost NASA more to save than destroying it, I say 'bring on the TNT!'
They should have used it when building the Air and Space museum, or could build something cool out of it in Cape. I agree, if it's just going to be stored somewhere let's kill it, but it seems like something could be done with it so that it's financially self-sufficient.
i personally think the file dialog could use some improvements, (i know, this is gtk), maybe it could use a few more navigation buttons to speed things up, seems a little primitive atm ?!?!
That and weird little things like not being able to use wildcards in the file open dialog boxes. Personally, I think they should work on stuff like that, which affect basically all applications, before they work on the file manager/browser.
As for AI, that's a great thing to learn, problem is that 1) it's not taught in a lot of CS curricula, and it's too easy to pick up on your own (I have been).
As for a lot of the rest, many companies really don't care. Again, being a theoretical computer scientist will not get you a job in most cases. Most people who program for at least part of their jobs aren't doing coding for consumer use, believe it or not. Hence, it would be a good thing to know how one can use programming, as a tool, to solve problems relevant to some other field.
Being a one-trick pony isn't a good idea. That said, if you make yourself among the best damned coders around, you won't hurt for work either.
IBM did not move for dismissal, to the surprise of some observers. My theory is that IBM thinks they have SCO on the run, and want to make sure there is nothing left of them but a glowing crater when this is all done.
Actually, they're going to make Darl look like the Goatse guy. No ether for anasthesia, no vaseline for comfort, just a raw rogering.
I think Goatse took the site down because it would infringe on Darl's likeness, and they didn't want to get sued.
The American kept insisting that he had a right to everything. The Russian once opined that Sept. 11 didn't entitle the U.S. to a Carte Blanche on international behavior, and the American socked him in the jaw.
We do have a right to anything. Anyone who has a problem with that can feel free to attempt to do something about it.
In other words, all irrelevant Eurotrash opinions have been registered, duly noted, and completely ignored.
How about a business/CS combination? From my understanding, banks and investment firms are dying to get technologically integrated (banks tend to be conservative and stodgy, and are frequently riddled with legacy infrastructure) and those with knowledge of finance/accounting/etc. and programming are very valuable to these companies.
That'll probably find some takers. I don't have a business background, so I don't know that much, but I've seen a number of jobs that want some finance background and coding skills.
From what I've seen, for the more analyst-oriented jobs on Wall Street, they don't care if you know business as long as you're a math whiz - they assume they can teach you the business you need in 3 weeks (not kidding).
I bet a combo of CS/Finance/Math would have employers drooling, and I'd recommend Finance for the major.
A lot of people, especially engineers such as yourself, assume that the CS curriculum consists mostly of programming - the same stuff that engineers pick up along the way. This is mostly false. In practice most CS grads get programming jobs that only relate tangentially to computer science - just as most BS graduates in physics, chemistry, and math never work squarely in their own fields.
I minored in CS, and the difference between the major and the minor at my school was a bunch of BS classes that 1) should be common sense and 2) are not particularly challenging or programming-oriented. Bottom line is, it's too easy for other people with other majors and other skills to offer to pick up CS skills. So if you're a CS major who can code well, and I'm a Chemistry major who can code well, there are more jobs I'll get over you. I can show code I've written to prove I can program, but there's little way for a CS guy to prove he knows chemistry unless he's at least minored.
Engineering degrees are somewhat different because they focus on an *applied* science, whereas CS and the others you listed are more theoretical
Not necessarily, there are many applied areas of the "pure" sciences, my research group for instance. And I imagine not too many employers are interested in theoretical CS people. CS is inherently an applied field, in the sense that it's been wholly invented by humans. Having a theoretical take on CS makes you a mathemetician without the degree - a one-way trip to academia or unemployment.
In short, I would highly recommend a CS minor, but not the major. You pick up all the skills employers want with the minor. And I would wholeheartedly recommend an engineering/applied science major to go with it, it'll work wonders. That and a whole lot of linear algebra.
Wow, that starting salary must be appreciated by all 5 graduates who were able to find jobs.
Wow, that's amazing, because I recently returned from a career fair here at Caltech, and nearly every job needed a heavy programming background. The problem (for you) is, that they want other skills too.
Your REAL problem is that an increasing number of students majoring in physics, chemistry, math, etc have learned to program pretty damned well. That gives us a huge advantage - we can take a job that uses either our science knowledge, programming skills, or more likely both. Companies get somebody with a wider range of skills.
As such, I think the best idea is a major in the physical sciences or better yet, EE, with a CS minor (or double major).
I guarantee you this - if you had an EE/CS double major, or even EE major/CS minor, you'd be beating companies away with a stick. Particularly here in California.
Sadly, all we are doing is giving this guy free advertising. Even bas publicity is good publicity. On a different note, a lot of these guys are not ashamed of what they do. I met one once at an Open Source conference and when you ask him what he does he very plainly states "I'm a spammer". The guy was a total pariah.
I'm going to assume you went ahead and gave him the ass whooping he deserves. Otherwise, the rest of us will have to do so to you for passing up the opportunity.
"Darl wasn't happy about that and it was clear he didn't like the questions about the ABI files. He said that Linus claimed only two, and there were the rest they can sue over, though they still plan to contest Linus' claims in court."
One would think this would at least call into question their own ability to divine the provenance of their own damned source code. If they can't tell what Linus wrote and what they wrote, surely the judge will question why they're pestering IBM.
How come stamps can't stop all the spam I get through snail mail? Please, make those AOL disks stop!
I realize you're being facetious, but I still don't get 100 AOL discs a day, like I do spam. Hell, if I did, I wouldn't have had to use my nice Snoop CD for my wall mural.
I'm getting into this thread late, but I have some advice for you: if you don't like the GPL license, *don't use it.* It's that simple. Rarely does *any* author give anything away completely PD. Original BSD is the closest, and Berkeley required credits in the program. If the GPL didn't exist, all these authors would NOT be giving away their work. Plain and simple.
What you seem to want is the collected knowledge of the world, for FREE (as in beer), without giving back in return. That's fairyland. Not going to happen, so get over it.
It seems to me that the original authors were giving it away for free! How can they profit any less than that?
They only gave it away free of financial cost. But they gave it away knowing that anyone who contributed would contribute back.
Again, I have no idea why you're so angry. Plain and simple, if you can't abide by the GPL, don't use GPL'd code. But if you have no money, and lack the talent or time to write your code yourself, don't expect someone to come along, do a lot of the work for you, then get absolutely nothing back.
The same difference is there--Boromir tried to take the ring, and Faramir rejects it.
That's an extremely superficial consideration, which completely ignores the motivation behind each character. Previously, Faramir sent Frodo packing because he recognized its evil. Here, he does so because it's about to get his ass kicked. Enormous difference.
We just see the CHARACTER ARC that leads to that decision by Faramir. In movies, you have to have characters that change, or they are boring and tedious. It's really not that big of a change--in the books, he rejects it at first...in the movie, he has to be convinced first. It raises the tension, and also gives credence to Faramir trying to please his fauther.
He's also "convinced" in the book, but the treatment is more realistic. In the movie, his being "convinced" is simply realizing he's about to get his ass kicked.
and also gives credence to Faramir trying to please his father.
Which destroys the angle where Faramir becomes his own man.
Regardless, I'm inclined to go with Tolkein over Jackson. He's a better writer.
Your point about McD's cups is also speculative. I recall them actually being quite difficult to open unless you wanted to. So your "guaranteed spills" argument falls by the wayside.
Then I console you on your acquisition of some form of palsy, because it's not a problem for functioning hands. Perhaps there was a time when the tops were better, I don't know, but it's not the case now. Also, if they are squeezed AT ALL, the top instantly pops off. Try it sometime.
Why do we continue to scream "THIRD DEGREE BURNS"? Is it the severity of the injury that makes it so egregious? Would it have been OK if the company was negligent but the lady only got a little scalded by it instead?
Um, in short, yes. It's never OK, but the degree of negligence is certainly tied to the temperature of the coffee in this case. If it's 50C, that's not too bad. If it's 70C, that's pretty bad. If it's 99C, that's horrible. Yes, negligence is by definition those actions (or lack thereof) that can potentially lead to a dangerous outcome. Like I said in the last post, clorox comes in a strong bottle because it's more dangerous. McD's cokes come in obscenely weak cups because who cares if you spill it? The safety precautions have to be related to the danger of a spill.
Also your 'internal injuries' argument is a crock (or should that be Krok?:-D) as we all do the ol' sip it first to see if it's hot routine.
First, nice pun. Second, horseshit. Had she sipped it she'd have third degree burns on her lips too. There would have been absolutely no safe way to apply that coffee to her person. That's negligence. Realize the coffee she got was a great deal hotter than usual restaurant coffee.
The single biggest problem with this whole incident and lawsuit is that there was no responsibility taken by the lady for spilling the damn cup of coffee in the first place.
Her responsibility ends with the clothes she would have stained. In short, it should be guaranteed that some customers WILL spill their drinks. It is not acceptable for INJURIES to result from a spilled beverage. Ever.
(If the cups were so "obviously defective" then how come millions of people managed to drink their coffee in their cars each day without experiencing a similar accident?)
You can't seriously believe that logic. By the way, 83% of people who play Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter survive. This does in no way indicate that it's a safe activity. To answer your question directly, millions of those people weren't injured, while they probably DID spill their drinks, because not every McDonalds sets their coffeepots to "Nuclear."
For what it's worth, I had the exact same thing happen to me at a McDonalds that happened to her, minus the injuries. Before I could get the coffee transferred to my cupholder, the cup fell apart, and spilled all over my lap. I wasn't injured (although it hurt a little bit) because the coffee at that particular McDonalds was a sane temperature. But seriously, I don't think you realize how hot a liquid has to be to cause third degree burns. That's not acceptable at all.
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Right, that's a good management style. Make unilateral, completely unpopular decisions with no effort to win people over or assuage their fears. Great management style. In general, having employees not hate management is a good thing. Especially since all it cost here was a couple of t-shirts and stuffed toys.
How about this approach... "Use the damned software!". Really, I dont know why people seem to think they should have complete freedom on a computer at work. The company owns the machine, and the company chooses the software... so long as the company involved the proper employees in evaluating which is the best software(s) to use... thats it, end of story. Employees really shouldnt have a choice one way or another.
Again, treating your employees like shit is a great way to kill morale and drive them away from the company. I'm assuming you're not a manager.
So instead, you get this boneheaded company in germany, that is now going to have a number of mail employee's that have no clue how to use the software, and thus loose productivity, because there ego refuses to let them be beat by a girl?!?!
Management wouldn't do it if they didn't think it was a good idea, and that's another issue. They were doing what they had to in order to overcome linux-phobias. And they did a great job.
Besides that point... does male ego really apply that much to intellectual persuits? I mean, do most people think men are better then women at using a computer because of genetics? I doubt the number is high.
Really? There's not a perception that males are better at computers than females? Because as it stands, 90+% of CS grads are male, for whatever reason. The old "no girls on /." joke is so old, yet true, that it's just taken for granted. Yes, many men are unwilling to admit a woman can do ANYTHING better than they can. And you'd be surprised, evidently, about their distribution - it's not all neanderthal plumbers, but doctors, lawyers, and computer engineers too.
Hey, I've seen lots of well-endowed women give hummers. It's not just the ugly chicks, honestly. You can get hot ones to do it too.
Usually you have to go down on them first though.
Because you never get up to speed playing maybe a couple hours per week, like the guy in question does. You play that infrequently, and you still get your ass kicked.
Bottom line is he (and many of us!) want servers where one can be capabibility-matched, so as to have a fun and competitive game regardless of skill level. Basically the idea is to vent some real-life frustration without making the game a full-time job.
What changes did your lawyer make to your contract?
No, I don't. Could you explain it to me?
That damn Symbian Liberation Army is the group that brainwashed Patty Hearst. Don't be their next victim!!
They should have used it when building the Air and Space museum, or could build something cool out of it in Cape. I agree, if it's just going to be stored somewhere let's kill it, but it seems like something could be done with it so that it's financially self-sufficient.
That and weird little things like not being able to use wildcards in the file open dialog boxes. Personally, I think they should work on stuff like that, which affect basically all applications, before they work on the file manager/browser.
As for a lot of the rest, many companies really don't care. Again, being a theoretical computer scientist will not get you a job in most cases. Most people who program for at least part of their jobs aren't doing coding for consumer use, believe it or not. Hence, it would be a good thing to know how one can use programming, as a tool, to solve problems relevant to some other field.
Being a one-trick pony isn't a good idea. That said, if you make yourself among the best damned coders around, you won't hurt for work either.
Actually, they're going to make Darl look like the Goatse guy. No ether for anasthesia, no vaseline for comfort, just a raw rogering.
I think Goatse took the site down because it would infringe on Darl's likeness, and they didn't want to get sued.
We do have a right to anything. Anyone who has a problem with that can feel free to attempt to do something about it.
In other words, all irrelevant Eurotrash opinions have been registered, duly noted, and completely ignored.
In fewer words, fuck off.
That'll probably find some takers. I don't have a business background, so I don't know that much, but I've seen a number of jobs that want some finance background and coding skills.
From what I've seen, for the more analyst-oriented jobs on Wall Street, they don't care if you know business as long as you're a math whiz - they assume they can teach you the business you need in 3 weeks (not kidding).
I bet a combo of CS/Finance/Math would have employers drooling, and I'd recommend Finance for the major.
I minored in CS, and the difference between the major and the minor at my school was a bunch of BS classes that 1) should be common sense and 2) are not particularly challenging or programming-oriented. Bottom line is, it's too easy for other people with other majors and other skills to offer to pick up CS skills. So if you're a CS major who can code well, and I'm a Chemistry major who can code well, there are more jobs I'll get over you. I can show code I've written to prove I can program, but there's little way for a CS guy to prove he knows chemistry unless he's at least minored.
Engineering degrees are somewhat different because they focus on an *applied* science, whereas CS and the others you listed are more theoretical
Not necessarily, there are many applied areas of the "pure" sciences, my research group for instance. And I imagine not too many employers are interested in theoretical CS people. CS is inherently an applied field, in the sense that it's been wholly invented by humans. Having a theoretical take on CS makes you a mathemetician without the degree - a one-way trip to academia or unemployment.
In short, I would highly recommend a CS minor, but not the major. You pick up all the skills employers want with the minor. And I would wholeheartedly recommend an engineering/applied science major to go with it, it'll work wonders. That and a whole lot of linear algebra.
Wow, that's amazing, because I recently returned from a career fair here at Caltech, and nearly every job needed a heavy programming background. The problem (for you) is, that they want other skills too.
Your REAL problem is that an increasing number of students majoring in physics, chemistry, math, etc have learned to program pretty damned well. That gives us a huge advantage - we can take a job that uses either our science knowledge, programming skills, or more likely both. Companies get somebody with a wider range of skills.
As such, I think the best idea is a major in the physical sciences or better yet, EE, with a CS minor (or double major).
I guarantee you this - if you had an EE/CS double major, or even EE major/CS minor, you'd be beating companies away with a stick. Particularly here in California.
Please find me a job for a high school grad that starts out at $40,000.
Right, but that was back when Russia was a second world nation. ;)
I'm going to assume you went ahead and gave him the ass whooping he deserves. Otherwise, the rest of us will have to do so to you for passing up the opportunity.
Start a new email account, and never check it again. No worries.
One would think this would at least call into question their own ability to divine the provenance of their own damned source code. If they can't tell what Linus wrote and what they wrote, surely the judge will question why they're pestering IBM.
I can't wait until Feb 18. ;)
I realize you're being facetious, but I still don't get 100 AOL discs a day, like I do spam. Hell, if I did, I wouldn't have had to use my nice Snoop CD for my wall mural.
I'd recommend you have them deduct your bill each month from your credit card. That's what I do - I never worry about paying the bastards. No worries.
What the fuck is your position? So go take your medication and code your own goddamn programs.
What you seem to want is the collected knowledge of the world, for FREE (as in beer), without giving back in return. That's fairyland. Not going to happen, so get over it.
It seems to me that the original authors were giving it away for free! How can they profit any less than that?
They only gave it away free of financial cost. But they gave it away knowing that anyone who contributed would contribute back.
Again, I have no idea why you're so angry. Plain and simple, if you can't abide by the GPL, don't use GPL'd code. But if you have no money, and lack the talent or time to write your code yourself, don't expect someone to come along, do a lot of the work for you, then get absolutely nothing back.
That's not how the world works.
That's an extremely superficial consideration, which completely ignores the motivation behind each character. Previously, Faramir sent Frodo packing because he recognized its evil. Here, he does so because it's about to get his ass kicked. Enormous difference.
We just see the CHARACTER ARC that leads to that decision by Faramir. In movies, you have to have characters that change, or they are boring and tedious. It's really not that big of a change--in the books, he rejects it at first...in the movie, he has to be convinced first. It raises the tension, and also gives credence to Faramir trying to please his fauther.
He's also "convinced" in the book, but the treatment is more realistic. In the movie, his being "convinced" is simply realizing he's about to get his ass kicked.
and also gives credence to Faramir trying to please his father.
Which destroys the angle where Faramir becomes his own man.
Regardless, I'm inclined to go with Tolkein over Jackson. He's a better writer.
Then I console you on your acquisition of some form of palsy, because it's not a problem for functioning hands. Perhaps there was a time when the tops were better, I don't know, but it's not the case now. Also, if they are squeezed AT ALL, the top instantly pops off. Try it sometime.
Why do we continue to scream "THIRD DEGREE BURNS"? Is it the severity of the injury that makes it so egregious? Would it have been OK if the company was negligent but the lady only got a little scalded by it instead?
Um, in short, yes. It's never OK, but the degree of negligence is certainly tied to the temperature of the coffee in this case. If it's 50C, that's not too bad. If it's 70C, that's pretty bad. If it's 99C, that's horrible. Yes, negligence is by definition those actions (or lack thereof) that can potentially lead to a dangerous outcome. Like I said in the last post, clorox comes in a strong bottle because it's more dangerous. McD's cokes come in obscenely weak cups because who cares if you spill it? The safety precautions have to be related to the danger of a spill.
Also your 'internal injuries' argument is a crock (or should that be Krok? :-D) as we all do the ol' sip it first to see if it's hot routine.
First, nice pun. Second, horseshit. Had she sipped it she'd have third degree burns on her lips too. There would have been absolutely no safe way to apply that coffee to her person. That's negligence. Realize the coffee she got was a great deal hotter than usual restaurant coffee.
The single biggest problem with this whole incident and lawsuit is that there was no responsibility taken by the lady for spilling the damn cup of coffee in the first place.
Her responsibility ends with the clothes she would have stained. In short, it should be guaranteed that some customers WILL spill their drinks. It is not acceptable for INJURIES to result from a spilled beverage. Ever.
(If the cups were so "obviously defective" then how come millions of people managed to drink their coffee in their cars each day without experiencing a similar accident?)
You can't seriously believe that logic. By the way, 83% of people who play Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter survive. This does in no way indicate that it's a safe activity. To answer your question directly, millions of those people weren't injured, while they probably DID spill their drinks, because not every McDonalds sets their coffeepots to "Nuclear."
For what it's worth, I had the exact same thing happen to me at a McDonalds that happened to her, minus the injuries. Before I could get the coffee transferred to my cupholder, the cup fell apart, and spilled all over my lap. I wasn't injured (although it hurt a little bit) because the coffee at that particular McDonalds was a sane temperature. But seriously, I don't think you realize how hot a liquid has to be to cause third degree burns. That's not acceptable at all.