Yeah, well, often you don't want to charge for something at all, until the expense becomes unbearable or it requires so much of your time that it necessitates making some money from it just to compensate. Anyway, you're not going to charge for something that is essentially beta and doesn't have the value it will for people for a couple years.
Face it, the internet is not the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago. It isn't like putting together a BBS with a spare $12/mo incoming-only phone line and a cheap PC. You need hardware. You need bandwidth. You need software. You may have to write a lot of custom code. You have to manage databases, email servers, webservers. In some cases, you may have to pay for licensed software. Not to mention registrations. Maybe SSL certs.
Even people who want to provide a service out of the goodness of their heart and their appreciation for the niche they fill can't always afford to do so. At some point, one needs to find a legitimate return on their spent time. And even beloved projects can become a drag after awhile and make you want to shoot yourself, because of ungrateful people or people who don't realize you're just one guy, with one wallet and limited resources.
It's all fine and well for people who just surf around and use sites to say "how dare it not be free!", but someone is doing all of that work so that you have a place to share, chat, interact - whatever. People still have to make a living. Some people would like to dedicate themselves full time to their project. That's hard to do if it doesn't make a dime and you have to meet a mortgage and buy food and gas.
Anyway, why is it okay to pay $60/mo for your cable internet access, but everyone gets their panties in a twist if they have to pay $1/mo to access a site that has actual content and value? It's okay for Time Warner, Ted Turner, Cox, Comcast, SBC, Covad, Speakeasy and so forth to make a dollar, but not a web admin or a sysop?
There are innocent people on death row, too. That doesn't mean we stop convicting murder crimes.
Obviously we don't want to put away innocent people and plenty of people are falsely accused of sex crimes. But that doesn't mean we should be soft on everyone just in case we make one mistake. Is it worth the risk of letting someone back into the community who molested a six year old girl or raped someone's mom and just cross your fingers and hope they don't rape someone else's child or wife or mother while they're out? And if they do - oops! Guess we'll put them back in jail again! Our bad! Sorry!
I think someone who is an adult having sex with a minor is an incredible crime, too. I don't mean an 18 year old with a 16 year old - but certainly a 21 year old with a 16 year old. Or a 30 year old with a 15 year old. Or a 40 year old with a 12 year old. Beef up the investigations of these people before conviction and in cases which are not refutable, lock those fuckers up for life. I don't have a problem with that.
Anyway, I really just don't get your logic. It's like "because some people may commit manslaughter, we shouldn't put serial murderers away for life". WTF?
As someone who operates a large site with fiercly loyal members, I can vouch that even fiercly loyal and frequent members are not always (or even often) willing to contribute financially for that service.
There is nothing wrong with looking to make a profit (or at least break even) on your work and the services you offer. If people really care, they can pay for the service. If they don't, they won't and you'll have to reverse your policy and find another way to survive (or just stop providing the service). The control is in the hands of the members. If they find it isn't worth paying for, they won't participate and the policy will be obliterated. If there are enough that make it profitable, it will remain.
It's called capitalism. Supply and demand. Not everything has to be free. Christ, I wish I could get paid for the thousands of hours I've put into my service. That'd be wonderful. There's nothing wrong with trying.
That said, I just don't see how this is a big deal?
1. Replace the SSN with SecureID card with challenge keypad (none of those biometric foo-foo crap, bio is non-revokable)
There is a significant portion of the population that would be completely baffled by a SecureID card/fob and would never be able to comprehend how to use them. But I agree that there should be a non-biometrical solution.
What sucks is that you can't be required to provide a social security number to a company. Only your employer, financial institution, a hospital and the social security administration are allowed to require your social security number. However, in the real world, any utility service (and many other businesses and services) will not even look at you without providing them a social security number. Want electricity in your apartment or house? You need to give the electric company your social security number so they can run a credit check. Same with cable, telephone, paypal and so forth.
What I really hate is that they consider the CCV number on the back of your credit card to be strong proof that it's really you using the card. Well, since I have to give that three digit number out to every site I order something from and many businesses in meat-space require you to write the CCV number on an authorization form - there are countless people out there with access to your credit card number, full name, expiration date - and CCV! Fucking retarded.
Apparently you know nothing about having your identity stolen. Very often, when someone has their identity stolen, they are treated like the criminal and not the victim. At the worst, the corporate entity that extended credit to "them" can write it off, get a tax break and just up their fees annually to cover for it. The victim, however, will have their credit ruined at the least.
When your identity is stolen, there is very little you can do about it. A lot of people have been left in total financial ruin by just such unfortunate means. And when all of my identity was stolen five years ago (from my office, no less), the local police didn't offer any hope or information. Their only comment was "well, we've got this in the record which might help you, but chances are you're now the victim of identity theft, so keep an eye on things".
I asked them "and if I find problems arising out of this?".
They didn't really have much to offer. They said to just contact them again so they could make a record of whatever additional complaints arose - but they seemed to feel I was essentially screwed. I'm only lucky that the person was apparently too stupid to know what data they had (they had my social security card, state photo identification card, birth certificate, pay stub, bank account and checking numbers)...
Unfortunately, the person robbed is the individual whos ID was stolen and then a loan was given fraudulently in their name. The lender or creditor isn't robbed, because they're going to get their blood out of you, whether you're the actual initiator or not.
Hell, I consider my social security number compromised every time I'm forced to give it to a $8/hr customer service person over the phone to get my Cable, Internet, Telephone, Gas, Electricity services, rent a car, get a loan, get a bank account, apply for a job.
Even when it's acceptable to request a social security number (an employer), you aren't promised that someone in the chain won't take your information for their own use. *shrug*
1) Just because you know where they are doesn't mean you know who they're around. 2) Strangers aren't allowed on school grounds as it is. 3) Molesting children and raping women is illegal already.
If you deem a sex offender risky enough to require GPS tracking for the rest of his life, then he's clearly too dangerous to be released, period. Why are we releasing people and gambling on the hope that they won't reoffend? It's not like letting a guy go who will probably run another red light some day. We're talking about playing the odds that a person may or may not rape a young child again, which will devestate them for the rest of their entire lives. This isn't shit to play with.
False evidence, false accusations, false memories and just downright lying to get someone in trouble aside (which we have to admit does happen fairly frequently), there is no reason we should EVER let someone out of prison if they have, without a doubt, unquestionably raped or molested someone. These people should never see the light of day. They should be treated like murderers.
What I don't get is why these freaks can't just accept the idea that perhaps evolution is part of whatever "intelligent design" they believe in?
If I can knock over a thousand setup dominoes by ticking over just the first one, then surely some "supreme being" can do the same on a more grand scale?
Really, "intelligent design" is so incredibly beside the point here. Evolution has nothing to do with the big bang, which could have been created by anything. I'll even concede that religious people could be right on some minor level (that something outside of or concept initiated the beginning of life as we know it) - but that has nothing to do with evolution of life and the world around us after that point.
This is like requiring that every person who takes driver's education be taught all about the life of Henry Ford, which has absolutely nothing to do with driving, driving laws and safety.
Well, anecdotal as this is, I'll simply offer this:
I dropped out of the 9th grade and have been pulling down close to six figures since I came of drinking age. That was some time ago. I have a respectable resume and accomplished what I have through nothing more than working hard, being reliable, being productive, learning new concepts and constantly proving myself to people.
The most important skill you can ever have is comprehension. More important than "do you know xyz" is "can you learn xyz". If you can learn new skills as necessary and be a reliable and productive person - that's all anyone will really ask of you. After all, what you learn in school regarding tech is only going to be applicable as long as that is the prevailing technology - which is usually not that long. That said, a degree will help get your foot in the door if you have no other way. But realize that it is not necessarily better. It is merely alternative. If I'd gone for a university education, it would have cost me perhaps $40,000 in tuition, not to mention a few hundred thousand dollars in lost wages that I was making in my career by that time (over four years). And who is to say that after graduating and following the traditional path of internships and such that I'd have landed such a prime offer at all?
The key really seems to be in figuring out what kind of person you are. If you're a hardcore techie that learns on your own - no matter what - and you are a hard worker, maybe there are alternatives. If you need the structure, guidance, etc... then maybe a formal education really is the better path.
Having not gone that rout, I can only speak from the one which I took.
Also, don't forget that the older you get, the harder it is to go to school.
How so? The older you get, the more advanced you probably are in your career and the more money you probably have saved up. Rather than starving and living on top ramen for four years, you could probably take significant time off work (having a better relationship with your employer due to seniority by this time, perhaps) and afford all of your tuition and text books. Much easier than scrounging around living in a cramped little studio apartment where you can barely pay rent and working two or three jobs while cramming your education into it.
I guess it's harder, if you've done something stupid like get married and knock out some gets and sink yourself into a mortgage and maybe have an exwife and child support and alimoney to deal with before the age or 30... But in that case, you've got bigger problems with maturity and wisdom than you do with dealing with an education.
Not to mention, by about 30, you'll have a far better concept of what a university education is worth, whether to specialize or generalize, what your true interests are and what you want to do with your life. I'd rather do that than decide in highschool that I want to be a rocket scientist, go to a university, spend four years aiming toward rocket science, graduate, get a job doign tech support for AOL or something and then realizing that what I really want to do with my life is own my own business... and go back to the drawing board all over again.
Also, a degree is very helpful in getting your foot in the door if you have little or no history. But if you have a great resume and work history, nobody is going to turn you down just because you didn't get a degree ten or fifteen years before (unless it's something that obviously requires one like... oh, I don't know - fucking brain surgery).
I've been considering going to a university even though I'm getting a bit aged now - but there are just no programs of interest. Look at your average school's offerings... They have degree programs for... nursing, teaching, business - maybe chemistry. Quite a limit to the variety of programs. Hell, I'd even consider changing careers at this point in my life - but going into debt for an education that will land you a job in a field that doesn't pay nearly as well as the tech field seems kind of silly. I don't know a lot of teachers or MBAs making six figures. In fact, all the MBAs I know are just boring middle-management schmoes or pie-in-the-sky guys with ideas that they can never properly capitalize on.
Except, really, how many network admins really need to know the TCP/IP stack to the point of writing their own? It's nice to know and it's a thing you can educate yourself on in your own time. You don't need to smelt copper and form your own wires, insulation and covering and mold your own RJ45 jacks to understand and string CAT5.
I'm not saying that a lot of the information isn't interesting or doesn't make one knowledgable, but there is a great disconnect between "educators" and employers as to exactly what is "useful" in the real world.
I'm constantly amazed at the things I have to explain to highly paid and supposedly well-educated (formally) admins and CTOs on a daily basis which I should not have to explain.
I mean, what good is it if you can write a software RAID driver, if you can't even understand how to implement DNS properly on your network and you come crawling to me to figure out why your improperly configured servers are going to shit?
The problem is that it's difficult to find truly credible technical schools (unless you want to spend as much or more than you would have spent on a university education in the first place). A lot of them present themselves one way to the public and to the government accrediting agencies, but are little more than mills on the inside. Prepare to be bored to death.
Then again, if you can find a place that's both affordable and respected, go for it. But you're still just going to be learning things that you could learn faster and grasp better if you were doing it in the real world for a living.
As far as the university stuff goes - in this day and age, there's no point in specializing. Take a path of "general education" in school. It will simply make you a more rounded person, though it won't really directly apply to any one career choice. However, with that you can then establish your footing in whatever chosen career you might have at one time or another by taking additional specialized classes later on.
I'm a bit biased, as I've made a relatively successful career without any formal education to speak of. I'm one of those guys who simply loves technology, educated himself, worked his way into a position with a great company and learned everything necessary while I was there. I wouldn't trade it for sitting in a classroom with a text book and some guy lecturing me about network topologies and file systems who himself hasn't had a real tech job in a decade.
The real world is a great plave for developing your personality, too. And there is great copmetition in the real world. Nothing you've offered here from a university is not available in the real world. You're only prolonging it under the guise of some great education.
If you're looking to be a lead product developer on major software products or something, that's great. Go get your education. If you're just looking to do IT work, you can learn all you need to know about the major languages, hardware and systems (unix, linux, etc) and networking from a handful of books and a first job. It will be infinitely more valuable than the theoretical exam-prep bullshit you're going to learn elsewhere.
But if you want to waste $20k or more, go for it. It delays having to become an adult for a few more years, I guess. And then when you have that degree or certificate, you can brag about how knowledgable you are compared to everyone else... well, except the people that spent the four years you were getting an IT education getting four years of their own real world experience.
Seriously - nothing beats real world experience. If you have the passion and charisma, you'll get someone to hire you. You can then parlay that into something greater as your knowledge and experience expand.
Jump right in somewhere that is willing to hire you. Work hard, establish a good chunk of resume material from that company and then move onward if necessary after a couple years. Nothing beats real world experience and I've found that people who learned what they know through their own passion and desire (and real world implementation) tend to be far more enthusiastic and adaptable and quick to learn new concepts and skills and frameworks than people who just sat in a chair at a university or trade school for a handful of years, learning soon to be outdated material from professors or instructors who rarely implement their own knowledge in a real environment.
Not to mention, things in the real work environment are rarely anything like what you've learned in school and you'll have to be broken of your old habits.
Wow. Why was this guy marked flamebait? Sun was one of the staunches supporters pushing the whole "there's not enough qualified tech labor in America" thing in the late 90s that lead us to the situation we have today.
However, I don't think the "foreigners generally dislike documentation because it requires effective use of English" thing is at all accurate. Most overseas companies who have support contracts (which most anyone with a lot of Sun hardware will have) has people who speak fluent (or fluent enough) english. And nobody loves having everything documented - english or otherwise - than the Japanese. It's like, if it doesn't say it somewhere on an official piece of paper - it isn't right.
Yes, because being the leader of the greatest military and economic power on earth and sending 130,000 troops overseas to attack a couple of countries on "misinformation" is far better than being well-aware of everything and simply lying about it to achieve your objectives.
Of course, as a private company, it's enough to make a profit. As a public company, you could saturate the market 100% and every person on the planet could own your product, but unless you still manage to sell to more than every person on the planet the next quarter, nobody wants your stock.
Why anyone would take a company public without being absolutely necessary is beyond me. As a public, your mission is no longer to dedicate yourself to your product and customers, but to become a professional corporate dick waver to keep wallstreet's attention.
Every break room used to get a box full of donuts, bagels and fruit every Wednesday. It was apparently a big deal. Granted, I prefered the Netscape situation where bottled water and soda were free every day, but looking back on that and my physical health and the sedentary type of job one has at a Sun or a Netscape, neither is exactly a brilliant idea for the health of your employees.
Anyway, I'd have traded all those free donuts for something more than an Ultra-5 to run JES tests on.:)
Not really. Bad credit is better than no credit. A history of debt is better than a history of no debt. Someone with an established history of being "in the hole" is socially and economically preferable to someone with a responsible history of not incurring debt in the first place.
Book Reviews
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Iron Council
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Reviewing books on Slashdot is like reviewing toothbrushes in the appalachians or condoms in south africa or deodorant on G4TV.
Didn't we just have an article yesterday about how Firefox was "nearing 50 millionth download"? This is getting to be a little silly. Like it matters how many times it's actually downloaded anyway. That's like me claiming that my 4,000,000/mo pageview website actually recieves 40,000,000, by counting each hit.
They obviously have no idea if twenty people are downloading it or if I'm downloading it 20 times (which I've easily done recently for my machines at home). Not to mention, is it really fair to count downloading 1.02 to upgrade my 1.0, then downloading 1.03 to upgrade my 1.0? That's three downloads right there. Per machine. So that brings it to about 60 downloads that I'm accountable for just at home and just in the last few months.
It's really a meaningless number. Just a promotional gimmick. I'd rather see this much excitement over more original mail folder management (especially for the Move Folder To feature which gets absurd after awhile).
The only thing that really matters is how many people are using Firefox and the simple way to figure that out (with some minor skewing by people like me who lie about their user agent so that they can get into certain IE-only sites) is just to look at the logs of major sites like Google which cross the divide of newbie/experienced/hacker and mac/linux/windows and open/closed source. Unfortunately, I don't think Google offers insight into their visitors client brands anymore after some sort of a lawsuit or whatever awhile back (I could be wrong, but I seem to recall this occurring).
Their site does not make it clear AT ALL. But if you download the 71k client and run the setup, it downloads some additional files. Once loaded, you have a chance to create a new account. That then directs you to a site called PlayNC.com - from there, you have the option to purchase the game online and get a key (no box).
I've been wanting to get in on this all week, but I can't find a place to download anything other than the "pre-order" client. I would presume they offer a download of the game somewhere on the publisher's site... right?!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well, often you don't want to charge for something at all, until the expense becomes unbearable or it requires so much of your time that it necessitates making some money from it just to compensate. Anyway, you're not going to charge for something that is essentially beta and doesn't have the value it will for people for a couple years.
Face it, the internet is not the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago. It isn't like putting together a BBS with a spare $12/mo incoming-only phone line and a cheap PC. You need hardware. You need bandwidth. You need software. You may have to write a lot of custom code. You have to manage databases, email servers, webservers. In some cases, you may have to pay for licensed software. Not to mention registrations. Maybe SSL certs.
Even people who want to provide a service out of the goodness of their heart and their appreciation for the niche they fill can't always afford to do so. At some point, one needs to find a legitimate return on their spent time. And even beloved projects can become a drag after awhile and make you want to shoot yourself, because of ungrateful people or people who don't realize you're just one guy, with one wallet and limited resources.
It's all fine and well for people who just surf around and use sites to say "how dare it not be free!", but someone is doing all of that work so that you have a place to share, chat, interact - whatever. People still have to make a living. Some people would like to dedicate themselves full time to their project. That's hard to do if it doesn't make a dime and you have to meet a mortgage and buy food and gas.
Anyway, why is it okay to pay $60/mo for your cable internet access, but everyone gets their panties in a twist if they have to pay $1/mo to access a site that has actual content and value? It's okay for Time Warner, Ted Turner, Cox, Comcast, SBC, Covad, Speakeasy and so forth to make a dollar, but not a web admin or a sysop?
There are innocent people on death row, too. That doesn't mean we stop convicting murder crimes.
Obviously we don't want to put away innocent people and plenty of people are falsely accused of sex crimes. But that doesn't mean we should be soft on everyone just in case we make one mistake. Is it worth the risk of letting someone back into the community who molested a six year old girl or raped someone's mom and just cross your fingers and hope they don't rape someone else's child or wife or mother while they're out? And if they do - oops! Guess we'll put them back in jail again! Our bad! Sorry!
I think someone who is an adult having sex with a minor is an incredible crime, too. I don't mean an 18 year old with a 16 year old - but certainly a 21 year old with a 16 year old. Or a 30 year old with a 15 year old. Or a 40 year old with a 12 year old. Beef up the investigations of these people before conviction and in cases which are not refutable, lock those fuckers up for life. I don't have a problem with that.
Anyway, I really just don't get your logic. It's like "because some people may commit manslaughter, we shouldn't put serial murderers away for life". WTF?
As someone who operates a large site with fiercly loyal members, I can vouch that even fiercly loyal and frequent members are not always (or even often) willing to contribute financially for that service.
There is nothing wrong with looking to make a profit (or at least break even) on your work and the services you offer. If people really care, they can pay for the service. If they don't, they won't and you'll have to reverse your policy and find another way to survive (or just stop providing the service). The control is in the hands of the members. If they find it isn't worth paying for, they won't participate and the policy will be obliterated. If there are enough that make it profitable, it will remain.
It's called capitalism. Supply and demand. Not everything has to be free. Christ, I wish I could get paid for the thousands of hours I've put into my service. That'd be wonderful. There's nothing wrong with trying.
That said, I just don't see how this is a big deal?
1. Replace the SSN with SecureID card with challenge keypad (none of those biometric foo-foo crap, bio is non-revokable)
There is a significant portion of the population that would be completely baffled by a SecureID card/fob and would never be able to comprehend how to use them. But I agree that there should be a non-biometrical solution.
What sucks is that you can't be required to provide a social security number to a company. Only your employer, financial institution, a hospital and the social security administration are allowed to require your social security number. However, in the real world, any utility service (and many other businesses and services) will not even look at you without providing them a social security number. Want electricity in your apartment or house? You need to give the electric company your social security number so they can run a credit check. Same with cable, telephone, paypal and so forth.
What I really hate is that they consider the CCV number on the back of your credit card to be strong proof that it's really you using the card. Well, since I have to give that three digit number out to every site I order something from and many businesses in meat-space require you to write the CCV number on an authorization form - there are countless people out there with access to your credit card number, full name, expiration date - and CCV! Fucking retarded.
Apparently you know nothing about having your identity stolen. Very often, when someone has their identity stolen, they are treated like the criminal and not the victim. At the worst, the corporate entity that extended credit to "them" can write it off, get a tax break and just up their fees annually to cover for it. The victim, however, will have their credit ruined at the least.
When your identity is stolen, there is very little you can do about it. A lot of people have been left in total financial ruin by just such unfortunate means. And when all of my identity was stolen five years ago (from my office, no less), the local police didn't offer any hope or information. Their only comment was "well, we've got this in the record which might help you, but chances are you're now the victim of identity theft, so keep an eye on things".
I asked them "and if I find problems arising out of this?".
They didn't really have much to offer. They said to just contact them again so they could make a record of whatever additional complaints arose - but they seemed to feel I was essentially screwed. I'm only lucky that the person was apparently too stupid to know what data they had (they had my social security card, state photo identification card, birth certificate, pay stub, bank account and checking numbers)...
Unfortunately, the person robbed is the individual whos ID was stolen and then a loan was given fraudulently in their name. The lender or creditor isn't robbed, because they're going to get their blood out of you, whether you're the actual initiator or not.
Hell, I consider my social security number compromised every time I'm forced to give it to a $8/hr customer service person over the phone to get my Cable, Internet, Telephone, Gas, Electricity services, rent a car, get a loan, get a bank account, apply for a job.
Even when it's acceptable to request a social security number (an employer), you aren't promised that someone in the chain won't take your information for their own use. *shrug*
I think this is going overboard, only because:
1) Just because you know where they are doesn't mean you know who they're around.
2) Strangers aren't allowed on school grounds as it is.
3) Molesting children and raping women is illegal already.
If you deem a sex offender risky enough to require GPS tracking for the rest of his life, then he's clearly too dangerous to be released, period. Why are we releasing people and gambling on the hope that they won't reoffend? It's not like letting a guy go who will probably run another red light some day. We're talking about playing the odds that a person may or may not rape a young child again, which will devestate them for the rest of their entire lives. This isn't shit to play with.
False evidence, false accusations, false memories and just downright lying to get someone in trouble aside (which we have to admit does happen fairly frequently), there is no reason we should EVER let someone out of prison if they have, without a doubt, unquestionably raped or molested someone. These people should never see the light of day. They should be treated like murderers.
What I don't get is why these freaks can't just accept the idea that perhaps evolution is part of whatever "intelligent design" they believe in?
If I can knock over a thousand setup dominoes by ticking over just the first one, then surely some "supreme being" can do the same on a more grand scale?
Really, "intelligent design" is so incredibly beside the point here. Evolution has nothing to do with the big bang, which could have been created by anything. I'll even concede that religious people could be right on some minor level (that something outside of or concept initiated the beginning of life as we know it) - but that has nothing to do with evolution of life and the world around us after that point.
This is like requiring that every person who takes driver's education be taught all about the life of Henry Ford, which has absolutely nothing to do with driving, driving laws and safety.
Well, anecdotal as this is, I'll simply offer this:
I dropped out of the 9th grade and have been pulling down close to six figures since I came of drinking age. That was some time ago. I have a respectable resume and accomplished what I have through nothing more than working hard, being reliable, being productive, learning new concepts and constantly proving myself to people.
The most important skill you can ever have is comprehension. More important than "do you know xyz" is "can you learn xyz". If you can learn new skills as necessary and be a reliable and productive person - that's all anyone will really ask of you. After all, what you learn in school regarding tech is only going to be applicable as long as that is the prevailing technology - which is usually not that long. That said, a degree will help get your foot in the door if you have no other way. But realize that it is not necessarily better. It is merely alternative. If I'd gone for a university education, it would have cost me perhaps $40,000 in tuition, not to mention a few hundred thousand dollars in lost wages that I was making in my career by that time (over four years). And who is to say that after graduating and following the traditional path of internships and such that I'd have landed such a prime offer at all?
The key really seems to be in figuring out what kind of person you are. If you're a hardcore techie that learns on your own - no matter what - and you are a hard worker, maybe there are alternatives. If you need the structure, guidance, etc... then maybe a formal education really is the better path.
Having not gone that rout, I can only speak from the one which I took.
Also, don't forget that the older you get, the harder it is to go to school.
How so? The older you get, the more advanced you probably are in your career and the more money you probably have saved up. Rather than starving and living on top ramen for four years, you could probably take significant time off work (having a better relationship with your employer due to seniority by this time, perhaps) and afford all of your tuition and text books. Much easier than scrounging around living in a cramped little studio apartment where you can barely pay rent and working two or three jobs while cramming your education into it.
I guess it's harder, if you've done something stupid like get married and knock out some gets and sink yourself into a mortgage and maybe have an exwife and child support and alimoney to deal with before the age or 30... But in that case, you've got bigger problems with maturity and wisdom than you do with dealing with an education.
Not to mention, by about 30, you'll have a far better concept of what a university education is worth, whether to specialize or generalize, what your true interests are and what you want to do with your life. I'd rather do that than decide in highschool that I want to be a rocket scientist, go to a university, spend four years aiming toward rocket science, graduate, get a job doign tech support for AOL or something and then realizing that what I really want to do with my life is own my own business... and go back to the drawing board all over again.
Also, a degree is very helpful in getting your foot in the door if you have little or no history. But if you have a great resume and work history, nobody is going to turn you down just because you didn't get a degree ten or fifteen years before (unless it's something that obviously requires one like... oh, I don't know - fucking brain surgery).
I've been considering going to a university even though I'm getting a bit aged now - but there are just no programs of interest. Look at your average school's offerings... They have degree programs for... nursing, teaching, business - maybe chemistry. Quite a limit to the variety of programs. Hell, I'd even consider changing careers at this point in my life - but going into debt for an education that will land you a job in a field that doesn't pay nearly as well as the tech field seems kind of silly. I don't know a lot of teachers or MBAs making six figures. In fact, all the MBAs I know are just boring middle-management schmoes or pie-in-the-sky guys with ideas that they can never properly capitalize on.
Except, really, how many network admins really need to know the TCP/IP stack to the point of writing their own? It's nice to know and it's a thing you can educate yourself on in your own time. You don't need to smelt copper and form your own wires, insulation and covering and mold your own RJ45 jacks to understand and string CAT5.
I'm not saying that a lot of the information isn't interesting or doesn't make one knowledgable, but there is a great disconnect between "educators" and employers as to exactly what is "useful" in the real world.
I'm constantly amazed at the things I have to explain to highly paid and supposedly well-educated (formally) admins and CTOs on a daily basis which I should not have to explain.
I mean, what good is it if you can write a software RAID driver, if you can't even understand how to implement DNS properly on your network and you come crawling to me to figure out why your improperly configured servers are going to shit?
The problem is that it's difficult to find truly credible technical schools (unless you want to spend as much or more than you would have spent on a university education in the first place). A lot of them present themselves one way to the public and to the government accrediting agencies, but are little more than mills on the inside. Prepare to be bored to death.
Then again, if you can find a place that's both affordable and respected, go for it. But you're still just going to be learning things that you could learn faster and grasp better if you were doing it in the real world for a living.
As far as the university stuff goes - in this day and age, there's no point in specializing. Take a path of "general education" in school. It will simply make you a more rounded person, though it won't really directly apply to any one career choice. However, with that you can then establish your footing in whatever chosen career you might have at one time or another by taking additional specialized classes later on.
I'm a bit biased, as I've made a relatively successful career without any formal education to speak of. I'm one of those guys who simply loves technology, educated himself, worked his way into a position with a great company and learned everything necessary while I was there. I wouldn't trade it for sitting in a classroom with a text book and some guy lecturing me about network topologies and file systems who himself hasn't had a real tech job in a decade.
The real world is a great plave for developing your personality, too. And there is great copmetition in the real world. Nothing you've offered here from a university is not available in the real world. You're only prolonging it under the guise of some great education.
If you're looking to be a lead product developer on major software products or something, that's great. Go get your education. If you're just looking to do IT work, you can learn all you need to know about the major languages, hardware and systems (unix, linux, etc) and networking from a handful of books and a first job. It will be infinitely more valuable than the theoretical exam-prep bullshit you're going to learn elsewhere.
But if you want to waste $20k or more, go for it. It delays having to become an adult for a few more years, I guess. And then when you have that degree or certificate, you can brag about how knowledgable you are compared to everyone else... well, except the people that spent the four years you were getting an IT education getting four years of their own real world experience.
Seriously - nothing beats real world experience. If you have the passion and charisma, you'll get someone to hire you. You can then parlay that into something greater as your knowledge and experience expand.
I have a better idea.
Jump right in somewhere that is willing to hire you. Work hard, establish a good chunk of resume material from that company and then move onward if necessary after a couple years. Nothing beats real world experience and I've found that people who learned what they know through their own passion and desire (and real world implementation) tend to be far more enthusiastic and adaptable and quick to learn new concepts and skills and frameworks than people who just sat in a chair at a university or trade school for a handful of years, learning soon to be outdated material from professors or instructors who rarely implement their own knowledge in a real environment.
Not to mention, things in the real work environment are rarely anything like what you've learned in school and you'll have to be broken of your old habits.
Hoax?
Funny, when hedge-fund managers do this sort of thing, I always thought it was called "fraud".
Wow. Why was this guy marked flamebait? Sun was one of the staunches supporters pushing the whole "there's not enough qualified tech labor in America" thing in the late 90s that lead us to the situation we have today.
However, I don't think the "foreigners generally dislike documentation because it requires effective use of English" thing is at all accurate. Most overseas companies who have support contracts (which most anyone with a lot of Sun hardware will have) has people who speak fluent (or fluent enough) english. And nobody loves having everything documented - english or otherwise - than the Japanese. It's like, if it doesn't say it somewhere on an official piece of paper - it isn't right.
Yes, because being the leader of the greatest military and economic power on earth and sending 130,000 troops overseas to attack a couple of countries on "misinformation" is far better than being well-aware of everything and simply lying about it to achieve your objectives.
Of course, as a private company, it's enough to make a profit. As a public company, you could saturate the market 100% and every person on the planet could own your product, but unless you still manage to sell to more than every person on the planet the next quarter, nobody wants your stock.
Why anyone would take a company public without being absolutely necessary is beyond me. As a public, your mission is no longer to dedicate yourself to your product and customers, but to become a professional corporate dick waver to keep wallstreet's attention.
Every break room used to get a box full of donuts, bagels and fruit every Wednesday. It was apparently a big deal. Granted, I prefered the Netscape situation where bottled water and soda were free every day, but looking back on that and my physical health and the sedentary type of job one has at a Sun or a Netscape, neither is exactly a brilliant idea for the health of your employees.
:)
Anyway, I'd have traded all those free donuts for something more than an Ultra-5 to run JES tests on.
Not really. Bad credit is better than no credit. A history of debt is better than a history of no debt. Someone with an established history of being "in the hole" is socially and economically preferable to someone with a responsible history of not incurring debt in the first place.
Reviewing books on Slashdot is like reviewing toothbrushes in the appalachians or condoms in south africa or deodorant on G4TV.
Didn't we just have an article yesterday about how Firefox was "nearing 50 millionth download"? This is getting to be a little silly. Like it matters how many times it's actually downloaded anyway. That's like me claiming that my 4,000,000/mo pageview website actually recieves 40,000,000, by counting each hit.
They obviously have no idea if twenty people are downloading it or if I'm downloading it 20 times (which I've easily done recently for my machines at home). Not to mention, is it really fair to count downloading 1.02 to upgrade my 1.0, then downloading 1.03 to upgrade my 1.0? That's three downloads right there. Per machine. So that brings it to about 60 downloads that I'm accountable for just at home and just in the last few months.
It's really a meaningless number. Just a promotional gimmick. I'd rather see this much excitement over more original mail folder management (especially for the Move Folder To feature which gets absurd after awhile).
The only thing that really matters is how many people are using Firefox and the simple way to figure that out (with some minor skewing by people like me who lie about their user agent so that they can get into certain IE-only sites) is just to look at the logs of major sites like Google which cross the divide of newbie/experienced/hacker and mac/linux/windows and open/closed source. Unfortunately, I don't think Google offers insight into their visitors client brands anymore after some sort of a lawsuit or whatever awhile back (I could be wrong, but I seem to recall this occurring).
Awesome - thank you.
Their site does not make it clear AT ALL. But if you download the 71k client and run the setup, it downloads some additional files. Once loaded, you have a chance to create a new account. That then directs you to a site called PlayNC.com - from there, you have the option to purchase the game online and get a key (no box).
Exactly what I was looking for.
I've been wanting to get in on this all week, but I can't find a place to download anything other than the "pre-order" client. I would presume they offer a download of the game somewhere on the publisher's site... right?!