The few times I saw the requirement for a.doc file I emailed the lecturer and told them that I didn't have Office, didn't have the money to buy it and since it wasn't on the free software repo that we were provided (which actually had quite a bit of expensive MS software), I couldn't use it. Most of the time they wrote back and told me I could hand in a PDF instead. It always worth asking individual lecturers for an alternative. Just be polite, don't do it as part of some geek crusade against Microsoft (have a valid reason) and most people will try and be helpful.
Of course, I did a computer based degree so my lecturers were all savvy enough to deal with different formats.
Colleges and companies work on a vastly different schedule. In college every semester is an opportunity to do something new. In a company, a project often drags-on for years. I haven't been in a lab since January 2006 when we finished the design of a PowerPC-based GPS board. Since that time it's just been documentation and ongoing customer support.
Yes! As a fairly recent graduate this is the biggest difference I've found. The project itself is broken up into lots of different parts so it doesn't feel too much like it's just dragging on but I expect that the project as a whole is going to last at least another 18 months before we can claim to have finished the first proper release. After this it'll be improvements and extensions. This is one of the more challenging things that I've found since getting into a proper job since I'm used to just hacking something together, handing it in, getting a grade and then moving on.
Your friend has a point. I haven't used anything higher in difficulty than sophomore-year electronics (V=IR, et cetera). I did learn one new thing on the job - VHDL and Verilog coding, so it hasn't all been a bust. Oh and I got to crawl inside a tank in Summer 2008 so I could measure and modify a cable. Woo.;-)
Now here's where we differ. I've learned a great deal and used a whole lot of what I learned. Things like compiler engineering and complexity theory, which I didn't think I'd ever really use have actually come in very handy. I've also had to sit and learn a ton of new technologies, programming techniques and the odd new (programming) language to get on with my job. It's actually a lot of fun and makes me glad I ran into this particular job (I can get away with learning anything I fancy as long as it's semi-relevant to the project).
There is still plenty of scope to be able to set up a site in your spare time and let it grow. Heck, look right here at slashdot. It started as a bloggy thing and now has thousands of users. How about facebook, again, started fairly small and grew, friends re-united in another example. There are lots of things changing and there are growing avenues to actually get started. For example, now if you can get something popular on facebook you can use it to attract all of those people to your actual site. Viral advertising is actually very easy if you're smart about it.
I bet you that in 5 years many of the players will have changed, as will the game. The "monopolies" are only monopolies if they can keep up with the evolution of the web. The second they fail to do so they fade away ala altavista, geocities and ICQ.
I use kubuntu and I'm pretty happy with it but yes, there's a load of rubbish sitting around the system that I'll never use. What I find most annoying though is the lack of what I consider to be pretty basic apps and utilities such as slocate and lynx. Sure, they have mlocate and yes, I know it's probably better but it seems silly to put in 1001 things I'll more than likely never even know are there but leave out utilities that people have been using for years. Heck, even replacing slocate with a script telling me I might want to use mlocate instead would have been more useful.
And to add to that they also have to all be able to verify that the machines do exactly what they say they do internally and that there's no nefarious code, that once the data has left the machine it is verified as being correct and remains so. Then there's the issue of the machine being left unguarded, who knows if someone tampered with it if it was? At least with paper ballots, if they're unaccounted for one moment and then they show up they can be checked quickly or heck, destroyed if there's any suspicion.
No, we did elect the current government. We just didn't elect Brown. Luckily for him we elect parties here and not people. Unfortunately there isn't and probably will never be a law that says if the head of the party in power changes during their term then a new general election (or at the very least a vote of confidence) should be held.
When senior police (aka politicians in uniforms) start claiming that we "need" these things in order to stay safe I have to laugh. Especially when people like Dame Stella Rimington, a lady who knows a darn sight more about any "terrorist threat" (ex-MI5 head), comes out and says what a load of rubbish they're talking. Makes me wonder if there actually *is* hope for us on this little island.
I'm in a country where we have national health care and there's no bribery going on so I have no idea where you'd get the idea that that would happen.
We get a fairly decent, bog-standard level of health care which means everybody can afford to get checkups and advice. Sure, you'll have to wait a while to get an appointment for checkups since they're not exactly an emergency but it's possible to do. There's also the option of going private if you have the money. I don't see a problem with this as it doesn't mean the "poor" are deprived of health care, it's just that those with more money can get a faster and more personal service. Just like in any other service industry.
Most people here complain about the health service, it's bureaucratic and full of middle managers sucking funds away from the actual service. However, when it comes down to it, if I'm sick or injured I can get seen and treated in a decent manner and time frame, no matter who I am, how much money I have or if I have health insurance or not.
More like an employee is charged with looking after the office and keeping it secure so they hide the keys. They then refuse to give up the keys to a person who has no need or reason to enter the office. Employee states that they will give up the keys if told to do so by an appropriate person in authority. Employee then gets arrested.
It was a release version meant for people wanting to get to grips developing for the newer API. It was not meant for general use.
They shouldn't have versioned it as 4 and probably should have made it clearer to those who simply look at the new version number and don't read the release notice (I'm guilty of this).
It doesn't help that Kubuntu have used 4.1 as their default 8.10 install either.
I'm beginning to think that Gordo and co know that they don't have a snowballs chance in hell of re-election and so are trying to push through as many of their crackpot ideas as possible, whether or not they think they're good ones. I feel sorry for the next lot to come in as they'll be left with a bunch of crappy initiatives that they're obliged to push money into.
As most people here can probably see, this is a technological and financial disaster waiting to happen. Even without the media company tax, free broadband, by 2012 no less, is going to be an absolute nightmare for all concerned and will most likely help to degrade broadband performance. If they really cared they'd be leaning on the likes of BT to upgrade the current infrastructure so ISP speeds and costs can slowly come down.
People expect teachers to be better with computers because so many of them are claiming that they are and trying to teach kids about them (whether it's their job or not). I'd get cross if my kids French teacher was trying to teach maths as well, despite not even knowing basic trig. The same goes for computers. If you're not qualified, don't teach it or pretend to people trying to learn from you that you know more than you do.
Exactly. I've recently released some software to a customer of my company. It's just a small utility to get rid of a small problem. I had my own version numbers for my own use which were all 1.0. On release my boss asked me to bump it up to 1.0 purely because the customer would feel better seeing it. As for as I'm concerned it's still a beta release but the version number says 1.0 and the next will say 2.0. In other words, the version number is there to make the customer feel better, not to indicate the state of the software.
I have to say, I wasn't really a KDE user at the time so I didn't as I wasn't paying attention.
However, I did know that KDE4 was new and so figured it wouldn't be for wide scale use for quite some time. I tried it out when I first installed Kubuntu a few months ago. My experience was that it was nice and shiny and mostly stable but couldn't deal with my dual screen setup for some reason and so I went to KDE3 and was very happy.
Kudos to the KDE developers for this new release and anyone who thinks that it's magically going to be bug free is most likely an idiot who doesn't understand software.
I'll have to see if they've fixed whatever issue was stopping me from using both my screens properly!
If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
Says you, but how would the police know that you actually did this or actually know how to make it forensically "clean"? They don't and therefore should examine that cork board. They'd be negligent if they didn't.
The grocery store should not have to keep a record of every person that may potentially post an illegal message. And a website should not be subject to search and seizure because of an anonymous post. We the people do not want to be tracked all the time. We want anonymity. Anonymity cannot be stopped.
No, they shouldn't, but they should also be prepared to have their board examined if someone does post an illegal message.
This article makes me imagine a scenario like this:
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely.
Now imagine this one:
Cops: Can we inspect your hunting knife? We suspect it was used in a murder. Murdering bastard: I have no knife! You're mistaken. Cops; oh, OK, sorry to have bothered you Sir.
The police have to follow up on potential evidence or they'd just be taking every bodies word for it.
the police still have to obtain a warrant to seize property without the owners consent. A scenario like yours requires the judicial system to become completely corrupt (yes, yes, people already say it is but many judges still believe in the law) and when that's happened we've got more problems than property seizures.
Nope, but I would think it appropriate for law enforcement to try and find the person responsible for posting the information, which would include inspecting the server for any logged information. Taking the say-so of the servers owners would *not* be a particularly competent action to take.
This is a solution that covers all bases without going over the top. I'd have loved this in school and allows teachers to make *good* use of computers without forcing them to have them there the whole time and play nanny to those not interested in learning.
The concept of a roll-in trolley always reminds me of the TV trolleys. Useful and only there if the teacher wants it!
At the University I attended (in the UK) the SE students and CS students both did a ton of theory in the first 2 years and then the SE were expected to go do more engineering stuff (don't ask me as I didn't do those courses) while CS students got to go and study a handful of other technologies and theory. The course was actually pretty good. Calling the SE lot code monkeys is rather harsh as they're expected to be competent engineers able to put theory into practice to solve real world problems rather than just spit out code. Us CS lot were expected to be able to code but as a tool for exploring theory and building experimental systems.
The difference in the final year was to take a good base and get us to either look at theory from a scientific (CS) or practical (SE) view.
Agreed. My degree is Computer Science, therefore I am a Scientist. The Software Engineering degree followed the CS degree in just about every area except the final year where everyone specialised. It's that final year that really taught us our discipline, so even though I know much of what a software engineer knows, I am not an engineer and they are not a scientist.
It wouldn't be a big jump in order for me to *become* an engineer (I could go back to University and do an MEng in a year) but right now I'm not and I shouldn't dilute the meaning of the title just because it sounds good.
The problem is, there was a whole load of cautious optimism surrounding vista before they started nuking all the interesting features and generally messing it around. I heard lots of good things when the beta was released and people got to have a play. However, the problems started after the release.
I was actually quite excited when vista came out as I was hoping that promises would be kept and my life would be made easier by not having to help friends and family sort their computers out once every six months. I'm hoping again that *this* time it'll be different but I'm being a bit of a pessimist since this whole windows 7 thing is giving me a great big feeling of deja vu. I hope I'm just being paranoid:)
I'm currently using wxWidgets and have used Qt in the past. I'm using wx as using Qt would have meant having to get a paid license but with this news I'm considering talking to my boss about maybe making a pyQt version.
I like Qt better as it's always felt just more complete and functional. wxWidgets is good but it lacks in areas and doesn't seem to have a really decent UI designer. I've also been warned that for more complex applications it can be a headache to get unit testing (important in my job) to work nicely with wx in comparison to other python GUI toolkits.
Slashdot Mirror
The few times I saw the requirement for a .doc file I emailed the lecturer and told them that I didn't have Office, didn't have the money to buy it and since it wasn't on the free software repo that we were provided (which actually had quite a bit of expensive MS software), I couldn't use it. Most of the time they wrote back and told me I could hand in a PDF instead. It always worth asking individual lecturers for an alternative. Just be polite, don't do it as part of some geek crusade against Microsoft (have a valid reason) and most people will try and be helpful.
Of course, I did a computer based degree so my lecturers were all savvy enough to deal with different formats.
Colleges and companies work on a vastly different schedule. In college every semester is an opportunity to do something new. In a company, a project often drags-on for years. I haven't been in a lab since January 2006 when we finished the design of a PowerPC-based GPS board. Since that time it's just been documentation and ongoing customer support.
Yes! As a fairly recent graduate this is the biggest difference I've found. The project itself is broken up into lots of different parts so it doesn't feel too much like it's just dragging on but I expect that the project as a whole is going to last at least another 18 months before we can claim to have finished the first proper release. After this it'll be improvements and extensions. This is one of the more challenging things that I've found since getting into a proper job since I'm used to just hacking something together, handing it in, getting a grade and then moving on.
Your friend has a point. I haven't used anything higher in difficulty than sophomore-year electronics (V=IR, et cetera). I did learn one new thing on the job - VHDL and Verilog coding, so it hasn't all been a bust. Oh and I got to crawl inside a tank in Summer 2008 so I could measure and modify a cable. Woo. ;-)
Now here's where we differ. I've learned a great deal and used a whole lot of what I learned. Things like compiler engineering and complexity theory, which I didn't think I'd ever really use have actually come in very handy. I've also had to sit and learn a ton of new technologies, programming techniques and the odd new (programming) language to get on with my job. It's actually a lot of fun and makes me glad I ran into this particular job (I can get away with learning anything I fancy as long as it's semi-relevant to the project).
There is still plenty of scope to be able to set up a site in your spare time and let it grow. Heck, look right here at slashdot. It started as a bloggy thing and now has thousands of users. How about facebook, again, started fairly small and grew, friends re-united in another example. There are lots of things changing and there are growing avenues to actually get started. For example, now if you can get something popular on facebook you can use it to attract all of those people to your actual site. Viral advertising is actually very easy if you're smart about it.
I bet you that in 5 years many of the players will have changed, as will the game. The "monopolies" are only monopolies if they can keep up with the evolution of the web. The second they fail to do so they fade away ala altavista, geocities and ICQ.
Lost or stolen DVDs would NOT work as the copyrights go along with the original media.
Wait, so if I lose my original DVDs that I've backed up, my backups become illegal copies?
Or were you saying that making copies of those backups after I've been robbed is now illegal (which sort of makes sense).
I'm actually curious since I really *do* have backups of my DVDs.
I use kubuntu and I'm pretty happy with it but yes, there's a load of rubbish sitting around the system that I'll never use. What I find most annoying though is the lack of what I consider to be pretty basic apps and utilities such as slocate and lynx. Sure, they have mlocate and yes, I know it's probably better but it seems silly to put in 1001 things I'll more than likely never even know are there but leave out utilities that people have been using for years. Heck, even replacing slocate with a script telling me I might want to use mlocate instead would have been more useful.
Of course this is just MHO.
And to add to that they also have to all be able to verify that the machines do exactly what they say they do internally and that there's no nefarious code, that once the data has left the machine it is verified as being correct and remains so.
Then there's the issue of the machine being left unguarded, who knows if someone tampered with it if it was? At least with paper ballots, if they're unaccounted for one moment and then they show up they can be checked quickly or heck, destroyed if there's any suspicion.
No, we did elect the current government. We just didn't elect Brown. Luckily for him we elect parties here and not people. Unfortunately there isn't and probably will never be a law that says if the head of the party in power changes during their term then a new general election (or at the very least a vote of confidence) should be held.
When senior police (aka politicians in uniforms) start claiming that we "need" these things in order to stay safe I have to laugh. Especially when people like Dame Stella Rimington, a lady who knows a darn sight more about any "terrorist threat" (ex-MI5 head), comes out and says what a load of rubbish they're talking. Makes me wonder if there actually *is* hope for us on this little island.
I'm in a country where we have national health care and there's no bribery going on so I have no idea where you'd get the idea that that would happen.
We get a fairly decent, bog-standard level of health care which means everybody can afford to get checkups and advice. Sure, you'll have to wait a while to get an appointment for checkups since they're not exactly an emergency but it's possible to do. There's also the option of going private if you have the money. I don't see a problem with this as it doesn't mean the "poor" are deprived of health care, it's just that those with more money can get a faster and more personal service. Just like in any other service industry.
Most people here complain about the health service, it's bureaucratic and full of middle managers sucking funds away from the actual service. However, when it comes down to it, if I'm sick or injured I can get seen and treated in a decent manner and time frame, no matter who I am, how much money I have or if I have health insurance or not.
More like an employee is charged with looking after the office and keeping it secure so they hide the keys. They then refuse to give up the keys to a person who has no need or reason to enter the office. Employee states that they will give up the keys if told to do so by an appropriate person in authority. Employee then gets arrested.
It was a release version meant for people wanting to get to grips developing for the newer API. It was not meant for general use.
They shouldn't have versioned it as 4 and probably should have made it clearer to those who simply look at the new version number and don't read the release notice (I'm guilty of this).
It doesn't help that Kubuntu have used 4.1 as their default 8.10 install either.
I'm beginning to think that Gordo and co know that they don't have a snowballs chance in hell of re-election and so are trying to push through as many of their crackpot ideas as possible, whether or not they think they're good ones. I feel sorry for the next lot to come in as they'll be left with a bunch of crappy initiatives that they're obliged to push money into.
Err...what I meant to say was costs come down and speeds go UP!
As most people here can probably see, this is a technological and financial disaster waiting to happen. Even without the media company tax, free broadband, by 2012 no less, is going to be an absolute nightmare for all concerned and will most likely help to degrade broadband performance. If they really cared they'd be leaning on the likes of BT to upgrade the current infrastructure so ISP speeds and costs can slowly come down.
People expect teachers to be better with computers because so many of them are claiming that they are and trying to teach kids about them (whether it's their job or not). I'd get cross if my kids French teacher was trying to teach maths as well, despite not even knowing basic trig. The same goes for computers. If you're not qualified, don't teach it or pretend to people trying to learn from you that you know more than you do.
Exactly. I've recently released some software to a customer of my company. It's just a small utility to get rid of a small problem.
I had my own version numbers for my own use which were all 1.0. On release my boss asked me to bump it up to 1.0 purely because the customer would feel better seeing it. As for as I'm concerned it's still a beta release but the version number says 1.0 and the next will say 2.0. In other words, the version number is there to make the customer feel better, not to indicate the state of the software.
I have to say, I wasn't really a KDE user at the time so I didn't as I wasn't paying attention.
However, I did know that KDE4 was new and so figured it wouldn't be for wide scale use for quite some time. I tried it out when I first installed Kubuntu a few months ago. My experience was that it was nice and shiny and mostly stable but couldn't deal with my dual screen setup for some reason and so I went to KDE3 and was very happy.
Kudos to the KDE developers for this new release and anyone who thinks that it's magically going to be bug free is most likely an idiot who doesn't understand software.
I'll have to see if they've fixed whatever issue was stopping me from using both my screens properly!
If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
Says you, but how would the police know that you actually did this or actually know how to make it forensically "clean"? They don't and therefore should examine that cork board. They'd be negligent if they didn't.
The grocery store should not have to keep a record of every person that may potentially post an illegal message. And a website should not be subject to search and seizure because of an anonymous post. We the people do not want to be tracked all the time. We want anonymity. Anonymity cannot be stopped.
No, they shouldn't, but they should also be prepared to have their board examined if someone does post an illegal message.
This article makes me imagine a scenario like this:
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely.
Now imagine this one:
Cops: Can we inspect your hunting knife? We suspect it was used in a murder.
Murdering bastard: I have no knife! You're mistaken.
Cops; oh, OK, sorry to have bothered you Sir.
The police have to follow up on potential evidence or they'd just be taking every bodies word for it.
the police still have to obtain a warrant to seize property without the owners consent. A scenario like yours requires the judicial system to become completely corrupt (yes, yes, people already say it is but many judges still believe in the law) and when that's happened we've got more problems than property seizures.
Nope, but I would think it appropriate for law enforcement to try and find the person responsible for posting the information, which would include inspecting the server for any logged information. Taking the say-so of the servers owners would *not* be a particularly competent action to take.
This is a solution that covers all bases without going over the top. I'd have loved this in school and allows teachers to make *good* use of computers without forcing them to have them there the whole time and play nanny to those not interested in learning.
The concept of a roll-in trolley always reminds me of the TV trolleys. Useful and only there if the teacher wants it!
At the University I attended (in the UK) the SE students and CS students both did a ton of theory in the first 2 years and then the SE were expected to go do more engineering stuff (don't ask me as I didn't do those courses) while CS students got to go and study a handful of other technologies and theory. The course was actually pretty good. Calling the SE lot code monkeys is rather harsh as they're expected to be competent engineers able to put theory into practice to solve real world problems rather than just spit out code. Us CS lot were expected to be able to code but as a tool for exploring theory and building experimental systems.
The difference in the final year was to take a good base and get us to either look at theory from a scientific (CS) or practical (SE) view.
Agreed. My degree is Computer Science, therefore I am a Scientist. The Software Engineering degree followed the CS degree in just about every area except the final year where everyone specialised. It's that final year that really taught us our discipline, so even though I know much of what a software engineer knows, I am not an engineer and they are not a scientist.
It wouldn't be a big jump in order for me to *become* an engineer (I could go back to University and do an MEng in a year) but right now I'm not and I shouldn't dilute the meaning of the title just because it sounds good.
The problem is, there was a whole load of cautious optimism surrounding vista before they started nuking all the interesting features and generally messing it around. I heard lots of good things when the beta was released and people got to have a play. However, the problems started after the release.
I was actually quite excited when vista came out as I was hoping that promises would be kept and my life would be made easier by not having to help friends and family sort their computers out once every six months. I'm hoping again that *this* time it'll be different but I'm being a bit of a pessimist since this whole windows 7 thing is giving me a great big feeling of deja vu. I hope I'm just being paranoid :)
Yes, but then again they also allow me to use Kubuntu :)
I'm currently using wxWidgets and have used Qt in the past. I'm using wx as using Qt would have meant having to get a paid license but with this news I'm considering talking to my boss about maybe making a pyQt version.
I like Qt better as it's always felt just more complete and functional. wxWidgets is good but it lacks in areas and doesn't seem to have a really decent UI designer. I've also been warned that for more complex applications it can be a headache to get unit testing (important in my job) to work nicely with wx in comparison to other python GUI toolkits.