The US is nowhere near as bad as the UK in these regards. Also do you have any idea how the US government even works, voters are irrelevant in this regard. The bill of rights and constitution do not prevent any law from getting passed. They allow the supreme court to strike down laws that they deem to not conform to them. Then again you seem to be one of those nut cases who thinks there is some grand conspiracy in place so I guess your knowledge of the US government is average for a person of such views.
As someone else said, not if you consider this from the point of view of money. MS doesn't send out broken consoles, they send out consoles refurbished for as little as possible. They make no money off of this and even if they send 3 cheap refurbs to someone it is still cheaper than sending out a single new console. Remember also that when you send in a broken console they can simpyl repair it cheaply and send out the barely working result to someone else who sends in a broken console. So they decided that the PR hit is worth the cost, probably someone said something along the liens of"gamers are idiots" during that meeting.
Then again this isn't exactly evil compared to what other US companies have done such as balancing out deaths caused by their product with increased profits.
Maybe MS simply send not-fully-working-as-new consoles to people whose consoles break, that seems the simplest (not saying the right one) explanation for why this is so.
*shrug* Then add in something like a hard drive password, those are stored on the platter. You can easily make it so that the only way to get around a password is solder out a number of chips and replace them (even a hacked firmware need not do the job depending on exactly how you implement this). At some point why bother, its cheaper to just buy a device than to make one work.
If you're smart you'd have gone to a good school, good schools generally leave you with little if any loans to pay off. Add in some scholarships or fellowships, after all if you are smart you would have done lots of outside of school research in HS.
offered a job making 65k at 19, benefits, high paced environment, or stay in school and keep paying 20k/yr to learn slowly and be bored
*shrug* If I had wanted to I'd probably be making 110k at 20 with a masters degree but I took it slowly in school and preferred to enjoy life (you can only take so many advanced classes while maintaining sanity). For various reasons college degrees lead to higher salaries so over your lifetime the cost of not having one (except for a small group of people) is much more than the cost of getting one.
I have friends who finished college who still make 50% of what I make (experience is more valuable than school)
Everyone is different, thinking that how your friends do is due to college or your experience simply shows your own (and your friend's) stupidity.
I complain about being spoonfed because I don't need that. I taught myself calculus from my dad's college texts when I was 12. Every time I tried to "take advantage" of opportunities in school I was discouraged from doing my best, from applying myself, from trying to advance faster than "average" students. I am 100% confident that given the chance I could have graduated from college at the age of 18 or 19. Unfortunately every teacher, counselor, professor, department head that I ever spoke to about moving faster, or getting in a more advanced course would discourage and slow me down (even though I always maintained 3.8-4.0GPAs).
So you had shitty luck and no one fought for you, which doesn't mean much really. You don't ask for permission from schools administrators, you do and then tell them to "fuck off" afterwards. Knew calc at 12? You should have taken the AP exam, passed it and then told your school to either provide math at your level or exempt you from math. Add in implied (legal) threats of various sorts and letters to every single person above your school principal and finally you'd get a letter from high enough above agreeing with you that your school has no choice but to concede. Want to take more advanced math? Talk to local colleges and universities until someone lets you sit in on classes (or has a program that lets you). Bored during the summer? Send apps to every single college level research program you can find till one agrees to accept you. Bored in school? Talk to local universities and professors and try to do research with/for them. 1 in 200 may agree but you only need 1, for some reason Indian professors were nicer in this regard.
Granted most of this requires your parents to help you or do it for you but that's life.
Also to paraphrase my dad, the sign of an intelligent person is not how hard they work but how little they work. Work smart not hard in other words.
School is a joke and a waste of time.
First of all if you cannot understand that everyone is different and that school exists for a reason (for the vast majority of people at least) then maybe you should have gone to college just to learn that if nothing else. To add to that, college is in many ways about learning about life not the material. This included making connections and the like which will help you throughout your life.
Not to be too cliche but Will Hunting said it best in the quote about doing some thinking and realizing you spent 250k on an education you could have got for $1.50 in late charges at the library.
Not really, since you've never taken any decent college level courses in your life nor have you ever take advantage of any of the other things offered in school (research being a high one on the list) your opinion is essentially worthless (as its based on nothing). There is
I was talking about colleges and universities, lower schools a somewhat different matter. Second of all the problem 95% of the time isn't schools (almost all, even "magnet", middle and high schools are rigid) or the nature of the student but parenting (or rather lack thereof). Now I'm not blaming the parents per say but simply saying that there are tons of options to get out of the hell hole of a system if you are determined enough.
Likewise children should be taught to do the damn work, contrary to what you may believe in real life you all too often need to do bitch work and you can't cry or throw a tantrum or get bored. I remember fondly how in 6th grade after realizing that every math assignment was from the book I simply took a few days and did all the assignments till the end of the year. Doing them all at once on my own was mildly interesting and gave me 2+ months of no math homework. A few friends even got into it and we had a sort of implied competition on who could finish the problems the fastest.
As I have said often in the past: Just because you went to shitty college, took shitty classes and didn't take advantage of the available opportunities doesn't mean everyone is a dumbass like you.
College (and life) is what you make of it, don't complain about being spoon fed everything when you never showed any ability to eat on your own.
Would impress a corprate hiring manager. the answer in NO. It'd impress them more than if you'd been unemployed or worked at McDonalds which apparently are the alternatives in question. You'd also need to be able to sell yourself both in what you've done and to people you meet. Also those aren't things that I'd have done myself as I would have known beforehand that they'd be pointless for getting work.
I'd have likely done general network and website work (the later being complex as I have time to do within limits of it being appropriate) for the church while getting to known the pastor and churchgoers. The later being more important in this case than the work itself. Mainly I'd attempt to get to know these people and see if there was anything I could do for them (paid or for small things for free) even if they didn't know it themselves. Most likely however I would have aimed specifically for a charity that is technology in need of help but whose donors/participants are well off themselves.
How many other labs are there? My mother volunteered at a hospital lab for a year as she had a degree but no experience (her degree being somewhat out of date). She has since been given a well paying full time position.
My point is free work devalues the work. Because you did the tech support it means someone else has a harder time making a business to do the same work for a fee, because he has one less customer. The net effect would be minimal as much of this would be work that would be gone without if you didn't do it for free. Likewise most companies understand that free also means unreliable by nature (you have nothing concrete to lose) so they'd pay someone instead.
Thus devaluing the work. I am tech support for all of my family, friends, and take on part time gigs for small businesses. But I have yet to get a job in that. I have applied. The avenues for entry have vanished. *shrug* I can't comment on your specific case or why you didn't get anything, maybe you live in an area without jobs or maybe you're doing something wrong.
I totally agree. Would I ask my mechanic friend to come over and overhaul my engine for free, or my painter friend to come paint my house for free, or my electrician friend to come re-wire my house for free? Hell no I wouldn't and if I did I am sure they would call me crazy if I asked.
On the other hand since I "know computers" I have people asking for help with all types of computer problems all the time and even some people asking me to build a website, etc for their businesses and they want it for free. Sure, for my grandma, parents, or girlfriend I will probably do it but other than that I did not go to college and get an interesting job as a software developer to spend my free time doing stuff that doesn't even interest me for free. For something small I may swap some jobs or accept a case of beer or something like that but for the most part I have told people to not bother asking. God knows how many times my dad got car repairs for essentially a pack of beer or flight ticket discounts as a favor. That of course has nothing to do with the topic at hand as the topic was about people complaining that they don't have enough experience. I simply said that if they want experience then they need to get it money be damned. If you're decent with people (ie: aren't an utter social reject) then you can easily and quickly get a full time position from such work (assuming you do it for the right organization).
For example if you help your local church with computer work (website, networking, etc.) then you can easily let it be known that you are only doing it for free as charity but that you are willing to work for money. Some church goer with a business would then be more likely to hire you then someone who they have no direct way to get references for. Furthermore to some future employers such work would look very well to them even if they don't go that particular church. Granted some careful BSing may need to be done to prevent it from looking like the only reason you're doing this is due to desperation (although saying outright its for experience may not be bad).
Your point? Then people leave IT, shortage causes prices to rise, etc., etc. It all evens out in the end. Likewise companies want experienced people, if they were willing to forgo experience then they'd already be hiring people for much less with no experience. Apparently since this isn't the case they're not and won't change if people do free work. It is for these reasons that I specifically mentioned doing jobs for free which normally wouldn't be able to afford someone.
Plenty of professions have the inexperienced work for free or almost free but pay very well for those who aren't "learning." Lab technicians, helicopter pilots (heck these make YOU pay to get experience), all those with unpaid intern work, etc. If you expect everything to be shoved into your on a silver spoon then don't complain when it isn't.
...please look up what the term "networking" means to everyone except computer geeks. In essence it's just like the term applied to IT except that instead of computers you have people.
That's assinine. If he wanted to hustle like that, he could have just gotten an easy business degree and gone into sales. Not everyone wants to be a salesman. Not everyone is a Kiyosaki wannabe. If you don't want to do what it takes to get a good job then don't complain when you don't have one. It's not different than some high school drop out complaining they can't get a 200k job at the drop of a hat. Only the born rich and idiots expect anything to be given to them on a silver platter.
BTW, the difference is that a business major has to do it for the rest of their lives, everyone else can stop once they get a job. Networking is a vital skill for any and all jobs, if you're incapable of it then maybe you should spend some time learning it instead of playing video games.
This is all called an investment but apparently some of the people here have so little work ethic its beyond pathetic. Maybe thats the real reason they don't have a job, employers were able to sense their laziness from 100 feet away.
But that won't pay a mortgage... Then rent, it won't kill you to not "own" a house in your early 20s. If you're really desperate do what my parents did back in the "old country" and move back with your parents (yes they did this after getting married, the US has fucked up social values imho).
I never meant that the current system is good but rather that if you're complaining about not having a job it's very likely your own fault for being essentially lazy. It's the same in most fields, those who complain the most are the ones who have time to complain because they're not out there getting the experience/skills to get a job with.
Thats true, but for every one that does that there's probably several others that just choose another field. This is sort of what the article hints too. A lot of IT fields require constant updating of skills to remain competitive, above and beyond getting a degree and paying your dues to get that first bit of experience.
That's the way it is in most fields, if you don't adapt then you'll wind up working in fast food at 50 (when the company fires you for being too old and your skills are too limited to find other employment).
I can't fault a lot of people for going into plumbing or something instead. The money is good, the work is steady and you don't have to chase certifications all day in addition to your regular job responsibilities. A toilet is pretty much a toilet. No disrespect to plumbers, but they mostly aren't trying to master an ever changing skillset. (at least, I don't think so?)
Why chase certifications? Once you get experience then certs only matter at places where you probably wouldn't want to be working anyway. IT can also get you 150-200k+ jobs after a while which as a plumber you probably won't get.
Personally I recommend Statistics. See no one wants to do it for some reason yet it has a ton of programming in it, moderately easy classes, getting into a good program is relatively easy and it pays well.
That doesn't mean people can't, won't or shouldn't do IT...it just means a lot of people are going to do the math and decide that it doesn't add up.
Which may or may not be a bad thing, the 90s had way too many people go into IT who never should have.
Mod parent up. Exactly, you work with what you can. If you can't find any work then you work for free to get experience. You learn related and specialized skills in your free time. Hell, start an OSS project if nothing else for experience alone although there are probably better options. Also.net is apparently a decent framework so you can't exactly complain too much about it on technical grounds.
Or instead of sitting on your backside waiting 9 months for a job you could go an get experience. I don't mean a job, I mean experience. Volunteer, network, talk to local companies, work with local companies, do work for local charities, etc. In addition to that learn new skills, if you can't be a programmer see if there are any related or more specialized fields open.
If you can't put actual work or be even minimally creative in finding a job then its only your fault that you don't have one.
So you're advocating a horribly expensive and convoluted alternative to an online hardware quirks database.
One answer to this is "buy a mac", where the whole stack from silicon to software is owned and tested as a cohesive unit. There are some advantages to that model, and I don't see why the same model can't work, or even be better, with a mostly or completely open system. If you want a tested and mass produced computer then yes you can go buy a Dell, IBM, Mac and so on. You can also find what builds other people have, ask them questions and then use the one which doesn't seem to have problems (for them). You can't have the freedom (and arguably greater performance) of picking any part and the security of a cohesive "pre-built"/"tested as a whole" machine.
It's not like Open Source software always works together and it probably has more quirks than an equivalent amount of hardware (remember software usually has less selection than hardware does for a given task).
It's actually not stuff like the CPU that i care about.. its more like.. all of the other things that make it onto a motherboard. They invented this great thing called expansion cards a few decades ago, you may wish to look into them (aka: pci cards).
It's actually not stuff like the CPU that i care about.. its more like.. all of the other things that make it onto a motherboard. There's no reason to put up with noisy audio, non-functional s/pdif outputs, buggy "hardware" raid, crappy bios, etc. The only value-add in these components is when they manage to live up to their as-advertised specs reliably. Then don't buy cheap components or replace the built in cheap components with pci cards. If you want quality then you need to pay for it.
I choose to think the 'terrorist organizations' aren't really that well or wisely organized. You don't need great organization, you need half decent organization and marginally intelligent leaders.
It's hard when your 'foot soldiers' are frothing religious zealots. Why? Most armies are made of such people after all. Replace zealot with nationalistic or political and you have some of the most devastating armies of the last century. All you need to do is direct them after all and not even mass death will cause them to waver. Grunts can be canon fodder as long as the people higher up aren't as suicidal which they usually aren't in these organizations.
It really wasn't that big of an organized feat to use the planes for the 9/11 attack, esp. not in the 'security environment' or lack therof, of the time. But they did it and the security environment isn't much better now either. They found the right people for the job even when there weren't recruits pilling at their doorways and they found the right plan given the limitations they had.
Somehow I don't buy into the notion that some Dr. Evil hidden in a volcano somewhere is directing the placement of IEDs in Iraq. It's decentralized, disorganized, and can be defeated by attrition. I never said that, you don't seem to understand how much loose organizations can do despite their limitations. All the leaders need is to have it known that certain types of people are wanted and have them sent to a certain location if they are found at training camps. Reward those training camps/commanders who send the best such people upwards, either materially or spiritually (ie: some BS about helping the cause greatly). It won't be efficient or foolproof but should probably get them more than enough people, a thousand would be more than enough I'd assume.
More importantly lack of central organization helps them in this as there is no idiot on the top to truly force others to follow idiotic schemes, stifle good ones or micromanage things to hell. Worse catching one group doesn't necessarily mean we'll learn anything about larger plans no matter how high up the people we catch were.
Nonetheless I do agree that it is stupid to overestimate these people but at the same time it is even worse to underestimate what they can do. There is a reason those in power grow paranoid of even the smallest dissident groups.
There are not lots of people getting out. Their best and brightest go to Iraq and we KILL them. Dead is dead. You actually think an organization the size of some terrorist groups isn't keeping the best out of combat? You do realize that the best for fighting in Iraq and the best for fighting in the US are two very different types of people, right?
The ones who live . . . are those providing the funding and direction (notice that Osama did not himself volunteer to fly one of those planes). Guess what? Of course the ones in charge don't sacrifice their lives, Bush isn't there fighting either last I checked.
If it comes that they still want to come here ten years from now we will still slaughter them. You mean like we slaughtered the hijackers on 9/11... last I checked we didn't so so well on stopping that one. I mean how do you think they'll attack is in the future.
But their funding will be less, not more. Ten years from now there will be less reliance (with some luck since the Democratic hypocrites don't want to cut back on oil use) on oil and foreign oil in particular. US oil usage is going up all the time as are prices, in 10 years we'll be if lucky using the same amount of oil. You think that in 3 years anyone will even give a damn about limiting foreign oil?
The one step that the Left in our country will not take in defeating terrorism . . . siding with the Right to do it. They succeeded in turning our victory in Vietnam into defeat Lol, Vietnam was a clusterfuck which gained nothing. It'd have gained nothing even if we had held the damn country from uniting.
and will continue push defeat out of the jaws of victory here. Victory? Christ you're insane. We're losing more lives every day, Iraq is essentially in a civil war, oil prices are at a record high, the US is hated world wide, Afghanistan is returning to what it was before the war, Iran is making nukes and we don't even have the forces left to invade them if need be.
If we were not busy draining the blood out of terrorism in Iraq we would be doing it here . . . which strikes me as being VERY BAD for our kids. And where do you think the now massively enlarged, better funded, better organized, battle hardened terrorists will attack once the US leaves Iraq? You're an idiot if you think they haven't been spending all this time finding (and not sending to their deaths) all the terrorists intelligent enough for a mission to the US. Thats not even talking about what will happen in 10 years when all the anti-US fervor and hatred that we've sowed in youths will finally be reaped. Or that we've turned Iraq over to the same religious group than runs Iran.
That is one self-inconsistent list.
'Proper journalistic standards' does not mean conforming to some governmental idea of truth. You're a fool if you think it won't become essentially that and I never said they are the same. I said that they will be the same if the government or any group is given power to define such things. Even good newspapers have plenty of bias after all and they have little to really gain from that bias. The government can simply state that a given story which goes against their view did not follow such standards.
1: Use primary source material. How many times have rumors/opinions been reported as fact (including the notorious preliminary reporting of U.S. presidential election results)? That means the government would have to be able to verify these sources which often are people. Oh wait you don't want that as it goes against your 4th point...oops.
3: You do NOT EVER exclude information because it does not conform to a viewpoint toward which you are prejudiced. You can leave it to only passing mention status, but actually glossing over primary source information that bears on a subject is immoral reporting practice. We're all human, if you think that being called a "journalist" magically makes you capable of inhuman levels of self control then you truly are insane. This isn't going into just how impossible this is to check. Thats not even goign into how by your own reasoning as long as a journalist simply avoids looking at certain sides of a story and thus does not have information on them they are perfectly fine to write an otherwise biased story. The opposite would be to require journalists to look at all sides but then you get into all sorts of lovely practical problems.
4: You accept that as a journalist you are obligated to defend the rights of journalists. Even one journalist folding and revealing sources that could be harmed through retribution is an example of betraying the journalistic standard. This goes against the first and third points, one cannot verify sources if you are not allowed to know who the sources are.
Please brush up on the difference between state controlled media and journalistic standards./quote
And you should brush up on history and what exactly can happen when the government is given power to define something where abuse of such control can greatly benefit those in power.
You don't understand, you want the government to dictate what the truth is. If you think that any of them won't in 10 years force only what they consider to be the "truth" to be shown then you are very much living in a fantasy world. You complain about them controlling the media and yet you want to give them near total control over it.
You do realize that in your Utopian media world all that Russia government would have needed to do is claim that the "truth" is that 50% of news stories are positive. Any arguments against this would be labeled as false and so not be allowed to reach the people. Truth is relative so by definition from the government's point of view (fuck, by most people's point of view) anyone who disagrees with them is lying so they are not telling the truth.
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The US is nowhere near as bad as the UK in these regards. Also do you have any idea how the US government even works, voters are irrelevant in this regard. The bill of rights and constitution do not prevent any law from getting passed. They allow the supreme court to strike down laws that they deem to not conform to them. Then again you seem to be one of those nut cases who thinks there is some grand conspiracy in place so I guess your knowledge of the US government is average for a person of such views.
As someone else said, not if you consider this from the point of view of money. MS doesn't send out broken consoles, they send out consoles refurbished for as little as possible. They make no money off of this and even if they send 3 cheap refurbs to someone it is still cheaper than sending out a single new console. Remember also that when you send in a broken console they can simpyl repair it cheaply and send out the barely working result to someone else who sends in a broken console. So they decided that the PR hit is worth the cost, probably someone said something along the liens of"gamers are idiots" during that meeting.
Then again this isn't exactly evil compared to what other US companies have done such as balancing out deaths caused by their product with increased profits.
Maybe MS simply send not-fully-working-as-new consoles to people whose consoles break, that seems the simplest (not saying the right one) explanation for why this is so.
*shrug* Then add in something like a hard drive password, those are stored on the platter. You can easily make it so that the only way to get around a password is solder out a number of chips and replace them (even a hacked firmware need not do the job depending on exactly how you implement this). At some point why bother, its cheaper to just buy a device than to make one work.
I'm not 75k in school loan debt like my peers.
If you're smart you'd have gone to a good school, good schools generally leave you with little if any loans to pay off. Add in some scholarships or fellowships, after all if you are smart you would have done lots of outside of school research in HS.
offered a job making 65k at 19, benefits, high paced environment, or stay in school and keep paying 20k/yr to learn slowly and be bored
*shrug* If I had wanted to I'd probably be making 110k at 20 with a masters degree but I took it slowly in school and preferred to enjoy life (you can only take so many advanced classes while maintaining sanity). For various reasons college degrees lead to higher salaries so over your lifetime the cost of not having one (except for a small group of people) is much more than the cost of getting one.
I have friends who finished college who still make 50% of what I make (experience is more valuable than school)
Everyone is different, thinking that how your friends do is due to college or your experience simply shows your own (and your friend's) stupidity.
I complain about being spoonfed because I don't need that. I taught myself calculus from my dad's college texts when I was 12. Every time I tried to "take advantage" of opportunities in school I was discouraged from doing my best, from applying myself, from trying to advance faster than "average" students. I am 100% confident that given the chance I could have graduated from college at the age of 18 or 19. Unfortunately every teacher, counselor, professor, department head that I ever spoke to about moving faster, or getting in a more advanced course would discourage and slow me down (even though I always maintained 3.8-4.0GPAs).
So you had shitty luck and no one fought for you, which doesn't mean much really. You don't ask for permission from schools administrators, you do and then tell them to "fuck off" afterwards. Knew calc at 12? You should have taken the AP exam, passed it and then told your school to either provide math at your level or exempt you from math. Add in implied (legal) threats of various sorts and letters to every single person above your school principal and finally you'd get a letter from high enough above agreeing with you that your school has no choice but to concede. Want to take more advanced math? Talk to local colleges and universities until someone lets you sit in on classes (or has a program that lets you). Bored during the summer? Send apps to every single college level research program you can find till one agrees to accept you. Bored in school? Talk to local universities and professors and try to do research with/for them. 1 in 200 may agree but you only need 1, for some reason Indian professors were nicer in this regard.
Granted most of this requires your parents to help you or do it for you but that's life.
Also to paraphrase my dad, the sign of an intelligent person is not how hard they work but how little they work. Work smart not hard in other words.
School is a joke and a waste of time.
First of all if you cannot understand that everyone is different and that school exists for a reason (for the vast majority of people at least) then maybe you should have gone to college just to learn that if nothing else. To add to that, college is in many ways about learning about life not the material. This included making connections and the like which will help you throughout your life.
Not to be too cliche but Will Hunting said it best in the quote about doing some thinking and realizing you spent 250k on an education you could have got for $1.50 in late charges at the library.
Not really, since you've never taken any decent college level courses in your life nor have you ever take advantage of any of the other things offered in school (research being a high one on the list) your opinion is essentially worthless (as its based on nothing). There is
Sure there is, encryption is one example.
I was talking about colleges and universities, lower schools a somewhat different matter. Second of all the problem 95% of the time isn't schools (almost all, even "magnet", middle and high schools are rigid) or the nature of the student but parenting (or rather lack thereof). Now I'm not blaming the parents per say but simply saying that there are tons of options to get out of the hell hole of a system if you are determined enough.
Likewise children should be taught to do the damn work, contrary to what you may believe in real life you all too often need to do bitch work and you can't cry or throw a tantrum or get bored. I remember fondly how in 6th grade after realizing that every math assignment was from the book I simply took a few days and did all the assignments till the end of the year. Doing them all at once on my own was mildly interesting and gave me 2+ months of no math homework. A few friends even got into it and we had a sort of implied competition on who could finish the problems the fastest.
As I have said often in the past: Just because you went to shitty college, took shitty classes and didn't take advantage of the available opportunities doesn't mean everyone is a dumbass like you.
College (and life) is what you make of it, don't complain about being spoon fed everything when you never showed any ability to eat on your own.
Then put god damn bandwidth limits on students in both gb/month and kb/s with an easy to use system to apply for exceptions.
I'd have likely done general network and website work (the later being complex as I have time to do within limits of it being appropriate) for the church while getting to known the pastor and churchgoers. The later being more important in this case than the work itself. Mainly I'd attempt to get to know these people and see if there was anything I could do for them (paid or for small things for free) even if they didn't know it themselves. Most likely however I would have aimed specifically for a charity that is technology in need of help but whose donors/participants are well off themselves. How many other labs are there? My mother volunteered at a hospital lab for a year as she had a degree but no experience (her degree being somewhat out of date). She has since been given a well paying full time position. My point is free work devalues the work. Because you did the tech support it means someone else has a harder time making a business to do the same work for a fee, because he has one less customer. The net effect would be minimal as much of this would be work that would be gone without if you didn't do it for free. Likewise most companies understand that free also means unreliable by nature (you have nothing concrete to lose) so they'd pay someone instead. Thus devaluing the work. I am tech support for all of my family, friends, and take on part time gigs for small businesses. But I have yet to get a job in that. I have applied. The avenues for entry have vanished. *shrug* I can't comment on your specific case or why you didn't get anything, maybe you live in an area without jobs or maybe you're doing something wrong.
On the other hand since I "know computers" I have people asking for help with all types of computer problems all the time and even some people asking me to build a website, etc for their businesses and they want it for free. Sure, for my grandma, parents, or girlfriend I will probably do it but other than that I did not go to college and get an interesting job as a software developer to spend my free time doing stuff that doesn't even interest me for free. For something small I may swap some jobs or accept a case of beer or something like that but for the most part I have told people to not bother asking. God knows how many times my dad got car repairs for essentially a pack of beer or flight ticket discounts as a favor. That of course has nothing to do with the topic at hand as the topic was about people complaining that they don't have enough experience. I simply said that if they want experience then they need to get it money be damned. If you're decent with people (ie: aren't an utter social reject) then you can easily and quickly get a full time position from such work (assuming you do it for the right organization).
For example if you help your local church with computer work (website, networking, etc.) then you can easily let it be known that you are only doing it for free as charity but that you are willing to work for money. Some church goer with a business would then be more likely to hire you then someone who they have no direct way to get references for. Furthermore to some future employers such work would look very well to them even if they don't go that particular church. Granted some careful BSing may need to be done to prevent it from looking like the only reason you're doing this is due to desperation (although saying outright its for experience may not be bad).
Your point? Then people leave IT, shortage causes prices to rise, etc., etc. It all evens out in the end. Likewise companies want experienced people, if they were willing to forgo experience then they'd already be hiring people for much less with no experience. Apparently since this isn't the case they're not and won't change if people do free work. It is for these reasons that I specifically mentioned doing jobs for free which normally wouldn't be able to afford someone.
Plenty of professions have the inexperienced work for free or almost free but pay very well for those who aren't "learning." Lab technicians, helicopter pilots (heck these make YOU pay to get experience), all those with unpaid intern work, etc. If you expect everything to be shoved into your on a silver spoon then don't complain when it isn't.
...please look up what the term "networking" means to everyone except computer geeks. In essence it's just like the term applied to IT except that instead of computers you have people.
BTW, the difference is that a business major has to do it for the rest of their lives, everyone else can stop once they get a job. Networking is a vital skill for any and all jobs, if you're incapable of it then maybe you should spend some time learning it instead of playing video games.
This is all called an investment but apparently some of the people here have so little work ethic its beyond pathetic. Maybe thats the real reason they don't have a job, employers were able to sense their laziness from 100 feet away.
I never meant that the current system is good but rather that if you're complaining about not having a job it's very likely your own fault for being essentially lazy. It's the same in most fields, those who complain the most are the ones who have time to complain because they're not out there getting the experience/skills to get a job with.
Thats true, but for every one that does that there's probably several others that just choose another field. This is sort of what the article hints too. A lot of IT fields require constant updating of skills to remain competitive, above and beyond getting a degree and paying your dues to get that first bit of experience.
That's the way it is in most fields, if you don't adapt then you'll wind up working in fast food at 50 (when the company fires you for being too old and your skills are too limited to find other employment).
I can't fault a lot of people for going into plumbing or something instead. The money is good, the work is steady and you don't have to chase certifications all day in addition to your regular job responsibilities. A toilet is pretty much a toilet. No disrespect to plumbers, but they mostly aren't trying to master an ever changing skillset. (at least, I don't think so?)
Why chase certifications? Once you get experience then certs only matter at places where you probably wouldn't want to be working anyway. IT can also get you 150-200k+ jobs after a while which as a plumber you probably won't get.
Personally I recommend Statistics. See no one wants to do it for some reason yet it has a ton of programming in it, moderately easy classes, getting into a good program is relatively easy and it pays well.
That doesn't mean people can't, won't or shouldn't do IT...it just means a lot of people are going to do the math and decide that it doesn't add up.
Which may or may not be a bad thing, the 90s had way too many people go into IT who never should have.
Mod parent up. .net is apparently a decent framework so you can't exactly complain too much about it on technical grounds.
Exactly, you work with what you can. If you can't find any work then you work for free to get experience. You learn related and specialized skills in your free time. Hell, start an OSS project if nothing else for experience alone although there are probably better options.
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Or instead of sitting on your backside waiting 9 months for a job you could go an get experience. I don't mean a job, I mean experience. Volunteer, network, talk to local companies, work with local companies, do work for local charities, etc. In addition to that learn new skills, if you can't be a programmer see if there are any related or more specialized fields open.
If you can't put actual work or be even minimally creative in finding a job then its only your fault that you don't have one.
It's not like Open Source software always works together and it probably has more quirks than an equivalent amount of hardware (remember software usually has less selection than hardware does for a given task).
More importantly lack of central organization helps them in this as there is no idiot on the top to truly force others to follow idiotic schemes, stifle good ones or micromanage things to hell. Worse catching one group doesn't necessarily mean we'll learn anything about larger plans no matter how high up the people we catch were.
Nonetheless I do agree that it is stupid to overestimate these people but at the same time it is even worse to underestimate what they can do. There is a reason those in power grow paranoid of even the smallest dissident groups.
And you should brush up on history and what exactly can happen when the government is given power to define something where abuse of such control can greatly benefit those in power.
You don't understand, you want the government to dictate what the truth is. If you think that any of them won't in 10 years force only what they consider to be the "truth" to be shown then you are very much living in a fantasy world. You complain about them controlling the media and yet you want to give them near total control over it.
You do realize that in your Utopian media world all that Russia government would have needed to do is claim that the "truth" is that 50% of news stories are positive. Any arguments against this would be labeled as false and so not be allowed to reach the people. Truth is relative so by definition from the government's point of view (fuck, by most people's point of view) anyone who disagrees with them is lying so they are not telling the truth.