I was playing plenty of modern games, given I couldnt do Crysis at any real entertaining level, but I could play most of the games on the shelves easily with my 6800, I guess I should have mentioned the 6800 was modded a bit. But if I am not looking for 100+fps I could easily have upgraded my PC for sub $200 and I would still be under the $650 mark. In fact I did when my mobo fried just the other day, bought an X2 with 2GB Ram and an 8800. That lets me fly just fine.
My Gaming PC, recently retired to running media center...athlon2800 overclocked, NVIDIA6800, NF7-Sv2 MOBO, 80GB hard drive, 2GB ram....have had it for well more than two years and would play any game on the market. You can put that system together for under $200 now adays easy.
Honestly, you would think these dont exist when you look at the state of things and how no one seems to regard them...This is not flame bait, how many of you sysadmins out there have had difficulty with people not following RFCs and their e-mail rejecting or being rejected, piss poor networks built, or just flat out disregard for them. The creators did a wonderful thing, makes my life easy, but it is almost like an idealistic goal that will never be reached because there are too many fake admins out there. Hell I'm lucky when I walk into a door at a job that anyone has even heard of the term RFC.
Everything in moderation. I am a different case for instance, i suffer from mild ADD and the caffine intake is a natural way to control my focus. When I drink caffine I get much calmer and my thoughts are less scattered. But it also means I have to be a little more deliberate in drinking...a cup every couple hours does great things. Now if it is a crazy day and lots of things are going on I might be ok, but a good cup allows me to do all that nasty paperwork...
argued against something I never even wrote Welcome to/. If someone isn't misunderstanding you then you must not be posting anything worthwhile;)
like claiming I was arguing high GPAs means better workers
Since that was not your intent then I withdraw any allegation against that part of your argument and apologize.
But you did make the assertion that lower GPAs can equate mediocre workers. Which can easily be mistaken as the superset not mentioned includes a higher number of non-mediocre workers. That would be a fair assumption. It could be wrong as your intent was, as I understand it, to say that companies that would shop around for students who did not stand out were looking for complacent individuals.
But you should remember that the crowd you are speaking to are just waiting for an argument so you have to be super clear;)
You also did say that you hired new grads so part of your job description could be inferred as to be a hiring manager. But I was not necessarily saying that you were a dime a dozen, but rather if you fit the aforementioned profile you would be one of the dime a dozen hiring managers, but as I was being fecicious I had assumed you were not.
still managed to get a decent GPA. Exactly they got a decent GPA, but you and I both know there is sacrifice that comes with the higher GPAs the ones who can do it all are the exceptionally gifted individuals or need to be going to a more rigorous school. You cant do everything and succeed at everything, you have to make sacrifices in some area of your life, some people have to make less sacrifices some have to make more.
You know, that fact that you call them "IT companies" Sorry it was late here when I wrote it so I apologize for not being accurate with my description of companies I have worked for. I meant to say IT departments. And no, I don't work in the Valley, I prefer small startups and companies where you get by on merit. I did the whole corporate thing, hell even the gov't thing, there is where mediocre is DEFINED.
My contention was that mediocre GPA individuals are often exceptionally gifted employees. Many kids in the last 13 years that I have mentioned fell through the academic cracks because they either had ADD, were bad test takers, or were too busy with other projects. I have been in the academic field, my wife was a prof for 5 years at one of the top 100 colleges in the nation, #1 in our region. She herself is a 4.0 student, just one of those people who can do it all, but her type is RARE. A company should grab hold of people like that. But one thing we have found. GPA means jack in ability. It means you can do exactly what you are told and can memorize. That is a good corporate employee there. GPA should never be taken into consideration in a non-academic job. But if it is, you should use it to get an idea of the kind of individual there, not equate a low score with a mediocre employee.
Never said it was. I assume you were too busy thinking outside the box in college to learn basic reading comprehension. Now was that really necessary? Why do people always resort to attempting to insult grammar rules when they are frustrated?
Startups and small companies (or the occasional large tech company trying to preseve its startup roots) need people who can think beyond what everyone else has already been doing and create something new
Then having worked in the industry hiring for 15 years you should know that the individuals that didnt memorize everything in front of their faces are the innovative ones. Anyone can get a 4.0 in school the past 13 years or so, you just have to keep your head down and crank out the code the profs expect. The guys thinking outside the box are the ones who have a musical ability on the side, or some creative talent they foster, not just passing tests. Having worked at a variety of IT companies over the last decade I have run into all types, great coders, bad coders, great engineers, bad engineers. GPA had nothing to do with ability nor did any HR department I worked at hire based on GPA. We like a coder or engineer who has creative hobbies, like music, or art. If you have been hiring grads for 15 years you would know this or you are just another generic hiring manager, dime a dozen.
+5 insightful? Honestly? GPA means jack and shit in the business world. I have applied to many many jobs and there hasnt been one that has asked for my GPA. What a crock. I have even heard it the other way around, many businesses would look down on a 3.8+ GPA for fear that the individual wouldn't be able to relate.
Seriously, that GPA talk is for academics, if you plan on moving on in your schooling then you need to pay close attention to those things. However, for those of us who care not to go to grad school. A 2.8+ will do you far more than a 3.5 would. Get your nose out of the books, half those details will be forgotten in a year or less. Hell, sit a 2.7 GPA next to a 4.0 in 3 years and I bet there is little difference between the two other than the 2.7 is gonna be a better presented individual. Instead of studying the extra 4 hours for that test, go down to the local pub, buy a round of drinks for the MBAs and shoot the shit, you will do FAR more for your career than the 'A' will.
GPA, pschaw...if I am asking for a GPA you don't wanna work for me.
Here on/. you are gonna get a lot of OSS geek replies. If that fits your model it may work. But I would do the following:
1. Call a vendor like dell, hp, or PC Connection and have them look up your licensing, they are really good at this. They can tell you exactly what has been purchased at your business.
2. Figure up what you need for licensing, bare minimum, Antivirus, some text editor, some spreadsheet editor, and OS.
3. Get no less than 3 bids on the software PO.
4. Present the bids alongside a OSS solution, a real OSS solution, don't just say free look at TCO. Open office is wonderful for many businesses though.
5. Go with what the CFO says, you may not like it, but at least you presented a good set of solutions. You don't have to be shady if you don't want to but CYA is part of IT. You dont have to like paperwork but you had better do it.
ya I am a Pandora guy myself. People in these threads seem to think I am not able to find music or that I have some kind of eclectic taste. I find music, it is just harder now than it used to be. I gave up on listening to traditional radio a while ago (there are only so many creed and jack Johnson songs one can hear). But even so, it could be that I am not in a college culture anymore, or that I am hitting that stubborn part of life where my brain is more resistant to change. But I would love a service, outside of ITunes that allowed me to browse music and listen to stuff. I like to own the CDs album art and all but I do download when I know what I want.
pretty interesting site, I will have to look at it more when I have time. THe problem is, it used to be that you could flip on the radio and hear a bunch of good stuff. But it just seems more and more to be nothing new or interesting. It doesn't have to be cutting edge but it has been a long time since I flipped on the radio and thought...hey I really like that song or sound, im gonna go buy their album. Usually I stumble across an individual such as yourself who shows me some little known artist or area and I am satisfied. But no mainstream media would ever point me to it.
Oh I look, im not saying there are not great artists out there but there is a TON of crap to cut through to get to it. Hell i am only 29 years old, not some 40 something wishing for the glory days. But with the hip hop commercialized crap taking over the airwaves it is hard to hear the bands that still play good music. I find that you can pick a bar with an cover band playing that night and it is better than 75% of the stuff you hear on the radio...
Nah I don't mind DRM, the way the music industry has handled it is a symptom of the bigger issue. The music industry has made it so damn hard to actually use the files, DRM or no, and so difficult to get to that there is a reason people pop over to places like limewire and torrents. They are simple and I get to use the music how I want. This goes for streaming like pandora, I can put that on a hundred differnet devices without knowing anything about tech.
But no you are not alone in your senitment about today's music. I like a variety of music but I havent bought a CD or downloaded music in a long time, with the exception of the CDs I pick up from local starving artists. Maybe I am getting old or something but the music today is just commercialized crap...hell I will deal with commercialized, but the crap....well crap is crap.
For pete's sake, now learn from it you idiots. People want to download music, people want it easily pushed to their media devices. What we DON'T want, not just geeks and the like, EVERYONE wants ease of use. Drop in CD sales shows this, we just want to listen to music. No fighting ITunes DRM to play on other devices, no tricky hacks, specialized software, rootkits and the like. We just want to listen to music and we will go the path of least resistance. Now that some of the major providers are going DRMless I would bet that you see music sales go up.
Now your drop in overall sales is more likey due to the shoddy music that is out on the market today as compared to 5-10 years ago but that is just the music cycle.
Throw some sand on the floor (it is conductive after all and the racks are enclosed anyways right?), Relax dress attire to allow for sandals and shorts (not too much relaxing, as IT personel and skimpy clothing rarely mix), and you will attract more IT personnel due to the tropic weather in your location!
The dropout rate is because CS is a very difficult major. It is also misunderstood by 90% of the general populace as an IT degree. I like to think of CS as the Philosophy degree of computing. Or Biology to a MD. Sure it is not where you will get any job skills. It will augment your job skills IMMENSELY, but it is up to you to acquire those skills.
Sorry inside joke, I should know better. The picture in our literature, (and on wiki for that matter), makes him look like a girl...that coupled with the name Brook...
Nothing unless you look at future needs while trying to approximate within a certain degree of certainty the outcome based on previous data sets...sounds familiar....what was that chick's name...Brook Taylor?
Man I need to start copying and pasting my response to this question. If the kid wanted to take the easy route, yes, VoTech is the way to go. However, I have made a rather sucessful carreer as a network/system admin with a BS in CS. Sure I dont work on microcontrollers and I cant tell you how to write C++ anymore. But the vision and reasoning skills I received by getting a BSCS gives me a huge advantage. (relevant books in parenthesis) I can relate to any area of IT easily, I can read code smoothly (Essentials of programming languages), I can troubleshoot (File structures,algorithms and analysis), predict future needs (numerical analysis), adapt easily to different OS's (Applied Operating system Concepts), and can relate socially (many late nights at the bar).
Yes CS CAN be IT, is there an easier way to do it? Oh hell ya. But you miss out on so much. Vo-tech is outdated in 5 years...BSCS well that hasnt changed in what...40-50 years?
Slashdot Mirror
I was playing plenty of modern games, given I couldnt do Crysis at any real entertaining level, but I could play most of the games on the shelves easily with my 6800, I guess I should have mentioned the 6800 was modded a bit. But if I am not looking for 100+fps I could easily have upgraded my PC for sub $200 and I would still be under the $650 mark. In fact I did when my mobo fried just the other day, bought an X2 with 2GB Ram and an 8800. That lets me fly just fine.
Cant believe I got flamebait on that one. I thought it was funny as hell. Obv, the person who modded me didn't know perl.
least 670 if not more on your PC.
My Gaming PC, recently retired to running media center...athlon2800 overclocked, NVIDIA6800, NF7-Sv2 MOBO, 80GB hard drive, 2GB ram....have had it for well more than two years and would play any game on the market. You can put that system together for under $200 now adays easy.
Ya, CLI is GREAT if you know the syntax. You sound like a perl programmer...
Honestly, you would think these dont exist when you look at the state of things and how no one seems to regard them...This is not flame bait, how many of you sysadmins out there have had difficulty with people not following RFCs and their e-mail rejecting or being rejected, piss poor networks built, or just flat out disregard for them. The creators did a wonderful thing, makes my life easy, but it is almost like an idealistic goal that will never be reached because there are too many fake admins out there. Hell I'm lucky when I walk into a door at a job that anyone has even heard of the term RFC.
Everything in moderation. I am a different case for instance, i suffer from mild ADD and the caffine intake is a natural way to control my focus. When I drink caffine I get much calmer and my thoughts are less scattered. But it also means I have to be a little more deliberate in drinking...a cup every couple hours does great things. Now if it is a crazy day and lots of things are going on I might be ok, but a good cup allows me to do all that nasty paperwork...
Then google will play fair, im sure these news agencies will miss being able to use google's services for free when researching...
like claiming I was arguing high GPAs means better workers
Since that was not your intent then I withdraw any allegation against that part of your argument and apologize.
But you did make the assertion that lower GPAs can equate mediocre workers. Which can easily be mistaken as the superset not mentioned includes a higher number of non-mediocre workers. That would be a fair assumption. It could be wrong as your intent was, as I understand it, to say that companies that would shop around for students who did not stand out were looking for complacent individuals.
But you should remember that the crowd you are speaking to are just waiting for an argument so you have to be super clear ;)
You also did say that you hired new grads so part of your job description could be inferred as to be a hiring manager. But I was not necessarily saying that you were a dime a dozen, but rather if you fit the aforementioned profile you would be one of the dime a dozen hiring managers, but as I was being fecicious I had assumed you were not.
You know, that fact that you call them "IT companies" Sorry it was late here when I wrote it so I apologize for not being accurate with my description of companies I have worked for. I meant to say IT departments. And no, I don't work in the Valley, I prefer small startups and companies where you get by on merit. I did the whole corporate thing, hell even the gov't thing, there is where mediocre is DEFINED.
My contention was that mediocre GPA individuals are often exceptionally gifted employees. Many kids in the last 13 years that I have mentioned fell through the academic cracks because they either had ADD, were bad test takers, or were too busy with other projects. I have been in the academic field, my wife was a prof for 5 years at one of the top 100 colleges in the nation, #1 in our region. She herself is a 4.0 student, just one of those people who can do it all, but her type is RARE. A company should grab hold of people like that. But one thing we have found. GPA means jack in ability. It means you can do exactly what you are told and can memorize. That is a good corporate employee there. GPA should never be taken into consideration in a non-academic job. But if it is, you should use it to get an idea of the kind of individual there, not equate a low score with a mediocre employee.
Never said it was. I assume you were too busy thinking outside the box in college to learn basic reading comprehension. Now was that really necessary? Why do people always resort to attempting to insult grammar rules when they are frustrated?
There fixed that for you.
Then having worked in the industry hiring for 15 years you should know that the individuals that didnt memorize everything in front of their faces are the innovative ones. Anyone can get a 4.0 in school the past 13 years or so, you just have to keep your head down and crank out the code the profs expect. The guys thinking outside the box are the ones who have a musical ability on the side, or some creative talent they foster, not just passing tests. Having worked at a variety of IT companies over the last decade I have run into all types, great coders, bad coders, great engineers, bad engineers. GPA had nothing to do with ability nor did any HR department I worked at hire based on GPA. We like a coder or engineer who has creative hobbies, like music, or art. If you have been hiring grads for 15 years you would know this or you are just another generic hiring manager, dime a dozen.
Seriously, that GPA talk is for academics, if you plan on moving on in your schooling then you need to pay close attention to those things. However, for those of us who care not to go to grad school. A 2.8+ will do you far more than a 3.5 would. Get your nose out of the books, half those details will be forgotten in a year or less. Hell, sit a 2.7 GPA next to a 4.0 in 3 years and I bet there is little difference between the two other than the 2.7 is gonna be a better presented individual. Instead of studying the extra 4 hours for that test, go down to the local pub, buy a round of drinks for the MBAs and shoot the shit, you will do FAR more for your career than the 'A' will.
GPA, pschaw...if I am asking for a GPA you don't wanna work for me.
1. Call a vendor like dell, hp, or PC Connection and have them look up your licensing, they are really good at this. They can tell you exactly what has been purchased at your business.
2. Figure up what you need for licensing, bare minimum, Antivirus, some text editor, some spreadsheet editor, and OS.
3. Get no less than 3 bids on the software PO.
4. Present the bids alongside a OSS solution, a real OSS solution, don't just say free look at TCO. Open office is wonderful for many businesses though.
5. Go with what the CFO says, you may not like it, but at least you presented a good set of solutions. You don't have to be shady if you don't want to but CYA is part of IT. You dont have to like paperwork but you had better do it.
ya I am a Pandora guy myself. People in these threads seem to think I am not able to find music or that I have some kind of eclectic taste. I find music, it is just harder now than it used to be. I gave up on listening to traditional radio a while ago (there are only so many creed and jack Johnson songs one can hear). But even so, it could be that I am not in a college culture anymore, or that I am hitting that stubborn part of life where my brain is more resistant to change. But I would love a service, outside of ITunes that allowed me to browse music and listen to stuff. I like to own the CDs album art and all but I do download when I know what I want.
pretty interesting site, I will have to look at it more when I have time. THe problem is, it used to be that you could flip on the radio and hear a bunch of good stuff. But it just seems more and more to be nothing new or interesting. It doesn't have to be cutting edge but it has been a long time since I flipped on the radio and thought...hey I really like that song or sound, im gonna go buy their album. Usually I stumble across an individual such as yourself who shows me some little known artist or area and I am satisfied. But no mainstream media would ever point me to it.
Oh I look, im not saying there are not great artists out there but there is a TON of crap to cut through to get to it. Hell i am only 29 years old, not some 40 something wishing for the glory days. But with the hip hop commercialized crap taking over the airwaves it is hard to hear the bands that still play good music. I find that you can pick a bar with an cover band playing that night and it is better than 75% of the stuff you hear on the radio...
But no you are not alone in your senitment about today's music. I like a variety of music but I havent bought a CD or downloaded music in a long time, with the exception of the CDs I pick up from local starving artists. Maybe I am getting old or something but the music today is just commercialized crap...hell I will deal with commercialized, but the crap....well crap is crap.
Precisely, thus as I said, "music that is out on the market". Best music I have found the last 5 years? Some indi rock or a lone guitarist in a bar...
Now your drop in overall sales is more likey due to the shoddy music that is out on the market today as compared to 5-10 years ago but that is just the music cycle.
I was gonna say one more measure of physical security...
Throw some sand on the floor (it is conductive after all and the racks are enclosed anyways right?), Relax dress attire to allow for sandals and shorts (not too much relaxing, as IT personel and skimpy clothing rarely mix), and you will attract more IT personnel due to the tropic weather in your location!
The dropout rate is because CS is a very difficult major. It is also misunderstood by 90% of the general populace as an IT degree. I like to think of CS as the Philosophy degree of computing. Or Biology to a MD. Sure it is not where you will get any job skills. It will augment your job skills IMMENSELY, but it is up to you to acquire those skills.
Sorry inside joke, I should know better. The picture in our literature, (and on wiki for that matter), makes him look like a girl...that coupled with the name Brook...
Nothing unless you look at future needs while trying to approximate within a certain degree of certainty the outcome based on previous data sets...sounds familiar....what was that chick's name...Brook Taylor?
Yes CS CAN be IT, is there an easier way to do it? Oh hell ya. But you miss out on so much. Vo-tech is outdated in 5 years...BSCS well that hasnt changed in what...40-50 years?