I'm terribly afraid that the high-order bit ingrained in the human psyche is not liberty and fulfillment in life, but the assurance of safety at virtually any cost. Ask the average American if they would, if given the chance, immediately shut down all illegal surveillance by the NSA, and thereby increase their (vanishingly small) chances of dying in a terrorist attack by 1%. Who is going to check the box labelled, "increase my chances of dying" or "increase the chances of a pedophile molesting my kid"? Ratcheting up surveillance, if done right, doesn't immediately make life noticeably less comfortable. That's all you need to do to keep the majority from taking action.
Having lived in China for a year, I'm surprised at a few things. First, every day life feels pretty much free. Sure, you can't say whatever you want online, and don't have to look very far to find corruption and oppression that makes your blood boil. But this can be largely ignored and most people just go about their lives and don't spend too much energy brooding about how unfair everything is (and damn is it unfair). Plus I find that I'm happier the less political news I read, but that was true in the US too.
Second, I'm surprised at the degree to which people worship stability and safety and prosperity. You hear stories of (rich) people paying ridiculous amounts of money to feng shui practitioners to make sure their house has the best feng shui. People going to random temples to pray/burn incense/make donations, even though they don't believe in Buddhism. The degree to which people eschew "dangerous" activities like hiking (and then ride scooters the wrong way down the street without wearing helmets, nobody wears helmets here). The way people constantly say "careful!" or how pregnant women are treated like glass. The whole obsession with Chinese medicine and astrology and other pseudoscientific ways of supposedly gaining an edge over the natural world. But nauseatingly widespread superstition, an ill in its own right, isn't the point here: look past it to see that it's overwhelmingly employed in the protection of a person and his family, above all else.
Third, people, even some educated people who know about all the stuff you're not supposed to know here, sometimes partially buy the government line that it's only doing what is necessary for the protection and safety of society. This scares the hell out of me. It's true that all-out civil war would have a terrifyingly high human cost, so the government should try to avoid that. But as long as people buy the line about safety then liberty will continue to diminish with no end in sight.
It's true that Chinese, on average, seem to desire stability and safety more than westerners. But though the degree is different, the same tendencies are present in the west, and the politicians are using the same arguments. The way the UK and US governments have responded to Snowden is terribly chilling.
So, what can we hope for to reinvent America? A mass movement by the increasingly frustrated and desperate middle and lower classes? A few more Edward Snowdens to keep the heat on? I worry that it's already too late. Would the American Revolution still have gotten started if life under British rule didn't suck so much?
What we're lacking, then, is a powerful and widely understood answer to the question, "What is the danger of more surveillance?" Why does the line "only the criminals have something to fear" not immediately sound like propaganda to everyone in America?
I just ordered Beta 2 a month ago (http://www.getthebetas.com/ ), and I've fallen in love with it. It's like Microsoft was joking when they released previous versions of VS. For C/C++, you can't beat it. Granted, I've never been an Emacs or vi person, but IntelliSense is vastly improved with this edition and will save you quite a few keystrokes.
It also contains the best XML editor I've ever used (Earlier this year I was working on an XML-heavy project, so I tried about 10 different ones).
The purpose of internships is for the interns to learn something working in a real world environment. They may only have the few skills they learned while in college and certainly aren't worth being paid much (as a rule of thumb).
Are you kidding me? Any other software company would get reamed here for paying their interns substandard wages. But if Google does it, it's not really exploitation.
Finally, IBM hires about twice as many interns per year as Microsoft (and they are actually paid pretty decently).
Then why did IBM tell me there weren't really any internship slots open, only co-ops, while I got an internship at Microsoft? And you can't possibly be implying that Microsoft doesn't pay decently.
I'm also an intern at MS, and it's great. People are really open, working hours are flexible. You're basically treated like a full-time employee (except for a few extra perks). I even found time to code outside of work.
Given that this is Slashdot, this comment is probably falling on deaf ears... but seriously, I've had a great summer.
IIRC, Java on MS is broken because of Sun's lawsuit preventing MS from bundling their version of the Java VM with Windows. Would MS then go and bundle Sun's VM, after getting sued by them?
So what someone needs to due [sic] is sue.
I don't understand how someone could sue MS for not supporting OpenGL. That's like asking someone to sue Apple because iTMS doesn't support Ogg Vorbis, the "industry standard for audio" (at least, that was the case when I tried it), or sue WinZip because their archiver doesn't support RAR or bz2 archives. Granted, OpenGL is more of a standard in an arena with fewer players, but the analogy still holds.
Like previous posters said, graphics card manufacturers will write their own drivers anyway.
This entire story is anti-Microsoft FUD about a complete non-issue.
<rant>
What is with all the anti-MS FUD recently? Slashdot admins posted an article that incorrectly implicated the removal of Monad from Vista due to proof-of-concept viruses (the article has since been quietly corrected). A similar story appears here. And we're supposed to boycott IE7 because it's not perfectly standards-compliant.
Congratulations to all of those who have wholeheartedly jumped on the anti-MS bandwagon. Unwarranted criticism for its own sake is the easiest thing in the world.
</rant>
2) Don't Get a degree to increase your "marketability", unless it increases your "marketability" in a field that you would want a job in. In which case, see (1).
I mostly agree. I'm a junior at the University of Michigan. I started with pure physics, then added CS because I've always liked programming. Since then, my interest in physics has waned -- I've considered dropping my major several times -- but professors have encouraged me to stick with it, so I have. I've found physics to be more difficult intellectually than CS.
Physics and CS go well together. You can't really be a physicist anymore without having some programming skills. And if you want to do any kind of physical simulation, whether with fluids or rigid bodies or traffic or galaxies, then you'll need expertise in both areas.
About half those with a BS in physics go into industry (as opposed to continuing their education), many to jobs unrelated to physics. If you have a degree in physics, employers see that you know how to solve problems well.
It's paying off for me, as I currently have one internship offer and am following two more tracks for other internships. They're at good companies (though at least one has been called evil here). Everyone I talked to at the career fair a while back remarked about my physics major.
If you can't find another major you like, then just dig in and kick butt with CS. Take a course on object-oriented programming that covers design patterns, and do lots of work on cool projects in your free time.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm terribly afraid that the high-order bit ingrained in the human psyche is not liberty and fulfillment in life, but the assurance of safety at virtually any cost. Ask the average American if they would, if given the chance, immediately shut down all illegal surveillance by the NSA, and thereby increase their (vanishingly small) chances of dying in a terrorist attack by 1%. Who is going to check the box labelled, "increase my chances of dying" or "increase the chances of a pedophile molesting my kid"? Ratcheting up surveillance, if done right, doesn't immediately make life noticeably less comfortable. That's all you need to do to keep the majority from taking action.
Having lived in China for a year, I'm surprised at a few things. First, every day life feels pretty much free. Sure, you can't say whatever you want online, and don't have to look very far to find corruption and oppression that makes your blood boil. But this can be largely ignored and most people just go about their lives and don't spend too much energy brooding about how unfair everything is (and damn is it unfair). Plus I find that I'm happier the less political news I read, but that was true in the US too.
Second, I'm surprised at the degree to which people worship stability and safety and prosperity. You hear stories of (rich) people paying ridiculous amounts of money to feng shui practitioners to make sure their house has the best feng shui. People going to random temples to pray/burn incense/make donations, even though they don't believe in Buddhism. The degree to which people eschew "dangerous" activities like hiking (and then ride scooters the wrong way down the street without wearing helmets, nobody wears helmets here). The way people constantly say "careful!" or how pregnant women are treated like glass. The whole obsession with Chinese medicine and astrology and other pseudoscientific ways of supposedly gaining an edge over the natural world. But nauseatingly widespread superstition, an ill in its own right, isn't the point here: look past it to see that it's overwhelmingly employed in the protection of a person and his family, above all else.
Third, people, even some educated people who know about all the stuff you're not supposed to know here, sometimes partially buy the government line that it's only doing what is necessary for the protection and safety of society. This scares the hell out of me. It's true that all-out civil war would have a terrifyingly high human cost, so the government should try to avoid that. But as long as people buy the line about safety then liberty will continue to diminish with no end in sight.
It's true that Chinese, on average, seem to desire stability and safety more than westerners. But though the degree is different, the same tendencies are present in the west, and the politicians are using the same arguments. The way the UK and US governments have responded to Snowden is terribly chilling.
So, what can we hope for to reinvent America? A mass movement by the increasingly frustrated and desperate middle and lower classes? A few more Edward Snowdens to keep the heat on? I worry that it's already too late. Would the American Revolution still have gotten started if life under British rule didn't suck so much?
What we're lacking, then, is a powerful and widely understood answer to the question, "What is the danger of more surveillance?" Why does the line "only the criminals have something to fear" not immediately sound like propaganda to everyone in America?
I just ordered Beta 2 a month ago (http://www.getthebetas.com/ ), and I've fallen in love with it. It's like Microsoft was joking when they released previous versions of VS. For C/C++, you can't beat it. Granted, I've never been an Emacs or vi person, but IntelliSense is vastly improved with this edition and will save you quite a few keystrokes.
It also contains the best XML editor I've ever used (Earlier this year I was working on an XML-heavy project, so I tried about 10 different ones).
Then why did IBM tell me there weren't really any internship slots open, only co-ops, while I got an internship at Microsoft? And you can't possibly be implying that Microsoft doesn't pay decently.
Give me a break.
I'm also an intern at MS, and it's great. People are really open, working hours are flexible. You're basically treated like a full-time employee (except for a few extra perks). I even found time to code outside of work.
Given that this is Slashdot, this comment is probably falling on deaf ears... but seriously, I've had a great summer.
Like previous posters said, graphics card manufacturers will write their own drivers anyway. <rant>
What is with all the anti-MS FUD recently? Slashdot admins posted an article that incorrectly implicated the removal of Monad from Vista due to proof-of-concept viruses (the article has since been quietly corrected). A similar story appears here. And we're supposed to boycott IE7 because it's not perfectly standards-compliant.
Congratulations to all of those who have wholeheartedly jumped on the anti-MS bandwagon. Unwarranted criticism for its own sake is the easiest thing in the world.
</rant>
1) Get a degree in a field that interests you.
2) Don't Get a degree to increase your "marketability", unless it increases your "marketability" in a field that you would want a job in. In which case, see (1).
I mostly agree. I'm a junior at the University of Michigan. I started with pure physics, then added CS because I've always liked programming. Since then, my interest in physics has waned -- I've considered dropping my major several times -- but professors have encouraged me to stick with it, so I have. I've found physics to be more difficult intellectually than CS.
Physics and CS go well together. You can't really be a physicist anymore without having some programming skills. And if you want to do any kind of physical simulation, whether with fluids or rigid bodies or traffic or galaxies, then you'll need expertise in both areas.
About half those with a BS in physics go into industry (as opposed to continuing their education), many to jobs unrelated to physics. If you have a degree in physics, employers see that you know how to solve problems well.
It's paying off for me, as I currently have one internship offer and am following two more tracks for other internships. They're at good companies (though at least one has been called evil here). Everyone I talked to at the career fair a while back remarked about my physics major.
If you can't find another major you like, then just dig in and kick butt with CS. Take a course on object-oriented programming that covers design patterns, and do lots of work on cool projects in your free time.