Reason is right. PCs (desktop) are far cheaper than Mac. As a general rule of thumb, Mac cost upwards of 33% of higher.
Dell, Sony, are just some manufacters; they by no means represent the PC market; herein lay the difference. Mac on the otherhand does represent the PC market.
about:config is the worst method of changing preferences that I have ever seen.
about:config is evidence of feature creep, and hence evidence of Firefox turning into the Mozilla browser.
Past versions of Firefox have added additional features such as image resizing. And guess, what, users are not given the ability to disable this; they must enter into the cryptic about:config.
I hope this proposal fails. They probably know it will fail but this is a "make work" project -- just a method of researchers to spend grants so that they will get further grants like governments do at end of fiscal.
When they talk about "The internet" they mean layers 4 and 5: IP and TCP (or TCP/IP). [Points about the internet] - The author of that article knows nothing about the internet; not once did he mention any of the layers.
[[Important]] Just because the internet is old does not mean that it is by any means bad; in fact, for most users, this "older version" is better.
- IP was formalized back in the 1980s; it was designed back when memory was expensive; it was designed when every bit and byte counted. A new "version" of the internet would in fact be much slower than the current IPV4. IPV6 for example has more over head than IPV4.
The paper may seem a little complex; however, realize that the purpose of IP is for simply routing messages so that one machine on the internet can reach another
-- Final comments -- The only service which the "old" internet does not offer is functionality for quality of service (technically it does, but those bits are not used).
And this is a good thing. No quality of service prevents ISPs from gouging their users. How would you like it if your ISP implemented IPV6 and then said "Oh, and if you want your latency below 200ms that will be an extra $20/month).
That is the type of functionality they are looking to add into the "new internet". Anything else can just be built ontop of TCP.
---
Also, to clarify the IP running out of addresses issue: TCP/IP supports 4 billion address. Only 1 or 2 are in use. Why is there a shortage problem you ask? Because of the method in which IP addresses are assigned. IP addresses are assigned in classes of A, B, and C (do further research for understanding this).
There are many other dangers in society; it is unfortunate that a religious group would choose to pick pornography (as they usually) do, rather than more serious problems. What about all of the violent video games?
So let us seriously address this issue: What exactly is porn? It is but graphical depictions of people having sex where there is no emotional relationship involved. Realize that the internet has not brought about porn nor invented it; porn has been around since the beginning of civilization (eg the Roman empire, do a wikipedia search on it).
Porn can be dangerous yes, and addictive (in the sense of being a "slave to sin" which is quite serious);however, protecting one from viewing porn is NOT how you protect your children.
Any teenager who is raised and instilled/taught proper morals, ethics, and values (whether they be religious or not) will be completely unaffected by porn; when they come across it (which they eventually will) they might have sympathy for the harlots involved.
Teaching the ability to see something for what it is, and responsibly deciding "this is bad" will empower one to successful navigate EVERY obstacle in life. It's called wisdom. Being taught how to think wisely is a difficult thing, and it's hard to describe. We can approach the topic however by stating that wisdom cannot be taught by any means through censorship nor ignorance.
---
The XBox 360, PS2, cellphones, and many more devices also have internet connectivity. I don't see that religious group getting all retarded about those technologies.
Truth is, the Internet is ubiquitous.
There is a lot you can do to get a head start. Try making a website. Dabble with that technology. Go from simple html to more advanced technologies such as servlets and finally database connectivity.
This will allow you to learn the technology and to be creative. if you were to design a nice site which received a few thousand hits per day, you'd make some money and have somthing to place on your resume.
Note that business drives technology, not the other way around. The technology itself albeit it interesting is not where the money lies.
Come up with an idea, and then learn the technology necessary to implement that idea. Do not simply learn C/C++ just for the purpose of learning the language itself; you will find that will be painstakingly slow, and you'll lose focus of the bigger picture let alone being stuck writing stupid hello world programs.
I would also not recommend against doing any internships not until you are midway in college and are looking for work experience. Companies are not in business to teach -- and putting yourself in the position of doing an internship when you are "completely green" -- well they will exploit you.
But yeah when you do internships. Try to work alongside with programmers, programmer/analysts, and system analysts. Stay away from testers and help desk.
For companies, scout around. Be careful for what you wish for. Some companies like google are excellent ones to work for. Other companies such as Microsoft and EA are terrible; they will essentially turn you into a white collar slave and try to suck your life from you by forcing you to work 50+ hours per week. In fact there was/is a class action lawsuit against EA by its employees for the terrible working conditions.
Yeah I will never buy an iTunes song simply because 1. The song is in DRM -- that means I have to remember my login/password to play it, plus it will use more battery power on my ipod. 2. The quality of itunes songs literally sucks. I believe they are 128k -- compare that against any "unlegit" mp3 on the web, which are usually between 192-256kbps.
I've compared several itunes store songs against my mp3s -- and the itunes store songs sound like complete garbage.
If they can fix those two issues then I'll buy; however, I will always vow to keep my machines drm free.
As for which technology to start off with - that is a stupid question - I will explain why.
I recommend starting your education with IT at a prestigious university. Stay away from community colleges and the like--go for a Computer Science degree.
There are two facets to learning about learning IT: learning the technology, and obtaining a job. Getting a prestigious degree will open doors; getting a community college diploma will not -- this I speak from experience.
As for which technology--learn the basics first. As you advance, and learn the fundamentals of programming language, you will realize that learning the technologies is irrelevant. Once you have a firm grasp upon the foundations, the programming languages themselves are easy to grasp; there are merely a set of syntax of existing language paradigms.
Back to the community college aspect. Atleast in Canada, if you get a technology degree from a community college, prepare to be unemployed. Community colleges IMO are shit; they offer a lot of bullshit diplomas in a lot of bullshit. Prestigious universities on the other hand are of a higher nature and will open doors for you. Since I've been in a prestigious university (I attended after community college), I've had work doing bleeding edge work in Bioinformatics and Geographic Information Technology; however, had I simply stuck with my community college diploma, I'd still be washing dishes in a restaurant.
As for where to start - you have to start at the bottom and work your way up the education latter. There is much more than simply learning a technology; any monkey can do that. It's the software engineering practice/principles and experience that are valuable.
As for Slashdot--a lot of denizens here are anti-social nerds (people who excel in technology, but have otherwise failed in all other aspects in life), so take their advice (including mine) with a grain of salt (or less.
The writer is pointing out that education in that context is discrimination in terms of predjudice; you are pre-judged and it is a form of ignorance. However there are arguments for and against this.
Were a person smarter or as good as someone which holds a degree, then they could get one.
Were a person not smart enough as someone which holds a degree, then they most likely could not get one.
Since hiring an employee is risky and can cost a lot of money the degree is sometimes used as a threshold in terms of tangible measurement of accomplishments.
Not enough man power? not enough money? Wrong questions. Try again
When it comes to software development, throwing more people at a problem entailing a complex peice of software in fact increases the amount of development time taken to produce a deliverable.
This is one of the first concepts taught in IT management.
The most obvious reason why any fix is taking longer, rather than shorter, is from bad design.
It is from bad design that these exploits are appearing in the first place -- issuing "on-the-fly" fixes makes this design even worse; therefore, fixes will continually be on the trend of taking longer and longer, irreguardless of the amount of money and manpower thrown at it.
A solution would be to redesign windows; however, given the beaucratic atmosphere now present at Microsoft, this sort of change is impossible.
There are lots of meaningfull careers out there. IT is such a broad term as well -- Personally I enjoy doing software development; I like reseraching and solving problems.
I have since persued enjoyable work doing bioinformatics and GIS. Sure there are other fields which aren't as intellectually stimulating. In fact, I would rather quit the field than work as a technical support person
Sure the job market isnt "easy" -- Life isn't easy -- don't approach it as a job beggar --- If you really want to have job security, then you need to endeavour to be very good at what you do. Be so good to the point that they cannot afford to lose you
My advice -- this is, the hard lessons I have learned:(in order of most important to least important
Get your education at a prestigious college or university that gives a Bachelors degree. Not a diploma
Develop a resume that portrays your broad ability in A. Communication, B. Technical skills (specifically programming languages)
Build your social network
Ultimately, the people owning/running a company, in almost every case, is someone who is non-IT oriented. Therefore, the person hiring you often has little knowledge of IT....
The most unforunate thing about people in the IT field is their sociability -- A lot of techies lack social skills -- and that can make them more or less usless in a team environment, and therefore unemployable.
Yes, I concur. The IT industry is bad for community college students. There are several reasons for this; one being that IT is drying up, and community colleges lack prestigue -- Speaking generally, The job market is not near what it used to be -- now you're lucky if you find one; whereas, back in the day, during the boom, you'd be grabbed up with a signing bonus.
Me personally: Employers would not even look at me after I had graduated (fairly recently) with a 2 year diploma in Computer Systems Technology from a community colege. -- seriously not chance -- at a grad ceremony, I was stunned to hear 80% of grads had not found a job after 6 months.
Thank god I transfered into university to go for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science --==-- Now I have co-op job offers coming at me left right and center -- and now have over 11 months of paid work experience.
Had if of stuck with my community college diploma, I'd be digging ditches now -- like the rest of my class mates.
Had I had the opportunity to do it over again, I would never have gone to community college.
It sounds almost comical. To answer your questions on resignation
When an employee gives their notice, they should take their holiday time as well. There are two ways an employer will react to a resignation notice; they will work the employee like a mule, or will give the employee nothing to do, since they realize he won't be giving a fuck what happens,since he has only 2 weeks left.
His actions are highly unprofessional and harassement. Don't argue with him; dont give him any fuel to bitch about, and don't worry about any threats. IF he withholds your paycheck, go to your state/provinces labour relations board, and have them force him to pay you. In order to do this, you must record your days/hours worked.
Here in Canada BC, the labour relations board is very swift with these issues, and fines are very heavy.
Don't cut your losses and leave early... I recommend you take a serious look into work place harassement; you'll be very surprised as to what constitues it (its anything spoken/given in an unwanted way....even gossip constitutes this).
Burning your bridges is not a concern either. Keeping good ties with such an individual, trying to associate with someone like that, looks very poorly upon you.
Bottom line: Its harassement, and thats illegal. But I don't think you will take action; posting your issue on slashdot is evidence enough of your extreme cowardice. Anyone that needs motivation to stick up for themselvs is already a lost cause.
What is GOOD DESIGN? A design document that
1. Adds value/understanding of the proposed system to the developers
2. Can facilitate a test plan
3. Can adopt change
5. Etc.
If it does not satisfy point #1, then it is completely worthless. Note that UML documentation is merely a notation; a bad design in UML is still but a bad design.
Its unfortuate that you had a UML NAZI as a prof. There is a perfect example of one who is in academics because they cannot hack it in the business world. I recommend you switch to a more prestigious university.
Software Engineers use engineering principles yes; designs which are tried, tested, and true.
Whereas, Computer Scientists, when faced with the task of designing a system, will try to "reinvent the wheel".
Futhermore, UML Documentation should only be written if it adds value to the projcet; if the UML documentation helps developers understand the system, then it should be written. If it doesn't, then it is completly useless!!!!. Any competent prof will pound that into your head, like a mantra.
However, there it should be noted that modern Computer Science programs are interlaced with Software Engineering.
MSN's search site is cluttered with advertisements. Because of this, I shall never use it. Note that advertisements box in the search results. There are adds at the top, bottom and right corners of the page.
Eventually, the box of advertisements will get so large, he user will see only one search result per page!
Slashdot Mirror
Reason is right. PCs (desktop) are far cheaper than Mac. As a general rule of thumb, Mac cost upwards of 33% of higher.
7 -6311-BA72-D69D8922B9D1115F-1457351
u stom?qprm=78313&family=MacPro
Dell, Sony, are just some manufacters; they by no means represent the PC market; herein lay the difference. Mac on the otherhand does represent the PC market.
Consider this general comparison
[pc $1578]
http://pc.ncix.com/ncixpc/ncixpc.cfm?uuid=8B99131
[Mac $2,499.00]
http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjects/BizC
While I'm at it, I also want to state the Mac commericals are garbage in how they portray the Mac as being better than the PC.
Apple is using intel cpus. One can even get a copy of OS X (unoffically and unsupported) to run on an intel PC.
about:config is the worst method of changing preferences that I have ever seen.
about:config is evidence of feature creep, and hence evidence of Firefox turning into the Mozilla browser.
Past versions of Firefox have added additional features such as image resizing. And guess, what, users are not given the ability to disable this; they must enter into the cryptic about:config.
about:config is an HCI catastrophe.
I hope this proposal fails. They probably know it will fail but this is a "make work" project -- just a method of researchers to spend grants so that they will get further grants like governments do at end of fiscal.
t hreadID=190&messageID=26576&start=-1
When they talk about "The internet" they mean layers 4 and 5: IP and TCP (or TCP/IP).
[Points about the internet]
- The author of that article knows nothing about the internet; not once did he mention any of the layers.
[[Important]]
Just because the internet is old does not mean that it is by any means bad; in fact, for most users, this "older version" is better.
- IP was formalized back in the 1980s; it was designed back when memory was expensive; it was designed when every bit and byte counted. A new "version" of the internet would in fact be much slower than the current IPV4. IPV6 for example has more over head than IPV4.
Read about the formalized protocol here
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc791.html
The paper may seem a little complex; however, realize that the purpose of IP is for simply routing messages so that one machine on the internet can reach another
-- Final comments --
The only service which the "old" internet does not offer is functionality for quality of service (technically it does, but those bits are not used).
And this is a good thing. No quality of service prevents ISPs from gouging their users. How would you like it if your ISP implemented IPV6 and then said "Oh, and if you want your latency below 200ms that will be an extra $20/month).
That is the type of functionality they are looking to add into the "new internet". Anything else can just be built ontop of TCP.
---
Also, to clarify the IP running out of addresses issue: TCP/IP supports 4 billion address. Only 1 or 2 are in use. Why is there a shortage problem you ask? Because of the method in which IP addresses are assigned. IP addresses are assigned in classes of A, B, and C (do further research for understanding this).
For example, Stanford university has more IP addresses than all of china.
http://news.com.com/5208-1028_3-0.html?forumID=1&
There are many other dangers in society; it is unfortunate that a religious group would choose to pick pornography (as they usually) do, rather than more serious problems. What about all of the violent video games? So let us seriously address this issue: What exactly is porn? It is but graphical depictions of people having sex where there is no emotional relationship involved. Realize that the internet has not brought about porn nor invented it; porn has been around since the beginning of civilization (eg the Roman empire, do a wikipedia search on it). Porn can be dangerous yes, and addictive (in the sense of being a "slave to sin" which is quite serious);however, protecting one from viewing porn is NOT how you protect your children. Any teenager who is raised and instilled/taught proper morals, ethics, and values (whether they be religious or not) will be completely unaffected by porn; when they come across it (which they eventually will) they might have sympathy for the harlots involved. Teaching the ability to see something for what it is, and responsibly deciding "this is bad" will empower one to successful navigate EVERY obstacle in life. It's called wisdom. Being taught how to think wisely is a difficult thing, and it's hard to describe. We can approach the topic however by stating that wisdom cannot be taught by any means through censorship nor ignorance. --- The XBox 360, PS2, cellphones, and many more devices also have internet connectivity. I don't see that religious group getting all retarded about those technologies. Truth is, the Internet is ubiquitous.
There is a lot you can do to get a head start. Try making a website. Dabble with that technology. Go from simple html to more advanced technologies such as servlets and finally database connectivity. This will allow you to learn the technology and to be creative. if you were to design a nice site which received a few thousand hits per day, you'd make some money and have somthing to place on your resume. Note that business drives technology, not the other way around. The technology itself albeit it interesting is not where the money lies. Come up with an idea, and then learn the technology necessary to implement that idea. Do not simply learn C/C++ just for the purpose of learning the language itself; you will find that will be painstakingly slow, and you'll lose focus of the bigger picture let alone being stuck writing stupid hello world programs. I would also not recommend against doing any internships not until you are midway in college and are looking for work experience. Companies are not in business to teach -- and putting yourself in the position of doing an internship when you are "completely green" -- well they will exploit you. But yeah when you do internships. Try to work alongside with programmers, programmer/analysts, and system analysts. Stay away from testers and help desk. For companies, scout around. Be careful for what you wish for. Some companies like google are excellent ones to work for. Other companies such as Microsoft and EA are terrible; they will essentially turn you into a white collar slave and try to suck your life from you by forcing you to work 50+ hours per week. In fact there was/is a class action lawsuit against EA by its employees for the terrible working conditions.
Yeah I will never buy an iTunes song simply because
1. The song is in DRM -- that means I have to remember my login/password to play it, plus it will use more battery power on my ipod.
2. The quality of itunes songs literally sucks. I believe they are 128k -- compare that against any "unlegit" mp3 on the web, which are usually between 192-256kbps.
I've compared several itunes store songs against my mp3s -- and the itunes store songs sound like complete garbage.
If they can fix those two issues then I'll buy; however, I will always vow to keep my machines drm free.
As for which technology to start off with - that is a stupid question - I will explain why.
I recommend starting your education with IT at a prestigious university. Stay away from community colleges and the like--go for a Computer Science degree.
There are two facets to learning about learning IT: learning the technology, and obtaining a job. Getting a prestigious degree will open doors; getting a community college diploma will not -- this I speak from experience.
As for which technology--learn the basics first. As you advance, and learn the fundamentals of programming language, you will realize that learning the technologies is irrelevant. Once you have a firm grasp upon the foundations, the programming languages themselves are easy to grasp; there are merely a set of syntax of existing language paradigms.
Back to the community college aspect. Atleast in Canada, if you get a technology degree from a community college, prepare to be unemployed. Community colleges IMO are shit; they offer a lot of bullshit diplomas in a lot of bullshit. Prestigious universities on the other hand are of a higher nature and will open doors for you. Since I've been in a prestigious university (I attended after community college), I've had work doing bleeding edge work in Bioinformatics and Geographic Information Technology; however, had I simply stuck with my community college diploma, I'd still be washing dishes in a restaurant.
As for where to start - you have to start at the bottom and work your way up the education latter. There is much more than simply learning a technology; any monkey can do that. It's the software engineering practice/principles and experience that are valuable.
As for Slashdot--a lot of denizens here are anti-social nerds (people who excel in technology, but have otherwise failed in all other aspects in life), so take their advice (including mine) with a grain of salt (or less.
I don't care -- no one cares.
It depends.
The writer is pointing out that education in that context is discrimination in terms of predjudice; you are pre-judged and it is a form of ignorance. However there are arguments for and against this.
Were a person smarter or as good as someone which holds a degree, then they could get one.
Were a person not smart enough as someone which holds a degree, then they most likely could not get one.
Since hiring an employee is risky and can cost a lot of money the degree is sometimes used as a threshold in terms of tangible measurement of accomplishments.
Not enough man power? not enough money? Wrong questions. Try again When it comes to software development, throwing more people at a problem entailing a complex peice of software in fact increases the amount of development time taken to produce a deliverable. This is one of the first concepts taught in IT management. The most obvious reason why any fix is taking longer, rather than shorter, is from bad design. It is from bad design that these exploits are appearing in the first place -- issuing "on-the-fly" fixes makes this design even worse; therefore, fixes will continually be on the trend of taking longer and longer, irreguardless of the amount of money and manpower thrown at it. A solution would be to redesign windows; however, given the beaucratic atmosphere now present at Microsoft, this sort of change is impossible.
I've had it pretty good in the IT field.
There are lots of meaningfull careers out there. IT is such a broad term as well -- Personally I enjoy doing software development; I like reseraching and solving problems.
I have since persued enjoyable work doing bioinformatics and GIS. Sure there are other fields which aren't as intellectually stimulating. In fact, I would rather quit the field than work as a technical support person
Sure the job market isnt "easy" -- Life isn't easy -- don't approach it as a job beggar --- If you really want to have job security, then you need to endeavour to be very good at what you do. Be so good to the point that they cannot afford to lose you
My advice -- this is, the hard lessons I have learned:(in order of most important to least important
Ultimately, the people owning/running a company, in almost every case, is someone who is non-IT oriented. Therefore, the person hiring you often has little knowledge of IT....
The most unforunate thing about people in the IT field is their sociability -- A lot of techies lack social skills -- and that can make them more or less usless in a team environment, and therefore unemployable.
Yes, I concur. The IT industry is bad for community college students. There are several reasons for this; one being that IT is drying up, and community colleges lack prestigue -- Speaking generally, The job market is not near what it used to be -- now you're lucky if you find one; whereas, back in the day, during the boom, you'd be grabbed up with a signing bonus. Me personally: Employers would not even look at me after I had graduated (fairly recently) with a 2 year diploma in Computer Systems Technology from a community colege. -- seriously not chance -- at a grad ceremony, I was stunned to hear 80% of grads had not found a job after 6 months. Thank god I transfered into university to go for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science --==-- Now I have co-op job offers coming at me left right and center -- and now have over 11 months of paid work experience. Had if of stuck with my community college diploma, I'd be digging ditches now -- like the rest of my class mates. Had I had the opportunity to do it over again, I would never have gone to community college.
It sounds almost comical. To answer your questions on resignation
When an employee gives their notice, they should take their holiday time as well. There are two ways an employer will react to a resignation notice; they will work the employee like a mule, or will give the employee nothing to do, since they realize he won't be giving a fuck what happens,since he has only 2 weeks left.
His actions are highly unprofessional and harassement. Don't argue with him; dont give him any fuel to bitch about, and don't worry about any threats. IF he withholds your paycheck, go to your state/provinces labour relations board, and have them force him to pay you. In order to do this, you must record your days/hours worked.
Here in Canada BC, the labour relations board is very swift with these issues, and fines are very heavy.
Don't cut your losses and leave early... I recommend you take a serious look into work place harassement; you'll be very surprised as to what constitues it (its anything spoken/given in an unwanted way....even gossip constitutes this).
Burning your bridges is not a concern either. Keeping good ties with such an individual, trying to associate with someone like that, looks very poorly upon you.
Bottom line: Its harassement, and thats illegal. But I don't think you will take action; posting your issue on slashdot is evidence enough of your extreme cowardice. Anyone that needs motivation to stick up for themselvs is already a lost cause.
-TonicxT
What is GOOD DESIGN? A design document that 1. Adds value/understanding of the proposed system to the developers 2. Can facilitate a test plan 3. Can adopt change 5. Etc. If it does not satisfy point #1, then it is completely worthless. Note that UML documentation is merely a notation; a bad design in UML is still but a bad design. Its unfortuate that you had a UML NAZI as a prof. There is a perfect example of one who is in academics because they cannot hack it in the business world. I recommend you switch to a more prestigious university. Software Engineers use engineering principles yes; designs which are tried, tested, and true. Whereas, Computer Scientists, when faced with the task of designing a system, will try to "reinvent the wheel". Futhermore, UML Documentation should only be written if it adds value to the projcet; if the UML documentation helps developers understand the system, then it should be written. If it doesn't, then it is completly useless!!!!. Any competent prof will pound that into your head, like a mantra. However, there it should be noted that modern Computer Science programs are interlaced with Software Engineering.
And a lot of people aren't using bittorrent. Any form of ratio sharing sucks; therefore, bittorrent sucks.
MSN's search site is cluttered with advertisements. Because of this, I shall never use it. Note that advertisements box in the search results. There are adds at the top, bottom and right corners of the page. Eventually, the box of advertisements will get so large, he user will see only one search result per page!