I would disagree. Contractors can play a very distinct role: to fill a void (in skills) at a company. If this isn't the case, then they are contracted to fill a void in manpower. Most of the time, however, a contractor is brought on board to lend their expertise to a project.
Many organizations work with contractors because it's easier to hire and release a contractor than it is to hire and release a full-time employee with positional power. With contracting, there's typically a trial period during which the organization has made no guarantee of your employment with them. So the contractor benefits from higher wages, and the organization benefits from one less salary commitment.
You must be a daemon in the sack.
You must be agile.
No time for debugging your problems.
I will not use a trojan horse.
Time slicing with others is not okay.
Don't ever call my thing a widget.
Battery fires and rootkits are Slashdot tech news, but not everyday Mom & Pop frontpage news. It's then quite obvious why Sony still has a great reputation with the majority.
It should come as no surprise, then, that actual encyclopedias such as Britannica and Columbia have nowhere near the web readership as their Wiki counterpart these days
Definetely true, but you must remember these are two beasts that ultimately serve different purposes:
The Britannica focuses on proper form, accuracy, and thoroughness;
Wikipedia focuses on brevity (sometimes), collaboration, and timeliness.
But most importantly for an average user, the ability to click-through to hundreds of interesting topics in a single sitting is the most attractive part of Wikipedia.
The healthcare industry does not give a shit about health. If this were NOT the case, all healthcare companies and pharmeceutical companies would be registered non-profit.
Just a clarification: just because an organization is registered as not-for-profit does not mean it is not in the business of making money. Not-for-profits need just as much income to operate as regular businesses. The primary difference is the after-expenses dollar doesn't go into pockets, it returns to the organization (or funder) to spend it during that fiscal year. However, salaries can still be high and spending can be furious, just like other businesses.
I'm not saying you are wrong about health companies being driven by money, but many people commonly mistake not-for-profits with Mother Theresa, and that is usually false.
It's so easy to blast a celebrity for an inaccurate talk on scientific matters. However, each of us are guilty of spewing out incorrect information because we believed it was right.
I don't care if Tom Cruise or Donald Trump speak authoritatively. What I do care about is the friends, neighbors, teachers, and other adults that have an overwhelming influence over their peers (children, students, friends, etc.). To the public, Cruise & Trump are fiction. To you, your teacher talking about Evolution is real.
I expect someone will point out the difference between my neighbour and a celebrity is the latter has an audience of thousands and therefore has a larger effect. That would seem to be true, but I highly doubt it. Only the disillusioned will absorb the words of a celebrity. But embracing the information that a friend, neighbor or teacher imparts to you is a natural thing because we typically have trust in those surrounding us. A teacher has so much more authority and leverage to influence you into believing incorrectly, a level of influence that Tom Cruise cannot match.
This isn't to say that television is not influential, only that there should be stronger fears than the celebritity: those people (including ourselves) close to us that impart incorrect knowledge on a daily basis.
It is too bad PostgreSQL didn't have Windows support in prior versions. My company (and the clients we contract for) develops applications in the Windows environment and moves them to Production usually running *nix. The fact that PostgreSQL didn't have native Windows support several years ago led to the decision of choosing MySQL as the database engine for a major application. I would have loved to use PostgreSQL, but the lack of Windows support made it an easy decision to pick MySQL. It is good to see that PG has come around, but I can definetely understand why MySQL is a favourite for simplicity (installation and support of environments).
While I can't vouch for the effectiveness of Best Buy's system, I work for the federal government (Canada) and the work hours are pretty flexible. I can begin work anytime between 7am and 9am, and finish between 3pm and 5pm. This translates to everyone being available during the core hours (9-3) for meetings, etc., but the time you start / finish beyond that is at your discretion. It's very convenient, makes working a steady job less routine, and helps you avoid the 9-5'er traffic rush:)
If I'm not mistaken, Hubbert's theory was based on historic and current data, not futuristic estimates of production and consumption methods. They are not assuming the world's demand for oil will be stagnant, but rather suggesting that at our current rate, reserves will last 122 more years. This is more accurate than an estimation based on future practices.
It's pretty hard to predict future consumption and production patterns. The best evidence we have is historic, which has naturally formed the basis for their argument.
But you haven't done that, whiz kid. Nobody cares that you can do this in a hour, because so can everyone else that knows PHP. The point is that nobody else has done it before, and this is a new security technique. Who are you trying to impress by telling Slashdot that you could copy someone else's idea in less than an hour?
This should be a mandatory requirement to graduate with a computing degree. Here's why (and I'll try to break this down in sequence of the things you would learn in a basic, real-world project):
You become accustomed to engaging with a client.
Prior to this kind of project, for most students, "client" could be substituted for "Mom & Dad" or equivalent. So when you actually start dealing with a client with real and strict(er) requirements, you begin to understand the importance of a) communicating effectively as to ensure that there's ambiguity, and; b) being extremely attentive to what the client is looking for. In other words, reading between the lines.
You begin to appreciate the need for organization (task assignment, delegation, etc.) within a group
Having a group of three-five+ members without any organization will obviously result in a mess. You will clearly recognize that the group needs structure, and this mimics real work environments. People will elect (or chose) duties as it aligns with their skills. And some things you just have to suck up and do. But in hindsight, you will see the importance of organizing yourselves properly.
You learn to write, design, and present technical information
So chances are your client will not be very technical. This isn't desirable from a requirements illicitation perspective, but it's very desirable from a 'speaking to a layperson' perspective. You will learn how to write, design, and present technical information to an audience that doesn't understand the keywords 'object', 'stored procedure', and 'web service'. The skills you pickup here will carry on with you and be used everywhere you go.
You learn the importance of/how to use a CVS
Odds are pretty good that in a group project you wil have more than one developer. So a CVS will pay dividends here.
You learn the importance of time management
This one is huge. You will be given a task that will take n amount of time. It will probably seem easy to do, but when you are one month from the delivery stage, it won't seem that way. You will probably be over your
head in work and stressing that things are not being completed on time. This is where introducing a management system ahead of time (and this sort of ties in with my second point) will help mitigate time issues. Meeting with group members once a week (compared to every three weeks, for example) will help plenty in keeping the group on task and on time. You don't learn this when coding assignments that have a one week lifespan.
You learn that quality is of the essense
When you're handing off a deliverable to a client who is expecting to use and have a return on investment on this software, quality should become very important to you and the group. Programming assignments don't have this type of demand for quality.
You learn about development models/processes
Whether its waterfall, spiral, or extreme programming, you will gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages to development models. Plus when you really hit the job market, the development model a company is using probably won't seem so foreign. You'll also learn what Requirements Specification documents are, what it's like to write a User's Manual, and so forth.
Finally (and yes, there's a lot more...), you get the real-world experience
All combined you get to walk away with real work experience listed on your resume. This is very, very beneficial for someone coming out of University.
So a group project (at least eight months to a year in length) is beneficial in so many ways that it should be mandatory. Everyone heading into software development out of academia should be able to list this kind of experience on their resume when they graduate. Programming assignments just don't cut it.
$350? Here in Canada it's retailing for almost $700, individual games being $60ish. And since the Canadian dollar isn't running a mile behind the USD, it still makes the PS3 very expensive for Americans.
I'm not into consoles, but I certainly couldn't imagine spending that much on one.
but the first people to buy a PS3 are going to be tech savvy
I would disagree, and so would the children of rich (or submissive) parents that have them already planning to pickup a system the date of. That kind of 'average consumer' makes up a much larger population of consumers than the tech-savvy who are aware of all the faults, etc..
Snow White a lesbian? You, sir, have just brought my fantasies with her and the delectable Miss Piggy to life! I knew reading about Linux had a benefit, but I just hadn't found it. In my dreams, I will be saluting you.
I am not very familiar with the.NET framework (I've had my head stuck in PHP for the past five years). Can someone please clarify which.NET language has the most promising employment prospects? Looking at a Wikipedia entry, I see that C# is the flagship, but there's no mention of ASP. Isn't ASP used almost exclusively for web development within the.NET framework?
I've decided I would like to pursue another language outside of PHP, and it's a toss up between.NET and Java. Except I'm confused about the whole.NET thing. I've never been fond of Java, so any wisdom regarding.NET (and vs. Java) would be very much appreciated!
Four years ago, I was determined to earn a CS degree. Up until last year, three years into my CS degree, I realized that my efforts were going to be moot. So I made the best move I could have: I changed direction and headed for a joint-major with Business.
Now, a year later, I quit University and decided to pursue my own work. I had been PHP freelancing for several years, earning enough money to put food on my plate. Two years ago, however, I was struck with a brilliant idea for a program that I would spend the next two years developing. In August, I had to make a decision: finish my final year at University and earn my degree, or pursue my business venture and see what happens.
Three months later and with a new city underneath my feet, I could not be more pleased having left University and focusing my time on my program. I felt confident enough that I could find additional work to supplement my own schedule if necessary, and recently did just this. I picked up a consultation job at a prestigious law firm based solely off my experience and personality. And if you are wondering about the program I developed -- the target audience is most definetely not the Slashdot crowd so I've elected to avoid an increased bandwidth bill and not post the link. However, the feedback I have recieved has helped solidify my decision.
In hindsight, I wish I had pursued Business from the beginning because my foundations in computer science was primarily self-taught. The food on my plate was not from something I was taught.
My advice is neither in favour of obtaining a degree nor joining the work force as a substitute to academics. Both are equally important to your current and future success. In the wake of my indecision and trepidations, I can recommend pursuing a Business degree as a joint to your Computer Science degree. You will get a solid foundations in both subjects. Business skills are almost essentially as tech skills in the technology world. You will find yourself well-rounded and able to understand different stakeholder perspectives. It is mandatory that you find extracurricular work outside of academic. This is an absolute must for anyone studying who wants to be eligible for work when they finish their degree.
The years I spent studying computer science could have been more effective elsewhere. But then again, my agenda in the technology field is different than many who study CS. I want to make money by doing my own thing. Many of my peer's wanted to play with the technology and avoid the possible applications of those technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
I would disagree. Contractors can play a very distinct role: to fill a void (in skills) at a company. If this isn't the case, then they are contracted to fill a void in manpower. Most of the time, however, a contractor is brought on board to lend their expertise to a project.
Many organizations work with contractors because it's easier to hire and release a contractor than it is to hire and release a full-time employee with positional power. With contracting, there's typically a trial period during which the organization has made no guarantee of your employment with them. So the contractor benefits from higher wages, and the organization benefits from one less salary commitment.
I have high standards, you insensitive clod!
You must be a daemon in the sack.
You must be agile.
No time for debugging your problems.
I will not use a trojan horse.
Time slicing with others is not okay.
Don't ever call my thing a widget.
Where do I sign up to get my check from Exxon?
With the man wearing the rubber glove.
Battery fires and rootkits are Slashdot tech news, but not everyday Mom & Pop frontpage news. It's then quite obvious why Sony still has a great reputation with the majority.
It should come as no surprise, then, that actual encyclopedias such as Britannica and Columbia have nowhere near the web readership as their Wiki counterpart these days
Definetely true, but you must remember these are two beasts that ultimately serve different purposes:
The Britannica focuses on proper form, accuracy, and thoroughness;
Wikipedia focuses on brevity (sometimes), collaboration, and timeliness.
But most importantly for an average user, the ability to click-through to hundreds of interesting topics in a single sitting is the most attractive part of Wikipedia.
The healthcare industry does not give a shit about health. If this were NOT the case, all healthcare companies and pharmeceutical companies would be registered non-profit.
Just a clarification: just because an organization is registered as not-for-profit does not mean it is not in the business of making money. Not-for-profits need just as much income to operate as regular businesses. The primary difference is the after-expenses dollar doesn't go into pockets, it returns to the organization (or funder) to spend it during that fiscal year. However, salaries can still be high and spending can be furious, just like other businesses.
I'm not saying you are wrong about health companies being driven by money, but many people commonly mistake not-for-profits with Mother Theresa, and that is usually false.
It's so easy to blast a celebrity for an inaccurate talk on scientific matters. However, each of us are guilty of spewing out incorrect information because we believed it was right.
I don't care if Tom Cruise or Donald Trump speak authoritatively. What I do care about is the friends, neighbors, teachers, and other adults that have an overwhelming influence over their peers (children, students, friends, etc.). To the public, Cruise & Trump are fiction. To you, your teacher talking about Evolution is real.
I expect someone will point out the difference between my neighbour and a celebrity is the latter has an audience of thousands and therefore has a larger effect. That would seem to be true, but I highly doubt it. Only the disillusioned will absorb the words of a celebrity. But embracing the information that a friend, neighbor or teacher imparts to you is a natural thing because we typically have trust in those surrounding us. A teacher has so much more authority and leverage to influence you into believing incorrectly, a level of influence that Tom Cruise cannot match.
This isn't to say that television is not influential, only that there should be stronger fears than the celebritity: those people (including ourselves) close to us that impart incorrect knowledge on a daily basis.
In the spirit of helping those of us at work to avoid inappropriate websites, thank you kindly for linking to goatse on the front page!
It is too bad PostgreSQL didn't have Windows support in prior versions. My company (and the clients we contract for) develops applications in the Windows environment and moves them to Production usually running *nix. The fact that PostgreSQL didn't have native Windows support several years ago led to the decision of choosing MySQL as the database engine for a major application. I would have loved to use PostgreSQL, but the lack of Windows support made it an easy decision to pick MySQL. It is good to see that PG has come around, but I can definetely understand why MySQL is a favourite for simplicity (installation and support of environments).
Because they don't use public ISP's like you and I do.
I need a work warning on posts like this! Me and my cubicle just couldn't stop laughing after reading that one :)
While I can't vouch for the effectiveness of Best Buy's system, I work for the federal government (Canada) and the work hours are pretty flexible. I can begin work anytime between 7am and 9am, and finish between 3pm and 5pm. This translates to everyone being available during the core hours (9-3) for meetings, etc., but the time you start / finish beyond that is at your discretion. It's very convenient, makes working a steady job less routine, and helps you avoid the 9-5'er traffic rush :)
Spaceballs, of course. I thought "you give great helmet" would have been the tip-off :)
Well, I can just imagine the complications. Keep in mind this is from a male perspective.
You: Oh Dot Matrix, you give great helmet.
Dot Matrix: Don't bust that nut just yet! I will regain activity in two minutes after a firmware upgrade.
Its amazing when roaming around the city, the number of default windows screen savers/login screens you see running all night.
We all know that's code for the activities of a Peeping Tom.
If I'm not mistaken, Hubbert's theory was based on historic and current data, not futuristic estimates of production and consumption methods. They are not assuming the world's demand for oil will be stagnant, but rather suggesting that at our current rate, reserves will last 122 more years. This is more accurate than an estimation based on future practices.
It's pretty hard to predict future consumption and production patterns. The best evidence we have is historic, which has naturally formed the basis for their argument.
But you haven't done that, whiz kid. Nobody cares that you can do this in a hour, because so can everyone else that knows PHP. The point is that nobody else has done it before, and this is a new security technique. Who are you trying to impress by telling Slashdot that you could copy someone else's idea in less than an hour?
Not that having vision would make Nebraska any more enjoyable. In the words of my two good friends...
Lloyd: I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.
Harry: I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver is full of shit, man.
Oops, the first point should read:
a) communicating effectively as to ensure that there's no ambiguity, and;
This should be a mandatory requirement to graduate with a computing degree. Here's why (and I'll try to break this down in sequence of the things you would learn in a basic, real-world project):
You become accustomed to engaging with a client.
Prior to this kind of project, for most students, "client" could be substituted for "Mom & Dad" or equivalent. So when you actually start dealing with a client with real and strict(er) requirements, you begin to understand the importance of a) communicating effectively as to ensure that there's ambiguity, and; b) being extremely attentive to what the client is looking for. In other words, reading between the lines.
You begin to appreciate the need for organization (task assignment, delegation, etc.) within a group
Having a group of three-five+ members without any organization will obviously result in a mess. You will clearly recognize that the group needs structure, and this mimics real work environments. People will elect (or chose) duties as it aligns with their skills. And some things you just have to suck up and do. But in hindsight, you will see the importance of organizing yourselves properly.
You learn to write, design, and present technical information
So chances are your client will not be very technical. This isn't desirable from a requirements illicitation perspective, but it's very desirable from a 'speaking to a layperson' perspective. You will learn how to write, design, and present technical information to an audience that doesn't understand the keywords 'object', 'stored procedure', and 'web service'. The skills you pickup here will carry on with you and be used everywhere you go.
You learn the importance of/how to use a CVS
Odds are pretty good that in a group project you wil have more than one developer. So a CVS will pay dividends here.
You learn the importance of time management
This one is huge. You will be given a task that will take n amount of time. It will probably seem easy to do, but when you are one month from the delivery stage, it won't seem that way. You will probably be over your head in work and stressing that things are not being completed on time. This is where introducing a management system ahead of time (and this sort of ties in with my second point) will help mitigate time issues. Meeting with group members once a week (compared to every three weeks, for example) will help plenty in keeping the group on task and on time. You don't learn this when coding assignments that have a one week lifespan.
You learn that quality is of the essense
When you're handing off a deliverable to a client who is expecting to use and have a return on investment on this software, quality should become very important to you and the group. Programming assignments don't have this type of demand for quality.
You learn about development models/processes
Whether its waterfall, spiral, or extreme programming, you will gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages to development models. Plus when you really hit the job market, the development model a company is using probably won't seem so foreign. You'll also learn what Requirements Specification documents are, what it's like to write a User's Manual, and so forth.
Finally (and yes, there's a lot more...), you get the real-world experience
All combined you get to walk away with real work experience listed on your resume. This is very, very beneficial for someone coming out of University.
So a group project (at least eight months to a year in length) is beneficial in so many ways that it should be mandatory. Everyone heading into software development out of academia should be able to list this kind of experience on their resume when they graduate. Programming assignments just don't cut it.
$350? Here in Canada it's retailing for almost $700, individual games being $60ish. And since the Canadian dollar isn't running a mile behind the USD, it still makes the PS3 very expensive for Americans.
I'm not into consoles, but I certainly couldn't imagine spending that much on one.
but the first people to buy a PS3 are going to be tech savvy
I would disagree, and so would the children of rich (or submissive) parents that have them already planning to pickup a system the date of. That kind of 'average consumer' makes up a much larger population of consumers than the tech-savvy who are aware of all the faults, etc..
Snow White a lesbian? You, sir, have just brought my fantasies with her and the delectable Miss Piggy to life! I knew reading about Linux had a benefit, but I just hadn't found it. In my dreams, I will be saluting you.
I am not very familiar with the .NET framework (I've had my head stuck in PHP for the past five years). Can someone please clarify which .NET language has the most promising employment prospects? Looking at a Wikipedia entry, I see that C# is the flagship, but there's no mention of ASP. Isn't ASP used almost exclusively for web development within the .NET framework?
.NET and Java. Except I'm confused about the whole .NET thing. I've never been fond of Java, so any wisdom regarding .NET (and vs. Java) would be very much appreciated!
I've decided I would like to pursue another language outside of PHP, and it's a toss up between
Four years ago, I was determined to earn a CS degree. Up until last year, three years into my CS degree, I realized that my efforts were going to be moot. So I made the best move I could have: I changed direction and headed for a joint-major with Business.
Now, a year later, I quit University and decided to pursue my own work. I had been PHP freelancing for several years, earning enough money to put food on my plate. Two years ago, however, I was struck with a brilliant idea for a program that I would spend the next two years developing. In August, I had to make a decision: finish my final year at University and earn my degree, or pursue my business venture and see what happens.
Three months later and with a new city underneath my feet, I could not be more pleased having left University and focusing my time on my program. I felt confident enough that I could find additional work to supplement my own schedule if necessary, and recently did just this. I picked up a consultation job at a prestigious law firm based solely off my experience and personality. And if you are wondering about the program I developed -- the target audience is most definetely not the Slashdot crowd so I've elected to avoid an increased bandwidth bill and not post the link. However, the feedback I have recieved has helped solidify my decision.
In hindsight, I wish I had pursued Business from the beginning because my foundations in computer science was primarily self-taught. The food on my plate was not from something I was taught.
My advice is neither in favour of obtaining a degree nor joining the work force as a substitute to academics. Both are equally important to your current and future success. In the wake of my indecision and trepidations, I can recommend pursuing a Business degree as a joint to your Computer Science degree. You will get a solid foundations in both subjects. Business skills are almost essentially as tech skills in the technology world. You will find yourself well-rounded and able to understand different stakeholder perspectives. It is mandatory that you find extracurricular work outside of academic. This is an absolute must for anyone studying who wants to be eligible for work when they finish their degree.
The years I spent studying computer science could have been more effective elsewhere. But then again, my agenda in the technology field is different than many who study CS. I want to make money by doing my own thing. Many of my peer's wanted to play with the technology and avoid the possible applications of those technologies.