Someone who shows up at college with no programming experience is likely not going to be a GREAT programmer. It's too late. They're competing against people who have been programming for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. It's too much of a head start. You're comparing apples to oranges there. Becoming a great programmer is an independent challenge. Other peoples' skill set has no bearing on your skill as a programmer. Your education is not a competition to be won over other students.
I have seen some really solid programmer come out of colleges with slim to nil experience coding prior to enrolling. Were they "great" programmers right out of college? Nah, they were solid though, good enough that I wouldn't hesitate to hire any of them for a junior/mid-level coding position. Given 5 years of work experience, I am confidant that they will all either turn out to be top notch developers, or become equally skilled in other fields.
I'm not sure I entirely like that idea either. I picked up 3 degrees through a variety of tech schools and university courses. None of them focused entirely on programming, although it was the predominant theme.
I still had the standard core classes, English (focused on research paper writing), Math (calc and trig), Statistics (which seems to be more useful to me than I ever wanted it to be), Physic (okay, not so relevant, but I enjoy it), etc...
There were a lot of even IT related courses that were not on programming. Having the knowledge and experience to set up and configure a full Windows/Linux network with web server, email server, DNS, etc... just comes in handy when working in code that relies on the network. Knowing how a switch works, and how to configure a firewall will save you a lot of debugging time while trying to get your remote apps to work. Understanding Normalization and data-warehouse database design principals will help you pick up on other peoples' creations faster.
The list goes on and on. Networking, technical writing, OS's, there is a lot more to programming in most cases than just writing code.
Unless your goal is to get into one of those code factories where they hire 20-40 people every summer (hello college grads!) and burn 'em out by the next spring. In which case, yeah, focus on code, and code alone.
As opposed to the level of accessibility CAPTCHAs provide to blind/limited sight individuals?
And have you ever tried the audio CAPTCHAs? Talk about horrendous.
Plain text or even TTS would allow near 100% accessibility if you asked simple math questions in the context of a story problem. With rotating questions, nouns, and verbs, a relatively small number of predetermined values could be used to quickly generate many different combinations.
Sure, it's still crackable, but it would be a hell of a lot nicer for the users. And with a significant enough base of words and grammar structures it would still be rather solid. Combine that with decent behavior tracking. (Wow look, this ASDFDSA guy just created his email account 5 minutes ago and has already sent 15,000 emails!) And you'd wind up with something that is MORE accessible and still provides a solid amount of protection.
So far as I know there is no commercially available digital speaker. There are speakers that are marketed with the word "digital" on them, but they are still just analogue speakers. There are some digital amplifiers, which in theory can reduce energy consumption, but they still go through a DAC before the signal hits the speakers.
The only places I would bother with shielded cables are: In your car, and long runs in your house where the audio signal cable comes close to AC circuits (specifically those tied to ceiling fans)
To the filter: Yes, using so many caps is like yelling, because I am. When was the last time you heard an elderly gentleman say "get off my yard" in a civil voice to a bunch of rowdy teenagers?! Is this enough babble to avoid the yelling filter?
Not really. The EPA tightened the restrictions on diesel emissions last year (2007). The Diesel technology to meet those requirements already existed, but the excessive amount of sulfer in US Diesel prevented those systems from being introduced here.
Also taking place in 2007 was the change over from Low Sulfur Diesel (LSD) to Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD). Because of the time line of the USLD conversion you could still buy LSD up until October/November of 2007, and In theory, the tanks could have a LSD/ULSD mix there after if there was still some amount of LSD in the storage tanks when the first ULSD delivery came in.
So basically, due to really crappy timing on the EPA's part (that ironically enough helped the US manufacturers who had no light duty diesel options), there was only 1 light duty diesel that could be sold in the US through 2007.
But now it's 2008. ULSD is the only Diesel now. VW, Mercedes, Jeep, hell even Honda all have new light duty diesels either already out, or coming out in the US this year.
So you want to combine paper and oxygen and trap the resulting heat and excess electrons? I'm not sure about the electrons, but trapping the heat is pretty simple to do when combining paper and oxygen.
If you want to get really green about it, grow your own algae farm. Use the algae to reduce the unburnt hydrocarbons in your fireplace/furnaces exhaust. Crush the oil laden algae for your own diesel fuel, then ferment the crushed husks for ethanol. And with the left over dredges you have perfectly good filler for animal feed.
It's a similar phenomenon to how they've taken over digg and spammed the forum with pro-Obama and anti-Clinton media for the past several months. There is a simple summary to the situation we have now: The Executive branch has too much power.
If we elect Hillary Clinton to the position of President, would you expect the amount of power in the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
If, on the other hand, we elect Obama, and Hillary takes over as Speaker of the House (a slight break from tradition, but that's what we're after at this point), would you expect the power of the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
Ideally, we would have had John Edwards in the oval office. While his plans were more left leaning than any other mainstream candidate, they would have been watered down a lot by Congress, and he likely would have been an easier negotiator for the reduction of executive power. Tie that in with his focus on infrastructure, health care, and the low/middle class, and you wouldn't have the greatest president in the history of the US, but you'd have the right president at the right time.
Radical and disruptive is what we need. But we need it to be in the form of a power stripping Congress and a passive President.
The executive branch has collected entirely too much power. Hell, Jefferson was very clear in his requirements that it was Congress's duty to determine when the country went to war. But guess when the last time Congress signed a declaration of War? Yup, WWII. For the last 60+ years we have not been in a single "war", just "military conflicts".
The executive branch needs to have it's knees broken, and to be brought back into balance with the Judicial and Legislative branches.
Disposing of Hussein was not the reason we went into Iraq. If the good of the people was our mission, we could be in Darfur, DR Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan (remember that 'war'?) or any number of other places where civil war, dictatorship, and authoritarian rule is leading to excessive innocent deaths.
Heck, just in Iraq, if we had done nothing, how many people could Hussein have killed over the last 5 years? hundreds? a couple thousand? Compared to how many hundreds of thousands that have died either in the invasion, or in the on going occupation and the pent up civil war.
Iraq was not about saving the people in Iraq, nor was it about saving the people in the US, to think otherwise is just post-hock silver lining hunting.
Give me 30 minutes and an SSH connection and I'll get you the latest Ricky Martin album downloaded to an IP apparently in Brazil.
True, the vast majority of infringers are not going to go to that kind of extreme or hassle, but downloading to another IP isn't that hard, especially if you have physical access to the machine.
Now the next obvious question would be: would you sue if I made a cola called "/. ID 1235070 Cola" which was found to contain nicotine, bat urine, and was found after a couple of highly publicized trials to have allowed improperly disposed medical wastes into the mix?
If I make a product that can be absolutely linked to you (even falsely) and it's a good product, you probably wouldn't mind too much. But if I make a product linked to you that would drag your face through the mud, you might be a bit upset.
There is no patent or trade mark on your user ID. And I don't imagine the/. copyrights would prevent someone from using such a combination of digits. So this all comes down to publicity rights, not IP rights. Unless of course they used a picture of her, or quoted her words (I didn't RTFA).
Defamation would be harder to argue as she would actually have to prove damages.
If someone was mislead into getting into the rung under the premise that it was an act, yeah, that's shady. But if they were given the oppertunity to box him, and they went into the ring with out prepairing, it was a dumb decision on their part. If the cornermen weren't smart enough to toss in the towel for their boxers, it was a dumb decision on their part. And if the ref didn't call the fight as soon as it was clear that it was over, it was a dumb decision on his part.
Sue who you like, but it was a whole lot of dumb decisions going on, and for once, I don't think it was Uwe. Although waving the rules for a 17 year old was pretty damn stupid.
To be fair, anyone who gets into a ring with another person set on a competition of combat prowess, for what ever reason, should be there to fight. Charity or not, they are fighting.
The problem with your argument is that abortion, at least specific types of abortion, are not murder. Your opinion that all abortion is the moral equivalent is nice and all, you are entitled your opinion, but it is not a law.
IF congress passed a bill and the president signed it into law stating that all abortions were murder, and the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional, then yes, your argument would be valid. But at this point, your argument is nothing but an opinion.
Hey, if you can find a link to that research, please post it. I swear I caught a glimpse of similar work years ago in college, but have long since lost it. And it just so happens that now I'm working for a R&D company focusing on mental health testing and the topic of scale sizes comes up on occasion (especially when planning surveys for patients with mental illnesses). Anyways, I've had squat for luck tracking down that paper.
There are many broadcast standards Yar, thus the reason I said:
There are like 8 different NTSC standards for "standard def" broadcast TV Sorry for any confusion, I grew up with a broadcast engineer in the family, so my thoughts were on the transmission side. Which is where you have the different 704x480 aspect ratios, 640x480, and a variety of refresh rates.
With internet, it does cost the supplier marginally more to provide the extra service to a "leacher". And thus the reason these types of laws are being push for by Lobbyists and not by the will of the people.
There are like 8 different NTSC standards for "standard def" broadcast TV. Getting into significant detail on them was not the goal of the post. The mention of the lower standard was only to give an idea of scope difference between the two arenas.
Actually, most console versions of PC games have watered down poly counts and lower resolution textures. They've been able to get away with sub par graphics for years because standard def TV is only 640x480 at 24 FPS. Compare that to people running PC games on wide screens at 2048x1024 and pushing 60+fps.
As HD TV penetration rises, consoles will have to package more hardware to push the same picture quality. And thus the reason why we're seeing console going for $400-600 instead of $100-200.
I don't know if I'd even go that far. Assuming your assertion that people pay a flat rate is true, I would say this is more like:
Security/DHCP off - You left your porch lights on and someone is on the sidewalk using the light to read.
Security off/DHCP On - You have a spot light pointed at your neighbor's window, and he has his lights turned off and is reading by the light of your spotlight.
What changed regularly was the APIs. So you are blaming the programming language for changes to the Windows API? Even then, the Windows API hasn't changed all that radically. I'm sitting here on a XP box using the exact same GDI based double buffer graphics tricks in.Net as I did on Windows 95 and NT 4 using VB5. I can still use a lot of the same multi-media API that I used to write my first VB5 CD player years ago. And even my original socket based communication library from VB5 would only require a few tweaks to get running on XP. Things really haven't changed all that much. The most revolutionary things that happened back in the VB days were the introduction of DAO, then RDO, and finally ADO. Each was tailored for a specific purpose though, DAO was designed for Access/Jet, RDO was the first solid ODBC connection, and ADO was a more flexible connection capable of a variety of connections. But ADO operated identically from VB5 to VB6, DAO received some iterative changes since it's inception, but continues to exist and operate in largely the same manner. And RDO has largely fallen by the side as Lotus Notes diminished and ADO became more widely accepted.
So I'm not really sure what changes you are talking about. Silverlight has been going through a lot of changes, but it is an exceptionally young product (and the 1.0 release really should have been a beta prototype, 2.0 should have been the 1.0 beta).
My experience has been that Microsoft documentation is poorly organized, lacking in detail, designed to run you around in circles, and packaged in a proprietary format that makes it non-portable and generally quite useless. While I would agree that MS's documentation is not wonderfully organized, and is often lacking in detail, claiming that it is in a proprietary format and non-portable when it is available on the web in HTML, is well, a bit of an exaggeration. I've never bothered with developing on a Linux box, because, as you put it:
The craptacular Linux build process bests me again And there is the reason that Windows beats Linux, and Mac OS beats Windows. Process refinement and ease of use. So when it comes to developing.Net apps for Linux, it's just easier to use VS.Net to create your code, then compile it on the Linux box. Sure, you'll run into some annoying issues where Mono doesn't function identically to.Net, and you'll have to make some adjustments. But VS.Net is one heck of a specialized text editor.
Someone is feeding you a line of BS. The intent of Mono was to create a modern managed code environment for Linux. You see, I hear what you are saying there, and it makes sense. But I came across 3 explicit quotes on the website expressing their current efforts, the goal of the project, and their desires. All of which specifically sited compatibility and interop with.Net. And while I respect your opinion Batman, I'd take their word about their goals over your word about their goals.
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I have seen some really solid programmer come out of colleges with slim to nil experience coding prior to enrolling. Were they "great" programmers right out of college? Nah, they were solid though, good enough that I wouldn't hesitate to hire any of them for a junior/mid-level coding position. Given 5 years of work experience, I am confidant that they will all either turn out to be top notch developers, or become equally skilled in other fields.
-Rick
I'm not sure I entirely like that idea either. I picked up 3 degrees through a variety of tech schools and university courses. None of them focused entirely on programming, although it was the predominant theme.
I still had the standard core classes, English (focused on research paper writing), Math (calc and trig), Statistics (which seems to be more useful to me than I ever wanted it to be), Physic (okay, not so relevant, but I enjoy it), etc...
There were a lot of even IT related courses that were not on programming. Having the knowledge and experience to set up and configure a full Windows/Linux network with web server, email server, DNS, etc... just comes in handy when working in code that relies on the network. Knowing how a switch works, and how to configure a firewall will save you a lot of debugging time while trying to get your remote apps to work. Understanding Normalization and data-warehouse database design principals will help you pick up on other peoples' creations faster.
The list goes on and on. Networking, technical writing, OS's, there is a lot more to programming in most cases than just writing code.
Unless your goal is to get into one of those code factories where they hire 20-40 people every summer (hello college grads!) and burn 'em out by the next spring. In which case, yeah, focus on code, and code alone.
-Rick
As opposed to the level of accessibility CAPTCHAs provide to blind/limited sight individuals?
And have you ever tried the audio CAPTCHAs? Talk about horrendous.
Plain text or even TTS would allow near 100% accessibility if you asked simple math questions in the context of a story problem. With rotating questions, nouns, and verbs, a relatively small number of predetermined values could be used to quickly generate many different combinations.
Sure, it's still crackable, but it would be a hell of a lot nicer for the users. And with a significant enough base of words and grammar structures it would still be rather solid. Combine that with decent behavior tracking. (Wow look, this ASDFDSA guy just created his email account 5 minutes ago and has already sent 15,000 emails!) And you'd wind up with something that is MORE accessible and still provides a solid amount of protection.
-Rick
KittenAuth, Hot or Not, simple math, word tests, anything to get rid of those pain in the ass CAPTCHAs.
So far as I know there is no commercially available digital speaker. There are speakers that are marketed with the word "digital" on them, but they are still just analogue speakers. There are some digital amplifiers, which in theory can reduce energy consumption, but they still go through a DAC before the signal hits the speakers.
The only places I would bother with shielded cables are: In your car, and long runs in your house where the audio signal cable comes close to AC circuits (specifically those tied to ceiling fans)
-Rick
Damn you kids and your lingo!
GET OFF MY INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY!
-Rick
To the filter: Yes, using so many caps is like yelling, because I am. When was the last time you heard an elderly gentleman say "get off my yard" in a civil voice to a bunch of rowdy teenagers?! Is this enough babble to avoid the yelling filter?
Not really. The EPA tightened the restrictions on diesel emissions last year (2007). The Diesel technology to meet those requirements already existed, but the excessive amount of sulfer in US Diesel prevented those systems from being introduced here.
Also taking place in 2007 was the change over from Low Sulfur Diesel (LSD) to Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD). Because of the time line of the USLD conversion you could still buy LSD up until October/November of 2007, and In theory, the tanks could have a LSD/ULSD mix there after if there was still some amount of LSD in the storage tanks when the first ULSD delivery came in.
So basically, due to really crappy timing on the EPA's part (that ironically enough helped the US manufacturers who had no light duty diesel options), there was only 1 light duty diesel that could be sold in the US through 2007.
But now it's 2008. ULSD is the only Diesel now. VW, Mercedes, Jeep, hell even Honda all have new light duty diesels either already out, or coming out in the US this year.
-Rick
So you want to combine paper and oxygen and trap the resulting heat and excess electrons? I'm not sure about the electrons, but trapping the heat is pretty simple to do when combining paper and oxygen.
If you want to get really green about it, grow your own algae farm. Use the algae to reduce the unburnt hydrocarbons in your fireplace/furnaces exhaust. Crush the oil laden algae for your own diesel fuel, then ferment the crushed husks for ethanol. And with the left over dredges you have perfectly good filler for animal feed.
-Rick
If we elect Hillary Clinton to the position of President, would you expect the amount of power in the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
If, on the other hand, we elect Obama, and Hillary takes over as Speaker of the House (a slight break from tradition, but that's what we're after at this point), would you expect the power of the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
Ideally, we would have had John Edwards in the oval office. While his plans were more left leaning than any other mainstream candidate, they would have been watered down a lot by Congress, and he likely would have been an easier negotiator for the reduction of executive power. Tie that in with his focus on infrastructure, health care, and the low/middle class, and you wouldn't have the greatest president in the history of the US, but you'd have the right president at the right time.
-Rick
Radical and disruptive is what we need. But we need it to be in the form of a power stripping Congress and a passive President.
The executive branch has collected entirely too much power. Hell, Jefferson was very clear in his requirements that it was Congress's duty to determine when the country went to war. But guess when the last time Congress signed a declaration of War? Yup, WWII. For the last 60+ years we have not been in a single "war", just "military conflicts".
The executive branch needs to have it's knees broken, and to be brought back into balance with the Judicial and Legislative branches.
-Rick
Disposing of Hussein was not the reason we went into Iraq. If the good of the people was our mission, we could be in Darfur, DR Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan (remember that 'war'?) or any number of other places where civil war, dictatorship, and authoritarian rule is leading to excessive innocent deaths.
Heck, just in Iraq, if we had done nothing, how many people could Hussein have killed over the last 5 years? hundreds? a couple thousand? Compared to how many hundreds of thousands that have died either in the invasion, or in the on going occupation and the pent up civil war.
Iraq was not about saving the people in Iraq, nor was it about saving the people in the US, to think otherwise is just post-hock silver lining hunting.
-Rick
You mean like in a fireplace or non-gas/electric furnace?
-Rick
Give me 30 minutes and an SSH connection and I'll get you the latest Ricky Martin album downloaded to an IP apparently in Brazil.
True, the vast majority of infringers are not going to go to that kind of extreme or hassle, but downloading to another IP isn't that hard, especially if you have physical access to the machine.
-Rick
Now the next obvious question would be: would you sue if I made a cola called "/. ID 1235070 Cola" which was found to contain nicotine, bat urine, and was found after a couple of highly publicized trials to have allowed improperly disposed medical wastes into the mix?
/. copyrights would prevent someone from using such a combination of digits. So this all comes down to publicity rights, not IP rights. Unless of course they used a picture of her, or quoted her words (I didn't RTFA).
If I make a product that can be absolutely linked to you (even falsely) and it's a good product, you probably wouldn't mind too much. But if I make a product linked to you that would drag your face through the mud, you might be a bit upset.
There is no patent or trade mark on your user ID. And I don't imagine the
Defamation would be harder to argue as she would actually have to prove damages.
-Rick
If someone was mislead into getting into the rung under the premise that it was an act, yeah, that's shady. But if they were given the oppertunity to box him, and they went into the ring with out prepairing, it was a dumb decision on their part. If the cornermen weren't smart enough to toss in the towel for their boxers, it was a dumb decision on their part. And if the ref didn't call the fight as soon as it was clear that it was over, it was a dumb decision on his part.
Sue who you like, but it was a whole lot of dumb decisions going on, and for once, I don't think it was Uwe. Although waving the rules for a 17 year old was pretty damn stupid.
-Rick
To be fair, anyone who gets into a ring with another person set on a competition of combat prowess, for what ever reason, should be there to fight. Charity or not, they are fighting.
-Rick
The problem with your argument is that abortion, at least specific types of abortion, are not murder. Your opinion that all abortion is the moral equivalent is nice and all, you are entitled your opinion, but it is not a law.
IF congress passed a bill and the president signed it into law stating that all abortions were murder, and the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional, then yes, your argument would be valid. But at this point, your argument is nothing but an opinion.
-Rick
Hey, if you can find a link to that research, please post it. I swear I caught a glimpse of similar work years ago in college, but have long since lost it. And it just so happens that now I'm working for a R&D company focusing on mental health testing and the topic of scale sizes comes up on occasion (especially when planning surveys for patients with mental illnesses). Anyways, I've had squat for luck tracking down that paper.
-Rick
-Rick
-Rick
There are like 8 different NTSC standards for "standard def" broadcast TV. Getting into significant detail on them was not the goal of the post. The mention of the lower standard was only to give an idea of scope difference between the two arenas.
-Rick
Actually, most console versions of PC games have watered down poly counts and lower resolution textures. They've been able to get away with sub par graphics for years because standard def TV is only 640x480 at 24 FPS. Compare that to people running PC games on wide screens at 2048x1024 and pushing 60+fps.
As HD TV penetration rises, consoles will have to package more hardware to push the same picture quality. And thus the reason why we're seeing console going for $400-600 instead of $100-200.
-Rick
I don't know if I'd even go that far. Assuming your assertion that people pay a flat rate is true, I would say this is more like:
Security/DHCP off -
You left your porch lights on and someone is on the sidewalk using the light to read.
Security off/DHCP On -
You have a spot light pointed at your neighbor's window, and he has his lights turned off and is reading by the light of your spotlight.
-Rick
Not that I actually want to spend currency on it, but I'll blow some kara to get that kind of critical thinking process up to +5 insightful.
-Rick
So I'm not really sure what changes you are talking about. Silverlight has been going through a lot of changes, but it is an exceptionally young product (and the 1.0 release really should have been a beta prototype, 2.0 should have been the 1.0 beta). My experience has been that Microsoft documentation is poorly organized, lacking in detail, designed to run you around in circles, and packaged in a proprietary format that makes it non-portable and generally quite useless. While I would agree that MS's documentation is not wonderfully organized, and is often lacking in detail, claiming that it is in a proprietary format and non-portable when it is available on the web in HTML, is well, a bit of an exaggeration. I've never bothered with developing on a Linux box, because, as you put it: The craptacular Linux build process bests me again And there is the reason that Windows beats Linux, and Mac OS beats Windows. Process refinement and ease of use. So when it comes to developing
-Rick