I'd add that I'm a high school drop-out who is now doing well at a name brand software company. My 20 year journey to where I am now was definitely more challenging due to my lack of degree. But it was possible since someone took a risk with me and I was able to demonstrate programming smarts beyond those of my college graduate peers.
Like acquiring a credit history in the U.S., each subsequent job built on the accomplishments of the last which enabled me to move up to a better company and better job with each move. But as the previous post mentioned, if you don't have social skills that allow you to honestly sell yourself and position yourself equally or better than your peers, take a deep breath and get that degree.
And to the other replies that suggest IT is a dumping ground, it's not. It's - thankfully - a place where lives are generally not at risk (a bad piece of code is rarely as dangerous as a bad weld in a gas line, or a slip up during surgery) and where the brain power needed to code doesn't necessarily spawn from the smarts learned from a degree. In fact, there are some who could argue that self-taught coding is often far more ingenious.
As one whoâ(TM)s now involved in the hiring process at my company, I look for those unique individuals who not only think, but also code differently than the masses of college-trained folks. Is it a personal bias based on my history? Perhaps. But the results have proven to be exceptionally fruitful for my team and my company's needs.
If you can set your ego aside and dispassionately compare your social and coding skills against your peers and find you have a real leg up on the competition, go for it. Otherwise, get that degree. Iâ(TM)ll also say that the world of IT has changed to favor those with degrees far more than when I joined my company 15 years ago. When compared with todayâ(TM)s slew of college graduates from all over the world, my company probably wouldnâ(TM)t even give me a second glance.
Kirk: [Explaining Spock's odd behavior] Oh, him? He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS.
While there are downsides to the 'internet mob mentality' when it comes to senselessly threatening someone's wife and kid (if that actually happened), the benefits of invoking the 'power of the internet' are more often a powerful force for good.
Consumerist.com makes a living out of giving internet-sized visibility to bad customer experiences. The result? The offending company usually learns a lesson and the customer often gets respectful treatment and accommodations.
The customer just harnessed that same power and contacts to get increased visibility. Sure, he probably could have been less aggressive. But from the Kyle Orland interview, it doesn't seem like Paul Christoforo learned anything at all.
Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned (at least on the internet).
Violate this rule at your own peril, Mr. Christoforo.
Corps won't be upgraded automatically. Corporate admins will always have the option to accept or decline a new version of IE just as they always have. Loosely managed PCs (those who aren't managed by a Microsoft solution like SMS, SCCM, WSUS Server, Intune, SBS or SCE) can use the blocker toolkit that they likely already have in place to block the original IE9 update.
They caught us with our pants down. Asking for it back is just showing how weak we are to the Iranians.
Since the the self-destruct mechanism wasn't thought of (!) or used, we need to blow it up ASAP wherever they move it to. We can't care about how much of an 'incident' a stealth demo job might cause in the international community. We need to pull our pants back up and punch the country we were spying on in the face for everyone to see. It's the only thing middle eastern folk respect.
Computers in the classroom prepare the students for real-world experiences and environments, not necessarily improve test scores. If they do, that’s a bonus.
While you're outfitting these classrooms with new technology, can you drop the mandatory year of cursive writing, please?
You're kidding, right? What expectation of privacy do you think is in force in the transaction of her leaving the message on the company's answering machine? What about her openly recorded rant is copyrighted?
The two founders of WordPerfect, Bruce Bastian and Dr. Alan Ashton were looking to retire and sell off the company. WordPerfect produced GroupWise and WordPerfect. The soon-to-be released versions of WordPerfect 6.1 (Windows) and 6.0 (UNIX) were getting rave reviews. As soon as they were released, they were sure to take MS Word by storm, put the last nail in WordStar's coffin and secure WordPerfect as the de facto word processor on the planet.
At the same time, Novell was having a hard time showing the value of NetWare-connected machines. Companies were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to install NetWare, but weren't seeing the value of 'networked' machines without an application to showcase NetWare-connected PCs.
Novell approached Alan and Bruce with an offer to purchase GroupWise. But Alan and Bruce were unwilling to split the company into two. Novell insisted and pushed. Novell finally agreed to buy the company (WordPerfect + GroupWise) - as a whole - for the negotiated price.
This all happened right before mass production of the new and highly reviewed WordPerfect products was to begin. All that was needed was for the 'Golden Bits' to be delivered to the factories for mass production, duplication, packaging and shipping. The channel was primed and the companies were waiting with bated breath to purchase the new WordPerfect.
But that never happened.
As soon as the company was purchased, Novell ignored WordPerfect (the product) like an ugly stepchild. They wrapped all of their energies and marketing muscle around GroupWise and bundled it with every sale of Novell NetWare. As a result, people were finally able to see the value of 'networked' machines that you allowed employees to collaborate calendars and share intra-office email.
But it was Novell that killed WordPerfect. There is no one else to blame. Novell killed a cash cow that was handed to them for nearly nothing. In the resulting vacuum, Microsoft Word slowly made inroads that eventually established Word as the word processing standard for the majority of companies around the world.
If the facts come out, it'll be clear Novell has no one to blame but themselves. And not just for WordPerfect's demise - but for NetWare as well. They've failed to capitalize on so many opportunities it's a wonder they even lasted as long as they did.
...to the next generation. I've got 12" vinyl and photographs I'll be able to pass down to my children. If all their music and photos are in the cloud, some of which they may not even 'own' in the view of comtent owners, what will they pass down to their children?
A big chunk of our lives is turning so digital that there won't be much to represent who we were after we pass on.
Trend Micro gets it wrong on a few points. Windows Update is the updating service for Windows only. MSE is released through Microsoft Update - the service for applications and additional Microsoft software that didn't come on the CD/DVD with Windows - things like MS Office, SQL Server, Windows Live Essentials, etc. Not only do customers have to turn on Windows/Automatic Updates, but customers have to explicitly opt-into Microsoft Update for anything that's not part of Windows.
Trend Micro can't have it both ways. When MSE was originally released, nearly all AV vendors said MSE was inferior. Now that it will be automatically offered as an Optional update, suddenly it's not so bad after all. Anyway, it's not automatically offered to anyone, only to the customers who actually open their Windows/Microsoft Update console, find it and select it (i.e., they choose it).
Finally, MSFT was prohibited from offering additional features in Windows for anticompetitive reasons (email, newsgroup reader, IM, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery). Like MSE, these are now an optional update called Windows Live Essentials that customers have to explicitly select from the Windows/Microsoft Update console to receive. Is it wrong for MSFT to use their distribution channel to offer an optional upgrade in the same way? Replace MSFT in the pervious sentence with the name of your favorite auto manufacturer and see how much sense it makes.
With multiple online news and interest sources (23 page 'home' page), personal financial software, investments, innumerable interests and hobbies. With my new Droid, I found myself inundated with even more sources competing for my interests and time. Realizing the current demands on my curiosity and OCD-like tendencies was bad now and was trending worse, I took hard inventory of my life and greatly simplified.
It was hard – probably not much unlike an addict to some degree. But the harsh ‘life cutting’ I did to remove extraneous demands and perceived demands was the fix, not a unified data source or Wiki.
Remember the days of renting your dial telephone from the Ma Bell?
Allowing other manufacturers to create phones initially resulted in a slew of sub-standard, crappy telephones. After a short period of growing pains, touch-tone phones appeared and grew in popularity. This innovation was further enjoined by cordless phones.
I wonder what kind of antiquated phones we'd be stuck with today if we were still renting phones from a single provider.
How amazing, powerful and inexpensive can cable boxes become now that they're open to competition.
Aside from the obvious fact that everyone knew drawn graphics were far beyond what any video game could create in that era, compare the same to album covers from the 70's and 80's.
When I bought my 12-inch vinyl, I didn't get a prism splitting-light in a dark room, a scantily-clad barbarian woman or busty babe draped over a sketch of a car.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we've heard that we'll be "given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities" before.
daemonenwind got it right.
I'd add that I'm a high school drop-out who is now doing well at a name brand software company. My 20 year journey to where I am now was definitely more challenging due to my lack of degree. But it was possible since someone took a risk with me and I was able to demonstrate programming smarts beyond those of my college graduate peers.
Like acquiring a credit history in the U.S., each subsequent job built on the accomplishments of the last which enabled me to move up to a better company and better job with each move. But as the previous post mentioned, if you don't have social skills that allow you to honestly sell yourself and position yourself equally or better than your peers, take a deep breath and get that degree.
And to the other replies that suggest IT is a dumping ground, it's not. It's - thankfully - a place where lives are generally not at risk (a bad piece of code is rarely as dangerous as a bad weld in a gas line, or a slip up during surgery) and where the brain power needed to code doesn't necessarily spawn from the smarts learned from a degree. In fact, there are some who could argue that self-taught coding is often far more ingenious.
As one whoâ(TM)s now involved in the hiring process at my company, I look for those unique individuals who not only think, but also code differently than the masses of college-trained folks. Is it a personal bias based on my history? Perhaps. But the results have proven to be exceptionally fruitful for my team and my company's needs.
If you can set your ego aside and dispassionately compare your social and coding skills against your peers and find you have a real leg up on the competition, go for it. Otherwise, get that degree. Iâ(TM)ll also say that the world of IT has changed to favor those with degrees far more than when I joined my company 15 years ago. When compared with todayâ(TM)s slew of college graduates from all over the world, my company probably wouldnâ(TM)t even give me a second glance.
Kirk: [Explaining Spock's odd behavior] Oh, him? He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS.
Watch out Mormons. A new LDS is in town.
While there are downsides to the 'internet mob mentality' when it comes to senselessly threatening someone's wife and kid (if that actually happened), the benefits of invoking the 'power of the internet' are more often a powerful force for good.
Consumerist.com makes a living out of giving internet-sized visibility to bad customer experiences. The result? The offending company usually learns a lesson and the customer often gets respectful treatment and accommodations. The customer just harnessed that same power and contacts to get increased visibility. Sure, he probably could have been less aggressive. But from the Kyle Orland interview, it doesn't seem like Paul Christoforo learned anything at all.
Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned (at least on the internet).
Violate this rule at your own peril, Mr. Christoforo.
XP will only be upgraded to IE8. IE9 isn't supported on XP.
Corps won't be upgraded automatically. Corporate admins will always have the option to accept or decline a new version of IE just as they always have. Loosely managed PCs (those who aren't managed by a Microsoft solution like SMS, SCCM, WSUS Server, Intune, SBS or SCE) can use the blocker toolkit that they likely already have in place to block the original IE9 update.
They caught us with our pants down. Asking for it back is just showing how weak we are to the Iranians.
Since the the self-destruct mechanism wasn't thought of (!) or used, we need to blow it up ASAP wherever they move it to. We can't care about how much of an 'incident' a stealth demo job might cause in the international community. We need to pull our pants back up and punch the country we were spying on in the face for everyone to see. It's the only thing middle eastern folk respect.
It's called the American Policy Institute (API)
Didn't these guys watch the last episode of the updated BSG?
Computers in the classroom prepare the students for real-world experiences and environments, not necessarily improve test scores. If they do, that’s a bonus.
While you're outfitting these classrooms with new technology, can you drop the mandatory year of cursive writing, please?
The source of Global Warming on Mars.
You're kidding, right? What expectation of privacy do you think is in force in the transaction of her leaving the message on the company's answering machine? What about her openly recorded rant is copyrighted?
Score one for the good guys.
Seems we'd have answers to a lot more questions if we could get a printed history of President Obama and his past.
Seems we'd have answers to a lot more questions if we could get a printed history of President Obama and his past.
Mike Judge was right. Fast forward 30 years when all but a few will be too dumb to use a computer that requires a setting change or troubleshooting.
The two founders of WordPerfect, Bruce Bastian and Dr. Alan Ashton were looking to retire and sell off the company. WordPerfect produced GroupWise and WordPerfect. The soon-to-be released versions of WordPerfect 6.1 (Windows) and 6.0 (UNIX) were getting rave reviews. As soon as they were released, they were sure to take MS Word by storm, put the last nail in WordStar's coffin and secure WordPerfect as the de facto word processor on the planet.
At the same time, Novell was having a hard time showing the value of NetWare-connected machines. Companies were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to install NetWare, but weren't seeing the value of 'networked' machines without an application to showcase NetWare-connected PCs.
Novell approached Alan and Bruce with an offer to purchase GroupWise. But Alan and Bruce were unwilling to split the company into two. Novell insisted and pushed. Novell finally agreed to buy the company (WordPerfect + GroupWise) - as a whole - for the negotiated price.
This all happened right before mass production of the new and highly reviewed WordPerfect products was to begin. All that was needed was for the 'Golden Bits' to be delivered to the factories for mass production, duplication, packaging and shipping. The channel was primed and the companies were waiting with bated breath to purchase the new WordPerfect.
But that never happened.
As soon as the company was purchased, Novell ignored WordPerfect (the product) like an ugly stepchild. They wrapped all of their energies and marketing muscle around GroupWise and bundled it with every sale of Novell NetWare. As a result, people were finally able to see the value of 'networked' machines that you allowed employees to collaborate calendars and share intra-office email.
But it was Novell that killed WordPerfect. There is no one else to blame. Novell killed a cash cow that was handed to them for nearly nothing. In the resulting vacuum, Microsoft Word slowly made inroads that eventually established Word as the word processing standard for the majority of companies around the world.
If the facts come out, it'll be clear Novell has no one to blame but themselves. And not just for WordPerfect's demise - but for NetWare as well. They've failed to capitalize on so many opportunities it's a wonder they even lasted as long as they did.
...to the next generation. I've got 12" vinyl and photographs I'll be able to pass down to my children. If all their music and photos are in the cloud, some of which they may not even 'own' in the view of comtent owners, what will they pass down to their children? A big chunk of our lives is turning so digital that there won't be much to represent who we were after we pass on.
Trend Micro gets it wrong on a few points. Windows Update is the updating service for Windows only. MSE is released through Microsoft Update - the service for applications and additional Microsoft software that didn't come on the CD/DVD with Windows - things like MS Office, SQL Server, Windows Live Essentials, etc. Not only do customers have to turn on Windows/Automatic Updates, but customers have to explicitly opt-into Microsoft Update for anything that's not part of Windows.
Trend Micro can't have it both ways. When MSE was originally released, nearly all AV vendors said MSE was inferior. Now that it will be automatically offered as an Optional update, suddenly it's not so bad after all. Anyway, it's not automatically offered to anyone, only to the customers who actually open their Windows/Microsoft Update console, find it and select it (i.e., they choose it).
Finally, MSFT was prohibited from offering additional features in Windows for anticompetitive reasons (email, newsgroup reader, IM, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery). Like MSE, these are now an optional update called Windows Live Essentials that customers have to explicitly select from the Windows/Microsoft Update console to receive. Is it wrong for MSFT to use their distribution channel to offer an optional upgrade in the same way? Replace MSFT in the pervious sentence with the name of your favorite auto manufacturer and see how much sense it makes.
With multiple online news and interest sources (23 page 'home' page), personal financial software, investments, innumerable interests and hobbies. With my new Droid, I found myself inundated with even more sources competing for my interests and time. Realizing the current demands on my curiosity and OCD-like tendencies was bad now and was trending worse, I took hard inventory of my life and greatly simplified.
It was hard – probably not much unlike an addict to some degree. But the harsh ‘life cutting’ I did to remove extraneous demands and perceived demands was the fix, not a unified data source or Wiki.
Remember the days of renting your dial telephone from the Ma Bell?
Allowing other manufacturers to create phones initially resulted in a slew of sub-standard, crappy telephones. After a short period of growing pains, touch-tone phones appeared and grew in popularity. This innovation was further enjoined by cordless phones.
I wonder what kind of antiquated phones we'd be stuck with today if we were still renting phones from a single provider.
How amazing, powerful and inexpensive can cable boxes become now that they're open to competition.
Down with Bush Hitler! Wait...
Show me a company that isn't doing something to drive more revenue and I'll show you a company on its last legs.
Aside from the obvious fact that everyone knew drawn graphics were far beyond what any video game could create in that era, compare the same to album covers from the 70's and 80's.
When I bought my 12-inch vinyl, I didn't get a prism splitting-light in a dark room, a scantily-clad barbarian woman or busty babe draped over a sketch of a car.
From the guy who proposed the fix in the triage meeting, "It's only a one-line change."