Programming skills are ten-a-penny, what a startup needs is good ideas and enthusiasm. They're buying your enthusiasm at your hourly rate and I doubt if they would want to give you part of "their" company simply because you provide a service (so does the power company and the sandwich guy).
If you have a genuine way to IMPROVE their product - which you should have if you've been paying attention and have any experience and initiative, pitch it to them. Don't just casually mention it at the coffee machine, but do a full-out sales pitch, complete with costs, benefits, projections, how it fits in with their plans - the works.
After that, the clincher is to say that you're prepared to work on that new line for FREE, i.e. no more hourly rates. But you'd like a (small: a few percent) stake if the idea works out. That's the key element: that you're prepared to give up your security for the hope of rewards if your ideas work out. After all, that's what the founders did and they'd be crazy to accept anyone new into the fold who wasn't prepared to do the same. However, since they've already taken the lion's share of the risk and done the hard bit, all you have is a "me too" after the fact. So obviously your level of risk is much lower and your future rewards should be too.
CS is most definitely a vocational course. Most people use it only as an entry into a programming job and realise from looking at ALL the job adverts that it is the only thing that will get them a position.
If you haven't taught yourself
So far as "self-taught" programmers go they're the worst sort. They learn the syntax and the hacks and they think they're professionals. They can (sadly) get past interviews but have no discipline or clue that 75% of the job of a programmer is NOT programming. It's testing, documenting, retesting, standards compliance and more documentation and testing. Just look at the difference between an amateur/hobbyist piece of open-source stuff and professional quality work.
if anything, people who have taught themselves programming should be excluded from CS courses. All professionals have heard (and some believe) the old saying: ""It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." Except now, yo can replace BASIC with pretty much any language.
For most students, university IS the "trade school". Most colleges offer vocational courses. They ALL promote the success rate of graduates as the proportion who leave with a job (amongst other things, but not many other things).
university level should not be your first exposure to your area of study
So how would that work for doctors? Personally I would any REQUIRE pre-med school student to never have tried to diagnose or operate on people before they get into a well-supervised hospital environment. (And playing "doctor" as a child doesn't count.)
For a lot of people the answer is because no other course will take them - or the entry requirements for the course they DO want is too high. Most universities don't have a great deal of competition for CS places, so they're willing to take pretty much anyone who can spell compooter. It's no longer the calling or aspiration it was 20 or 30 years ago. These days, for most (not all. most. Not you: most. Most CS types haven't even heard of slashdot. You are not the norm) graduates, a CS qualification is merely an entry into a lowish level support job.
That's because a significant proportion of the respondents are not old enough to ever have worked and their only experience of a job is the "borderline-psychopathic bullies" which are the cliche bosses that appear on TV. Personally, I've met two or three who fit the description (most have the easy-going, yet authoratative air that comes with knowing you're in control and to be able to quietly impose your will as you know youre right). They are easily avoided and generally everyone recognises them for who they are and just gets on with running the place despite them.
However, that doesn't make good TV, hence the table-thumping. Some of these kids are in for a surprise when they grow up.
Riiiight - just like the quality control guys are a cost centre, and the safety standards people, too.
IT people are the guys who keep the baddies out of the COMPANY network, the one that you want to connect all your little toys to. They're the ones who are charged with producing the most stuff from the least money, which requires common standards so they don't have to spend hours or days trying to work out why some manager didn't/couldn't read the 1-page of instructions with his/her latest trinket and set it up wrong.
The point is, we all work for the shareholders and they don't care if you want to use your latest little phone to access stuff. They want the lowest cost of operation, the fewest number of lawsuits for data loss and data thefts and they don't want different individuals craching their company on a daily basis just so they can show off some new status symbol.
No of course you don't dent anything to people more senior than you. But have you ever heard a drill sergeat chewing out a squad of officer recruits? There are ways and means (just put "sir" on the end). You tell them "That's a great idea. I'll get right on it. Oh - and I'll need your cost code for this work..... you do have a cost code, don't you?" or "Yup, sure. Is that the Mark 3 or the Mark 4, cos those old Mark 2's well - they're just not up to it.... Oh, that's a shame" and any sysadmin worth his/her pay has a cupboard full of responses like these.
Ultimately, if they absolutely INSIST, just say you'll need to keep it for a day or two to test the integration works OK and then "find" some smut on it, or simply just lose it. Isn't that what all the retail support outfits do?
There are thousands to choose from. If you don't like one, pick another.
Seriously, these ones have no great insight - they're merely guessing. But what they're guessing is what will make a good story in 2011, not what will happen in years to come - when their guesses have been forgotten, superceeded, revived, altered, discredited and forgotten again. They have no great insight, or knowledge of what's to come and are really only useful for entertainment - such as posting equally ignorant replies to.
or that splinter in your finger, otherwise you could end up getting locked out of your accounts for a while. This dead-end idea sounds a little like voice recognition: fine 'til you catch a cold.
Often times, our professors would hand out maybe one or 2 chapters of a book in printed form, to keep students from having to pay for the whole book.
if that is what's considered acceptable practice at GSU, then yes: it sound sound like copyright violations. From my perspective, "fair use" means quoting a soundbite-sized portion - maybe a conclusion or a few sentences that support a proposition. It definitely should NOT cover giving students enough material that they don't have to buy textbooks.
I do think the monitoring proposals sound a little extreme, but if large-scale copying is rampant at that university, then something needs to be done to stop it - and to ensure it IS stopped.
Leave aside all the technical stuff for now. A large proportion of people don't buy tech. to solve a technical problem (such as being able to play a given game, or run a particular application). A lot of people buy stuff as an extension of their personalities. This is particularly true of cars. So asking "What do you want to do with it?" will elicit a technical answer that probably has nothing to do with what the purchasing decision will be made on.
I also find that most people who do go for the "emotional" buy, rather than the technical buy, will often be reluctant to tell you the real reason they bought something. Usually the sales/marketing material that they quote afterwards is merely an excuse or rationalisation for their decision. Usually the reason people buy tech is because it makes them feel good. Nothing more.
There were (apparently) lots of people at OBLs compound and a steady flow in & out, too. Just like any large residence with "staff" I would expect there would be some porn somewhere. It's not exactly a surprise and if it hadn't been there before the kill-squad arrived, I'm sure it was after they'd all been through the place.
ISTM Groupon are being greedy, taking a 50% skim off the top (i.e. without sharing the credit card commission). So if you were to make a profit on a groupon deal. you'd have to be charging over 100% of your costs to do so. With the recession / crisis (different countries, different words - same squeeze on the wallet), there can't be many businesses that haven't pared their margins and can't therefore afford to take
As for follow on business? I doubt many bargain hunters would come back. if they're too tight to pay full price *before* getting the deal, wouldn't they be more likely to just fill their pockets with freebies/cheapbies and then wait for the next offer - or closing down sale? Most of them are more interested in getting a bargain, than in the product they receive (cue Monty Python sketch)
So far the only areas commercial space outfits have been able to turn a profit is communications and TV satellites. There's not a whole lot in the way of raw materials they've been able to exploit. Not that much in terms of tourism/leisure - apart from a few bored billionaires. And no space-based manufacturing or processes that would come close to break even.
So the speed of development seems to be limited by companies' ability to find things in or about space that can be commercially exploited. It's still not clear what else there is out there that would be a profitable venture.
Space (and travel in it) should really only be regulated by its inhabitants. For people in another place to impose rules on it sounds a lot like an imperial power imposing its laws on a colony - and we all know how well that works.
Never honk off the people at the top of the gravity well
... while keeping the signal. The thing about FB is it's all noise. None of the information that people put there voluntarily is worth a dam' to an intelligence organisation. None of it's validated. None of it is from a "person of interest" (unless you're interested in vain teenagers - but we have another word for people like that. And none of it is actionable.
You might as well say that the local rubbish tip is a valuable source of information. There's just as much garbage as facebook has, but at least you have the chance of picking up something usable.
Just because a product dies doesn't mean people stop using it.
So if a software product is killed off, and the code made available for everyone (not just the good guys) to inspect, who pays the cost of patching any security vulnerabilities that are found as a result?
It's not that the holes weren't there before (you never know, they may *be* the reason the product got canned), just that until it was handed to the world on a plate, there were easier vulnerbilities in other products to exploit. I have to say that if I had a company that used a product which was subsequently hacked after its source was released, I'd have a stampede of lawyers headed right for the door of the people who released that code.
The EFF really should not go making global declarations when they only consider one or two country's laws.
Sure, they can say "should" and "ought" as much as they like. However, unless they can be sure that everybody (hint only 5% of the world is american) could do this legally, it sounds like a particularly irresponsible thing to urge people to do.
So much si-fi does fall into a formulaic adventure romp
I'm not clear on what you actually mean by science fiction. If you say that it includes " formulaic adventure romp" fiction, then that doesn't sound to me like SF. If the setting of the story doesn't have an intrinsic requirement for the science part, then it's not really science fiction. Merely having the pro(or ant-)angonist as an alien, or setting a story on another planet or a spaceship does NOT make a story a science-fiction story.
If the plot of these "romps" could equally be set in the wild-west, or ancient Egypt, or Boston - or if it's fundamentally about the characters - then it doesn't count as science fiction. The thing I've noticed about a lot of "SF" is that the stories are set in a futuristic or space environment, not because that is a requirement of the plot, but because it allows the writer to simply make things up: "well, it's the future - how do you know they won't have a.... " without going to the effort of researching real, live, locations or the properties of contemporary things or places. it's basically just laziness.
Science is an embarrasment to the BBC. Their TV coverage is meant to be "inclusive", so they don't like technical terms and abstract thoughts - only tangible, here-and-now stuff. They are so scared of accusations of elitism (as if the "elite" weren't entitled to TV programmes, or views) that they try their hardest to dumb down every aspect of their content.
Partly it's because they are staffed mainly by arts graduates (who don't like being made to appear ignorant, with concepts they don't understand) , and are more concerned with the creativity and partly because they are financed by a mandatory TV license, so are open to calls that their programming must reach everybody. And that requires aiming for the lowest common denominator.
The last "support" I saw for XP was SP3 so the lack of any more improvements, bug fixes or security patches really won't make any difference to me. In fact, not having patches forced onto my XP VM could even be one less distraction and annoyance. I fully expect to get at least another 10 years service out of it and will only stop using it when the copies of Office, Photoshop and the development tools I need stop working.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard of people using ferrets to lay cables http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/582123.stm but horses? How do you get them into the trunking?
If you have a genuine way to IMPROVE their product - which you should have if you've been paying attention and have any experience and initiative, pitch it to them. Don't just casually mention it at the coffee machine, but do a full-out sales pitch, complete with costs, benefits, projections, how it fits in with their plans - the works.
After that, the clincher is to say that you're prepared to work on that new line for FREE, i.e. no more hourly rates. But you'd like a (small: a few percent) stake if the idea works out. That's the key element: that you're prepared to give up your security for the hope of rewards if your ideas work out. After all, that's what the founders did and they'd be crazy to accept anyone new into the fold who wasn't prepared to do the same. However, since they've already taken the lion's share of the risk and done the hard bit, all you have is a "me too" after the fact. So obviously your level of risk is much lower and your future rewards should be too.
Computer science isn't a vocation education
CS is most definitely a vocational course. Most people use it only as an entry into a programming job and realise from looking at ALL the job adverts that it is the only thing that will get them a position.
If you haven't taught yourself
So far as "self-taught" programmers go they're the worst sort. They learn the syntax and the hacks and they think they're professionals. They can (sadly) get past interviews but have no discipline or clue that 75% of the job of a programmer is NOT programming. It's testing, documenting, retesting, standards compliance and more documentation and testing. Just look at the difference between an amateur/hobbyist piece of open-source stuff and professional quality work.
if anything, people who have taught themselves programming should be excluded from CS courses. All professionals have heard (and some believe) the old saying: ""It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." Except now, yo can replace BASIC with pretty much any language.
For most students, university IS the "trade school". Most colleges offer vocational courses. They ALL promote the success rate of graduates as the proportion who leave with a job (amongst other things, but not many other things).
university level should not be your first exposure to your area of study
So how would that work for doctors? Personally I would any REQUIRE pre-med school student to never have tried to diagnose or operate on people before they get into a well-supervised hospital environment. (And playing "doctor" as a child doesn't count.)
For a lot of people the answer is because no other course will take them - or the entry requirements for the course they DO want is too high. Most universities don't have a great deal of competition for CS places, so they're willing to take pretty much anyone who can spell compooter. It's no longer the calling or aspiration it was 20 or 30 years ago. These days, for most (not all. most. Not you: most. Most CS types haven't even heard of slashdot. You are not the norm) graduates, a CS qualification is merely an entry into a lowish level support job.
However, that doesn't make good TV, hence the table-thumping. Some of these kids are in for a surprise when they grow up.
IT people are the guys who keep the baddies out of the COMPANY network, the one that you want to connect all your little toys to. They're the ones who are charged with producing the most stuff from the least money, which requires common standards so they don't have to spend hours or days trying to work out why some manager didn't/couldn't read the 1-page of instructions with his/her latest trinket and set it up wrong.
The point is, we all work for the shareholders and they don't care if you want to use your latest little phone to access stuff. They want the lowest cost of operation, the fewest number of lawsuits for data loss and data thefts and they don't want different individuals craching their company on a daily basis just so they can show off some new status symbol.
You're going to tell them they can't have it?
No of course you don't dent anything to people more senior than you. But have you ever heard a drill sergeat chewing out a squad of officer recruits? There are ways and means (just put "sir" on the end). You tell them "That's a great idea. I'll get right on it. Oh - and I'll need your cost code for this work ..... you do have a cost code, don't you?" or "Yup, sure. Is that the Mark 3 or the Mark 4, cos those old Mark 2's well - they're just not up to it. ... Oh, that's a shame" and any sysadmin worth his/her pay has a cupboard full of responses like these.
Ultimately, if they absolutely INSIST, just say you'll need to keep it for a day or two to test the integration works OK and then "find" some smut on it, or simply just lose it. Isn't that what all the retail support outfits do?
Seriously, these ones have no great insight - they're merely guessing. But what they're guessing is what will make a good story in 2011, not what will happen in years to come - when their guesses have been forgotten, superceeded, revived, altered, discredited and forgotten again. They have no great insight, or knowledge of what's to come and are really only useful for entertainment - such as posting equally ignorant replies to.
or that splinter in your finger, otherwise you could end up getting locked out of your accounts for a while. This dead-end idea sounds a little like voice recognition: fine 'til you catch a cold.
Often times, our professors would hand out maybe one or 2 chapters of a book in printed form, to keep students from having to pay for the whole book.
if that is what's considered acceptable practice at GSU, then yes: it sound sound like copyright violations. From my perspective, "fair use" means quoting a soundbite-sized portion - maybe a conclusion or a few sentences that support a proposition. It definitely should NOT cover giving students enough material that they don't have to buy textbooks. I do think the monitoring proposals sound a little extreme, but if large-scale copying is rampant at that university, then something needs to be done to stop it - and to ensure it IS stopped.
I also find that most people who do go for the "emotional" buy, rather than the technical buy, will often be reluctant to tell you the real reason they bought something. Usually the sales/marketing material that they quote afterwards is merely an excuse or rationalisation for their decision. Usually the reason people buy tech is because it makes them feel good. Nothing more.
Provided we can meet the standards of the customers in India and China
There were (apparently) lots of people at OBLs compound and a steady flow in & out, too. Just like any large residence with "staff" I would expect there would be some porn somewhere. It's not exactly a surprise and if it hadn't been there before the kill-squad arrived, I'm sure it was after they'd all been through the place.
ISTM Groupon are being greedy, taking a 50% skim off the top (i.e. without sharing the credit card commission). So if you were to make a profit on a groupon deal. you'd have to be charging over 100% of your costs to do so. With the recession / crisis (different countries, different words - same squeeze on the wallet), there can't be many businesses that haven't pared their margins and can't therefore afford to take As for follow on business? I doubt many bargain hunters would come back. if they're too tight to pay full price *before* getting the deal, wouldn't they be more likely to just fill their pockets with freebies/cheapbies and then wait for the next offer - or closing down sale? Most of them are more interested in getting a bargain, than in the product they receive (cue Monty Python sketch)
They also breed and vote a lot.
But presumably they don't evolve?
So the speed of development seems to be limited by companies' ability to find things in or about space that can be commercially exploited. It's still not clear what else there is out there that would be a profitable venture.
Never honk off the people at the top of the gravity well
You might as well say that the local rubbish tip is a valuable source of information. There's just as much garbage as facebook has, but at least you have the chance of picking up something usable.
So if a software product is killed off, and the code made available for everyone (not just the good guys) to inspect, who pays the cost of patching any security vulnerabilities that are found as a result?
It's not that the holes weren't there before (you never know, they may *be* the reason the product got canned), just that until it was handed to the world on a plate, there were easier vulnerbilities in other products to exploit. I have to say that if I had a company that used a product which was subsequently hacked after its source was released, I'd have a stampede of lawyers headed right for the door of the people who released that code.
Sure, they can say "should" and "ought" as much as they like. However, unless they can be sure that everybody (hint only 5% of the world is american) could do this legally, it sounds like a particularly irresponsible thing to urge people to do.
So much si-fi does fall into a formulaic adventure romp
I'm not clear on what you actually mean by science fiction. If you say that it includes " formulaic adventure romp" fiction, then that doesn't sound to me like SF. If the setting of the story doesn't have an intrinsic requirement for the science part, then it's not really science fiction. Merely having the pro(or ant-)angonist as an alien, or setting a story on another planet or a spaceship does NOT make a story a science-fiction story.
If the plot of these "romps" could equally be set in the wild-west, or ancient Egypt, or Boston - or if it's fundamentally about the characters - then it doesn't count as science fiction. The thing I've noticed about a lot of "SF" is that the stories are set in a futuristic or space environment, not because that is a requirement of the plot, but because it allows the writer to simply make things up: "well, it's the future - how do you know they won't have a .... " without going to the effort of researching real, live, locations or the properties of contemporary things or places. it's basically just laziness.
Partly it's because they are staffed mainly by arts graduates (who don't like being made to appear ignorant, with concepts they don't understand) , and are more concerned with the creativity and partly because they are financed by a mandatory TV license, so are open to calls that their programming must reach everybody. And that requires aiming for the lowest common denominator.
The last "support" I saw for XP was SP3 so the lack of any more improvements, bug fixes or security patches really won't make any difference to me. In fact, not having patches forced onto my XP VM could even be one less distraction and annoyance. I fully expect to get at least another 10 years service out of it and will only stop using it when the copies of Office, Photoshop and the development tools I need stop working.