2002-2007, worked ~35 hours/week during the school year, more if the academic load was light and I could get them (multiple jobs, not a single one), 40+ hours per week in the summer, so nights and weekends were never free. Also, in my experience the estimates provided by the schools are inflated. Tuition at my regional state school was ~8k/year, so as long as I averaged $10/hour or so, I was able to make things work.
Living below the poverty level didn't contribute to what I would call the best years of my life, but it worked.
It was 2002 to 2007. And as a young white American male also with no family money, I worked multiple jobs and figured it out. No loans at all, no scholarships either until my senior year when I managed to land a research scholarship that required 15 hours/week of research with a professor. I missed out on a lot as a consequence, all those "college experiences" that others talked about like parties and such. It was the lifestyle I couldn't afford, not the tuition.
While I would have loved to receive an advanced education for free, I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I worked my way through debt-free and received my "4 year" degree in 5.5 years by going to a state university and living a reduced lifestyle. Why can't others do the same? Why do they have to go into debt in the first place? This smells more like a problem with irresponsibility and poor life choices than some sort of systemic issue.
I think the fundamental issue here is that these debtors were reckless enough to finance lifestyle, tuition, and course of study combinations that were fundamentally imbalanced. This is a classic personal responsibility problem, apathetic, self-entitled people making decisions in their youth and not wanting responsibility for them later.
Why did they use student loans to go to expensive schools and study courses they should have known up front are unlikely to land them the type of salary that can pay back those student loans? I studied philosophy for two years as I worked though my non-technical requirements. I enjoyed that time and loved studying the subject but I knew it wouldn't pay the bills. Two years in I changed my course to computer science. It took me 5.5 years to graduate debt-free. And I didn't benefit from my state's lottery-funded scholarship program. I've watched as my peers that received that benefit pissed it away. And now they're whining about their debt load working for a third or less of what I make and requesting "relief".
As far as I'm concerned, they should be forced to pay it back no matter how long it takes.
I prefer exercise bikes. If they do this in a bike form and make the seat nice and comfortable, I'd be all over it. I rarely play games these days because so many more useful things to be doing, but I wouldn't mind sitting for hours on end to catch up on the latest titles if I'm getting some decent exercise along with it.
Yea, good idea man! Let's all wait till the price comes down to buy new games! If we all wait, then the best years of that game's online life will be when it costs us next to nothing and we can *all* get in on the pwnage! And we'll also show these greedy corporations what for, because they'll get no sales on that 5+ development years, multi-billion dollar project they're pushing! Next time they'll *know* not to price it so high at launch and pretty soon *all* games will come out at bargain basement prices! When we finally get to this golden age of producer/consumer harmony everyone will be fan-dandy-tastic! We will never again have to worry about large corporations giving a big, slimy stiffy to the people that supported them in years past!
hell yea! I loved the Year Zero ARG. I had no clue about it when I bought the cd, but caught on pretty quick when I took it out of my cd player to find it had changed color. From there a quick gtfq found me the wiki and an entire backstory to catch up on.:-) I think what makes these games truly fun is the process of discovery and community involvement that they foster.
What the fuck is wrong with these these fucking people? Fuck Hans Reiser, fuck his file system, and fuck his friends, fuck this if total bullshit. Fuck their entire association with linux. Congratulations fuckhead, you're a god damned moron. I truly have no respect or you. You bring shame to the linux community by shear association. Fuck you, fuck your friends, and fuck everything to do with you. I, for one, will NEVER use ReiserFS due to this. Fuck that shit. Technical superiority? Fuck it! What the hell has technical superiority (or lack there of for that matter) have considered up against this stupid fuck's obvious other bad decisions. Of course, I assume there is some technical superiority in the technology that he produced. Now though, fuck him, and fuck his technology. Any of you advocating for ReiserFS, I'm sorry. Find a new god damned file system technology to advocate, Reiser just brought complete shame to his legacy. His association with a confessed killer is enough to fuck him over. And if he killed his wife? Totally fuck him! I hope he rots in prison, fucked beyond belief for his stupidity! This has officially become a fiasco in my mind and I will not forgive him for it. Never let the name Reiser be mentioned in my presence again for shame of his lack of proper judgement. I will officially ignore him and his contribution. Let his name be forgotten and no legacy left by him. From here on, Reiser is erased.
Okay, I've no clue about the reality of this, but I'll relate "my friend's" story. Not "friend of a friend", just "my friend".
A friend was looking for a Wii, so he hit up Wal-mart. Wal-mart has everything right? Well, not that day they didn't. However, he managed to talk to manager that told him they were supposed to get some in through UPS the next day, a ton of them (my friend said 30 or so). Well, suitably excited, he shows up the next day and asks about them only to be told that they had none. Naturally, he bitched and moaned until they brought out manager. Lo and behold, it was the same manager he talked to. The guy instantly recognized him and told my friend that they did, indeed, have them in (again, about 30 of them) but that they were not allowed to bring them out or sell them yet. He didn't say why, he simply said he couldn't do anything. Well, my friend called him on it, raised hell again, really got on the guy about how he was anticipating their having one specifically because the guy told him they would. Eventually the guy relented and quietly slipped him one.
So, Nintendo hoarding? I dunno. But maybe retailers are up to something. I'm not sure what. Maybe some big coordinated sale like the "guaranteed in stock" thing that Wal-mart did a while back.
Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my story. Do with it what you will.
I fail to understand the contradiction as well. How the hell can we be lacking enough CS expertise to meet demand if the demand does not exist? I'm a computer science major. I'm perfectly willing to be a code monkey to pay the bills, but I'm going straight through to my Masters and PhD in order to qualify myself for a more interesting research position. In the event that I'm truly not needed upon graduation, I'll manage somehow. However, before the industry imports more cronies, I certainly hope they'll look my way long enough to realize that CS majors *do* exist, and that *some* of us are ready and eager to fulfill whatever needs the industry has. Oh, by the way Mr. Gates, if you'd like to contribute to my graduate tuition fund, I'll gladly forsake my part time job and concentrate more fully on developing the skills you need.
D.R.M.
Especially the shoddy piece of code on my new Bond cd that prevents me from legitimately listening to it on my computer. The DVD side of the dual-disc works fine, but the cd side won't even mount (under windows or ubuntu). I hope the RIAA enjoyes the twenty bucks that I spent on it, because they'll have no more of my money.
And if they go through with it, I'll jump on their bandwagon immediately. I love linux, but I'm willing to branch out. Solaris sounds great to me, particularly DTrace.
How does this theory hold up with the paradigm switch we're seeing toward unified shader architectures? With Intel's clout and their experience with multi-core design, I'm sure they could cook up a decent general purpose "stream processing engine" suitable for graphics work. In the move to general purpose GPUs, I would expect to see less emphasis on the specialized algorithms supported by these add-ins as graphics processors and more emphasis upon the ability to implement your own algorithms.
I'm personally more intrigued by the idea of an Ubuntu version meant specifically for developers. Give me the normal Ubuntu system (sans useless desktop things like games, media players, etc.), add on a nice IDE maybe, throw in build-essential and the relevant sections of the UNIX manual, and I'd probably make a mess of myself in anticipation.
Currently, I make these modifications myself after a fresh install at every new release. I'm really just asking Canonical to make my life even easier.;-)
Cliff clearly suffers from a myopic conception of FOSS systems. He also demonstrates the danger in representing an entire ecosystem of software with a single moniker. Free and open source software is not 'Linux', but Linux is free and open source software. The distinction is important. Linux is just one piece of a grand and heterogeneous domain of software. On top of that, anyone can contribute to it, take it and do what they like with it. I don't think it quite qualifies as a 'monoculture' the way that Windows does. I also find the Gnome/KDE reference amusing considering that they use completely different toolkits and libraries.
He complains about the cover charge for current generation console gaming (and targets the cheapest solution!) and praises episodic PC content partly for the fact that around 80% of US homes have PCs. I think this is remarkably myopic considering the heterogeneity of home PCs. What percentage of all those PCs are capable of playing the shiniest new episode of [insert game here]? What percentage of those PC owners with PCs NOT capable of playing the shiniest new episodes are willing to buy new hardware to play new episodes? One of the driving forces in the computer hardware industry is the demand for bigger, better, smarter games. Innovation has its place, but humans tend to favor shiny new things. So, quite naturally, developers produce bigger, better, smarter games, and vendors release faster, more powerful hardware to run it on.
Console gaming is attractive to the developer because they have a standard platform to develop for. No matter how crappy the hardware, atleast they know that everyone who buys a Wii will have the *same* hardware. Thus, they may develop bigger, better, and smarter games by pushing that hardware to its limits. Similarly, consoles are attractive to the consumer because its new, its shiny, and it just works. There is no anxiety about whether or not your system will handle it, or whether you'll get the best experience from it.
So, in order for this 80% argument to work, game developers would have to be targeting much less powerful machines. Intel has the largest segment of the PC graphics market, by far. Yet, you never see favorable benchmarks for it with the latest titles. Many games are "playable" on lower hardware, but that simply isn't the focus of the industry. PC gaming pushes boundaries. It enjoys the latest and greatest capabilities well before the console market gets them. This is a strength. The appparent ubiquity of the PC has nothing to do with the future of PC gaming as long as the push is toward more demanding games and more capable hardware. We may one day digest all our gaming in more bite-sized morsels, but they will still be just as demanding. I dare say no large publisher is targeting the X3000 as the ideal GPU for their next great title.
Man, there's no way I'm reading ALL those comments. However, I will contribute to the mass of senslessness that is internet commentary by posting my twenty-three cents about this article. Which, btw, is the first article I've ever come across on slashdot that made me feel impassioned enough to sign up and comment. Yay me.
I wish I could come in here and simply say "what a moron, losers are as losers do, if you can't cut it, you don't deserve to waste precious air by breathing". However, I am no genius. I'm pursuing a computer science degree myself, came to it from liberal arts (philosophy to be exact), and haven't looked back. I suppose it could be argued that I couldn't "hack" the arts...but then again the move meant a whole lot more work (his article had that much right). So, I feel perfectly justified in my response to this. Frankly, I feel that if he couldn't stick with it, then he simply wasn't up to it. Period. I'm struggling through integral calculus right now. That's right, "struggling". Yet I don't back down. I took deifferential calculus twice. Because I couldn't get it? No. Because I made a C the first time and knew I could do better. I desired to do better. I had the drive to prove that. I came out the second go 'round with a B. You get what you put in I guess...
I find the attitude he exhibits appalling. Professorial incompetence aside, I and several others walk onto the front lines of an engineering education every day and we tough it out. I dare say most of us suffer from the same academic symptoms he mentions, yet we soldier on. We don't turn tale and take the path of least resistance. Consequently, I think this warrants us a small measure of elitism. I'm doing that which you could not. I'm better than you. Let's not turn this into a "science education is better than arts" debate though. That is by no means what I'm saying. (I'm minoring in philosophy and plan to do grad study in it at some point) What I'm saying is, to come to a technical program with the cocky idea that your some super rookie just because you aced a spoon fed lower education curricula only to tuck and run when the meat hits the grinder and you realise that for once in your life you must take your education into your own hands, qualifies you as one thing and one thing only. That thing is not a critic. You get by virtue of US citizenship and the bill of rights. The thing it qualifies you as is a washout. Bitch as you might, the fact still remains that you gave up. And so, I feel those of us who do tough it out, who don't run away from the challenge, those who may go on to contribute to the annals of man's greatest endeavour (science) should take the privilege to proclaim our fortitude and be proud of our pursuit. And we should give neither a moment's thought nor due consideration to the bitching of those that couldn't cut it.
But then again, what do I know. I did, after all, sign up and spend the past ten minutes typing out this rant of my own. That's my $.023
Slashdot Mirror
2002-2007, worked ~35 hours/week during the school year, more if the academic load was light and I could get them (multiple jobs, not a single one), 40+ hours per week in the summer, so nights and weekends were never free. Also, in my experience the estimates provided by the schools are inflated. Tuition at my regional state school was ~8k/year, so as long as I averaged $10/hour or so, I was able to make things work. Living below the poverty level didn't contribute to what I would call the best years of my life, but it worked.
It was 2002 to 2007. And as a young white American male also with no family money, I worked multiple jobs and figured it out. No loans at all, no scholarships either until my senior year when I managed to land a research scholarship that required 15 hours/week of research with a professor. I missed out on a lot as a consequence, all those "college experiences" that others talked about like parties and such. It was the lifestyle I couldn't afford, not the tuition.
While I would have loved to receive an advanced education for free, I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I worked my way through debt-free and received my "4 year" degree in 5.5 years by going to a state university and living a reduced lifestyle. Why can't others do the same? Why do they have to go into debt in the first place? This smells more like a problem with irresponsibility and poor life choices than some sort of systemic issue.
I think the fundamental issue here is that these debtors were reckless enough to finance lifestyle, tuition, and course of study combinations that were fundamentally imbalanced. This is a classic personal responsibility problem, apathetic, self-entitled people making decisions in their youth and not wanting responsibility for them later. Why did they use student loans to go to expensive schools and study courses they should have known up front are unlikely to land them the type of salary that can pay back those student loans? I studied philosophy for two years as I worked though my non-technical requirements. I enjoyed that time and loved studying the subject but I knew it wouldn't pay the bills. Two years in I changed my course to computer science. It took me 5.5 years to graduate debt-free. And I didn't benefit from my state's lottery-funded scholarship program. I've watched as my peers that received that benefit pissed it away. And now they're whining about their debt load working for a third or less of what I make and requesting "relief". As far as I'm concerned, they should be forced to pay it back no matter how long it takes.
I prefer exercise bikes. If they do this in a bike form and make the seat nice and comfortable, I'd be all over it. I rarely play games these days because so many more useful things to be doing, but I wouldn't mind sitting for hours on end to catch up on the latest titles if I'm getting some decent exercise along with it.
Yea, good idea man! Let's all wait till the price comes down to buy new games! If we all wait, then the best years of that game's online life will be when it costs us next to nothing and we can *all* get in on the pwnage! And we'll also show these greedy corporations what for, because they'll get no sales on that 5+ development years, multi-billion dollar project they're pushing! Next time they'll *know* not to price it so high at launch and pretty soon *all* games will come out at bargain basement prices! When we finally get to this golden age of producer/consumer harmony everyone will be fan-dandy-tastic! We will never again have to worry about large corporations giving a big, slimy stiffy to the people that supported them in years past!
I'll be all over it in a hearbeat. That game and CS:S are the only reasons I give windows any hard drive space at all.
What's a "homogenously sealed" environment?
hell yea! I loved the Year Zero ARG. I had no clue about it when I bought the cd, but caught on pretty quick when I took it out of my cd player to find it had changed color. From there a quick gtfq found me the wiki and an entire backstory to catch up on. :-) I think what makes these games truly fun is the process of discovery and community involvement that they foster.
"You may continue to demand our silence, but you will not obtain it." Where did jeevesbond demand silence?
What the fuck is wrong with these these fucking people? Fuck Hans Reiser, fuck his file system, and fuck his friends, fuck this if total bullshit. Fuck their entire association with linux. Congratulations fuckhead, you're a god damned moron. I truly have no respect or you. You bring shame to the linux community by shear association. Fuck you, fuck your friends, and fuck everything to do with you. I, for one, will NEVER use ReiserFS due to this. Fuck that shit. Technical superiority? Fuck it! What the hell has technical superiority (or lack there of for that matter) have considered up against this stupid fuck's obvious other bad decisions. Of course, I assume there is some technical superiority in the technology that he produced. Now though, fuck him, and fuck his technology. Any of you advocating for ReiserFS, I'm sorry. Find a new god damned file system technology to advocate, Reiser just brought complete shame to his legacy. His association with a confessed killer is enough to fuck him over. And if he killed his wife? Totally fuck him! I hope he rots in prison, fucked beyond belief for his stupidity! This has officially become a fiasco in my mind and I will not forgive him for it. Never let the name Reiser be mentioned in my presence again for shame of his lack of proper judgement. I will officially ignore him and his contribution. Let his name be forgotten and no legacy left by him. From here on, Reiser is erased.
Okay, I've no clue about the reality of this, but I'll relate "my friend's" story. Not "friend of a friend", just "my friend".
A friend was looking for a Wii, so he hit up Wal-mart. Wal-mart has everything right? Well, not that day they didn't. However, he managed to talk to manager that told him they were supposed to get some in through UPS the next day, a ton of them (my friend said 30 or so). Well, suitably excited, he shows up the next day and asks about them only to be told that they had none. Naturally, he bitched and moaned until they brought out manager. Lo and behold, it was the same manager he talked to. The guy instantly recognized him and told my friend that they did, indeed, have them in (again, about 30 of them) but that they were not allowed to bring them out or sell them yet. He didn't say why, he simply said he couldn't do anything. Well, my friend called him on it, raised hell again, really got on the guy about how he was anticipating their having one specifically because the guy told him they would. Eventually the guy relented and quietly slipped him one.
So, Nintendo hoarding? I dunno. But maybe retailers are up to something. I'm not sure what. Maybe some big coordinated sale like the "guaranteed in stock" thing that Wal-mart did a while back.
Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my story. Do with it what you will.
I fail to understand the contradiction as well. How the hell can we be lacking enough CS expertise to meet demand if the demand does not exist? I'm a computer science major. I'm perfectly willing to be a code monkey to pay the bills, but I'm going straight through to my Masters and PhD in order to qualify myself for a more interesting research position. In the event that I'm truly not needed upon graduation, I'll manage somehow. However, before the industry imports more cronies, I certainly hope they'll look my way long enough to realize that CS majors *do* exist, and that *some* of us are ready and eager to fulfill whatever needs the industry has. Oh, by the way Mr. Gates, if you'd like to contribute to my graduate tuition fund, I'll gladly forsake my part time job and concentrate more fully on developing the skills you need.
I would call it a 'qit' personally pronounced like 'kit'. But what do I know? I'm just lazy.
D.R.M. Especially the shoddy piece of code on my new Bond cd that prevents me from legitimately listening to it on my computer. The DVD side of the dual-disc works fine, but the cd side won't even mount (under windows or ubuntu). I hope the RIAA enjoyes the twenty bucks that I spent on it, because they'll have no more of my money.
And if they go through with it, I'll jump on their bandwagon immediately. I love linux, but I'm willing to branch out. Solaris sounds great to me, particularly DTrace.
What was it? Oh yea, "once bitten, twice shy."
How does this theory hold up with the paradigm switch we're seeing toward unified shader architectures? With Intel's clout and their experience with multi-core design, I'm sure they could cook up a decent general purpose "stream processing engine" suitable for graphics work. In the move to general purpose GPUs, I would expect to see less emphasis on the specialized algorithms supported by these add-ins as graphics processors and more emphasis upon the ability to implement your own algorithms.
I'm personally more intrigued by the idea of an Ubuntu version meant specifically for developers. Give me the normal Ubuntu system (sans useless desktop things like games, media players, etc.), add on a nice IDE maybe, throw in build-essential and the relevant sections of the UNIX manual, and I'd probably make a mess of myself in anticipation.
;-)
Currently, I make these modifications myself after a fresh install at every new release. I'm really just asking Canonical to make my life even easier.
Cliff clearly suffers from a myopic conception of FOSS systems. He also demonstrates the danger in representing an entire ecosystem of software with a single moniker. Free and open source software is not 'Linux', but Linux is free and open source software. The distinction is important. Linux is just one piece of a grand and heterogeneous domain of software. On top of that, anyone can contribute to it, take it and do what they like with it. I don't think it quite qualifies as a 'monoculture' the way that Windows does. I also find the Gnome/KDE reference amusing considering that they use completely different toolkits and libraries.
He complains about the cover charge for current generation console gaming (and targets the cheapest solution!) and praises episodic PC content partly for the fact that around 80% of US homes have PCs. I think this is remarkably myopic considering the heterogeneity of home PCs. What percentage of all those PCs are capable of playing the shiniest new episode of [insert game here]? What percentage of those PC owners with PCs NOT capable of playing the shiniest new episodes are willing to buy new hardware to play new episodes? One of the driving forces in the computer hardware industry is the demand for bigger, better, smarter games. Innovation has its place, but humans tend to favor shiny new things. So, quite naturally, developers produce bigger, better, smarter games, and vendors release faster, more powerful hardware to run it on. Console gaming is attractive to the developer because they have a standard platform to develop for. No matter how crappy the hardware, atleast they know that everyone who buys a Wii will have the *same* hardware. Thus, they may develop bigger, better, and smarter games by pushing that hardware to its limits. Similarly, consoles are attractive to the consumer because its new, its shiny, and it just works. There is no anxiety about whether or not your system will handle it, or whether you'll get the best experience from it. So, in order for this 80% argument to work, game developers would have to be targeting much less powerful machines. Intel has the largest segment of the PC graphics market, by far. Yet, you never see favorable benchmarks for it with the latest titles. Many games are "playable" on lower hardware, but that simply isn't the focus of the industry. PC gaming pushes boundaries. It enjoys the latest and greatest capabilities well before the console market gets them. This is a strength. The appparent ubiquity of the PC has nothing to do with the future of PC gaming as long as the push is toward more demanding games and more capable hardware. We may one day digest all our gaming in more bite-sized morsels, but they will still be just as demanding. I dare say no large publisher is targeting the X3000 as the ideal GPU for their next great title.
I've known about this for a while, the discovery channe did a special about this a while back. Slashdot needs to get with tbe times man. :-)
Man, there's no way I'm reading ALL those comments. However, I will contribute to the mass of senslessness that is internet commentary by posting my twenty-three cents about this article. Which, btw, is the first article I've ever come across on slashdot that made me feel impassioned enough to sign up and comment. Yay me. I wish I could come in here and simply say "what a moron, losers are as losers do, if you can't cut it, you don't deserve to waste precious air by breathing". However, I am no genius. I'm pursuing a computer science degree myself, came to it from liberal arts (philosophy to be exact), and haven't looked back. I suppose it could be argued that I couldn't "hack" the arts...but then again the move meant a whole lot more work (his article had that much right). So, I feel perfectly justified in my response to this. Frankly, I feel that if he couldn't stick with it, then he simply wasn't up to it. Period. I'm struggling through integral calculus right now. That's right, "struggling". Yet I don't back down. I took deifferential calculus twice. Because I couldn't get it? No. Because I made a C the first time and knew I could do better. I desired to do better. I had the drive to prove that. I came out the second go 'round with a B. You get what you put in I guess... I find the attitude he exhibits appalling. Professorial incompetence aside, I and several others walk onto the front lines of an engineering education every day and we tough it out. I dare say most of us suffer from the same academic symptoms he mentions, yet we soldier on. We don't turn tale and take the path of least resistance. Consequently, I think this warrants us a small measure of elitism. I'm doing that which you could not. I'm better than you. Let's not turn this into a "science education is better than arts" debate though. That is by no means what I'm saying. (I'm minoring in philosophy and plan to do grad study in it at some point) What I'm saying is, to come to a technical program with the cocky idea that your some super rookie just because you aced a spoon fed lower education curricula only to tuck and run when the meat hits the grinder and you realise that for once in your life you must take your education into your own hands, qualifies you as one thing and one thing only. That thing is not a critic. You get by virtue of US citizenship and the bill of rights. The thing it qualifies you as is a washout. Bitch as you might, the fact still remains that you gave up. And so, I feel those of us who do tough it out, who don't run away from the challenge, those who may go on to contribute to the annals of man's greatest endeavour (science) should take the privilege to proclaim our fortitude and be proud of our pursuit. And we should give neither a moment's thought nor due consideration to the bitching of those that couldn't cut it. But then again, what do I know. I did, after all, sign up and spend the past ten minutes typing out this rant of my own. That's my $.023