they are happy to give up privacy and freedoms if it "helps fight terrorism"
Not saying I agree, per se, but this is not entirely unreasonable. If all it takes is for some spooks to run algorithms on call metadata to significantly reduce a person's likelihood of being blow up, lots of people are going to opt for "not being blown up".
I can respect Snowden for acting on his principles (at great personal cost), but I'm mostly okay with the NSA monitoring phone call metadata. The whole thing seems like a tempest in a teapot.
Guess we'll find out if it goes to trial. I will add that there are multiple examples of hackers being convicted in federal court and not receiving the max sentence.
1. The hacker is an adult; the other two were juveniles.
2. 10 years is the maximum possible sentence he could receive. He hasn't been tried yet. It is unlikely he'll receive the maximum sentence, or even anything close to it.
Until very recently (when my office was turned into a nursery) my home computer was an old Dell laptop running Windows XP. So in that sense I was "on" Windows. But I had zero interest in upgrading to 7 or 8, so in that sense I was already "off" Windows. They're not fundamentally different from XP, but the mere fact that they're different at all is an irritation. I'm really not interested in acclimating myself to a new desktop environment. Also, since May 2007 I've used nothing but Macs at work, a period spanning three different employers. At this point, if I were to buy a new machine for personal use, it would almost certainly be a Mac.
I actually prefer Firefox to Chrome on the desktop. My comment was just meant to say that I wouldn't buy an Android phone that wasn't one of Google's reference models, which (AFAIK) all run Chrome as the stock browser. My understanding is that Mobile Firefox is a little assy, but I don't have much firsthand experience.
Depends on what you want to do. Most coding jobs don't utilize much more than basic discrete math. Set theory, modulo arithmetic, etc. That said, there are still plenty of projects and applications that utilize heavy duty math. Photoshop, audio editing, 3d games, etc., not to mention all manner of scientific computing. If you can be content not working on projects like that (or, possibly, not working on the "mathy" components thereof) then you'll probably find you never, ever use differential equations once you leave school.
The question was rhetorical, but thanks for providing the actual stats. I was aware the rate for C.S. degree holders was lower; just not by how much. Certainly the rate isn't "100%" as the guy to whom I was responding implied when he wrote, "No business hires domestic programmers anywhere".
As someone who spends most of his time in Java but has had to dabble in Ruby, I find Ruby to be way more tedious. If I were going to recommend a language in that vein, though, I'd stick to Python. It seems to have wider adoption and generally be more future proof.
You have to think about what peoples' motivation will be to be part of a "computer club". Despite being generally interested in coding, most folks don't want to sit around and talk about it all the time. Some ideas:
1. Serve others. For instance, offer to tutor kids in lower-level programming classes. This won't be well received if you just end up doing their work for them.
2. Prepare, as a group, to enter local programming contests. Where I grew up, there were one or two schools in the area that had "invitational" team programming contests. See if you can get a staff sponsor to drive you to these events so you can compete.
3. Try to build something functional, and invite club members to help in the effort. Maybe a website that allows students at your school to plan out their course schedules based on your areas degree requirements. Maybe something that lets them sign up for automatic SMS updates containing news about your school. Etc.
4. If you have any sort of budget then provide food at your meetings. Cheap pizza usually does the trick. People flock to free food.
5. Invite speakers people might want to hear speak. If you live near a research university, see if some of their CS faculty might consider speaking to your group. If you live near any companies that do software development (and most people do), see if you can get some "real developers" to come talk about how things are in the "real world" and impart wisdom. (Caveat: many professional developers are not, in fact, very wise.)
One thing you'll realize in high school, and college for that matter, is that about half the people in most "clubs" are there just so they can put it on their resume. I say that not to criticize, necessarily; it is what it is.
No "computer camp" or even much coding outside school. Was taught BASIC and basic language concepts in the 7th grade, then Turbo Pascal in the 9th and 10th grades. After that I think we were taught a bit of FORTRAN and some x86 assembly in an advanced placement class. In hindsight I wish they'd skipped the Pascal, FORTRAN and assembler and just taught us C. At the time, though, Pascal was the language being used on the AP Computer Science exam, so that's what we learned.
"What will net you $130K today will be done by junior programmers in five years"
That really depends on why you're getting paid a premium. Is it because you have experience with the current "hot thing", or is it because you are capable of crafting correct, performant and elegant solutions to hard problems? If it's the latter, then that probably won't be "done by junior programmers in five years".
Not saying that's not true for some folks, but it isn't for me. Small startup, around 20 employees, maybe 8 of them technical. My "manager" is basically the CTO. That said, I spent five years at IBM so I'm familiar with the other side of the coin. Even at those types of places, though, your first-line manager typically has some discretion w.r.t. raises. If I had another offer in hand from a company whose work environment, benefits, stability, etc. where roughly comparable to my current situation but who was willing to pay me more then I'd probably just give my two weeks notice and call it a day. At that point, even if my employer were to offer to match, what would be my motivation to accept?
Don't know what to tell you except to say that I don't view my manager as a "bastard", nor do I think those two statements of mine would be received identically. That's not to say there isn't some merit to your suggestion that the offer never be mentioned. Even when you're polite about it, mentioning that you've already interviewed somewhere else and gotten an offer suggests you were already pretty unhappy where you are, or else you wouldn't have taken the time to interview somewhere else. In retrospect I probably wouldn't mention the other offer. I'd say something like, "I've taken some time to survey the job market, and it really seems as if someone with my qualifications is viewed as more valuable than my current compensation would suggest. Hopefully we can both agree that employees of {insert company name} should be compensated 'fairly' given the current market value of their labor, right?"
In his defense, the date is somewhat mushy. The NBER uses a number of measures (gdp growth, unemployment, etc.) and comes up with a date, but one could reasonably disagree with those criteria and the date they come up with. That said, the Lenzer article is still way wrong.
Lenzer is wrong from the first sentence of his column when he says, "For the recession of 2008 to have ended would have required the GDP to grow back to its former 2007 peak." That simply isn't true. At least, not according to the commonly accepted definition of "recession", i.e. a period in which the economy is contracting. If the economy is expanding, even at an anemic rate, and even if unemployment remains high and/or is slightly increasing, then the economy is not in recession. Even were I to accept the alternate measure of unemployment Williams' advances, it still wouldn't mean the economy remained in recession much after the official end date published by the NBER. But I don't accept that alternate measure. The unemployment rate is intended, conceptually, to measure the percentage of those who are both able to work and who want a job but who can't find one. Where Williams sees a category of "long-term discouraged" workers I see people who don't really want jobs anymore or else they'd have gone out looking sometime in the past 12 months. I'm fine with their being excluded.
Incidentally, I'd be more inclined to give credence to data from shadowstats if he weren't charging $175 a year for a subscription.
I suspect it has to do with the attitude that's used when the other offer is presented. You could do this:
I have an offer in hand for %10 more than what you're paying me now. If you can't or won't match it then I'm perfectly happy to go elsewhere. Your move.
Or you could do something like this:
So, I've been offered more money by another employer, but I really like working here and count several members of the team as genuine friends. I would hate to leave you guys in the lurch and really don't want to leave, but this offer is for significantly more than my current compensation and, as you can imagine, that's hard to turn down. My only goal is to be paid "fairly" as defined by the value proposition I present as an employee. With that in mind, while not definitive, this other offer suggests that my value may exceed the level at which I'm currently being compensated. Please understand: I am in no way giving you guys an ultimatum. This is not me "demanding" more money. That said, my family and I have a decision to make, and if you could manage to even partially bridge the gap then the decision would be that much easier to make. Thanks for understanding.
The first is confrontational and communicates that the employee has no real attachment to the job and is truly only interested in the money. He or she will always demand any other offer be matched and will bolt as soon as one isn't.. The second formulation is much more sympathetic. It's probably less likely to get you a full match of the other offer, but it's also less likely to piss off your manager and put you on the fast track to termination.
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Not saying I agree, per se, but this is not entirely unreasonable. If all it takes is for some spooks to run algorithms on call metadata to significantly reduce a person's likelihood of being blow up, lots of people are going to opt for "not being blown up".
I can respect Snowden for acting on his principles (at great personal cost), but I'm mostly okay with the NSA monitoring phone call metadata. The whole thing seems like a tempest in a teapot.
Guess we'll find out if it goes to trial. I will add that there are multiple examples of hackers being convicted in federal court and not receiving the max sentence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_criminals#Computer_criminals
Yes. It is still unlikely this guy will get the maximum sentence. Due, in part, to Schwartz's case.
1. The hacker is an adult; the other two were juveniles.
2. 10 years is the maximum possible sentence he could receive. He hasn't been tried yet. It is unlikely he'll receive the maximum sentence, or even anything close to it.
That said, if I were a gamer I'd probably keep a windows machine around just for that. But I'm not.
Until very recently (when my office was turned into a nursery) my home computer was an old Dell laptop running Windows XP. So in that sense I was "on" Windows. But I had zero interest in upgrading to 7 or 8, so in that sense I was already "off" Windows. They're not fundamentally different from XP, but the mere fact that they're different at all is an irritation. I'm really not interested in acclimating myself to a new desktop environment. Also, since May 2007 I've used nothing but Macs at work, a period spanning three different employers. At this point, if I were to buy a new machine for personal use, it would almost certainly be a Mac.
I actually prefer Firefox to Chrome on the desktop. My comment was just meant to say that I wouldn't buy an Android phone that wasn't one of Google's reference models, which (AFAIK) all run Chrome as the stock browser. My understanding is that Mobile Firefox is a little assy, but I don't have much firsthand experience.
Personally I'd never buy an Android phone where the stock browser wasn't already Chrome.
Depends on what you want to do. Most coding jobs don't utilize much more than basic discrete math. Set theory, modulo arithmetic, etc. That said, there are still plenty of projects and applications that utilize heavy duty math. Photoshop, audio editing, 3d games, etc., not to mention all manner of scientific computing. If you can be content not working on projects like that (or, possibly, not working on the "mathy" components thereof) then you'll probably find you never, ever use differential equations once you leave school.
The question was rhetorical, but thanks for providing the actual stats. I was aware the rate for C.S. degree holders was lower; just not by how much. Certainly the rate isn't "100%" as the guy to whom I was responding implied when he wrote, "No business hires domestic programmers anywhere".
As someone who spends most of his time in Java but has had to dabble in Ruby, I find Ruby to be way more tedious. If I were going to recommend a language in that vein, though, I'd stick to Python. It seems to have wider adoption and generally be more future proof.
Do you really believe this? I'm curious; what do you think the jobless rate is for U.S. citizens with at least a bachelor's degree in C.S.?
You have to think about what peoples' motivation will be to be part of a "computer club". Despite being generally interested in coding, most folks don't want to sit around and talk about it all the time. Some ideas:
1. Serve others. For instance, offer to tutor kids in lower-level programming classes. This won't be well received if you just end up doing their work for them.
2. Prepare, as a group, to enter local programming contests. Where I grew up, there were one or two schools in the area that had "invitational" team programming contests. See if you can get a staff sponsor to drive you to these events so you can compete.
3. Try to build something functional, and invite club members to help in the effort. Maybe a website that allows students at your school to plan out their course schedules based on your areas degree requirements. Maybe something that lets them sign up for automatic SMS updates containing news about your school. Etc.
4. If you have any sort of budget then provide food at your meetings. Cheap pizza usually does the trick. People flock to free food.
5. Invite speakers people might want to hear speak. If you live near a research university, see if some of their CS faculty might consider speaking to your group. If you live near any companies that do software development (and most people do), see if you can get some "real developers" to come talk about how things are in the "real world" and impart wisdom. (Caveat: many professional developers are not, in fact, very wise.)
One thing you'll realize in high school, and college for that matter, is that about half the people in most "clubs" are there just so they can put it on their resume. I say that not to criticize, necessarily; it is what it is.
No "computer camp" or even much coding outside school. Was taught BASIC and basic language concepts in the 7th grade, then Turbo Pascal in the 9th and 10th grades. After that I think we were taught a bit of FORTRAN and some x86 assembly in an advanced placement class. In hindsight I wish they'd skipped the Pascal, FORTRAN and assembler and just taught us C. At the time, though, Pascal was the language being used on the AP Computer Science exam, so that's what we learned.
"What will net you $130K today will be done by junior programmers in five years"
That really depends on why you're getting paid a premium. Is it because you have experience with the current "hot thing", or is it because you are capable of crafting correct, performant and elegant solutions to hard problems? If it's the latter, then that probably won't be "done by junior programmers in five years".
Not saying that's not true for some folks, but it isn't for me. Small startup, around 20 employees, maybe 8 of them technical. My "manager" is basically the CTO. That said, I spent five years at IBM so I'm familiar with the other side of the coin. Even at those types of places, though, your first-line manager typically has some discretion w.r.t. raises. If I had another offer in hand from a company whose work environment, benefits, stability, etc. where roughly comparable to my current situation but who was willing to pay me more then I'd probably just give my two weeks notice and call it a day. At that point, even if my employer were to offer to match, what would be my motivation to accept?
Don't know what to tell you except to say that I don't view my manager as a "bastard", nor do I think those two statements of mine would be received identically. That's not to say there isn't some merit to your suggestion that the offer never be mentioned. Even when you're polite about it, mentioning that you've already interviewed somewhere else and gotten an offer suggests you were already pretty unhappy where you are, or else you wouldn't have taken the time to interview somewhere else. In retrospect I probably wouldn't mention the other offer. I'd say something like, "I've taken some time to survey the job market, and it really seems as if someone with my qualifications is viewed as more valuable than my current compensation would suggest. Hopefully we can both agree that employees of {insert company name} should be compensated 'fairly' given the current market value of their labor, right?"
Yeah. That's a totally commensurate response to my saying the recession ended in 2009. Good day to you sir, Mr. Anonymous Coward!
In his defense, the date is somewhat mushy. The NBER uses a number of measures (gdp growth, unemployment, etc.) and comes up with a date, but one could reasonably disagree with those criteria and the date they come up with. That said, the Lenzer article is still way wrong.
Lenzer is wrong from the first sentence of his column when he says, "For the recession of 2008 to have ended would have required the GDP to grow back to its former 2007 peak." That simply isn't true. At least, not according to the commonly accepted definition of "recession", i.e. a period in which the economy is contracting. If the economy is expanding, even at an anemic rate, and even if unemployment remains high and/or is slightly increasing, then the economy is not in recession. Even were I to accept the alternate measure of unemployment Williams' advances, it still wouldn't mean the economy remained in recession much after the official end date published by the NBER. But I don't accept that alternate measure. The unemployment rate is intended, conceptually, to measure the percentage of those who are both able to work and who want a job but who can't find one. Where Williams sees a category of "long-term discouraged" workers I see people who don't really want jobs anymore or else they'd have gone out looking sometime in the past 12 months. I'm fine with their being excluded.
Incidentally, I'd be more inclined to give credence to data from shadowstats if he weren't charging $175 a year for a subscription.
Or you could do something like this:
The first is confrontational and communicates that the employee has no real attachment to the job and is truly only interested in the money. He or she will always demand any other offer be matched and will bolt as soon as one isn't.. The second formulation is much more sympathetic. It's probably less likely to get you a full match of the other offer, but it's also less likely to piss off your manager and put you on the fast track to termination.
Add in a constant factor and I'd buy it.
The U.S. economy hasn't been in a state of recession since June 2009.
You had me at "They don't sting like fire ants do...".