I think this is particularly true in technical/engineering fields. I spent my first year of grad school being groomed for a PhD thesis.
I'm of the opinion that a Master's degree is a good way to target one's career. If you have a technical undergrad degree, a master's can allow you to switch specialties. I don't think it makes much sense to pursue a Master's in the same field as one's undergrad, though. You already have the basics, and a Master's doesn't require enough work to truly become an expert in a field - either get the PhD and become an expert, or spend the two years doing actual work and developing practical experience.
Actually, I would guess the opposite: someone with only a bachelor's degree is more likely to fill a "generalist" role; graduate degrees lead to specialization.
A graduate degree will likely accelerate your advancement, but is unlikely to be a prerequisite for any particular career path (with some exceptions, of course... don't expect to be too far up the R/D chain without a PhD, and similarly a lack of an MBA will likely create a ceiling of some type). As far as professional registration (first as an engineering intern, then as a PE) it'll probably be immediately apparent once out of school whether it's something you _need_ to purse (say, as a civil engineer), something you don't need at all (pretty much everyone else), or simply something you may get for bragging rights (if you're in consulting).
They're mathematical terms. So, let's Vista's current state is represented by some kind of number, say number of bugs left to fix. If the world generally perceives this number to be X, the author's saying that the actual state of Vista is not simply off by a constant (i.e., c*X, where c is some constant) but that X is off by an order of magnitude (i.e., X*10 [this also assumes a "bad shape" is represented by a larger X]).
So, "by a constant" - multiply by a fixed number
"order of magnitude" - ten times larger or smaller
Obviously, if your constant is greater than 10, being off by a constant is worse, making this a poorly worded sentence by the author.
It had been my hope the Origami/UMPCs would be like this - the size of a steno, instant on/off and battery life of a Palm, and the flexibility of XP. Oh well...
Hey, I'm with you... a PDA is too small for my purposes (ie, too little display real estate), and laptops a bit bulky. I've heard that the Origami should get a day's worth of battery life... if so, it will fill a niche in my company - a great tool for remote data collection or display.
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Excel 2007 increases the rows beyond 65K. That alone almost justified my purchase of a copy.
This was true 6 or 7 years ago. Now, with gas prices having increased, coal plants are in vogue once again.
I think this is particularly true in technical/engineering fields. I spent my first year of grad school being groomed for a PhD thesis. I'm of the opinion that a Master's degree is a good way to target one's career. If you have a technical undergrad degree, a master's can allow you to switch specialties. I don't think it makes much sense to pursue a Master's in the same field as one's undergrad, though. You already have the basics, and a Master's doesn't require enough work to truly become an expert in a field - either get the PhD and become an expert, or spend the two years doing actual work and developing practical experience.
Actually, I would guess the opposite: someone with only a bachelor's degree is more likely to fill a "generalist" role; graduate degrees lead to specialization. A graduate degree will likely accelerate your advancement, but is unlikely to be a prerequisite for any particular career path (with some exceptions, of course... don't expect to be too far up the R/D chain without a PhD, and similarly a lack of an MBA will likely create a ceiling of some type). As far as professional registration (first as an engineering intern, then as a PE) it'll probably be immediately apparent once out of school whether it's something you _need_ to purse (say, as a civil engineer), something you don't need at all (pretty much everyone else), or simply something you may get for bragging rights (if you're in consulting).
They're mathematical terms. So, let's Vista's current state is represented by some kind of number, say number of bugs left to fix. If the world generally perceives this number to be X, the author's saying that the actual state of Vista is not simply off by a constant (i.e., c*X, where c is some constant) but that X is off by an order of magnitude (i.e., X*10 [this also assumes a "bad shape" is represented by a larger X]). So, "by a constant" - multiply by a fixed number "order of magnitude" - ten times larger or smaller Obviously, if your constant is greater than 10, being off by a constant is worse, making this a poorly worded sentence by the author.
It had been my hope the Origami/UMPCs would be like this - the size of a steno, instant on/off and battery life of a Palm, and the flexibility of XP. Oh well...
The plans are also dirt cheap with the employee discount. Unfortunately, little else is.
Hey, I'm with you... a PDA is too small for my purposes (ie, too little display real estate), and laptops a bit bulky. I've heard that the Origami should get a day's worth of battery life... if so, it will fill a niche in my company - a great tool for remote data collection or display.