I work as an IT consultant, doing SOX work. I have 'a friend' who is in the same line of work, who recently installed an open-source interpreted language package on his work laptop (they are not locked down, but if you break it or get it infected, you're responsible, and probably unemployed) in order to solve a client problem that was costing the client a fortune in billable hours. When he broached the solution to management (of the consultancy, not the client), he was told that despite the open culture of the organization and emphasis on innovation and efficiency, since this language was not part of the standard load for laptops, it could not be used period, and there was no machanism to get it approved. Period.
Community-built software is not perceived as 'safe' - 'It could have a trojan or virus built into it' is the exact phrase used by Sr. management in their demurral. When 'my friend' suggested that the likelihood of say, the Perl distribution, containing some kind of malicious code was vanishingly small and the code was way too open to scrutiny for such things to get in, and that closed-source firms have a far worse record on the subject of malware than established open-source projects, he was dismissed out of hand.
As such, he is developing his app, on his own computer, on his own time, and trying to come up with some kind of 'sales pitch' to get management to listen. Suggestions welcome - I'll pass them to him, although I'm sure he'll read this post.
For a good answer to this, read "Teach like your hair is on fire" - it was written by a teacher who has won pretty much every award possible for a teach, and who has an incredible track record of successfully teaching kids of various education and income levels. I would issue a copy to every teaching program grad. Seriously, the guy is amazing - and when you read how he does what he does, you'll wonder why the rest of the educational establishment doesn't 'get it'. He has two rules, 'work hard' and 'be nice'. And he enforces them - and so do the students.
My grandmother used to live on Long Island, in New York. Her retirement portfolio included shares of LILCO, the power utility for Long Island. They paid her dividends. She never bothered to follow what that company did, and when she retired to Florida (in 1972) she enjoyed the dividend checks she kept getting. LILCO built a nuclear power plant on Long Island, which bothered the hell out of so many LI residents, they eventually paid a huge price to keep the plant from opening - which ultimately broke the company. Grandma was upset her stock became worthless. She was also upset that some company was endangering her grandchildren, children, etc. and behaved so 'irresponsibly'. It never occurred to her that her long term, continued ownership of LILCO stock had anything to do with the nuke plant.
In my experience, most Americans are this way. 'If it kills my 401k performance, I'll tolerate pretty much anything' - 3rd world child labor, oil companies in Africa brutalizing their employees, diamond cartels, 'Walmarting' of small towns, etc.
America - I say this as a very proud American - get your head out of your butt and remember in a Democracy, you are the government, and in capitalism, you are the market. If 'the market' can sell you shampoo and celebrity mags and reality TV, it can sell you good corporate governance and wise leadership. You just have to get over your ADD and stop thinking of 'important' things as 'boring'. If you have time to watch TV, you have time to learn what is being done in your name, by your employees, public servants and asset managers.
Companies are not inherently evil - they represent the owner. When the owner (the public) hires sociopaths to run them and tolerates horrific behavior, said owner shouldn't be too surprised when their creation dumps PCBs in the Hudson River (GE), killing its' own workers AND customers, then lobbies against being forced to clean it up because the cleanup will cost them (their shareholders) too much and will open them to further liability when a centurys' worth of toxic crud gets lifted off the riverbed and starts to float downriver... and more people in the Hudson Valley get brain cancer because of it.
But hey - what do I know, I get my news from the BBC, 'cause my own country won't do news right...
As a (former) accountant, auditor and now implementation consultant, I agree except: accounting almost *never* gets asked about functionality. The 'do-ers' in accounting know the best way a process works. The managers, who usually come from public accounting (Big 4 or regional) almost NEVER have any actual accounting experience - in terms of doing accounting. They were auditors, which requires no actual accounting ability. Hence, conversations like this, "You're net income is overstated, because you mis-stated depreciation expense for last quarter. Fix it.", "OK, how? What is the journal entry?", "I'm an auditor, not a bookkeeper... you figure it out..." I kid you not.
Clerks can't pass the CPA exam, because they lack a theoretical background ("Discuss FASB141 impact on long-term assets..."). Managers can't pass Practical Accounting 101 - 'How to keep good books' because they never *worked* as an accountant, yet they became decision makers.
In my experience, a senior-level accounting manager (controller level or above) gets sold on a system by a consultancy - they look at price or sex appeal, but NEVER take a few staff accountants and have them test out the system before purchase. What? Get some high-school educated clerk who has done the same job for 15 years test this complicated product? What do they know? They wear reindeer sweaters to the Christmas party fer chrissakes!
Yah, they only know exactly how the job is done, what should happen, and usually what should work better, but since no one cares to ask their opinion, and they are routinely reminded they are not considered 'the best and the brightest' in the office, because they get paid way less than a freshie straight from University, management never finds out what would actually work.
I went into consulting because I decided, after 4 companies, each worse than the last, that if I had to deal with this kind of idiocy, I was damn well gonna be on the 'getting paid' side of it. That, and I get to talk to Ms. Reindeer sweater and help her out during the implementation and setup where her manager could care less. Kinda nice, actually.
Back OT, don't blame accounting for bad IT decisions - they're either marketing victims, too stupid, or not asked for their input. Blame senior management and their love of free golf outings./rant
A caveat: This assumes people would go out and buy commodity hardware to run OSX on. If Apple simply said 'fine, run it wherever you can, but we will not support anything but our hardware.' Then you'd have:
- Geeks cooking up homebrew hardware configurations that ran OSX fine, and publishing howtos. Resellers may jump on the bandwagon, but are still beholden to Apple for updates, which may break the commodity box, so software-update goes from crucial to hazardous. - Mac fanboys and -girls continue to buy Apple hardware and Software and pay for support and get what they get now - exactly what they (we) want. - Consumers who are too dumb to know better trying a roll-your-own Mac system and getting mad because it aint' like Windows and it breaks every time they run software update or change a video/audio/whatever card - and when they call Apple, they are told politely to run it on approved hardware, or re-read their license.
Macs are NOT commodities - that is why we (me too) are willing to pay more for them. We see more value in them than we do in generic PCs. As long as Macs are not commodities, they will have a market, OSX on PC or not. And, BTW, as other posters pointed out, you can buy OSX in any Apple store, and they don't even scan your 'Mac customer barcode' tattoo to sell it to you.
Heck - Apple doesn't even DRM their OSX install disks, but they do sell reasonably-priced 5-license-packs. The trust their users. And we drink the Kool-Ade. So far, works for me.
For those who are convinced that there's too much hype to the new Will Wright game 'Spore'... what else can you possibly expect, given the mans' track record?
Combine what he's done previously with the team he put together and the type of game he's making - unless he hid in a basement and told no one, including EA, what he was doing, his project would be 'overhyped'.
This does not mean the game will suck. It means it will suck to whomever decides that due to the huge hype, if it isn't the 'best bang since the big one', it sucks. In other words, the idiots.
Frankly, the man made exactly one bad game - SimHealth - IMHO, and that was under contract to a NFP to try and educate people about health care, so I'll give him a pass on the game and an honorable mention for public service.
If the game is only as good as the features shown in the demos, it is still worth the $49.95.
As a combat vet of Gulf War Part I (USMC), I submit that the priority of the 'Davids' is putting together a gadget that keeps them alive rather than creating a reproducible, durable long-term solution. While there is a definite need for planned, careful R&D, there is also a need - far more pressing, IMHO - to encourage imagination and flexibility in the field. You'll get better results (i.e., fewer dead) - to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing so concentrates the mind like the prospect of death.
I was with a [unnamed for reasons that will become obvious] helicopter squadron in 1991, aboard the USS Tarawa who had laser-guided weapons, but no laser-designator. Consequently, they had to fly a helo in closer to the target and use wire-guided or dumb weapons, obviously much more dangerous. Fortunately, the prospect of federal prison didn't deter a few of the squadron members from contacting Redstone Arsenal, an Army facility, where they *happened* to know there was a device capable of marking a target, that could, in theory, be mounted on a UH1 Huey, which they happened to have. Some creative requisitioning later, they had a helo that could designate targets from a safe distance, and long-range, guided munitions could be used to take them out. Saved lives. No one got a medal. I wanted to write a story on it (I was a USMC Journalist at the time) but I was told if I did, half the squadron would go to prison - what they did was completely illegal. 'Homebrew' weapons R&D is strictly against regs, apparently - hey, someone could have gotten hurt, not to mention the budget and procurement process was completely circumvented.
Another aging gamer like me, whose ability to machine-mash buttons is shot:)... I *hate* that fight. It only gets worse as you go through. Good luck...
My Gamecube has defeated me. Eternal Darkness - the three-legged boss that takes three spates of spell-casting (per the walkthrough) to kill. Never got past, despite 2 hours of trying. Gave up. Metroid Prime - Boss where you have to shoot, roll around the circular track around it and up to the body three times. Never got past despite several hours of trying. Gave up. Zelda - Wind Waker - got to the last castle and had to break for a few weeks due to school. Came back and I have no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do. And the timed side-quests (bring a bottle of special water halfway across the world in $RIDICULOUSLY_LITTLE time) were so annoying I didn't bother. Did anyone EVER figure out how to complete the 'flying platform' ? Your leaf won't stay 'whole' long enough, no matter how many mini-typhoons you catch. Zelda - Twilight Princess - Got the damn goats into the stall, saved the game, came back the next day and I have another 10 goats to herd. Originals are already in the shed, and the 'new' goats won't enter. NPCs driving me nuts asking 'aren't you going to help out at the ranch?' Two hours in, the goats have beaten me. I quit - my personal record for giving up on a game - not making it out of the 'tutorial' portion. Prince of Persia - Warrior Within - If I don't play it every day, I lose the ability to fight even remotely decently (at $AGE, my fast-twitch reflexes are shot unless playing guitar, and that's more muscle memory than anything else).
Original Doom on the PC - played the higher levels with NOCLIPPING and god-mode the first time to see where everything was. What a pansy when I was younger...
Super Mario - Any game that keeps letting me play no matter how many times I die gives me a sense of incredible game-inferiority, like its' saying 'It's okay, it happens to everybody... maybe next time.' Get to the second world with 5 restarts of however many lives and just have to stop, go outside and get some sunshine so I don't feel like a total idiot.
Yes, I suck at these games, but am obviously too stupid to know I should stop buying them. Good thing I'm married, or I'd have nothing constructive to spend my spare time on... and my wife doesn't care that I'm bad at video games - I can usually beat her at Mario Kart, so my (video game) life is not completely pathetic.:)
At the risk of belaboring the obvious: It costs money and time to create content. We may disagree about appropriate pricing of content, but a studio and its' employees and/or contractors spent resources to create content for others to enjoy. The argument "Oh, I bought a DVD and can do what I like with it" is valid on its' face - you bought it, do what you like. Rip to your iPod, etc. This is where DRM sucks. There is an argument to be made for accountability - you buy a DVD of "Pirates of the Carribean II", rip it, and make it available to your friends to watch (lend it) or have them over to watch it. Muddier, but really, no harm, no foul - this is still part of the normal use of your *single* copy of the video. End case - you rip the DVD to a full-quality copy using Handbrake and make the archive available online to anyone. Now, the argument goes, you are making a product available for free that anyone can access - people who would otherwise have to buy it. Do we assume people are ethical and will try it, then buy it if they like? Is it fair to force a corporation, who is out of pocket tens if not hundres of millions of dollars, to make that assumption? I am not saying the studios are 'good guys' at all - but the notion that IP theft is not *really* theft is wrong-headed and counterproductive. If I were a content-creator, and I saw my margins dropping because users felt free to copy and redistribute as they saw fit, I would happily remove any DRM and make it easier for them to trade that content - but I would alter my content so I could generate more revenue from alternate sources. In other words, my 'movies' would incorporate a lot more ads, sponsorships, product placement - I would add marketing garbage until people actually revolted and stopped watching. In case no one noticed, this has already begun - but the popular palate for trash (in the US) is pretty forgiving. Hell, I am listening to NPR right now, and THEY are doing sponsorships ("This American Life is brought to you by...")
Pick your poison - DRM, ads or ethics.
For my money, ethics is the least painful and easiest to work with. If you download and like the product, you should go buy a 'legal' copy. If not, delete it and call it a day - your dollars were not spent encouraging the production of garbage. 'Try before you buy' applies to pretty much anything else we pay for, why not media content?
I use Windows XP at work and OSX, FC3, Win2000 and XP at home. I am a heavy duty business user and student developer. I offer the following observations: 1. I use OSX primarily, on a pre-Intel iMac. Speed is good. System slowdowns are generally longer under Windows than OSX, but the 'pinwheel' in OSX drives me insane. 2. The UI and system administration tools in OSX are hands-dows way easier to use. I used every version of Windows from 3.1, and worked at a support desk in college - and once I learned OSX (ok, BSD) - style system maintenance and operation, I never went back. *NIX is far more discoverable and has a well-engineered feel that I like. 3. I have yet to run into any software package that I needed that did not have a counterpart on Mac. 4. I still have not played Half-Life 2. I do not need to, but I would like to, and I bought WinXP just to do so. I can't really blame Apple for this. In fact, Apple, by moving to Intel, has made it easier for their user base to access windows apps. Microsoft, by making it more difficult (from what I've read - haven't tried it yet) to run Vista in any kind of virtual environment is not really helping the user base much. Although they probably don't care about Mac users, there are many business reasons to support virtual environments, from posts I've seen on/. 5. Searching in OSX returns better results than WinXP or 2000. 6. Mac help, for system related issues, returns more relevant results than WinXP or 2000. 7. Mac hardware just works. I have a hetogenous network - my Mac has no problems, nor does my FC3 laptop. I have a dual-boot PC with WXP and 2000 - 2000 recognized my wirelss card and the built-in ethernet adapter. WXP doesn't have a driver for the built in. The wireless card has a driver, but cannot acquire a network address from my AirPort. Win2000 has no problems with the wirelss card or network address. The driver in both OSes is up to date. I should NOT have to put in this much effort, especially for supposedly supported hardware - it stuns me that 2000 is actually better at 'figuring out' what to do than XP. Needless to say, the Mac setup has never caused any problems for my Mac hardware. 8. Development - I do mostly Java and Ruby. Java runs pretty much identically on both boxes, but setting up newer versions of the Java environment is more difficult on Mac. Installing and configuring Ruby also requires a lot more effort. However, it is easier to troubleshoot in the Mac environment. XP and 2000, the installs seem to 'just work' but if they go wrong or there is a misconfiguration, it is a lot harder for me to figure out what went wrong. 9. Licensing - I can install my OSX CD/DVD on any Mac I have, no registration necessary. I do not do this, but I can. Windows XP, I installed and because it couldn't get on my network, I had to use the dial-in service to validate my copy of XP, which was a PITA. 10. I took C in college, working in a UNIX environment. It was amazing and taught me a ton. I took Java in college, working on a PC with NetBeans. Worked great. I used VBA to do corporate work and learned two things - first, an IDE is very nice, especially to learn UI implementation and second, VBA makes it way too easy to write crap code. You can write crappy Applescript too, but I've seen far less of it. Xcode is a nice balance and can hit multiple targets. I like it, although I've not done much Objective C work. 11. I like scripting and *NIX tools. Scripting is far easier in a *NIX-like environment than on Windows. Yes, there is Cygwin, but that was designed to remedy the lack of such tools in Windows. 12. C# for web development is, in a word, crap. Sure, it is easy to learn. Sure, it is free. Sure, the MS IDE is ok if you choose to use it. HOWEVER, it is so wrapped up in Microsoft-specific 'stuff' it sucks to use. Example - to simply change the color of a button in a web-form, I spent several hours working through my code to see what went wrong. I sent it to my professor, who told me it was fine and worked. I was mystified
1. Most people don't know what they want... 2. However, most people know what they _have to_ accomplish. 3. A good developer will take #2 to heart, grit his/her teeth and understand the use to which the program will be put prior to doing anything. 4. A great developer will also engineer the system well, in the true spirit of 'engineering'. 5. A good business manager paying for the great developer will listen to the developer and provide feedback on any subject except usage and technical issues. Technology is the developers lookout, usage is up to the users. Work it out together - developer, you are the referee as well as participant. Management gets to fund or not-fund. That's it. They gave up any other input when they stopped being users of the system and took the bigger paychecks. 6. End users will not care about any of this list except #2, so you gotta get that one right.
I am nowhere near the first person to figure this out - much better minds than mine came up with this long ago. So, why does software still suck, and do people deserve $hitty software if they are unwilling to insist on good software? Or, do users - who are always (in my experience) the last ones to have input into a project, if they get any at all - deserve the opportunity to lynch managers when a bad app. is deployed and they are forced to use it?
I am a 'business dude'. I interpret 'IT Stuff' including (this week) COBOL code to business users. I don't and can't write it. And, neither I nor my clients care. The only time we even look at code is if we are trying to figure out what the code is supposed to be doing, since the Birkenstock-wearing dude who maintains it (no exaggeration, he really is Comic Book Guy from Simpsons, with Birks) insists it is 'impossible' to provide a listing of the program, 'impossible' to provide a list of batch functions that run on 'his' mainframe, 'impossible' to determine what programs and batch jobs are supposed to run and 'impossible' to look at the raw data before or after it is processed and has (deliberately) no inkling of the business purpose of the code.
Part of the actual conversation: "Is the data in a database?" "No, not a database." "Is it in a flat file?" "No, not really." "Is it in any format readable by people, or is there an application for viewing or manipulating the data?" "No." "How do you update the data?" "The batch jobs and programs do that." "Can we see them - listings of either?" "No, I don't have those."
I had to go to his bosses boss and muck around in the system myself until I found a way to list both batches and programs to a buffer and then SCREENSHOT ALL THE PAGES because no one could get into a command prompt - at least no one who would admit it.
My point - business users don't want to read the code - they want to make sure the system does what it should, and if it doesn't they want it fixed. If the maintainers of the system want to keep the business weenies (me then) and consultants (me now) out of their way, don't act like the business exists for the sole purpose of hosting your 'local fishing holes' website (actually happened - though not with Birkenstock guy).
I used to make fun of consultants, and there are some bad ones - but I meet a lot more unprofessional idiots on the business and tech sides of clients who act like any attempt to unf*ck an organization that is sinking like a baby with a bowling ball duct-taped to its butt is a personal affront to their dignity.
And for you business types - there is no reason to pay a consulting firm $200+ per hour, per consultant, if you have hired good engineers and computer scientists and developers, but hey - the expert is always 'the guy from out of town', right? Keep that payroll down, now, gotta keep the year-end bonus up.
Sarcasm aside, business types, remember the adage 'you get what you pay for' is true of employees. Before you decide to save a little money by hiring certification-whores or following the siren-song of cheap foreign labor, remember you might have to help grow your firms' business, and will have to use the people you hire to do it. Or pay a firm like mine a lot of money. I've seen it happen, and it is neither pretty nor cheap.
One exception - when I was in HS in the 1980s', the only music from the late 50s through early 70s people thought was cool was Rock - especially that which came to be called 'Classic Rock'. Note: That includes Led Zeppelin, but NOT Motley Crue, for you young-uns. The rest of the music sucked. For those who would argue, I submit the following bands who sucked then and can NEVER be considered good by any standard upon which rational, music-loving human beings can agree: Bread, Three Dog Night, Captain and Tennille (played own instruments, wrote own music, still sucked), The Carpenters, Donovan, Sonny & Cher. Pretty much every 'singer-songwriter' to ever chart. The list goes on. In short, there was a time during which 'todays music just sucks, compared to what we used to listen to..." was true - the 60's and 70's 'pop' charts, after the boomers did enough dope to terminally fry their minds. How could they go from Jimi at Woodstock to Donnie & Marie? I don't want to know. Korn may not be Metallica, but they certainly aren't the Osmonds... hey you, get outta my yard...!
I think the main objections are first, that companies pay you a salary, then try to externalize costs to you by making you, the salaried worker do more than your fair share of work (i.e., 40 hours per week, with the occasional crunch).
There is a happy medium - but to find it, workers require as much protection as employers. No one 'owes me' a job, but there are certain standards that should be met. In a totally free market, it is possible to price anything - say, the virginity of your 12 year old daughter. As a culture, we set limits on what we will allow the market to dictate, because some things are deemed social goods that should not be sold away. 80 hour weeks for everyone with limited or no compensation (PTO or $) means, for starters, no parenting for those with kids and no social life for those without.
In short, the labor market must be regulated just enough, IMHO, that the corporation and the employees come to the table as equals. That is not the case, in the US anyway, in my experience.
Besides all the above, in my experience as a white collar wage-slave, unpaid overtime (I'm exempt) usually comes about due to poor managerial planning, rather than through laziness or real work requirements. Managers need to be made to understand - if you suck at managing resources, you can't just seize more (of your employees time).
If the issue is you're slowing down, you might try some of the text-based adventures out there. You can get emulators for the old Infocomm games, and there are some newer interactive fiction games out there. Typing replies takes time, but you won't die because your hands are slower than your reflexes.
You might also try http://www.makoa.org/computers.htm - good links for adaptive tech. You might be able to keep playing your favorite games, just with a new interface/device. I don't know if they work for consoles, but for PC/Mac, you should be good.
... human beings are the only organisms capable of attaching value to 'better'. Other organisms certainly struggle to live, but can't assign a value to living.
Stupid argument, but the sentiment (preserve the Earth) is valid, IMHO.
1. If you have children 'to benefit society' you are either really, really twisted or just plain out of your nut. 2. Having children is imperative for some, not for others. In the long run, we're ALL dead, so it really doesn't matter, and just because there is a long evolutionary history supporting having kids (cause if your parents had none, chances are you won't...;) ) does not mean there is some sort of goal to it. Evolution is not about outcomes, it's about survival from moment to moment. 3. More on point, I've seen many people with good marriages go bad because they spoiled the crap out of their kids and neglected each other. I've seen parents so self-centered that they hire nannies as soon as the kids are born so they can resume their careers. Balance, balance, balance. There is no need to rank 'spouse or kids' - just keep both of them somewhere above everything else, and you're golden. Unless that idea doesn't appeal to you - then don't have kids or get married. Either way, you contribute more net happiness to the world than spoilers or nanny-ers.
My bosses' bosses' boss just had her first kid at 37. She was back at work in 6 weeks, because she and her husband are career oriented - they have a ton of money and one of them could easily quit to raise the rugrat. She told us at a group meeting that her toddler runs to the nanny and has bonded with her instead of mom - she and her husband are happy their precious daughter loves the nanny, because that means they 'got a good one'. I almost vomited. She then replied to a question from one of my peers about stock we were issued as part of compensation, "I really don't know about that - those shares are so cheap, and I get so many other forms of incentive compensation, well, that's just shoe money. Ask Human Resources - they'll know."
FYI, the share payout was about $900, which is a lot to us - we don't get 'incentive compensation', wages have been frozen and bonuses were cancelled last year, for the foreseeable future. For us, anyway, not for COOs.
The point of the above - bad parents suck. Don't be one. Have vacations, cars and houses in the wine country instead - your taxes will pay for my kids education, for which I will be grateful.
I would be curious to know how many jobs were created in the same span. Stories like this tend to misstate the case. Every time say, Boeing lays off 10,000 people, or Ford, or (insert company here), or there is an uptick in offshoring, the press goes nuts.
Unemployment was at 4.7% in August, per the US Dept. of Labor. Offshoring is hardly new, so one would expect it to skew the percentages over time - yet, 3-6% unemployment has been pretty much the trend every year since WWII, witha few notable spikes (oil shock in the 1970's).
Yes, morale may suck, yes, there might be overwork - welcome to white-collar work. If you came into IT in the 90s', it's probably a nasty shock. I suspect that the older./-ers out there have seen this kind of thing before.
When I see geeks working in Burger King, I'll worry. Now, off to finish my grad degree in IS since IT is still a great place to earn above-average wages...
Google Is Your Friend. Try Googling "Information technology earnings site:.edu" - you'll get lots of the following:
Instead of focusing on parties or current (cliched) discussions, start with first principals and try to steer discussion toward principals upon which people agree on, THEN apply the reasoning to current events.
For example:
Abortion - pro or anti? -- Wrong!
To what degree should the law force dependency on a person? Can the law require a person to allow the use of their body to host another, even if it means the other may perish? Could we force a person to donate blood or an organ? -- Discuss the principal, then work up to 'abortion' - the specific application of the principal.
This will probably still backfire, so you will have to moderate - there are a lot of asshats out there with axes to grind.
Good luck and post a link - I'd welcome a positive political discussion.
1. If I want to socialize, I can still do that - I just need to go out of my way. It is not your job as my professor to ensure I socialize with other students. If you really have to have interaction, assign me a group project (/me shudders). 2. "Appearance of attentiveness" ? If you bore me, whether live or via podcast, I am not learning. It is worse 'live' since I can't rewind you. Also, if I need a break, I can pause a podcast - I can't pause a two or three hour lecture, unfortunately.
Lecture style presentation is not a good format to start - podcasting makes them bearable. Podcasts also make it easier to mitigate the impact of crappy lecturers on your academic career - I can fast forward through the droning about how LISP is so much more suited to the task at hand and how C just sucks yadda yadda... (Note: I am not looking to start a flamewar, I am quoting a former prof. of mine who was supposed to tech us C, but who spent a lot of time griping instead. I don't know LISP, so I can't intelligently say if he was right or wrong, but I can say, I didn't care at that point. I wish I could have 'fast forwarded' him.)
For those masochists who like lecture format, they can still attend the original taping.
Only problem: 1. Professors don't, in my experience, assigne much value to such in-class assessments of student knowledge, beyond a 'participation' score, which you get for being there and asking the occasional question, even if you are a complete idiot. 2. "Student input" in class is usually a cover up for a course with really thin material or a really disorganized prof.
You want insight into student learning?
Hold a structured debate in class with assigned teams.
Make students write an essay *in class* covering material they should know - no plagiariasm risk, and you'll know right away who is learning and who is goldbricking. This practice also develops writing skills. Give a small points discount for grammar/spelling when grading though - you'll be grading a first draft, which almost by definition should have errors in it.
Of course, many Uni. classes are taught by overworked, underpaid grad students, so asking them to spend so much time and effort ensuring learning might not be terribly fair to them, but that is hardly the students fault...
I am a grad student at DePaul U. in Chicago. I also work a full-time day job. Online classes make my graduate education possible, and for the naysayers, the course material is identical to the in-class. The online courses are actually webcasts of 'live' classes posted the day after the class occurs, and exams must be taken on-site or proctored. Online classes are great for motivated students but terrible for non-motivated students. When it comes to class interaction, especially for technical classes, I prefer online classes with a good discussion board / wiki. Offer the classes as soon as they are done, and don't encumber them (I have to jump through hoops to get my classes into a format I can watch, since DePaul only supports IE on a PC for watching classes). If you have the server space, put them out there in Quicktime and Windows Media format, or if you must, post unencumbered.wmv files and a link to one of the free tools (e.g., iSquint) that will convert.wmv to Quicktime. Podcasts of the audio are awesome - watching webcasts is pretty uselss, since the stream is usually so low-res that it is impossible to read the blackboard/whiteboard. Speaking of which, do not waste resources on a fancy 'collaboration tool' wherein the class video is embedded in a Java applet that also shows the whiteboard contents in detail - nice idea, but usually the video quality still sucks, and students are then stuck watching via a browser. Plus, poor handwriting on a low-res whiteboard equals illegible scribbles on half the screen. I prefer printing the class notes and following along a podcast - works great, and I can take notes on my hardcopy. This works only if your professor is organized enough to have good lecture notes - which s/he should, especally at the graduate level.
Copyright should be a nonissue, since unless you are registered, you can't get the degree, which is the whole point of the class. If someone wants to download your content to see what the classes are all about, let them - free promotion. Also, make texts available online. College bookstores are, in my experience, a complete ripoff, and don't even tell me how the huge margins support student programs - that's crap. At DePaul, the student bookstore is a Barnes & Noble, and they gouge the hell out of us to the point where most of the faculty tell students point-blank, "don't buy your books at the bookstore, go to (insert recommended online discount textbook supplier)."
For liberal arts classes, however, all bets are off - just post the notes and forget the lectures. No one cares anyway. (kidding!!!... mostly...)
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I work as an IT consultant, doing SOX work. I have 'a friend' who is in the same line of work, who recently installed an open-source interpreted language package on his work laptop (they are not locked down, but if you break it or get it infected, you're responsible, and probably unemployed) in order to solve a client problem that was costing the client a fortune in billable hours. When he broached the solution to management (of the consultancy, not the client), he was told that despite the open culture of the organization and emphasis on innovation and efficiency, since this language was not part of the standard load for laptops, it could not be used period, and there was no machanism to get it approved. Period.
Community-built software is not perceived as 'safe' - 'It could have a trojan or virus built into it' is the exact phrase used by Sr. management in their demurral. When 'my friend' suggested that the likelihood of say, the Perl distribution, containing some kind of malicious code was vanishingly small and the code was way too open to scrutiny for such things to get in, and that closed-source firms have a far worse record on the subject of malware than established open-source projects, he was dismissed out of hand.
As such, he is developing his app, on his own computer, on his own time, and trying to come up with some kind of 'sales pitch' to get management to listen. Suggestions welcome - I'll pass them to him, although I'm sure he'll read this post.
For a good answer to this, read "Teach like your hair is on fire" - it was written by a teacher who has won pretty much every award possible for a teach, and who has an incredible track record of successfully teaching kids of various education and income levels. I would issue a copy to every teaching program grad. Seriously, the guy is amazing - and when you read how he does what he does, you'll wonder why the rest of the educational establishment doesn't 'get it'. He has two rules, 'work hard' and 'be nice'. And he enforces them - and so do the students.
Why would a god who wanted to create 'children' with free will, to accept or reject said god, build in an inherent bias?
Oh, right - 'works in mysterious ways', got it.
My bad.
My grandmother used to live on Long Island, in New York. Her retirement portfolio included shares of LILCO, the power utility for Long Island. They paid her dividends. She never bothered to follow what that company did, and when she retired to Florida (in 1972) she enjoyed the dividend checks she kept getting. LILCO built a nuclear power plant on Long Island, which bothered the hell out of so many LI residents, they eventually paid a huge price to keep the plant from opening - which ultimately broke the company. Grandma was upset her stock became worthless. She was also upset that some company was endangering her grandchildren, children, etc. and behaved so 'irresponsibly'. It never occurred to her that her long term, continued ownership of LILCO stock had anything to do with the nuke plant.
In my experience, most Americans are this way. 'If it kills my 401k performance, I'll tolerate pretty much anything' - 3rd world child labor, oil companies in Africa brutalizing their employees, diamond cartels, 'Walmarting' of small towns, etc.
America - I say this as a very proud American - get your head out of your butt and remember in a Democracy, you are the government, and in capitalism, you are the market. If 'the market' can sell you shampoo and celebrity mags and reality TV, it can sell you good corporate governance and wise leadership. You just have to get over your ADD and stop thinking of 'important' things as 'boring'. If you have time to watch TV, you have time to learn what is being done in your name, by your employees, public servants and asset managers.
Companies are not inherently evil - they represent the owner. When the owner (the public) hires sociopaths to run them and tolerates horrific behavior, said owner shouldn't be too surprised when their creation dumps PCBs in the Hudson River (GE), killing its' own workers AND customers, then lobbies against being forced to clean it up because the cleanup will cost them (their shareholders) too much and will open them to further liability when a centurys' worth of toxic crud gets lifted off the riverbed and starts to float downriver... and more people in the Hudson Valley get brain cancer because of it.
But hey - what do I know, I get my news from the BBC, 'cause my own country won't do news right...
As a (former) accountant, auditor and now implementation consultant, I agree except: accounting almost *never* gets asked about functionality. The 'do-ers' in accounting know the best way a process works. The managers, who usually come from public accounting (Big 4 or regional) almost NEVER have any actual accounting experience - in terms of doing accounting. They were auditors, which requires no actual accounting ability. Hence, conversations like this, "You're net income is overstated, because you mis-stated depreciation expense for last quarter. Fix it.", "OK, how? What is the journal entry?", "I'm an auditor, not a bookkeeper... you figure it out..." I kid you not.
/rant
Clerks can't pass the CPA exam, because they lack a theoretical background ("Discuss FASB141 impact on long-term assets..."). Managers can't pass Practical Accounting 101 - 'How to keep good books' because they never *worked* as an accountant, yet they became decision makers.
In my experience, a senior-level accounting manager (controller level or above) gets sold on a system by a consultancy - they look at price or sex appeal, but NEVER take a few staff accountants and have them test out the system before purchase. What? Get some high-school educated clerk who has done the same job for 15 years test this complicated product? What do they know? They wear reindeer sweaters to the Christmas party fer chrissakes!
Yah, they only know exactly how the job is done, what should happen, and usually what should work better, but since no one cares to ask their opinion, and they are routinely reminded they are not considered 'the best and the brightest' in the office, because they get paid way less than a freshie straight from University, management never finds out what would actually work.
I went into consulting because I decided, after 4 companies, each worse than the last, that if I had to deal with this kind of idiocy, I was damn well gonna be on the 'getting paid' side of it. That, and I get to talk to Ms. Reindeer sweater and help her out during the implementation and setup where her manager could care less. Kinda nice, actually.
Back OT, don't blame accounting for bad IT decisions - they're either marketing victims, too stupid, or not asked for their input. Blame senior management and their love of free golf outings.
A caveat: This assumes people would go out and buy commodity hardware to run OSX on. If Apple simply said 'fine, run it wherever you can, but we will not support anything but our hardware.' Then you'd have:
- Geeks cooking up homebrew hardware configurations that ran OSX fine, and publishing howtos. Resellers may jump on the bandwagon, but are still beholden to Apple for updates, which may break the commodity box, so software-update goes from crucial to hazardous.
- Mac fanboys and -girls continue to buy Apple hardware and Software and pay for support and get what they get now - exactly what they (we) want.
- Consumers who are too dumb to know better trying a roll-your-own Mac system and getting mad because it aint' like Windows and it breaks every time they run software update or change a video/audio/whatever card - and when they call Apple, they are told politely to run it on approved hardware, or re-read their license.
Macs are NOT commodities - that is why we (me too) are willing to pay more for them. We see more value in them than we do in generic PCs. As long as Macs are not commodities, they will have a market, OSX on PC or not. And, BTW, as other posters pointed out, you can buy OSX in any Apple store, and they don't even scan your 'Mac customer barcode' tattoo to sell it to you.
Heck - Apple doesn't even DRM their OSX install disks, but they do sell reasonably-priced 5-license-packs. The trust their users. And we drink the Kool-Ade. So far, works for me.
For those who are convinced that there's too much hype to the new Will Wright game 'Spore'... what else can you possibly expect, given the mans' track record?
Combine what he's done previously with the team he put together and the type of game he's making - unless he hid in a basement and told no one, including EA, what he was doing, his project would be 'overhyped'.
This does not mean the game will suck. It means it will suck to whomever decides that due to the huge hype, if it isn't the 'best bang since the big one', it sucks. In other words, the idiots.
Frankly, the man made exactly one bad game - SimHealth - IMHO, and that was under contract to a NFP to try and educate people about health care, so I'll give him a pass on the game and an honorable mention for public service.
If the game is only as good as the features shown in the demos, it is still worth the $49.95.
As a combat vet of Gulf War Part I (USMC), I submit that the priority of the 'Davids' is putting together a gadget that keeps them alive rather than creating a reproducible, durable long-term solution. While there is a definite need for planned, careful R&D, there is also a need - far more pressing, IMHO - to encourage imagination and flexibility in the field. You'll get better results (i.e., fewer dead) - to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing so concentrates the mind like the prospect of death.
I was with a [unnamed for reasons that will become obvious] helicopter squadron in 1991, aboard the USS Tarawa who had laser-guided weapons, but no laser-designator. Consequently, they had to fly a helo in closer to the target and use wire-guided or dumb weapons, obviously much more dangerous. Fortunately, the prospect of federal prison didn't deter a few of the squadron members from contacting Redstone Arsenal, an Army facility, where they *happened* to know there was a device capable of marking a target, that could, in theory, be mounted on a UH1 Huey, which they happened to have. Some creative requisitioning later, they had a helo that could designate targets from a safe distance, and long-range, guided munitions could be used to take them out. Saved lives. No one got a medal. I wanted to write a story on it (I was a USMC Journalist at the time) but I was told if I did, half the squadron would go to prison - what they did was completely illegal. 'Homebrew' weapons R&D is strictly against regs, apparently - hey, someone could have gotten hurt, not to mention the budget and procurement process was completely circumvented.
Another aging gamer like me, whose ability to machine-mash buttons is shot :) ... I *hate* that fight. It only gets worse as you go through. Good luck...
My Gamecube has defeated me.
:)
Eternal Darkness - the three-legged boss that takes three spates of spell-casting (per the walkthrough) to kill. Never got past, despite 2 hours of trying. Gave up.
Metroid Prime - Boss where you have to shoot, roll around the circular track around it and up to the body three times. Never got past despite several hours of trying. Gave up.
Zelda - Wind Waker - got to the last castle and had to break for a few weeks due to school. Came back and I have no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do. And the timed side-quests (bring a bottle of special water halfway across the world in $RIDICULOUSLY_LITTLE time) were so annoying I didn't bother. Did anyone EVER figure out how to complete the 'flying platform' ? Your leaf won't stay 'whole' long enough, no matter how many mini-typhoons you catch.
Zelda - Twilight Princess - Got the damn goats into the stall, saved the game, came back the next day and I have another 10 goats to herd. Originals are already in the shed, and the 'new' goats won't enter. NPCs driving me nuts asking 'aren't you going to help out at the ranch?' Two hours in, the goats have beaten me. I quit - my personal record for giving up on a game - not making it out of the 'tutorial' portion.
Prince of Persia - Warrior Within - If I don't play it every day, I lose the ability to fight even remotely decently (at $AGE, my fast-twitch reflexes are shot unless playing guitar, and that's more muscle memory than anything else).
Original Doom on the PC - played the higher levels with NOCLIPPING and god-mode the first time to see where everything was. What a pansy when I was younger...
Super Mario - Any game that keeps letting me play no matter how many times I die gives me a sense of incredible game-inferiority, like its' saying 'It's okay, it happens to everybody... maybe next time.' Get to the second world with 5 restarts of however many lives and just have to stop, go outside and get some sunshine so I don't feel like a total idiot.
Yes, I suck at these games, but am obviously too stupid to know I should stop buying them. Good thing I'm married, or I'd have nothing constructive to spend my spare time on... and my wife doesn't care that I'm bad at video games - I can usually beat her at Mario Kart, so my (video game) life is not completely pathetic.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious:
It costs money and time to create content. We may disagree about appropriate pricing of content, but a studio and its' employees and/or contractors spent resources to create content for others to enjoy.
The argument "Oh, I bought a DVD and can do what I like with it" is valid on its' face - you bought it, do what you like. Rip to your iPod, etc. This is where DRM sucks.
There is an argument to be made for accountability - you buy a DVD of "Pirates of the Carribean II", rip it, and make it available to your friends to watch (lend it) or have them over to watch it. Muddier, but really, no harm, no foul - this is still part of the normal use of your *single* copy of the video.
End case - you rip the DVD to a full-quality copy using Handbrake and make the archive available online to anyone. Now, the argument goes, you are making a product available for free that anyone can access - people who would otherwise have to buy it. Do we assume people are ethical and will try it, then buy it if they like? Is it fair to force a corporation, who is out of pocket tens if not hundres of millions of dollars, to make that assumption?
I am not saying the studios are 'good guys' at all - but the notion that IP theft is not *really* theft is wrong-headed and counterproductive. If I were a content-creator, and I saw my margins dropping because users felt free to copy and redistribute as they saw fit, I would happily remove any DRM and make it easier for them to trade that content - but I would alter my content so I could generate more revenue from alternate sources. In other words, my 'movies' would incorporate a lot more ads, sponsorships, product placement - I would add marketing garbage until people actually revolted and stopped watching. In case no one noticed, this has already begun - but the popular palate for trash (in the US) is pretty forgiving. Hell, I am listening to NPR right now, and THEY are doing sponsorships ("This American Life is brought to you by...")
Pick your poison - DRM, ads or ethics.
For my money, ethics is the least painful and easiest to work with. If you download and like the product, you should go buy a 'legal' copy. If not, delete it and call it a day - your dollars were not spent encouraging the production of garbage. 'Try before you buy' applies to pretty much anything else we pay for, why not media content?
I use Windows XP at work and OSX, FC3, Win2000 and XP at home. I am a heavy duty business user and student developer. I offer the following observations: /.
1. I use OSX primarily, on a pre-Intel iMac. Speed is good. System slowdowns are generally longer under Windows than OSX, but the 'pinwheel' in OSX drives me insane.
2. The UI and system administration tools in OSX are hands-dows way easier to use. I used every version of Windows from 3.1, and worked at a support desk in college - and once I learned OSX (ok, BSD) - style system maintenance and operation, I never went back. *NIX is far more discoverable and has a well-engineered feel that I like.
3. I have yet to run into any software package that I needed that did not have a counterpart on Mac.
4. I still have not played Half-Life 2. I do not need to, but I would like to, and I bought WinXP just to do so. I can't really blame Apple for this. In fact, Apple, by moving to Intel, has made it easier for their user base to access windows apps. Microsoft, by making it more difficult (from what I've read - haven't tried it yet) to run Vista in any kind of virtual environment is not really helping the user base much. Although they probably don't care about Mac users, there are many business reasons to support virtual environments, from posts I've seen on
5. Searching in OSX returns better results than WinXP or 2000.
6. Mac help, for system related issues, returns more relevant results than WinXP or 2000.
7. Mac hardware just works. I have a hetogenous network - my Mac has no problems, nor does my FC3 laptop. I have a dual-boot PC with WXP and 2000 - 2000 recognized my wirelss card and the built-in ethernet adapter. WXP doesn't have a driver for the built in. The wireless card has a driver, but cannot acquire a network address from my AirPort. Win2000 has no problems with the wirelss card or network address. The driver in both OSes is up to date. I should NOT have to put in this much effort, especially for supposedly supported hardware - it stuns me that 2000 is actually better at 'figuring out' what to do than XP. Needless to say, the Mac setup has never caused any problems for my Mac hardware.
8. Development - I do mostly Java and Ruby. Java runs pretty much identically on both boxes, but setting up newer versions of the Java environment is more difficult on Mac. Installing and configuring Ruby also requires a lot more effort. However, it is easier to troubleshoot in the Mac environment. XP and 2000, the installs seem to 'just work' but if they go wrong or there is a misconfiguration, it is a lot harder for me to figure out what went wrong.
9. Licensing - I can install my OSX CD/DVD on any Mac I have, no registration necessary. I do not do this, but I can. Windows XP, I installed and because it couldn't get on my network, I had to use the dial-in service to validate my copy of XP, which was a PITA.
10. I took C in college, working in a UNIX environment. It was amazing and taught me a ton. I took Java in college, working on a PC with NetBeans. Worked great. I used VBA to do corporate work and learned two things - first, an IDE is very nice, especially to learn UI implementation and second, VBA makes it way too easy to write crap code. You can write crappy Applescript too, but I've seen far less of it. Xcode is a nice balance and can hit multiple targets. I like it, although I've not done much Objective C work.
11. I like scripting and *NIX tools. Scripting is far easier in a *NIX-like environment than on Windows. Yes, there is Cygwin, but that was designed to remedy the lack of such tools in Windows.
12. C# for web development is, in a word, crap. Sure, it is easy to learn. Sure, it is free. Sure, the MS IDE is ok if you choose to use it. HOWEVER, it is so wrapped up in Microsoft-specific 'stuff' it sucks to use. Example - to simply change the color of a button in a web-form, I spent several hours working through my code to see what went wrong. I sent it to my professor, who told me it was fine and worked. I was mystified
1. Most people don't know what they want...
2. However, most people know what they _have to_ accomplish.
3. A good developer will take #2 to heart, grit his/her teeth and understand the use to which the program will be put prior to doing anything.
4. A great developer will also engineer the system well, in the true spirit of 'engineering'.
5. A good business manager paying for the great developer will listen to the developer and provide feedback on any subject except usage and technical issues. Technology is the developers lookout, usage is up to the users. Work it out together - developer, you are the referee as well as participant. Management gets to fund or not-fund. That's it. They gave up any other input when they stopped being users of the system and took the bigger paychecks.
6. End users will not care about any of this list except #2, so you gotta get that one right.
I am nowhere near the first person to figure this out - much better minds than mine came up with this long ago. So, why does software still suck, and do people deserve $hitty software if they are unwilling to insist on good software? Or, do users - who are always (in my experience) the last ones to have input into a project, if they get any at all - deserve the opportunity to lynch managers when a bad app. is deployed and they are forced to use it?
I am a 'business dude'. I interpret 'IT Stuff' including (this week) COBOL code to business users. I don't and can't write it. And, neither I nor my clients care. The only time we even look at code is if we are trying to figure out what the code is supposed to be doing, since the Birkenstock-wearing dude who maintains it (no exaggeration, he really is Comic Book Guy from Simpsons, with Birks) insists it is 'impossible' to provide a listing of the program, 'impossible' to provide a list of batch functions that run on 'his' mainframe, 'impossible' to determine what programs and batch jobs are supposed to run and 'impossible' to look at the raw data before or after it is processed and has (deliberately) no inkling of the business purpose of the code.
Part of the actual conversation: "Is the data in a database?" "No, not a database." "Is it in a flat file?" "No, not really." "Is it in any format readable by people, or is there an application for viewing or manipulating the data?" "No." "How do you update the data?" "The batch jobs and programs do that." "Can we see them - listings of either?" "No, I don't have those."
I had to go to his bosses boss and muck around in the system myself until I found a way to list both batches and programs to a buffer and then SCREENSHOT ALL THE PAGES because no one could get into a command prompt - at least no one who would admit it.
My point - business users don't want to read the code - they want to make sure the system does what it should, and if it doesn't they want it fixed. If the maintainers of the system want to keep the business weenies (me then) and consultants (me now) out of their way, don't act like the business exists for the sole purpose of hosting your 'local fishing holes' website (actually happened - though not with Birkenstock guy).
I used to make fun of consultants, and there are some bad ones - but I meet a lot more unprofessional idiots on the business and tech sides of clients who act like any attempt to unf*ck an organization that is sinking like a baby with a bowling ball duct-taped to its butt is a personal affront to their dignity.
And for you business types - there is no reason to pay a consulting firm $200+ per hour, per consultant, if you have hired good engineers and computer scientists and developers, but hey - the expert is always 'the guy from out of town', right? Keep that payroll down, now, gotta keep the year-end bonus up.
Sarcasm aside, business types, remember the adage 'you get what you pay for' is true of employees. Before you decide to save a little money by hiring certification-whores or following the siren-song of cheap foreign labor, remember you might have to help grow your firms' business, and will have to use the people you hire to do it. Or pay a firm like mine a lot of money. I've seen it happen, and it is neither pretty nor cheap.
I like to think of it as a 'stupidity premium.'
One exception - when I was in HS in the 1980s', the only music from the late 50s through early 70s people thought was cool was Rock - especially that which came to be called 'Classic Rock'. Note: That includes Led Zeppelin, but NOT Motley Crue, for you young-uns. The rest of the music sucked. For those who would argue, I submit the following bands who sucked then and can NEVER be considered good by any standard upon which rational, music-loving human beings can agree:
Bread, Three Dog Night, Captain and Tennille (played own instruments, wrote own music, still sucked), The Carpenters, Donovan, Sonny & Cher. Pretty much every 'singer-songwriter' to ever chart. The list goes on.
In short, there was a time during which 'todays music just sucks, compared to what we used to listen to..." was true - the 60's and 70's 'pop' charts, after the boomers did enough dope to terminally fry their minds. How could they go from Jimi at Woodstock to Donnie & Marie? I don't want to know. Korn may not be Metallica, but they certainly aren't the Osmonds... hey you, get outta my yard...!
I think the main objections are first, that companies pay you a salary, then try to externalize costs to you by making you, the salaried worker do more than your fair share of work (i.e., 40 hours per week, with the occasional crunch).
There is a happy medium - but to find it, workers require as much protection as employers. No one 'owes me' a job, but there are certain standards that should be met. In a totally free market, it is possible to price anything - say, the virginity of your 12 year old daughter. As a culture, we set limits on what we will allow the market to dictate, because some things are deemed social goods that should not be sold away. 80 hour weeks for everyone with limited or no compensation (PTO or $) means, for starters, no parenting for those with kids and no social life for those without.
In short, the labor market must be regulated just enough, IMHO, that the corporation and the employees come to the table as equals. That is not the case, in the US anyway, in my experience.
Besides all the above, in my experience as a white collar wage-slave, unpaid overtime (I'm exempt) usually comes about due to poor managerial planning, rather than through laziness or real work requirements. Managers need to be made to understand - if you suck at managing resources, you can't just seize more (of your employees time).
If the issue is you're slowing down, you might try some of the text-based adventures out there. You can get emulators for the old Infocomm games, and there are some newer interactive fiction games out there. Typing replies takes time, but you won't die because your hands are slower than your reflexes.
You might also try http://www.makoa.org/computers.htm - good links for adaptive tech. You might be able to keep playing your favorite games, just with a new interface/device. I don't know if they work for consoles, but for PC/Mac, you should be good.
Good luck!
... human beings are the only organisms capable of attaching value to 'better'. Other organisms certainly struggle to live, but can't assign a value to living.
Stupid argument, but the sentiment (preserve the Earth) is valid, IMHO.
1. If you have children 'to benefit society' you are either really, really twisted or just plain out of your nut. ;) ) does not mean there is some sort of goal to it. Evolution is not about outcomes, it's about survival from moment to moment.
2. Having children is imperative for some, not for others. In the long run, we're ALL dead, so it really doesn't matter, and just because there is a long evolutionary history supporting having kids (cause if your parents had none, chances are you won't...
3. More on point, I've seen many people with good marriages go bad because they spoiled the crap out of their kids and neglected each other. I've seen parents so self-centered that they hire nannies as soon as the kids are born so they can resume their careers. Balance, balance, balance. There is no need to rank 'spouse or kids' - just keep both of them somewhere above everything else, and you're golden. Unless that idea doesn't appeal to you - then don't have kids or get married. Either way, you contribute more net happiness to the world than spoilers or nanny-ers.
My bosses' bosses' boss just had her first kid at 37. She was back at work in 6 weeks, because she and her husband are career oriented - they have a ton of money and one of them could easily quit to raise the rugrat. She told us at a group meeting that her toddler runs to the nanny and has bonded with her instead of mom - she and her husband are happy their precious daughter loves the nanny, because that means they 'got a good one'. I almost vomited. She then replied to a question from one of my peers about stock we were issued as part of compensation, "I really don't know about that - those shares are so cheap, and I get so many other forms of incentive compensation, well, that's just shoe money. Ask Human Resources - they'll know."
FYI, the share payout was about $900, which is a lot to us - we don't get 'incentive compensation', wages have been frozen and bonuses were cancelled last year, for the foreseeable future. For us, anyway, not for COOs.
The point of the above - bad parents suck. Don't be one. Have vacations, cars and houses in the wine country instead - your taxes will pay for my kids education, for which I will be grateful.
I would be curious to know how many jobs were created in the same span. Stories like this tend to misstate the case. Every time say, Boeing lays off 10,000 people, or Ford, or (insert company here), or there is an uptick in offshoring, the press goes nuts.
./-ers out there have seen this kind of thing before.
i tts%20-%20Kansas1.pdf#search=%22Information%20tech nology%20earnings%20site%3A.edu%22
Unemployment was at 4.7% in August, per the US Dept. of Labor. Offshoring is hardly new, so one would expect it to skew the percentages over time - yet, 3-6% unemployment has been pretty much the trend every year since WWII, witha few notable spikes (oil shock in the 1970's).
Yes, morale may suck, yes, there might be overwork - welcome to white-collar work. If you came into IT in the 90s', it's probably a nasty shock. I suspect that the older
When I see geeks working in Burger King, I'll worry. Now, off to finish my grad degree in IS since IT is still a great place to earn above-average wages...
Google Is Your Friend. Try Googling "Information technology earnings site:.edu" - you'll get lots of the following:
http://www2.ku.edu/~econsem/Friday/papers(0506)/P
Instead of focusing on parties or current (cliched) discussions, start with first principals and try to steer discussion toward principals upon which people agree on, THEN apply the reasoning to current events.
For example:
Abortion - pro or anti? -- Wrong!
To what degree should the law force dependency on a person? Can the law require a person to allow the use of their body to host another, even if it means the other may perish? Could we force a person to donate blood or an organ? -- Discuss the principal, then work up to 'abortion' - the specific application of the principal.
This will probably still backfire, so you will have to moderate - there are a lot of asshats out there with axes to grind.
Good luck and post a link - I'd welcome a positive political discussion.
As a student...
1. If I want to socialize, I can still do that - I just need to go out of my way. It is not your job as my professor to ensure I socialize with other students. If you really have to have interaction, assign me a group project (/me shudders).
2. "Appearance of attentiveness" ? If you bore me, whether live or via podcast, I am not learning. It is worse 'live' since I can't rewind you. Also, if I need a break, I can pause a podcast - I can't pause a two or three hour lecture, unfortunately.
Lecture style presentation is not a good format to start - podcasting makes them bearable. Podcasts also make it easier to mitigate the impact of crappy lecturers on your academic career - I can fast forward through the droning about how LISP is so much more suited to the task at hand and how C just sucks yadda yadda... (Note: I am not looking to start a flamewar, I am quoting a former prof. of mine who was supposed to tech us C, but who spent a lot of time griping instead. I don't know LISP, so I can't intelligently say if he was right or wrong, but I can say, I didn't care at that point. I wish I could have 'fast forwarded' him.)
For those masochists who like lecture format, they can still attend the original taping.
Only problem:
1. Professors don't, in my experience, assigne much value to such in-class assessments of student knowledge, beyond a 'participation' score, which you get for being there and asking the occasional question, even if you are a complete idiot.
2. "Student input" in class is usually a cover up for a course with really thin material or a really disorganized prof.
You want insight into student learning?
Hold a structured debate in class with assigned teams.
Make students write an essay *in class* covering material they should know - no plagiariasm risk, and you'll know right away who is learning and who is goldbricking. This practice also develops writing skills. Give a small points discount for grammar/spelling when grading though - you'll be grading a first draft, which almost by definition should have errors in it.
Of course, many Uni. classes are taught by overworked, underpaid grad students, so asking them to spend so much time and effort ensuring learning might not be terribly fair to them, but that is hardly the students fault...
I am a grad student at DePaul U. in Chicago. I also work a full-time day job. Online classes make my graduate education possible, and for the naysayers, the course material is identical to the in-class. The online courses are actually webcasts of 'live' classes posted the day after the class occurs, and exams must be taken on-site or proctored. .wmv files and a link to one of the free tools (e.g., iSquint) that will convert .wmv to Quicktime. Podcasts of the audio are awesome - watching webcasts is pretty uselss, since the stream is usually so low-res that it is impossible to read the blackboard/whiteboard. Speaking of which, do not waste resources on a fancy 'collaboration tool' wherein the class video is embedded in a Java applet that also shows the whiteboard contents in detail - nice idea, but usually the video quality still sucks, and students are then stuck watching via a browser. Plus, poor handwriting on a low-res whiteboard equals illegible scribbles on half the screen. I prefer printing the class notes and following along a podcast - works great, and I can take notes on my hardcopy. This works only if your professor is organized enough to have good lecture notes - which s/he should, especally at the graduate level.
... mostly...)
Online classes are great for motivated students but terrible for non-motivated students. When it comes to class interaction, especially for technical classes, I prefer online classes with a good discussion board / wiki. Offer the classes as soon as they are done, and don't encumber them (I have to jump through hoops to get my classes into a format I can watch, since DePaul only supports IE on a PC for watching classes). If you have the server space, put them out there in Quicktime and Windows Media format, or if you must, post unencumbered
Copyright should be a nonissue, since unless you are registered, you can't get the degree, which is the whole point of the class. If someone wants to download your content to see what the classes are all about, let them - free promotion.
Also, make texts available online. College bookstores are, in my experience, a complete ripoff, and don't even tell me how the huge margins support student programs - that's crap. At DePaul, the student bookstore is a Barnes & Noble, and they gouge the hell out of us to the point where most of the faculty tell students point-blank, "don't buy your books at the bookstore, go to (insert recommended online discount textbook supplier)."
For liberal arts classes, however, all bets are off - just post the notes and forget the lectures. No one cares anyway. (kidding!!!
How cool would that be - IF you could get the licensing bits out - unlockable Mace Windu, Jules (Pulp Fiction) or other film characters. Shaft!!!!