Tyrannical Government Attention || CSE Job Tips
And if you are lonely this holiday season...
on Saturday December 17, @03:45PM (#14281052) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/08
Little Red Book Draws Government Attention: "Looks like he found what he was looking for...
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Niet3sche (534663) Alter Relationship on Saturday December 17, @05:55PM (#14281852)
'The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.'
What better way to learn about fascism and totalitarianism than to live under 'em, eh?
Yes, I'm feeling sardonic today."
=================
Peking Version?
(Score:5, Interesting) on Saturday December 17, @08:40PM (#14282493) .../...
5) The professor is up for tenure. Which may or may not make a lick of difference, depending on the professor. He seems cool enough, though, doing some sort of extreme history thing in Afghanistan.
http://www.brianglynwilliams.com/ [brianglynwilliams.com]
6) Another quote: "The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country." And this quote is just stuck in the middle of the rest of the article, with no clue why it's there. So why IS it there? Is there an implication the feds are threatening the students of professors who (amongst most Americans, including the Senate) are criticizing the ability of the feds to eavesdrop without a warrant?
7) Another mistake: "In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it [the Little Red Book] was required reading." The 1st Edition of the Little Red Book was published in April, 1964. (Mao had earlier publications, but the Little Red Book came out rather late in the game.) http://www.bibsocamer.org/BibSite/Han/ [bibsocamer.org]
I'm not convinced the student was lying, but it seems very suspicious to me, especially with the timing involved.
============
Re:Peking Version?
(Score:5, Informative) on Sunday December 18, @05:41AM (#14284205) (Last Journal: Sunday December 18, @07:45PM)
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http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171476&threshold=4&commentsort=0&tid=103&tid=158&tid=146&tid=219&mode=thread&cid=14284205
Dear Bill,
Delighte to hear from you and I hope my response is of service. If you could post it I would be most grateful.
I am one of the professors mentioned in your 'conspiracy theory response' (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams)With all due respect I wanted to add a few comments. A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this incident as an example of the White House policies' very real applications and how they trickle down to the university level. My description of the incident was in response to an inquiry from a reporter at the Standard Times, New Bedford who called requesting a commentary and I thought it was appropriate. B. There are several key sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good history!
C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am Associate Professor of History. But I do appreciate your reference to the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of investigation and encourage the same in my students. D. I know this student well. He is the real thing, he is mature, honest, reliable, hard-working and genuinely interested in getting to the truth on issues, i.e. he is everything we train our students to be. The fact that Dr. Bob Pontriband who is by the way a passionate educator who seeks to instill just this sort of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty research in his students also vouches for him lends two voices to his defense. I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Glyn Williams
Associate Professor of History
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
===================================
down load it here
(Score:5, Informative) <SCPowell@excite.com> on Saturday December 17, @04:03PM (#14281166) (Last Journal: Saturday July 10, @11:27PM)
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Re:This is unfortunately predictable
(Score:5, Insightful)Because they think of themselves as the "good guys", and the history they are taught (by school, Hollywood, the media, etc) portrays bad things being done by "bad guys". In reality, there is no good and bad, just a mixture of greys.
I completely agree that history as it is taught is a mostly worthless mess of "we are infinitely good" and "they are infinitely bad". However, to day that "there is no good and bad, just a mixture of greys" is ridiculous! There are many events throughtout history that are very clearly Bad and others that are clearly Good, regardless of your ethical background.
Let's look at a few extreme examples:
- 6 million Jews are murdered in German death camps during World War II
- An estimated 20 million Russians are murdered in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign
- American slavery is an established institution for hundred//s of years
- Native Americans are nearly wiped out by small-pox infected blankets and through other genocidal actions
There is no shades of grey in those acts. They were and are evil acts.
Now the fact that American history books as taught in our schools will only go into detail on the first two (non-American "bad guys") and gives only token treatment to slavery and usually don't mention the Native American genocide is an entirely different problem...
===================
Re:This is unfortunately predictable
(Score:5, Insightful) on Saturday December 17, @04:11PM (#14281224) (Last Journal: Sunday September 19, @09:03PM)
Human nature wants someone to protect us, we want to believe the world is a happy place and all will be well. Because if we look in the mirror we see someone we don't like and a world we can't stand.
It works the same way religion does. If you look at something else, you don't have to see the real world. It's the same reason so many body builders work so hard to get great bodies. They often hate the person inside so much they want to change it.
People believe what they are told.. because if they don't, they end up broken..
Anonymous Coward - For trolls without balls or people not caring for Karma
.../...Why do people not learn from history? It is clear that those in power have a
vested interest in having a sheeple populace. A critical thinking, well informed
electorate, is the biggest enemy to would be dictators in a democratic society.
Start with the children. I guess fear really is the mind killer. And, at the risk of
pulling a Godwin, two quotes from Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's Luttewaffe.
"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy"
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
==============
I don't know about "innapropriate".
(Score:5, Insightful)
He even refuses to give his name now because he "fears repercussions".
You just can't get that kind of gut-level understanding without a visit from the authorities. That is one kid who will have a deeper understanding of the material now than anyone else in class.
Re:I don't know about "innapropriate".
(Score:5, Insightful)That was the whole point. You don't send agents to knock on the front door of potential terrorists. If someone is dangerous or is believed to be dangerous, they are put under surveillance to see what's going on.
You send agents to intimidate. Apparently people interested in world views contradictory to our own.
Yeah, it's almost time to go.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOcyclop asks: "I am a close friend of a Ph.D. student on human
interface usability. She's now working to tailor a [1]KDE-vs-[2]Gnome
usability study ([3]a pretty hot topic these days), and I have been
called to help, as a long time GNU/Linux desktop user. What kind of
advice -- both technical and theoretical -- would you give us on
conducting a deep and objective study on the Unix desktop, that can be
useful for the developers and the OSS community?"
This story continues at:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/15/2119226
Discuss this story at:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/12/15/2119226
Links:
0. mailto:brullonulla@gmail.com
1. http://www.kde.org/
2. http://www.gnome.org/
3. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/13/1340215&tid=121
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
So how long until Yahoo changes their name from Del.icio.us to "Yahoo Social Bookmarking Service", just like they changed Konfabulator to "Yahoo Widget Engine", Oddpost to "Yahoo Mail" and Launch.com to "Yahoo Music"...?
---------------------
Re:Yahoogle
(Score:4, Insightful)Google started free email? No.
Google started newsgroups? No.
Google started analytics? No.
Google started online advertising? No.
Google started satelite maps? No.
Google started blogging? No.
Google started toolbars? No.
The only innovative thing Google has done is convince the masses a corporation is unable to do evil. And that's only innovative because nobody else has succeeded at it before.
====================
http://www.clearps.com/tjr/computing/advice-for-cs
Programming employment in the United States generally climbed until circa 2000, when suddenly mass layoffs hit and much programming work was either eliminated or outsourced. But if you're reading this, you likely already know all about that, so let's not focus on the gloomy details of the past.
My personal take on the technology bubble of the 1990's is that a lot of people who weren't particularly interested in programming or computer science jumped on board, because it seemed like it was the way to go for a high-paying gig. I too thought it was the way to go for a high-paying gig, but I was genuinely interested in programming. I was also genuinely interested in music, but expecting better job prospects in the computer field, I took some music courses, focused on CS, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science shortly after the technology bubble burst.
Alas, though, there weren't a lot of programming jobs open that summer. At least, there weren't as many openings as there were programmers applying for them. From what I heard in my area, it wouldn't be odd if a human resources department received over a hundred (possibly several hundred) resumes for any given programming job. Things have been improving since then, but the technology market has yet to find places for everyone.
If you're in that kind of position, unemployed with seemingly little hope in sight, what can you do?
The first thing to consider is, do you really want to be employed? This isn't meant to advocate becoming an unmotivated sluggish mass, but rather, have you thought of starting your own company? It costs essentially nothing to write software, and if you can develop a product that people will pay for, or even better, a company that could be acquired by a larger corporation, then you may find that route more enjoyable and more profitable than working for somebody else. (Paul Graham has many good ideas on this topic, and I urge you to read his essays.)
Even if that's your goal, sometimes working in the industry for a while can be good for educational purposes, or for providing income while you work on your initial company and product ideas. Whatever the reason, assuming that you do still want to be employed as a programmer, what can you be doing to help make yourself a good candidate for a job?
Search for a Job
I can almost hear the entire population of the Internet saying "Duh!" all at the same time, so I shall clarify: search for a job, but don't spend too much time searching for a job. You can probably limit yourself to an hour or two each day (with some variance), and still learn about all of the job postings that you need to learn about. If you start spending six... eight... ten hours a day looking at job postings, then it starts getting easier and easier to become discouraged, which really doesn't help the matter and just results in an unpleasant day.
Write Software
Writing software might seem obvious, but speaking from experience, it's not hard to miss this one. If you're not employed, it can be all to easy to fall into the trap of spending all day browsing the web for job openings or reading something of the likes of Slashdot. Writing software -- especially if you start with a some sort of project plan and build a complete, usable application -- is one of the best things you could be doing with your extra free time.
No matter how sharp of a programmer you were when you graduated from college, or when you were released from your previous programming job, you need to stay sharp. There is more than one way to do this, of course, but just as some suggestions:
- Start an open source project. It can be something that no one has done as open source before, or it could be yet another text editor. Pick something you're interested in, and do it.
- Contribute to an existing open source project. This is not the same as the previous item, because (1) you won't be in charge, and (2) you'll have to deal with existing code, both of which are issues that you are likely to face once you begin employment as a programmer. More on these points later.
- Build an application for a local non-profit organization or small comapny. You might be able to get paid doing this, but even if not it would still be good experience.
- Go through exercises in your computer science textbooks. Some of these books contain a wealth of valuable information that you may want to draw on in the future. (And some don't.)
Edify Thyself
Okay, so you're writing software. My next suggestion, perhaps just as obvious, but also sometimes hard to make yourself do, is to read books on programming.
This often ends up being a two-fold benefit: many programming books have exercises for the reader; if you do the exercises while reading the book, then not only do you absorb wisdom and knowledge from the prose, but you get additional practice in programming.
There are way too many good programming books out there for me to provide you with a comprehensive list of ideas, but I do encourage you to develop the skill of quickly telling the difference between a programming book that will be useful to you and one that will not. (Just as a hint, you will likely discover certain authors whose writings you enjoy and learn a lot from. Perhaps less obviously, you might also find that you prefer books from certain publishers over others; this can occur for a variety of reasons.)
One subtrack here is to keep up with the latest trendy technologies. Even if you prefer writing in something like Lisp, if you can get some solid skills writing in Ruby, PHP, C#, or whatever language-de-jour you see lots of job postings for, then those will be good skills to have. Some HR people really do look systematically for keywords on your resume, and if enough of the "right words" aren't there, then there's a good chance that your resume will get, ah, set aside for future consideration.
You should also spend time reading non-programming books that will be useful in your future job. For example, if you are seeking employment as a programmer at a research hospital, then it would be good for you to spend time studying some basic medical materials. You may not need to know how to perform an operation, but it would be to your advantage if you knew some fundamental terminology, medical insurance and legal matters, and how technology is used in medical fields.
Testing
Another skill you should work on is software testing. It might seem trivial from the outside, but to really be a good software tester takes practice. There aren't a lot of books on this topic, but there are a few. Find one you like and read through it. Learn about test plans and test cases, and try applying these concepts either to software that you've written or that someone else has written. At minimum, this will help you become a better programmer, as you will be more aware of possible errors. You may even find that you really enjoy testing. Either way, solid experience with actual software testing will be a plus for your resume.
Attitude
Try to cultivate having a good attitude. Once you do land that programming job, you may be asked to do things that you don't want to do, or to do them in a way you that you don't think is best. You might feel like your management or coworkers don't have a clue what they're doing. Indeed, they might not have a clue what they are doing. But before setting them straight, spend sufficient time doing things their way to make sure that you understand their way; it's quite possible that they know exactly what they are doing.
(If you've been a career programmer for decades, then you might need to spend only five minutes learning what's up. If you just graduated a few weeks ago, then you might need to spend six months. Just take your time, and make sure you've learned anything new that you need to.)
Most software systems that are worth using are reasonably complex. Many are very complex, and have more obscure legacy code than you could shake a stick at. Some may even have "legacy users", so to speak, that would complain if the next version of the software wasn't 100% backwards-compatible with the current version.
With so much complexity going around, while you may think it's obvious that the software should be changed to use Programming Paradigm B, the fact may be that, even though B would be better, it was originally done with A, and much existing code would be broken changing it from A to B. Or, more frustratingly, you may find that there are seemingly incomprehensible legal, political, or financial reasons that prevent you and your software team from making the kinds of improvements that you know need to be done.
Of course, there's a balance here. Don't get down on yourself while you're learning. You're still a sharp, brilliant software developer, even if you have some more learning to do. Don't forget that.
Yeah, But, Is There Still a Job Market?
Yes, although it is still kind of saturated with job seekers. One last bit of advice I learned from Philip Greenspun: seek to become an engineer, rather than just a programmer. What does that mean? Programmers code software. Engineers, Greenspun says, can take a problem in the real world and build a technological solution.
When you're working on your own software projects, ask yourself what kind of software you could build that would be useful to a non-computer scientist? Is there software that you could build that would make life easier for grocers? Musicians? Pilots? Real estate agents? If you can see these real-world problems that people have, and build software that helps them, then you have gone beyond being a programmer into being an engineer... and there will always be a market for people like that.
Other Resources
- Y Combinator: Startup Library
- Philip Greenspun: My Life as a User
- Finding a Job: A Few Thoughts on Finding a Job in the New Economy
posted by USSSlavebation @ 12/19/2005 09:56:00 pm
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