Apple prices

[networkman]

kind of scary to think that the modern american university believes they can prepare students for the real world...especially computer science students

...but like my tutor mentioned to me twenty five years ago, go to college if you can but do not make the mistake of thinking it will prepare you for a job or make you more money

a lot of left wing political interests like to skew statistics to make it look like college graduates make more money (by up to 60 percent) because of college so they can get funding for their universities...instead of mentioning that the college kids get the jobs because they are better connected from birth, their parents are more likely to have better connections and more money, and that a lot of salary surveys are not routinely passed out in the blue collar sectors, which in reality, often pay more money

ps - and i am a "left winger" and i cringe when i hear a liberal pronounce that college is the "answer" to better wages instead of hard work or basic common sense

 

[evildead]

yes

... The department that I was working in was unrelated to computer science. The Psychology dep. was responsible for the nickels thing and the tutoring/education departments were the ones responsible for the $5000.00 laptops. I?m in the CS department at my school. True... they don?t do too much to prepare student for the real world. That?s why I got a job at a defense contractor before I graduated. I have learned more working than I did at school so fare. School is only a teething ring for the real world. There is much to learn. My first project I had to work on at work scared the hell out of me. They plopped down 1000's of pages of code on my desk and said fix this... and we have a customer sales meeting in 2 weeks that it must be ready by. And I?m still a student!! Before that I had never written any program more than 500 lines!

 

[networkman]

the reason they gave you the work to do is because if your are an actual on the books civil servant, you get in trouble for doing your work and get penalized for having a brain

if it were not for the contractors to bail out the full time civil servants, the usa would be in a lot of trouble and i saw this first hand in the defense department and it was such a shame

where i live, the navy dept is trying to get good civilian cotractors for network security because their standard post world war II idea of a 10 day training program for navy network administrators did not cut the mustard (day one showed a uniformed sailor how to use a mouse) and somehow nine days later, that person will become a "network administrator" sailor for the navy department?...2600 magazine/ a hacker quarterly

 

[networkman]

ok, i may be a liberal hippie with a haircut but i am not cutting down our men and women in the armed services who make the us and the world safe from terrorism

but from what i have heard from my friends who teach, work, or contract IT for the military...it is the weakest link in the system

until recently, the 286 was a major machine in the military, then the 486 as is used now in a major military school, and k6-2 laptops which are used for naval weapons simulations as featured in the navy league magazine a few issues back

i have heard that DoD still uses some proprietary vacuum tube mainframes...still

...and that some of our first line fighter jets are running computers which are from the pre-windows 3.1 era (not a computer by today's standards...even on the defense level)

 

[DavidCL23]

MAC is expensive, but it is worth every penny, lol

 

[eyelikeart]

my rant on college & jobs...

I couldn't agree anymore with jef....I mean networkman....he he he 😉

When I was interviewing to go to tech school to get my degree in graphic design, I was convinced that having the diploma would indefinitely secure me a nice job and I'd be able to command a decent salary. I feel now, though, that most people who want to be graphic artists do not need a degree in order to become one. I think I knew this much back while I was in school, but today it's so much more evident....which is why I'm seeking alternate routes for my life & career (yes I am back in college finishing my undergraduate & will seek out a graduate degree as well).

What pisses me off most of all is that I'm paying a lot of money to repay a loan to get where I am now, and nearly 50% of the print jobs we work on are from secretaries and the such working in Microsoft Word of Publisher....and they are actually making a living doing it! some of which, I'm sure, are making more than I am with the "qualifications."

.....people who haven't the first idea what good design is....
people who think just because it looks good on the screen it should print the same way....
I could go on and on....

The whole point is, my degree was and still is worth something.....but if I were to go back with the knowledge I have now, I wouldn't dare consider spending the money I have & still am to get where I am now. I feel I honestly could have done it all completely on my own. I know for a fact that I did not at all feel I was "ready" to work when I finished tech school....I actually taught myself more than I learned while there.

I'm not knocking the importance of a good education by any means...I feel it's much more relative to the field in which u want to work...

please feel free to voice your opinions on this... 😉

 

[networkman]

tech school

tech school is better than college for the real world, but 99 percent of your skills and knowledge are going to come from doing the field itself

a tech or college diploma will possibly get your foot in the door but if you don't have the experience, out the door you go as fast as you came in

so it comes to the age old catch 22, we will hire you if you have a good deal of experience, but how do you get the experience if nobody is willing to hire you in the first place without it

i think the answer is luck...almost all of us get into our fields by pure chance, not by a premeditated plan and strategy

my chosen field in college was business, particularily human resources management and i am still yet to meet an hr person with a business hr degree

the same goes with networking computers where i am now...the degree exists in college for computer engineering with a specialty in networking, but of the legions of networkers i have met in the field, no one studied computer engineering...not one!

only doctors, nurses, and lawyers are the only consistent people i have seen, in any number, that premeditated their career any length of time before they entered the workforce

 

[sparkleytone]

hatman, you are so on the ball. i try to explain this to my family all the time.

"why don't you do computers in college?" or "why don't you double major in computer science too?"

a degree in a computer field is so useless in my eyes. i see the people at my school graduating with these degrees yet knowing not even half of what i do. by the time the information trickles down into textbooks and labs, its beyond obsolete.

so, i am going to school as a music major. a choral EDUCATION major, because its what i love. if at some point a want to get into computer business, the biggest asset to me is the fact that i have A degree.

haha double major, riiiiight. no one understands the life of a music major.

 

[networkman]

re: useless

i worked for the third fastest growing major silicon valley company in the region, who is now my client, and among their 100 or so IT people...not one CS college graduate

math, business, liberal arts...you name it, but either the CS grads didn't cut it, were obsolete, or like a CS grad friend of mine says...after years of doing it in school, it's the last thing you want to do in real life unless missing weekends and free time is cool to you and a life of coding instead of eating

are CS majors turned off or do they know something really bad about IT that the rest of us non-IT college grads and non-college grads don't know?

my theory is that CS grads are being taught the wrong things in school and they are in it because they have parents pushing them or think that it is about the money, either of which doesn't make you a techie which you need to be

being a computerhead comes from within (look at gates, jobs, dell, ellison, and fanning...the true leaders of our industry and all without degrees or CS training in general)

however, the three CS grads that i know of somewhat connected to the IT industry all have PhDs and teach hardware, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce to college students so an IT degree is not completely useless

but you heard the saying, "those who can't do teach" but i want to rectify that myth by teaching the right way as it pertains to my business as a techie on a daily basis