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Comment Re:Is it worth it? (Score 4, Informative) 262

Did you just call DICOM proprietary?

Technically correct. It *is* a copyrighted standard, with the copyright being held by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. When defining proprietary software as "computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder", this standard would fall into that category.

The Military

Meet DARPA's New Militarized Earthworm 83

derekmead writes "Meshworm is a toughened, robotic earthworm that can crawl virtually silently at a speed of about 5 millimeters per second. DARPA wants to send it into battle. Believe it or not, the Pentagon's been working on building a robotic earthworm for a while. They tried putting one together with gears. They tried with air-powered and pneumatic pumps, but the results were bulky and untenable. Then, researchers at Harvard, MIT and Seoul National University in Korea put their heads together and designed an 'artificial muscle.' It's essentially a polymer mesh that's wrapped with nickel and titanium wire designed to stretch and contract with heat. When an electric current is applied, the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward."

Comment Re:Ready... set... Troll! (Score 3, Informative) 362

The post actually presents an interesting issue (via the time.com link): why do corporations feel they have to take sides on the gay marriage issue?

As I recall, Microsoft's reasoning was made explicit at least once. MSFT believes that, by supporting issues such as same-sex marriage, it can attract the most talented gay people in the software industry as employees, who may see the company's support of such an issue as a reason to work for MSFT rather than a competitor.

Comment Re:Mixed feelings (Score 1) 694

And Netflix...is a private company...I could understand this maybe if it was a govt. entity, but how can they make a private company like Netflix alter their business model or software like this? The ADA is getting out of hand...

Since it's been a legal requirement for them to pass-through captioning/subtitling that's already been done, this isn't nearly the burden you think it is. In fact, for the last 5 years, all new TV material has been *required* to have captioning ( with a very few exceptions), so Netflix isn't going to have pay to have all their material redone.

Comment Re:No thesis/dissertation? (Score 1) 191

True. I earned $14k per year stipend in graduate school, plus $6k per summer grading a summer-school course. I opted for that instead of a more lucrative summer internship.

So for the 2.5 years of graduate school I earned $20k per year instead of around $56k, so if it was $6k extra per year then I'm at break-even next year. If it was an extra $8k instead (since I am estimating) I was at break even a while ago.

Comment Re:flawed idea (Score 1) 191

Are you part of the interviewing process where you work? I am, and while I can't say what HR or our recruiter might do, I often don't even look at the part of the resume that lists where a candidate was educated, except for curiosity. I still need a candidate to prove to me that s/he can program and can think, and their educational source is only tangentially related in my experience.

Comment Re:Nothing (really) new (Score 1) 191

My colleagues have interviewed new college graduates in CS who don't know big-O notation. That's a pre-requisite for understanding P versus NP. Though to be fair, there's a broad swath of problems one can solve for an employer where the algorithms don't reach that combinatoric complexity, and the data sets aren't large enough to make O(n^2) with low constants worse too often compared to O(n lg n) with high constants.

Comment Re:No thesis/dissertation? (Score 2) 191

I personally see no value in this kind of master's degree if there is no need to write a thesis/dissertation.

The value for me of a course-based M.S. (dropout from a PhD program) was $6000 per year starting salary. That's a pretty decent bump that I likely kept with me my whole career, as raises tend to be percentage based. So after 11 years it may have been worth at least $66k.

Oh, and also I learned a bunch of stuff in those courses I hadn't yet learned as an undergrad. To my recollection, none of the specific things has been relevant to my job, but it is sometimes hard to tell.

Comment Re:Key Word "Hope" (Score 4, Insightful) 191

I fully suspect the degree they will offer is worth every penny, but not a penny more - and you won't "fool" anyone with this Masters degree

I, as a interviewer, won't be "fooled". But since I work with some brilliant software people who never got a college degree, it won't necessarily be a barrier to getting at least a phone interview. If the interviewee knows their stuff, it doesn't matter how they learned it.

I mean, with someone who has 20 years experience, do you care if they went to Harvard, Stanford, or the University of Kansas? Of course not, you care if they're smart and have some relevant skills. A lot of times as an interviewer I don't even care if they have the relevant skills (i.e. I work in the storage industry, but candidates don't need to know anything about storage or filesystems to get a job here -- I certainly didn't know that when I started).

As an interviewer I care about two things, essentially: can you think, and do you understand some CS theory? If you can do the first but don't know the second, you can still get a job, we just won't start you as a senior level engineer.

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