Seriously.
It has been the case for nearly a decade that a college diploma was necessary even for low level jobs.
Food service, hospitality, factory work, agriculture, manual labor, and adult services are the only industries left where you can get an entry level job without a college degree, and those jobs suck.
Let's not forget that Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State. If Slashdotter's are not familiar with that position, that is a DIPLOMATIC position.
Her job is to NEGOTIATE with foreign governments. Public acknowledgment of such attacks might hash the negotiations.
I would prefer that she DOES HER JOB and works through diplomatic channels. Public threats will not help. Private threats might. This is doubly true for a secretive regime such as China.
It is the job of the cyber-warfare unit–part of the MILITARY. Of course, it probably is not to the military's strategic nor tactical advantage to publicly acknowledge the either.
So sorry Slashdotters, you probably won't get the public details about cyber-warfare that you might want. Don't be so surprised, you haven't be all of the details of physical warfare either.
It's better that the government does its job than keep us informed.
There is also a genetic basis for nicotine tolerance. The mechanism is essentially the same. There is an gene that codes for an enzyme which removes nicotine from the bloodstream. This gene has several different alleles that code for more or less effective versions of the same enzyme. Individuals who have the allele that codes for the most effective enzyme are heavy smokers if they smoke. They smoke a cigarette, receive the desired stimulation, and then the enzyme clears the nicotine. Thus they desire another dose soon afterward. Individuals who produce the least effective version of the enzyme get sick when they smoke. The enzyme fails to clear the toxin in a reasonable time and they feel ill, sometimes vomiting. Individuals producing middling effective versions can be occasional smokers. Read more here.
If researchers can create a treatment for alcohol in this way, they can probably create a smoking treatment as well. It is unlikely, though, that the treatment would alleviate withdrawal symptoms on its own. This approach likely will lead to treatments for other addiction problems also.
If there come sto exist effective treatments for illegal drugs, there will be serious socio-political implications. The rational for the the war on drugs will be completely destroyed. If people can choose effective treatment, then there will be no unwilling chemical dependence. This will decrease crime, health problems, and other negative effects of dangerous drugs. So there will be no basis for illegality. Will that change the politics surrounding drugs? I don't think so.
You are absolutely correct that Slashdot's readership is a bit older. I fall into that demographic, but feel that I can speak on the subject of lowering college standards.
I believe that the OP is correct, but there are qualifications. Public universities cannot raise tuition and their government funding is being drastically squeezed between the national debt and the small government tea-baggersI mean tea party. Private universities are raising tuition prices and standards.
I attended a top fifteen private university. The standards were very high. Sure there were a few blow-off classes, but the requirements were such that every student had to take some quite rigorous classes. Engineering students could get away with a minimum of writing classes, but they were HARD. Humanities students could get away with a minimum of math and science. They weren't as hard, but were blow off classes either.
I am friends with several current students at my alma mater. The standards have definitely gone up. The average standardized test scores have gone up. Students now have to take clusters, and the rigorousness of the course work has increased.
My (very recently) ex-girlfriend graduated from a public university recently, and I can tell you that the standards have dropped. There is essentially no math requirement. There are majors where one can take 80% blow-off classes, and student services are poor.
Having said that, there are some fantastic professors at her school, and some great classes. If you attend a school with low standards, you can still get a great education. You just need to seek out those classes that have good professors and interest you.
Check out reatemyprofessors.com, but don't just go by the numeric ratings. Read actual comments. Some people rate primarily based on workload; others actually rate the quality of the teching.
Numero Uno: get a job. Get more experience in the real world.
How best to do that?
Well, you are lucky in that the job market is pretty good for tech skills. Companies would like to hire more experienced people, but can't always find them. Put your resume together as well as you can and prep for interviews by Googling potential questions and working on them.
Better yet, if you know anyone in IT, have them grill you.
If you are going for a programming job, make sure that you know and can apply basic procedural program concepts such as working with arrays, lists, queues, stacks, iteration, and recursion. Understand the basics of object oriented design. Write programs to practice these things. Find a good CS course online and do the homework.
Wrox's Programming Interviews Exposed is great practice for programming interviews.
If you want to move up, learn more advanced algorithms concepts.
If you are going for a sys admin job, install Linux on your home machine and manually manage it. Ubuntu is great, but learn about partition, booting, permissions, sudo privileges. A Linux admin handbook can teach you a lot.
Don't sweat the philosophy degree.
I do a lot of interviewing/hiring technical types, and have no problem with an non tech degree. Just know your shit.
I can't speak to networking/DBA certs, but I will say that in my experience hiring developers, programming certificates are relatively useless.
In fact, when I read a resume, I am happy to see no certificates. The developers who highlight certificates on their resumes seem to be able to parrot back technical specs, but not to think dynamically about programming problems and that is what I am more interested in.
No certificate will replace writing code on a whiteboard.
Want the FDA to do something about this?
FTFA:
Contact William Flynn:
7519 Standish Pl.
Rockville, MD 20855, (240) 276–9000
William.flynn@fda.hhs.gov
If you can't even do that, STFU and stop bitching about corruption.
Researchers at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have now developed what they say is a world-first intelligent absorbent that is capable of removing radioactive material from large amounts of contaminated water
So, they've reinvented zeolite filters which have been used since the 40s to do the exact same task exactly the same way?
"One gram of the nanofibres can effectively purify at least one tonne of polluted water," Professor Zhu said.
That's extremely efficient.
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst
