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Comment Useful why.... (Score 1) 155

As someone with a BCS who has worked in the industry for over 10 years in an environment highly focused on algorithmic efficiency and performance, AND got a near failing grade in stats in university, I fail to see how being proficient at statistics would help one in computer science. What is important is computation theory and algorithm theory, which are not things you learn in statistics. Unless you are trying to write code that does everything using Monte Carlo simulations that is.

Comment That is not the whole truth (Score 5, Informative) 370

While wages I am sure do play a factor, as former a hiring manager I can tell you the GP is 100% correct. Older and younger programmers both have their pros and cons. Younger programmers are nearly always more up to date on the latest technologies and trends and have an innate ability to "churn out" fairly good quality code at a lightning fast rate. However, they are nearly always inexperienced compared to their more seasoned peers, and make a lot of what I would call "elementary mistakes" when it comes to architecture. They also have a tendency to *always* want to use the latest and greatest tech instead of the tried and true, which is not always a good thing.

Older workers have the opposite pros and cons. They tend to take a bit longer to finish a project, but that project is usually of higher quality and better architecture because they have been around the block and know how to code for the long term. They also like to stick with the tried and true technology because they know it, and it works.

Ideal teams have a healthy mix of both young fresh employees and older seasoned ones. A good manager knows how to create this team and get them to work together to bring out the best of the young and old, and how to get the seasoned professionals to help teach the young employees about enterprise architecture, while the young employees can help keep the older employees fresh and up to date on the latest technology trends.

Comment Re:What is the internet of things? (Score 1) 113

The internet of things referrs to the concept of connecting all kinds of devices and sensors to the internet that have essentially zero processing power.. all they do is serve as inputs to other cloud-based systems. Traditionally, things that were connected to the internet were "smart" - they were computers, laptops, or more recently tablets and smartphones. The internet of things is dumb. It is thermostats, wireless cameras, bluetooth proximity devices, sensors in roads and driveways, in cars, in light bulbs. None of these things has any real CPU or memory horsepower nor do they do much of anything beyond sending data to the cloud, and/or receive a single "ON/OFF" command.

Comment Re:My Anecdotal Evidence (Score 5, Insightful) 455

You are looking at this from the wrong point of view. The way you should be looking at is, if you ALSO had the option of calling up Ford or GM or whoever your car maker was directly, and asking THEM if they could beat the dealer's price, could they? Of course they could, they make the damn car.

The idea that dealers create pricing competition for cars is total baloney because dealers don't make cars in the first place, they just mark them up and sell them. Ford competes with Honda and GM, they don't compete with Honda dealers and GM dealers. The thing that keeps the features and functions progressing for Ford while keeping costs low is not their dealer network, it is competition from other auto makers. The only competition dealers are having is who can mark up your car the least.

Comment Poorly Priced (Score 1) 192

Let's see.... either you pay $199 and get locked into an AT&T contract and then have to pay even more money to get your phone unlocked at the end of it, or you pay $349 and get a Nexus 5/6 and use it with any carrier you want. Oh and did I mention it also has access to the Play store?

Comment Re:Sensationalist summary (Score 1) 435

No one is saying there is no value or lesser value. What I am saying is if 1% of CS graduates are black then you are not going to have greater than 1% of your tech employees be black... period. You can't artificially create diversity. This issue needs to be tackled at the source, the universities. They need to attract more females and minorities to CS programs.

How do they do this and what are the barriers that blacks and females see that prevent them from getting a CS degree? This is the complicated question that needs answering, not "why isn't Yahoo hiring more women and blacks".

Comment Sensationalist summary (Score 5, Insightful) 435

The charts released by Yahoo indicate women fare worse in its global tech workforce...

They indicate nothing of the sort. They indicate that Yahoo has fewer female workers than male workers. That is it.

Insinuating that female workers "fare worse" at Yahoo is akin to insinuating that there is rampant sexism and a glass ceiling going on there, which is most likely simply untrue. The truth is that there are simply fewer females applying for positions because there are fewer female CS graduates, which is the ACTUAL fact.

If you want more women in the tech workforce, you need to start at the source and graduate more first.

The same thing can be said of blacks. Like it or not the amount of black CS engineers in Silicon Valley is very, very small. You can't artificially create diversity when none exists in the talent pool.

Comment Private airspace (Score 1) 138

We need a revision to the common law statues around private airspace. This law is horribly outdated in the modern environment.

Reasonable provisions could be made, for example, one has complete control of all airspace 500m above their property. This would not interfere with any "real" aircraft but would prohibit spying by cheap quadcopters without a warrant.

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