The professors at the university I went to specifically told us that they were not there to teach us how to program in a particular language. But to give us the fundamentals to program in any language that we needed to. If you need to program in x, go buy a book on x and learn the language. And, to make that point, we were thrown at Pascal (all the data structures classes), ADA, C (networking, operating systems), C++ (OOP) , COBOL, databases, a couple flavors of assembler, file systems (I can still do block calculations) computers and law, and, to top things off, PostScript. I also was able to pick up a minor in mathematics, classes on Russian history, Western Civ., communications, economics, physics, chemistry and all that other 'crap' that is to make you a well rounded egghead. Because of that expanded world-view, I can actually work with my counterparts in India and treat them like human beings. (For everyone that is bemoaning the fact that jobs are going over there - don't blame the Indians - they want the same thing for their families as you do - food on the table, roof over their head, clothes on there back and a better life for their children. Blame your local politicians and business leaders).

Because of the way they designed the CS environment, and how they approached the material, I was able to build stuff that ran circles around the 'self taught' folks. Sure, we can build a linked list and tree in COBOL 85 to do fast data lookups (COBOL didn't support pointers in that release, but it has this really good array system). I understand the multiple tree structures inside of a PDF - and how the file actually organized as it is written to disk.

I have a CS degree.. I work in IT... and to be honest, I rarely use the programming skills to actually program - most of what I did was in PostScript when I did program. But, I've also had to learn Python, JavaScript, Visual Basic, 370 Assembler, JCL, and SAS when the need arose. Lately what I've needed to do is advise other folks on good practices vs. bad. Talk to the engineering departments at my vendors how their systems work (or don't) .. sometimes with an uncanny insight into how their systems were actually programmed (I'll bet Bob wrote this at 3AM) hopefully with some great ideas on how to make their better. I can translate business rules into software rules (four years coding pension plans) and generally understand why business operates the way they do. Finally, I made some great friends there. The kind of friends that are still friends 20 years later.

Yea, at least for me, the CS degree was worth it.

The school year is already a year long - how do you increase the length of a year?

OK - snarky remark aside.

I don't think the answer is increasing the length of time children spend in school in the current form. There are way too many institutional hurdles that will need to be overcome.
The broad and vast set of industries that are dependent upon children being off - from tourism to agriculture.
Enrichment that can occur during the summer - commonly known as summer camps (Scout, language, baseball, etc.). And, family vacations - there is enrichment in an Griswold's style road trip.
The demarcation between one grade and the next that psychology occurs during the summer time off. If you run year round, when does the next year start?
If summer learning is so important why do most (all?) colleges and universities have the summer off? The only students I ever saw at university over the summer were either - trying to get ahead or were behind and trying to catch up. The professors wanted their time off as well.

What I would rather see, than more rote STEM+Reading / Writing during the summer - is maybe a series of 1-2 week mini-camps that are organized by the local school districts (and, yes paid for out of tax dollars) for students to attend. If there are 12 weeks off, the students must attend 6-7-8 (somewhere between 50 and 75%) of their choice. Each session is part summer camp (you get outside to do kickball) but also is focused on a specific subject matter. Gives the families time to do family things. Gives the kids time to do kid things. That is still important.

Suggested topics:
Model rocketry - and all the science camps that can go with it.
Foreign language - French, Spanish, Mandarin, etc.
Performing arts - you can do a 1-act play in 2 weeks - who says you need sets?
Craft arts - pottery, painting, etc.

How to structure one - each session has some sort of reading, writing (journals count), social studies component. The more 'engineering' ones would integrate age appropriate math, science, tech, etc. into them. Add in some field trips, edumakational films, discussion groups, labs, etc. and you've greatly enriched the learning environment along with kept the giant summer brain leech at bay. Something I think everyone agrees need to be dealt with

Yes, these would be graded - and the grades would count on your transcript.

Depends on what you plan on doing with the picts when you are done. If you just want some cool picts to hand around easily.. go for the lowest price you can. Hand them out like Doritos. Munch all you want, we'll make more.

If you are planning on archiving them, then you will need to invest in a proper HP, Canon, or Epson printer using their archival grade inks (pH neutral) and archival grade paper (acid free). Then you then need to store them in an archival fashion. Black plastic archival envelope in a (more or less) temperature and humidity controlled environment. Under your socks in your drawer is actually a good place.

The on-line services are primarily geared towards low cost and quick turnaround. Some of them do have archival grade services (you need to check!). But, if you really want to make sure, do your research an do them yourself.

As for those that think digital is the way to go... yes and no. If you really, really, want to make sure it will still be there paper is still the only medium that has the longevity track record. Properly stored, centuries to millennium (or more) are not uncommon. Dead Sea Scrolls anyone?

I think what they are referring to is the extremely tight coupling of software, wetware, and hardware. Windows has, traditionally, had a tighter coupling with hardware due to it staticly loading a lot of things at boot time vs. dynamic loads of Linux/UNIX's.

You have to move the entire OS, intact, with no reboots, no dropped processes, and no psychological trauma due to a switch on where the interfaces are located.

I have a feeling the psychological issues will be more like the movie Sourcecode. Not the prescience, the disconnectedness.

I think Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a good example of what we would like to see.

I know of existing dams in the US - several on the Rock River (north-central Illinois, U.S.A.) - Rockton, Rockford, Dixon, Byron, Sterling/Rock Falls, etc. that were built years ago by Commonwealth Edison for min-hydro power. The dams are still there to provide floodwater control, but have been decom'd for electrical generation.

Last time I looked, the dam in Dixon station still had generators in operation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_River_(Mississippi_River)

Now, I'm no civil engineer.. but if you already have a dam, and the environmental impact associated with it, why not us the head you have to generate some? Yea, your not getting the 200-300' head that you would like, but there is still a lot of potential energy to be captured out of the 20' 30' head out of one of these.

For as much as this crowd wants to bash Adobe on occasion for 'proprietary' formats, closed source products, etc. PDF is ISO'd* along with information on how to create/modify/remove the annotation COS objects in the file. Annotations were added in the PDF specification in 1.2 (circa 1996) and into the Acrobat / Reader product lines in the 3.15 update which came out, roughly, 1999.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Windows

* You can get the current PDF spec free of charge from Adobe's web site by downloading the Acrobat SDK.

I know that Annotations (along with forms objects) became first-class tools in the product with the release of 4.0 and were a major selling point (including annotation import/export). Adobe has since added and has continued to expand annotation capabilities and synching options in Acrobat 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Starting with regular file systems, through WebDav and other web based technologies (e.g. Acrobat.com) and onto Lotus Notes and Sharepoint.

I'm surprised that the USPTO even entertained this patent as, for them to even process the patent they would have had to use the exact same technology in the patent with Acrobat as apart of the regular USPTO workflow. It would be akin to Bell calling the USPTO, on the phone, to patent the phone that both of them were talking on.

Going to get a bucket of popcorn and watch the show on this one.

Hurm... how many want to bet that absolutely none of this will make Fox News at 11 tonight?

Soliciting charitable donations is still a very personal thing. Especially if you intend on getting beyond the nickle and dime range (under $50 US). It requires directly talking to potential donors. What's the benefit to your organization - you have 30-seconds, tops. They think they know what you want and why you want it. Money, but what are you really asking for? Operational (smells of on-going funds)? Grants (one time). Equipment? Services? What? Target your pitch to them in terms of what they already do. Not just a check for x dollars. Then you need to spell out what they are going to get in return? Name recognition? Tax write off? What are you going to give them? A plaque? Name wall? What? Have this before you call them. If you are asking for scholarship monies, you can easily handle that one.. Example... the Fred and Ethyl Mertz Scholarship Fund. Will you let them reach out to their employees? Will they match it at the corporate level?

Do this in person, and old-school. That means a paper letter (typeset in a nice font with good legibility and hand signed! (Yes, there is still a need for good penmanship!).

Once you get whatever you are asking for send them a thank you note - personally addressed listing what you received, how it was used and how it benefited whomever it benefited.

If they won't cough over the dough, ask them for a pledge or letter of intent. Something on the order of - XYZ Corp pledges the sum of $5,000 to ABC Organization if they make the goal of raising $150,000. Similar letters of intent will be counted towards funds raised.

This mechanism allows a lot of folks to intend to contribute, but gives them an out if you cannot make the goal. It also allows you to get public support on a nascent project that has little name recognition.

Otherwise you can continue with the bake sales.

I have a thought, that I am happy to share.....

Even ordinary people can have extraordinary thoughts.

In that everyone can think about this stuff. Not just Rand, Aristotle, and the like. No, the layman may make many more mistakes than the professional. Just as the amateur mechanic, photographer and programmer tends to make more mistakes than those professionally trained. And, yes, the school of hard knocks does count in this regards. However, I tend to find that people who do actually think about philosophy, regardless of their station in life, tend to be more humanistic in their approach.

Philosophy is hard work - it takes time and effort to actually 'think'. But, so does exercise. And, like exercise, the more you do it the easier it becomes. All of a sudden you realize that the arguments that most people make (both liberal and conservative) either pro or con to any particular issue are hollow, shallow, full of half-truths and lies.

Our society is such that, As the Jello Biafra tune "Message From Our Sponsor" declares - Finally, the thinking will be done for you.

If the boss is a decent guy/gal just mention it to them that we have a corporate policy regarding xyz. Don't mention they implemented it. Don't say the words 'against xyz' Your goal is to get them to comply. Not point out they are wrong.

The other avenue would be to talk to the Secretary/Administrative Assistant. Bosses don't want to listen to peons. That's why they are the boss. However, they will usually listen to their most trusted confidant - that is usually the Sect/AA. They point you want to make to the AA isn't that the boss is wrong (see a trend here?) it's to change their behavior to be in line with corporate policy.

If the boss is a bonehead - talking to them won't solve anything. If the transgression will torpedo the company, go look for other work.

In any event, none of these conversations should be in public (your not out to embarrass the dude) and be careful if you tell someone else that they don't go spreading it around.

Remember - you are trying to get them to stop what they are doing not get them into trouble.

Another avenue is to speak with whomever is incharge of security. In a small shop it may also be the CIO and a really small shop the CIO may be 'Frank - he fixes our computers.'

Graph theory underlies every datastructure ever designed - link-lists, trees, etc. It is also how you build the schema map for a RDBMS and remove redundancies through normalization*. It is also needed for modeling program, data, network and other sorts of 'information flow'... including recursion.

* Yes, Dorothy, most databases in the business world are RDBMS as most systems do not benefit from the obtuseness of object based DBs.

Discrete is very handy when you have to convert from one number space to another. Not all systems are UNIX/ASCII based. I do a lot of work in the print industry - the core of that is still built on OCTAL character representation and a great deal of EBCDIC.

Combinatorics - Basically, how do you count. Again, you need this to know if your elementary math is giving you the correct numbers. A lot of things have been automated (BCD and the like), but that doesn't mean you will be working on a 'new' system when you graduate. There is still a lot of COBOL out there. It's not sexy, but it pays well and is generally a stable gigl

I would also suggest you take a course on Linear Algebra. Again, I'm in print and so use it more than most, but any time you need to lay something out in 2-space (e.g. a web page) and you need to translate that space to another (e.g. iPhone) LA will come in handy to fine tune the output. ... As well as a calculus based course on Stats. With today's data sets, analysis is no longer being done against the entire set, but a sample of the set. How to set up the sample and what sort of distribution you use is different than for algebraic based stats.

Calculus, IMHO, is only good for the rigor unless you get into engineering, graphics or physics. It's still good to have.

Lastly, Take at least two classes in communication. One on public speaking (your in meetings a lot and have to learn to communicate what you know to someone who doesn't - e.g. your boss). The other on writing - you will be writing a lot of system documentation, proposals, e-mails and the like. Other than your core CS/Math, I would say to have very, very solid communication skills. They never hurt.

Enjoy!

Either get licensed or get a new job - seems to be the running theme here. I agree. As the license manager (and product expert) for Adobe Acrobat at my company I can honestly say that if you don't have the support of leadership to get and stay licensed you really need to get a new job. Software worth using is software worth paying for. Many software companies really would rather you became compliant rather than have to deal with litigation - no one wins. And in these economic times your negotiation power is that much greater. You can always threaten with the 'I really like your xyz product, but if terms aren't favorable I guess we will just have to go with the FOSS abc tool. Yea, we are willing to take the functional hit.' Two things - be willing to back it up. Be reasonable in your requests. Sorry - you will never get Acrobat Pro for less that $250/seat unless you are handing over at least seven figures. But by then, you are already at CLP Level 4 pricing - which is a significant discount against list - that you can leverage across ALL your Adobe products (CS, Flex, etc.) For Acrobat - Yea, it's expensive but it does a lot of things that are hard to do with FOSS* tools. You may also want to investigate just 'lower cost' alternatives - Nuance's is pretty good along the solution from ArtsPDF. With some negotiation you may be able to get Nuance's sub $10US/seat. Stay away from PDF995 and other such really low-cost tools - they aren't worth the hassle. The primary problem with them is the way they handle the conversion. Most are implemented as a GDI printer which tends to have problems with some graphics and layout accuracy. Direct to PDF is the best (e.g. Adobe CS tools), but if the underlying library is bunk that makes the PDF bunk. Second best is through PostScript, but it has it's limitations. PDF, as a filetype, is much, much more complicated than many folks realize. A lots of ways to screw it up - not so many to do it right. * Sorry if I rub some folks wrong here - but I have yet to find a FOSS implemented PDF library that is any good. The GNU library, and products based on it (OpenOffice, GhostScript, FOP, etc.) really produce poor quality PDFs in the production world. For quick, one-off work it works just fine. But when you have to take their PDF output and use it as input into another system (or even just to combine them) they tend to breakdown. Or the PDF becomes overly bloated. Yes, the Adobe library is expensive, but I know what I am getting and don't have problems with them. PDFlib is also a really good production-grade library and isn't all that expensive. Licensing terms are more than generous. More language bindings and platforms than you can shake a stick at (even native z/OS - not just USFHFS). We had some reasonable success with iText for on-the-fly generation but in a production print workflow, not all that good.

I was in the middle of music throws in the 80's when MJ, Hair Bands and pop were all the rage. When MTV was new, Tripple-J, Nina Blackwood, and other 'V-Jay's' I was not a fan of MJ - neither his music or lifestyle. I don't own a single album and only saw the Thriller video more than once simply because MTV was saturated with it. But did understand that his music, like that of the Beatles/John Lennon, Elvis and other such avant guard artists would have lasting influence on not only music, but world culture. In a hundred years, if I am around, I would expect to see some 20-something write a PhD thesis on 'Michael Jackson and the fall of Communism' or other such works regarding his music, impact on society or culture. Similar to ones written about Shakespear, Wagner or J.S.Bach. World wide, MJ had a much greater influence than those three combined. That alone grants him a minor decorum of respect.