Gulf War Vet who is not missing the point over here.

That money is being wasted isn't the fault of the agencies that are shutting down.

I think the shrimp on a treadmill, study of the drinking habits of Brazilian prostitutes and a host of other forms of waste would beg to disagree.

I mean, WTF...over.

It's the fault of the Republicans who're holding the entire country hostage in a blatantly un-Constitutional attempt to repeal majority-supported legislation

Oh, you mean the *FORMER* democratic majority that rammed it through in the dead of nite on
CHRISTMAS EVE?

First: Current congress is not beholden to a previous congress.

Second: "Power of the Purse" is there to keep the Executive branch in check.

Third: "Holding hostage"...are you fucking kidding me? This must be that "calm rhetoric" I keep hearing
so much about.

They've tried dozens of times to repeal the legislation through the normal legislative process and failed miserably each time; now, they're determined to wreck the national economy (with the shutdown) and possibly even the global economy (with the default) if the majority doesn't give in to their demands. They've shot multiple prisoners already (don't forget the ongoing sequester!) and are now threatening to blow up the whole building.

At least 7 of those "failures" have been passed and signed into law by the Prezzie.

New word time: Conflating. Two separate issues, bro.

The sequester was a 2% reduction in growth of the 5+% in spending YOY.

See, here is the thing: recall that a democracy is "two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner" and
a REPUBLIC is "the same situation with a well armed sheep contesting the vote."

Can you say "contesting the vote?...I knew you could."

"Blow up the whole building"...really, again?

Such a shame we live in a place that's rested so much on its laurels and is now so far behind the times.

DING! DING! DING! DING!

We have a winner!

That, I agree with. So many "useful idiots" vote 'black prez' first time and 'single issue' the second time over "jobs, economy, competence/leadership" even if you ignore the IRS targeting, NSA wiretaps and FBI investigation of anyone who disagrees with the 'community organizer in chief'.

Shame on all of them for staying home out of fear of reprisal. (I understand, but at least the WWII vets stood
up, as did the Vietnam vets).

Gulf War Vets...one question: "y'all pissed off enough yet? Because we are next, I think."

To Quote (Dingy) Harry Reid: "We won't negotiate with a gun to our head."

I'd like to test that theory, asshole....just keep pushing vets around.

When you make a 40-something want to give his life for his country...again...you've fucked up.

[SNARL]

Remember your oath: "...against all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC..."

(sarcasm tag)
That's one way, another is to sick the IRS after political opponents and the DOJ after reporters after a bit of judge shopping.

What's a little voter suppression based on race, religion or political affiliation...it is not like it ruins lives like killing does?

Ah, just another of several "phony scandals".
(/st)

Amen.

When I started my degree for the second time, I had about 15 years in IT/Support/SysAdmin roles (or all 3 at once).

I had done quite well in CS and math/Calc classes, but had to start from ground zero (Algebra 1 on up) to get into calc,
because while I had the ability, I lacked the skills/exp.

EE was my goal, after being an AT in the Navy...but calc was a brutal first go, but I *GOT IT* the second time around to the
point I could do volumes of irregular shapes and implicit differentiation so well it was ... (GASP) ... FUN (and annoying to those
I studied with, even though Newton's Law of Cooling gave me fits). And, I was in the top 5 students in my Discrete Logic
class (and dating the girl who was likely #1 in the class).

Second time around was a different story in both Calc I and DL, and I had the same teacher my 2ND time in DL I got to
hear the same concern: "Your excellent knowledge and ability in this subject is not reflected in your grade."

I became CS after EE wasn't going to happen, and second time around went for CS, but got a BA because I could not make
it through Calc III because the math was easy, but Sequences and Series beat me down so badly I just could not take any
more abuse. First was a horrible teacher (use the term very loosely) second was great, but there was some lynch-pin missing
to keep everything from flying apart.

I eventually talked to the Dept Head and explained and he said "CS uses calc and discrete as weed-out courses."
I replied something to the effect of "I see that, and I agree...however you are weeding out people who know what the hell
they are doing."

It is amusing now, but I was explaining the calc I and II concepts to other students, but getting a "C" in both and failing calc III
despite strong math skills and obvious poor decision skills with Seq's and Ser's and getting no help.

I seriously think that if "professors who teach" were subject to a GPA that could cause them fiscal (or even physical) harm
from students, the shitty ones would be weeded out in rapid order.

In my opinion; CS degrees need calc *only* for mathematical discipline, and Discrete should be taught by other CS people.
(Note: when I went through my degree the second time, this was not the case. I had a Theoretical Mathematician teaching
Discrete. It did not go well, surprisingly)

I sorta agree, yes it'll run.

Case in point: Q9550 @3.2Ghz, Radeon 5870, 8G mem would chug is several games (last few Assassin's Creed games,
Dishonoured, Max Payne 3, etc). No slouch to be honest, so there I agree.

However, getting a 3770K @4.7Ghz, Nvidia 660 and 16G of mem = SMOOOOTH gameplay in the above games.

The only time I've seen slow downs is when folding on 6 out of 8 cores with GPU folding paused...even that is rare.

The video card is not the only limiter as I found out after a bunch of research for a paper I did a while back, yes the
new cards kick much ass, but w/o modern CPUs and memory to back it up most of the benefits will not be realized.

(However, for the record you are correct, and would be spot on if most games were half-way decently threaded).

Fuck the karma, I'll name 3 and you take your pick: Obama, Reid, or Pelosi.

Let's see: first re-elected by low information, single issue voters on the dole.

Second: Unions. So much so the AFL/CIO, et al said "We did this!"

Third: Well, it *is* California...no explanation besides "bat-shit insane" elects in kind.
And I lived there while serving, but I suppose I was insulated from the crazy.

I mean really, c'mon we re-elect one prez on another (Clinton) prez's record.

Wow, just fucking wow.

Maybe I should go down to the local gun store and buy the AK-47 I've wanted for a long time and *gasp* NOT kill anything with it, just use it for fun at the range.

  I suppose it is time to move down to Mexico, at least I can get weapons for cheap, courtesy of Fast and Furious' gun running fiasco.

is there a reliable way to change IE9 or 10 to look normal or like IE8 like I can do with firefox?

Particularly:
no unified buttons
menu bar
normal size address bar (not the tiny one IE9 has)

There's a few other minor things, but the 3 above have made me switch back because IE9+ just puts me off quickly....like the
longest I've tolerated it was an hour and a half.

I'm largely self taught, but instead of the programming route, I went more into networks, OS's, hardware, etc.

In '93 I had dreams of being EE (electrical engineer) after .mil service and being a damn good tech and teacher of fellow students.
Somewhere about calc2 that dream died and I discovered computers (mandatory for EE'ish people) and I was good with those
because I was doing things real UNIX admins were doing and students would see and say "You can do that!?"
(no surprise, a lot of that stuff is trivial and standard...now).

Anyway, a big part of my success was being able to communicate to the highers and lower ends of the tech spectrum, which
a lot of "CS" people could not do, and still have a difficult time doing even today.

But even ignoring that, IMO: CS is more than just programming because experience and constant reminders show this:
Excellent programmers, especially in CS/academia don't have a clue about their machines and what goes on behind the
scenes.

Case in point: a very good friend of mine was one of those clueless users, but a fantastic programmer whose pr0n surfing got
him a nasty bug on his laptop. He could not figure out how to get rid of it, much less easily do a nuke and reload w/o
backing up stuff he could not afford to lose.
Well, when he got a job doing embedded systems (he'd never dealt w/ hardware) he was worried about getting canned w/in
a month or less. My advice was "Dude, don't worry, you'll love it because it fits you perfectly and you'll do well".

That was over a year ago, and I was right because he has that anal retentive, laser like focus and over caffeinated mindset
that need control freaks w/ some creative leanings.

I say that, to say this: knowing that, he barely passed the intro to linux and windows class that I aced because of a lack of
experience and the class itself contained good material but was schizophrenic at worst and disorganized at best.

Sadly, very few profs will listen to those of us with experience IRL/exp/jobs because they are put in a box, and in most cases
have never seen the inside of a "box" (computer), have never run a network, but teach networking in a way that confounds
"CS" people but benefits computer engineers, as another poster alluded to.

So, the "is it worth it" question boils down to "yes" if you got the exp, drive and love of the field, because my future adviser
saw my resume when I was getting into school and asked, and I quote directly "why the hell are you going back to school".
Money and a degree, because I got in when the 'pendulum' swung from degree/certs to skill/exp and I wanted to cover both.

Of course for a good decade I was never unemployed for more than 3 weeks because of skill, exp, and reputation that I'd build
over that period.

A degree is worth it in most cases whether you do it forwards or bassackwards like I did, but you have to like/love it and learn
the field and not get boxed totally into one mindset, namely "just programming".

(yeah, programming is a good chunk, but is not the 'end-all-be-all' when you are faced with: building a webserver, network,
custom workstation for X, Y, Z task, explaining why things work, how they work and at what cost an such, when a specialist
in programming will just say "Ummmm...."
Fun moments of a_non_moose: Prof: "what'll you do when a problem you can only solve by programming comes about?"
'moose: "Hire, or have hired someone who knows what the fuck they are doing more that I do, like twice in my career, so far" .
Two or three times I've been asked that, and answered the same. The looks of satisfaction and/or astonishment of the best
answer I think they've ever gotten is still priceless)

Got an Asus G73JH whose boot time was in the 2 minute range (from bios menu to desktop plus another
30+ seconds to be usable once on the desktop...ack) on a > 1.5 year old windows7 install.

If I were not in .edu, wipe and reload...as is, did a system image (had to fight that, too)

Pure SSD was still too pricey and storage too small, so I tried a hybrid drive (8G SSD attached).

One word: "Wow".

Fresh install of win7, 20 seconds flat and ready to go.

Restored image as mentioned above: 45 seconds +/- 10 sec and off to the races.

Now, granted I could have gotten a cheap and small SSD and put it in the second bay, but until I
can get a 750G+ SSD for less than $200 *aaaand* boot in 20 seconds, I'll likely stick with
straight mechanical but I'm really liking the hybrid route.

A hybrid with enough room for a complete OS (128G or so?) would more than give me what I seek
if done right.

As many have already pointed out, computer science != programming.

Exactly my argument for a long time.

Simply put, some of the best programmers I know don't know jack about their systems, network, interactions and operating systems.

It boils down, IMO, to: programming ~= pure math based and systems/network/OS is more of an art form, albeit less math based.

Seriously, you (the programmer) make it work for your narrow world view and I will make it work in a bigger picture, environment and/or world view.

Like the saying "In theory there is no difference from practice, in practice there is."

My college has the worst math dept. know to the continental U.S. and requires 3 levels of calculus. Now, first they split up derivatives (calc1) and integrals (calc2) which go hand-in-hand, but then foist upon us calc3 which boils down to "remember all that shit that was poorly taught and makes no sense, now apply it."

Yeah, uh-huh. Fuckers.

Discrete, useful as it is, is taught by "theoretical" mathematicians who've not a clue how it applies.
Bah!

Your premise is dead on...programming is a subset of CS and not the end all be all of it.

Are you claiming that news shows giving both sides of a story is a _bad_ thing?

Yes, if one of the sides is clearly false. Ignorance is not a point of view.

(smarmy) Unless you work for (false stories) or read the New York Times for ClimateGate emails (nope
they did not publish).

Ironically, I've been spending a few days clearing up years of bookmarks and visited one from alternet
I'd saved and upon re-reading, deleted it while thinking "God, it reads like the onion.com, only stupider
and without the humor".

And, yes, I must say online at least once:
NJ Governor Chris Christie for president in '12 or '16.

How long did it take Joe Wilson's 'YOU LIE' to go from decorum breaking to "well, duh".

Nice transparency, and wasn't this covered like...oh, about 6 months ago?

Hope we can change back to a republic before it's too late.

I keep hearing the line from Heavy Metal: "It's not like he'd do anything immoral/illegal".

Yeah, right.

.....Men at Work do come from a land down under, where women glow and lawyers plunder.

leaving us with a slack jaw, and not much to say...

How about saying that the Brit's Health Care system is extended to PC's and then download the
remote app, make them wait a few months before connecting to the machine (so it seems normal)
then take it over.

It could work.

(/tongue firmly in cheek, BTW)

You have to because some freaking idiot made it a unified/menu-like like IE.

So instead of a single click and you're done, it's now, click, menu, choose/click the fwd/back,
go wrong direction (possibly) or too far, click the unified button again (repeat).

A FWD (with menu and clear direction/levels) and BKWD with the same menu and CLEAR direction.

I HATE the way IE does it (can't seem to fix) and it's the first thing I fixed in FF3.

Both had a point in time when their names meant something good, now

"It's a Sony" and "This is CNN" only server as warning labels.

And a merger? I'm sure it'll work out as well as MSNBC has, if you're going for
two single digit viewer-ships, one might actually make it to double digits.