Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Really? (Score 1) 481

"It's unlikely that a high school student would come away with any other conclusion than the police are a fearful group to be avoided at all costs," says Eugene O'Donnell, a former police officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Based on recent history, that sounds like an assumption grounded in reality.

Maybe the police forces in the U.S. should start acting like the responsible adults in the room and not the kids with new toys, and the police forces that already do should be more vocal about abuses of power. Then maybe we'd still operating from the assumption that a cop that stops you is going to shoot first and ask questions later.

Comment Re:The power of EULAs only goes so far (Score 2) 216

The ATT vs Concepcion case isn't really an appropriate basis for comparison.

In the case of wireless service, the consumer actively signs a service contract, where these terms and conditions are laid out. In this case, what is essentially a click-through EULA, and even then for only SOME activities that GM is claiming constitute acceptance, is actively stripping the consumer of any legal remedy.

The courts are very hesitant to allow corporate boilerplate shrink-wrap licensing terms that cause the consumer to forfeit their legal remedy paths. I can't believe this change will make it through the first case.

Comment Re:But why? (Score 1) 445

First, it's ruining the night vision of anyone in the area.

If you're turning on the lights, who cares about your night vision? If I wanted to make use of my night vision while walking around in the dark, I wouldn't have lights outside at all. However, since we're not canines or felines or any number of other nocturnal animals, our night vision is terrible for seeing detail. And someone sneaking around the exterior of my house in the dark, I don't much care to preserve their night vision. In fact, maybe I should upgrade my motion sensor to 1000 watt stage throw bulbs.

Then, along with that, it's creating super dark shadows.

Yes - at some distance greater than zero away from your house. In the meantime, the area immediately surrounding your house has now been sufficiently lit up to reveal whatever is there in the first place.

Comment Try again - Re:Sensationalist Tripe (Score 3, Insightful) 42

I just patched this on a half dozen servers yesterday - it's not the CVE vulnerability, it's a Plesk-Apache-PHP configuration exploit.

Plesk installed a PHP-via-CGI configuration that turned an entire directory path into an auto-CGI, and exposed the system path to the php executable. A couple of escape characters later and you had remote shell commands executing via POST.

Comment Re:Because a career isn't about editing HTML files (Score 1) 347

If you notice what I said in that entire sentence, and the next - I didn't say get a CS degree. In fact, I explicitly mentioned several non-CS degrees immediately following where you ended the quote.

The point of getting the degree, as many other people also posted, isn't to show your credentials for {INSERT FIELD HERE} . It's to show that you can learn - anything - and follow something through to completion. Newly-graduated college students don't get hired because they're experts in their field, they get hired because they graduated, and as an aside while they were earning their degree, managed to do something that shows they have the ability do do whatever it is related to what they're applying for.

Disclaimer: This all, of course, assumes you pursue and get a job somehow related to your field. Job availability may vary by market. Past performance is in no way related to future gains. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform. This information is subject to change without notice. And you "Art History" or "Humanities" majors out there, you should have talked to a guidance counselor before you left High School.

Comment Because a career isn't about editing HTML files. (Score 1) 347

I want to be a web developer, and everyday I ask myself the same question: why am I wasting my time getting a computer science degree?

If your goal in life is to edit HTML files, then don't go get a degree at all. Like the (only 2 at the time of my writing this) other posters have said, build and run a website or 3, get a job as an intern at a company that does technology stuff, do things on your own and build a portfolio.

That being said, a career as a web designer is good for about 1 or 2 steps up, and then you are left as...a very experienced web designer, with a resume of short-term contract-type positions, and no educational background to show you know anything about databases, or actual programming, or business, or being able to make it through a degree program, or being able to deal with being around people, or anything much to give me or any other hiring manager a reason to spend more than 30 seconds reading your resume.

Just last week, I tossed a resume, for a new DBA position we're trying to fill, in the trash. Maybe he was a good DBA, but his resume was 10 years of web development and website administration, with 2 6-month stints at a place being an actual DBA in any sense of the word. Yes, I know any web developer that deals with running websites most likely has run the databases that back those websites, especially at a smaller company (I've done it myself at even not-so-small companies), but I can't suggest hiring someone to manage 2 dozen customer databases in a production environment with 12 months of short-lived "DBA" experience on a 10 year career in technology.

If you want to be a "Web Designer" for all of eternity, then teach yourself and build your portfolio of Things You've Done to show off to potential customers.

If you want a career in technology that might eventually lead to managing and hiring other web developers, or moving into Production Operations, or dealing with technology workers that do anything other than develop web pages, get a degree. Get a business or management or sociology degree if you think a CompSci degree will be a "waste", but give future hiring managers a reason to think you have the ability to learn more than how to monkey with HTML.

Slashdot Top Deals

Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should.

Working...