In some cases at work we've replaced laptops with tablets for field use. Laptops were often not a very good fit anyway.

At home, we used to have two PCs, then a PC and a laptop, then 2 laptops and we've since replaced one laptop with a tablet. That arrangement works pretty well, especially when you consider that my son has his own tablet through school and my daughter has an iPod touch that she uses for email, games, messaging, and watching shows on netflix.

My point is that there are things that we used to use PCs for that are done as well or better by a mobile device. That's not to say there aren't trade offs but I do believe that tablets in particular are cutting into PC and laptop sales. Lots of people use a computer primarily for web and email access. Even though a PC might be better at some things and many families will keep one around, they aren't going to be as inclined to buy new ones as often. Our current laptop is 4 years old and we've got no plans to upgrade anytime soon. We'd probably get another tablet first. So yeah, I think the PC market has definitely been impacted.

I think the mistake some techie folks make is that they feel they should be judged strictly on their technical skills. Whether you want to call it "good at office politics" or "having people skills", ultimately the success of many projects depends on technical people being able to effectively work with non technical people to deliver a product.Those are skills that you should develop if you don't have them all ready.

I may promote or give better opportunities to an employee that is really good at getting user stories as opposed to somebody who's good at generating code but not much else. That's still a meritocracy.

It's all relative.

I have no idea about modern CS degrees but 20 years ago the required math courses you had to take in order to get a CS degree left you about 10 credits short of a math minor (which I went ahead and got). I don't consider myself a math expert by any means but compared to an average college grad my math skills are (or at least were) pretty good. Believe me that I know I was just scratching the surface.

My post was in response to the AC who said that CS degrees are a waste of money and don't tell you anything about the applicant. It does tell me that they have above average math skills though not necessarily much above average. Someone who's programming skills are self taught may really suck at math and in the organization I work for that would be a problem.

How long could society support every couple having 4 kids?

The point is that having 4 kids is a choice. So is two kids. So is none. Likewise there are 1,200 sqft apartments and $4,000 sqft homes.

Choosing more interesting work over a higher salary doesn't necessary mean you can't support a family, but certainly having a large family can make that harder.

Salary is but one consideration and high paying + challenging is not mutually exclusive.

I deliberately left a higher paying job for a non-profit even though I had a mortgage and two kids. Ultimately I'm happier for it even though I know I'd be making more money if I had stayed where I was. The work wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling or challenging. Still I'm not exactly poor and I'm content with my pay.

Wow. At least when I graduated a CS degree wasn't exactly an easy one to get. It doesn't mean that everyone holding a CS degree is automatically a better candidate than everyone who doesn't have one, nor does it mean that they are good candidate for a given position. It at least used to mean that they have a pretty good understanding of how computers and operating systems work, that they have decent (if not great) math skills, that they have some ability to complete a project, work with others, and have reasonable writing skills.

Usually when I'm looking for people I'll state that a computer science degree is preferred. That has not stopped me from hiring people without CS degrees though I think pretty much everyone I've hired (as a developer) has had some degree.

You're right, I think his advice is timeless and not particularly targeted towards the class of 2013. It's still good advice. The other topics you mention might be interesting (or maybe not) and have some relevance for them but I'm not sure they'd make good commencement speech topics.

The Terms of service makes it plain that it doesn't matter if he's using the service for commercial purposes or not, he can't have a server. He was providing a high bandwidth service to friends and family that potentially impacts the level of service that Verizon is able to give its other customers. I think they did the right thing.

Now in all honesty, I also think as a residential customer I should be able to host a server or two on my Internet connection for my own purposes which would include the ability to host a few files and photos that for privacy reasons I may not want to have on dropbox or flickr.

Maybe the best way to handle something like this and prevent the kind of abuse this guy engaged in is to allow unlimited downloads but charge extra for uploads over a certain amount. Then remove the server restriction.

From what I understand he had two places in Belize. On located in the mainland off of the New river (which I saw) and the other on Ambergris Caye which I probably was within a couple miles of. I think it was the latter which burned down. It was on a quiet part of an island otherwise filled with tourists and American expatriates. It's not as remote as you're thinking it is. The place I grew up in the states probably had a worse road and was located next to a smaller town.

Oh and if your candybar phone was anything like mine, using its hobbled browser to download music from Amazon would have been pretty painful if would have worked at all.

You have to remember that we're talking about 7 or 8 years ago when Intel opted not to work with Apple on a processor for the iPhone. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s at the time and wouldn't start until after the iPhone was released. And then only with a much smaller list of available titles compared to the iTunes store.

As for ripping CDs, when's the last time you actually bought a music CD? I haven't in a long time. Why? Because downloading is so much easier and convenient. This is one of the things the iPhone offered that other phones of that era didn't.

Where did these mp3s you played on your candy bar phone come from and what steps did you have to go through to get them on the phone itself? Could you browse through a library of millions of songs (on the phone) and download them individually or by album? Could you do it legally? What about your non-techie friends and relatives? Even if their phones could play mp3s, did they have any clue as to how to do it?

To be completely accurate, the ability to download songs from the iTunes store straight to the iPhone itself wasn't there at launch. It took a few months but that does point out another advantage of the iPhone over what was available at the time, - frequent software upgrades.

More and more it's becoming apparent to me that many of us in the tech industry have a huge blind spot. We want faster GPUs and processors. We want more storage capacity, more bandwidth, and more pixels, but we really only care about ease of use to a point. We like gadgets and playing with software so if getting some music on our phone takes some fiddling with software and hardware, it's just part of the fun. On the other hand, if everyone can do it, it takes away from our techie mystique. ;-)

Yes, iTunes was vendor locked but it was apparent well before 2007 that vast majority of the public didn't care.

When it comes to specifics we probably agree. I will add some caveats though. Technology moves quickly and career wise if we want to be relevant in our 40's and 50's we need to move with it. It's not only good for your career, learning new skills is good for your brain.

There's been plenty of times in my career where I've chosen to use a particular technology for a given project primarily because I wanted to learn it or I wanted a member of my staff to learn it. Yes, it costs more, but it pays off down the road.

My current example is a backend text processing system for one of our data analysis applications. I started it about 12 years ago and chose perl. Python seems to be the language of choice now for scripting and I'm contemplating doing a conversion. It will be time consuming and expensive. Further there's nothing I foresee needing to do with this system that I can't do with perl. The problem is that the system continues to grow and as expensive as it would be to convert now, it will be even more expensive in 2 years.

Great advice and I will add that as far as your brain and career goes, sometimes change for change sake is good. You really should be ensuring that you're learning new stuff on a regular basis. Keeps your brain healthy. I've seen too many posts on Slashdot from tech folks in their 40's or 50's wondering what they should learn in order to have relevant skills again because the demand for the skills they had dried up.