America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34b01701.htm


Here if you just want the TEXT! :)

From the issue dated May 2, 2008
OPINION
America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree

By MARTY NEMKO

Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.

Such students are not aberrations. Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.

Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound - they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

Also, the past advantage of college graduates in the job market is eroding. Ever more students attend college at the same time as ever more employers are automating and sending offshore ever more professional jobs, and hiring part-time workers. Many college graduates are forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck or tending bar.

How much do students at four-year institutions actually learn?

Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student's classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.

That's not to say that professor-taught classes are so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn't bring in the research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life. Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported "frequently" feeling bored in class, the survey found.

College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below "proficient" levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.

Unbelievably, according to the Spellings Report, which was released in 2006 by a federal commission that examined the future of American higher education, things are getting even worse: "Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined. … According to the most recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, for instance, the percentage of college graduates deemed proficient in prose literacy has actually declined from 40 to 31 percent in the past decade. … Employers report repeatedly that many new graduates they hire are not prepared to work, lacking the critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today's workplaces."

What must be done to improve undergraduate education?

Colleges should be held at least as accountable as tire companies are. When some Firestone tires were believed to be defective, government investigations, combined with news-media scrutiny, led to higher tire-safety standards. Yet year after year, colleges and universities turn out millions of defective products: students who drop out or graduate with far too little benefit for the time and money spent. Not only do colleges escape punishment, but they are rewarded with taxpayer-financed student grants and loans, which allow them to raise their tuitions even more.

I ask colleges to do no more than tire manufacturers are required to do. To be government-approved, all tires must have - prominently molded into the sidewall - some crucial information, including ratings of tread life, temperature resistance, and traction compared with national benchmarks.

Going significantly beyond the recommendations in the Spellings report, I believe that colleges should be required to prominently report the following data on their Web sites and in recruitment materials:

* Value added. A national test, which could be developed by the major testing companies, should measure skills important for responsible citizenship and career success. Some of the test should be in career contexts: the ability to draft a persuasive memo, analyze an employer's financial report, or use online research tools to develop content for a report.

Just as the No Child Left Behind Act mandates strict accountability of elementary and secondary schools, all colleges should be required to administer the value-added test I propose to all entering freshmen and to students about to graduate, and to report the mean value added, broken out by precollege SAT scores, race, and gender. That would strongly encourage institutions to improve their undergraduate education and to admit only students likely to derive enough benefit to justify the time, tuition, and opportunity costs. Societal bonus: Employers could request that job applicants submit the test results, leading to more-valid hiring decisions.

* The average cash, loan, and work-study financial aid for varying levels of family income and assets, broken out by race and gender. And because some colleges use the drug-dealer scam - give the first dose cheap and then jack up the price - they should be required to provide the average not just for the first year, but for each year.

* Retention data: the percentage of students returning for a second year, broken out by SAT score, race, and gender.

* Safety data: the percentage of an institution's students who have been robbed or assaulted on or near the campus.

* The four-, five-, and six-year graduation rates, broken out by SAT score, race, and gender. That would allow institutions to better document such trends as the plummeting percentage of male graduates in recent years.

* Employment data for graduates: the percentage of graduates who, within six months of graduation, are in graduate school, unemployed, or employed in a job requiring college-level skills, along with salary data.

* Results of the most recent student-satisfaction survey, to be conducted by the institutions themselves.

* The most recent accreditation report. The college could include the executive summary only in its printed recruitment material, but it would have to post the full report on its Web site.

Being required to conspicuously provide this information to prospective students and parents would exert long-overdue pressure on colleges to improve the quality of undergraduate education. What should parents and guardians of prospective students do?

* If your child's high-school grades and test scores are in the bottom half for his class, resist the attempts of four-year colleges to woo him. Colleges make money whether or not a student learns, whether or not she graduates, and whether or not he finds good employment. Let the buyer beware. Consider an associate-degree program at a community college, or such nondegree options as apprenticeship programs (see http://www.khake.com), shorter career-preparation programs at community colleges, the military, and on-the-job training, especially at the elbow of a successful small-business owner.

* If your student is in the top half of her high-school class and is motivated to attend college for reasons other than going to parties and being able to say she went to college, have her apply to perhaps a dozen colleges. Colleges vary less than you might think (at least on factors you can readily discern in the absence of the accountability requirements I advocate above), yet financial-aid awards can vary wildly. It's often wise to choose the college that requires you to pay the least cash and take out the smallest loan. College is among the few products that don't necessarily give you what you pay for - price does not indicate quality.

* If your child is one of the rare breed who knows what he wants to do and isn't unduly attracted to academics or to the Animal House environment that characterizes many college-living arrangements, then take solace in the fact that countless other people have successfully taken the noncollege road less traveled. Some examples: Maya Angelou, David Ben-Gurion, Richard Branson, Coco Chanel, Walter Cronkite, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Alex Haley, Ernest Hemingway, Wolfgang Puck, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Ted Turner, Frank Lloyd Wright, and nine U.S. presidents, from Washington to Truman.

College is a wise choice for far fewer people than are currently encouraged to consider it. It's crucial that they evenhandedly weigh the pros and cons of college versus the aforementioned alternatives. The quality of their lives may depend on that choice.

Marty Nemko is a career counselor based in Oakland, Calif., and has been an education consultant to 15 college presidents. He is author of four books, including The All-in-One College Guide: A Consumer Activist's Guide to Choosing a College (Barron's, 2004).
http://chronicle.com
Section: Admissions & Student Aid
Volume 54, Issue 34, Page B17

[bhagat] people : a very basic question , What make FreeBSD more secure when
compared to other Operating Systems ? any hints most welcome
[grzybowski] bhagat: other O.S. .. what you mean by "other os"?
[xunlinkx] bhagat: The Administrator.
[xunlinkx] eof.
[grzybowski] perfect answer =D

7 Confessions Of An Apple Macintosh Specialist

Taken from:

7 Confessions Of An Apple Macintosh Specialist

It was a dark and stormy night, and the Consumerist team was hunkered down at HQ poring over leads. Suddenly, we heard a ruckus coming from the alley. Footsteps, followed by the sound of breaking glass and a cat crying out as if to say, "OMGWTF?" We ran out to see who it was, but by the time we got there they were long gone. Only the noise of faint footsteps could be heard dissolving into the distant hum of the night. I glanced down and spotted something on the ground. As I knelt down to pick it up I saw it was a tattered white envelope bearing the words, "7 Confessions of an Apple Mac Specialist." Its contents, inside...

7. iPods have two fixes. Resetting and Restoring.
If both of those features do not work, your iPod is trash. Unless it's under warranty or you purchased AppleCare, then they will give you two options. First is to trade in your iPod for 10% off any model (except shuffle), or they will give you out of warranty replacement, Which usually means that you will pay around $100-$250 depending on the model you purchased.

6. We have 4 things that we will try to sell you when you purchase a computer.
AppleCare, of course, is your extended 3 year warranty, we are told to sell it as a service plan, but it does not do ANYTHING extra, but extend your warranty, and does not cover anything extra. .Mac is a ripoff unless you use the web site hosting. ProCare has to be the biggest ripoff. All this does is upgrade your AppleCare for one year. It has a little perk for business uses, but otherwise useless. Lastly, One-to-One training, which is the best deal in the store.

5. If you have a return outside of the return policy we will most likely take care of you.
If it's sealed we'll take it back, and open, if you speak to a manager and plead your case, they will most likely take care of you no matter what.

4. We do not know ANYTHING about when some product will come out.
And we aren't allowed to speculate on anything that isn't on apple.com. We can get fired if we even tell a customer that a 3G iPhone might come out.

3. Apple Employment: If you want full-time, do not get into this company.
To be full-time, it is a recommendation that you be with the company for a year or more. The shifts are horrible, and they typically have more than 100 people working in a single mall store. For part-time you can get anywhere to 4-20 hours in one week, very very unreliable."

2. Why we will ask you for your e-mail at checkout.
This is for two reasons. One, we will send your receipt to your email, and two there is a survey at the bottom of the email. This leads to the store being ranked on what is called detractors and promoters. The company takes an average from the surveys and ranks us. 10-9 is a promoter, 8-7 is a "passive" and 6 below is a detractor. Which leads to the next confession.

1. If you fill out the survey and rank us 6 or lower, a manager will call you the same day or the next, corporate policy.
They usually will ask why you had a bad experience, and offer to make it better, usually by discounting something or another for you. These are directly related to the salesperson who checked you out, so we get our asses reamed when we make a detractor. Also, If you complain to a manager, nothing usually gets done, it goes in one ear and out the other. Buy something very small, have them email your receipt, and fill out the survey. The management will wait on you hand and foot. Oh, and return the product.

truthiness and doubtability

i read this on /. and thought it was very very...very..funny. maybe its the 11:33pm in me talking.

I wonder if you can set a president to self destruct?

Judging from his poll numbers, it is safe to say that GWB has. The truthiness of this is beyond doubtability.

Rice pudding.

I want.

from http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001427rice_pudding.php

Rice Pudding Recipe

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Filed under All Seasons, Dessert, Wheat-free

Updated. From the recipe archive.

"Rice pudding is how God intended us to eat rice," my father announced when I mentioned I was thinking about making some. Well that settled it, rice pudding it would be. With a little investigation, I found that there are two basic ways to make rice pudding - baking or boiling. Then there is my dad's way, which is take some cold white rice, add some cream, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix and eat. Dad has been making rice pudding this way my whole life, but dad's method has never appealed to me that much, so boiling or baking it would have to be. The first recipe I tried called for 3/4 cup of heavy cream for a recipe that only served 2 people. Yikes! Too rich, couldn't eat it. (Ever notice that recipes 20 years and older can be a bit heavy on the cream and butter?) A couple of adjustments later, I settled on this recipe, using the boiling method. It is especially tasty with raisins.

• 2 1/2 cups (600 ml) of whole milk
• 1/3 cup (66 grams) of long or short grain white rice
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup (50 grams) dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup (40 grams) raisins

1 In a medium heavy bottomed saucepan, combine milk, rice and salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

2 In a small mixing bowl, whisk together egg and brown sugar until well mixed. Add a half cup of the rice mixture - a tablespoon at a time - beating to incorporate.

3 Add egg mixture back into the saucepan of rice and milk and stir, on low heat, for 10 minutes or so, until thickened. Be careful not to have the mixture come to a boil at this point. Stir in the vanilla. Remove from heat and stir in the raisins and cinnamon.

Serve warm or cold.

cat pipe more | bad habit

i have this bad habit of catting and then piping it to more. i don't know why i do it when i could more or less the file and achieve the same results. i'm going to work on that. ;p

old habits die hard.

yet im not sure where i picked it up in my 18 years of unix.

swapon swapfile in linux w/fstab

Q. I need additional swap space to improve my system performance. How do I add a swap file to Linux system?

A. In Linux, as in most other Unix-like operating systems, it is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast[7] as swap partitions, although Red Hat recommends using a swap partition. The administrative flexibility of swap files outweighs that of partitions; since modern high capacity hard drives can remap physical sectors, no partition is guaranteed to be contiguous. You can add swap file as a dedicated partition or use following instructions to create a swap file.

Procedure to add a swap file

You need to use dd command to create swapfile. Next you need to use mkswap command to set up a Linux swap area on a device or in a file.

a) Login as the root user

b) Type following command to create 512MB swap file (1024 * 512MB = 524288 block size):
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=524288

c) Set up a Linux swap area:
# mkswap /swapfile1

d) Activate /swapfile1 swap space immediately:
# swapon /swapfile1

e) To activate /swapfile1 after Linux system reboot, add entry to /etc/fstab file. Open this file using text editor such as vi:
# vi /etc/fstab

Append following line:
/swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0

So next time Linux comes up after reboot, it enables the new swap file for you automatically.

g) How do I verify swap is activated or not?
Simply use free command:
$ free -m

Ubuntu: Compiling a custom kernel

From: http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2006/09/15/Ubuntu-Compiling-a-custom-kernel

Ubuntu: Compiling a custom kernel

Posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 22:53:55 GMT by: quietearth
Posted under: ubuntu kernel
Here's a very dirty how to to build a custom kernel for ubuntu. This does not cover propietary drivers such as nvidia or ati. If you are using any propietary video drivers, you will need to modify your xorg.conf, otherwise X will not work when you boot into the new kernel. More detailed instructions are available at the link on the bottom of this post.

# apt-get install ncurses-dev kernel-package linux-source build-essential
# cd /usr/src
# bzip2 -dc linux-source-2.6.15.tar.bz2 |tar xf -
# cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.15

Now lets get our running kernel version and copy over the appropriate config file.
# uname -r
# cp /boot/config-2.6.15-26-386 .config

Now let's configure it, run the following and then set and save your options.
# make menuconfig

Now lets use make-kpkg to compile the kernel and it will produce an installable .deb for us:
# make-kpkg clean
# make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=custom1 kernel_image kernel_headers

One problem I ran into while compiling the kernel source was errors in the prism54 wireless driver code. I had to completely remove support to get the kernel to compile.

Now after this is done compiling we can look in /usr/src and we have the following packages:
kernel-headers-2.6.15.7-ubuntu1custom1_10.00.Custom_i386.deb
kernel-image-2.6.15.7-ubuntu1custom1_10.00.Custom_i386.deb

And we can install with:
# dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.15.7-ubuntu1custom1_10.00.Custom_i386.deb

After installation, your custom kernel will be at the bottom of the grub's list, so it will not be automatically booted. You will either need to move it to the top of the list in /boot/grub/menu.lst or manually stop autoboot in grub and specify booting your new custom kernel.

To remove the kernel, you will have to boot into another kernel otherwise you might destroy your system.
# dpkg -r kernel-image-2.6.15.7-ubuntu1custom1

A more detailed article is available at http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper .

Tested under dapper.

Peanut Sesame Noodles

From Smitten Kitchen:

Friday, April 18, 2008

peanut sesame noodles

The fact that today is a startling 78 degrees with low humidity and the sun is streaming in wide ribbons through every windowed wall is leaving me as torn as I have ever been between my simultaneous urges to Take Walk! Frolic Outside! Drinks Beers on a Terrace, Somewhere! And come home late tonight with my skin smelling like summer and my forehead re-freckled and fall into a deep sleep, my legs twitching like a puppy who dreams about catching frisbees… and, you know, bake some things for tomorrow’s Seder. Hrm, is it actually any question what will win?

Nevertheless, I haven’t even told you about my Single Girl’s Dinner from Monday night. No, calm down, Alex did not finally tire of me, the dishes I create and my incessant complaining about the wrinkles on my forehead (and the IfYouLovedMeYou’dBuyMeBotox!), etc. He just had some clients taking him out to dinner and I was in no mood for take-out. Well, that’s not true, I was in the mood for takeout-like food, but I wanted it to be the way I like it which pretty much left me with the option of making it myself. Such is the life of the Too Picky For Their Own Good.

I had cold peanut sesame noodles for the first time when I was 13 and had recently decided to go vegetarian. A friend who was also eschewing meat wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant and I was certain there would be nothing for us eat, but she ordered them for us and I was instantly, head-over-heels in love. If this was vegetarian food, I was in it for the long haul (or about until the age of 28, you know, whichever came first). However, it was many more years before I found a formula for it that allowed me to make it at home, any time I pleased.

And yet, I actually don’t make it very often because my favorite way to eat it is toss with some cold chunks of firm tofu and this guy I married thinks that tofu is evil (and seeing as I am a really picky–but I like to call it “particular”–eater, I don’t have any leverage to change his mind), which is why Monday night was a perfect excuse to dust off my old favorite. Except, I was bit more tired and lazy (than usual) so when the store was out of the buckwheat soba noodles I usually like, I settled for somen, which are really too thin and delicate for this dish. I also realized after I had already sat down that I’d forgotten to toast sesame seeds, which, in case you don’t already know, means it’s just not happening.

Let’s see, if you were coming here for the first time, you’d learn that that I don’t want to do my work, I complain a lot to my husband and I’m lazy. I should edit this to make me seem like a nicer, better person but–squee!–the sun beckons. I hope you all have a great weekend.

Peanut Sesame Noodles
Adapted from Gourmet, June 2002

Servings: Makes 6 side-dish or 4 vegetarian main-course servings.

For peanut dressing
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup warm water
1 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 medium garlic clove, chopped
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons Asian toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes or a splash of the hot sauce or chili paste of your choice

For noodles
3/4 lb dried soba nooodles (dried linguine fini or spaghetti will work in a pinch)
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/8-inch-thick strips
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1/8-inch-thick strips
Half a seedless cucumber, thinly sliced
1 cup firm or extra-firm tofu, cubed
3 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted

Purée dressing ingredients in a blender until smooth, about 2 minutes, then transfer to a large bowl.

Cook pasta in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water until tender. Drain in a colander, then rinse well under cold water.

Add pasta, scallions, bell peppers, cucumber and tofu to dressing, tossing to combine. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and serve immediately.

Strawberry Teeth Whitener

From:
Health, January 2006

Whiten Your Teeth the Natural Way

by Karina Timmel

The secret to this inexpensive home whitening method is malic acid, which acts as an astringent to remove surface discoloration. Combined with baking soda, strawberries become a natural tooth-cleanser, buffing away stains from coffee, red wine, and dark sodas. While it’s no replacement for a bleaching treatment at your dentist’s office, “this is a fast, cheap way to brighten your smile,” says Adina Carrel, DMD, a dentist in private practice at Manhattan Dental Arts in New York. “Be careful not to use this too often, though, as the acid could damage the enamel on your teeth.”

You need:
1 ripe strawberry
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions: Crush the strawberry to a pulp, then mix with the baking powder until blended. Use a soft toothbrush to spread the mixture onto your teeth. Leave on for 5 minutes, then brush thoroughly with toothpaste to remove the berry–baking powder mix. Rinse. (A little floss will help get rid of any strawberry seeds.) Carrel says you can apply once a week.

— Karina Timmel is a former Assistant Beauty and Fashion Editor for Health.

All I need is a programmer...

Taken from http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-i-need-is-programmer.html

Monday, April 14, 2008

"All I need is a Programmer"

I was contacted this week by an old acquaintance, and he had a proposition for me.

"Hey, I hear you're a programmer! That's great, because my buddy and I have
this idea for a business. We have everything important figured out, and all we need is a programmer to throw it together."

On the surface there isn't really anything unreasonable about that statement. These guys know what they want for an application, they "just" need the technical know-how to implement it. So, quelling my urge to say something flippant, I penned a reasonable response.


"Well, I have some other projects I'm involved in right now, but I'm always happy to take a look at something new and see if it's a good fit. If you want to do this as a strictly cash-for-labor exchange, it would probably take $X-per-hour to get me interested in spending time on it. If, on the other hand, you don't have any startup capital and are interested in trading equity for this work, I would probably have to see at least an X% cut of the company (and this option would, of course, be predicated on whether I felt the business was a viable one that I'd be interested in being invested in)"


Although I really didn't expect him to be interested in meeting me at those terms, I expected maybe a counter offer or an indication that he was expecting Y instead of X. What I actually got as a reply surprised me a little.

Hey, so, we aren't really prepared to pay. I mean there isn't that much to it, it's just a PHP website with a MySql database, I was hoping you could just throw it together as a favor. Oh well, thanks anyway

I thought about this for a minute, and realized that implicit in the conversation are several assumptions (or perhaps more accurately, conventionally perceived "truths") with regard to the craft of software development.

1)"there isn't that much to it" = "software is really easy to write"

2)"We have everything important figured out" = "in a business, the actual software is just icing on the cake"

3)"All we need is a programmer" = "software developers are cogs in a machine, or interchangeable components of an assembly line"

So then my question is this: Are these common assumptions within the software industry, and more importantly are they accurate?

Assumption 1: software development is easy

This is certainly an opinion I'm used to dealing with, and I'm sure most of you have experienced it as well: "This isn't rocket science, all we need is a program that does [insert complicated feature here]". Unfortunately it's all too common to be under the illusion that software is about 1/10th as tough to build as it actually is. Now we could say that's not unreasonable to assume, because to a non-technical user the User Interface IS the software, so they only can perceive 1/10th of the full application anyway. Based on that fact it wouldn't be illogical to conclude that it's no big deal to just add another button there at the bottom that completely changes the work-flow of the application. This is one misconception of the software industry that in my opinion can be 100% debunked: Software development is hard. We have tools to mitigate that; there are good development methodologies that can keep us focused on what's important, and good tools that can amplify our productivity, but at the end of the day it's difficult to produce good and simple software.

Assumption 2: software is just fluff compared to the business

This is another attitude I've encountered more than a few times, and again the surface value of the argument seems reasonable. After all, software can be made to do anything (within reason), so it isn't really the software that we're selling, it's the business concept. It's the product or the service that's making us them money, not the code. Now in a way, that's very true: great software that has no utility is perhaps not great software after all. However, it would be wrong to take that statement and turn it around to say that a great business idea will succeed regardless of the software that acts as it's delivery medium. Whether you are a product or a service company, the software is telling your story and your business WILL be judged on whether it is easy to use and doesn't break down. The greatest business in the world would not be able to overcome a millstone of bad software around it's neck. This misconception is, in my opinion, false and getting falser.

Assumption 3: programmers are interchangeable pluggable components

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm a programmer, I have a vested interest in this not being true.

Nevertheless, I have experienced this opinion many times during various job-searches. A company is experiencing time-line problems, and the "obvious" solution is to get 5 more programmers. More manpower = more progress, right? Now of course this is a biased opinion, but I don't think all programmers are created equal. Plenty of other bloggers have written on the subject of the "Rockstar" programmer, that mythical super-productive hero who can carry a project on his back, and I'm not entirely convinced that he exists. That being said, I do think that the right people in the software developer roles on a project can make a difference of at least an order of magnitude. What might take one average-joe-coder 10 hours might be done in 1 if you have the right guy for the job, and if that's true I think I can safely throw the above assumption right out the window.

What do you think? Has the software industry changed to the point where the above assumptions are becoming more viable? Or is it just that the things potential customers believe about software are changing because of the pervasiveness of technology today?

FreeBSD and Windows Vista - Bootloader Problems

Taken from http://www.clearchain.com/wiki/FreeBSD_&_Windows_Vista

The Problem

After installing Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, I very quickly wanted to get back to FreeBSD. As per previous versions of Windows, Vista does a great job of overwriting the Master boot record (MBR). Unlike previous versions of windows, you cannot just install a different boot loader in the MBR - so I found out the hard way. (It used to be sooo easy fdisk /mbr would fix any broken boot sectors, then just install your favourite boot loader).

Vista writes a unique disk id in the MBR. This unique id (UID) is used by Vista to determine what disk is what. It does make some sense, Hardware can shift around, but the UID should always be the same. This allows Vista to always know where it's files are and to appropriate label drive C: as the correct drive.

Installing another boot loader, however (ie Grub, lilo, the FreeBSD boot0 / boot loader /boot manager) will overwrites the UID in the MBR and Vista fails to load with an error:

"unable to access \windows\winload.exe"

The error message is semi appropriate but very misleading. What it really should say is "I can't work out which of my the drives has my files on it hence I can't find winload.exe".

• 'Full details about the UID can be found at: http://multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html

Existing Solutions

Out on the web there is many solutions to the dreaded winload.exe. Many of them are misleading, some I believe are not even tested. Also many apply to Vista Release Candidate 1 (rc1) which I believe didn't required the UID to be present in order to successfully boot. Below is some of the solutions that people say work (but Ifound didn't).

Using Grub

• Ref: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=358175
• Ref: http://blogs.sun.com/moinakg/entry/vista_and_solaris_express_dual

Some say grub loading windows with something like:

Title Vista
 root (hd0,0)
 makeactive
 chainloader +1

will work - but grub still over writes the MBR hence the same issue will occur - though you may be lucky as the grub MBR is really small (and might leave the UID) untouched.

Using gag

There's reports on a FreeBSD mailing list that gag will work, thought I'm running FreeBSD/amd64 which gag or grub for that matter won't compile on. I know I could always install the lib32 compatability distribution to use it but I wanted the default FreeBSD boot loader.

Using the Vista Boot Loader

• Refs: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2014/vista_using_bcdedit_boot_up_options_dual_boot_xp_prof'

Many people have given up on trying to use a normal boot loader, and instead use the Vista boot loader.

The WinXP/NT bootloader (ntldr & config file boot.ini) have been replaced with files winboot.exe and bcedit.exe for configuration.

Theses commands could be setup to boot other operating systems though your milege may vary.

Commercial Software

Many people have decided it's all too hard and gone and purchased software to handle it for them - there's lots out there

• VistaBoot (http://vistabootpro.org)
• EasyBCD

Utilities

• Ref: http://www.sysint.no/en/Download.aspx

There is many utilities that claim to fix the issue. One such util is MBRFix.exe, this fixes the fact that vista won't boot but it will clobber any boot loader you have got installed.

The Fix (That Worked)

• Obtained from: http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=1324

The simple fix is to tell Vista that the drive it boots off of will always be the drive it can find its files on. This way you can clobber the UID in the MBR as much as you want and Vista won't care. To do this you run:

BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

This can be run from either the Vista repair cd, from within Vista, or from something like http://www.ultimatebootcd.com (For Windows).

Conclusion

Hence it IS possible to run Vista with any boot loader that you like - in my case the FreeBSD boot loader is the one of choice.