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Thread ID: 58129	2005-05-22 11:51:00	Qualifications	beetle (243)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
357507	2005-05-24 00:40:00	Ok i have read and re read this thread and not sure if any of this is relevant or what to what i was originally thinking . and has it really answered my question or not? I will shortly have a new qualification behind my name . . . . to add to the other qualifications i have which i dont use . . . in a totally different field of expertise . . . . . . both varsity / uni qualifications and the 3rd is polytech ( before UCOL time) we are being pressured to add more study to our future as the think (mostly the class) that we need to go on and get a degree . . . . which i think with all the work we have done should of been what we got any way . . . . :( but i feel the ones that are going to go on are doing it for the wrong reasons . apart from the fact i feel i need a break from being a study nerd . and get some time to be me, and my family have missed me lots . . . . and the motel churns out a lot of work we have to do . . . i think really i need a job in the field i am studying and if in 6 months or a year i think yes i want to go back studying i will . . . my brain is not working at all well most of the time, and get confuddled or forgetful easily . so yes i think traing in a way is good, but the amount in any field of study needs a hell of a lot more practical experience to be churned out to the people . theres a lot of qualified useless practically people out there . . . society is doing this to themselves . we are pushed to strive bigger and better things for ourselves and often the basics get lost on the way . woffle over . insominia is hell, stress is painful and dibilitating . . . . but we do this to ourselves daily . ????? not sure why . thanxs people for posting, more posts welcome . beetle :illogical	beetle (243)
357508	2005-05-24 02:10:00	The following statement is true . The previous statement was false . Now that's an interesting pair of statements . Bit of background to them perhaps? This is an interesting type of verbal paradox with a very long history . It has been classified as “liar paradox,” “Cretan Paradox” and antinomy (a word invented by Immanuel Kant), although not everyone even agrees these are the same type . Its earliest recorded form is an alleged statement by Epimenides the Cretan poet (from Crete) in the 6th century BC to the effect that”Cretans always tell lies’ . (If Epimenides lied he told the truth and if he told the truth he lied) . This story has also been attributed by some writers to the 6th century BC Greek poet Phocylides . A couple of centuries later Eubulides of Miletus troubled Aristotle with somewhat similar questions like “Does a man who says that he lies speak truly?” Aristotle was the founder of much of the logic we still use today for mathematics, scientific inference etc . But he is not known to have been able to answer Eubulides, just as he could not effectively respond to the time and motion paradoxes of Zeno of Elea (although these are a quite different type of paradox) . In the early 1300’s the French philosopher and physicist Jean Buridan even tried using the liar type of paradox to “prove” the existence of God by using the two sentences “God exists . ” ”Neither of these two sentences is true . ” The more recent type of formulation of this sort of paradox was by the English mathematician Philip Jourdain in 1913 who suggested a card on one side of which was written: The sentence on the other side of this card is TRUE . And on the other side: The sentence on the other side of this card is FALSE . Beetle’s preferred version follows pretty much directly from Jourdain's version, although even that one is often condensed even further to one statement, viz “This statement is untrue . ” This desire for greater brevity is related the view of William of Ockham (contemporary to Jean Buridan) that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity . ” Or maybe more interestingly related to the approach of the Eastern philosopher (unfortunately I’ve forgotten his name) who spent most of his life summarising the wisdom of the universe into nine words, then tried to reduce these further by one word each succeeding year . (So how much longer did he live? Incidentally, his activities considerably pre-dated Arthur C Clarke’s interesting little short story “The Nine Billion Names of God . ”) Or in similar vein the French/English mathematician Abraham de Moivre (among other things it was he who produced the first explicit formula for the “bell-shaped”, Gaussian or “normal” curve so beloved of statisticians, scientists, educators and the like) who, wondering when he would die, observed in old age that he was sleeping about 15 minutes more each day and deduced that on the day he slept for more than 24 hours … (and gave an explicit prediction of the date) . In case PressF1 readers of this (if any) have troubles like Aristotle with this sort of stuff (or even with your computing problems or scholarship maths or whatever else you might have problems with), then spare a thought to one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell, who for a while had to do this sort of stuff for a living (later on he moved away from mathematical logic and into general philosophy, even later into peace activism) . He writes in his autobiography : "At first I supposed that I should be able to overcome these contradictions quite easily, and that probably there was some trivial error in the reasoning . It seemed unworthy of a grown man to spend his time on such trivialities, but what was I to do? By the end of 1901 I had concluded it was a big job . Every morning I would sit down before a blank sheet of paper . Throughout the day, with a brief interval for lunch, I would stare at the blank sheet . Often when evening came it would be still empty . It seemed quite likely that the whole of the rest of my life might be consumed in looking at that blank sheet of paper . " (Can you find much of this stuff by using Google? Try! Is it worthy of a grown person to spend their time on such trivialities? Probably not . Why not get some useful (??) qualifications instead?) Just filling in time here coz I don't have any computing problems, all my hardware working good (probably because I put it all together myself), I even (if only temporarily) got on top in the ongoing battle with XP…	rugila (214)
357509	2005-05-24 02:18:00	I have a 2 or 3 quals. Except I did it backwards. Worked in IT then went nad got them, then worked some more in IT, then quit and work for myself. One of the quals I'll never use again so probably wasn't worth bothering with except I didn't pay for it, and at the time it was required. I think its useful, some people like it that you have them, on the other hand some people don't care - they are more interested in if you know what you are doing, and as has been said already, the two are not necessarily the same thing. My partner has no quals for his current line of work and hasn't found it to be a problem at all. He sticks to doing what he knows and doing it well. I think it comes down to if you are good at what you do then quals add to that but just having got some and not having a clue what you're doing then it means nothing. I don't have a lot of interest in continuing to get more of them whereas I have a friend who does. Hes done MCSE and the first of the Cisco exmas and is going to go through all the MS stuff but to be honest he is fairly useless as far as PCs go. He actually had no idea what spyware was and recently got another HDD and a USB enclosure and had to ring me twice to get it going. Hmmm. Then again, he probably knows more than me about Exchnage Server....	pctek (84)
357510	2005-05-24 02:30:00	we are being pressured to add more study to our future as the think (mostly the class) that we need to go on and get a degreeWell that's no surprise. They need bums on seats, don't they? ;)	FoxyMX (5)
357511	2005-05-24 06:15:00	Ok i have read and re read this thread and not sure if any of this is relevant or what to what i was originally thinking . and has it really answered my question or not? sorry beetle . but let me just get this out . . . . :p AFAIK they still do - that's exactly what I did eons ago . You should be able to cross-credit the computer science papers to the B . Com . It's a good mix in the world of commerce, provided that's where you want to head . . . . yeah i would like to go in the IT industry, but also in the commerce part, maybe they mix together somewhere . . . . but not too sure if there are many job opportunities out there, my parents reckon that there are so many "pc people" out there and that there wont be any god jobs left, like well paid ones . . . . oh i dunno . . . too many decisions at once :illogical How many 17 or 18 year old actually know what they want to do? im 16 and in year 13(7th form) :p	Prescott (11)
357512	2005-05-24 12:10:00	Well I am 9 "Level 6" credits short of passing my diploma in computer engineering @ MIT Worst part is the Level six courses that fit my category only start in semester 2 :angry	bob_doe_nz (92)
357513	2005-05-24 21:08:00	my parents reckon that there are so many "pc people" out there and that there wont be any god jobs left, like well paid ones.... Agreed that there's a lot of "pc people" out there, but theres only so many who are really good at it :)	personthingy (1670)
357514	2005-05-25 01:14:00	I got a BA back in the good 'ol days when University was an educational institute rather than the training institute it has been manipulated into by Friedmanite economics . It was fun, easy and exciting . I got straight A's in my last year in my major, Political Sciience . And I took three years off in the middle and bummed around NZ doing odd jobs and "living" . I consider myself lucky . I went back and finished the degree because I thought it would be a handy ticket to have . Exactly the "OH well he's got a degree so he can probably do the job", sort of trick . Then I drifted around the world for ten years working in construction, catering, driving . anything in the 'ordinary' labour market . Then in London I did a qual . for Teaching English as Second Language . Only a month course but the hardest training I had, and have , done . Worked in Spain and back in NZ at that for another fifteen years . Nothing to do with the original BA but you needed a degree in anything to get a job in the language schools . Took a year off (self-funded) to do 90% of a NZ Cert . in Computer Science at what was then ATI in the 80's but left it because sitting in a basement doing COBOL mainteneance was not my idea of fun . So, yes qualifications are important to get your 'foot in the door" . I feel sympathy for kids these days with the enormous burden their "job training' costs . I think it is extremenly selfish of our generation that we burden the next with what we got for free . And to the younger people here I would say yes, get a bit of life and work experience before you dedicate yourself to some career but also realise you don't have too much time to do it in . :2cents: Does that answer your question beetle ? :D	mark c (247)
357515	2005-05-25 03:03:00	Yeah i guess . . . . . beetle :lol:	beetle (243)
357516	2005-05-25 03:48:00	Hi beetle. You've got to consider whether the degree is bread and butter or personal development. I went off to varsity part-time in my thirties to do a BA. Initially intended to major in English but later changed it to History. 'Cos I enjoyed it. Job, family, three kids, but still enjoyed it. Took forever. We had a Yank over here working with us at the time and when I graduated I can remember him scorning the Arts degree and saying "That slip of paper and 25 cents will buy you a cup of coffee anywhere." That was half a life-time ago and I still get satisfaction from having given it a try. :cool:	Scouse (83)
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