Advice to a Junior in High School?

[Howard Nease]

Hello, everyone. I would appreciate any advice that someone could give me on
my future career path. Here is my situation:

I am a bright Junior in a very well-respected private high school, taking
almost all AP and accelerated classes. I am HIGHLY interested in technology,
more specifically the field of Computer Science and software engineering. I
have heard a whole lot about the fact that the market for software engineers
nowadays is *HORRIBLE*, and that I should double major or perhaps go into a
field of study in which I'm not very interested.

I would be devastated were I to find the need to leave computer science. I
love the subject, and I've wanted to be a computer scientist ever since I
was 12 years old.

Does anyone have any advice for me and my future? What should I study in
college? Will the market for jobs get better? Do I have any hope at all of
finding a decent-paying job in compsci? What languages do you suggest that I
study (I'm already studying Python)?

thank you very much for your help!

--shn

[Stan Graves]

Jeremy Bowers <je**@jerf.org> wrote in message news:<pa**************************@jerf.org>...

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 13:46:27 -0700, Stan Graves wrote:

Study literature - I have yet to see a single computer scientist who can
manipulate symbols as well as Shakespeare.
class Rose:
"A Rose is a Rose is a Rose."""
def sweetness(self):
return "very"

rose = Rose()
otherName = rose
assert rose.sweetness() == otherName.sweetness()

Would you *notice* if a computer scientist matched Shakespeare?

Yes. I have had the mis-fortune of being a maintenance programmer for
far too much of my life. I have read reams of documentation, and
hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I have attempted to make
sense of code written to do one thing, but extended and tortured into
doing another.

This may not be the computer scientists fault - but the fact remains
that the resulting system of code has little, if any, coherence across
itself, let alone a deliberate connection from it's elements to
anything that resembles the real world problem that the code was
written to give greater insight.

Then again, if an army of editors attempted to re-write Shakespeare, I
doubt seriously if anythign worth reading would have survived.
How can you compare the two at all?
I can compare the two because they relate to the same larger idea.
Literature, on its surface may simply be pretty prose. But literature
is also meant to provide us with some greater insight into the human
condition. Literature can be a stand-in for actual experience. When
you read the report of Lewis and Clarke to President Jefferson, you
can get a sense of what their journey was like. That is a journey
that can never be redone - the face of the land has changed since that
time...yet the words of the report provide a greater sense of
understanding about the men, the journey, the land, and the times.

In general, code is written to solve a greater problem than the
creation of that code. As such, code, or its results, should provide
a greater understanding into a non-code related problem.

As such, I can say that no computer program has provided me with a
greater sense of understanding into the problem it was meant to solve,
than Shakespeare has provided me with an understand of the human
conditions that he wrote about. Even with the precise language of
mathematics, code is generally a poor stand in for actual
understanding of a problem.
Statements like that sound all profound but are really the exact opposite;
meaningless.

I stand by my original statement. Perhaps with the clarification that
I have provided above, you may find some greater meaning in what I
originally said. If not, I hope we can simply agree to disagree.

--Stan Graves

[Jeremy Bowers]

On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 09:14:41 -0700, Stan Graves wrote:

Yes. I have had the mis-fortune of being a maintenance programmer for
far too much of my life. I have read reams of documentation, and
hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I have attempted to make
sense of code written to do one thing, but extended and tortured into
doing another.

For what it's worth, you're reading the slush pile and judging the whole
discipline with it, if that statement is accurate. To be fair, you need to
be comparing the *best* of computer science against Shakespeare, not
whatever happens to cross your desk. You can't judge English Novels by
Danielle Steele, either. The whole "Turing Machine" bit (including the
Halting Problem, incomputability, the whole "there are problems we can't
solve, provably") has personally moved me a lot more then Shakespeare.
Knuth has a piercing clarity. There are others. (Python itself is
surprisingly larger then the sum of its parts, to stay on topic, and I'm
not just saying that; I mean it.)

(Actually, I'm not a fan of Shakespeare; he's good with words but I think he
is worshipped because he was first; the first guys to be decent at
something are held up as geniuses later, but I think the exact same work,
done thirty years later after somebody *else* had been first, would be
merely a historical footnote. So I'll take the larger point and
extrapolate to "English masterpiece".)

(On the later point, I'm agreeing to disagree.)

[Corey Coughlin]

A junior in high school? First off, I wouldn't worry too much about
the job market, computers aren't going to go away, there will be a
need to program them for at least a little longer, and if you really
love it, you'll get good at it, and being better than most is all you
really need to get a job. If you're still really worried, I'd suggest
a double major with electrical/computer engineering. Learning what
goes on inside computers can be useful. Take it from an EE grad who
wishes he'd done CS now.

As far as what languages to study, I wouldn't worry about that at all
at this point, any of the previous suggestions would be fine. In high
school, I learned Pascal, Cobol, Basic (applesoft, if you must know)
and Fortran, and guess how long I kept using those languages? First,
figure out what you need to know for the AP tests, learn that
language, and then figure out what languages are most
popular/applicable for whatever CS specialities you're interested in.
Lisp and C are good suggestions, the highbrow CS types love Lisp, and
C will be useful until somebody finally puts a stake in Unix/Linux/(os
written in C). Python is great if you enjoy it (and you should),
C++/java/perl always make nice resume items, but that's bound to
change by the time you get out of college, so keep an eye on them and
see if they last. Many people have suggested learning a whole bunch
of languages, and that's fine if you want to learn a whole bunch of
languages, but if you enjoy programming more, then just pick the
languages you need to know to program what you want, and you should be
fine (for now, anyway). Keep an eye on new languages, peruse them
occasionally to see if they can help you out, otherwise stick with
your favorites. And in general, try to relax, I know the
hypercompetitive/internet time future is scary, but like most people,
you'll probably figure out some way to get by.

[Nick Vargish]

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <me***@gnosis.cx> writes:

And should you be mugged on the street by a stranger, your chance of
walking away dead (rather than just with less money), are MANY times
higher if you pull a gun on your assailant.

Just to contribute to the topic drift...

I was mugged at gunpoint in the early 90's. I complied with my
nervous-seeming assailant and even helped him get my watchband
unbuckled. The police officer I talked to later said, "Good thing, or
I might be filing my report from the morgue."

Nick

--
# sigmask || 0.2 || 20030107 || public domain || feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

[Paul Rubin]

Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> writes:

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?
Whaaat?? Where did you hear that the UK has anywhere near as much gun
violence as the US?? I've always heard it's much lower. Do you have
a cite?
For that matter why is it in several other European nations
(Netherlands and Switzerland IIRC) where there is a legal
requirement for all males over a certain age to be armed (standing
militia) that there is so little gun related violence?

Just Switzerland, and those guns are rifles and they take special ammo
that is issued to you in sealed cans that you keep in your house in
case you'er called up for service. It's not a handgun that you can
easily go mug someone with. And as someone else put it, it's not your
gun, it's the government's gun and every so often a government
inspector comes to your house to make sure you still have the gun and
ammo and that the ammo cans are still sealed. I don't know what
happens to you if they find the ammo they issued you is partly used up
outside of official exercises, but it can't be anything nice. It's
nothing like the US where you can buy as many handguns as you want and
shoot them whenever you want.

[Robin Becker]

In article <7x************@ruckus.brouhaha.com>, Paul Rubin <http@?.cx>
writes

Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> writes:

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

Whaaat?? Where did you hear that the UK has anywhere near as much gun
violence as the US?? I've always heard it's much lower. Do you have
a cite?

I believe Paul's right here, these pages may be of interest on UK stats
though they're not uniformly positive

http://www.sourceuk.net/indexf.html?02937
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/01...2/9_crime.html

For that matter why is it in several other European nations
(Netherlands and Switzerland IIRC) where there is a legal
requirement for all males over a certain age to be armed (standing
militia) that there is so little gun related violence?

Just Switzerland, and those guns are rifles and they take special ammo
that is issued to you in sealed cans that you keep in your house in
case you'er called up for service. It's not a handgun that you can
easily go mug someone with. And as someone else put it, it's not your
gun, it's the government's gun and every so often a government
inspector comes to your house to make sure you still have the gun and
ammo and that the ammo cans are still sealed. I don't know what
happens to you if they find the ammo they issued you is partly used up
outside of official exercises, but it can't be anything nice. It's
nothing like the US where you can buy as many handguns as you want and
shoot them whenever you want.

--
Robin Becker

[Bengt Richter]

On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 07:43:06 -0000, Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> wrote:

On 2003-08-28, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <me***@gnosis.cx> wrote:

As for homicide, well, you're far more likely to be either a victim or a
killer. If you are armed, it is quite possible that an angry loved one
would have access to that gun.... and no doubt regret shooting you after
his/her anger cooled. And should you be mugged on the street by a
stranger, your chance of walking away dead (rather than just with less
money), are MANY times higher if you pull a gun on your assailant.
If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US? For that matter

I am highly skeptical of this, and wonder where you got your "info." ;-)
why is it in several other European nations (Netherlands and Switzerland
IIRC) where there is a legal requirement for all males over a certain
age to be armed (standing militia) that there is so little gun related
violence?

When are people going to learn, it ain't the guns, its the education
and attitude surrounding them. It isn't guns that are the problem, it's
ignorance of guns thats the problem.

Well, when someone "loses it" and ignorantly mistakes you for the devil, what
would you rather see in their hand, a cocked "45" or a banana?

If your best friend "loses it" in a spiral of despondency over a mistaken (or not) diagnosis
of some kind, what would you rather know is in the drawer of their nightstand,
a loaded "45" or a book?

You seem to be hoping that education and attitude (which you don't mention a way of
improving, enforcing, or QA-ing) will prevent all the temporary quasi-insanities that
normally reasonable humans are capable of.

(Sheesh, look at the violence-trolling in the middle east. Not everyone is equally
capable of self-restraint, nor does culture/education/experience equally promote it.
(They seem to be having a "losing it" chain reaction meltdown over there, exacerbated
by antagonist leaders who have apparently "lost it" w.r.t. each other).)

IMO the problem should be approached in terms of risk management, and risks are not either/or.

There are risks in owning and operating cars. The risks vary according to operator and location etc.
We require licensing and insurance -- which does not control all outcomes, but does modify
probabilities of owner ship and behavior, and does mitigate some effects on surviving kin
(and financial institutions holding car loans).

There are risks in owning and operating firearms. The risks vary according to operator and location etc.
We don't require licensing and insurance -- which would not control all outcomes, but which would modify
probabilities of owner ship and behavior, and would mitigate some effects on surviving kin
(and financial institutions holding car loans etc for the deceased).

Wonder why the difference.

It says, "must wear corrective lenses" on many drivers' licenses. Should not something similar
apply to shooting within range of at least any other human (and is knowing that range less important
than knowing how far high beams carry? Why not test knowledge of both for respective licensings?)

OTOH, my grandfather was a deadeye shot, and there's a bunch of silver stuff somewhere
to prove it ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> wrote previously:
|If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
|if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

I guess the answer is that this belief is absurdly far from the truth,
so it probably cannot be "explained" in that sense.

The USA gun fatality rate is about 10.4 per 100k. The UK has a rate
considerably below 1 per 100k. It's true, however, that Guy Ritchie
made some violent films about brits, so maybe that's where the imagined
rates come from.

For US rate, see:

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html

I nice comparison of various countries is at:

http://www.dvc.org.uk/~johnny/dunblane/homemain.pdf

In particular, look at the chart on p.4. Somewhat of an anomoly is that
Switzerland, which has nearly half the gun ownership rate of USA has
less than 1/4 the gun homicide rate (still, the Swiss with their lots
more guns than UK, thereby have lots more murders than UK). New Zealand
and Australia are lower in both rates, but the proportions are even more
skewed.

So while the mere correlation between gun ownership and gun violence is
not perfect, all those countries with vastly lower gun ownership rates
have vastly lower homicide rates.

Yours, Lulu...

--
---[ to our friends at TLAs (spread the word) ]--------------------------
Echelon North Korea Nazi cracking spy smuggle Columbia fissionable Stego
White Water strategic Clinton Delta Force militia TEMPEST Libya Mossad
---[ Postmodern Enterprises <me***@gnosis.cx> ]--------------------------

[Peter van Kampen]

In article <sl*****************@dmiyu.org>, Steve Lamb wrote:

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US? For that matter
I very much doubt that, can you provide some numbers to backup this
statement?
why is it in several other European nations (Netherlands and Switzerland
IIRC) where there is a legal requirement for all males over a certain
age to be armed (standing militia) that there is so little gun related
violence?
The Netherlands has no standing militia, nor does it require all males
to own a gun. Until the early 90s there was a draft --if that's what
it's called-- (Give all young men a chance to learn how to kill and
then bore themselves to death in the other (11,13 or 17) months of
service), but it was abandoned in 1993. The Netherlands now have a
profesional army (i.e. all military personal voluntarily joined the
army/navy/air force) that is mostly used in peace-keeping missions
(with, regretfully, very mixed results).
When are people going to learn, it ain't the guns, its the education
and attitude surrounding them. It isn't guns that are the problem, it's
ignorance of guns thats the problem.

By that rationale it wouldn't matter who owns 'weapons of mass
destruction' as long as they would know how to (not) use them... If
you would agree that Saddam Hussein shouldn't be allowed to own a
'gun', could you still argue that every Tony, Dick and George should?

Only-mentioning-Godwin's-Law-ly yours,

PterK

--
Peter van Kampen
pterk -- at -- datatailors.com

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> wrote previously:
|No, that isn't the question. The question is when someone breaks
|into my home which do I want more in my hand, a .45 (is a caliber, not a
|quote) or a banana.

I'll take the banana. I'd rather be out a stereo and a laptop than be
dead in a gun fight (or even than harm someone else who merely wants my
money).

|Do this simple test [...absurd story of criminal pathos and bathos...]

The VAST majority of gun violence (or any violence) is between people
who know each other well: husbands, wives, children, parents, friends,
etc. Loved ones without guns are many, many times less likely to kill
each other. Well, actually, the majority is suicide--which roughly
falls under the category described also.

Sure it sounds gruesome to get struck by lightning at the moment you are
getting run over by a railroad... but frankly, it ain't gonna happen.
On the other hand, keeping poison out of reach of children, for example,
seems like a sensible action, even if the much more likely resulting
death wouldn't make for quite as colorful a story as the train/lightning
thing.

Yours, Lulu...

[Chad Netzer]

On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 00:43, Steve Lamb wrote:

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

You still haven't responded to the rebuttals of this statement. On the
face of it, it appears made up. Can you explain?

--
Chad Netzer

[Steve Lamb]

On 2003-09-07, Chad Netzer <cn*****@sonic.net> wrote:

On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 00:43, Steve Lamb wrote:

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

You still haven't responded to the rebuttals of this statement. On the
face of it, it appears made up. Can you explain?

Because it was worded incorrectly and is, in essence, as worded,
indefensible. Quite frankly I don't have the time or patience to
discuss the issue further in a PYTHON newsgroup.

--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------

[Bengt Richter]

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 05:36:03 -0000, Steve Lamb <gr**@despair.dmiyu.org> wrote:
[...]

What you've all missed is that violence still happens. The

Are you talking to me? ;-) (when you say "all")

If you read my post, you will note that I didn't say you should not be allowed
to make the choice of owning a gun. I just suggested (indirectly at that) that
maybe we should regulate ownership and operation of firearms at least as well as
we do cars.

I suggested that this might have a good influence on the odds of bad things happening.
I didn't say I expected them to stop happening. In fact, I said/wrote
"""
You seem to be hoping that education and attitude (which you don't mention a way of
improving, enforcing, or QA-ing) will prevent all the temporary quasi-insanities that
normally reasonable humans are capable of.
"""

I suggested that a risk management approach might be reasonable. Risks vary, as I also
mentioned. I understand what happens in one's mind if one receives believable threats
of bodily harm, and my sympathies if it has happened to you. I understand that there
are contexts where arming oneself is rational, just as there are contexts where wearing
a parachute is rational. You have to calculate your own odds. There is a non-zero
probablility that you'll be pushed off a high place where a parachute would do you some good.
Or jumping might be part of your job.

Anyway, try not to be in the wrong place during thunderstorms etc., and never point a banana
at an armed person, not even a police officer you know ;-)
(well, never say never. Someone probably has bluffed their way out of a bad spot with
a banana. But how many got called on it is another thing to consider ;-)

Human life structured mainly according to fears is a kind of hell. It is certainly not
freedom. We must be careful that our curative measures don't contribute to the disease.

Enough OT ;-/

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Al Kirke]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Skip Montanaro" <sk**@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: "Al Kirke" <al******@comcast.net>
Cc: <py*********@python.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 8:07 AM
Subject: Re: OT: Americans love their guns

>> Counter-test: Imagine your seven-year-old son finding your gun and
>> shooting and killing your five-year-old daughter while you're working >> in your study.

Al> Impossible. The son had been taught safe gun handling on the

pistol Al> range w/ a .22 starting at aged five, and would come and tell you
Al> that firearm had not been safely stored.

This sort of thing still happens (it hits the news whenever such a shooting occurs),
You're correct in that this sort of thing hits the news. What doesn't
hit the news are the instances when handguns are used for personal
defense. John Lott wrote a whole book about liberal news bias
aganst those instances.

http://www.wmsa.net/people/john_lott..._bias_star.htm
so clearly all seven-year-olds who live in houses with guns are not
being trained to handle and respect firearms.

MY children were taught to handle firearms safely beginning age 5.
Are yours? My son got his mini-size .22 bolt-action atage 9. The
son and one daughter expect to apply for a Texas CHL when
they reach their twenty first birthdays.

But the biggest difference that household firearms make in
society is in the hot burglary statistics. A "hot" burglary is one
that occurs when the family is home. . In England more than
half of the burglaries are "hot". In the U.S. that statistic is
about 13 percent. The U.S. burglars tell that they go to
great pains to avoid householders, not because the police
will be summoned, but because of the risk of getting shot.
English buglars don't care much whether you're home or not.

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/1/17/105209

A current judicial move concerns the 2nd Amendment. 5th
Circuit in New Orleans says its an individual right to keep
and bear arms, 9th Circuit in San Francisco (where else?)
says the right belongs to the national guard. This conflict
will reach the SCOTUS in the next year or so.

Cheers,

Al

[Grzegorz Staniak]

Al Kirke writes:

This sort of thing still happens (it hits the news whenever such a shooting

occurs),

You're correct in that this sort of thing hits the news. What doesn't
hit the news are the instances when handguns are used for personal
defense. John Lott wrote a whole book about liberal news bias
aganst those instances.

http://www.wmsa.net/people/john_lott..._bias_star.htm

I think it's a mistake to cite Lott here. As an extreme libertarian he
has shown his own bias a couple of times. His famous "More guns, less
crime" findings has been challenged recently (see e.g.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/...62387,00.html),
and he could not produce any evidence whatsoever that his telephone
survey on the crime-repelling effects of gun carrying has been actually
conducted.

[---] But the biggest difference that household firearms make in
society is in the hot burglary statistics.
Another one is that half of the burglars serving time in US prisons
admit to have stolen a gun at least once. That means a lot of guns in
the hands of criminals.

[---] A current judicial move concerns the 2nd Amendment. 5th
Circuit in New Orleans says its an individual right to keep
and bear arms, 9th Circuit in San Francisco (where else?)
says the right belongs to the national guard. This conflict
will reach the SCOTUS in the next year or so.
It is a myth that the 2nd Amendment warrants "an individual right to
keep and bear arms":

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/i...efs/second.asp

A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed."

Pro-gun activists have made it a habit to omit the first, crucial part
of the above sentence. Nonetheless, it is one of the well-established
facts od the US constitutional law that gun-restricting laws are NOT in
conflict with the 2nd Amendment. Actually, AFAIR no such law has ever
been overturned on constitutional grounds.
Al

--
Grzegorz Staniak <gs******@zagiel.com.pl>

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Grzegorz Staniak <gs******@inka.zagiel.pl> wrote previously:
|I think it's a mistake to cite Lott here. As an extreme libertarian he
|has shown his own bias a couple of times. His famous "More guns, less
|crime" findings has been challenged recently (see e.g.
|http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/...562387,00.html

As well as Lott's tendency to outright falsify data, which Staniak
cites, Lott is pretty much an unabashed White Supremicist ideologue,
e.g.:

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/wholott.htm

He's actually quite a nut in a lot of ways other than that, for example
arguing that dioxin is harmless to people; or that wealthy people should
not be punished for committing violent crimes, only poor people.

Yours, Lulu...

--
mertz@ | The specter of free information is haunting the `Net! All the
gnosis | powers of IP- and crypto-tyranny have entered into an unholy
..cx | alliance...ideas have nothing to lose but their chains. Unite
| against "intellectual property" and anti-privacy regimes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Grzegorz Staniak <gs******@inka.zagiel.pl> wrote previously:
|I think it's a mistake to cite Lott here. As an extreme libertarian he
|has shown his own bias a couple of times. His famous "More guns, less
|crime" findings has been challenged recently (see e.g.
|http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/...562387,00.html

As well as Lott's tendency to outright falsify data, which Staniak
cites, Lott is pretty much an unabashed White Supremicist ideologue,
e.g.:

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/wholott.htm

He's actually quite a nut in a lot of ways other than that, for example
arguing that dioxin is harmless to people; or that wealthy people should
not be punished for committing violent crimes, only poor people.

Yours, Lulu...

--
mertz@ | The specter of free information is haunting the `Net! All the
gnosis | powers of IP- and crypto-tyranny have entered into an unholy
..cx | alliance...ideas have nothing to lose but their chains. Unite
| against "intellectual property" and anti-privacy regimes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Skip Montanaro]

Al> MY children were taught to handle firearms safely beginning age 5.
Al> Are yours?

No, we're more intelligent than that. We have no guns in our house.

Why is this on c.l.py anyway?

Skip

[Daniel Dittmar]

Skip Montanaro wrote:

Why is this on c.l.py anyway?

Wasn't 'gun' just an allegory for using Perl?

Daniel

[Nick Vargish]

Skip Montanaro wrote:

Why is this on c.l.py anyway?

"Daniel Dittmar" <da************@sap.com> writes:
Wasn't 'gun' just an allegory for using Perl?

+1 QOTW.

Nick

--
# sigmask || 0.2 || 20030107 || public domain || feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

[Al Kirke]

"Skip Montanaro" <sk**@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:ma**********************************@python.o rg...

Al> MY children were taught to handle firearms safely beginning age 5.
Al> Are yours?

No, we're more intelligent than that. We have no guns in our house.

Why is this on c.l.py anyway?

It shouldn't be on the python group.. It was off-topic and I
should not have replied.

But in winding up, the fact remains that there is and has always
been a violent criminal element in society, and none of us
expect this to change. That being the case, without handguns
is there any protection against those elements?

The only statistics I know of that compare convictions of Texas
carry-concealed license holders to convictions in the general
population are from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

http://www.tsra.com/DPS_convictions.htm

About a year ago a constable pulled me over for speeding. The
procedure for a driver is to hold both his drivers license and his
concealed handgun license out the window for the officer to
observe as he approaches. Texas police are in general comforted
by the appearance of concealed handgun licenses, because
these guarantee that a convicted felon is not driving that car.

My (very) pretty daughter was in the car, and as the constable
was writing out the ticket, he spent some time telling my daughter
that the world is nastier now that it once was, and that she
should seriously consider getting her own CHL.

Remember, when you and your family are driving late at night,
that you're only a timing belt away from meeting new and
exciting people.

Cheers,

Al

[Nick Vargish]

"Al Kirke" <al******@comcast.net> writes:

It shouldn't be on the python group.. It was off-topic and I
should not have replied.

[ More pro-gun rhetoric snipped. ]

And yet, you are still determined to push your agenda, despite your
admission that it's OT and you should not have replied.

Real nice.

Nick

--
# sigmask || 0.2 || 20030107 || public domain || feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

[collegebabe2004]

wow! Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves? Well, I'm glad you are
beefing up your college knowledge but let's just sit back for a minute
and breathe..........there, feel better? Now, listen. When I was a
freshman and sophomore in high school I was so sure I wanted to be an
artist and attend one of the most highly recognized and expensive art
schools in the country. I wanted to go to college back east away from
my parents. Now I'm a psychology major in community college and I want
to attend UCLA! First of all, NEVER SETTLE FOR LESS when it comes to
your major. Do what it is true to your heart and never let people say
you can't! You can double major if you want to be on the safe side.
Compsci isn't an easy thing to do as you know and it's a highly
regarded profffession! By the time you graduate college, the world
could be a completely different place. But let's just worry about here
and now. If you think too much about the future IT WILL DRIVE YOU
CRAZY! Trust me, you are doing everything right so far. I applaud
your effort but relax and everything will fall into place eventually!
I would suggest taking Japanese because you will have to work with them
eventually if you do decide to choose compsci as your proffesion.
Margaux

[Stephen Waterbury]

collegebabe2004 wrote:

wow! Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves? ...

Well I'm like "yuhhh!" Like, you know, Japanese ...
oh I am *so* shur!

[Peter Hansen]

collegebabe2004 wrote:

I would suggest taking Japanese because you will have to work with them
eventually if you do decide to choose compsci as your proffesion.

Over what time frame should I expect this requirement to become
critical? I'd like to know so I can reserve a spot in the next
Japanese course in the area, if you think it's really urgent.
Also, should I plan on adopting various aspects of the Japanese
culture as well, or will a mastery of the language be sufficient?

-Peter

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:04:01 -0500, rumours say that Peter Hansen
<pe***@engcorp.com> might have written:

collegebabe2004 wrote:

I would suggest taking Japanese because you will have to work with them
eventually if you do decide to choose compsci as your proffesion.

[Peter]Over what time frame should I expect this requirement to become
critical? I'd like to know so I can reserve a spot in the next
Japanese course in the area, if you think it's really urgent.
Also, should I plan on adopting various aspects of the Japanese
culture as well, or will a mastery of the language be sufficient?

I think having a katana next to your keyboard will suffice to give the
*impression* you have mastered enough of the japanese culture, Peter :)
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best.
"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving." (from RFC1958)
I really should keep that in mind when talking with people, actually...