How have you managed to not interact with the most widely used operating system on the planet in the last 18 years? I mean, even a cursory knowledge would be expected from anyone who reads Slashdot, or even pretends to follow technology.
I had a similar choice when I left highschool. My uncle owns a pool company, and he wanted to take me on to write software to automate some of their business tasks. He offered me $40k a year to do it. I declined and went to a top tier college instead. When I graduated, me uncle again offered me a position, this time managing a new online retail division at $100k a year. Again, I declined and went to graduate school for robotics.
So, in the last 6 years I could have made $360,000. Instead, I owe $20,000 in student loans, and I'm only making $25,000 a year from my stipend.
Did I make the right choice? Hell yes. I wake up every day ready and excited to go to work. I can't believe people are paying me to do what I would do for free anyway. And the sacrifices I'm making now will enable me to do this kind of work in the future.
Would I be making more doing online retail for pool products? Yes, but I would hate every second of it.
I know this is slashdot, where socialization in highschool was a solo activity, and that may make you a bit bitter about your highschool days. But the further I get from highschool the more I realize how important the social skills I developed actually are. From college, to gradschool, to the office, every social environment has been the same.
I know we all value intelligence here, but nothing will limit your potential more than if you're socially awkward.
Oh, and those douchebags who used to pick on you in highschool? The "cool" kids? They're not flipping burgers for a living. They went to college, joined a frat, got a business degree, and are now your managers.
My friend's father, who works for NASA, held this attitude toward MIT graduates. He wouldn't hire them because he found them too lacking in social skills. While they were technically competent, they had trouble working in teams and integrating with the rest of the group.
Like many oddities in baseball, "World Series" is simply traditional. The A.G. Spalding sporting goods company published a baseball annual, Spalding's Base Ball Guide. As an international company, they were trying to get other countries involved in baseball, and started pushing for a "World's Championship Series" involving Australia and Britain in the early 1900s. The event never happened, but as the guide was the preeminent baseball annual, fans and others in the industry started using "Word's Series" which eventually became "World Series."
So, just a tradition that stuck, not some statement about how the US is the center of the world.
Speak for yourself and where you live. I live in Philly, and Citizens Bank Park has sold out the last 123 games (since July 2009). At a capacity of 43,000, that's over 5 million people, or 3x the population of Philadelphia. This of course includes games on work days. A ballgame is a great place to spend your Friday night, and the games are usually done early enough that you can hit the bars after. Of course I understand socializing and going out are things the/. crowed are pretty averse to.
Even games old games were subject to this kind of scrutiny. I remember my grandmother telling me how she came up with a path in pac-man which if followed would maximize her points (she would get every ghost and every fruit for every level), since the behavior of the ghosts is deterministic. Honestly I feel going through that process takes what little fun there is to be had in pac-man.
No, and this is why I removed IE9 from my system. IE9 was incredibly unstable, and would crash repeatedly from a fresh start (loading MSN.com). I need IE to view a couple sites I frequent, so I had to uninstall IE9 to use IE8 instead.
IKEA actually makes some decent softwood furniture. Sure it's not hardwood, but it's certainly a step above particle board. Their hemnes line is all made from solid pine.
And honestly, they specialize in furniture for small spaces, like my city apartment. I tried going the cheapest route by buying at thrift stores, but the furniture you find there is usually huge, made of solid heavy wood, and in need of a fair deal of repair.
Further, since IKEA furniture comes flat packed, I was able to bring home a bed, desk, book case, dining room table, and dresser by myself in a subaru outback wagon.
I love IKEA furniture. I just bought $1000 worth of it to furnish my new apartment, and that money went a long way (I got a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, and bathroom out of it). Aside from that, I felt vindicated that my childhood lego skills came in handy. I'd say that IKEA furniture is legos for adults... but who am I kidding? Legos are legos for adults.
So true. Just look at the topic of physics. In the middle ages, there was no planetary motion, there was no nuclear physics, there was no electricity, there was no relativity, there was no quantum mechanics, or thermodynamics or solid state or condensed matter... there wasn't even Newtonian mechanics! Understanding the breadth of physics consisted of understanding the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato.
Today the situation is such that you get to choose one field, and specialize in a subset of that field. There isn't enough time in the world for anything more.
I think when you are on the outside of a field, it's hard to grasp its depth and subtlety. apoc.famine mentioned he's doing climate science, so he probably hasn't taken more than a couple courses in English, and therefore can't grasp the nuance of the subject (no offense to apoc.famine, I can't either). Conversely you note that you find math easy to learn online; however as you get more and more advanced, there are less and less resources online to learn from. Eventually you'll reach a point where even wikipedia will only have a stub article on which you wrote a 50 page thesis.
Do YOU want to learn from a professor that's sat in a lab for 20 years (but worked for Nasa launching the Moon rocket) or do you want to learn from a Sales guy that teaches in between meetings with customers right now? Or how about learning business from a guy that actually started his own business and uses it to feed his family?
If I want to learn astrophysics, I'd want to learn from the professor who sat in a lab for 20 years. I don't think learning astro from a sales guy or small business owner would work out. As an aside, I'd be concerned that the business owner feeds his family his business, unless he's a farmer.
On a more serious note, I don't think you actually went to university, or maybe completed just a couple years. Yes, first and sometimes second year is about sitting in a lecture hall with 100 people listening to a guy in the front of the room. This is to get everyone on the same level of background and familiarize them with note taking and study habits. But upper level courses change considerably. I went to a fairly large university, and my upper level courses never had more than 20 people in them, with the average around 15. If you don't interact with your professor enough in these courses, it's your own fault for lacking the initiative to attend office hours and participate in classroom discussions.
Not quite. The key here is what's called a priori probability and a posteriori probability. With no additional information (a priori) you assume the probability of picking the right door to be uniform, just as you did (1/100).
However, when the host opens 98 other doors, you're given more information about what's behind the doors, which changes the probability distribution. If you apply Bayes theorem, you see that the probability that the prize is behind the other door is higher than the probability that it is behind your door.
Ah, I see. That is indeed useful, although I've become accustomed to multiple windows using this method. Less automatic, but sort of the same effect. I agree that would be nice to have in Opera.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually hate Bill Gates
Bill gates has given over 28 billion dollars to global health, development, and education. What exactly has he done to warrant such contempt?
How have you managed to not interact with the most widely used operating system on the planet in the last 18 years? I mean, even a cursory knowledge would be expected from anyone who reads Slashdot, or even pretends to follow technology.
but AV really doesn't actually protect a knowledgeable user
And what about the ignorant user? You know... most users?
I had a similar choice when I left highschool. My uncle owns a pool company, and he wanted to take me on to write software to automate some of their business tasks. He offered me $40k a year to do it. I declined and went to a top tier college instead. When I graduated, me uncle again offered me a position, this time managing a new online retail division at $100k a year. Again, I declined and went to graduate school for robotics.
So, in the last 6 years I could have made $360,000. Instead, I owe $20,000 in student loans, and I'm only making $25,000 a year from my stipend.
Did I make the right choice? Hell yes. I wake up every day ready and excited to go to work. I can't believe people are paying me to do what I would do for free anyway. And the sacrifices I'm making now will enable me to do this kind of work in the future.
Would I be making more doing online retail for pool products? Yes, but I would hate every second of it.
I know this is slashdot, where socialization in highschool was a solo activity, and that may make you a bit bitter about your highschool days. But the further I get from highschool the more I realize how important the social skills I developed actually are. From college, to gradschool, to the office, every social environment has been the same.
I know we all value intelligence here, but nothing will limit your potential more than if you're socially awkward.
Oh, and those douchebags who used to pick on you in highschool? The "cool" kids? They're not flipping burgers for a living. They went to college, joined a frat, got a business degree, and are now your managers.
My friend's father, who works for NASA, held this attitude toward MIT graduates. He wouldn't hire them because he found them too lacking in social skills. While they were technically competent, they had trouble working in teams and integrating with the rest of the group.
Like many oddities in baseball, "World Series" is simply traditional. The A.G. Spalding sporting goods company published a baseball annual, Spalding's Base Ball Guide. As an international company, they were trying to get other countries involved in baseball, and started pushing for a "World's Championship Series" involving Australia and Britain in the early 1900s. The event never happened, but as the guide was the preeminent baseball annual, fans and others in the industry started using "Word's Series" which eventually became "World Series."
So, just a tradition that stuck, not some statement about how the US is the center of the world.
Speak for yourself and where you live. I live in Philly, and Citizens Bank Park has sold out the last 123 games (since July 2009). At a capacity of 43,000, that's over 5 million people, or 3x the population of Philadelphia. This of course includes games on work days. A ballgame is a great place to spend your Friday night, and the games are usually done early enough that you can hit the bars after. Of course I understand socializing and going out are things the /. crowed are pretty averse to.
Even games old games were subject to this kind of scrutiny. I remember my grandmother telling me how she came up with a path in pac-man which if followed would maximize her points (she would get every ghost and every fruit for every level), since the behavior of the ghosts is deterministic. Honestly I feel going through that process takes what little fun there is to be had in pac-man.
No, and this is why I removed IE9 from my system. IE9 was incredibly unstable, and would crash repeatedly from a fresh start (loading MSN.com). I need IE to view a couple sites I frequent, so I had to uninstall IE9 to use IE8 instead.
What exactly is the downside of running as standard user in Windows? If I need to do anything advanced it just prompts for my admin password.
Last I read Apple's net income last quarter was $3.25b, and you have to remember Q3 includes both the release of the iPad and iPhone 4.
The company's name is actually Cyberdyne? Why would you even tempt fate like that?
Yes
http://twitter.com/iaindodsworth/status/27813709366
Abused their monopoly... please elaborate. I don't remember any antitrust rulings regarding office.
If ever a story needed to be modded flame bait. The summary just begs for reactionary keyboard banging.
IKEA actually makes some decent softwood furniture. Sure it's not hardwood, but it's certainly a step above particle board. Their hemnes line is all made from solid pine. And honestly, they specialize in furniture for small spaces, like my city apartment. I tried going the cheapest route by buying at thrift stores, but the furniture you find there is usually huge, made of solid heavy wood, and in need of a fair deal of repair. Further, since IKEA furniture comes flat packed, I was able to bring home a bed, desk, book case, dining room table, and dresser by myself in a subaru outback wagon.
I love IKEA furniture. I just bought $1000 worth of it to furnish my new apartment, and that money went a long way (I got a bedroom, living room, and kitchen, and bathroom out of it). Aside from that, I felt vindicated that my childhood lego skills came in handy. I'd say that IKEA furniture is legos for adults... but who am I kidding? Legos are legos for adults.
So true. Just look at the topic of physics. In the middle ages, there was no planetary motion, there was no nuclear physics, there was no electricity, there was no relativity, there was no quantum mechanics, or thermodynamics or solid state or condensed matter... there wasn't even Newtonian mechanics! Understanding the breadth of physics consisted of understanding the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato.
Today the situation is such that you get to choose one field, and specialize in a subset of that field. There isn't enough time in the world for anything more.
I think when you are on the outside of a field, it's hard to grasp its depth and subtlety. apoc.famine mentioned he's doing climate science, so he probably hasn't taken more than a couple courses in English, and therefore can't grasp the nuance of the subject (no offense to apoc.famine, I can't either). Conversely you note that you find math easy to learn online; however as you get more and more advanced, there are less and less resources online to learn from. Eventually you'll reach a point where even wikipedia will only have a stub article on which you wrote a 50 page thesis.
Do YOU want to learn from a professor that's sat in a lab for 20 years (but worked for Nasa launching the Moon rocket) or do you want to learn from a Sales guy that teaches in between meetings with customers right now? Or how about learning business from a guy that actually started his own business and uses it to feed his family?
If I want to learn astrophysics, I'd want to learn from the professor who sat in a lab for 20 years. I don't think learning astro from a sales guy or small business owner would work out. As an aside, I'd be concerned that the business owner feeds his family his business, unless he's a farmer.
On a more serious note, I don't think you actually went to university, or maybe completed just a couple years. Yes, first and sometimes second year is about sitting in a lecture hall with 100 people listening to a guy in the front of the room. This is to get everyone on the same level of background and familiarize them with note taking and study habits. But upper level courses change considerably. I went to a fairly large university, and my upper level courses never had more than 20 people in them, with the average around 15. If you don't interact with your professor enough in these courses, it's your own fault for lacking the initiative to attend office hours and participate in classroom discussions.
Right, because the only reason we're not having sex is because we're on the internet too much.
Not quite. The key here is what's called a priori probability and a posteriori probability. With no additional information (a priori) you assume the probability of picking the right door to be uniform, just as you did (1/100).
However, when the host opens 98 other doors, you're given more information about what's behind the doors, which changes the probability distribution. If you apply Bayes theorem, you see that the probability that the prize is behind the other door is higher than the probability that it is behind your door.
Ah, I see. That is indeed useful, although I've become accustomed to multiple windows using this method. Less automatic, but sort of the same effect. I agree that would be nice to have in Opera.
Like this? http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/08/05/tab-grouping