Most schools (including Stanford) let you take 20-25% of your courses somewhere else (as long as they are accredited and approved) - as I already said in my last post, that includes AP courses, which I guess you could consider just "an exam". But I completely disagree that "most" US universities will allow you to get full units for *any* course towards a BA/BS just by taking one exam, especially once you get into your degree requirements. Beginning Spanish, maybe. Applied VLSI Design or Developmental Neurobiology, not a chance.
I assert my statement is still closer to truth than yours, given 25% is 3 quarters out of the normal 12 or 2 of 8 for a semester system. In TFA the guy "tested" out of 8 out of 11 semesters, over 70%.
No, it's not at ALL like Stanford (or any other similar school with basically the same policies).
Specifically, for undergrad Stanford charges flat rate tuition by the quarter for as many units as you can handle (min 12, ave 15, max somewhat negotiable with your advisor but rarely more than 20). You need 180 units to graduate with 1 degree, minimum 135 from Stanford (plus your degree requirements). If you need/want to take summer school, you pay for that quarter. If you need a whole extra year, you pay for those quarters. If you get done a quarter or two early, you don't pay for those (common for BAs majors with lots of AP credits). They just don't allow you to randomly "take exams" (same as most US universities) - you have to take the *classes* to get the units, so it's self-limiting based on how many you take per quarter.
I guess if I were to summarize the real moral of the story (not the stupid slashdot summary) it would be: don't drop out and expect it to lead to success in the future. But don't stay in school just for the sake of it if you see a great opportunity. These successful people didn't drop out on a whim, they saw a huge opportunity and took the risk. Timing is everything...
And, really, it's not that much of a risk, anyway. These are smart, motivated 20 year olds at Ivy League schools. They can always go back if it doesn't work out.
[ Or, don't blindly jump off a building, but if you actually see a passing flatbed truck filled with pillows and models... well, don't expect to ever see another one. And if the models turn out to be ugly, you can always get off and go back to the building;) ]
If you go through the whole teardown, only 2 parts (the Ethernet connector and an oscillator) were definitively shown to be made in China - that's probably less than 20 cents in parts for the whole device. Sure, there are a few chips and parts made in S. Korea or Thailand, and a few more from companies with fabs all over the world. The PCBs, PSU, case, base, chip stuffing, and assembly were apparently all done in the US. That's probably better than 90% of the other products labeled "Made in the USA" these days, so give it a rest...
Now, can we stop confusing the debate and making shit up that wasn't even in any of the articles cited by this really misleading summary?
Of course that then goes on a motherboard almost certainly made in China, they are pretty much the only place that makes them.
The main board on the Nexus Q clearly says "Made in the USA" on it. The power supply says the same thing (which surprised me even more). Designing, manufacturing, and stuffing the PCBs in the US, casting the case and base, and final assembly are the bulk of the manufacturing Google has any control over. I'd say that's a pretty damn honest effort to source US parts and labor.
Google taking 90% Chinese work and slapping it inside a US case and calling it American made
90%? Really, do you have a citation for that or just talking out of your ass? Did you read any of the articles linked? Honestly their tone was more or less impressed with the percentages, the only negative spin was the really biased/. summary. Besides the die cast case, the molded base, PCBs *and* power supply were also made in the USA, which IMO was pretty damn surprising. Additionally, so were several of the sensors and chips. And the two most time consuming (and labor intensive) manufacturing steps, PCB stuffing and final assembly, were also done in the USA.
So, basically, a few chips (some of which were US companies with fabs all over the world) and maybe a few stock nuts and bolts (but who knows as those aren't labeled) were made somewhere else. Honestly it appears they tried to source US parts and labor wherever they had a choice. Just because the US doesn't even make RAM any more doesn't mean the device can't be called "Made in the USA", jeez.
Use the definition of myth from the summary - they are talking about an invented or fictitious story, not an ancient legendary tale of god and heroes.
And under that definition, it's not even *close* to a myth, it's an exception. One that has way more than a kernel of truth - there are dozens of examples. Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Dell, Branson - and of course Zuckerberg. And Brin, Page, Filo, and Yang dropped out of grad school. These aren't once-in-a-lifetime outliers, these are the founders and CEOs of about half of the top US tech companies.
Vampires are a myth. Successful drop-out CEOs are an exception, but a very real, well documented one.
I see no compelling case to buy an Android phone unless you hate Apple [...]
When you buy an apple device, it's not the fastest device on the planet, but it won't ever break if you treat it well. Meanwhile I keep hearing from people that Android phones are a pain in the ass to develop for, there's no money in it, and the piracy and malware is worse than a windows PC. Lock it down otherwise Android devices are going to be nothing more than an OS and apps provided by google, with very little third party apps.
I have an iPhone and iPad and think they are great devices, but wow this comment is just FUD, more FUD, and extra-strength Kool-Aid.
Android now has a larger market share than iOS, and almost as many apps in the Android app store as iTunes (something like 470k vs. 500k+). And silly 3rd hand anecdotes aside, Apple devices have just as many hardware problems as other high-end computers and smart phones.
That being said, I do have to say Apple support is generally very good when you do have hardware problems, though. My girlfriend got the keyboard and mouse pad replaced on her out-of-warranty Macbook for free, they replaced my original 3+ year old iPhone after the touch screen had issues, and even replaced the broken screen on my iPad for free (which was technically my fault, even if a cat knocked it off the counter;) Apple is succeeding because - whether through marketing, image, engineering and product design, or customer support - they are able to get customers to pay a premium for their products and feel good about it...
Your basic premise is the same reason US healthcare is so completely out of control - as individuals and general policy, people are focusing on later treatment instead of prevention.
It may be a trite adage, but "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" seems just as appropriate here, too. In this case that ounce is going to be a LOT of expense and effort (but still much less than the pound).
Also, your comments about developing countries are completely irrelevant. Obviously we're all on the same planet and every country needs to be involved in any efforts or they will be much less effective. In fact, that's not an argument to ignore the problem, it's an argument to make people MORE aware.
Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press
The irony is the majority of people who are *literate* in science and math (including, what, about 95% of climate scientists?) agree that global warming is real and we need to do something about it. It's the scientifically illiterate who keep trying to claim (with their scientifically illiterate arguments, of course) that it's all a big conspiracy with no scientific support...
And being in the advertising industry is not the same as marketing your own company's products. When's the last time you saw a TV commercial for "Omnicom Group"?
The problem with Google's innovations is not that they are "small technical changes", it's that they are huge technical efforts that look simple so non-technical people just don't understand how much work goes into them. Building a silly but flashy demo app is easy, scaling it to 100's of millions of users and nearly unimaginable amounts of data is in fact innovation.
Luckily Google's core business is not driven by marketing and image like Apple's is...
Cable is regulated because it's not all a local coax - much of the system is distributed over satellite, etc, which the FCC regulates.
VHS uses line 21 VBI CC (ie just analog NTSC 480i and totally irrelevant), DVD uses bitmap images (a horrible format for streaming, and those are subtitles not closed captions anyway), and BD subtitles are way overcomplicated for streaming use. And that's all beside the point, since Netflix doesn't get their streaming from any of those, they get MPEG files from the content providers. Now they are going to have to go get CC/subtitle info from all of those providers in a big clusterfuck of content management.
Given companies like Netflix already have literally 100's of thousands of encoded and encrypted streams already on CDNs, they can't just "dump" anything to a stream. They will all be coming up with ways (some standard most somewhat proprietary) of taking CC from the content providers, sending it as separate requests (likely HTTP) and displaying it on devices. And given the FCC is basically requiring CEA-708 feature set compliance (along with the fact these services are on dozens or hundreds of devices with vastly different software), that's going to be a shit-ton of work.
This is complete non-news, really. The ADA isn't forcing anything directly - ie, yes, the ADA lawsuit is largely irrelevant, if Netflix wants to avoid this they need to sue the FCC. Though in general I have no idea why the ADA would bother with this silly lawsuit around the Americans With Disabilities Act when this is already covered by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.
The FCC ruled months ago that Internet content would be required to support closed captions, they have a whole document with various requirements and deadlines based on the types of content and provider. And being in the industry, I can tell you content owners and distributors are already starting to work on it.
You can read the requirements yourself, but yeah, the point is *broadcast* (OTA, cable, or satellite) TV is required to have CC by the FCC, and now the FCC is using above Act to require any program that has been broadcast to have CC with Internet distribution. Technically they have no control over content that has never been broadcast (new release movies, Youtube, etc) but given it does include movies that have been broadcast on TV it's probably going to be available for all feature length content.
And as far as quality, they have said it must comply with CEA 708, which is an absurdly overcomplicated standard (probably designed by the subtitle/closed caption software insdustry). Luckily almost no one uses all of the ridiculous parts of it (but in theory you still have to be compliant if they do and someone files a complaint).
Eh, Southern and Eastern European immigrants (Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slavs, Russians, etc) weren't discriminated for the color of their skin as much as their non-Protestant religions and non-Germanic languages.
While we are finally starting to get past that discrimination (Republican nominee is a Mormon?!) go try to convince most African Americans that skin color becomes irrelevant after your family has lived in the US for more than a hundred years...
Your over-generalizations are barely worth arguing, and standardized testing is so biased to social and economic classes that there are plenty of valid reasons they are not the end all of admissions.
And yeah, brilliant comeback, I'm racist against white people. Or maybe I'm white and got a very high score on my SAT, but I am really thankful I got to go somewhere that looks at background, extra-curriculars, effort, and motivation as well as a test score. It makes *everyone* more well rounded and a better person for the experience. I'm sorry you apparently had such a bad experience in college that you now have a warped viewpoint that considers "immigrants" synonymous with affirmative action.
Besides, 750 -> 1000 = 33%, not 133%. I bet even the "750's" got that one right.
Before the 1950's Europeans (I assume like your ancestors) made up the majority of immigrants to the United States. Immigrant != "non-white", and immigration certainly doesn't have anything to do with "affirmative action". The whole point of the article is that many of the grad students and PhDs publishing the papers and patents at US universities include many immigrants (who are in the US legally, and probably beat your SAT score by a large margin).
The mark of a real racist is one who doesn't even do it on purpose, I guess... congrats.
Well, as far as "STEM" goes, my question is - what patents are there that *aren't* in science, technology, engineering, or math? Maybe business processes (though even those are debatably called "industrial engineering"...)
In any case, STEM must make up 95%+ of filed patents, so it's pretty silly to differentiate in this article.
According to a quote from a state employee it was on the market for months without a single bid.
You can go look at Trulia, etc and see that it's by far the most expensive house in the neighborhood, which in real estate depressions means a motivated seller is pretty well screwed. I could definitely see a 30-35% drop at the high end of the market, especially if the state was the one to *buy* the house (for likely more than they should have in the first place).
So in the end people are talking about some big conspiracy, when reality is the price difference is from the height of a bubble to the bottom of a recession. So maybe they could have gotten $100k more if they kept it on the market another year. That's not a conspiracy, that's the real estate business.
Slashdot Mirror
Most schools (including Stanford) let you take 20-25% of your courses somewhere else (as long as they are accredited and approved) - as I already said in my last post, that includes AP courses, which I guess you could consider just "an exam". But I completely disagree that "most" US universities will allow you to get full units for *any* course towards a BA/BS just by taking one exam, especially once you get into your degree requirements. Beginning Spanish, maybe. Applied VLSI Design or Developmental Neurobiology, not a chance.
I assert my statement is still closer to truth than yours, given 25% is 3 quarters out of the normal 12 or 2 of 8 for a semester system. In TFA the guy "tested" out of 8 out of 11 semesters, over 70%.
No, it's not at ALL like Stanford (or any other similar school with basically the same policies).
Specifically, for undergrad Stanford charges flat rate tuition by the quarter for as many units as you can handle (min 12, ave 15, max somewhat negotiable with your advisor but rarely more than 20). You need 180 units to graduate with 1 degree, minimum 135 from Stanford (plus your degree requirements). If you need/want to take summer school, you pay for that quarter. If you need a whole extra year, you pay for those quarters. If you get done a quarter or two early, you don't pay for those (common for BAs majors with lots of AP credits). They just don't allow you to randomly "take exams" (same as most US universities) - you have to take the *classes* to get the units, so it's self-limiting based on how many you take per quarter.
Or lacking those two options just link to xkcd.
...is anyone going to tell this disinformation apart from the disinformation that makes up the majority of mainstream news today, anyway?
I guess if I were to summarize the real moral of the story (not the stupid slashdot summary) it would be: don't drop out and expect it to lead to success in the future. But don't stay in school just for the sake of it if you see a great opportunity. These successful people didn't drop out on a whim, they saw a huge opportunity and took the risk. Timing is everything...
And, really, it's not that much of a risk, anyway. These are smart, motivated 20 year olds at Ivy League schools. They can always go back if it doesn't work out.
[ Or, don't blindly jump off a building, but if you actually see a passing flatbed truck filled with pillows and models... well, don't expect to ever see another one. And if the models turn out to be ugly, you can always get off and go back to the building ;) ]
If you go through the whole teardown, only 2 parts (the Ethernet connector and an oscillator) were definitively shown to be made in China - that's probably less than 20 cents in parts for the whole device. Sure, there are a few chips and parts made in S. Korea or Thailand, and a few more from companies with fabs all over the world. The PCBs, PSU, case, base, chip stuffing, and assembly were apparently all done in the US. That's probably better than 90% of the other products labeled "Made in the USA" these days, so give it a rest...
Now, can we stop confusing the debate and making shit up that wasn't even in any of the articles cited by this really misleading summary?
Of course that then goes on a motherboard almost certainly made in China, they are pretty much the only place that makes them.
The main board on the Nexus Q clearly says "Made in the USA" on it. The power supply says the same thing (which surprised me even more). Designing, manufacturing, and stuffing the PCBs in the US, casting the case and base, and final assembly are the bulk of the manufacturing Google has any control over. I'd say that's a pretty damn honest effort to source US parts and labor.
Google taking 90% Chinese work and slapping it inside a US case and calling it American made
90%? Really, do you have a citation for that or just talking out of your ass? Did you read any of the articles linked? Honestly their tone was more or less impressed with the percentages, the only negative spin was the really biased /. summary. Besides the die cast case, the molded base, PCBs *and* power supply were also made in the USA, which IMO was pretty damn surprising. Additionally, so were several of the sensors and chips. And the two most time consuming (and labor intensive) manufacturing steps, PCB stuffing and final assembly, were also done in the USA.
So, basically, a few chips (some of which were US companies with fabs all over the world) and maybe a few stock nuts and bolts (but who knows as those aren't labeled) were made somewhere else. Honestly it appears they tried to source US parts and labor wherever they had a choice. Just because the US doesn't even make RAM any more doesn't mean the device can't be called "Made in the USA", jeez.
Get the fuck out of here. How exactly does my use of an air conditioner in the summer contribute to extended post-storm power outages?
Don't worry, AC, he wasn't talking about you...
Use the definition of myth from the summary - they are talking about an invented or fictitious story, not an ancient legendary tale of god and heroes.
And under that definition, it's not even *close* to a myth, it's an exception. One that has way more than a kernel of truth - there are dozens of examples. Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Dell, Branson - and of course Zuckerberg. And Brin, Page, Filo, and Yang dropped out of grad school. These aren't once-in-a-lifetime outliers, these are the founders and CEOs of about half of the top US tech companies.
Vampires are a myth. Successful drop-out CEOs are an exception, but a very real, well documented one.
Except this article is about cheap Linksys-branded routers, ie. the same consumer crap that he was talking about.
On a related note, how will this affect linux being booted from within windows (if anyone still uses that approach)?
Just guessing here, but I doubt it will affect running in a VM as the hardware (including the BIOS) is virtualized.
I see no compelling case to buy an Android phone unless you hate Apple [...]
When you buy an apple device, it's not the fastest device on the planet, but it won't ever break if you treat it well. Meanwhile I keep hearing from people that Android phones are a pain in the ass to develop for, there's no money in it, and the piracy and malware is worse than a windows PC. Lock it down otherwise Android devices are going to be nothing more than an OS and apps provided by google, with very little third party apps.
I have an iPhone and iPad and think they are great devices, but wow this comment is just FUD, more FUD, and extra-strength Kool-Aid.
Android now has a larger market share than iOS, and almost as many apps in the Android app store as iTunes (something like 470k vs. 500k+). And silly 3rd hand anecdotes aside, Apple devices have just as many hardware problems as other high-end computers and smart phones.
That being said, I do have to say Apple support is generally very good when you do have hardware problems, though. My girlfriend got the keyboard and mouse pad replaced on her out-of-warranty Macbook for free, they replaced my original 3+ year old iPhone after the touch screen had issues, and even replaced the broken screen on my iPad for free (which was technically my fault, even if a cat knocked it off the counter ;) Apple is succeeding because - whether through marketing, image, engineering and product design, or customer support - they are able to get customers to pay a premium for their products and feel good about it...
Your basic premise is the same reason US healthcare is so completely out of control - as individuals and general policy, people are focusing on later treatment instead of prevention.
It may be a trite adage, but "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" seems just as appropriate here, too. In this case that ounce is going to be a LOT of expense and effort (but still much less than the pound).
Also, your comments about developing countries are completely irrelevant. Obviously we're all on the same planet and every country needs to be involved in any efforts or they will be much less effective. In fact, that's not an argument to ignore the problem, it's an argument to make people MORE aware.
Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press
The irony is the majority of people who are *literate* in science and math (including, what, about 95% of climate scientists?) agree that global warming is real and we need to do something about it. It's the scientifically illiterate who keep trying to claim (with their scientifically illiterate arguments, of course) that it's all a big conspiracy with no scientific support...
Advertising.
And being in the advertising industry is not the same as marketing your own company's products. When's the last time you saw a TV commercial for "Omnicom Group"?
The problem with Google's innovations is not that they are "small technical changes", it's that they are huge technical efforts that look simple so non-technical people just don't understand how much work goes into them. Building a silly but flashy demo app is easy, scaling it to 100's of millions of users and nearly unimaginable amounts of data is in fact innovation.
Luckily Google's core business is not driven by marketing and image like Apple's is...
Damn, I swear you are now my textbook example for http://xkcd.com/386/ .
Cable is regulated because it's not all a local coax - much of the system is distributed over satellite, etc, which the FCC regulates.
VHS uses line 21 VBI CC (ie just analog NTSC 480i and totally irrelevant), DVD uses bitmap images (a horrible format for streaming, and those are subtitles not closed captions anyway), and BD subtitles are way overcomplicated for streaming use. And that's all beside the point, since Netflix doesn't get their streaming from any of those, they get MPEG files from the content providers. Now they are going to have to go get CC/subtitle info from all of those providers in a big clusterfuck of content management.
Given companies like Netflix already have literally 100's of thousands of encoded and encrypted streams already on CDNs, they can't just "dump" anything to a stream. They will all be coming up with ways (some standard most somewhat proprietary) of taking CC from the content providers, sending it as separate requests (likely HTTP) and displaying it on devices. And given the FCC is basically requiring CEA-708 feature set compliance (along with the fact these services are on dozens or hundreds of devices with vastly different software), that's going to be a shit-ton of work.
This is complete non-news, really. The ADA isn't forcing anything directly - ie, yes, the ADA lawsuit is largely irrelevant, if Netflix wants to avoid this they need to sue the FCC. Though in general I have no idea why the ADA would bother with this silly lawsuit around the Americans With Disabilities Act when this is already covered by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.
The FCC ruled months ago that Internet content would be required to support closed captions, they have a whole document with various requirements and deadlines based on the types of content and provider. And being in the industry, I can tell you content owners and distributors are already starting to work on it.
You can read the requirements yourself, but yeah, the point is *broadcast* (OTA, cable, or satellite) TV is required to have CC by the FCC, and now the FCC is using above Act to require any program that has been broadcast to have CC with Internet distribution. Technically they have no control over content that has never been broadcast (new release movies, Youtube, etc) but given it does include movies that have been broadcast on TV it's probably going to be available for all feature length content.
And as far as quality, they have said it must comply with CEA 708, which is an absurdly overcomplicated standard (probably designed by the subtitle/closed caption software insdustry). Luckily almost no one uses all of the ridiculous parts of it (but in theory you still have to be compliant if they do and someone files a complaint).
http://www.fcc.gov/document/closed-captioning-internet-protocol-delivered-video-programming-1
Eh, Southern and Eastern European immigrants (Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slavs, Russians, etc) weren't discriminated for the color of their skin as much as their non-Protestant religions and non-Germanic languages.
While we are finally starting to get past that discrimination (Republican nominee is a Mormon?!) go try to convince most African Americans that skin color becomes irrelevant after your family has lived in the US for more than a hundred years...
Your over-generalizations are barely worth arguing, and standardized testing is so biased to social and economic classes that there are plenty of valid reasons they are not the end all of admissions.
And yeah, brilliant comeback, I'm racist against white people. Or maybe I'm white and got a very high score on my SAT, but I am really thankful I got to go somewhere that looks at background, extra-curriculars, effort, and motivation as well as a test score. It makes *everyone* more well rounded and a better person for the experience. I'm sorry you apparently had such a bad experience in college that you now have a warped viewpoint that considers "immigrants" synonymous with affirmative action.
Besides, 750 -> 1000 = 33%, not 133%. I bet even the "750's" got that one right.
Before the 1950's Europeans (I assume like your ancestors) made up the majority of immigrants to the United States. Immigrant != "non-white", and immigration certainly doesn't have anything to do with "affirmative action". The whole point of the article is that many of the grad students and PhDs publishing the papers and patents at US universities include many immigrants (who are in the US legally, and probably beat your SAT score by a large margin).
The mark of a real racist is one who doesn't even do it on purpose, I guess... congrats.
Well, as far as "STEM" goes, my question is - what patents are there that *aren't* in science, technology, engineering, or math? Maybe business processes (though even those are debatably called "industrial engineering"...)
In any case, STEM must make up 95%+ of filed patents, so it's pretty silly to differentiate in this article.
According to a quote from a state employee it was on the market for months without a single bid.
You can go look at Trulia, etc and see that it's by far the most expensive house in the neighborhood, which in real estate depressions means a motivated seller is pretty well screwed. I could definitely see a 30-35% drop at the high end of the market, especially if the state was the one to *buy* the house (for likely more than they should have in the first place).
So in the end people are talking about some big conspiracy, when reality is the price difference is from the height of a bubble to the bottom of a recession. So maybe they could have gotten $100k more if they kept it on the market another year. That's not a conspiracy, that's the real estate business.
If that's the myth, his existence has already been confirmed 3 times.