Anyone who has tried to read the comment threads on an iPhone gets it. Slashdot didn't make the transition to the separation of content and display well, limiting your flexibility when it comes to adapting to the plethora of new devices popping up. Among other things which I'm sure include "monetizing" the site more.
So, you need to redesign the site. Got it.
So, you created "Beta", whether because of an edict from the new corporate masters or whether it's an internally driven project, it was immediately obvious whoever did Beta ( on mobile especially) didn't even do a basic "This is how people use the site" survey. Or if they did, they did a really shitty job. Maybe they read the comments and thought those were the truth. Anyway.
So, here's a thought:
What if you did the redesign in an open/community driven manner?
Set up a persistent discussion (make it a tab, "Changes are a coming to Slashdot", weigh in with a comment) and explain what changes you want to make, and why. Let the community hash it out. Maybe let us vote on a feature, and allow us to test it out on some dummy (or real) stories to see how it works. Allow us to view different stories under the new look and layout. Maybe with a button that changes the CSS a la CSS Zengarden (simplest reference site) or that redirects us to the same story at beta1.slashdot.org, beta2.slashdot.org, etc if it requires serious architectural changes that can't be done with just a reskin. Or something similar.
Also, set up a persistent discussion board where you guys explain the issues you're trying to fix and why(!) and see what the community has to say. You have one of the largest dens of geeks of varying skill and knowledge levels on this site and it's quite possible they may have an actual solution for you, or a simpler one, or a better one. I know the guys who run slashdot are super-geeks, but you can't know everything (root != god, sorry). But the community has an incredible amount of combined knowledge. Use it. And read the comments at level 1 or 2, since the way the slashdot moderation system works, a lot of valid commentary will get pushed down over the most artful use of an obligatory xkcd Natalie Portman reference.
Then, instead of committing to wholesale bulk changing the site (come on, you have to know better. Who's forcing that on you? New management? Tell them what's up.), make incremental changes. Maybe to one set of features of a subsystem, or an entire section or something. If that section of the site is "Difficult" to fix because it's interwoven with other parts of the site, then spend the time to unravel it. You're going to have to anyway.
But regardless, instead of making bulk changes and driving away the people that allow this site to make enough money for it to change corporate hands a few times, include the community. Maybe we'll have feature suggestions you didn't even know about. Maybe we'll have a solution to what you thought were inexplicable problems that are easily solved because you're just aware the solution exists. Maybe you're agonizing over a feature no one uses.
But try including the community. And it's a community, not an "Audience". Nor are we users. We're a community. Of people. Online. If you need to spin it for the new corporate overlords, we are the biggest "stakeholder" in the redesign. Frame the problem that way on the whiteboards and in the meetings with the IT people.
The beta and redesign comments have spilled into way too many comment threads. Because you guys are clearly managing it poorly. Or someone from corporate is managing it poorly. You've got once change to do this right. Because if you drive the community away, like the former inhabitants of Chernobyl and mySpace, they're not coming back.
Maybe it takes a little longer than it should. Unless you've got some corporate budget target to meet, that's ok with most of us. If it takes a year, or two. Who cares if it results in a truly better slashdot? Put
In my redirects to the beta (on mobile) it was immediately (and I mean immediately) obvious that whoever designed the beta had no fucking clue how people used the site and turned it into some sort of engadget clone.
I don't know how whoever designed it thought that all I wanted to read were headlines on my phone. It was embarrassing. And disappointing.
The changes have helped, but the mobile experience still doesn't completely "get it". But it's getting better.
Why not do this in an open/community driven manner?
Set up a persistent discussion (make it a tab, "Changes are a coming to Slashdot", weigh in with a comment) and explain what changes you want to make, and why. Let the community hash it out. Maybe let us vote on a feature, and allow us to test it out on some dummy (or real) test stories to see how it works.
Or, instead of committing to wholesale, all at once change, change subsystems and let the community test them. See if slashdot can be slashdotted. And move forward.
You know, like actual professional software developers do. Not like Microsoft does.
Which is what most direct marketers do. Images in marketing emails are not embedded, they're links to remote images ( tag FTW!). Most images have a hashed part of its URL that is your "unique" identifier in their logs.
What the cache will likely do is pre-emptively grab the images, triggering higher hit rates on the marketer's servers, leading them to believe more people are reading their emails, meaning more spam.
All this discussion on this and no one has commented that TFA is from 2011??
This article isn't reliable information. It's from when SSDs were relatively new and definitely doesn't apply to the in-the-field results people are seeing in 2013.
Apple was visionary because they got USB to work as promised/designed.
Back then, it was about 50/50 whether you could hot-plug a USB device into a Windows machine and have it not crash. Famously demonstrated by Bill Gates at a trade show. There's video. Look it up.
The Mac was also the first computer to allow you to plug in the maximum number of USB devices (128) without crashing. It took Windows a while to get there too.
It can also be integrated into unmanned drones, to have radar-invisible unmanned drones. Convenient for popping over a border real quick and taking a look around without alerting local air forces.
Finally I can post without getting arrows in my chest!
As a marketer, and given the tiny little bit of info you've given, you can probably afford one person on staff, or an agency part time in your local city.
Just be aware, and this is the part that sucks, you need to make sure you have:
a) A clear idea of the consumer's problem you're trying to solve.
b) A great solution for that solves it.
Failure to have either one of those will lead to you chasing a bad product into irrelevance. And it's really expensive.
How do you make sure they're accountable, well, that'll be defined by what you and the marketing person agree is your metric for success. Is it sales? Target market penetration? Site Traffic? Word of Mouth/google trends? All of these goals will be treated differently through the eyes of the marketing person, and you need to make sure which one you want. There are strengths and weaknesses to all of them.
If you're concerned about bringing in non-performers, then do NOT enter in a "partnership" with them. Hire them outright. That way you can fire them if they don't meet the agreed upon metrics. Trust me, there are many, many charlatans out there who will gladly take your money and give you next to nothing in return. Conversely, one failed campaign is not an indicator of non-performance. It may take a few stabs to figure out what it takes to make people want to buy your product, but consistent underperformance is the sign of bad marketing. Or a bad product.
You cannot discount the idea that you may have a bad product. And nothing, and I mean nothing, will kill a bad product faster than great marketing. Once you get people's interest, you had better have a product that lives up to the marketing promise or word of mouth will sink you faster than the Titanic. Seriously, take a page out of Apple's marketing book: Underpromise, overdeliver. You don't have to overdeliver by much, but over deliver.
There's a lot more, but that should be enough to get you started.
The "argument" is not "pointless". Ones and zeros have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want to charge me a dollar just to use one particular combination of ones and zeros?
Your comment is pointless. Letters and punctuation have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want me to derive argumentative points from your particular arrangement of them?
Then you place a naked and petrified Natalie Portman above the turkeys, and you pour hot grits all over her, letting the grits fall on the turkeys, slow cooking them with their transferred heat.
If you find the turkey's aren't cooking fast enough, you add the sonic energy from screaming, "OMG ponies!" to the process, hopefully speeding it up an uncountable number of femtoseconds.
When Netcraft confirms that all other forms of turkey cooking are dying, you dispense the entire Beowulf cluster of turkeys into a series of (feeding) tubes.
Before eating, you praise technology by reading the latest F*cking Article on Slashdot, and ban any insensitive clods to the neighbors.
Then you eat the turkeys before they can move to Soviet Russia and eat you.
I discovered these in college, and have never looked back. I buy them in bulk, they last forever. Satisfies all your requirements except maybe #1, and that depends on finely you draw. Also inexpensive.
I started using this in my High School drafting class, to the chagrin of my teacher at the time. He told me if my drawings went down in quality, he wouldn't let me use it any more.
It's been 20 years. I don't know what I'm going to do if either company quits making them.
If neither of these works, find a drafting supply store (or, I guess, an art store these days, or a Ben Franklin if you live on the East Coast), and go through the pen aisle. Unlike Staples/Office Depot, those stores will frequently have pens in bins instead of blister-packed. Take a pad of paper with you, and test some candidates. Find a representative group that might work, buy one of each, then use them at work. Find one you like, buy them by the dozen.
I've been a space nerd since I was a little kid. I remember watching the space shuttle going up when I was in elementary school. I remember being glad that I stopped growing at 5'8" because it meant I could fit in the shuttle cockpit without issue. But, alas, space was not meant to be in my youth. This idea intrigues me, and I have some questions.
Will there be an age limit? Say I get to 65, and decide to give my remaining living years (which could be as many as 30), to helping this project succeed, would I be able to do so? What would be the physical requirements?
Will there be projects for the Mars inhabitants to do to grow the colony (methods of creating some sort of atmosphere in a controlled space, growing crops, etc.)?
How often do you plan on refreshing the project with supplies, and more importantly will you be sending the supplies first? Will you send a housing unit beforehand? How long can one survive off of the supplies?
Will the transport module be something that can be scavenged and repurposed? Will the launch vehicle be designed to be reused as housing on Mars easily?
Will any medium equipment be sent so the creation of Martian cement/bricks can commence immediately upon landing? Mainly, a cement mixer and a laser to melt water from the poles? Will you be sending a shipment of tools, piping and other construction materials beforehand?
If I were to go at the age of 65, will there be any sort of designated funeral area that will memorialize me as a starter colonist to future generations of Mars inhabitants?
Or is this trip really just a ruse to send a bunch of DNA and organic material to a new planet in the hopes that as we die, our bodies will decompose and start terraforming the planet the slow way?
Look. You're 40. It's time to sit down and think for a while. No, really. Just sit and think.
Think about where you've been, and where your career has been. Think about where you want your career to go.
Factor in the fact that you probably have 20 more years of work ahead of you, if you're lucky.
Think about all the things you hate about the current scope of your work, and think about whether you still want to be doing them when you're 50.
Think about the things you can do if you hire two young buck programmers, teach them right, and have them do your programming for you.
Think about what people have said about what you excel at, and if it's different from what you've been doing, think about going that way.
Think about going into management.
IT (I'm using IT as the whole sphere of computer related degrees) + MBA = CIO position.
Think about that. Even if you don't make it to the CIO, and you may not, what you're buying it looking at problems from the 50,000 foot view and choosing the direction of a company.
If you get a master's degree in BioInformatics, you'd better focus on doing something no one else is doing, preferably something forward-looking. By the time you get done with school and what not, it's probably not going to be as forward looking as you thought.
Computer Science could be easy, it could be tough. You've got programming experience, that's great. You're probably reluctant to pull all-nighters though, and there's some 18 year old kid who will. And what is it really going to get you?
Here's what you do.
Look around the world. (Yes, the world.)
Find the people who are a few years older than you doing work that you think you'd want to do.
Shoot them an email. No, seriously, shoot them an email. Get over that fear of "Oh, they're too busy and don't have time for my little measly email." Politely lay out your case, and wait for their advice. It might take them up to 3 weeks to reply. You might have to email them a few times (no more than once every two weeks).
Find out how they got there. Master's degrees? Fellowships? Luck?
Follow in their footsteps as much as you can.
Just remember, you're 40. If you were to quit work and go to school full-time, you'll be 42+ by the time you graduate. In two year's time, some jobs you want will no longer exist. They will have been discovered to be dead ends (see: Ruby on Rails in large applications) The industry will have moved on. You'll have to be above that on some level. Figure out whether going to school is going to pay off. You can finish undergrad in 2.666 years if you set your mind to it. A master's will take two years no matter how you slice it.
Here's a hint: A Master's degree is not as much about the education as the opportunities you will be provided as a side effect of the school you go to and the people you meet there.
Therefore: Go to a good, real, school. Discard the University of Phoenixes of the world right off the bat. Apply somewhere there are people that might be smarter than you. Many companies use specific Master's programs as feeder schools. (Stanford -> Apple + Google, Cornell -> IBM).
Remember, you're already 40. Going back to school is going to be weird.
I think it's interesting that no one has bothered to mention why they think Steve Jobs thought it was important to have huge cash reserves.
Aside from the fact that having that money allows you to make big investments without resorting to a bank loan (yes, big corporations get bank loans), Steve was acutely aware of how fragile Apple's existence was. The simple chain of a few bad decisions could send the company on a downward spiral much like the last one in the 1992-1997 era. If anyone recalls, Apple had about 7 billion in the bank at the beginning of that downturn and proceeded to bleed all that money out over the next 5 years while still selling products that were so popular they were backordered for months. Yes, their supply chain was a wreck back then, but they managed to bleed off all that money.
Steve knew that Apple shipping one or two failure products could put the company into a tailspin that would take a while, and cash, to recover from. He also knew that the computer industry goes through boom and bust cycles and you need money to weather those. And you can't predict them. Contrary to what proponents of the "Long Now" and "End of scarcity" economics say, we're not (nor will we probably ever be) in a world of plenty, and Apple needs to be prepared for that.
So, if it took 7 billion for Apple to slide through 5 years of mismanagement and lack of vision, how much will it take for it to for them get through the next one? Apple's much bigger now, and everything in the world is more expensive now. If Tim Cook does this, it'll be the beginning of the end of the Apple we all know and love (and hate). Whether or not that's a good thing or not is completely different discussion.
And that's my.02, which is nowhere near the $58 billion Apple has.
Slashdot Mirror
..or is it?
That was a Babylon 5 reference.
Shame you didn't get it.
And in context, in was meant as a warning, not as a literal threat.
I've been here since 1997. Turn in your geek card.
Ok, you need to redesign the site.
We get it.
Anyone who has tried to read the comment threads on an iPhone gets it. Slashdot didn't make the transition to the separation of content and display well, limiting your flexibility when it comes to adapting to the plethora of new devices popping up. Among other things which I'm sure include "monetizing" the site more.
So, you need to redesign the site. Got it.
So, you created "Beta", whether because of an edict from the new corporate masters or whether it's an internally driven project, it was immediately obvious whoever did Beta ( on mobile especially) didn't even do a basic "This is how people use the site" survey. Or if they did, they did a really shitty job. Maybe they read the comments and thought those were the truth. Anyway.
So, here's a thought:
What if you did the redesign in an open/community driven manner?
Set up a persistent discussion (make it a tab, "Changes are a coming to Slashdot", weigh in with a comment) and explain what changes you want to make, and why. Let the community hash it out. Maybe let us vote on a feature, and allow us to test it out on some dummy (or real) stories to see how it works. Allow us to view different stories under the new look and layout. Maybe with a button that changes the CSS a la CSS Zengarden (simplest reference site) or that redirects us to the same story at beta1.slashdot.org, beta2.slashdot.org, etc if it requires serious architectural changes that can't be done with just a reskin. Or something similar.
Also, set up a persistent discussion board where you guys explain the issues you're trying to fix and why(!) and see what the community has to say. You have one of the largest dens of geeks of varying skill and knowledge levels on this site and it's quite possible they may have an actual solution for you, or a simpler one, or a better one. I know the guys who run slashdot are super-geeks, but you can't know everything (root != god, sorry). But the community has an incredible amount of combined knowledge. Use it. And read the comments at level 1 or 2, since the way the slashdot moderation system works, a lot of valid commentary will get pushed down over the most artful use of an obligatory xkcd Natalie Portman reference.
Then, instead of committing to wholesale bulk changing the site (come on, you have to know better. Who's forcing that on you? New management? Tell them what's up.), make incremental changes. Maybe to one set of features of a subsystem, or an entire section or something. If that section of the site is "Difficult" to fix because it's interwoven with other parts of the site, then spend the time to unravel it. You're going to have to anyway.
But regardless, instead of making bulk changes and driving away the people that allow this site to make enough money for it to change corporate hands a few times, include the community. Maybe we'll have feature suggestions you didn't even know about. Maybe we'll have a solution to what you thought were inexplicable problems that are easily solved because you're just aware the solution exists. Maybe you're agonizing over a feature no one uses.
But try including the community. And it's a community, not an "Audience". Nor are we users. We're a community. Of people. Online. If you need to spin it for the new corporate overlords, we are the biggest "stakeholder" in the redesign. Frame the problem that way on the whiteboards and in the meetings with the IT people.
The beta and redesign comments have spilled into way too many comment threads. Because you guys are clearly managing it poorly. Or someone from corporate is managing it poorly. You've got once change to do this right. Because if you drive the community away, like the former inhabitants of Chernobyl and mySpace, they're not coming back.
Maybe it takes a little longer than it should. Unless you've got some corporate budget target to meet, that's ok with most of us. If it takes a year, or two. Who cares if it results in a truly better slashdot? Put
In my redirects to the beta (on mobile) it was immediately (and I mean immediately) obvious that whoever designed the beta had no fucking clue how people used the site and turned it into some sort of engadget clone.
I don't know how whoever designed it thought that all I wanted to read were headlines on my phone. It was embarrassing. And disappointing.
The changes have helped, but the mobile experience still doesn't completely "get it". But it's getting better.
Why not do this in an open/community driven manner?
Set up a persistent discussion (make it a tab, "Changes are a coming to Slashdot", weigh in with a comment) and explain what changes you want to make, and why. Let the community hash it out. Maybe let us vote on a feature, and allow us to test it out on some dummy (or real) test stories to see how it works.
Or, instead of committing to wholesale, all at once change, change subsystems and let the community test them. See if slashdot can be slashdotted. And move forward.
You know, like actual professional software developers do. Not like Microsoft does.
There's a huge difference between a surge protector and a power strip, which many people unfortunately believe offers the same functionality.
Which is what most direct marketers do. Images in marketing emails are not embedded, they're links to remote images ( tag FTW!). Most images have a hashed part of its URL that is your "unique" identifier in their logs.
What the cache will likely do is pre-emptively grab the images, triggering higher hit rates on the marketer's servers, leading them to believe more people are reading their emails, meaning more spam.
that's called issuing a paycheck.
All this discussion on this and no one has commented that TFA is from 2011??
This article isn't reliable information. It's from when SSDs were relatively new and definitely doesn't apply to the in-the-field results people are seeing in 2013.
He is required to register a trademark. Not a copyright.
But, if he relies on the at-large copyright, it's not as strong as if he actually registers through the Copyright Office.
Apple was visionary because they got USB to work as promised/designed.
Back then, it was about 50/50 whether you could hot-plug a USB device into a Windows machine and have it not crash. Famously demonstrated by Bill Gates at a trade show. There's video. Look it up.
The Mac was also the first computer to allow you to plug in the maximum number of USB devices (128) without crashing. It took Windows a while to get there too.
A timestamp and a few IP addresses can fix that.
Go get yourself a real computer.
It can also be integrated into unmanned drones, to have radar-invisible unmanned drones. Convenient for popping over a border real quick and taking a look around without alerting local air forces.
Sheesh.
This is what permissions are for.
Finally I can post without getting arrows in my chest!
As a marketer, and given the tiny little bit of info you've given, you can probably afford one person on staff, or an agency part time in your local city.
Just be aware, and this is the part that sucks, you need to make sure you have:
a) A clear idea of the consumer's problem you're trying to solve.
b) A great solution for that solves it.
Failure to have either one of those will lead to you chasing a bad product into irrelevance. And it's really expensive.
How do you make sure they're accountable, well, that'll be defined by what you and the marketing person agree is your metric for success. Is it sales? Target market penetration? Site Traffic? Word of Mouth/google trends? All of these goals will be treated differently through the eyes of the marketing person, and you need to make sure which one you want. There are strengths and weaknesses to all of them.
If you're concerned about bringing in non-performers, then do NOT enter in a "partnership" with them. Hire them outright. That way you can fire them if they don't meet the agreed upon metrics. Trust me, there are many, many charlatans out there who will gladly take your money and give you next to nothing in return. Conversely, one failed campaign is not an indicator of non-performance. It may take a few stabs to figure out what it takes to make people want to buy your product, but consistent underperformance is the sign of bad marketing. Or a bad product.
You cannot discount the idea that you may have a bad product. And nothing, and I mean nothing, will kill a bad product faster than great marketing. Once you get people's interest, you had better have a product that lives up to the marketing promise or word of mouth will sink you faster than the Titanic. Seriously, take a page out of Apple's marketing book: Underpromise, overdeliver. You don't have to overdeliver by much, but over deliver.
There's a lot more, but that should be enough to get you started.
And made Microsoft nice stack of money in the process.
The "argument" is not "pointless". Ones and zeros have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want to charge me a dollar just to use one particular combination of ones and zeros?
Your comment is pointless. Letters and punctuation have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want me to derive argumentative points from your particular arrangement of them?
No I didn't, it's the last line.
First you get a beowulf cluster of turkeys.
Then you place a naked and petrified Natalie Portman above the turkeys, and you pour hot grits all over her, letting the grits fall on the turkeys, slow cooking them with their transferred heat.
If you find the turkey's aren't cooking fast enough, you add the sonic energy from screaming, "OMG ponies!" to the process, hopefully speeding it up an uncountable number of femtoseconds.
When Netcraft confirms that all other forms of turkey cooking are dying, you dispense the entire Beowulf cluster of turkeys into a series of (feeding) tubes.
Before eating, you praise technology by reading the latest F*cking Article on Slashdot, and ban any insensitive clods to the neighbors.
Then you eat the turkeys before they can move to Soviet Russia and eat you.
I use two writing devices these days.
Pilot Precise V5 http://www.pilotpen.us/ProductGroup/711-Precise-V5-V7.aspx
I discovered these in college, and have never looked back. I buy them in bulk, they last forever. Satisfies all your requirements except maybe #1, and that depends on finely you draw. Also inexpensive.
and the Pentel Twist Erase III http://www.pentel.com/store/twist-erase-iii-mechanical-pencil
I started using this in my High School drafting class, to the chagrin of my teacher at the time. He told me if my drawings went down in quality, he wouldn't let me use it any more.
It's been 20 years. I don't know what I'm going to do if either company quits making them.
If neither of these works, find a drafting supply store (or, I guess, an art store these days, or a Ben Franklin if you live on the East Coast), and go through the pen aisle. Unlike Staples/Office Depot, those stores will frequently have pens in bins instead of blister-packed. Take a pad of paper with you, and test some candidates. Find a representative group that might work, buy one of each, then use them at work. Find one you like, buy them by the dozen.
I've been a space nerd since I was a little kid. I remember watching the space shuttle going up when I was in elementary school. I remember being glad that I stopped growing at 5'8" because it meant I could fit in the shuttle cockpit without issue. But, alas, space was not meant to be in my youth. This idea intrigues me, and I have some questions.
Will there be an age limit? Say I get to 65, and decide to give my remaining living years (which could be as many as 30), to helping this project succeed, would I be able to do so? What would be the physical requirements?
Will there be projects for the Mars inhabitants to do to grow the colony (methods of creating some sort of atmosphere in a controlled space, growing crops, etc.)?
How often do you plan on refreshing the project with supplies, and more importantly will you be sending the supplies first? Will you send a housing unit beforehand? How long can one survive off of the supplies?
Will the transport module be something that can be scavenged and repurposed? Will the launch vehicle be designed to be reused as housing on Mars easily?
Will any medium equipment be sent so the creation of Martian cement/bricks can commence immediately upon landing? Mainly, a cement mixer and a laser to melt water from the poles? Will you be sending a shipment of tools, piping and other construction materials beforehand?
If I were to go at the age of 65, will there be any sort of designated funeral area that will memorialize me as a starter colonist to future generations of Mars inhabitants?
Or is this trip really just a ruse to send a bunch of DNA and organic material to a new planet in the hopes that as we die, our bodies will decompose and start terraforming the planet the slow way?
-RT
Look. You're 40. It's time to sit down and think for a while. No, really. Just sit and think.
Think about where you've been, and where your career has been. Think about where you want your career to go.
Factor in the fact that you probably have 20 more years of work ahead of you, if you're lucky.
Think about all the things you hate about the current scope of your work, and think about whether you still want to be doing them when you're 50.
Think about the things you can do if you hire two young buck programmers, teach them right, and have them do your programming for you.
Think about what people have said about what you excel at, and if it's different from what you've been doing, think about going that way.
Think about going into management.
IT (I'm using IT as the whole sphere of computer related degrees) + MBA = CIO position.
Think about that. Even if you don't make it to the CIO, and you may not, what you're buying it looking at problems from the 50,000 foot view and choosing the direction of a company.
If you get a master's degree in BioInformatics, you'd better focus on doing something no one else is doing, preferably something forward-looking. By the time you get done with school and what not, it's probably not going to be as forward looking as you thought.
Computer Science could be easy, it could be tough. You've got programming experience, that's great. You're probably reluctant to pull all-nighters though, and there's some 18 year old kid who will. And what is it really going to get you?
Here's what you do.
Look around the world. (Yes, the world.)
Find the people who are a few years older than you doing work that you think you'd want to do.
Shoot them an email. No, seriously, shoot them an email. Get over that fear of "Oh, they're too busy and don't have time for my little measly email." Politely lay out your case, and wait for their advice. It might take them up to 3 weeks to reply. You might have to email them a few times (no more than once every two weeks).
Find out how they got there. Master's degrees? Fellowships? Luck?
Follow in their footsteps as much as you can.
Just remember, you're 40. If you were to quit work and go to school full-time, you'll be 42+ by the time you graduate. In two year's time, some jobs you want will no longer exist. They will have been discovered to be dead ends (see: Ruby on Rails in large applications) The industry will have moved on. You'll have to be above that on some level. Figure out whether going to school is going to pay off. You can finish undergrad in 2.666 years if you set your mind to it. A master's will take two years no matter how you slice it.
Here's a hint: A Master's degree is not as much about the education as the opportunities you will be provided as a side effect of the school you go to and the people you meet there.
Therefore: Go to a good, real, school. Discard the University of Phoenixes of the world right off the bat. Apply somewhere there are people that might be smarter than you. Many companies use specific Master's programs as feeder schools. (Stanford -> Apple + Google, Cornell -> IBM).
Remember, you're already 40. Going back to school is going to be weird.
But it will probably be rewarding.
I'm pretty sure this is a dupe.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/98/04/17/91338/seti-at-home
Don't the editors double check for anything around here?
I think it's interesting that no one has bothered to mention why they think Steve Jobs thought it was important to have huge cash reserves.
Aside from the fact that having that money allows you to make big investments without resorting to a bank loan (yes, big corporations get bank loans), Steve was acutely aware of how fragile Apple's existence was. The simple chain of a few bad decisions could send the company on a downward spiral much like the last one in the 1992-1997 era. If anyone recalls, Apple had about 7 billion in the bank at the beginning of that downturn and proceeded to bleed all that money out over the next 5 years while still selling products that were so popular they were backordered for months. Yes, their supply chain was a wreck back then, but they managed to bleed off all that money.
Steve knew that Apple shipping one or two failure products could put the company into a tailspin that would take a while, and cash, to recover from. He also knew that the computer industry goes through boom and bust cycles and you need money to weather those. And you can't predict them. Contrary to what proponents of the "Long Now" and "End of scarcity" economics say, we're not (nor will we probably ever be) in a world of plenty, and Apple needs to be prepared for that.
So, if it took 7 billion for Apple to slide through 5 years of mismanagement and lack of vision, how much will it take for it to for them get through the next one? Apple's much bigger now, and everything in the world is more expensive now. If Tim Cook does this, it'll be the beginning of the end of the Apple we all know and love (and hate). Whether or not that's a good thing or not is completely different discussion.
And that's my .02, which is nowhere near the $58 billion Apple has.