You aren't going to go far with just a BS or BA in biology, particularly molecular biology (speaking as a molecular biologist). There are plenty of job opportunities in biotech for PhDs, though...
As far as I know there aren't many jobs for PhD's either. I work with someone who has a PhD in Chemistry (ok, it's not bio, but chem's probably a better field than bio), and he's a lab tech like me!! Besides, why the fsck should anyone have to get a PhD just for the chance to make a livable wage in their field? If that's the case, I'd say it's a lousy field.
As a molecular biologist, I steer interns out of biology. Blend bio with any other discipline. You will spend your entire life justifying the 90% of experiments that fail, justifying your existance to get grants, etc. Bio-business, bio,-programming, bio-sales, bio-anything. Lab rats at the bench make no money, get zero respect, get zero creative control and are this generation's ditch diggers.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Here's something to chew on. Do you need a bio degree to do bio-sales, bio-business, bio-programming, etc? Most likely not. Biologists generally know nothing about business, sales, or programming, so they can't get jobs in these fields.
I work as a lab tech and I agree that they are ditch diggers. I actually did go to grad school for a bit, I pretty much hated it. It's very unsatisfying. At least if you program you can design something *useful* that *works* and feel like you've accomplished something. Biologists go months without accomplishing anything, and the work is dirty. Who wants to be in a lab for the rest of their lives? Even the PhD's have it really tough. No one hires PhD's, they're overqualified. Most of them end up working long hours for years as post-docs making $30,000.
I graduated from Rutgers U. (decent NJ state school) in May 2000 with a bachelor's in biology. Back when I decided to major in bio, I really enjoyed studying the field, and (high school) teachers were telling me that molecular biology was the fastest growing job sector. So by the time senior year came around I began looking for a "real" job. I checked all the papers, company websites, monster, etc. and realized that there really are NO good jobs out there for biologists. There are a few bioinformatics jobs, but guess what, you need a CS degree for them, not biology. I ended up getting a lousy job as a lab technician paying around $14 an hour (which took several months to find, btw, and this was when the economy was booming), and I'm extremely unhappy. I've completely lost any love I had for this field. Say what you want about money not being the most important thing, but when you can't afford to do anything you want, your life gets miserable very fast, I don't care how great your job is. Biology jobs typically have zero mobility and are extremely underpaid. You think there's a flood of people graduating from CS? Biology is far worse. My CS classes have about 20-30 people in them. My bio classes had hundreds.
Just recently I decided to go back to Rutgers for a second bachelor's in computer science. Not only are the job prospects better and higher-paying (even considering the dot-com collapse), I've always enjoyed working with computers and my grades are actually far better (although I was never a bad student). I'm actually having fun in my CS classes, I never had fun in bio. The classes were more like a chore. Another horrible thing about biology is that you really don't learn anything practical in college, you just memorize facts. At least with computer science you learn many useful tools to make you a competant programmer, which is actually a marketable skill. Nothing about biology is marketable. I highly discourage anyone from majoring in Bio unless they seriously, seriously love it and intend to get a PhD and devote their lives to research without regards to trivial things like money and job prospects.
For some more info check out the company's website. Here's the page on EPE. Looks like pretty neat technology. Easy to set up and accurate to within 1 meter. I doubt warchalkers will be deterred though.:)
I don't understand the belief that copyright should be extended past the creater's death.
Excellent point, I don't understand how this got started either. if you read what the constitution says, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;", no where in that passage does it mention the authors' and inventors' heirs. It seems pretty clear to me that any copyright law that sets the duration beyond a "limited time" within the author's lifetime should be unconstitutional. But that's just my interpretation.
Could someone in the US please tell me what a "GRE" exam is?
The Graduate Record Exam is a standardized test administered by the non-profit (yeah, right) College Board (same people who do the SATs). It's usually a required test for anyone wishing to gain admittance to graduate school. In addition to the general test, which tests language skills, basic math, and analytical skills, they also offer a wide range of subject tests. Some schools just require the general, some require both the general and subject tests. The cost for the general test when I took it was a whopping $90 or so. It's a grueling test that will ruin your day. Takes about 3-4 hours. The best part is that it's on computer and you get your scores instantly.
I have to disagree. There are PLENTY of artists out there that are experimenting w/music.
That may be true, but none of them are on major labels. All the innovative artists are underground (where they belong). How many great, innovative bands were ruined when they finally went mainstream? *cough*metallica*cough* I, for one, hope the major labels all go bankrupt. That's what happens to any business who provides an inferior product at lousy prices.
Most people here seem to be concerned with the problems of cloaking people. Wouldn't a cloaking device be better used to cloak aircraft, artillery, etc? It'd probably be easier to fit a power source on a huge plane than on a person, plus air and ground units can be engineered to optimize their shape/size for cloaking. Imagine a squadron of cloaked F-16's patrolling/bombing hostile countries?
A virus is basically a self replicating (with a hosts help) package of RNA.
A germ (or bacteria) is a single celled organism.
Allow me to make a few corrections. Viruses can be DNA *or* RNA, and they don't self-replicate, they take control of cells and use the cells' equipment to replicate. Germs and bacteria aren't neccessarily the same. "Germ" isn't really a biology term anyway. "Germ" is just the word lay-people use for pathogenic microorganisms.
Re:First they came for the Indians...
on
Shop Till It Drops
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· Score: 1
Eventually? You mean you still have people at your gas stations?
I live in NJ too. It's illegal to pump your own gas, so there HAS to be someone attending the gas station.
Yeah, you can't breathe funny without worrying about getting into a lawsuit. There's this comic book store in the mall near me that used to have a drawing of Yoda or something hanging up in their store. Well George Lucas somehow found out about it and his lawyers sent them a letter stating that they had to take it down! There has to be a line drawn about where the first amendment ends and copyright law begins. Under the current laws, it's anything but clear.
"Most of you yank fuckers are from the UK anyway. Go back a few generations and you'll see what I mean. You're either British or Irish. George Washington was British."
If most americans are British why don't we have British accents? Why don't we pay British taxes? Or have pictures of the "royal family" on our currency?
"What amazes me most is how Americans have begun to view air conditioning as a "necessity". Are we insane? The necessities in life are food, oxygen, and heat in climates with extreme cold."
You are of course correct that AC isn't a necessity. But by your logic, if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, we would still be living in caves, hunting and gathering our food. There's more to life than just surviving. The will for a better way of life drives innovation. Sure, I could live without AC, but I wouldn't enjoy life as much without it.
"hahaha.. the US just steals ideas, they don't actually *invent* any (at least not many anyway). all the cool stuff actually comes from the UK first. the US just steals them in order to make themself feel more significant."
This is simply not true. All it takes is a cursory glance at the list of Nobel laureats for the past few decades to see which country is leading in scientific innovation. How about naming a few things that were first invented in the UK and stolen by the US? (provide proof too) It's easy to write something like you did, especially without backing it up. There have been countless great american inventions, such as the airplane and television, just to name two big ones.
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You aren't going to go far with just a BS or BA in biology, particularly molecular biology (speaking as a molecular biologist). There are plenty of job opportunities in biotech for PhDs, though...
As far as I know there aren't many jobs for PhD's either. I work with someone who has a PhD in Chemistry (ok, it's not bio, but chem's probably a better field than bio), and he's a lab tech like me!! Besides, why the fsck should anyone have to get a PhD just for the chance to make a livable wage in their field? If that's the case, I'd say it's a lousy field.
As a molecular biologist, I steer interns out of biology. Blend bio with any other discipline. You will spend your entire life justifying the 90% of experiments that fail, justifying your existance to get grants, etc. Bio-business, bio,-programming, bio-sales, bio-anything. Lab rats at the bench make no money, get zero respect, get zero creative control and are this generation's ditch diggers.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Here's something to chew on. Do you need a bio degree to do bio-sales, bio-business, bio-programming, etc? Most likely not. Biologists generally know nothing about business, sales, or programming, so they can't get jobs in these fields.
I work as a lab tech and I agree that they are ditch diggers. I actually did go to grad school for a bit, I pretty much hated it. It's very unsatisfying. At least if you program you can design something *useful* that *works* and feel like you've accomplished something. Biologists go months without accomplishing anything, and the work is dirty. Who wants to be in a lab for the rest of their lives? Even the PhD's have it really tough. No one hires PhD's, they're overqualified. Most of them end up working long hours for years as post-docs making $30,000.
I graduated from Rutgers U. (decent NJ state school) in May 2000 with a bachelor's in biology. Back when I decided to major in bio, I really enjoyed studying the field, and (high school) teachers were telling me that molecular biology was the fastest growing job sector. So by the time senior year came around I began looking for a "real" job. I checked all the papers, company websites, monster, etc. and realized that there really are NO good jobs out there for biologists. There are a few bioinformatics jobs, but guess what, you need a CS degree for them, not biology. I ended up getting a lousy job as a lab technician paying around $14 an hour (which took several months to find, btw, and this was when the economy was booming), and I'm extremely unhappy. I've completely lost any love I had for this field. Say what you want about money not being the most important thing, but when you can't afford to do anything you want, your life gets miserable very fast, I don't care how great your job is. Biology jobs typically have zero mobility and are extremely underpaid. You think there's a flood of people graduating from CS? Biology is far worse. My CS classes have about 20-30 people in them. My bio classes had hundreds.
Just recently I decided to go back to Rutgers for a second bachelor's in computer science. Not only are the job prospects better and higher-paying (even considering the dot-com collapse), I've always enjoyed working with computers and my grades are actually far better (although I was never a bad student). I'm actually having fun in my CS classes, I never had fun in bio. The classes were more like a chore. Another horrible thing about biology is that you really don't learn anything practical in college, you just memorize facts. At least with computer science you learn many useful tools to make you a competant programmer, which is actually a marketable skill. Nothing about biology is marketable. I highly discourage anyone from majoring in Bio unless they seriously, seriously love it and intend to get a PhD and devote their lives to research without regards to trivial things like money and job prospects.
By the way, when people say BSDs are dead
I think you misspelled BBS.
For some more info check out the company's website. Here's the page on EPE. Looks like pretty neat technology. Easy to set up and accurate to within 1 meter. I doubt warchalkers will be deterred though. :)
I don't understand the belief that copyright should be extended past the creater's death.
Excellent point, I don't understand how this got started either. if you read what the constitution says, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;", no where in that passage does it mention the authors' and inventors' heirs. It seems pretty clear to me that any copyright law that sets the duration beyond a "limited time" within the author's lifetime should be unconstitutional. But that's just my interpretation.
Could someone in the US please tell me what a "GRE" exam is?
The Graduate Record Exam is a standardized test administered by the non-profit (yeah, right) College Board (same people who do the SATs). It's usually a required test for anyone wishing to gain admittance to graduate school. In addition to the general test, which tests language skills, basic math, and analytical skills, they also offer a wide range of subject tests. Some schools just require the general, some require both the general and subject tests. The cost for the general test when I took it was a whopping $90 or so. It's a grueling test that will ruin your day. Takes about 3-4 hours. The best part is that it's on computer and you get your scores instantly.
I have to disagree. There are PLENTY of artists out there that are experimenting w/music.
That may be true, but none of them are on major labels. All the innovative artists are underground (where they belong). How many great, innovative bands were ruined when they finally went mainstream? *cough*metallica*cough* I, for one, hope the major labels all go bankrupt. That's what happens to any business who provides an inferior product at lousy prices.
Most people here seem to be concerned with the problems of cloaking people. Wouldn't a cloaking device be better used to cloak aircraft, artillery, etc? It'd probably be easier to fit a power source on a huge plane than on a person, plus air and ground units can be engineered to optimize their shape/size for cloaking. Imagine a squadron of cloaked F-16's patrolling/bombing hostile countries?
A virus is basically a self replicating (with a hosts help) package of RNA.
A germ (or bacteria) is a single celled organism.
Allow me to make a few corrections. Viruses can be DNA *or* RNA, and they don't self-replicate, they take control of cells and use the cells' equipment to replicate. Germs and bacteria aren't neccessarily the same. "Germ" isn't really a biology term anyway. "Germ" is just the word lay-people use for pathogenic microorganisms.
Eventually? You mean you still have people at your gas stations?
I live in NJ too. It's illegal to pump your own gas, so there HAS to be someone attending the gas station.
Can any of you suggest cheap solutions (at or below $500USD) that could handle a farm of 5-10 machines? yo momma
Yeah, you can't breathe funny without worrying about getting into a lawsuit. There's this comic book store in the mall near me that used to have a drawing of Yoda or something hanging up in their store. Well George Lucas somehow found out about it and his lawyers sent them a letter stating that they had to take it down! There has to be a line drawn about where the first amendment ends and copyright law begins. Under the current laws, it's anything but clear.
I still can't figure out how to make my aopen dvd region free!
"Most of you yank fuckers are from the UK anyway. Go back a few generations and you'll see what I mean. You're either British or Irish. George Washington was British."
If most americans are British why don't we have British accents? Why don't we pay British taxes? Or have pictures of the "royal family" on our currency?
"What amazes me most is how Americans have begun to view air conditioning as a "necessity". Are we insane? The necessities in life are food, oxygen, and heat in climates with extreme cold."
You are of course correct that AC isn't a necessity. But by your logic, if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, we would still be living in caves, hunting and gathering our food. There's more to life than just surviving. The will for a better way of life drives innovation. Sure, I could live without AC, but I wouldn't enjoy life as much without it.
"hahaha .. the US just steals ideas, they don't actually *invent* any (at least not many anyway). all the cool stuff actually comes from the UK first. the US just steals them in order to make themself feel more significant."
This is simply not true. All it takes is a cursory glance at the list of Nobel laureats for the past few decades to see which country is leading in scientific innovation. How about naming a few things that were first invented in the UK and stolen by the US? (provide proof too) It's easy to write something like you did, especially without backing it up. There have been countless great american inventions, such as the airplane and television, just to name two big ones.