Some colleges admit up to 80% freshmen they know they are going to push out in this way. For them it is a point of pride that most people admitted can't get through their program, rather than a point of shame. For every graduate given their "exclusive" degree they ruin four lives, and they aspire to get that figure up to five.
If you want the worst possible outcome then leverage yourself to the hilt with loans and get into a premium university only to be failed out in year three or four to maintain the university's aura of being challenging through the failout percentage. Now you've got no degree, no job, no way of paying back your student loans that amount to decades of your newfound gross income - and they can't even be forgiven in bankruptcy. You are well on your way to participating in the underground economy, living out your twenties under the roof of some charitable soul until you discover identity theft.
I would like to see an analysis of how many billions of dollars are burned each year in this way, how many young lives ruined. This has become an institutional process where premium schools compete to have the highest failout percentage and thus be the most premium school rather than raising entry requirements to ensure entrants can graduate if they apply themselves. If these halls of higher learning are the font of science and knowledge they claim to be they ought not ruin so many lives in the process of making more educated humans.
The struggle between ease of adoption and power of use is an endless one. There are options that seek to avoid the strife by optimizing for the least of each, which is a pathological solution (this is a technical term) to the problem. Example: Windows 8.
Some factual glitches: Samsung only makes half of the Android devices. What you call "crap phones" are phones the customer selected because they have some mix of features that the customer prefers. Android phones outsell iPhones by over 4:1, not 3:1, meaning that Samsung by itself sells twice as many phones as Apple. Usage numbers have always been sketchy at best, and always lag sales.
As iPhones absorb iPods, so Android phones are absorbing other media players. Android devices are also eating into share of other things like smart TVs, tablets and so on. This is where the hugely dominant market share begins to see heavy leverage: when you are invested in apps on a device already and are shopping for a new device, people like to stick with the one that already has all the apps and features they already use on the prior device - especially if they don't have to buy everything all over again. The Apple advantages you speak of all come from first-mover advantage which is now fading fast.
/. ebbs and flows. Search interest isn't that big of a deal since as mha observes below in the last five years the number of sites and total traffic has grown as well. Page hits are a big deal.
What I see here is an opportunity to make/. a little more like what I want it to be. User generated content and all that. Now that it's easier to hit the front page I'm looking harder for stories that I would like to see there.
It really doesn't matter anyway. The nuclear waste that's travelling through the groundwater on its way to the Columbia River left the tanks decades ago. There is no way to stop it from reaching the river now.
I don't know if you noticed but the US has been kind of bitchy lately about even our allies like Japan reprocessing their own reactor fuel locally for fear they might make weapons of it. I don't think anybody is going to get an export permit for Hanford's waste, which looks to have more uranium and plutonium in it (of the specific actinides) than is in the US arsenal. Even if they did - just pumping the tanks is almost certain death.
I see this comment all the time: "Microsoft has the money and revenue streams to play the long game, to make bold bets, to stick it out. Early days yet."
Well, yes, Microsoft has a lot of money offshore and a lot of money coming in. But they don't have infinite money. The offshore money isn't "real" until they bring it home to spend and take a 40% haircut on it. They're sinking two billion a year into Bing and the rest of OSD, a billion into Nokia, billions in marketing to get their mobile business off the ground and pretend W8 is going super, and tens of billions in share buybacks and dividends to prop up their stock price, tens of billions a year in failed acquisitions. In the wise words of Bill Gates: "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money." It is not an inexhaustible spigot. They can "fail" every so often but once in a while they have to "win". They ain't been winning new money for a long time now.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to derail your conversation. But when I see this so idly said it makes me sad that so much money is being burned in a hopeless cause when I know what an able, competent, intelligent and compassionate man could do with it.
Most of us urban/suburban types can wifi tether to our smartphones. That gives us that reliable connection you want everywhere except where we don't want one, i.e.: down by the river. Sure, there are places in the Ozarks where you can't get a decent signal - not a big fraction of the population any more.
Slashdot Mirror
Some colleges admit up to 80% freshmen they know they are going to push out in this way. For them it is a point of pride that most people admitted can't get through their program, rather than a point of shame. For every graduate given their "exclusive" degree they ruin four lives, and they aspire to get that figure up to five.
If you want the worst possible outcome then leverage yourself to the hilt with loans and get into a premium university only to be failed out in year three or four to maintain the university's aura of being challenging through the failout percentage. Now you've got no degree, no job, no way of paying back your student loans that amount to decades of your newfound gross income - and they can't even be forgiven in bankruptcy. You are well on your way to participating in the underground economy, living out your twenties under the roof of some charitable soul until you discover identity theft.
I would like to see an analysis of how many billions of dollars are burned each year in this way, how many young lives ruined. This has become an institutional process where premium schools compete to have the highest failout percentage and thus be the most premium school rather than raising entry requirements to ensure entrants can graduate if they apply themselves. If these halls of higher learning are the font of science and knowledge they claim to be they ought not ruin so many lives in the process of making more educated humans.
The struggle between ease of adoption and power of use is an endless one. There are options that seek to avoid the strife by optimizing for the least of each, which is a pathological solution (this is a technical term) to the problem. Example: Windows 8.
Then you must watch the Extremely Decent ad for The First Honest Cable Company
Q: How can you know why somebody is a vegan?
A: Don't worry. He'll tell you.
Facebook updates in real life.
Some factual glitches: Samsung only makes half of the Android devices. What you call "crap phones" are phones the customer selected because they have some mix of features that the customer prefers. Android phones outsell iPhones by over 4:1, not 3:1, meaning that Samsung by itself sells twice as many phones as Apple. Usage numbers have always been sketchy at best, and always lag sales.
As iPhones absorb iPods, so Android phones are absorbing other media players. Android devices are also eating into share of other things like smart TVs, tablets and so on. This is where the hugely dominant market share begins to see heavy leverage: when you are invested in apps on a device already and are shopping for a new device, people like to stick with the one that already has all the apps and features they already use on the prior device - especially if they don't have to buy everything all over again. The Apple advantages you speak of all come from first-mover advantage which is now fading fast.
/. ebbs and flows. Search interest isn't that big of a deal since as mha observes below in the last five years the number of sites and total traffic has grown as well. Page hits are a big deal.
What I see here is an opportunity to make /. a little more like what I want it to be. User generated content and all that. Now that it's easier to hit the front page I'm looking harder for stories that I would like to see there.
PS: On the other hand, enough people voted this to the front page...
I have discovered recently that it's not as hard to get a submission accepted to the /. front page as it once was.
He's an example of somebody sent to prison for it.
Why would you do that?
3G is adequate. We're not using it for Netflix. Batteries are an issue, but fortunately there are many solutions for that.
It really doesn't matter anyway. The nuclear waste that's travelling through the groundwater on its way to the Columbia River left the tanks decades ago. There is no way to stop it from reaching the river now.
I don't know if you noticed but the US has been kind of bitchy lately about even our allies like Japan reprocessing their own reactor fuel locally for fear they might make weapons of it. I don't think anybody is going to get an export permit for Hanford's waste, which looks to have more uranium and plutonium in it (of the specific actinides) than is in the US arsenal. Even if they did - just pumping the tanks is almost certain death.
I see this comment all the time: "Microsoft has the money and revenue streams to play the long game, to make bold bets, to stick it out. Early days yet."
Well, yes, Microsoft has a lot of money offshore and a lot of money coming in. But they don't have infinite money. The offshore money isn't "real" until they bring it home to spend and take a 40% haircut on it. They're sinking two billion a year into Bing and the rest of OSD, a billion into Nokia, billions in marketing to get their mobile business off the ground and pretend W8 is going super, and tens of billions in share buybacks and dividends to prop up their stock price, tens of billions a year in failed acquisitions. In the wise words of Bill Gates: "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money." It is not an inexhaustible spigot. They can "fail" every so often but once in a while they have to "win". They ain't been winning new money for a long time now.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to derail your conversation. But when I see this so idly said it makes me sad that so much money is being burned in a hopeless cause when I know what an able, competent, intelligent and compassionate man could do with it.
That could have actually worked.
That did actually work. It's called Android.
Most of us urban/suburban types can wifi tether to our smartphones. That gives us that reliable connection you want everywhere except where we don't want one, i.e.: down by the river. Sure, there are places in the Ozarks where you can't get a decent signal - not a big fraction of the population any more.
It's plutopyrophilia is what it is. Classic case of a fetish for burning wealth.
And then burn it to the ground.
That is to be charged an insanely high annual rate to be weeded out, leaving many with a mountain of debt and no way to pay.
Once all the high end cameras are Android powered this problem will go away.
Ebay.
Yes, Hydriotic acid is toxic in sufficient concentrations.
And if a doctor prescribes these medications without APAP a flag goes up and an audit team descends on him to put a stop to it.
If somebody really wants to kill themselves with chemicals, table salt will do.