To me Google sounds like a nightmarish place to work. It's my understanding that most of those perks they provide aren't designed to make you happier, they're designed to keep you at work 24/7.
Depends on your perspective... I've worked at places that wanted you there 24/7, and didn't provide jack shit as far as perks. In that situation, Google would seem like paradise.
Granted, the best option is to find somewhere with better work/life balance.
Why? because university is more about the process by which you get the answer and because commercial engineering has always been more about getting the answer.
But isn't is also the case that the body of knowledge needed to contribute is so much larger? To paraphrase the famous quote, if you advance by standing on the shoulders of giants, then the next generation of contributors needs to learn that much more in order to advance the state of the art.
That's all fine, but expecting universities to provide everything (i.e. an advancing amount of "base knowledge") means the 4 year degree starts to become 5, 6, 7, etc. Corporations need to hold up their end of this relationship and mentor/train instead of offshore to other countries. They need to expand intern/coop programs (I know my employer actively seeks interns/coops, not sure what industry-wide averages are).
The long term spending in this country must be brought under control and that will never happen as long as boondoggles like these green "investments" continue. They're symbols of the waste that infects our system from top to bottom and so ending them is also symbolic of our commitment to the long term goal of cutting wasteful spending and preserving the rights of our children and grandchildren to be free of the crushing debts incurred by their parents and grandparents.
If you want to control long term spending, there are tons of better programs to examine. Wall street bailouts. Oil company subsidies. Those together are about 1000 times as much money as was lost in Fisker. Toss in the Medicare pharma giveaway and you almost get another order of magnitude. That doesn't get to a bullshit war fought for fraudulent reasons.
On someone ignorant like yourself wouldn't see that infrastructure spending, and yes that includes research, is the future. It encourages education, it creates jobs. Waiting for private industry to solve all our problems means we wouldn't have a space program, nuclear tech, GPS satellites, or highways. Private industry seeks to maximize profit, not benefit society. Private industry is better off in wars fought elsewhere - they sell bullets, health services, and reconstruction industries. As opposed to just selling cheap goods to a content population.
I bought a Sager Midern gaming notebook 3 years ago, for right about $2000. It is heavy, but more like 9 lbs not 12.
Yeah, it was pricier than a regular notebook, and I could have gotten a more awesome desktop for that much, but overall, I'm really happy with the gaming notebook.It has decent stats for me (core i7, 6 GB, 500 GB HD originally but I swapped out for a 250 GB SSD, 17" 1920x1200 screen, GeForce 285M, wireless). I'm not into FPS games so I don't need every graphics setting maxed out. This thing plays the games I want to play just fine - mostly MMOs, indie puzzlers, RPGs, strat games, etc.
And the portability is very useful. I hate headphones (I wear glasses so headphones eventually pinch my ears against the frames) so if I'm bothering somebody (somebody else wants to watch TV) I can take my games to the 2nd or 3rd floor. Or to a LAN party (kinda rare for me these days, but I've dragged midtowers to those and that kinda sucked to do).
So basically, $5000, every year, 12 lbs: not even close.
So why not have a minimum salary for H1B employees?
They do have minimums, but companies skirt them anyway. Shocking, I know.
I can't find the article which summarized it nicely, but if I recall, it boiled down to listing multiple tiers of jobs - e.g. junior employee, mid-level employee, senior employee with various salary ranges. Then, as long as the average of all that somehow equaled the prevailing wages in the area, the hiring company could somehow miraculously ONLY find candidates for the junior jobs!
And as for "that's not what the H1B program is supposed to be about". Well YEAH. Problem is, corporations are essentially full-time dedicated to looking for any way around the law.
Those are my tax dollars buying those things... I don't want to pay a premium because of your political values.
Oh really? Well I get stuck paying for bullshit war, wall street bailouts, and corporate welfare - you want to talk about saving serious money instead of buget ROUNDOFF then let's talk about efficient government spending and political values.
And paying more for a a product or service doesn't create or protect jobs.
It definitely would with the right stipulations, basically "tech stuff needs to manufactured in the U.S. by citizens". Again, we're talking about the purchases of a few specific agencies, not the entire country and all corporations within it.
The United States became an economic superpower because it has steadfastly refused to take up the ideology you're preaching
We become a superpower more due to geography and not getting fucked up as bad as the rest of the world in WW2. Thanks to government spending after it was over, the economy boomed.
thanks to us kicking in the door on their isolationist policies, they went from a feudalistic agricultural society to a modern economic power in the scant space of fifty years.
It had a little more than forcing them into trade. We also rebuilt their country, and then stayed and protected them from China as revenge for various atrocities committed. They'd have been annexed by China had we left the region.
Besides violating over a dozen international treaties
The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?
What? Which treaties require 4 particular U.S. agencies to purchase IT systems from the PRC?
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
Sorry about the post spam... at work have to post, leave, etc. And what I wouldn't give for an edit button.;)
To be clear, I'm not totally down on the free market. It works, mostly. I just think there are areas it doesn't handle well, and waiting for it to sort out is an unacceptable cost - chiefly healthcare and education "markets". There is also the problem of corporate influence into government process, but that is a separate issue that ultimately traces back to the populace that elects Congress. sigh.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
You do realize that's a really stupid thing to say right?
You do realize that blind obedience to the free market is really stupid, right?
Forgot to include that in my other response.
incorporated businesses are more efficient at getting funds from "the public" than anyone else is and mooching, because getting funds from "the public" in exchange for a vote is easier than working.
It just might be that our system (government, economic), by which I mean the U.S., while pretty decent, isn't perfect and the end-all and be-all of sovereign organization. Perhaps the role of politics and government and cash should be heavily examined and revamped to include benefiting citizens as a primary goal, not skimming and extraction rent and transaction fees for corporations.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 0
I would argue that the market is the 21st century way to distribute resources, that there isn't anything better out there, and I would be right.
You would be most incorrect. The free market works great in specific instances, where there is perfect knowledge in the customer base, infinite competition, completely fungible products that aren't necessities, etc. Things like the market for cars, where I have a zillion choices, tons of companies are competing for me, and I can avoid the purchase if nothing meets my various criteria.
Education is not such a product. Neither is healthcare for that matter, but that's a different rant. Going without is unacceptable. The free market does NOT guarantee everybody that needs a product, gets the product. People may not want the product, but that's different, those people exist all the time. The free market guarantees some people do not get said items, since if there isn't enough for everybody, prices rise until some folks drop out due to lack of money. That is not a way to run the foundation and future of a modern superpower, blowing off chunks of the potential of the country due to the circumstances of their birth. That shit might have worked in the 1850's when rugged individualists farmed their own crops and just needed to count, when we had limited interaction with the rest of the world due to communication and travel limitations of the era.
that leads to things like corporatism because specialized rent seekers of the form of profit,
Yes, the for-profit motivation is the shitstain on the fabric of modern society - it taints everything. And that's the problem - somehow dozens of other countries manage to distribute needed resources to their population (healthcare, education) without it disappearing into the craphole of corporate/capitalistic skimming. We should figure out how they are doing it, and replicate it. If that means some folks don't get to scam the rent they are used to, then too goddamn bad.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
That's exactly what I'm saying - this feeding off government guaranteed loans that aren't dischargeable via bankruptcy is total BS. I'd like to see colleges forced into actual free market competition, the kind where they aren't guaranteed payment under all circumstances for merely enrolling bodies, where they have to control costs and so on.
As for scholarships, there are ~17.5 million college students in the U.S. in 2012. If we got rid of government backed loans, that money would need to be replaced. Let's say each student needs an average scholarship of 10K for 4 years (probably a huge underestimate these days), above and beyond their family's savings, what they earn working as a student, and so on. That's only 175 billion a year. I'm thinking the available scholarship money just isn't that high. Therefore the government/public whatever you want to imagine, needs to play a role in funding eduction.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
How are you going to stop the wealthy from getting better services? Will you shut down the Harvards and Yales? Force them to teach who you deem worthy?
First, are you asking what I would do, or are you asking me to be a devil's advocate of what the free market "should" do, with or without government assistance (i.e. government loans versus no government loans)?
Personally, I would fund education using the same attitude that funds wall street bailouts and bs foreign wars - an educated population is the foundation of a 21st century superpower. You know, investing the resources of the country into its citizens as a primary goal. Now if you're OK with the U.S. sliding into some eventual 3rd world shithole, you could take a different strategy.
I wouldn't stop the wealthy from getting better services, the goal would be to provide a baseline of services to those who can't afford them.
I'm not sure that trying to push a variety of platforms at once is necessarilly a bad thing. Tablets and phones are not the same market (although there is some overlap) - they largely won't cannibalise eachother's sales, so they are increasing the platform's user base, which makes it more attractive to developers, which makes it more attractive to consumers.
Yes but then the success of the phone and the tablet is symbiotic - both need each other to succeed. More phone sales lead to more apps which makes the tablet more attractive, etc.
I can't fault Microsoft for trying, but the bar is quite high these days - both iOS and Android have lots of useful apps and that's a major selling point, leading to a nice feedback loop with developers building more apps, etc.
What I think Microsoft did wrong is go in half ass, or put another way, they went in soft trying not to irritate their OEM partners. They've got billions in the bank, if they want to be a player in mobile phones and tablet, they need to heavily subsidize their products and basically pay some big bucks to get apps ported/supported. Stuff that's more expensive but less useful? I can't believe they are scratching their head wondering why uptake sucked. Yes that will piss off their hardware partners but there is a fork in the road, the previous business model won't get the job done fast enough.
I'm hoping they are at least offering a total discount on Win RT to their partners, to soften the inherent advantage they have building hardware.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Here's the thing, the free market isn't some magic fairy that shits pots of gold and sprinkles rainbow dust everywhere.
If you want to have education with a profit motive, then the RISK should be borne by universities. Getting government guaranteed loans with bankruptcy exemptions so it can be handed over to a for-PROFIT institution is total bullshit. In this situation, the university is motivated to crank up tuition with no ceiling. When the RISK is borne by universities, they'll price their damn "product" better, screen students better, perhaps even innovate (e.g. charge different amounts for degrees based on perceived ability to earn income).
Of course, that would lead to large stratification of education, with the wealthy drawn like a magnet to the best schools, the poor having to do with leftovers, etc.
And I would argue that outcome is unacceptable for a 21st century superpower, due to the fact that the free market outcome would not adequately distribute available resources, so education should be exempted or removed and handled by "the public" whereby the society itself benefits.
Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.
You left out the part where Apple spent 4 years building a software infrastructure including apps for handheld devices (phones), and then rolled out the iPad.
Microsoft attempted to birth both (phone, tablet) into a hostile environment (solid competition), at the same time. They may as well have chucked a baby into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected it to survive. After draining the water from the pool first.
Maybe the hypothetical recipient of the iPad is at a point where they want to do more but can't. They've downloaded some books/info at home for offline reading, and now want to write some code. They could jump through a ton of hoops trying to use a device that just isn't designed for that - I'm sure it can be make to work but perhaps the effort isn't worth it the results - and your suggestion about selling it for the money towards a cheap notebook is the way to go.
Are Android tablets better for this - say the Nexus 7, is it straight foward to hack it to a command prompt and get a keyboard for real typing? That would be for the super cost sensitive, but otherwise the cheap notebook/laptop would be better for the kid who wants to learn programming.
Sometimes I wonder why we are so quick to discard the PC. I certainly hope it won't become a symbol of lost opportunity.
The PC is overkill and too expensive for what a large number of customers actually use them for.
I love my PCs (OSX and Windows) and will always have one, but the simple fact is I see what my tech-savvy-but-not-developer friends do with their computers and their needs are essentially satisfied by tablets. I see what my relatives use theirs for. Tablets are the future for the chunk of customers that aren't current computer owners, and hell, most of the ones that are could get by with tablets.
Sure, there's a few things that would be cumbersome without a PC, but those tasks aren't critical path, or even common.
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If your super tight on money and at the point of scavenging for parts, the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to go, since you can SURELY turn up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard for free or close to it.
I own two Apple computers (Mac Mini and Mac Book Pro) so I know all about their pricing. Nevertheless, the FACT is the least amount of money you need to shell out for a full blown OSX development system is... $599 plus tax/shipping. Everything above that is just fine tuning how many luxuries you want.
I started in computers in the 1980's, when computers were expensive as hell and the dream of a one 1% as functional as today's phones and tablets was literally science fiction.
The the high school student who got a gift of a $600 system - STFU and use it to read any of the thousands of free resources devoted to Javascript or some scripting language like Python, Ruby, etc. Install an SSH app, get a VPS linux distribution and have about 1000 times better access to computers than any of the people back when THIS SHIT WAS BEING INVENTED did.
Or, said student should have just requested a Mac Mini in the first place, or some cheap beater PC and spent the difference on Visual Studio, or gotten a Chromebook and done whatever.
Basically, color me unfucking sympathetic to the plight of the student with a $600 modern tablet. Those things are orders of magnitude more powerful than any computer I had personal ownership of for a decade or two.
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet.
You could also buy the low-end Mac Mini, for $600.
I'd buy Game of Thrones on iTunes - I buy a few other shows already - if it were current. But if I have to wait a year to buy it, the same time the DVDs come out, I might as well get it through Netflix since I'm already subscribing to that.
You completely miss the point... There is a demand with no legal supply.
And you completely miss the entire planet the point is on. There is ALWAYS some demand for ANYTHING at a zero price - does that make copyright infringement OK?
Why does the vast majority of America so willingly work against it's best interest?
This is what happens when big money realizes it can influence the political system. It isn't the vast majority of America doing this, it is focused lobbying.
Slashdot Mirror
To me Google sounds like a nightmarish place to work. It's my understanding that most of those perks they provide aren't designed to make you happier, they're designed to keep you at work 24/7.
Depends on your perspective... I've worked at places that wanted you there 24/7, and didn't provide jack shit as far as perks. In that situation, Google would seem like paradise.
Granted, the best option is to find somewhere with better work/life balance.
Why? because university is more about the process by which you get the answer and because commercial engineering has always been more about getting the answer.
But isn't is also the case that the body of knowledge needed to contribute is so much larger? To paraphrase the famous quote, if you advance by standing on the shoulders of giants, then the next generation of contributors needs to learn that much more in order to advance the state of the art.
That's all fine, but expecting universities to provide everything (i.e. an advancing amount of "base knowledge") means the 4 year degree starts to become 5, 6, 7, etc. Corporations need to hold up their end of this relationship and mentor/train instead of offshore to other countries. They need to expand intern/coop programs (I know my employer actively seeks interns/coops, not sure what industry-wide averages are).
The long term spending in this country must be brought under control and that will never happen as long as boondoggles like these green "investments" continue. They're symbols of the waste that infects our system from top to bottom and so ending them is also symbolic of our commitment to the long term goal of cutting wasteful spending and preserving the rights of our children and grandchildren to be free of the crushing debts incurred by their parents and grandparents.
If you want to control long term spending, there are tons of better programs to examine. Wall street bailouts. Oil company subsidies. Those together are about 1000 times as much money as was lost in Fisker. Toss in the Medicare pharma giveaway and you almost get another order of magnitude. That doesn't get to a bullshit war fought for fraudulent reasons.
On someone ignorant like yourself wouldn't see that infrastructure spending, and yes that includes research, is the future. It encourages education, it creates jobs. Waiting for private industry to solve all our problems means we wouldn't have a space program, nuclear tech, GPS satellites, or highways. Private industry seeks to maximize profit, not benefit society. Private industry is better off in wars fought elsewhere - they sell bullets, health services, and reconstruction industries. As opposed to just selling cheap goods to a content population.
I bought a Sager Midern gaming notebook 3 years ago, for right about $2000. It is heavy, but more like 9 lbs not 12.
Yeah, it was pricier than a regular notebook, and I could have gotten a more awesome desktop for that much, but overall, I'm really happy with the gaming notebook.It has decent stats for me (core i7, 6 GB, 500 GB HD originally but I swapped out for a 250 GB SSD, 17" 1920x1200 screen, GeForce 285M, wireless). I'm not into FPS games so I don't need every graphics setting maxed out. This thing plays the games I want to play just fine - mostly MMOs, indie puzzlers, RPGs, strat games, etc.
And the portability is very useful. I hate headphones (I wear glasses so headphones eventually pinch my ears against the frames) so if I'm bothering somebody (somebody else wants to watch TV) I can take my games to the 2nd or 3rd floor. Or to a LAN party (kinda rare for me these days, but I've dragged midtowers to those and that kinda sucked to do).
So basically, $5000, every year, 12 lbs: not even close.
So why not have a minimum salary for H1B employees?
They do have minimums, but companies skirt them anyway. Shocking, I know.
I can't find the article which summarized it nicely, but if I recall, it boiled down to listing multiple tiers of jobs - e.g. junior employee, mid-level employee, senior employee with various salary ranges. Then, as long as the average of all that somehow equaled the prevailing wages in the area, the hiring company could somehow miraculously ONLY find candidates for the junior jobs!
And as for "that's not what the H1B program is supposed to be about". Well YEAH. Problem is, corporations are essentially full-time dedicated to looking for any way around the law.
Hey, I'd like to buy some of those drugs. Hit me up on iMessage at 407-TOTALLY-NOT-A-COP.
Oh crap you're in central florida too?!?! ;)
Those are my tax dollars buying those things... I don't want to pay a premium because of your political values.
Oh really? Well I get stuck paying for bullshit war, wall street bailouts, and corporate welfare - you want to talk about saving serious money instead of buget ROUNDOFF then let's talk about efficient government spending and political values.
And paying more for a a product or service doesn't create or protect jobs.
It definitely would with the right stipulations, basically "tech stuff needs to manufactured in the U.S. by citizens". Again, we're talking about the purchases of a few specific agencies, not the entire country and all corporations within it.
The United States became an economic superpower because it has steadfastly refused to take up the ideology you're preaching
We become a superpower more due to geography and not getting fucked up as bad as the rest of the world in WW2. Thanks to government spending after it was over, the economy boomed.
thanks to us kicking in the door on their isolationist policies, they went from a feudalistic agricultural society to a modern economic power in the scant space of fifty years.
It had a little more than forcing them into trade. We also rebuilt their country, and then stayed and protected them from China as revenge for various atrocities committed. They'd have been annexed by China had we left the region.
Besides violating over a dozen international treaties
The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?
What? Which treaties require 4 particular U.S. agencies to purchase IT systems from the PRC?
Sorry about the post spam... at work have to post, leave, etc. And what I wouldn't give for an edit button. ;)
To be clear, I'm not totally down on the free market. It works, mostly. I just think there are areas it doesn't handle well, and waiting for it to sort out is an unacceptable cost - chiefly healthcare and education "markets". There is also the problem of corporate influence into government process, but that is a separate issue that ultimately traces back to the populace that elects Congress. sigh.
You do realize that's a really stupid thing to say right?
You do realize that blind obedience to the free market is really stupid, right?
Forgot to include that in my other response.
incorporated businesses are more efficient at getting funds from "the public" than anyone else is and mooching, because getting funds from "the public" in exchange for a vote is easier than working.
It just might be that our system (government, economic), by which I mean the U.S., while pretty decent, isn't perfect and the end-all and be-all of sovereign organization. Perhaps the role of politics and government and cash should be heavily examined and revamped to include benefiting citizens as a primary goal, not skimming and extraction rent and transaction fees for corporations.
I would argue that the market is the 21st century way to distribute resources, that there isn't anything better out there, and I would be right.
You would be most incorrect. The free market works great in specific instances, where there is perfect knowledge in the customer base, infinite competition, completely fungible products that aren't necessities, etc. Things like the market for cars, where I have a zillion choices, tons of companies are competing for me, and I can avoid the purchase if nothing meets my various criteria.
Education is not such a product. Neither is healthcare for that matter, but that's a different rant. Going without is unacceptable. The free market does NOT guarantee everybody that needs a product, gets the product. People may not want the product, but that's different, those people exist all the time. The free market guarantees some people do not get said items, since if there isn't enough for everybody, prices rise until some folks drop out due to lack of money. That is not a way to run the foundation and future of a modern superpower, blowing off chunks of the potential of the country due to the circumstances of their birth. That shit might have worked in the 1850's when rugged individualists farmed their own crops and just needed to count, when we had limited interaction with the rest of the world due to communication and travel limitations of the era.
that leads to things like corporatism because specialized rent seekers of the form of profit,
Yes, the for-profit motivation is the shitstain on the fabric of modern society - it taints everything. And that's the problem - somehow dozens of other countries manage to distribute needed resources to their population (healthcare, education) without it disappearing into the craphole of corporate/capitalistic skimming. We should figure out how they are doing it, and replicate it. If that means some folks don't get to scam the rent they are used to, then too goddamn bad.
That's exactly what I'm saying - this feeding off government guaranteed loans that aren't dischargeable via bankruptcy is total BS. I'd like to see colleges forced into actual free market competition, the kind where they aren't guaranteed payment under all circumstances for merely enrolling bodies, where they have to control costs and so on.
As for scholarships, there are ~17.5 million college students in the U.S. in 2012. If we got rid of government backed loans, that money would need to be replaced. Let's say each student needs an average scholarship of 10K for 4 years (probably a huge underestimate these days), above and beyond their family's savings, what they earn working as a student, and so on. That's only 175 billion a year. I'm thinking the available scholarship money just isn't that high. Therefore the government/public whatever you want to imagine, needs to play a role in funding eduction.
How are you going to stop the wealthy from getting better services? Will you shut down the Harvards and Yales? Force them to teach who you deem worthy?
First, are you asking what I would do, or are you asking me to be a devil's advocate of what the free market "should" do, with or without government assistance (i.e. government loans versus no government loans)?
Personally, I would fund education using the same attitude that funds wall street bailouts and bs foreign wars - an educated population is the foundation of a 21st century superpower. You know, investing the resources of the country into its citizens as a primary goal. Now if you're OK with the U.S. sliding into some eventual 3rd world shithole, you could take a different strategy.
I wouldn't stop the wealthy from getting better services, the goal would be to provide a baseline of services to those who can't afford them.
I'm not sure that trying to push a variety of platforms at once is necessarilly a bad thing. Tablets and phones are not the same market (although there is some overlap) - they largely won't cannibalise eachother's sales, so they are increasing the platform's user base, which makes it more attractive to developers, which makes it more attractive to consumers.
Yes but then the success of the phone and the tablet is symbiotic - both need each other to succeed. More phone sales lead to more apps which makes the tablet more attractive, etc.
I can't fault Microsoft for trying, but the bar is quite high these days - both iOS and Android have lots of useful apps and that's a major selling point, leading to a nice feedback loop with developers building more apps, etc.
What I think Microsoft did wrong is go in half ass, or put another way, they went in soft trying not to irritate their OEM partners. They've got billions in the bank, if they want to be a player in mobile phones and tablet, they need to heavily subsidize their products and basically pay some big bucks to get apps ported/supported. Stuff that's more expensive but less useful? I can't believe they are scratching their head wondering why uptake sucked. Yes that will piss off their hardware partners but there is a fork in the road, the previous business model won't get the job done fast enough.
I'm hoping they are at least offering a total discount on Win RT to their partners, to soften the inherent advantage they have building hardware.
Here's the thing, the free market isn't some magic fairy that shits pots of gold and sprinkles rainbow dust everywhere.
If you want to have education with a profit motive, then the RISK should be borne by universities. Getting government guaranteed loans with bankruptcy exemptions so it can be handed over to a for-PROFIT institution is total bullshit. In this situation, the university is motivated to crank up tuition with no ceiling. When the RISK is borne by universities, they'll price their damn "product" better, screen students better, perhaps even innovate (e.g. charge different amounts for degrees based on perceived ability to earn income).
Of course, that would lead to large stratification of education, with the wealthy drawn like a magnet to the best schools, the poor having to do with leftovers, etc.
And I would argue that outcome is unacceptable for a 21st century superpower, due to the fact that the free market outcome would not adequately distribute available resources, so education should be exempted or removed and handled by "the public" whereby the society itself benefits.
Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.
You left out the part where Apple spent 4 years building a software infrastructure including apps for handheld devices (phones), and then rolled out the iPad.
Microsoft attempted to birth both (phone, tablet) into a hostile environment (solid competition), at the same time. They may as well have chucked a baby into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected it to survive. After draining the water from the pool first.
Ok I admit I was being harsh before.
Maybe the hypothetical recipient of the iPad is at a point where they want to do more but can't. They've downloaded some books/info at home for offline reading, and now want to write some code. They could jump through a ton of hoops trying to use a device that just isn't designed for that - I'm sure it can be make to work but perhaps the effort isn't worth it the results - and your suggestion about selling it for the money towards a cheap notebook is the way to go.
Are Android tablets better for this - say the Nexus 7, is it straight foward to hack it to a command prompt and get a keyboard for real typing? That would be for the super cost sensitive, but otherwise the cheap notebook/laptop would be better for the kid who wants to learn programming.
Sometimes I wonder why we are so quick to discard the PC. I certainly hope it won't become a symbol of lost opportunity.
The PC is overkill and too expensive for what a large number of customers actually use them for.
I love my PCs (OSX and Windows) and will always have one, but the simple fact is I see what my tech-savvy-but-not-developer friends do with their computers and their needs are essentially satisfied by tablets. I see what my relatives use theirs for. Tablets are the future for the chunk of customers that aren't current computer owners, and hell, most of the ones that are could get by with tablets.
Sure, there's a few things that would be cumbersome without a PC, but those tasks aren't critical path, or even common.
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If your super tight on money and at the point of scavenging for parts, the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to go, since you can SURELY turn up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard for free or close to it.
I own two Apple computers (Mac Mini and Mac Book Pro) so I know all about their pricing. Nevertheless, the FACT is the least amount of money you need to shell out for a full blown OSX development system is... $599 plus tax/shipping. Everything above that is just fine tuning how many luxuries you want.
I started in computers in the 1980's, when computers were expensive as hell and the dream of a one 1% as functional as today's phones and tablets was literally science fiction.
The the high school student who got a gift of a $600 system - STFU and use it to read any of the thousands of free resources devoted to Javascript or some scripting language like Python, Ruby, etc. Install an SSH app, get a VPS linux distribution and have about 1000 times better access to computers than any of the people back when THIS SHIT WAS BEING INVENTED did.
Or, said student should have just requested a Mac Mini in the first place, or some cheap beater PC and spent the difference on Visual Studio, or gotten a Chromebook and done whatever.
Basically, color me unfucking sympathetic to the plight of the student with a $600 modern tablet. Those things are orders of magnitude more powerful than any computer I had personal ownership of for a decade or two.
The solution is obviously to stop buying devices you don't truly own, but it's difficult when many applications are targeted for that platform first.
So, Yeelong Lemote or nothing?
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet.
You could also buy the low-end Mac Mini, for $600.
I'd buy Game of Thrones on iTunes - I buy a few other shows already - if it were current. But if I have to wait a year to buy it, the same time the DVDs come out, I might as well get it through Netflix since I'm already subscribing to that.
You completely miss the point... There is a demand with no legal supply.
And you completely miss the entire planet the point is on. There is ALWAYS some demand for ANYTHING at a zero price - does that make copyright infringement OK?
Why does the vast majority of America so willingly work against it's best interest?
This is what happens when big money realizes it can influence the political system.
It isn't the vast majority of America doing this, it is focused lobbying.