Actually, if you're willing to count deaths to others besides astronauts themselves, the Soviets had a much higher kill rate, because of a bad track record on launches. You're excluding:
(1960) The "Nedelin Disaster", in which an R-7 rocket undergoing repairs on the launchpad exploded. Estimates of the dead vary a lot, but the least I've seen is 100 people. Unquestionably the worst space disaster yet.
(1961) Cosmonaut Bondarenko dies in simulator accident
(1969) The N-1 launchpad explosion. The N-1 rocket was supposed to be the USSR's Saturn V, but it failed repeatedly, and took out 5 people and the launchpad on the final attempt.
(1973) Kosmos 3M explodes on the pad, 7 dead
(1980) At least 50 people die when a rocket explodes during refueling.
Including these sort of things adds the one casualty caused by a Titan launch crane accident.
I suspect Brazil is in second place in the casualty race, since their launchpad explosion in 2003 killed twenty-odd people. (I seem to recall India having a recent space-related accident, but I can't remember what it was.)
If you don't believe a computer can pick up girls, you've either never been out with a shiny new MacBook or you're so thoroughly lacking in other features that they're outweighing it.
I'm not hideous, and historically I've done alright with women (I'm married now), but I'm not by any means exceptional looking. I study a lot in coffee shops and the like because the library is a pain to park at and I can't get a thing done at home. No computer with me, I get left alone. No one talks to me. Brand new MacBook two weeks ago...only once out of about ten nights did some girl not strike up a conversation with me about it (some guy did that night...not going to guess at his motivations). Same thing happened when my old iBook was new 5 years ago, and continued happening with diminishing frequency the whole time I had it. Chicks dig mac laptops. Maybe not all girls, but what would you do with all of them anyway?
I work with Windows daily. And yet what "must have" apps do I use that I'm dying to run on my Mac? None. There is literally nothing among the probably several dozen apps I use at work on Windows that I wouldn't rather be doing with its equivalent on the Mac. Hell, probably 75% of Windows users don't use anything other than Office, a web browser, and an e-mail client in an average week.
Incidentally, if I hadn't decided to go to grad school, and stayed in the job I had after my undergrad, the only computers I would ever use would be Macs (aside from the scary Win95 pentium in the basement there that runs the big piece of home made equipment. But that's just a matter of starting up and clicking on an icon.)
Windows is NOT the most popular piece of software on the planet. It is perhaps the most used, but it is probably also among the most hated. Windows succeeded because of MS-DOS, and MS-DOS succeeded because it filled a niche well. Windows didn't succeed because it worked well, it succeeded because it ran on computers people, and more importantly, companies, were already buying, and it came from a company they already had a relationship. Windows sucks when it comes to usability. It's improving, not because of Bill Gates, but because of the people who work for him.
I'm not sure how him being well traveled is relevant, but for the record I've traveled to a number of poor places and spoken with the people, too. And I don't even own a multi-billion dollar software company!
Obviously, crank-powered computers are stupid, but crank-powered cell phones are fine.
Bill Gates has a long history of just not quite getting it when it comes to what people need and how people use their computers. There are a lot of capable, bright, people working at Microsoft, but they've never really been able to compensate for the fact that the guy at the top doesn't entirely understand what they're trying to do. This is just an extension of that.
It's worth noting that many people consider Gates to be at least mildly autistic, and an inability to "put himself in others' shoes" would not be uncommon for some one wit that diagnosis.
Apple's margin on the iTMS is pretty slim, compared to that of the iPod. Jobs has said that iTMS is basically just a vehicle to sell iPods, and if the music can play everywhere else, it ceases to be that. If the law goes into effect, I see Apple killing iTMS in France, but continuing to sell iPods. With the restrictions on WMA gone, iPod users can legally use that music, and the other music stores provide the incentive to buy iPods, without Apple sacrificing any IP rights along the way. Granted, they lose the income from iTMS, but I think they'd see it as worth it.
Most people get their idea that the Mac is safe compared to Windows by the fact that their Windows cohorts are constantly finding viruses and malware on their computer and/or experiencing their effects, while the Mac folks never seem to have issues with them. Nobody listens to the blatherings of the geek world...there are way too many alarmists on both sides and way too many threats for the average user to keep track of.
You are a liability, but you were before, too. It's not like you woke up one morning and found note taped to your forehead notifying you that you have a new job starting in two weeks. If you were going to do something vile with your privileges, and you were remotely intelligent, you'd have already done it before you provided notice. This is shooting themselves in the foot.
Certainly the company can survive without you, but transitions for many positions can be long and costly, and its silly for an employer not to keep somebody around to help prepare for it.
They're certainly within their rights, of course, so take your money and enjoy your time off.
Peer review is a little like evolution: it's sloppy, it's brutal, it makes its share of mistakes, but in the end it works. There are loads of horror stories out there, but most of the time things shake out. And in most fields, even if your paper gets rejected one place, unless the whole field is against you, it can generally get published somewhere else, assuming there's some merit to it. Unfair reviews are balanced by other reviewers, and if you feel like you've been truly screwed, the final decision always rests with the editor. Some one in my lab is fighting that fight right now.
It is important to remember the reviewers are only anonymous to the authors (though, as you say, they aren't that anonymous...looking at the review of my last three papers I can guess with about 90% certain who all but one of them are). The editors know who they are, and giving a sloppy, unfair, or inappropriate review still hurts a reviewer's reputation with editor, who many times is a fairly well-respected member of the field. I'm often tempted to give marginal papers in review a pass, just because I know how much it sucks to have a paper rejected, I know the amount of work that went into it, and I'm a fairly nice guy (I think). But I also know that the editor is judging me on how I respond to the paper, and I don't want him/her to take my willingness to let subpar work slide as a reflection of my understanding of what qualifies as quality science, and so I do my best to give my honest opinion on the quality of the work.
What this really underscores is that this space stuff is really, really hard. It's a tremendously complex endeavor with many, many variables completely unknown and little margin of error.
Also, while the Japanese have had a fair number of failures lately, remember that although the technology is better now, experience-wise they are in a much earlier stage of their program than the U.S. or Russia/USSR (remember, say, Mariner 1,3, and 8 and half a dozen Pioneer missions? Or the zillion mysterious "Kosmos" missions? These programs still have their fair share of failures even now). The European Space Agency has had it's share of problems too...at least the Japanese weren't making smugly superior comments to the press about how much better their spacecraft were like the Europeans were. (Or if they did I didn't read it.)
I'm not saying it's the way it should be, just the way it is. And America doesn't have a monopoly on this sort of thing. No one anywhere likes a 10 year old telling them how to do their job.
The socio-economical problems of an area did not influence the actual mortality rate, maybe (I have my doubts, but I won't argue here), but they almost certainly effect the reported mortality rate. How many Vietnamese chicken farmers would go to the hospital if they weren't already on death's door?
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
It also depends on the nature of the mutations necessary to convert into something readily human-transmissable. Viral genetics and epidemiology aren't exactly my field, but I'd say that if this conversion requires, say, mutations in genes A, B, and C, the odds of the complete change occurring in the first year will be considerably smaller than a few years later when it's already accumulated mutations A and B. And, of course, the odds will be effected by the impact on selection of having any of the given mutations.
I'd be willing to bet he won't be working at either place, except maybe as a janitor or low-level staff. These people don't wind up productive scientists. They wind up unemployed (or underemployed) weirdos. Gifted scientists might enter college in their early teens, but not at eight. I've worked in research for over a decade now, and I can tell you that being able to get along with other scientists is every bit as important as being a genius, and if you can't, then nine times out of ten your work, inspired genius or not, won't see the light of day. You think a ten year old is going to be able to socialize appropriately with research faculty? Hardly. Even if he was perfected normal emotionally (which is incredibly unlikely) he would be shunned, mocked, or resented by the people he has to work with. And this is as a ten year old, when people are possible at their greatest susceptibility to such treatment.
Everything I've seen indicates that this sort of thing is generally (though, admittedly, not always) bad for the kid. Whether he's intellectually ready for college or not, he's not emotionally ready, and in four years (or less, at his rate) he will certainly not be emotionally ready for grad school. You don't have to force him to "be his age" intellectually...you can offer him an intellectually challenging curriculum without forcing him into a situation designed for young adults.
These kids usually burn out fast, and very few make lasting contributions to their field. We will never hear of this kid as an adult. Mark my words. I think that's a function of a number of things, foremost among them is the fact that behind most of these kids are insane, high-pressure parents. Some of them are loving parents, but very few are good for their kids. Also the kind of thinking that wows people as an eight year old isn't necessarily the kind of thinking that gets you through college, and it almost certainly isn't the kind that writes a PhD dissertation in physics, or revolutionizes one's field.
Being freakishly intelligent is as much a handicap as a blessing. If anything, it gets in the way of your education. The idea behind Gifted & Talented programs was to recognize this and provide these kids with stimulating educational opportunities matched to their particular gifts. In practice, however, many schools have turned these either into functionless shells or programs apparently designed to reward the kids with good grades with something interesting to do. These are the programs we need to deal with these kids...not rushing him through the entire regular curriculum in months. (Speaking of which, why even pretend you're trying to educate the kid? You couldn't physically run through 13 years of coursework in nine months.)
It takes a true love of your field to stay in most sciences these days...
For example, I got a bachelors, started at $13,000 ("But it's just a foot in the door!") worked for five years up to $24,000. Then I went to grad school and got a masters. This qualifies me to a job making...maybe $28,000? But I went for the PhD, which is what I'm doing now. By the time I'm done I'll have ten years of schooling and I'll be making (at current rates) maybe $60,000. Now I'm okay with that...I made peace with the fact that I will never be rich a long time ago. But its been a little tough psychologically when all my CS friends, and even those who weren't CS but happened to have a single programming class, went off and got computer jobs that paid several times mine right out of college, and all of them already make considerably more than I will make once I finish my six years of 90 hours a week for less than $17,000 a year.
Add that to a social/political environment which ignores or manipulates science freely and in which a great proportion of society seems to resent and distrust scientists.
Better yet, do your homework and don't buy it in the first place. They want to cut themselves out of the market like that, more power to them.
The recording industry is all up in arms about how illegal downloads are ruining their business, and yet they're trying to seel us crippled crap? How long do they really expect people to go to the trouble of shelling out ridiculous sums of money for semi-functional crap when free and fully-functional is a few clicks away?
Actually, I'd put the average lifespan of rental DVD as shorter than many cars. There's just too much opportunity for abuse. My guess is the average Honda or Toyota outlives them easily.
Apple should, and probably will, call this bluff. The future of music is internet sales, and the record companies know it. Though its odd for me (some one who usually thinks of Apple in the context of its computers), to think of them in such terms, in this particular arena, Apple is the 800 pound gorilla. For good or ill, right now Apple can and does call the shots when it comes to online music sales. You want to cut your labels songs out of 75% of the online music sales market? Fine. Some people will go elsewhere to buy them, but many, probably most, people just won't buy them.
The labels have been throwing their weight around for years, to the detriment of both artists and listeners. It's nice to see them squirm.
I'll believe this is a good idea when I can go a week without having to leave my lab and hike across campus for a reference that isn't available online.
There's an impressive amount of stuff online these days. But there's also an impressive amount that isn't.
The ecosystem may not have adapted to the point of reaching any sort of equilibrium, but it most certainly has changed profoundly in 13,000 years, and there's no undoing it. That particular genie is out of the bottle. So we reintroduce near equivalents of North American megafauna - are we going to also introduce all the associated microfauna and microflora? What about North American wild horse diseases and American cheetah tapeworms? Plants with seeds which only germinated when passed through the gut of a wooly mammoth? These types of things existed, many, almost certainly, which did not exist outside the Americas. Do we even have more than a vague clue what all the relevant species 13,000 years ago were? Are there equivalent species around now? If we're going to pretend we're restoring the ecosystem of the Pleistocene Era, we can't just do the megafauna....the rest of the ecosystem has been changing too, and it all effects the whole.
I attend a large land grant university (a university not exactly brimming over with Mac support, I can tell you), and I can tell you roughly a third of the laptops I see in the library and the coffee shop are Macs. I can tell you this because I, being the giant dork that I am, counted every time I saw a laptop in one of those places.
Three of seven people in my lab use Macs, despite the fact that that meant purchasing/bringing our own rather than use the nice new PCs the university provided.
Apple has slipped in terms of institutional purchases at universities, but everything I have seen at the three universities I've been involved with recently (all three major universities with 18,000+ students each) indicates that the proportion of students with Macs is substantial, much larger than when I was an undergrad more than a decade ago (gasp!) when there were many more Macs in college computer labs.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if you're willing to count deaths to others besides astronauts themselves, the Soviets had a much higher kill rate, because of a bad track record on launches. You're excluding:
(1960) The "Nedelin Disaster", in which an R-7 rocket undergoing repairs on the launchpad exploded. Estimates of the dead vary a lot, but the least I've seen is 100 people. Unquestionably the worst space disaster yet.
(1961) Cosmonaut Bondarenko dies in simulator accident
(1969) The N-1 launchpad explosion. The N-1 rocket was supposed to be the USSR's Saturn V, but it failed repeatedly, and took out 5 people and the launchpad on the final attempt.
(1973) Kosmos 3M explodes on the pad, 7 dead
(1980) At least 50 people die when a rocket explodes during refueling.
Including these sort of things adds the one casualty caused by a Titan launch crane accident.
I suspect Brazil is in second place in the casualty race, since their launchpad explosion in 2003 killed twenty-odd people. (I seem to recall India having a recent space-related accident, but I can't remember what it was.)
If you don't believe a computer can pick up girls, you've either never been out with a shiny new MacBook or you're so thoroughly lacking in other features that they're outweighing it.
I'm not hideous, and historically I've done alright with women (I'm married now), but I'm not by any means exceptional looking. I study a lot in coffee shops and the like because the library is a pain to park at and I can't get a thing done at home. No computer with me, I get left alone. No one talks to me. Brand new MacBook two weeks ago...only once out of about ten nights did some girl not strike up a conversation with me about it (some guy did that night...not going to guess at his motivations). Same thing happened when my old iBook was new 5 years ago, and continued happening with diminishing frequency the whole time I had it. Chicks dig mac laptops. Maybe not all girls, but what would you do with all of them anyway?
And an oblate spheroid isn't round? What is it, square?
I work with Windows daily. And yet what "must have" apps do I use that I'm dying to run on my Mac? None. There is literally nothing among the probably several dozen apps I use at work on Windows that I wouldn't rather be doing with its equivalent on the Mac. Hell, probably 75% of Windows users don't use anything other than Office, a web browser, and an e-mail client in an average week.
Incidentally, if I hadn't decided to go to grad school, and stayed in the job I had after my undergrad, the only computers I would ever use would be Macs (aside from the scary Win95 pentium in the basement there that runs the big piece of home made equipment. But that's just a matter of starting up and clicking on an icon.)
Windows is NOT the most popular piece of software on the planet. It is perhaps the most used, but it is probably also among the most hated. Windows succeeded because of MS-DOS, and MS-DOS succeeded because it filled a niche well. Windows didn't succeed because it worked well, it succeeded because it ran on computers people, and more importantly, companies, were already buying, and it came from a company they already had a relationship. Windows sucks when it comes to usability. It's improving, not because of Bill Gates, but because of the people who work for him.
I'm not sure how him being well traveled is relevant, but for the record I've traveled to a number of poor places and spoken with the people, too. And I don't even own a multi-billion dollar software company!
Obviously, crank-powered computers are stupid, but crank-powered cell phones are fine.
Bill Gates has a long history of just not quite getting it when it comes to what people need and how people use their computers. There are a lot of capable, bright, people working at Microsoft, but they've never really been able to compensate for the fact that the guy at the top doesn't entirely understand what they're trying to do. This is just an extension of that.
It's worth noting that many people consider Gates to be at least mildly autistic, and an inability to "put himself in others' shoes" would not be uncommon for some one wit that diagnosis.
Apple's margin on the iTMS is pretty slim, compared to that of the iPod. Jobs has said that iTMS is basically just a vehicle to sell iPods, and if the music can play everywhere else, it ceases to be that. If the law goes into effect, I see Apple killing iTMS in France, but continuing to sell iPods. With the restrictions on WMA gone, iPod users can legally use that music, and the other music stores provide the incentive to buy iPods, without Apple sacrificing any IP rights along the way. Granted, they lose the income from iTMS, but I think they'd see it as worth it.
Most people get their idea that the Mac is safe compared to Windows by the fact that their Windows cohorts are constantly finding viruses and malware on their computer and/or experiencing their effects, while the Mac folks never seem to have issues with them. Nobody listens to the blatherings of the geek world...there are way too many alarmists on both sides and way too many threats for the average user to keep track of.
Also, look at the lame-ass website and the way he writes...do those look like the work of a Mac user?
You are a liability, but you were before, too. It's not like you woke up one morning and found note taped to your forehead notifying you that you have a new job starting in two weeks. If you were going to do something vile with your privileges, and you were remotely intelligent, you'd have already done it before you provided notice. This is shooting themselves in the foot.
Certainly the company can survive without you, but transitions for many positions can be long and costly, and its silly for an employer not to keep somebody around to help prepare for it.
They're certainly within their rights, of course, so take your money and enjoy your time off.
And how many of those five million cases were urinal-transmitted?
Peer review is a little like evolution: it's sloppy, it's brutal, it makes its share of mistakes, but in the end it works. There are loads of horror stories out there, but most of the time things shake out. And in most fields, even if your paper gets rejected one place, unless the whole field is against you, it can generally get published somewhere else, assuming there's some merit to it. Unfair reviews are balanced by other reviewers, and if you feel like you've been truly screwed, the final decision always rests with the editor. Some one in my lab is fighting that fight right now.
It is important to remember the reviewers are only anonymous to the authors (though, as you say, they aren't that anonymous...looking at the review of my last three papers I can guess with about 90% certain who all but one of them are). The editors know who they are, and giving a sloppy, unfair, or inappropriate review still hurts a reviewer's reputation with editor, who many times is a fairly well-respected member of the field. I'm often tempted to give marginal papers in review a pass, just because I know how much it sucks to have a paper rejected, I know the amount of work that went into it, and I'm a fairly nice guy (I think). But I also know that the editor is judging me on how I respond to the paper, and I don't want him/her to take my willingness to let subpar work slide as a reflection of my understanding of what qualifies as quality science, and so I do my best to give my honest opinion on the quality of the work.
What this really underscores is that this space stuff is really, really hard. It's a tremendously complex endeavor with many, many variables completely unknown and little margin of error.
Also, while the Japanese have had a fair number of failures lately, remember that although the technology is better now, experience-wise they are in a much earlier stage of their program than the U.S. or Russia/USSR (remember, say, Mariner 1,3, and 8 and half a dozen Pioneer missions? Or the zillion mysterious "Kosmos" missions? These programs still have their fair share of failures even now). The European Space Agency has had it's share of problems too...at least the Japanese weren't making smugly superior comments to the press about how much better their spacecraft were like the Europeans were. (Or if they did I didn't read it.)
Um, okay? That's not even coherent.
I'm not saying it's the way it should be, just the way it is. And America doesn't have a monopoly on this sort of thing. No one anywhere likes a 10 year old telling them how to do their job.
The socio-economical problems of an area did not influence the actual mortality rate, maybe (I have my doubts, but I won't argue here), but they almost certainly effect the reported mortality rate. How many Vietnamese chicken farmers would go to the hospital if they weren't already on death's door?
It also depends on the nature of the mutations necessary to convert into something readily human-transmissable. Viral genetics and epidemiology aren't exactly my field, but I'd say that if this conversion requires, say, mutations in genes A, B, and C, the odds of the complete change occurring in the first year will be considerably smaller than a few years later when it's already accumulated mutations A and B. And, of course, the odds will be effected by the impact on selection of having any of the given mutations.
I'd be willing to bet he won't be working at either place, except maybe as a janitor or low-level staff. These people don't wind up productive scientists. They wind up unemployed (or underemployed) weirdos. Gifted scientists might enter college in their early teens, but not at eight. I've worked in research for over a decade now, and I can tell you that being able to get along with other scientists is every bit as important as being a genius, and if you can't, then nine times out of ten your work, inspired genius or not, won't see the light of day. You think a ten year old is going to be able to socialize appropriately with research faculty? Hardly. Even if he was perfected normal emotionally (which is incredibly unlikely) he would be shunned, mocked, or resented by the people he has to work with. And this is as a ten year old, when people are possible at their greatest susceptibility to such treatment.
Everything I've seen indicates that this sort of thing is generally (though, admittedly, not always) bad for the kid. Whether he's intellectually ready for college or not, he's not emotionally ready, and in four years (or less, at his rate) he will certainly not be emotionally ready for grad school. You don't have to force him to "be his age" intellectually...you can offer him an intellectually challenging curriculum without forcing him into a situation designed for young adults.
These kids usually burn out fast, and very few make lasting contributions to their field. We will never hear of this kid as an adult. Mark my words. I think that's a function of a number of things, foremost among them is the fact that behind most of these kids are insane, high-pressure parents. Some of them are loving parents, but very few are good for their kids. Also the kind of thinking that wows people as an eight year old isn't necessarily the kind of thinking that gets you through college, and it almost certainly isn't the kind that writes a PhD dissertation in physics, or revolutionizes one's field.
Being freakishly intelligent is as much a handicap as a blessing. If anything, it gets in the way of your education. The idea behind Gifted & Talented programs was to recognize this and provide these kids with stimulating educational opportunities matched to their particular gifts. In practice, however, many schools have turned these either into functionless shells or programs apparently designed to reward the kids with good grades with something interesting to do. These are the programs we need to deal with these kids...not rushing him through the entire regular curriculum in months. (Speaking of which, why even pretend you're trying to educate the kid? You couldn't physically run through 13 years of coursework in nine months.)
It takes a true love of your field to stay in most sciences these days...
For example, I got a bachelors, started at $13,000 ("But it's just a foot in the door!") worked for five years up to $24,000. Then I went to grad school and got a masters. This qualifies me to a job making...maybe $28,000? But I went for the PhD, which is what I'm doing now. By the time I'm done I'll have ten years of schooling and I'll be making (at current rates) maybe $60,000. Now I'm okay with that...I made peace with the fact that I will never be rich a long time ago. But its been a little tough psychologically when all my CS friends, and even those who weren't CS but happened to have a single programming class, went off and got computer jobs that paid several times mine right out of college, and all of them already make considerably more than I will make once I finish my six years of 90 hours a week for less than $17,000 a year.
Add that to a social/political environment which ignores or manipulates science freely and in which a great proportion of society seems to resent and distrust scientists.
Better yet, do your homework and don't buy it in the first place. They want to cut themselves out of the market like that, more power to them.
The recording industry is all up in arms about how illegal downloads are ruining their business, and yet they're trying to seel us crippled crap? How long do they really expect people to go to the trouble of shelling out ridiculous sums of money for semi-functional crap when free and fully-functional is a few clicks away?
Actually, I'd put the average lifespan of rental DVD as shorter than many cars. There's just too much opportunity for abuse. My guess is the average Honda or Toyota outlives them easily.
Of course, it also costs a thousand times more.
Apple should, and probably will, call this bluff. The future of music is internet sales, and the record companies know it. Though its odd for me (some one who usually thinks of Apple in the context of its computers), to think of them in such terms, in this particular arena, Apple is the 800 pound gorilla. For good or ill, right now Apple can and does call the shots when it comes to online music sales. You want to cut your labels songs out of 75% of the online music sales market? Fine. Some people will go elsewhere to buy them, but many, probably most, people just won't buy them.
The labels have been throwing their weight around for years, to the detriment of both artists and listeners. It's nice to see them squirm.
I'll believe this is a good idea when I can go a week without having to leave my lab and hike across campus for a reference that isn't available online.
There's an impressive amount of stuff online these days. But there's also an impressive amount that isn't.
The ecosystem may not have adapted to the point of reaching any sort of equilibrium, but it most certainly has changed profoundly in 13,000 years, and there's no undoing it. That particular genie is out of the bottle. So we reintroduce near equivalents of North American megafauna - are we going to also introduce all the associated microfauna and microflora? What about North American wild horse diseases and American cheetah tapeworms? Plants with seeds which only germinated when passed through the gut of a wooly mammoth? These types of things existed, many, almost certainly, which did not exist outside the Americas. Do we even have more than a vague clue what all the relevant species 13,000 years ago were? Are there equivalent species around now? If we're going to pretend we're restoring the ecosystem of the Pleistocene Era, we can't just do the megafauna....the rest of the ecosystem has been changing too, and it all effects the whole.
I attend a large land grant university (a university not exactly brimming over with Mac support, I can tell you), and I can tell you roughly a third of the laptops I see in the library and the coffee shop are Macs. I can tell you this because I, being the giant dork that I am, counted every time I saw a laptop in one of those places.
Three of seven people in my lab use Macs, despite the fact that that meant purchasing/bringing our own rather than use the nice new PCs the university provided.
Apple has slipped in terms of institutional purchases at universities, but everything I have seen at the three universities I've been involved with recently (all three major universities with 18,000+ students each) indicates that the proportion of students with Macs is substantial, much larger than when I was an undergrad more than a decade ago (gasp!) when there were many more Macs in college computer labs.