What do pandas eat?
Bamboo.
What does bamboo have a lot of?
Fiber.
There's your reason for why you don't want a panda with 6 asses. You don't want them running around your house, shitting 6 times as efficiently.
If I could get my hands on some panda DNA, I'd genetically engineer a mini-panda about the size of a guinea pig or hamster for the pet market.
In one fell swoop, I will have saved a species from extinction AND become a billionaire!
Yup, monitoring blogposts is going to be TOTALLY useful. I can already see the blog posts that they'll have to be reading through:
"Dear Allah,
It's me, Muhammad. How do you deal with peer pressure? I mean, like, my friends have been pressuring me to join the jihad against the infidels. They've all joined the jihad, except for me. I really want to, but my mom won't let me. She's so uncool! What should I do?"
or
"Today I tried to talk to this hot chick in my engineering class, but she totally ignored me. Well, fuck that bitch - in a few days I'm going to be partying it up with 72 fine-ass virgins! YEAH! And that bitch will burn in hell with the rest of the infidels."
or
"Ugh! Service with homemadebombs.com is HORRIBLE! I ordered 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate, and it took them FOREVER to ship. When they did, they only shipped me half my order! I'm still waiting for my bulk shrapnel to come in. I'm never going to do business with these guys again."
It's gonna be a whopping 15 seconds before the body modification types get their hands on this, and start using it to implant horns, bumps, random appendages, what-have-you wherever they please:P
I took a job at at car dealership last summer, and one of my managers had asked me my opinion about his 15 year old daughter going to college. I told him my story, albeit slightly more abbreviated, and started crying when I got to the whole part about parental shame. I was mortified about crying in front of my manager...
The next day, he thanked me. He sat down with his daughter and really discussed her goals and aspirations, and he realized that he had been putting the same kind of pressure on her that my parents put on me. Now he knew first hand how destructive that kind of pressure can be.
I don't have any regrets, but I still hate that I'm a disappointment to my parents. This whole self-improvement thing is still a work in progress.
One idea I've seen come up on Slashdot pretty often is the idea that college isn't for everyone - rather, it should be for people who WANT to be there. The fact that there are so many people in college who are only there because, well, that's what you're "supposed to do after you graduate from high school" really does hurt the quality of the education.
It is absolutely ridiculous that I never attended any of my science classes more than maybe 3 times a semester, and passed them with a C. (It was the electives with the mandatory attendance that killed my GPA.) I understand that there's a curve, but the curve should be NO WHERE near that high. I'm pretty bright, but I'm not that smart. Looking back, I didn't learn a damn thing there.
At my current institution, I'm competing with a group of very motivated students who WANT to be in school. Yes, it's a lot more work, and yes, I have to put in a lot more effort just to make average grades - but I am learning a lot.
Totally agree with above post. Here's a little cautionary tale for you, from a girl who was pushed into a science major:
I scored above the 99th percentile on my SAT, ACT, as well as the ASVAB (one of the qualifying tests to join the military.) In fact, I just about maxed out the scores on the ASVAB - my recruiter wanted to photocopy and frame my scores in the recruiting office. I usually scored higher on the verbal sections than math sections on all of the above tests, but I was still in the top few percentiles. Given all that, I thought I was hot shit.
In high school, I had only had slightly-better-than-average grades because I didn't enjoy doing homework, but I generally did very well on my exams. I took a lot of AP and honors courses in both math/science subjects as well as the liberal arts, and breezed through them. Then when it came to college, I got a full scholarship to a state school. I matriculated as a biochemistry major because 1.) I've always done really well in those related subjects and 2.) my father is a biochemist, and he pushed me to follow in his footsteps. It was not my top-choice college, but I went there because it had good reputation and the scholarship was quite persuasive as well.
Long story short, I flunked out of college. Miserably. It only took me a semester before I was put on probation, a year to before I lost my scholarship, and then another year before they put me on academic suspension for not making the minimum grades. I hated my major, I hated my courses, and I hated everyone at my school. I didn't even bother attending my classes most of the time. I could rarely be bothered to even leave my room.
Anyway, I was too afraid to tell my parents that I flunked out of college... so I didn't. Instead, I told them I was doing fine, and became a stripper to pay for an apartment away from home and to attend community college while I figured myself out. Before I became a stripper, I also considered the possibility of running away to another country and suicide - being an academic failure is THAT big of a deal in my family, and I was THAT upset about it. I actually managed to pull this off for a while, until I couldn't take pressure of living a double life anymore.
I eventually 'fessed up to my parents. I pulled up my grades enough to transfer to another school. Unfortunately, I'm still a biology major for practical reasons - despite me failing so miserably at my last institution, I managed to pass enough courses in my major that my fastest route to graduation is to continue in my major. I am under a lot of parental pressure to graduate as soon as possible - for them, it's a great source of shame and embarrassment amongst our family and friends to have a daughter who didn't graduate college in 4 years.
Honestly, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have even gone to college at all until I was sure of what I wanted to do. I didn't discover my love and talent for physics until just last semester, when I aced my physics course. (Until then, I had always done rather poorly in physics - another reason why I chose biology/chemistry.) If time and money weren't issues, I'd probably pursue a degree in either engineering or physics instead of biochemistry. It's amazing what motivation can do - despite my past track record of laziness, I'm actually doing quite well now. My current school is a lot more academically rigorous than my last one - if I had put in a quarter of the effort that I am putting in now, I probably would've graduated a year early and with honors, no joke.
I'm not going to lie - being a stripper was probably one of the best and most formative experiences of my until-then overly sheltered life. I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and about the way the world works. It was a better education than I could've gotten at school. It also changed me to WANT to become a better person and to WANT to use my (other) talents to do useful, constructive things. Without all that, even if I had managed to pull up my grades to go back to school to please my parents, I probably would've fallen back into a cycle of avoiding class and failure all over again.
Moral of the story is, let her do what she likes - for herself, and not to please you or anyone else.
I'm a college student. My netbook is used mostly to take notes during class, and to check email between classes (and occasionally during class, if it's an especially boring class.)
I don't need a super computer here:P Though, I will note that it's plenty good enough to load Youtube so I can keep up with my buddies on the latest viral video. However, my screen is just a LITTLE too small for when I'm trying to watch porn on redtube.... no joke, the height of the video is more than my browser window can accommodate without scrolling. (Sigh.)
You're lucky. I'm a girl, and depending on what time of month it is, my sense of smell goes from pretty dull to excruciatingly sensitive.
I say excruciating, because I have the misfortune of being a biochemistry major that takes a couple of engineering classes. You have no idea how bad it is to be in a physics lab for three hours with a bunch of hygiene challenged college boys. My physics building is pretty old too, and I swear there are generations of funk built up in that stuffy little room. Think moldy Funyun factory.
Think about the role parents play in this. A lot of parents, especially Asian ones, push their children into a particular field. If Comp Sci is what's hot right now... well, guess what, kiddo? You're gonna be a Comp Sci major!
This happened to my older brother, who wanted to be a History major, and this happened to me too. My brother did well; he graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a dual degree in Comp Sci and Electrical Engineering, and got a Masters in Comp Sci. My parents are happy with him.
I, on the other hand, got pushed into a Biochemistry degree, because I did well in those subjects in high school. I flunked out of a college I had a full ride to, twice (technically, it was academic suspension); moonlighted as a stripper for a year and a half, and it wasn't until this year, after all my high school buddies had graduated, that I went back to school. No, I had no freakin' clue what I wanted to do in life, and it's only now that I'm starting to. (I enjoy my physics and engineering classes, a lot). However, I'm still being forced to finish my biochemistry degree because I'm "halfway done with it anyway." I hate it.
My parents push biochemistry on me because it's a stable industry where I can find a job and make a living. I figure Comp Sci isn't much different, and my parents would be pushing me towards that too, if I was even slightly more computer-inclined.
Yeah, pretty much. I just bought a netbook for school, and there's really not a whole lot I could or would improve on. The article has some interesting ideas, but nothing groundbreaking. Yes, I too would like my car to come with a 3.5L, 300 horsepower engine with a turbocharger and get 40 miles to the gallon! But you know what? I drive a Honda. I have a 2.0L naturally aspirated engine with 210 horsepower, and I get 27mpg local/36 highway. That's frikkin' good enough. Yes, I know the technology is out there to get all those extra fancy doodads, but what I have now satifies everything that I really need in a car. Much like my Acer Aspire One.
The only thing that I've changed on my Aspire One is operating system. I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu, and that was a fairly straightforward install for even a computer noob like me. I'm even happy about the price - I paid $350 for my Acer Aspire One with the 120GB harddrive and 1gb RAM. I haven't quite jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet - my brother works for a company who manfucturers SSDs, and in his opinion, the technology isn't sufficiently mature yet.
The build quality of this is great - I throw it in my backpack, and have been lugging back and forth from school almost every day. The hinges are stiff enough to feel sturdy, and there's no wobble, unlike my $1600 Fujitsu S-series laptop that I bought 4 years ago. I daresay that this is a much better purchase, and the specs aren't too different either. Granted, there Fujitsu is 4 years old, but this laptop is literally a quarter of the price, and yet the harddrive is 3x bigger! If we continue to compare my Aspire One to my old Fujitsu, it seems that even the keyboard on the Aspire One has a better tactile feel. Nothing I would change there.
People stop me to tell me "... that is the TINIEST laptop I've ever seen!" and girls squeal about how cute it is.
So based on the suggestions from the article, would a trackpoint mouse be all that much more awesomer? Not really. (It's a take it or leave it kinda thing.) 1280 x 800 resolution? Again, meh. Everything on my screen is already tiny enough with 1024 x 600. 1GB RAM, Atom processor, wifi, ethernet, usb ports, blah blah blah? Got that already, minus Bluetooth connectivity. Those are like "standard features" on a car. 6-cell battery? Already an option, and one I don't really find that I need. Last but not least, HSPDA? Dude, I don't even know what that IS, and I don't think I really even need it anyway. And the price of course - we would all like to buy a new Subaru STi for the price of Honda Civic - but dude... you know it just ain't happening.
Oh, and I LOL'd at the "Apple iPhone of netbooks" analogy. The Apple iPhone didn't blow anything out of the water. It just had a better marketing campaign. Considering most people at my school have never seen a net top before (they gawk at mine, and their eyes bug out when I tell them it was only $350), I suspect that the first company to really aggressively market the low-price net top will be hailed as the "the iPhone of net tops."
It's not just about smarts, it's also being hardworking.
Like him, I also scored extremely high on the Johns Hopkins CTY test (this was ~10 years ago; I had the 2nd highest score in Maryland.)
I flunked out of college. Twice. Natural smarts/good test taking skills only get you so far... I don't care HOW smart you are; you can't possibly do well on a test that you don't show up to, much less study for, or even know what you're going to be being tested on. Good for this kid - he seems both smart and motivated. It's amazing what you can accomplish with just one of either quality, but having both is truly a gift.
I'm not a real pushy kind of salesperson. My philosophy has always been that the car sells itself, so there's no need for me to foist a car on a buyer, or someone who is still in the early process of shopping around and comparing the car with others in the class.
On the other hand, I would never say, "no, don't buy this car - your credit rating is so low, you don't qualify for any sort of decent financing. You'd be better off keeping your old car for a while." Though, I've come close - I have a customer right now who wants to upgrade her 2006 Altima (that she bought in February of this year) to a new 2008 model. Her credit is so awful, all the banks we checked with refused to finance her. We told her to hang on to her current car for another 6 months so she can at least build up her credit, but she still wants the shiny new 3.5L with the cool lights on the side mirrors and push-button start.
I sell cars. My JOB is to lure these very same spendthrifts into buying a new car, that they probably don't really need (especially when they're trading in their mom's 2003 Honda Accord, which, being a Honda, would probably run another 20 years...) but I digress.
"For just $3000 down, and $350 a month, you can drive off in this BRAND NEW CAR with all these BRAND NEW AWESOME NEW DOOHICKEYS and you will totally pick up all the chicks at the club in your blingin' new ride!"
And yeah, it works. And these are the same guys that come back in a year with negative equity (owing more on the car than what the car is worth). and TRADE IT IN AGAIN for yet another new car, increasing their payments, just because they all want the blingiest, bestest, shiniest new thing.
I remember one young couple in particular - her with the newest Coach bag, him in his Ed Hardy designer threads. They traded in their 6-month-old Altima for... another Altima, except with a Navigation system. With their mediocre credit, and the fact that they still owed approximately $20,000 on their Altima (which we took as a trade-in for $16,000, and rolled over their negative equity), they ended up costing themselves $50,000 for a frikkin' Nissan Altima. All for a stupid Navigation system... when they could've gone to Best Buy and bought themselves a Garmin navigation system for $200.
Dialup users would be people like my parents, holding onto 15+ year old cars because "it runs just fine!" Broadband isn't a necessity for life any more than having a new car is.
Oh, I'm definitely not a fan of flash at all. I find it preposterous whenever I have to wait an extra 30 seconds for a page to load because the flash is still loading... and I'm on a 6Mbps cable connection!
Then again, my days of dialup were back in high school - almost 6 years ago.
I don't know if it'll still connect (though I suspect it would...), but by the time I was in high school, broadband had so permeated my neighborhood that my dialup provider didn't even bother deactivating inactive accounts. Three years after we switched to broadband, we could still use our dialup service when the cable was down.
Dialup was good enough back in the day. Couldn't -- and still can't -- beat $4.95/mo when 90% of all you needed to do is check your email once a day, which pretty much describes the internet habits of my parents. If they needed anything bandwidth intensive, they'd usually just take care of it at work.
I think the only reason my parents switched to broadband was because I would spend hours tying up the phoneline when I was IMing my friends.
Y'know, while I can't condone messing with someone else's car, this also kinda makes me want to say, "GOOD FOR YOU, MAN! GOOD FOR YOU!"
I can't even count how many times I've been cut off by soccer-moms in giant SUVs yapping away on their cellphones, or dodging and weaving through traffic trying to get to their next destination with a phone glued to their head. It's like they don't see me in my small sports coupe - it must be even worse for motorcyclists. I avoid taking long, extended calls while driving, and never text. If it's important's enough, I figure they can call me.
Honestly, people like the facebook founder make me ashamed to be 21 and of their generation. It's not unlike (automobile) racing - street racing has the potential to hurt others on the road and cause property damage to yourself and others. Responsible drivers keep it on the track... if you hurt another driver, well, he knew what he was getting into by getting on a race track. Can't say that about public roads.
The flat tail doesn't hurt aerodynamics as much as you think. Ever hear of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KammbackKammtail?
IANAAD (I Am Not An Automobile Designer) but I believe that aerodynamics of a car have improved significantly since the 70s and 80s. Notice how all modern cars are curvaceous and rounded, while older cars tend to be boxier?*
*That is not to say that I don't wish that popup headlights would come back. I loved those.
My brother is a computer engineer who lives and works in Shanghai China. He works for the Shanghai design branch of an American microchip company. I don't believe the iPhone is available in China. China does not not have mobile providers like ATT or Cingular or T-mobile. In China, you can go to almost any major store and buy a SIM card with minutes pre-loaded -- which is great if you have an unlocked phone.
On his last trip back here to visit, my brother ordered and sent six (yes, 6) iPhones to my house for himself and his coworkers in Shanghai. Upon his arrival, he spent an entire afternoon cracking and messing around with the iPhone. He kept one for himself, and sold the other 5 to his coworkers, plus a little premium.
Apple is definitely missing out by attaching a contract to the iPhone. There are a lot of young, tech-savvy and trendy workers in China, especially in Westernized cities like Shanghai, Beijing or HK, who would LOVE to have an iPhone.
I work in car sales at a Nissan dealership in Maryland, and I definitely notice a trend of my customers being much more gas-mileage minded. Sometimes the first question they ask me when they look at a car is, "how's the gas mileage on this thing?" Nissan's new crossover offering, the Rogue, is pretty much flying out the door. (I think it's built on an Altima platform, though it pretty much looks like a mini-Murano. It gets similar gas mileage to an Altima.) Versas (similar to the Toyota Yaris/Honda Fit) are popular as well, since they're compact fuel-sippers, and the hatchback version seems more popular than the sedan. Sentras also seem to be popular, though I've only sold one myself. The gas mileage on those things is actually decent, though the newest reiteration is pretty big - close to the size of a '90s Altima.
I had a lady trade in her 2005 Dodge Durango for a Murano on Saturday, and I had a customer yesterday that wanted to trade in his Ford Ranger for an Altima Coupe. I've also somehow managed to sell an XTerra, but it was for a woman who liked to go offroading and camping, and needed something that could tow. I have yet to see a Nissan Quest, Titan, Frontier or Armada get sold though.
BTW, I'm not trying to push Nissans on y'all -- I actually drive an Acura RSX myself, and I get 28mpg on local roads. I'm young, poor, and drive a car that requires premium gas, so I've gotten a lot more concious of how my driving habits affect my gas mileage (shift at 2000rpm, coast to red lights and stop signs, etc).
My dad sold off his SUV (an Acura MDX) because he realized he never drove it (as we had four cars in the house for three people), and he rarely needed to haul anything once I went to college. He sold it to a suburban soccer-mom earlier this year.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the uneasy feeling that this is how the whole Pokemon saga started...
What do pandas eat?
Bamboo.
What does bamboo have a lot of?
Fiber.
There's your reason for why you don't want a panda with 6 asses. You don't want them running around your house, shitting 6 times as efficiently.
If I could get my hands on some panda DNA, I'd genetically engineer a mini-panda about the size of a guinea pig or hamster for the pet market.
In one fell swoop, I will have saved a species from extinction AND become a billionaire!
Yup, monitoring blogposts is going to be TOTALLY useful. I can already see the blog posts that they'll have to be reading through:
"Dear Allah,
It's me, Muhammad. How do you deal with peer pressure? I mean, like, my friends have been pressuring me to join the jihad against the infidels. They've all joined the jihad, except for me. I really want to, but my mom won't let me. She's so uncool! What should I do?"
or
"Today I tried to talk to this hot chick in my engineering class, but she totally ignored me. Well, fuck that bitch - in a few days I'm going to be partying it up with 72 fine-ass virgins! YEAH! And that bitch will burn in hell with the rest of the infidels."
or
"Ugh! Service with homemadebombs.com is HORRIBLE! I ordered 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate, and it took them FOREVER to ship. When they did, they only shipped me half my order! I'm still waiting for my bulk shrapnel to come in. I'm never going to do business with these guys again."
It's gonna be a whopping 15 seconds before the body modification types get their hands on this, and start using it to implant horns, bumps, random appendages, what-have-you wherever they please :P
Anyone ever see the story about the guy who implanted horns on himself? http://www.ambient.ca/bodmod/implants.html
This seems like a much better alternative than silicone or teflon or whatever they're using these days. I could go for
I took a job at at car dealership last summer, and one of my managers had asked me my opinion about his 15 year old daughter going to college. I told him my story, albeit slightly more abbreviated, and started crying when I got to the whole part about parental shame. I was mortified about crying in front of my manager...
The next day, he thanked me. He sat down with his daughter and really discussed her goals and aspirations, and he realized that he had been putting the same kind of pressure on her that my parents put on me. Now he knew first hand how destructive that kind of pressure can be.
I don't have any regrets, but I still hate that I'm a disappointment to my parents. This whole self-improvement thing is still a work in progress.
One idea I've seen come up on Slashdot pretty often is the idea that college isn't for everyone - rather, it should be for people who WANT to be there. The fact that there are so many people in college who are only there because, well, that's what you're "supposed to do after you graduate from high school" really does hurt the quality of the education.
It is absolutely ridiculous that I never attended any of my science classes more than maybe 3 times a semester, and passed them with a C. (It was the electives with the mandatory attendance that killed my GPA.) I understand that there's a curve, but the curve should be NO WHERE near that high. I'm pretty bright, but I'm not that smart. Looking back, I didn't learn a damn thing there.
At my current institution, I'm competing with a group of very motivated students who WANT to be in school. Yes, it's a lot more work, and yes, I have to put in a lot more effort just to make average grades - but I am learning a lot.
Totally agree with above post. Here's a little cautionary tale for you, from a girl who was pushed into a science major:
I scored above the 99th percentile on my SAT, ACT, as well as the ASVAB (one of the qualifying tests to join the military.) In fact, I just about maxed out the scores on the ASVAB - my recruiter wanted to photocopy and frame my scores in the recruiting office. I usually scored higher on the verbal sections than math sections on all of the above tests, but I was still in the top few percentiles. Given all that, I thought I was hot shit.
In high school, I had only had slightly-better-than-average grades because I didn't enjoy doing homework, but I generally did very well on my exams. I took a lot of AP and honors courses in both math/science subjects as well as the liberal arts, and breezed through them. Then when it came to college, I got a full scholarship to a state school. I matriculated as a biochemistry major because 1.) I've always done really well in those related subjects and 2.) my father is a biochemist, and he pushed me to follow in his footsteps. It was not my top-choice college, but I went there because it had good reputation and the scholarship was quite persuasive as well.
Long story short, I flunked out of college. Miserably. It only took me a semester before I was put on probation, a year to before I lost my scholarship, and then another year before they put me on academic suspension for not making the minimum grades. I hated my major, I hated my courses, and I hated everyone at my school. I didn't even bother attending my classes most of the time. I could rarely be bothered to even leave my room.
Anyway, I was too afraid to tell my parents that I flunked out of college... so I didn't. Instead, I told them I was doing fine, and became a stripper to pay for an apartment away from home and to attend community college while I figured myself out. Before I became a stripper, I also considered the possibility of running away to another country and suicide - being an academic failure is THAT big of a deal in my family, and I was THAT upset about it. I actually managed to pull this off for a while, until I couldn't take pressure of living a double life anymore.
I eventually 'fessed up to my parents. I pulled up my grades enough to transfer to another school. Unfortunately, I'm still a biology major for practical reasons - despite me failing so miserably at my last institution, I managed to pass enough courses in my major that my fastest route to graduation is to continue in my major. I am under a lot of parental pressure to graduate as soon as possible - for them, it's a great source of shame and embarrassment amongst our family and friends to have a daughter who didn't graduate college in 4 years.
Honestly, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have even gone to college at all until I was sure of what I wanted to do. I didn't discover my love and talent for physics until just last semester, when I aced my physics course. (Until then, I had always done rather poorly in physics - another reason why I chose biology/chemistry.) If time and money weren't issues, I'd probably pursue a degree in either engineering or physics instead of biochemistry. It's amazing what motivation can do - despite my past track record of laziness, I'm actually doing quite well now. My current school is a lot more academically rigorous than my last one - if I had put in a quarter of the effort that I am putting in now, I probably would've graduated a year early and with honors, no joke.
I'm not going to lie - being a stripper was probably one of the best and most formative experiences of my until-then overly sheltered life. I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and about the way the world works. It was a better education than I could've gotten at school. It also changed me to WANT to become a better person and to WANT to use my (other) talents to do useful, constructive things. Without all that, even if I had managed to pull up my grades to go back to school to please my parents, I probably would've fallen back into a cycle of avoiding class and failure all over again.
Moral of the story is, let her do what she likes - for herself, and not to please you or anyone else.
I'm a college student. My netbook is used mostly to take notes during class, and to check email between classes (and occasionally during class, if it's an especially boring class.)
:P Though, I will note that it's plenty good enough to load Youtube so I can keep up with my buddies on the latest viral video. However, my screen is just a LITTLE too small for when I'm trying to watch porn on redtube.... no joke, the height of the video is more than my browser window can accommodate without scrolling. (Sigh.)
I don't need a super computer here
You're lucky. I'm a girl, and depending on what time of month it is, my sense of smell goes from pretty dull to excruciatingly sensitive.
I say excruciating, because I have the misfortune of being a biochemistry major that takes a couple of engineering classes. You have no idea how bad it is to be in a physics lab for three hours with a bunch of hygiene challenged college boys. My physics building is pretty old too, and I swear there are generations of funk built up in that stuffy little room. Think moldy Funyun factory.
Think about the role parents play in this. A lot of parents, especially Asian ones, push their children into a particular field. If Comp Sci is what's hot right now... well, guess what, kiddo? You're gonna be a Comp Sci major!
This happened to my older brother, who wanted to be a History major, and this happened to me too. My brother did well; he graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a dual degree in Comp Sci and Electrical Engineering, and got a Masters in Comp Sci. My parents are happy with him.
I, on the other hand, got pushed into a Biochemistry degree, because I did well in those subjects in high school. I flunked out of a college I had a full ride to, twice (technically, it was academic suspension); moonlighted as a stripper for a year and a half, and it wasn't until this year, after all my high school buddies had graduated, that I went back to school. No, I had no freakin' clue what I wanted to do in life, and it's only now that I'm starting to. (I enjoy my physics and engineering classes, a lot). However, I'm still being forced to finish my biochemistry degree because I'm "halfway done with it anyway." I hate it.
My parents push biochemistry on me because it's a stable industry where I can find a job and make a living. I figure Comp Sci isn't much different, and my parents would be pushing me towards that too, if I was even slightly more computer-inclined.
Yeah, pretty much. I just bought a netbook for school, and there's really not a whole lot I could or would improve on. The article has some interesting ideas, but nothing groundbreaking. Yes, I too would like my car to come with a 3.5L, 300 horsepower engine with a turbocharger and get 40 miles to the gallon! But you know what? I drive a Honda. I have a 2.0L naturally aspirated engine with 210 horsepower, and I get 27mpg local/36 highway. That's frikkin' good enough. Yes, I know the technology is out there to get all those extra fancy doodads, but what I have now satifies everything that I really need in a car. Much like my Acer Aspire One.
The only thing that I've changed on my Aspire One is operating system. I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu, and that was a fairly straightforward install for even a computer noob like me. I'm even happy about the price - I paid $350 for my Acer Aspire One with the 120GB harddrive and 1gb RAM. I haven't quite jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet - my brother works for a company who manfucturers SSDs, and in his opinion, the technology isn't sufficiently mature yet.
The build quality of this is great - I throw it in my backpack, and have been lugging back and forth from school almost every day. The hinges are stiff enough to feel sturdy, and there's no wobble, unlike my $1600 Fujitsu S-series laptop that I bought 4 years ago. I daresay that this is a much better purchase, and the specs aren't too different either. Granted, there Fujitsu is 4 years old, but this laptop is literally a quarter of the price, and yet the harddrive is 3x bigger! If we continue to compare my Aspire One to my old Fujitsu, it seems that even the keyboard on the Aspire One has a better tactile feel. Nothing I would change there.
People stop me to tell me "... that is the TINIEST laptop I've ever seen!" and girls squeal about how cute it is.
So based on the suggestions from the article, would a trackpoint mouse be all that much more awesomer? Not really. (It's a take it or leave it kinda thing.) 1280 x 800 resolution? Again, meh. Everything on my screen is already tiny enough with 1024 x 600. 1GB RAM, Atom processor, wifi, ethernet, usb ports, blah blah blah? Got that already, minus Bluetooth connectivity. Those are like "standard features" on a car. 6-cell battery? Already an option, and one I don't really find that I need. Last but not least, HSPDA? Dude, I don't even know what that IS, and I don't think I really even need it anyway. And the price of course - we would all like to buy a new Subaru STi for the price of Honda Civic - but dude... you know it just ain't happening.
Oh, and I LOL'd at the "Apple iPhone of netbooks" analogy. The Apple iPhone didn't blow anything out of the water. It just had a better marketing campaign. Considering most people at my school have never seen a net top before (they gawk at mine, and their eyes bug out when I tell them it was only $350), I suspect that the first company to really aggressively market the low-price net top will be hailed as the "the iPhone of net tops."
It's not just about smarts, it's also being hardworking.
Like him, I also scored extremely high on the Johns Hopkins CTY test (this was ~10 years ago; I had the 2nd highest score in Maryland.)
I flunked out of college. Twice. Natural smarts/good test taking skills only get you so far... I don't care HOW smart you are; you can't possibly do well on a test that you don't show up to, much less study for, or even know what you're going to be being tested on. Good for this kid - he seems both smart and motivated. It's amazing what you can accomplish with just one of either quality, but having both is truly a gift.
They already did. It's called a fake tan, and every college girl here has one.
I'm not a real pushy kind of salesperson. My philosophy has always been that the car sells itself, so there's no need for me to foist a car on a buyer, or someone who is still in the early process of shopping around and comparing the car with others in the class.
On the other hand, I would never say, "no, don't buy this car - your credit rating is so low, you don't qualify for any sort of decent financing. You'd be better off keeping your old car for a while." Though, I've come close - I have a customer right now who wants to upgrade her 2006 Altima (that she bought in February of this year) to a new 2008 model. Her credit is so awful, all the banks we checked with refused to finance her. We told her to hang on to her current car for another 6 months so she can at least build up her credit, but she still wants the shiny new 3.5L with the cool lights on the side mirrors and push-button start.
I sell cars. My JOB is to lure these very same spendthrifts into buying a new car, that they probably don't really need (especially when they're trading in their mom's 2003 Honda Accord, which, being a Honda, would probably run another 20 years...) but I digress.
"For just $3000 down, and $350 a month, you can drive off in this BRAND NEW CAR with all these BRAND NEW AWESOME NEW DOOHICKEYS and you will totally pick up all the chicks at the club in your blingin' new ride!"
And yeah, it works. And these are the same guys that come back in a year with negative equity (owing more on the car than what the car is worth). and TRADE IT IN AGAIN for yet another new car, increasing their payments, just because they all want the blingiest, bestest, shiniest new thing.
I remember one young couple in particular - her with the newest Coach bag, him in his Ed Hardy designer threads. They traded in their 6-month-old Altima for... another Altima, except with a Navigation system. With their mediocre credit, and the fact that they still owed approximately $20,000 on their Altima (which we took as a trade-in for $16,000, and rolled over their negative equity), they ended up costing themselves $50,000 for a frikkin' Nissan Altima. All for a stupid Navigation system... when they could've gone to Best Buy and bought themselves a Garmin navigation system for $200.
Dialup users would be people like my parents, holding onto 15+ year old cars because "it runs just fine!" Broadband isn't a necessity for life any more than having a new car is.
Oh, I'm definitely not a fan of flash at all. I find it preposterous whenever I have to wait an extra 30 seconds for a page to load because the flash is still loading... and I'm on a 6Mbps cable connection!
Then again, my days of dialup were back in high school - almost 6 years ago.
I don't know if it'll still connect (though I suspect it would...), but by the time I was in high school, broadband had so permeated my neighborhood that my dialup provider didn't even bother deactivating inactive accounts. Three years after we switched to broadband, we could still use our dialup service when the cable was down.
Dialup was good enough back in the day. Couldn't -- and still can't -- beat $4.95/mo when 90% of all you needed to do is check your email once a day, which pretty much describes the internet habits of my parents. If they needed anything bandwidth intensive, they'd usually just take care of it at work.
I think the only reason my parents switched to broadband was because I would spend hours tying up the phoneline when I was IMing my friends.
Y'know, while I can't condone messing with someone else's car, this also kinda makes me want to say, "GOOD FOR YOU, MAN! GOOD FOR YOU!"
I can't even count how many times I've been cut off by soccer-moms in giant SUVs yapping away on their cellphones, or dodging and weaving through traffic trying to get to their next destination with a phone glued to their head. It's like they don't see me in my small sports coupe - it must be even worse for motorcyclists. I avoid taking long, extended calls while driving, and never text. If it's important's enough, I figure they can call me.
Honestly, people like the facebook founder make me ashamed to be 21 and of their generation. It's not unlike (automobile) racing - street racing has the potential to hurt others on the road and cause property damage to yourself and others. Responsible drivers keep it on the track... if you hurt another driver, well, he knew what he was getting into by getting on a race track. Can't say that about public roads.
Yeah, spair time. Different from despair time, which is when you're actually at work.
Funny. My flying lego boats deployed pirates. I think we may have to have a throwdown.
Wait 'til they decide that being too skinny is unhealthy too. If your waist is below 24", you must eat 2 cheeseburgers a day!
So yeah, I agree. Measurements like waist size and weight are useless without being put in the context of overall fitness.
Get rid of the automatic transmission? Blasphemy! How will we be able to call/text message/hunt for spare change under the seat while driving?!
The flat tail doesn't hurt aerodynamics as much as you think. Ever hear of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KammbackKammtail?
IANAAD (I Am Not An Automobile Designer) but I believe that aerodynamics of a car have improved significantly since the 70s and 80s. Notice how all modern cars are curvaceous and rounded, while older cars tend to be boxier?*
*That is not to say that I don't wish that popup headlights would come back. I loved those.
My brother is a computer engineer who lives and works in Shanghai China. He works for the Shanghai design branch of an American microchip company. I don't believe the iPhone is available in China. China does not not have mobile providers like ATT or Cingular or T-mobile. In China, you can go to almost any major store and buy a SIM card with minutes pre-loaded -- which is great if you have an unlocked phone. On his last trip back here to visit, my brother ordered and sent six (yes, 6) iPhones to my house for himself and his coworkers in Shanghai. Upon his arrival, he spent an entire afternoon cracking and messing around with the iPhone. He kept one for himself, and sold the other 5 to his coworkers, plus a little premium. Apple is definitely missing out by attaching a contract to the iPhone. There are a lot of young, tech-savvy and trendy workers in China, especially in Westernized cities like Shanghai, Beijing or HK, who would LOVE to have an iPhone.
I work in car sales at a Nissan dealership in Maryland, and I definitely notice a trend of my customers being much more gas-mileage minded. Sometimes the first question they ask me when they look at a car is, "how's the gas mileage on this thing?" Nissan's new crossover offering, the Rogue, is pretty much flying out the door. (I think it's built on an Altima platform, though it pretty much looks like a mini-Murano. It gets similar gas mileage to an Altima.) Versas (similar to the Toyota Yaris/Honda Fit) are popular as well, since they're compact fuel-sippers, and the hatchback version seems more popular than the sedan. Sentras also seem to be popular, though I've only sold one myself. The gas mileage on those things is actually decent, though the newest reiteration is pretty big - close to the size of a '90s Altima. I had a lady trade in her 2005 Dodge Durango for a Murano on Saturday, and I had a customer yesterday that wanted to trade in his Ford Ranger for an Altima Coupe. I've also somehow managed to sell an XTerra, but it was for a woman who liked to go offroading and camping, and needed something that could tow. I have yet to see a Nissan Quest, Titan, Frontier or Armada get sold though. BTW, I'm not trying to push Nissans on y'all -- I actually drive an Acura RSX myself, and I get 28mpg on local roads. I'm young, poor, and drive a car that requires premium gas, so I've gotten a lot more concious of how my driving habits affect my gas mileage (shift at 2000rpm, coast to red lights and stop signs, etc). My dad sold off his SUV (an Acura MDX) because he realized he never drove it (as we had four cars in the house for three people), and he rarely needed to haul anything once I went to college. He sold it to a suburban soccer-mom earlier this year.