I chose Verizon because it provides the best coverage. But they stick it to you with the plan choices:
$39.99 for 450 minutes
$59.99 for 900 minutes + 5 friends and family
$5 for 250 text messages
$10 for 500 text messages + free txt to other Verizon mobile
If the 450 minute plan included 5 free friends and family numbers I could easily get by with that. In the rare cases that I go over 450 minutes the extra minutes are always used on just a few family members. But it doesn't include friends and family so I have to go with the 900 minute plan, which of course never gets used up since most of the time is spent talking to those 5 numbers. 250 text messages would be more than enough if it included the free Verizon texting, since the people I text most are also on Verizon. But of course they only offer that perk with the expensive 500 message plan, and I never go over 500 messages anyway. Then as others have pointed out, they charge you to put caps on your usage and avoid overage charges. There is no such thing as an affordable and practical plan. You are either counting your minutes and texts and checking constantly to avoid overages, or you pay out the nose.
Maybe one day there will be another reliable carrier so I can give these bastards the boot.
If I read your post correctly, I am an idiot savant because I haven't heard of Chaucer. That's great trivia but it will hardly keep somebody from participating in society as an informed adult. If you learned anything in college, it was how to come across as an elitist douche. Or, in the words of Chaucer, "The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people."
A math or science tattoo could be a conversation starter, introducing equations to new groups of people. Scientific education through body art and socializing.
I don't have any tattoos myself and don't want any, but I can understand why some people get them. When people go all-out with them (full sleeves) and they do it right, I'll admit it can look pretty bad ass. Everybody loves art, and you've got it right there on your arm. It's not for everybody but some people wear it well. What the OP suggests could be both cool looking and educational.
Reminds me of our home economics class in 8th grade. One of my buddies was playing with the cookie dough and making funny faces. I guess the (quite overweight) teacher noticed this and accused him of sexual harassment in front of the whole class because the dough was somewhat penis shaped. His response was great. "Believe me, you are the last person I would sexually harass!"
I would love to see a strict driving test for an 'elite' license that allowed you to drive 20mph over the speed limit on freeways in proper conditions, pass through a red light if traffic is completely clear, etc. I'd pay an extra $500 for such a license in a heartbeat.
I travel often and am courteous to the security personnel, and usually they respond in kind. If they are making your life miserable maybe you are doing something to evoke that behavior. Or you are stressed about traveling and are exaggerating. I see people all the time go through security all flustered for no reason at all. Do you really think they would prefer to hassle every single one of the thousands of people they see every day? Of course not, they want it to go as smoothly as possible. Chill out.
I've owned a Thinkpad T42 for several years and recently bought a Lenovo Z61 for my girlfriend. So far the Lenovo feels very solid and sturdy, perhaps even more than my Thinkpad. I'm very impressed with it.
He is for decriminalization at the federal level. Some states have already spoken and legalized use for medicinal purposes, only to have the feds swoop in and put cancer patients in prison.
Hey, was slacking on my reply... release crunch and all that. I'll understand if you don't reply.
There are problems that look simple but actually turn out to be complex. There are problems that are deceptive in that you think you've solved them but in reality you've left something out that will bite you in the ass. Learning in the real world about these problems may mean creating a system that appears to work but really doesn't.
The point I was making is that college won't teach you how to solve these problems. I've arrived at this conclusion from my experience working with mostly college-educated people. Instead of seeing the problem for what it is, you are stuck trying to make the problem fit into the solutions you learned.
The significance of the halting problem is teaching you a way to deduce whether or not a problem is computable.
Are you telling me that you've personally applied this proof to determine the feasibility of a project? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that real-world experience designing, maintaining and repairing computer systems will give you far better insight into the feasibility of solving a given problem than the HP proof.
However if you had been exposed to the knowledge they have been I don't doubt for one moment that you'd be even better.
I disagree. Early in my career I had the chance to sit in on a discussion at a local trade school (this was ITT tech, so not really a university) where the teacher of an RDBMS class actually said "primary keys are nice, but they aren't necessary." Learning from a bad teacher is worse than teaching yourself. If you're teaching software engineering there is a decent chance that you couldn't cut it as a software engineer. There's an even better chance that you're unfamiliar with the problems and technologies relevant to the industry today. On the other hand, I worked under very experienced developers early in my career. They were my teachers and role models. My classroom was a software development shop, and my homework was designing, writing and supporting real software.
As I said a degree is necessary but not sufficient.
I still don't see it as necessary. I've performed my job far better than coworkers who had degrees, and I'm paid as well or better. I have great technical, communication, and for the industry, above average social skills. Saying a degree is necessary doesn't make it so.
Instead I'll invest the money I would have spent on college and visit the library, bookstore or google whenever I yearn to learn.
It really is a personal choice, and it depends on your individual circumstances and aptitudes. One size does not fit all. College is not the answer. Further reading (sorry, had to throw this in): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias
If you can prove it to be false, than so be it. But, contrary to popular belief, religion has yet to be proven false. It may not have been proven true, but that doesn't mean its not.
So you haven't ruled out the existence of a flying spaghetti monster?
Religion says its true cause its stated to be so. Science says its true cause its stated to be so. They are what most of everyone's arguments boil down to.
No, religion says its true because it says so. Science says its true based on observable facts and repeatable experiments.
The broader a spectrum of problems you've considered, the better a coder you'll be. University is an excellent way to gain exposure to a very wide variety of problems." I got that the first time around. Working in the field is a better way to gain exposure to practical problems. You get the added benefit of coming up with solutions on your own. Better than trying to shoehorn the lessons you learned in college into real life.
Go look it up on Wikipedia at least.I did, when you first commented on it. The only practical application I found was adding a feature to a compiler that will tell you if your program will infinitely loop. I suppose you could also assess other programs (plugins to your own perhaps), but the halting problem by definition simply tells you whether a program runs forever or not. Care to enlighten me as to its significance beyond that?
If you have to get into debt to do a degree you have to weight whether it's worth it. I'm not in debt. My wife is. Frankly I think higher education should be free. It should be, but it isn't. You aren't in debt, good for you. I hope you're doing a lot better than "not in debt".
HOWEVER I do disagree with you about degrees being worthless.I never said they were.
(with one possible exception. If original thought is required and you're a genius, a degree may make your thinking more rigid than you need it to be. I'm thinking of Einstein here, not just anyone writing some business code for a living) While not an Einstein, I'm quite a bit smarter than the average bear. I was going to bring up the "original thought" argument myself but decided against it. I can't even tell you how many times I was able to come up with creative solutions to problems that my educated coworkers didn't even know how to approach. That goes back to my earlier point about trying to shoehorn problems into the solutions you've been taught instead of approaching with experience and intuition. Oh, and I'm not planning on writing business code forever. With what I have saved I'm going to take a break very soon and invest in some other opportunities.
I've spoken in depth with many of my educated coworkers, most of whom I've already passed on the career track. I considered getting a degree and spoke with several of them about it (including the few that held higher positions at the time). They all told me that aside from having some fun and learning about different things, it would do absolutely nothing for my career. They all say that with the experience and skill that I have, a degree would only slow me down. I remember interviewing a graduate of Cornell and turning him down because he had poor communication skills.
I agree that a degree can significantly increase the earning potential of your average Joe. However if you're making six figures before you hit 25, you might not need it after all. It reminds me of a certain Bill something or other who started a $oftware company. Maybe he should have asked for your thoughts first and gotten that degree.
ps - I would have responded sooner but I had to take the day off to go snowboarding.
..and your point is? My point is that a degree (or lack of) is not a good indicator of a person's skills.
However someone who understands computability and who understands how compilers work is much less likely to make such rediculous demands. If you're going to write a compiler then hopefully you'll be doing some on-the-job research beforehand. At this point you will likely discover the HP and its relevance to the task at hand. Otherwise it is more or less useless academic trivia.
If you don't understand these things and you come across a slightly more complex problem than your typical business problem (fetch and edit data with some calculation) you can bring a whole project unstuck. I don't quite understand what you're saying. I interpreted it as: "If you don't understand these things and you come across a complex problem then you can bring a project unstuck." Maybe you meant to say "If you understand these things..." Anyway, the halting problem in and of itself is not significant unless you are writing a compiler (correct me if I'm mistaken). Like you said, it is part of a whole class of unsolvable problems, but you don't need college to realize that such problems exist.
See, now that's both illogical and just plain nasty. I apologize, my comment may have been inappropriate. However it was not illogical. Too often we justify our life decisions to ourselves and others because it is painful to consider what could have been if we had made different choices. I'm as guilty as you, thanks for pointing that out.
I doubt that anybody read my comment anyway, but if it helps deter somebody from going thousands of dollars into debt while missing out on investment opportunities (aside from the time-value of money), then it was worth it. Had I gone to college I would have been paying 10k per year plus instead of earning 50k per year in my junior position. I would have graduated right after the dot com bubble burst, instead of getting my foot in the door with a stable job that had opportunity for advancement and which supported me well through the years of downturn. There is plenty that I missed out on, no doubt, but there was a lot to be gained as well.
Maybe I misinterpreted, but the gist of your original post irked me. You said the notion of experience over formal education was "complete garbage" when it has served me very well and when my results compare very favorably against others who took the opposite path.
I spent those 4 years programming and not in a university. I've worked alongside people who did spend those 4 years in a university, and some came out with hardly a drop of practical knowledge. While they were reading from a book I was solving real-world problems. The halting problem is a fun exercise in logic, but to say that one must have knowledge of it to realize that writing a compiler in 1 month is unrealistic is... unrealistic.
Considering the years and (tens of) thousands of dollars you've invested in formal education, I can see why you would want to justify that decision. Personally, the years I spent earning money and gaining experience in the field lead me to believe that a degree would have been a less-than-optimal use of my time and money.
"Lastly if anyone should be blamed for warping the minds of youngsters permanently, it should MSFT with its Visual Basic system."
My first languages were, in order:
1. Hypercard on the Mac (if you call that programming)
2. TI-Basic, because writing and playing Space Invaders on my calculator was more fun than classwork
3. Visual Basic (somewhat concurrent to #2)
I've since written a 3D game engine from scratch in C++, as well as several business apps in Java, C#, etc. VB does not warp the young mind permanently.
Slashdot Mirror
9/11 and the resulting housing crisis? *smacks forehead*
I chose Verizon because it provides the best coverage. But they stick it to you with the plan choices:
$39.99 for 450 minutes
$59.99 for 900 minutes + 5 friends and family
$5 for 250 text messages
$10 for 500 text messages + free txt to other Verizon mobile
If the 450 minute plan included 5 free friends and family numbers I could easily get by with that. In the rare cases that I go over 450 minutes the extra minutes are always used on just a few family members. But it doesn't include friends and family so I have to go with the 900 minute plan, which of course never gets used up since most of the time is spent talking to those 5 numbers. 250 text messages would be more than enough if it included the free Verizon texting, since the people I text most are also on Verizon. But of course they only offer that perk with the expensive 500 message plan, and I never go over 500 messages anyway. Then as others have pointed out, they charge you to put caps on your usage and avoid overage charges. There is no such thing as an affordable and practical plan. You are either counting your minutes and texts and checking constantly to avoid overages, or you pay out the nose.
Maybe one day there will be another reliable carrier so I can give these bastards the boot.
If I read your post correctly, I am an idiot savant because I haven't heard of Chaucer. That's great trivia but it will hardly keep somebody from participating in society as an informed adult. If you learned anything in college, it was how to come across as an elitist douche. Or, in the words of Chaucer, "The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people."
A math or science tattoo could be a conversation starter, introducing equations to new groups of people. Scientific education through body art and socializing.
I don't have any tattoos myself and don't want any, but I can understand why some people get them. When people go all-out with them (full sleeves) and they do it right, I'll admit it can look pretty bad ass. Everybody loves art, and you've got it right there on your arm. It's not for everybody but some people wear it well. What the OP suggests could be both cool looking and educational.
Reminds me of our home economics class in 8th grade. One of my buddies was playing with the cookie dough and making funny faces. I guess the (quite overweight) teacher noticed this and accused him of sexual harassment in front of the whole class because the dough was somewhat penis shaped. His response was great. "Believe me, you are the last person I would sexually harass!"
A friend of mine in 8th grade went by the name Cube. Yes, that bastard could always solve it in under 2 minutes.
...regretting his decision to be such a tool.
Sorry but overuse of the word "tool" is a pet peeve of mine. A tool does not decide to be one. From dictionary.com:
"a person who is controlled by others and is used to perform unpleasant or dishonest tasks for someone else"
In what way is a sniper a tool? For whom is he a tool?
I would love to see a strict driving test for an 'elite' license that allowed you to drive 20mph over the speed limit on freeways in proper conditions, pass through a red light if traffic is completely clear, etc. I'd pay an extra $500 for such a license in a heartbeat.
Sounds like somebody needs a roommate.
You are already +5, so I thank you for bringing me my first good laugh of the morning.
Gasp, cant we admit MS was on the right side for once
If by the "right side" you mean the "losing side", then yes.
I travel often and am courteous to the security personnel, and usually they respond in kind. If they are making your life miserable maybe you are doing something to evoke that behavior. Or you are stressed about traveling and are exaggerating. I see people all the time go through security all flustered for no reason at all. Do you really think they would prefer to hassle every single one of the thousands of people they see every day? Of course not, they want it to go as smoothly as possible. Chill out.
Some passengers, yes. My girlfriend, not so much.
I've owned a Thinkpad T42 for several years and recently bought a Lenovo Z61 for my girlfriend. So far the Lenovo feels very solid and sturdy, perhaps even more than my Thinkpad. I'm very impressed with it.
He is for decriminalization at the federal level. Some states have already spoken and legalized use for medicinal purposes, only to have the feds swoop in and put cancer patients in prison.
Threw mine down a full flight of stairs, it got a little scratched but still works perfectly.
.NET is friendly to these amateurs. Java is anything but friendly to someone who can't figure out how to setup their classpath.
.NET because it is more difficult to configure?
You're saying Java is better than
Hey, was slacking on my reply... release crunch and all that. I'll understand if you don't reply.
There are problems that look simple but actually turn out to be complex. There are problems that are deceptive in that you think you've solved them but in reality you've left something out that will bite you in the ass. Learning in the real world about these problems may mean creating a system that appears to work but really doesn't.
The point I was making is that college won't teach you how to solve these problems. I've arrived at this conclusion from my experience working with mostly college-educated people. Instead of seeing the problem for what it is, you are stuck trying to make the problem fit into the solutions you learned.
The significance of the halting problem is teaching you a way to deduce whether or not a problem is computable.
Are you telling me that you've personally applied this proof to determine the feasibility of a project? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that real-world experience designing, maintaining and repairing computer systems will give you far better insight into the feasibility of solving a given problem than the HP proof.
However if you had been exposed to the knowledge they have been I don't doubt for one moment that you'd be even better.
I disagree. Early in my career I had the chance to sit in on a discussion at a local trade school (this was ITT tech, so not really a university) where the teacher of an RDBMS class actually said "primary keys are nice, but they aren't necessary." Learning from a bad teacher is worse than teaching yourself. If you're teaching software engineering there is a decent chance that you couldn't cut it as a software engineer. There's an even better chance that you're unfamiliar with the problems and technologies relevant to the industry today. On the other hand, I worked under very experienced developers early in my career. They were my teachers and role models. My classroom was a software development shop, and my homework was designing, writing and supporting real software.
As I said a degree is necessary but not sufficient.
I still don't see it as necessary. I've performed my job far better than coworkers who had degrees, and I'm paid as well or better. I have great technical, communication, and for the industry, above average social skills. Saying a degree is necessary doesn't make it so.
Instead I'll invest the money I would have spent on college and visit the library, bookstore or google whenever I yearn to learn.
It really is a personal choice, and it depends on your individual circumstances and aptitudes. One size does not fit all. College is not the answer. Further reading (sorry, had to throw this in): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias
If you can prove it to be false, than so be it. But, contrary to popular belief, religion has yet to be proven false. It may not have been proven true, but that doesn't mean its not.
So you haven't ruled out the existence of a flying spaghetti monster?
Religion says its true cause its stated to be so. Science says its true cause its stated to be so. They are what most of everyone's arguments boil down to.
No, religion says its true because it says so. Science says its true based on observable facts and repeatable experiments.
I'm out of mod points. Well said good sir.
The broader a spectrum of problems you've considered, the better a coder you'll be. University is an excellent way to gain exposure to a very wide variety of problems." I got that the first time around. Working in the field is a better way to gain exposure to practical problems. You get the added benefit of coming up with solutions on your own. Better than trying to shoehorn the lessons you learned in college into real life.
Go look it up on Wikipedia at least.I did, when you first commented on it. The only practical application I found was adding a feature to a compiler that will tell you if your program will infinitely loop. I suppose you could also assess other programs (plugins to your own perhaps), but the halting problem by definition simply tells you whether a program runs forever or not. Care to enlighten me as to its significance beyond that?
If you have to get into debt to do a degree you have to weight whether it's worth it. I'm not in debt. My wife is. Frankly I think higher education should be free. It should be, but it isn't. You aren't in debt, good for you. I hope you're doing a lot better than "not in debt".
HOWEVER I do disagree with you about degrees being worthless.I never said they were.
(with one possible exception. If original thought is required and you're a genius, a degree may make your thinking more rigid than you need it to be. I'm thinking of Einstein here, not just anyone writing some business code for a living) While not an Einstein, I'm quite a bit smarter than the average bear. I was going to bring up the "original thought" argument myself but decided against it. I can't even tell you how many times I was able to come up with creative solutions to problems that my educated coworkers didn't even know how to approach. That goes back to my earlier point about trying to shoehorn problems into the solutions you've been taught instead of approaching with experience and intuition. Oh, and I'm not planning on writing business code forever. With what I have saved I'm going to take a break very soon and invest in some other opportunities.
I've spoken in depth with many of my educated coworkers, most of whom I've already passed on the career track. I considered getting a degree and spoke with several of them about it (including the few that held higher positions at the time). They all told me that aside from having some fun and learning about different things, it would do absolutely nothing for my career. They all say that with the experience and skill that I have, a degree would only slow me down. I remember interviewing a graduate of Cornell and turning him down because he had poor communication skills.
I agree that a degree can significantly increase the earning potential of your average Joe. However if you're making six figures before you hit 25, you might not need it after all. It reminds me of a certain Bill something or other who started a $oftware company. Maybe he should have asked for your thoughts first and gotten that degree.
ps - I would have responded sooner but I had to take the day off to go snowboarding.
..and your point is? My point is that a degree (or lack of) is not a good indicator of a person's skills.
However someone who understands computability and who understands how compilers work is much less likely to make such rediculous demands. If you're going to write a compiler then hopefully you'll be doing some on-the-job research beforehand. At this point you will likely discover the HP and its relevance to the task at hand. Otherwise it is more or less useless academic trivia.
If you don't understand these things and you come across a slightly more complex problem than your typical business problem (fetch and edit data with some calculation) you can bring a whole project unstuck. I don't quite understand what you're saying. I interpreted it as: "If you don't understand these things and you come across a complex problem then you can bring a project unstuck." Maybe you meant to say "If you understand these things..." Anyway, the halting problem in and of itself is not significant unless you are writing a compiler (correct me if I'm mistaken). Like you said, it is part of a whole class of unsolvable problems, but you don't need college to realize that such problems exist.
See, now that's both illogical and just plain nasty. I apologize, my comment may have been inappropriate. However it was not illogical. Too often we justify our life decisions to ourselves and others because it is painful to consider what could have been if we had made different choices. I'm as guilty as you, thanks for pointing that out.
I doubt that anybody read my comment anyway, but if it helps deter somebody from going thousands of dollars into debt while missing out on investment opportunities (aside from the time-value of money), then it was worth it. Had I gone to college I would have been paying 10k per year plus instead of earning 50k per year in my junior position. I would have graduated right after the dot com bubble burst, instead of getting my foot in the door with a stable job that had opportunity for advancement and which supported me well through the years of downturn. There is plenty that I missed out on, no doubt, but there was a lot to be gained as well.
Maybe I misinterpreted, but the gist of your original post irked me. You said the notion of experience over formal education was "complete garbage" when it has served me very well and when my results compare very favorably against others who took the opposite path.
I spent those 4 years programming and not in a university. I've worked alongside people who did spend those 4 years in a university, and some came out with hardly a drop of practical knowledge. While they were reading from a book I was solving real-world problems. The halting problem is a fun exercise in logic, but to say that one must have knowledge of it to realize that writing a compiler in 1 month is unrealistic is... unrealistic.
Considering the years and (tens of) thousands of dollars you've invested in formal education, I can see why you would want to justify that decision. Personally, the years I spent earning money and gaining experience in the field lead me to believe that a degree would have been a less-than-optimal use of my time and money.
"Lastly if anyone should be blamed for warping the minds of youngsters permanently, it should MSFT with its Visual Basic system."
My first languages were, in order:
1. Hypercard on the Mac (if you call that programming)
2. TI-Basic, because writing and playing Space Invaders on my calculator was more fun than classwork
3. Visual Basic (somewhat concurrent to #2)
I've since written a 3D game engine from scratch in C++, as well as several business apps in Java, C#, etc. VB does not warp the young mind permanently.
Of course it doesn't *force* you to use flash, but the page you linked certainly uses it.