My g/f is entitled to overtime pay through her company as a salaried chemical engineer working for a fortune 500 company (straight time, but still). Is that not a respectable profession? Trauma nurses get O/T pay - now there's a job a bit more draining and complicated than filling trucks with boxes, with the added benefits of swing shifting and catching bullshit from patients all day. OT pay isn't just for simple braindead drone jobs.
It always seemed to me that graphics design, architecture, and a few others get screwed in college (and beyond) because they seem like they'd be 'cool' jobs to have, so there's a glut of available people and tons of competition for grades and later jobs. The most extreme example is probably Marine biology - I've heard of people with PhDs getting turned down for volunteer positions. In general I think engineering degrees are more difficult to obtain than *most* business or liberal arts degrees, and have the added barrier to entry that you have to at least be able to understand some calculus, which some people never seem to.
My girlfriend had a few semesters where she averaged 100-120hrs of work and a few all nighters a week en route to her Chem E degree, my Comp E degree was no cakewalk but not nearly so time consuming. Compared to people in the business world, we both work less hours now. As for complaining about $55k/yr, I agree completely. That's higher than the US family median - what do you expect when you're 22?
Or I just won't visit Europe until it blows over? I mean, not being able to travel internationally on the cheap is an unfortunate side effect, but it's not the end of the world. That sort of hyper-inflation of course won't occur. Maybe if the Euro becomes the de-facto world reserve currency, China can fix its currency against yours instead of ours.
At Lehigh University the bookstore charges 15-30% more than the Amazon prices. Not a tremendous amount, but enough to save a hundred or two a semester by buying online (more, obviously, if you could find them used online).
It's probably less export controls and more the disorganized clusterfuck of Initech-like companies that make up the US military-industrial complex. Somebody probably did tell them that they were going to give them the codes, but the request ended up getting lost or mistranslated somewhere in the chain of communication - or got to someone who was hidden behind a union and just couldn't be bothered. It's amazing how long it can take even really simple things to get done when you've got as many bureaucrats, contractors, and busy-bodies as these companies do.
Along the lines of what the sibling post mentions, the bat in wii sports seems to mimic the direction you're holding the wiimote in pretty well, even when it's not pointed at the screen.
Were you stoned at the time? That went around my group of friends at school a few years ago, and as near as I can tell, that was the difference between the people who liked it and the people who had your reaction.
My girlfriend did a semester abroad (from the US) at U of Nottingham studying Chemical Engineering. She came back with the impression that the American schools, at least for someone pursuing an engineering degree, have liberal arts requirements than Nottingham didn't. There it was considered strange that she was taking a humanities class on the side of the ChemE curriculum. I don't know if this is typical of European Universities or not. I tend to agree, in general, that students should get as broad an education as possible, but given the ridiculous cost of schooling over here I can understand why people would rather avoid an extra semester or year if they're able.
As for the one language... it's only a matter of time before we'll all have to learn Spanish, too.
Point taken, I read it as you cutting off 24/25 as the older end of the fan base, not the youngest. Of course, if you're going to go that way, there are probably plenty of 20 year olds who grew up on the tail end of the NESs run and remember the games. My sister is 17 and knows all the early NES games because it's the only system we ever had.
As a side note, you sure managed to pack a bunch of vitriol into a response to a non-offensive post.
Ah, the guilt trip. This is the typical weapon of people like you. Ever consider that you're asking people to throw money at intractable problems instead of ones that can be solved, and that advances in science that benefit everyone come from funny places? A large portion of homeless people in the US are mentally ill. Since it's illegal to forcibly institutionalize them anymore (at least in the US), they don't stay in the shelters that do exist unless it is cold. Sickness is obviously inevitable, we all die someday. The solution to starvation, etc., is to reduce overpopulation. There are.. um.. difficulties in implementation here. Handouts, in general, don't work. What are your *solutions* (not band-aids) to these problems? Use your own money how you want. Judge other people for how they use theirs, and no one is going to think it's particularly *insightful*. They'll think you're an ass.
You're cutting off too young. I got a Nintendo when I was 6, and it wasn't new then. I'm 24 now. The NES hit the US in '85. Someone who was 10 when it came out would be 32 now.
Even if it's not flawed, it's totally asanine. No one walks 12000 miles a year - it would be almost impossible. AFAIK that's the average for USian drivers.
No, but there are probably people in similar situations to Gates who didn't have the connections, and without those, they're not Gates. I doubt any of them are starving. They're probably mostly multi-millionaires. Still, even with the right drive, brains, and ideas, there's still something to be said for being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.
Except that it's special just because of the size of its user base. It's a huge force in the PC gaming industry, and it affects future development because everyone else wants to try to replicate that kind of success. (and it seems to be unfortunately keeping Blizzard pretty occupied with a genre I'm not particularly interested in).
Walmart doesn't do much of anything unique either, they just do it better/faster/cheaper, and because of that they're very relevant.
The guy who killed JFK was a very unimportant person with delusions of grandeur who wanted to be relevant. There may have been people who wanted him dead, but the guy who killed him just wanted to be important. The guy who tried to kill Reagen was just crazy. Martin Luther King and John Lennon, while not politicians, were public figures killed without really doing anything wrong.
Of 42 US Presidents, 4 have been assassinated and 4 more survived assassination attempts. I would certainly want protection if the odds were that bad.
This is a trivial point, but I think you're limiting the sports game demographic too much. It's not just meatheads, it's sports fans in general, and I'd wager it includes a lot of guys in their 30's and 40's. They want to buy the new game with the updated roster so they can play with 'their team'. If you're willing to buy $75 football tickets, park for $15 and drink $6 Miller Lites once you get there, $50 for Madden '0X doesn't seem so bad.
Ok, I'm a huge fan of back of the envelope math. But... the asteroid belt is more of a torus than a sphere, and likely the impacted asteroids would stay on about the same plane, so you wouldn't be concerned about the whole of the sphere of earth's orbit. Also, the cross sectional area of the earth is pi*r*r, not 2*pi*r, that's the circumference.. also, the collision won't send the asteroid on a one-way path into the inner solar system, it'll put it an elliptical orbit, so it'll pass in or out of the earth's orbit every few years. That is, if it alters it enough to get that far into the inner solar system. Regardless, the answer is the same - the chances are small but non-zero.
Why is it a strong message to anyone? Everyone in the world knows that the US has more nukes than the rest of the world combined. What would the point of the message be? We have nukes, and we can fly them on planes? This is not the 1950's, this is not news. We don't *need* old missiles, we don't have much reason to deliver missiles via B-52. If they were to say they were decommissioning BM subs, I'd be suspicious. Decommissioning a few old, outdated missiles? Hardly.
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This isn't flamebait... did it piss off some mod working a 70 hour week for slave wages?
My g/f is entitled to overtime pay through her company as a salaried
chemical engineer working for a fortune 500 company (straight time, but still). Is that not a respectable profession? Trauma nurses get O/T pay - now there's a job a bit more draining and complicated than filling trucks with boxes, with the added benefits of swing shifting and catching bullshit from patients all day. OT pay isn't just for simple braindead drone jobs.
It always seemed to me that graphics design, architecture, and a few others get screwed in college (and beyond) because they seem like they'd be 'cool' jobs to have, so there's a glut of available people and tons of competition for grades and later jobs. The most extreme example is probably Marine biology - I've heard of people with PhDs getting turned down for volunteer positions. In general I think engineering degrees are more difficult to obtain than *most* business or liberal arts degrees, and have the added barrier to entry that you have to at least be able to understand some calculus, which some people never seem to.
My girlfriend had a few semesters where she averaged 100-120hrs of work and a few all nighters a week en route to her Chem E degree, my Comp E degree was no cakewalk but not nearly so time consuming. Compared to people in the business world, we both work less hours now. As for complaining about $55k/yr, I agree completely. That's higher than the US family median - what do you expect when you're 22?
Or I just won't visit Europe until it blows over? I mean, not being able to travel internationally on the cheap is an unfortunate side effect, but it's not the end of the world. That sort of hyper-inflation of course won't occur. Maybe if the Euro becomes the de-facto world reserve currency, China can fix its currency against yours instead of ours.
At Lehigh University the bookstore charges 15-30% more than the Amazon prices. Not a tremendous amount, but enough to save a hundred or two a semester by buying online (more, obviously, if you could find them used online).
It's probably less export controls and more the disorganized clusterfuck of Initech-like companies that make up the US military-industrial complex. Somebody probably did tell them that they were going to give them the codes, but the request ended up getting lost or mistranslated somewhere in the chain of communication - or got to someone who was hidden behind a union and just couldn't be bothered. It's amazing how long it can take even really simple things to get done when you've got as many bureaucrats, contractors, and busy-bodies as these companies do.
Along the lines of what the sibling post mentions, the bat in wii sports seems to mimic the direction you're holding the wiimote in pretty well, even when it's not pointed at the screen.
Were you stoned at the time? That went around my group of friends at school a few years ago, and as near as I can tell, that was the difference between the people who liked it and the people who had your reaction.
But somehow I always read the comments to see what sort of crazies will come out of the woodwork...
My girlfriend did a semester abroad (from the US) at U of Nottingham studying Chemical Engineering. She came back with the impression that the American schools, at least for someone pursuing an engineering degree, have liberal arts requirements than Nottingham didn't. There it was considered strange that she was taking a humanities class on the side of the ChemE curriculum. I don't know if this is typical of European Universities or not. I tend to agree, in general, that students should get as broad an education as possible, but given the ridiculous cost of schooling over here I can understand why people would rather avoid an extra semester or year if they're able.
As for the one language... it's only a matter of time before we'll all have to learn Spanish, too.
Point taken, I read it as you cutting off 24/25 as the older end of the fan base, not the youngest. Of course, if you're going to go that way, there are probably plenty of 20 year olds who grew up on the tail end of the NESs run and remember the games. My sister is 17 and knows all the early NES games because it's the only system we ever had.
As a side note, you sure managed to pack a bunch of vitriol into a response to a non-offensive post.
Ah, the guilt trip. This is the typical weapon of people like you. Ever consider that you're asking people to throw money at intractable problems instead of ones that can be solved, and that advances in science that benefit everyone come from funny places? A large portion of homeless people in the US are mentally ill. Since it's illegal to forcibly institutionalize them anymore (at least in the US), they don't stay in the shelters that do exist unless it is cold. Sickness is obviously inevitable, we all die someday. The solution to starvation, etc., is to reduce overpopulation. There are .. um.. difficulties in implementation here. Handouts, in general, don't work. What are your *solutions* (not band-aids) to these problems? Use your own money how you want. Judge other people for how they use theirs, and no one is going to think it's particularly *insightful*. They'll think you're an ass.
You're cutting off too young. I got a Nintendo when I was 6, and it wasn't new then. I'm 24 now. The NES hit the US in '85. Someone who was 10 when it came out would be 32 now.
I thought you sounded like a clancy novel personally, but then again, /. has lots of paranoia running around.
Even if it's not flawed, it's totally asanine. No one walks 12000 miles a year - it would be almost impossible. AFAIK that's the average for USian drivers.
Your car seats 9 and averages 33mpg going 95mph? Wow, I want one. :)
No, but there are probably people in similar situations to Gates who didn't have the connections, and without those, they're not Gates. I doubt any of them are starving. They're probably mostly multi-millionaires. Still, even with the right drive, brains, and ideas, there's still something to be said for being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.
Especially if you're Russian and view "two of ours for one of theirs" attrition as an acceptable combat strategy. (see: WW2)
Yeah but... then you have to work in the defense sector. I guess your job is much better than mine, but I sure feel like I'm working at Initech.
Except that it's special just because of the size of its user base. It's a huge force in the PC gaming industry, and it affects future development because everyone else wants to try to replicate that kind of success. (and it seems to be unfortunately keeping Blizzard pretty occupied with a genre I'm not particularly interested in).
Walmart doesn't do much of anything unique either, they just do it better/faster/cheaper, and because of that they're very relevant.
The guy who killed JFK was a very unimportant person with delusions of grandeur who wanted to be relevant. There may have been people who wanted him dead, but the guy who killed him just wanted to be important. The guy who tried to kill Reagen was just crazy. Martin Luther King and John Lennon, while not politicians, were public figures killed without really doing anything wrong. Of 42 US Presidents, 4 have been assassinated and 4 more survived assassination attempts. I would certainly want protection if the odds were that bad.
This is a trivial point, but I think you're limiting the sports game demographic too much. It's not just meatheads, it's sports fans in general, and I'd wager it includes a lot of guys in their 30's and 40's. They want to buy the new game with the updated roster so they can play with 'their team'. If you're willing to buy $75 football tickets, park for $15 and drink $6 Miller Lites once you get there, $50 for Madden '0X doesn't seem so bad.
Ok, I'm a huge fan of back of the envelope math. But... the asteroid belt is more of a torus than a sphere, and likely the impacted asteroids would stay on about the same plane, so you wouldn't be concerned about the whole of the sphere of earth's orbit. Also, the cross sectional area of the earth is pi*r*r, not 2*pi*r, that's the circumference.. also, the collision won't send the asteroid on a one-way path into the inner solar system, it'll put it an elliptical orbit, so it'll pass in or out of the earth's orbit every few years. That is, if it alters it enough to get that far into the inner solar system. Regardless, the answer is the same - the chances are small but non-zero.
Why is it a strong message to anyone? Everyone in the world knows that the US has more nukes than the rest of the world combined. What would the point of the message be? We have nukes, and we can fly them on planes? This is not the 1950's, this is not news. We don't *need* old missiles, we don't have much reason to deliver missiles via B-52. If they were to say they were decommissioning BM subs, I'd be suspicious. Decommissioning a few old, outdated missiles? Hardly.