My father, a physics professor, refuses to buy MS Office, and he's constantly cursing the journals, government organizations, and university institutions that demand .DOC (or .DOCX) format. Also, if you are switching papers back and forth (and you're not using TeX) with others, you're likely stuck in MS formats. My experience in the faculty was less dramatic, but about the same. MS Office was the default.

It can be avoided, but unless you're religiously avoiding MS Office (like my Dad), it's not likely worth the pain. There's a reason that MS is the Borg. To be clear, I'm happy to have people strike out into the wilds and not surrender to the MS Office hegemony. But if the OP's daughter is like most people, the computer is not a statement, it's just about the easiest way of getting things done.

It's hard to escape Death, Taxes or MS Office. And they're all about equally fun.

But the point stands: the criminals are not going to say, "Aw, shucks, we're out of business now that drugs are legal! Looks like we have to go work at Walmart now!"

Actually, the thing is that for a majority of criminals, crime is just another job choice. They weigh (often very badly) what they perceive as the benefits and the costs, just as you do when you are choosing which field to go into. If they perceive that crime has become less lucrative or that the costs have risen, then most criminals will look at other avenues, just as you would when deciding what job you're going after.

Now criminals perception are often not very accurate, and their workplace skills are often rather meager, but the fundamental calculus they perform is exactly the same. It's why as job opportunities rise, crime goes down. Criminals leave their current job for better ones.

Like it or now, Word and Excel documents are the common format for most large organizations.

This means you need Windows or a Macintosh. (I find as soon as you are doing detailed tech documentation, the various Open Office suites start having trouble with diagrams, complicated formatting, etc.)

Also like it or not, Linux (at best) or *nix at a minimum are also required for most open source science software. Pretty much everything is pre-built for Linux, the Mac is supported by most, but not quite all mainstream science packages.

This means you need Linux or at worst, a Macintosh.

So, my recommendations: Window PC running Linux in a VM or a Macintosh.

Personally, I'd look at an Ultralight (many decent manufacturers + VMWare w/ a pre-built Linux VM) or a MacBook Air. Either will require MS Office.

It's actually insanely good. $80K/yr would be WELL above average for just out of school.

I'll admit that's a really good income (out of school) for a general CS job, but for a job that's 80 hours/week? That's like oil-rig platform hours (except the oil rig sends you home every so often), in which case oil-rig platform pay would be expected.

You are absolutely right about where you live making a *huge* difference in what's reasonable. I imagine there are parts of the country in which $80K/year would allow you to purchase a house some day.

Well, $80K right out of school for a grueling job (and presumably top students) isn't insanely bad, although a choice I'd personally have avoided.

I was thinking $80K for 10+ years experience, which is insanely bad. (Although with those hours, perhaps after 10 years, there's only a a burned out husk left :-))

$80K/yr? With presumably the elite skills and technological flexibility you need along with incredibly bad hours?

With that level (none) of job security?

Boy, am I glad I never got suckered into the game industry. Scary!

(Unless that's what they're paying right out of school.)

The fact that the return is very likely to be zero is why I generally don't put a 'donate' button on software I release. If I'm not doing it for the money, I might as well make people not feel guilty about not donating by not even mentioning the possibility.

The funny thing is (albeit with an incredibly small sample size) I've found that I get a lot more feedback/nice things said about the no-donation software. My speculation is that many people who like it but didn't donate feel guilty about emailing the author with praise. In the end, the ego boost is worth more than the few bucks I might have made.

I'd estimate the paperwork (including searching to ensure you are not ignoring legal obligations as a US citizen, occasional accountant/lawyer visits, etc.) to be on order of 20 hours a year. Less many years, some years you could spend 100 hours trying to make certain you are not breaking US law when you buy a house, are self-employed, etc.

Over 80 years, that's 1,600 hours. If you value your leisure time at $50/hours, than consider it to be about $80K worth of hassle to be a U.S. citizen. Add in $20K in lawyer/accountant fees over the years, and you could be looking at a total lifetime cost of about $100K.

Is it worth it? Well, if you're child chooses to work there, then it's easily worth it. But otherwise, probably not.

So, what you really want to decide (and only you can do so), is "Is the life-time option of working in the US worth $100K?"

This system will execute on Z/OS and iOS.

That is correct. Women are paid less than men with equal skills and equal jobs. And yet somehow there are still fewer women. Could it be that companies are so foolish with their money that even though a just as competent woman is cheaper, they would still hire the male?

Indeed, that's why discrimination against blacks never occurred in post-slavery America. Businesses used androids who weren't actually subject to exactly the same bias as society as a whole to decide their hiring thus maximizing their profits.

Anyone who doesn't believe that culture doesn't beat profit 9 times out of 10 doesn't understand how human beings work. Krikey, put culture vs. survival, and a strong majority will choose culture.

I'd wager that Windows and Office *are* 'utilities' in the sense that they will be around almost forever, and generate the usual mountain of cash each quarter (although that mountain will slowly grow smaller over time). MS's success doesn't depend on popularity, it depends on businesses 'having' to have it.

Facebook and Apple both rely on being 'cool', which is a very treacherous business to be in. How many consumer products of any sort survive changing tastes over 20 years?

I'd bet 3:1 that in 20 years, MS will larger than Facebook or Apple - my guess, MS is 2/3rds its size, Apple and Facebook are near non-existent.

Unfortunately, with buyouts, name purchases, etc, the odds are about 10:1 any such wager would actually be handing the money back to both bettors as 'technically unresolveable', so I'm not making any actual bets here.

Is this in fact (reasonably) true? I've shied away from tail recursion, but I'd be pleased to find out that that is no longer necessary.

Ah, Ackermann's function, the trusted test of "Do the students understand recursion?" of 1st year university courses everywhere.

I can assure you that if the labels could "manufacture" success, they would do it a lot more. There's no quota system, and it's only slightly zero sum. (If it was zero sum, the music industry would be doing *much* better right now.)

After all, the labels do *lose* money on probably 80-90% of those they pick up. If they could manufacture just the successes, they'd drop the rest. It would be like a book publisher trying to only publishing best-sellers. Remember, we don't notice the artists that the labels spent a million or five to promote, but just dropped out of sight. We probably never even heard of them, they're forgotten so fast and a million dollars doesn't actually go that far. It is, however, enough to get some traction if there's traction to be had.

I suspect your mistake is assuming that talent (or any other single quality) is correlated with popularity. It's not quite random, but it's pretty damn close, although people are payed millions of dollars to make guesses in the creative arts that are only slightly better than chance.

What promotion does is get the artist in front of enough faces that if they have "it" (and nobody knows what "it" is), then they can succeed (as opposed to being liked, but never hitting the critical mass where people like your music because other people like your music - music is social).

It's fun to be cynical, but the truth is that in the creative arts, there's always massive insecurity because people's livelihood depends on predicting what cannot be predicted. You spend your entire life trying to control when you don't know what you're doing. Luck grants you a streak, and suddenly you're brilliant. Hit a dry spot, and suddenly you've "lost touch". No surprise it eats away at the psyche.

Sorry, went off topic there.

how many entities has MS sued for .net patent violations on the subsequent versions, as you referenced? It's been the better part of a decade now, right? No doubt they have sprung their trap...?

Ah, they're just deepening the trap, waiting for the day when they can take over the world. They may look like just another company trying to make money with their product, but just you watch.

Next you'll believe that the Soviet Union was dissolved and communism dead! Ha, yet another sucker, falling for the Red Army's trap!