I would include all of those, except UTA, in the "and so on".

It's a bit disingenuous to list out the Ivys while only implying the public schools, considering that the point you were trying to make was that going to a good CS school is expensive and the schools you selectively omitted disprove it.

Georgia Tech has 8 tracks. Pretty much the only hirable ones are the "Devices" and "Systems & Architecture" track. If you too CS4210 and CS4220 as electives on the "Theory" track, you might also do OK. I typically don't mention it because of the low percentage of people who opt for these tracks, compared to the other tracks at this school, so you have to be picky.

I went to Georgia Tech just long enough ago that my degree plan predated the "threads" curriculum. However, I think you're being excessively narrow in your opinion of which ones are worthwhile. Specifically, 5 of the 8 threads (all except "People," "Media," and "Intelligence" require CS2200, which is a computer architecture course that uses C for the assignments and teaches not only memory management, but threaded programming too. "Intelligence" requires CS2110, which sounds from the course catalog description like it's a less-rigorous version of the same. "Media" requires CS 2261, which is also a low-level systems programming course, but is more focused on graphics and sound.

Most of those threads also have 3000- or 4000-level classes (other than 4210 and 4220) that reinforce low-level programming skills: CS3451 (Computer Graphics) uses C and OpenGL, many of the "Modeling and Simulation" classes (e.g. CS4225) surely focus on low-level stuff since that thread is really about high-performance computing, "Information-internetworks" people are probably going to take either CS4420 (database implementation) or CS4251 (computer networking 2) which are very likely low-level, and I'm sure almost everybody in the "Intelligence" thread is going to take some kind of robotics or computer vision class.

In fact, the only "thread" where people could escape without learning C is the "People" thread, and considering that you have to complete two threads to get a degree, you're going to have to learn C to graduate no matter what you do.

I'm not saying that you should hire somebody who picked the "Intelligence" and "People" threads and took the least-rigorous classes possible (and thus got a glorified psychology degree) to do embedded device programming, but I am saying that even that guy should be competent enough to understand pointers and therefore be employable by the vast majority of Silicon Valley companies that aren't actually writing OS kernel or firmware-level code.

As long as Amazon is not in a position to force anyone to work for them, what business is it of ours, what they ask of people willing to work for them?

There was a lot of paranoia about Communist conspiracies. The Rosenberg trials.

Is it really "paranoia" (a mental disease involving ungrounded fears) if the fear is substantiated? Rosenbergs really were Communist-spies, you know, who helped USSR obtain nuclear weapons sooner.

it wasn't irrational to believe that expansionist communism was a real threat

Well, it didn't stop being a real threat — as Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968 kept proving. But, somehow, that clear and present danger of Communism no longer played the role it played during Korea War. Why?

Like I said, the USSR's active stimulation of "peace"-movement's collective clitoris played a role. Perhaps, a decisive one...

Confessions to a priest is confidential only because of religion. Certain religious beliefs declare a way to atonement and salvation through confessions. The priest is generally thought of as a conduit to their God(s). There is also spiritual guidance associated with it that can influence future behavior but ever since religion was in power, this came about and has been around since.

As for benefiting society- no more so or less than throwing out evidence and letting an obviously guilty person go free because the government failed to get a requirement of the warrant satisfied. You don't have to like it. Its just the way it is.

Rooms go quiet when you enter, people cross the street to avoid meeting you on the sidewalk then cross back after you've passed.

Ok, how do random people on the street tell that you're not a tourist and are there to stay, and more importantly how do they tell you're not a native Quebecoi?

Taxis wont pick you up.

Ok, how exactly does a taxi driver look at you standing on the street and tell that you speak English instead of French? It's not like French people look significantly different from other white people (assuming you're white of course). (If you're not white, that's just plain ol' racism, not discrimination against non-French people. And it's not like all French speakers are white anyway; there's whole countries in Africa full of French speakers, plus lots of African-descent people in France.)

And why wouldn't you just learn French anyway?

Quebec is the only way for an English white person to get an idea what life was like for African Americans in the time immediately after emancipation.

It was like that for AAs all the way until the 1960s, and beyond in some places.

But you're still not making sense. How do people tell at a distance that you're a white native English speaker instead of a white native French speaker? French people do not look remarkably different from people of British or German ancestry, at least not enough to tell at a distance.

There's already been at least one case of a homicidal pilot being overpowered by the other people in the cockpit. if I remember correctly, some people on board died, but, if the pilot had been on his own in the cockpit, they'd probably all have died.

So... BZZT... wrong.

Oh, sorry, I just double-checked, and the Tesla did just win the race :).

At least it's faster than a Tesla.

BS, this is the exact same thing every libertarian regurgitates and it isn't true. What you're describing is the Articles of Confederation. Those were tossed out in the 1790s in favor of the Constitution, which provides a much stronger central government though still with some federalism. What you describe also isn't feasible at all with all the tiny states we have, some no bigger than Luxembourg (which itself saw the value of union and created a trade union with Belgium and Netherlands, called Benelux, back in the 70s). That's why I propose breaking North America up into only handful of new nations, somewhere between 5 and 12. Each would have about the population of a good-sized European nation like France or Spain, not too small (small countries have no power or clout on their own) and not too large (large nations get you all the problems we have now, too much infighting and too much corruption due to too much diversity and disagreement between the regions). Then, coordinating 10 or less countries together in a more-limited trade union isn't that big a task, unlike trying to get 50 little (and some big) states to agree on anything.

While we're at it, we should eliminate all the state lines (each of these nations would probably have ~5 states) and redraw them in a more sensible ways, to account for local cultures and values, instead of just drawing straight lines on a map arbitrarily. A series of referendum elections, allowing people (probably at the county level) to choose which state they want to be in would fix this.

And this is why closed source combined with black-box development is so much safer than open source. Sigh.

I really don't mind -- actually, I think I'd be kind of of flattered -- if people were able to look at my code, go "hey, I can use that" and then proceed to use it. And in fact, I've written a fair bit of code I think would fall into that vein. I think I could write something book-length in the line of "cool coding stuff" and quite a few programmers would find it quite useful. I've been doing this since the early 70's. I write signal processing, and image processing (but I repeat myself, sorta) and AI code, with a strong background in embedded and special-purpose systems, a bunch more.

But because a lawyer might look at my code, and use it to screw me, and through me, my family and employees quite harshly?

Bang. Closed source. The opposite of furthering progress by virtue of passing along what I've learned. I give away some of my work product such as this, but you will never see my source code because of the legal environment.

As far as I'm concerned, if I wrote it without referring to "other" source code, then no one else has any claim on my work. I don't have any idea how to fix copyright and patent and still retain the supposed commercial motivation to create, but fact is, as it stands, it's completely fucktarded.

Pisses me off, it does. :/

Same is true for subversion. In both cases you can develop and test your code and review your changes against what was last seen original copy.

It's admittedly been a while since I last used SVN, but it was not at all like Git; it was entirely centralized and required server access to do almost anything. Not every developer has a full copy of the repo, as they do with Git. It was pretty slow when I used it too (though nothing like ClearCase).

With Git, you can check in changes, create branches, etc. all you want without needing any network access at all. You only need network access and server access when you want to share those changes with others. This just isn't possible in a centralized version control system.

Github changes git into centralized subversion-like system

No, it doesn't. It facilitates sharing between developers, and that's all. This is not like a centralized VCS, where you need server access to actually do version-control.

but if it is down, your cooperation workflow is going to suffer badly.

No, not really. The whole point to the GitHub (or similar) server is to provide a single point to facilitate sharing. Without it, you'll need to do pushes and pulls directly between developers' machines, which obviously is inefficient, but is doable. However, it's also trivial to switch to a new central server at any time: just stop using the old one, clone the latest version of the repo (which whoever last pushed to GitHub would have) to the new server, have everyone point to the new server, and you're done. That's something you can't easily do with a centralized VCS.

I remember reading that the $20k 'hammer' was actually a set of tools, including a spade & pick, made of a special set of alloys(can't remember what) designed to be non-magnetic, non-sparking, and a few other nons for use in helping to clean up stockpiles of explosives that were destabilizing, getting more sensitive. Given the location and amounts, they couldn't just set them off in location.

The toilet seat was actually a whole toilet system, I can't remember if it was for a plane or submarine. Still not cheap, but something that had to be custom designed and produced for that vehicle, and they were including design costs.

You're only using the FIRST definition of 'break'. There are many more.

"To break something is to" also covers:
  to overcome or wear down the spirit, strength, or resistance of; to cause to yield, especially under pressure, torture, or the like:
  to disable or destroy by or as if by shattering or crushing:
to ruin financially; make bankrupt
  to impair or weaken the power, effect, or intensity of
to train to obedience; tame
  to become inoperative or to malfunction, as through wear or damage

I think my use of the word is particularly appropriate.

Fast; efficient; not bloated; not buggy; respectful of the user's privacy; hardened with regard to hacking if that's relevant; not encumbered by dependencies; adequately featured; well supported; well documented for the end user.

As far as I'm concerned, if you can't hit those 00001000 or 00001001 targets, you should be looking for different line of work.

Of course it is lovely if it's easily read code, well commented, well structured -- but if the former list is covered, I'll give the 00000011 latter a pass.