I would highly recommend you take as much as possible at community colleges, paying as you go. The universities in my state (New Mexico) accept community college credits very, very well. Slightly before you've exhausted the community college course load, apply to, and get accepted into, a bachelor's program in some sort of engineering (not all science degrees are equally marketable.) After you're accepted, and have completed a year or two's worth of marketable engineering courses at the community college, you should be able to get an engineering internship and continue to pay cash for classes. These student, engineering, jobs (in my state) pay more than English degree professional jobs do. I've seen this approach work with computer science students.

My state has extremely inexpensive, or free, tuition for residents and access to a huge amount of engineering resources (two national labs + tons of military bases + the initial stages of a tech start up scene) as well as dirt cheap cost of living. I realize this approach might not work well in other states, but that's the approach I talk with people about. I'm working with a guy that studied music, but is getting into web development. His goal is to get accepted into a master's program, and spend an extra 2-3 semesters in it taking undergrad courses. If he can get funding (as a research assistant, or teaching assistant) that will be a great approach too.

I agree - the plastic holding it together isn't going to be the expensive part...I think for this drone the expensive parts are probably going to be the research and development, rather than any manufacturing. This sounds super cool, and possibly have tons of interesting ramifications in materials science, manufacturing, and other fields, but I haven't ever really heard of any long term vision, government funded, R&D project described as "cheap."

Did you ever read Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness?" NYC is like that, except instead of darkness, it's taxes.

NYC has a city income tax. They have property taxes. I think it is one of the most heavily taxed places in the United States.

This. Is. Not. Free.

The one book that helped me out more than any with my programming was "Introduction to Algorithms." This book helped me understand how to program efficiently, how to look at problems objectively and speak about them using the language describing algorithmic efficiency, and determine if a polynomial solution is NOT known to exist for the class of problem I am trying to solve. If you study this book, you will no longer be able to be derisively called a "code monkey" after someone looks at the output of your programming efforts.

I used this book for my undergraduate degree in computer science for my algorithms class, and then at a different school for my masters degree in computer science algorithms class (we did the star'd problems in grad school, finished more of the book, and generally went into greater depth.) If you understand this book, you will understand a major portion of computer science. Plus, whenever someone has a very difficult problem, and you know the content of this book, you will look extremely cool solving the problem in an efficient and elegant way (this only happened to me once, but it was very fun.)

This book is worth the weight in paper. If you can get (power?) an electronic version, there are a few other books I would recommend, but if you only bring one book on computer science (programming?) please consider bringing this one. You will be able to solve problems efficiently in any language after deeply studying this book.

Hiring someone (as a regular, W2) employee in the United States is a tremendous risk. Just look at all the social problems illustrated in the following comments, and you can see how quickly an HR hiring manager's spider sense starts to tingle about a talented software specialist, with some obvious social "issues."

In every company, and government organization, I've worked in, they will sit with positions empty, forgoing business and running their shops so fast and hot that people burn out, rather than take the risk of hiring a talented weird-o that will result in a lawsuit, dealing with increases in unemployment insurance, or EEOP federal focus.

This principle is one reason that makes contractors so valuable. They are not "protected" employees, and do not act on the behalf of the company they are working for (legally) despite being much more expensive than employees. I also believe this is a huge draw to hiring non-US workers (and they are inexpensive.)

Exactly. ... Unless the person talking about these "needs" build a product that satisfies these needs, and a supporting organization to market that product, support that product, sell it, and otherwise fulfill all the ancillary needs associated with fulfilling the primary need. Otherwise, it's just some pie-in-the-sky talking about other people's "needs" without actually doing anything to satisfy them in a constructive way.

I 100% agree. It should take all of five minutes to find a new job, and jumping jobs is a great way to get more money.

I live in New Mexico, and we don't have many earthquakes, or tall buildings, so I am not prepared at all.

The department I go my masters in computer science from divided the discipline into three chunks:
      systems
      languages
      theory

I think this is a good way to divide computer science.

It sounds like your Java / C question involves mostly languages, and a little bit about systems (since Java programmers do not need to have a fundamental understanding of memory works at a system's level.)

I don't think this question really addresses the underlying issue - what is computer science? To me, I tell people that my formal education is closer to applied mathematics than what I do on a day to day basis. I also like to humorously use the derogatory term "code monkey" to people that have learned everything through the "languages" chunk above. A lot of times when I've worked with these people, they haven't even really studied languages (Why did the language designers make the choice that they did? What does the formal language specification say the language should do in this case? How is this language related to earlier languages?)

Again, about 90% of what I do on a daily basis could be considered "code monkey" level. It's when a customer has a REALLY difficult math problem that my formal education comes into play, and for giving people confidence in me.

For your direct question, I'd study the book Computer Architecture, Fifth Edition: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)

That's what I used, and it helped me understand a ton of memory management. Then again, my undergrad curriculum was based on C....

I thought the previous poster asked for references in an all right way. Here's one I quickly found that seems relevant to me (even though I think Huffingtonpost contains a lot of hyperbole, normally):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The slashdot one below is good too!

... you insensitive clod!

Why not shoot the geese? The article didn't say that they were protected, endangered, or otherwise not-shootable. Is the section of Ottaway the geese are polluting not safe for discharging firearms?

In New Mexico, we have a number of animals that require culling (due to the elimination of top level predators) and the way New Mexico Game and Fish solves the problem is by issuing hunting licenses. This seems to work pretty well for us.

My bank allows more than one person to open my safety deposit box, if I tell them who I want to be on the access list. It's a good idea to have people you trust be able to open your safety deposit box.

Honestly, I think this entire post makes me feel a bit sad for the poster. I drink beer with my personal bankers, and the tellers at the bank know my name. If I had no ID for a little while, I'd still be able to do ALL of my banking - online and in person. About all I'd lose would be ATM access if I lost my ATM card, and the bank would probably give me a new one without an ID after I told them my crazy story. I keep my passport at my house, and my driver's license on me usually. Which reminds me, I keep my *expired* passport at my house...

If no one knows who this poster is without his ID, I think that is the problem. The problem isn't that he (doubtful it's a she) needs an offsite backup plan. It's probably that they should be making human connections with people that could be close with them in their life, or at least that their priorities are skewed towards making offsite backup plans. My neighbors could identify me, my business associates could, all my family could, my ex-girlfriends could. If someone horrible happened and I needed help for a few weeks, all of them would help me out (even some of the ex-girlfriends!) Having a social support network is (should be?) way more important than having an offsite backup scheme. However, this is slashdot...

Good point. I didn't see how much it was worth to find a dead American, Malaysian, or a dead airplane either...