Yeah, I know. They are a much better experience.

Sometimes they offer audio files for just a few dollars more. They are way better, but I am usually too cheap for it. And I don't want any hassle from questionable downloads. So I will stick with my robot voice reading to me for now.

I got my phone to read Kindle books and it changed my life. Look up accessibility settings, iPhone and Android can both do it. Any Kindle book is now read during my commute. Sure, some pronunciation is awful, but giving me an extra 5+ hours reading each week is a godsend.

Your generalization would be true if I was just one of a handful of students who worked up to general engineering principles from rudimentary physics knowledge. However, I can point to hundreds of my peers at MIT who did the same thing, many of whom likely have a much deeper understanding than I do. Given my exposure to the curriculum at CalTech and Stanford, I feel rather confident in stating that engineering students at those schools weren't just given equations and told to memorize them. Instead, they slogged through a series of derivations of those principles and had to build up their own understanding of the meaning behind those derivations. I'm sure that others can chime in about their experiences at other top-tier institutions, such as Berkeley, CMU, and the Ivies.

As an aside, undergraduate research assistantships are becoming more commonplace at some institutions. I agree that most undergraduates will probably not come out publishing papers in prestigious journals or conferences. However, that does not mean that they don't enhance their knowledge and understanding of various concepts.

In short, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of engineers out there with educational experiences that either partly or fully mirror my own. Consequently, you really need to be cautious when you make sweeping generalizations like engineers only spend their time memorizing formulas without reflecting on how those formulas came to be.

There are plenty of incorrect assertions and generalizations made in this post. It honestly reads like a dogmatic diatribe.

As EE/CS undergraduate students, my classmates and I learned the fundamental physics behind various phenomena, not just the high-level equations. That is, we learned why, for example, transistors function they way that they do and why we can rely on simplified equations to characterize their behavior. Most of what we were taught is still covered in the MIT undergraduate curriculum (see courses 6.002, 6.012, 8.012, 8.04, and 8.044).

As EE/CS graduate students, my lab partners and I were responsible for furthering the state of the art. During these years, we had to understand why, for example, our experimental results diverged from our model predictions and how to revise those models accordingly. In some cases, we invalided long-standing, widely taught models and proposed new ones. If we didn't understand the fundamental physics behind these models, we wouldn't have made the contributions that we did. We also wouldn't have had our work published in Science, Nature, and PNAS.

I don't even need to lengthily address your comment that engineers aren't smart. There are plenty of people on Slashdot that can thoroughly invalidate that claim.

I doubt they discount the expected value based on the possibility of a split pot.

Without knowing how many people are playing this round, you don't have totally accurate estimates.

"Don't have that much cost..."

People don't want to give up affordable cars for battery cars that cost $10k+ more, have less range, take longer to refill, and have battery packs that need to be replaced well before 200,000 miles.

Electric companies realize that transient alternative energy still requires full tradition infrastructure for weeks when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine. This costs a lot for underutilized plants and peoples rates will skyrocket.

Mandating more auto inspections will lead to increased costs for consumers. Who drives old cars that are probably out of spec? Poor people. Why do you hate poor people so?

These things cost billions an billions, cause hardships that you have not considered, and are not extremely effective.

What the hell was Lexx? I don't know, but I liked it.

If the government wants us to pay taxes, why doesn't the government set up an online system so that we can pay our taxes without this added fee?

H&R block does it, Turbo Tax does it. The government still allows you to pay using magnetic tape.

How is it different? In both cases, the police are accessing publicly available visual information. In one case, you have officers and another a camera. Surveillance was not illegal before, but now it is? Can cops still sit and watch without a warrant?

Just do your illegal stuff in the privacy of your own home with the blinds drawn.

I never saw the Odyssey, but the Odyssey 2 was a thing of beauty. When we were playing with our crappy Atari 2600, my buddy with a O2 had great graphics, analog joysticks, and a keyboard built in.

Too much golden age nostalgia!

The child poster who first replied to your comment was not me, the parent poster.

To expand upon my original comment: I am not interested in paying for and using software that is tied to platforms and services that I do not want or need. In my opinion, Origin is a good example of such a platform for two reasons. The first is that it is a glorified game-launcher application. If I've purchased a physical copy of the game, I should not need to install and use Origin to simply run the game, especially if its integration with Origin is minimal. Secondly, Origin is a digital storefront dedicated solely to a small catalog of EA products.

In contrast, I find platforms like Steam to be useful. For the most part, I'm able to launch and play games outside of the Steam service. As well, Steam offers a broad selection of products from a number of publishers. The fact that they offer massive sales throughout the year is also appealing, though tangential to the discussion.

Since EA has refused to release any of its newer games on Steam or other distribution platforms, there four options: (i) don't play the game, (ii) pirate the game and use a crack to get around the Origin requirement, (iii) pay for the game and crack it to get around the Origin requirement, or (iv) pay for the game and install/use Origin. Option (iv) is unappealing, as I do not wish to use Origin. Option (iii) is the one with the best intent; however, it is an unlawful choice due to circumventing the application protections. Moreover, in giving money to EA, I am reinforcing their use of Origin. Option (ii) is also unlawful. In this case, there are three possible side effects: (i) EA starts more tightly integrating their games with Origin, making cracking much more difficult or impossible, (ii) EA stops targeting computer gamers, or (iii) EA opens up their catalog to compensate for lost sales. This last side effect, while appealing, is unlikely.

Since EA started bundling their games with Origin, I have consistently chosen option (i) and will continue to do so in the future. If I had an overwhelming desire to play the game, which is not likely to happen, I would either go with option (ii) or an altered version of option (iii). I don't disagree with your assertion that this is an entitled viewpoint. However, it is not one on which I have acted.

Coal plants are beautiful - if you are a chemical engineer.

They don't chop up birds. They don't blind pilots. They produce energy basically 24/7.

It came back online eventually. Thanks!