I got my masters degree at the Technical University in Ilmenau. Ilmenau is a small university with very good reputation in central Germany. I did my degree and thesis in German, full immersion. Before that, I got my B.Sc. at the University of CA in Irvine (UCI). I had the GI bill and could have attended any U.S. public university tuition free. I went to Germany because I wanted to. Even without tuition, I still had to pay for living expenses, books, supplies, etc. and had a work permit so I could work part-time to make ends meet.

Having experienced both systems, I would say that the academics were comparable. I think the choice of where to study depends on whom you want to meet and what kind of career you would like having afterwards. The U.S. is closer to a lot of the innovation in computer science, so if striking it rich at the next big thing in Silicon Valley is your ambition, you could probably get better contacts at an American University. Germany has a more traditional industrial economy, a lot like the U.S. was before about 1970. Germany designs, develops and makes a lot of their own stuff. Studying in Germany helped me gain a lot of invaluable contacts in the German "Mittelstand" or mid-sized industry. Germany is one of the few places that still combine product development and manufacturing under one roof and there are a lot of advantages to the 'old-school' way of doing business. It might not be as sleek as "designed in California, made in China" but it's the best way to ensure consistant quality, especially in more complex, safety-critical industries.

The question this person should have been asking himself all these years is "if I don't repay my loan that I took out, then who should?" The nice middle-aged banker who helped him get the loan in the 1970s? The bank where he took the loan and then went under? His parents who are now deceased? The tax payers, and by extension, this /. reader who has to pay for his own mortgage and kids college? The irony is the debt is 30 years old. If the author had worked a normal job, he could have repaid the loan and had a life of his own. Instead, he's still caught up in a prision of his own making. Life is sometimes fair. Responsibility is hard. Sorry bub.

You could pack about three hours of music on a 10 1/2 reel. It was great for partys, etc. Throw on a tape and forget it. I've been thinking about getting a reel-to-reel player to mess with. They're pretty cheap now days. But would probably go with a two- channel player that can play 10 1/2" reels and has auto-reverse. Direct drive would be nice to have for the reason you mention. The pre-recorded music catalog for this format is pretty weak. Time to think about taking my old, dusty mp-3s out of storage and making some new tapes from them. :-)

The contact pressure from the stylus is high enough to cause the water to boil. You don't see it. But it will cause more wear than just playing the record dry. I did the reel-to-reel thing too, but not since the Reagen administration. Then I got a CD player.

If Disney wants to boost profitablity, they should bring in an H1-B replacement for Robert Iger. I'm sure they could find lots of qualified candidates from India or China who have experience managing an organization the size of Disney and who would be willing to do the job for less than 46.5 million dollars per year. Replacing this one employee would have a larger savings effect than replacing the entire IT staff, while allowing the IT staff to continue innovating and making Disney run smoothly. As a gesture of corporate good will, Disney could allow Mr. Iger to continue working at a theme park as a cast member, preferrably wearing the Goofy costume.

I go home to relax and unwind, and would like to have is a nice old-school, multi-room analog audio setup. Nothing digital. The other thing would be a good antenna for running a HAM radio. Maybe I'm getting too old, but I find myself caring less and less about being online.

Sounds like an old ICBM silo.

So if they are valued as a multibillion dollar company, they could have a line of credit as if they were a multi-billion dollar company. Agree 100% with the rest of your post.

No, Uber has been 'valued' as a multi-billion dollar company by the venture capitalists who are backing them. It has nothing to do with Uber's actual economic activity or the net-worth of their assets and cash. When venture capitalists put a value anything, it really means that is their asking price for that "investment". It has nothing to do with true economic value. I personally am willing to go out on a limb and would value Uber somewhere between my kid brother's lemonade stand (proven profitability) and a decomissioned Russian aircraft carrier (proven scrap value). Exactly where in that range Uber falls, I cannot say. But then again, I'm not a venture capitalist.

In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job 5 days a week
Rocket man! Rocket man!

Please mod AC up! The problem as I see it with TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which is a free trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union is that it attempts to grant corporations an innate right to profitability and the ability to sue any government that passes laws that might restrict that profitability.

Italy is a country and can make whatever laws they want to regulating taxis or any other industries. If a company can take away Italy's right to regulate their own markets via TTIP, then wait until some other entity or business comes to your backyard and decides they don't like the regulations that maybe you want or need to preserve your business.

Mario Draghi said, "Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough."

Financing a member state via printing money does not exist within the ECB's mandate. So the ECB cannot legally do what you say they are doing. Greece is financing itself via ELA Emergency Liquidity Assistance, where Greek banks loan the Greek government money that cannot be repaid, then the ELA rescues the Greek banks from the bad loans. This type of back-door financing is not sustainable and will eventuall collapse under its own weight. OTOH, the ECB also lacks the mandate to kick a member state out of the common currency when they are unwilling and unable to meet the conditions for membership. Only the political leadership of the member states have the authority to either change the ECB's mandate, or to kick a member state out. How this will turn out is anybody's guess.

I think both IBM and Microsoft were working hard to undermine each other from the start of the project. IBM wanted to regain 100% control of the PC market and eventually ditch Microsoft. Microsoft on the other hand was trying to break free of IBM and wanted to license the OS to other computer makers on other platforms. Hence the disagreement over assembler and 286 support.

Former OS/2 fan here. In hind sight, one of OS/2's biggest flaws was lack of file permissioning, which NT had. I don't think IBM ever intended for OS/2 to be used as a server OS at all.