The cellphone is less of the cost than the service.

WTF - don't link your soci(opathic)-political rants to my post!

"hands-off" jack

Makes sense why sales pitches given in the context of "hands-on" training work so well...

(they are evil I tell you)

... what the hell is an instant of time? Is it as t approaches zero?

Then LHC (the ring) along with HB can truly be the one ring that binds us and in the darkness finds us!

Oh no, here we go again...

I wonder if you were able to slow the playback of the audiences ooooohhhhhhs and aaaaaaahhhhhhhs, counted them, would they have been perfectly synchronized and in lock step with each burst?

If you want support for any product you have to pay for it; either by contract agreement (low risk to business), pay as you go (low risk to contractor), or having someone on staff to maintain it.

Brilliant, disposable (very expensive) hardware! Your mission Dan, is to ... this disk will self-destruct in five seconds.

Actually, they have one of the greatest large scale software architects (IMHO) John Lakos on staff not too mention some of the most advanced Quants and data informatics groups in the country. Considering they control most of the media (catalog / archive / mine) I believe they are ripe for the big data age. And, no I don't work for them, I'm too old!

Facebook, it's the new AOL!

I believe you misunderstood my words (as most do in the absence of a true dialogue). I have attended both a university course in Machine Learning and taken Andrew Ng course. The online one was a great refresher but didn't dive as deep as the former. Great for an overview, but it won't make you a Computer Scientist or Quant. Unfortunately it makes some people feel like they are, only to be brutally disappointed when trying to communicate with "peers".

Anyhow, I am not condoning social class, gender, or race discrimination. Quite the opposite, I believe it is the lack of public funding that dilutes our educational system. I, for one, donate my time as a mentor both at work and at school. Apprenticeship does still happen, for free! At work, in our communities, and (hopefully) at our schools.

Every time we loosen up the dynamic interaction that happens between pupil / teacher or apprentice / master we loss the very thing that keeps us creative and innovative. It isn't just a one-way transaction people, it is what keeps us all learning. I believe the printing press lessened the quality of knowledge transfer, so I see this as again another form of dilution.

Now even you can quote Game Theory thanks to Stanford Engineering online course offerings!

Since the 90s I have been a proponent of reuse, not only internally to an organization, but as interface libraries with a low bar to entry. I found this book to be seminal in identifying issues that show up in large programming efforts and general dependency decoupling for interfacing:

Large Scale C++ Software Design by Lakos

I bet the server names were Socrates, Plato, and Cicero at all six computer labs!