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.

I'm 30 and also consider myself to be among the oldest "millennials." I could have had a 5-digit UID, but lurked for a few years before joining.

(Back then, I was skeptical about joining web forums for some of the same reasons people don't like Facebook now. <hipster>I was a privacy nut before it was cool</hipster>)

I have 0.78 cents in lifes savings.

You should get a job at Verizon; you'd fit right in!

Sadly, You can no longer take a C++ class at most universities in the United States. You can take a "Databases using C++", and be expected to learn C++ on your own, but of course, that's much more likely to be "Databases using Java" these days.

If you're trying to learn pointers and memory management in a databases class, you're doing it wrong. An operating systems class is the right place to cover that topic.

Currently, ABET accreditation is "Outcome Based", a criterion which has been abandoned as hopelessly flawed in primary education for both math and reading:

General Criterion 3. Student Outcomes" ...

No where does it require proficiency in a programming language or other language, and in fact, it goes so far as to limit the requirement to reading about them - "exposure" - in section II:

Program Criteria for Computer Science and Simililarly Named Computing Programs ...
Student Outcomes ...
Curriculum

Students must have the following amounts of course work or equivalent educational experience:

a. Computer science: One and one-third years that must include: ...
2. An exposure to a variety of programming languages and systems. [CS]

WTF? The very next requirement after your quote says "3. Proficiency in at least one higher-level language. [CS] ."

The bad news is that there's only a handful of places that have these programs, such as Brown, Rice, Stanford, MIT, CMU, and so on.

The good news is that if you attend one of these handful of universities, AND you opt into the degree program that actually forces you to learn to use the tools, and use a computer as a tool, in more than a theoretical, abstract way, AND you do well, you are practically guaranteed a job at a top tier company, like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.. The bad news is that these places tend to be a heck of a lot more expensive than a community college.

Bullshit. While there are some expensive good CS undergrad programs, there are also good (relatively) cheap ones at public state universities such as University of California - Berkeley, University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and University of Texas - Austin (and those are just schools in the top 10 -- ranked above the Brown and Rice you mentioned!).

Ridiculous. Actually, part of the problem is that due to wealth transfers (Welfare and tax credits), government handouts to unions (especially federal union jobs), etc, have made it so that engineering take home pay gets held down through taxes, and some other jobs get paid more than they should.

Yes, I agree that wealth transfers (corporate tax credits, reducing the highest marginal tax rate from 84% (in 1950) to 40% (today), having a very low capital gains tax rate) have made it so that all salaried job take home pay gets held down through taxes, while owners make much more profit than they should.

Nobody said the switch had to be mounted permanently in the wall.

FYI, I managed to get my last mouse working better by hosing down the microswitches with CRC Mass Airflow Sensor Cleaner that I had laying around. So far so good.

Any thoughts on the relative merits of MAF cleaner vs. brake cleaner, canned air, or other things like that?

My iron just plugged into he wall with a specific wattage rating; meaning it couldn't be adjusted with the dial.

You're handy enough to attempt repairing a mouse, but not handy enough to hook your soldering iron up with a dimmer switch?

Actually, there are quite a few american cars that he has out and out loved on the show... He drove the Lexus LFA across Nevada and loved it.

In what way is the Lexus LFA an American car? It's made by a Japanese company, designed by Japanese engineers and manufactured in Japan.

Or he chose the remote location because that was the route he was scheduled to fly that day.

3 crew on flight deck for all aircraft, Let the pilots rest and get good sleep, and2 very well armed angry air marshalls on every flight. Solves 100% of all "terrorisim" problems.

Well, until the air marshals themselves go rogue. (It seems unlikely, but then again, so is a suicidal copilot.)

Yes, bikes can make a 13,000 mile trip very efficiently.

Indeed they can! They just can't do it quickly.

Or perhaps some means to allow a pilot back in.

Any method of getting in from the passenger compartment would be vulnerable to coercion.

I think maybe they should just have the senior flight attendant enter the cockpit whenever the pilot or copilot leaves, so that there are always two people in the cockpit (in theory, they probably won't *both* be suicidal...)

Either that, or implement better vetting of pilots.

Or maybe they should give the pilots their own bathroom, so there's no reason to leave the cockpit in the first place.

It got Comcast to honor their salesperson's promise, netting me $20/month 20Mbps Internet for a year.

BBB may not be a government agency, but (for some inexplicable reason) Comcast does actually care about its rating.

The last time Comcast tried to pull that kind of shit with me, I got the Better Business Bureau involved... and won.