The research shows a clear trend of the desirable cities becoming even more desirable, to the point where it's almost a necessity for city planners to lure college graduates or face decline.
I drew a different conclusion from this article. I know the article's focus was on attracting college graduates so that the city can prosper, but I instead considered the contrapositive: If a city is not prospering, then it has a lower-than-average percentage of college graduates. I see it as another confirmation of residential segregation.
More and more, there is becoming a "separate and not equal" divide in communities based on their socioeconomic status. As a teacher, I see it all the time in schools: there are some schools that leverage the taxpayer for new buildings, new technology, higher salaries, and less stressful work environments, while many others struggle due to an inability to levy. Instead of governments focusing on what to do about producing and/or attracting college graduates, perhaps it should instead consider what to do about the absence of them in their community.
If the USA is the bastion of freedom, capitalism and independence, why are cab licenses limited by city bureaucrats? Why not let everyone who qualifies swim in the taxicab business leaving those who cannot stand the waters perish? I just don't get it!
Because historically taxis have engaged in a number of fraudulent and unsavory practices, outright racism in some cases and have generally made cities look bad. So there was a legitimate reason to regulate them in order to ensure that they didn't bilk (or take the long route) for gullible tourists, refuse rides to people of the wrong color, install fake meters, organize into a racket to overcharge customer or skip on carrying decent insurance.
Then, lo-and-behold, the well-meaning regulators were captured by the taxicabs (because they were smart) and turned around and instituted any number of illegitimate regulations designed to stifle competition. This is generally pretty easy in a democracy because when there's a small number of cabbies with a very large interest in certain policies, they can often get their way when there are a large number of citizens with contrary interests. It's the law of diffused costs versus concentrated benefits.
So now, instead of being predictably idiotic with our left/right pro/anti regulation, maybe we should think about stupid regulation versus smart regulation. Then we could distinguish a rule require cabbies to carry insurance for their passengers with one that limits the number of medallions to some artifical number. Or one that requires accurate metering of any form with one that requires a specific brand or type of metering. Or a law that requires cabbies to serve any part of the city with one that requires them to drive home from the airport empty instead of picking up a fare immediately after dropping one off (this one really I don't understand -- there is a line for cabs at the terminal!).
On the other hand, nah, let's just hurf about it....
Ask for $8 million, get $1 million.
Maybe The Oatmeal should take a cue from the guy who started a $10 campaign for potato salad on Kickstarter. He seems to get a pretty good return on his requests.
I'm a C++ programmer by trade but there's no way I'd wish that language on a student
Agreed. Its not a learning language.
I learned to program with C++, you insensitive clod! And we had to write our own stacks, heaps and vectors without using the standard library, and that's the way we liked it!
Meanhile, the end result doesn't look THAT much better than the PS3, with its measly GeForce 7900 series.
I actually bought it for my PS3, and the graphic quality seems pretty good to me. Of course, I'm more about the game play than anything else.
It's pretty fun, but a lot more driving & gunplay than I was expecting, and there's no real feeling of consequence.
It's easy to get good karma simply by catching criminals, and if you accidentally kill a bystander, it's a minor hit to your karma. I'd expect it to tank, but it doesn't. Hacking people's bank accounts seems to not have any effect, which seems like it should. It would be nice if they had offered a white hat/black hat path that you could take.
Also, if you want, it's pretty easy to level up right away by simply doing the criminal detections and hacking everyone in site in order to buy 5-star weapons from the get go. There doesn't seem to be an XP cap on the criminal investigations, and they're always worth the same.
Many of the people who go to the "top schools" have been brainwashed by our corporate culture into believing that it's the only way to be successful, and so they waste absurd amounts of money.
If we're talking about Ph.D. students at top schools, which we seem to be, then those guys generally aren't going into a lot of debt to get their degrees. I was briefly a Ph.D. student in a top 15 C.S. dept.; my tuition was 100% covered and I got a $15k/yr stipend. This was 15 year ago. Not going to make you rich, and I might have struggled if I'd had a family, but as a single guy it was workable.
The US is awash in certain kinds of skilled tech workers: Java programmers, web programmers, iOS app programmers, and more. It's not hard to find them, nor is there any kind of shortage.
My employer has had trouble hiring competent Android devs in a moderately tech-centric metro area outside California. As an Android guy myself I can say that I get 2-3 emails a week from local head hunters, so it seems like other employers are finding it challenging as well.
But for more complex work, the best qualified workers are from overseas.
Yes and no. Generally speaking the absolute best people in the world are probably not going to be U.S. citizens simply because the U.S. represents a minority share of the world's "really bright people". The U.S. share will far outstrip its share of the world population, but it's still going to be a minority. That said, if you limit the question only to the U.S. labor pool, it's not my experience that the very best developers are predominantly non-citizens.
Go look in any US comp-sci graduate program, and try to find the Americans.
My dept. was about 60/40 in favor of U.S. citizens, but that's just from memory and I can't find current stats. It looks like nationwide the split is approx. 55/45 in favor of permanent residents vs. temporary residents among graduate C.S. students. Link here (appendix table 2-21).
I can't speak to the quality of perm. residents vs. temp. residents except to note that most employers aren't in the market for "cream of the crop" graduate students. Undeniably there are some that are. But most aren't, because those guys don't come cheap and are highly selective about what they're willing to work on (because they can afford to be), and a lot of companies just don't need someone with that level of theoretical "chops". At least, not badly enough to merit what they'd have to pay such a person to come work for them.
Neutrinos have bad breadth.