No one knows what they really need to learn to do a job until they've done it for a while. Go out and get a job as close to what you want as possible. Then in 18months think about college again.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
J.

Climate scientists are funded by the money they scare up, I mean, solicit for their own expertise to fight the process they are experts in. And yet we don't apply the same standards of conflict of interest to them because they are on the 'right side'?

In money terms M$ is winning, isn't it? Linux has helped other firms (Oracle-Sun etc.) maintain their relevance. How much revenue they would actually ascribe to it is, probably artificially low but still not M$ amounts. Maybe that's the problem since it's free it's not recorded how much value it is supporting? Another angle is how many programmers earn their living writing for M$ v's Linux?

Couldn't this post have started "Google releases improved video codec ..." or whatever a PNSR improved VP8 is? Really, just a hint at the topic in the first sentence would improve slashdot 'readability'.

Ehh ... this wasn't obvious? Why do you think they hold a competition? Because it's cheaper than funding the effort directly.

Random suggestion: Can you print the data out in text format and then OCR it into a new machine?

Why is astronomy layman reporting (and global warming, and meteor science) all about the extreme case? Only so many characters in the headline field? Too much character in the headline writer? Thing is you're wearing out the reader - in a few more generations the only way for this story to get noticed will be "Aliens From Orion On Their Way To Eat You".