Really? I was bummed when I had to learn LabVIEW during my EE program because I felt like it was something I'd never use in the 'real world.' I mean, I still haven't ever seen a job advert asking for LabVIEW skills.

I'm finishing up an electrical engineering degree in Sweden. Most of the engineering programs in this country are dominated by Chinese and Pakistani students. In some programs, there are ZERO Swedes enrolled. The view among young Swedes seems to be that, if they're going to pursue a difficult course of studies, then it may as well be something that they get well compensated for. Engineers are not particularly well compensated and thus many view it as a course of studies that demands a lot of hard work, i.e. many math and physics courses, and very little reward.

Or does using coupons seem "low rent"? I've always been too embarrassed to use them, even when I was a broke student. Foolish perhaps but even a fool has his pride.

Count me amongst those who don't know a single person who has ever used Groupon.

I too have had the experience of listening to a professor read directly from the text book. I was shocked the first time it happened, disappointed the second, and vowed after the third time that I would never attend that professor's lectures ever again. Apparently communication and didactic skills need not apply to the physics department.

Aren't the iPhone and iPad manufactured in China? The notion that China only produces low quality products is decades old.

I remember installing Slackware on a 400 MHz Pentium II system back in 1998. What a nightmare. Then I switched to Redhat which was slightly friendlier but still a barrel of problems. I regret ever wasting my time with that tripe.

I agree, and I also think that a company can't be the largest phone maker in the world and "toast" simultaneously. I also don't understand how following a Microsoft strategy necessarily means following a losing strategy. I think this is a case of someone wishfully wanting to see the big boys fail.

That wouldn't have been creepy enough. Unless by strap-on you mean that other kind...

It's just reason number 2,438 that I'm not on Facebook. Identity theft, stalkers, data mining advertisers, over-reaching law enforcement, annoying colleagues/classmates, etc., etc. It's amazing to me that so many voluntarily participate.

It's hard to imagine that the discrepancy between what a candidate has on his/her resume and what a candidate is actually capable of could have ever been greater. There are kids coming out of college that are barely literate and totally incapable of communication with people outside of their own social circle. The real kicker is that they're wildly confident and clueless about their own limitations.

When people realized that they could use Facebook as an electronic smoke screen to obscure the reality of their pathetic lives.

What about the ridiculous 20 year old technology tracking device the FBI installed on a students car? Search Wired if you don't know what I'm talking about. It was a huge black box with a gigantic whip antenna secured to the underside of his car using zip-ties and magnets glued to a stick. I'm sorry but I don't buy the idea that the US Gov is full of tech wizards and the latest and greatest equipment.

Instructing your foreign diplomats to collect biometric data and credit card information on politicians in their host country isn't really what I would call petty. It's what I would call spying. And when it happens in countries like Sweden (which it did, read the section called "Diplomats Helping American Spies" in NYTimes) then it seems particularly odd.

Isn't it amazing that with all of the pressing challenges our world currently faces, THIS is what institutions like Oxford are choosing to study? Kind of makes you wonder......