No amount of money is going to get parents in failing schools to care about their kid's education.

No computer engineers starting at 60k is about right in the US. Even in my ultra-low-cost area of the country.

I agree completely. However citing FPGA development as an example to specialize in is pretty ambitious. The programmers in my office make well over six figures, but they are all low level embedded programmers and have the skill and ability to help out the hardware and FPGA engineers in design. I'd say that the key for a programmer is to become involved at the higher levels of design. Poke your nose into the system design meetings. Don't just let yourself be cornered into being a code monkey. Learn as much as you can about the other aspects of design that are not directly related to programming.

Have 20 million Chinese WoW addicts have their game taken away.

Different people want different things out of an RPG. I prefer the tighter story and awesome dialogue of a Bioware game and loathe the lack of direction in Oblivion. I also prefer the combat in Dragon Age to Oblivion, since it is based on party tactics. Oblivion is simply swing sword/cast spell. But if that is what you like, then go for it!

According to the reviews and talk online, the PC version is the superior version by a significant margin. Some of the advantages of the PC version are better graphics (obviously), a better UI, and the ability to put the camera into isometric view similar to the old infinity engine games (i.e. Baldur's Gate et. al.). For control, on PC you have a standard spell bar and can click the ground to move, but on console you have a radial menu for your skills and have to move using standard 3rd person controls. This means that in combat, on the PC, you can queue up all parties members exactly where you want them to go without controlling them manually. But the biggest advantage to the PC version, in my opinion, is the toolset that Bioware just released to create user campaigns that you can download for free. They talked about porting some of the best ones to PS3, but on PC you will have access to everything.

I wouldn't say most companies do that. My company's policy states that anything I create that is work related is their property, which is reasonable. However, if I do something that is not related to work at all, such as create a new invention not related to my companies business, or write a novel, then it is my property.

Oh I should mention that to keep that project $5, just use cheaper components. You don't have to use audio-phile grade resistors and caps. And get a cheaper Op-Amp. It is a very simple circuit to breadboard if you want to test out the components ahead of time.

Why not a simple op-amp based headphone amp? Like this one: http://tangentsoft.net/audio/cmoy-tutorial/ You can present the simple an Op-Amp model since you only really need algebra to understand how an Op-Amp works at a high level. Plus in the end the kids will have a cool and useful device.

Get your masters. It should be free anyway. You have the rest of your life to work. The pay jump I got from having a Masters in EE out of college was probably very close to equivalent of what someone with 2 years of good ratings. You miss out on 2 years pay, but you have an advanced degree that is good for the rest of your professional career, and maybe even some good research that you can bank on. Also, people with advanced degrees are generally given less crap work to do. I was a digital design engineer from Day 1. I did not spend my days flipping switches as a junior test engineer (although that experience would have been very useful upon reflection).

They should have seen this coming. 1 month after launch I'm hitting an attack, seeing a number on the screen, and then watching the animation 2 seconds later. What is this 1998? Bye.

Dawn of War II requires a Steam Account even if you bought it in a store.