There are two common ways to make them "ASIC resistant" A CPU can do a lot of things while the mining ASIC's are focused on just the one calculation. So the two common ways are. The asic has an advantage because it will be far far smaller than a full CPU or GPU since it only contains the bare minimum logic to do the calculation. The first way is to require huge amounts of memory to do the calculation. You can't fake out the memory, you just need it on the die. This reduces the size that can be saved by creating a custom ASIC. An interesting twist on this is there are some coins now with an increasing memory requirement. Ie, right now it might require 500 meg memory but each time the difficulty hits certain points the memory requirement of the calculation doubles. So now not only does the ASIC have to be larger, eventually it will be unable to do the calculation unless it keeps memory of modern GPU's. Second one is to make the algorithm harder. Bitcoin is so susceptible since SHA-256 is a single calculation. There are coins out there now with 11 or 13 or even 15 different calclations required for a single block. Now you have to design an ASIC that can solve 15 different algorithms and maybe even has the memory requirements above. Now the ASIC is far harder to design and once you do design it the performance gains are far less than the were. I think for bitcoin the hash/watt increase by ASIC's was something like 100x better. (speculation, I think i read that) Then the Scrypt ASIC's was much lower. On the order of 10-20x. X11 and beyond algorithms would be even lower. And then the ASIC's have to overcome the inherent disadvantage of process. Ie, none of the ASIC designers are paying the enormous costs involved in trying to get their chips onto bleeding edge processes. I think the best ones are at 28nm in the near future, while most of the fabs are currently working on processes in the 14-20nm range and those cost far more money and may not make sense at the volumes they build their ASIC's. Ie, 100,000 chips not 10 million of chips. Of course there are literally hundreds of altcoins now and the pump n dump has really hit credibility. Some of the ones I mine have lost 60% of their value recently. I just do it on a small scale for the learning though. I probably barely pay for the power I use.

First a better idea would be computer engineering not electrical engineering. Computer engineering replaces things like electrical fundamentals and dynamics with more CS type coursework which he is more likely to have already. His goal is fastest, and making up 30-40% of a year worth or pre-engineering courses doesn't sound like a good way to do what he wants.

My first thought was that they could never do that because then most of them would end up in jail. Then I remembered that they would be exempt like they always are, so my idea stands. I hate loud annoying phone callers in public places. However making a law against it is a horrible idea. (except from the standpoint of trying to make everyone a criminal, then its an amazing law) I have a better solution. Lets bring back the stocks at the town square and if you are an asshole on a plane and get voted off, then you have to voluntarily spend 4 hours in the stocks in order to regain the privilege of flying on a plane. Or something. People just suck. I want to take my kids and go to Europe before all the countries go bankrupt. But they are too young. There is no way I am subjecting 200 people to listening to my two 6 year olds go apeshit after 7 of the 11 hour flight. That's just rude and awful. But people will do it. I probably do a bunch of other things that annoy the hell out of people. Sorry for that. :)

I work at one of these companies mentioned and have a friend who is a manager at one of the other companies. I actually asked once a few years back about a position I saw and he said he didn't think that they could hire people from my company when I asked if he wanted to submit my resume for the position in the other group. So there are examples both ways. Couple years later and this wasn't even mentioned. So it did exist in some form at some point. I never moved jobs in the last 12 years though so I am guessing I don't fit into the class requirements.

I don't plan to ever see any of that money anyways. It's probably best that I don't get reminded once a year how much money I have thrown down that rathole..... I do my retirement planning assuming 0 dollars from SS. Any money I do get will be spent on trips to vegas, "get of my lawn" signs, and rocks to throw at "those crazy neighbor kid's dog". Oh and to buy horrible gifts for the grandkids that they probably won't even like.

I grew up in the 80's and I never wore a helmet on bikes or skateboards. I have several nice bails including the time I rode straight into the back of a pickup truck with a shell on it. Guess what, I made it. I remember there was ONE kid at my school that always wore his helmet on his skateboard and bike because his parents made him. Now if you are riding a bike on the road with cars on hills and doing 20+ mph yes you absolutely should wear a helmet. If you are riding your bike in the park on the walkways at 4+ mph, im not so sure its required.

Its a bummer that Land Rover gets the "yuppie" label. Thats pretty much what I always thought too. Then a friend got one for the right reasons(to drive it off-road), and he invited me to ride along on the half day land rover course down in Carmel. The guy showed us all the features, and how they worked and how to use them. Then we went and spent the rest of the time doing actual driving. Leaning the rover over so far on its side I still don't know how it didn't fall over. Getting the rover on 3 wheels with one 2-3 feet in the air, then going forward until it tipped the weight from the back right to front left. Going up and down hills way steeper than I thought you could. The traction controls systems in the rover is very impressive, it even has an auto decent feature. Yes to descend a steep hill you sit at the top with the brake on, then you just take your foot off everything. You just steer, the car controls the descent and keeps the wheels turning so you can always steer. Your brain really makes that hard. So counter intuitive. The whole thing is done with the stock street tires. The instructor even let us get the car up around 40 and then hit the all stop switch. It really stops the car fast. :) So while it still is mostly driven by yuppies that will probably never go over a rock bigger than gravel, they really are impressive machines that are built to live offroad. So while I bet lots of yuppies buy the phone too, if it is designed like their rovers its probably pretty durable.