ahlatimer

[1]: Perhaps for good reasons -- it seems people are fighting against what appears to be an over-reach of Grand Juries. But that would just be an example of civil disobedience, which often carries the risk of jail time, not an example of the Fifth Amendment not applying in a Grand Jury hearing.

Now, the Fifth only guarantees protection against self incrimination, so I assume you could still be held in contempt for refusing to incriminate others.

Of course, my point still stands: just because it's 1% of households does not necessarily mean that it's >1% of people (it may very well be, though).

Or it contains less than 1% of people if the average household size for the top 1% is smaller than the average household size for the lower 99% (which it most likely is; wealthier people have fewer children on average).

Now, your friends may be more than capable at succeeding in university, and if a school only took the time to get to know them, they might see that, but, on paper, they look the same as someone who likely couldn't succeed in school (because they haven't, really, up to that point).

That all sounds all horrible about universities, disregarding these capable students because of an inability to really get to know prospects, but that's not on them. If you want to get into a good school, try harder.

As far as it defeating the point of getting an education, I'd wholly agree that college is not a worthwhile pursuit for a future-SE if your only reason for going is to get a job. You'll spend a lot of time in college learning skills that are not directly applicable to your future employment. You could arguably get to a point where you're good enough to hire more efficiently by skipping school. Whether or not it's worth passing on the things you really won't experience outside of school in exchange for a more efficient route to money is really up to you.

Isn't that still the case if I switch carriers?

I realize it was an aside and doesn't take away from the point you were making, but the person who wrote this is Michael Arrington, who, according to wikipedia, is 42. Not really old, but not exactly a 'young rich kid', either.

At the risk of sounding like an ass, adding other countries that are not states of the US seems to go against the initial question which says "If you are in the US…"

Puerto Rico might be a reasonable addition.

[1]: http://transbaycenter.org/

    <<-END
      this is some text
    END

It's particularly useful in metaprogramming, since you can maintain formatting, and you don't have to escape " or ' if they happen to show up in your code.

What's interesting in the OP's example is that you end up passing three strings " text of one\n", " text of two\n", " text of three\n". I had no idea that would happen, though I have seen things like

    define_method <<-RUBY, __FILE__, __LINE__ + 1
      some_code
    RUBY

[1]: At least that was the impression I got when shopping for a new TV ~6 mos ago.

In theory, that's how it is. In order to receive a patent, you must first "reduce it to practice". That doesn't mean you have to build it yourself, but it does mean that you have to describe it in sufficient enough detail that a person of "ordinary skill in the art" should be able to actually build it.

In practice, that doesn't happen. Part of that is that a lot of really general patents got through in the 90s, as the article states. Another part is that patents are written in such thick legalese that you almost need formal education just to make sense of the language, and most people in software won't even bother.

The financials of it isn't the end of it, though. The nightlife is better, the people are nicer, I can have a backyard, I'm not severely limiting my options by having dogs, and the weather is better (for me, but I'm used to hot). I'm significantly happier in Austin.

[1]: My 2-bedroom house that I live in by myself costs about what I was paying for my share of a 2-bedroom apartment in SF. Both required about a 10 minute commute, though I drive in Austin where I could walk in SF. It extends beyond rent, though. Everything in SF is more expensive, though nothing is quite as dramatic as the rent.

The sheer number of startups and engineers in the same place can be pretty fantastic, and there isn't anywhere else that can compete (NYC to some extent, I suppose). In the end, though, it's just an unusually large collection of tech-minded individuals in what amounts to a fairly terrible place to live. YMMV, of course.

I'm not Japanese, nor have I spent any time in Japan, so that's purely conjecture, but, knowing what little I know about Japanese culture, that wouldn't strike me as beyond belief.