ahlatimer

It wasn't economical for the statistician, since he was making more than he could possibly make doing this. It would likely be economical for many other people, however.

He said he could make $600/day doing this. Even if you only do this 5 days a week and give yourself 2 weeks of vacation, you still end up making $150,000/yr ($600/day * 50 weeks/yr * 5 days/week). That's well above the national average for both the US and Canada.

This was written over a decade ago (in 1997), when Apple was in a much more precarious situation than the one they are in now.

For those that are behind the paywall: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=128...

Click the first link.

This is essentially blog-spam. The WSJ link they provide in the source has a lot more information: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870477460457603...

To the people who are worried about giving up their password, who cares if he gets them? Are passwords really even that worthwhile without being able to tie them to some account on some site?

Let's say that one of my passwords is n0TMyR34lP4sSw0rD, and I enter that into the site. So what? Now you have to guess my username on a site that I might have an account on. Not to mention weeding through all the garbage from people entering in random passwords just to see what the results are.

I understand that being proactive about security is a good thing, but I really think the potential of this being successfully used maliciously is fairly non-existent.

If you change yellow to silver, it gives you "colour silver," but if you look at the assumptions, it assumes silver is an element. Clearly it's not really getting the meaning of the sentence, and the fact that it's picking "yellow" is mostly coincidental, I think, as is also illustrated by your examples.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=The+2nd+colour+in+blue,...

Do you have a citation for your tobacco statistics? Not trying to be an ass; I've just heard the opposite is true for tobacco. Something like 70% of people who begin using it casually eventually become addicted.

http://ypchef.com is another one. We built the site for them. The owners are good people, but I haven't tried the food (they don't deliver to my area).

I'm also a tad surprised that people are finding it this difficult to find a job in software. I haven't even finished my degree, and I get at least two requests for proposals through a freelancing site per week (even though my listed rate is fairly high, compared to my competitors, and I'm listed as unavailable). When I went looking for a new job, I applied to two companies. I got a callback from one and an offer (which I accepted) from the other.

I'm not saying this as a way to gloat. I've met plenty of students who are as good, if not better, developers than I am in my department. I've met plenty of them who have better GPAs, more letters of rec, do more extra-curricular activities, have won more awards, etc., yet I basically landed a job because it's the job I wanted, and they're sending resumes to basically anyone that could potentially offer them a job and are getting no where. There has to be a disconnect here. They have to be "doing it wrong."

Build something, freelance, work on a few open source projects (or start your own), found a non-profit, start a club. The barrier to entry for all of those is shockingly low. Hell, if you're living at home, start a company. Chances are it will fail, but it will be something that makes you stand out from the crowd. I would imagine that most startups would be much more willing to hire a fellow entrepreneur, even if that business didn't pan out. And if you get really lucky, you'll never have to find another job again because you'll be your own boss.

I've suggested this to several of my peers that are having trouble even getting someone to call them back, and hardly anyone ever takes the advice. I think the simple reason people don't actually go out there and do something, even if it's just physically walking into somewhere they want to work, is that's a lot harder. It's easy to write a cover letter, stick it on your resume, and send it jobs@somecompany.com. You never face outright rejection or failure; you simply never get contacted. By the time you realize that company isn't going to respond, you've already sent off another 20 resumes.

While Facebook may not be a "creative" outlet, at least not in the common definition of "creative", it can still be useful. I co-founded of a non-profit, and we do most of our organization, event planning, and networking through Facebook. It's been incredibly useful to get the word out, not just about our organization in general, but also to spread word about specific events we hold and other organizations we support.

Have we done anything particularly creative using just Facebook? No, not really, but we have helped gather support for local artists and musicians, who do do creative things. As rimantas noted, Facebook is just a tool. It can be a waste of time [1], but that doesn't mean it's always a waste of time.

[1]: A pen and paper can be a waste of time as well. Just look at all the people doodling during lectures.

I had a pair of Shures that I paid over $200 for. Every other earbud I've tried has been terrible. They're tinny, they don't fit right, and you have to blast them to get over moderate ambient noise. I worked in a fairly noisy office when I had the Shures, and I could turn the music down to one click over 0 and still hear nothing but music. The sound quality was also a lot better than just about anything else I've used (save for my $290 pair of over-ear headphones). I ended up losing them (or they were stolen, not sure) and just never replaced them. I mostly work from home now, and no one here is going to care if I turn up the speakers connected to my desktop.

Were they $300 better, or even $50 or $100 better? That depends on what your priorities are. Me, I've spent a lot of time and money collecting a high-quality music library, and I prefer to hear it through headphones that are transparent and don't lose detail. Your priorities might be completely different.

My favorite local coffee shop is like that. I know the owner fairly well, and he always drops by to chit chat whenever I come in. I refuse to go to any of the other coffee shops in town, even if the coffee is cheaper or marginally better, because I've built a relationship with the owner.

When I was shopping for a new motorcycle, I bought one from the dealership that's 45 minutes away instead of the one that's 5 minutes away because of the reputation the close one has of ripping people off. The bike I was looking at was actually available cheaper at the closer one, but I'd rather give my money to a dealer that's not going to try to scam me later on, even if it's less convenient or more expensive.

I truly appreciate good service, and I'll happily pay more for it. I'm surprised more businesses don't care about excellent customer service, or is it that a lot of people truly don't care about service?

Except that a lot of the time this discussion isn't started by a female interested in entering the tech industry. I've seen a few posts by women in the industry railing against some sexist thing some other member did [1]. I've also seen a few articles by men saying the tech industry needs to be more open to women. And I've also seen articles by women who are not in the tech industry saying that the tech industry needs to get more women, even though they themselves aren't really trying to get into the industry.

So, we have really one set of women with some sort of interest in actually being in the tech industry, but they're mostly talking about someone doing something stupid, which can and does happen in every other industry. I don't think a limited number of misogynistic instances is really indicative of the state of the industry.

If someone can point out a recent article written by a woman who tried to enter the tech industry but couldn't because we're a sexist bunch, I'd love to read it. So far, though, I just haven't come across that.

[1]: The one that comes to mind is the talk given for some Rails function a year or so ago. I don't remember who gave the talk or what it was about. I just remember it caused a big stink.

If he truly believes that advertising high wages leads to bad candidates, then why advertise wages at all? It seems to me that if you are offering wages that low, you will end up with a bunch of candidates who don't think very highly of their abilities. That isn't the sort of environment I would want to be a part of.

I, for one, wouldn't work for near minimum-wage, but that isn't because I have an inability to control my expenses [1] or I don't believe I could work my way from Jr. Developer to Sr. Developer. I wouldn't work for that because I expect my employer to respect me and my abilities, and an offer that low would be, quite frankly, an insult. I've invested a lot of time and effort to get to where I am, and I expect any potential employer to recognize that. If they didn't recognize that, why hire me at all?

[1]: I could roughly continue living my life at the wages he posted ($8.55-$10/hr).

We both linked to the same article, so I'm well aware that my tuition costs are not what everyone else will experience.

A median of $9k is still less than half of what the GP used, and my cost of tuition is a lot closer to the average than the $25k the GP used.

Also, if we were to put opportunity cost into the calculations (because you could work/work more if not going to school), it would quickly approach the $25K figure.

Which the GP already did.

I think you're overestimating the annual cost of school. I know it doesn't cost $25k/yr for me to go. I pay around $6k/yr for tuition, plus another $1k or so for books. According to College Board [1], that's about $1k less than the average for a student going to a public school, in-state.

Your figure matches about what it costs to go to a private school, but, from my experience, public schools are also more likely to give scholarships [2]. Even still, no one is forced to go to a private school.

[1]: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html

[2]: I went to a private school my first year. It was around $30k/yr, but I was also given a scholarship that cut that price to around $18k/yr. Most of the people I met on campus also received scholarships of some sort as well.

I think you're making the improper assumption that the drives would need to be left on during this entire time. I don't believe they would.

I don't know if the bits eventually lose their magnetism over time, so if they do, you may need to spin up the drives every so often and copy to and from drives to make sure the data is still "fresh", but I seriously doubt they'd need to be left on and spinning for the entire 50 year span.

Here is another set with a similar idea: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrabbit/galleries/721576231031...

I'm writing an in-browser IDE for Python. Having a Python interpretor in the browser is incredibly useful for that.

I highly and wholeheartedly disagree with this. Yes, there are a number of projects on elance that are only concerned with price, but I've managed to pick up a few good clients via elance who were willing to pay a higher fee for quality work. My suggestion: don't apply to the jobs that say their budget is $5-10/hr for 3-6 mos.

I'm 20 (almost 21), have about three years of real world experience, one in the niche I'm working in (Rails), and I started freelancing via elance a little over a month ago. I've made, so far, $2350 working 20 or so hours a week, and I've already started getting contacted for work instead of actively seeking it. I also made an extra grand through a personal contact, but those may or may not be an option for you. Freelancing isn't hard, and the barrier to entry is surprisingly low.

I'm honest with clients, and that may or may not have helped me succeed. I have yet to make a promise I was unable to deliver. Make sure you give yourself a little bit of breathing room. If something is probably going to take me a week, I'll tell the client it will take me a week and a half. It might be easy to promise you'll have something done by some date to please the client, but I'd rather have a few repeat clients than a ton of people I've only worked with once.

I'm not charging a lot ($25/hour, which I'll probably raise soon), but I'm still charging double or triple what some foreign providers are charging. I don't know where you're from, but if you're a native English speaker (bonus if you're in the US), you have an advantage already. The people I've worked with are willing to pay extra to have people in a similar timezone that natively speak English.

It's not all roses, though. Some people expect you to work for pennies, or they grossly underestimate what goes into building something. You just have to walk away from those clients. You'll also see a lot of people wanting x for y built, where x is some popular social network and y is some (apparently) under served market. You might have some issue building something you know is likely going to fail, but they're usually happy to pay.

Some people suggest becoming a master of some niche field. Doing so will apparently cause people to seek you out. That might work, but, honestly, I've found it to be unnecessary. I'm already in the top 5% of Rails providers on elance, and I'm not the most experienced Rails developer. Again, the barrier to entry is surprisingly low.

It also makes me feel better to go through a freelancing site. Fixed price jobs on elance, for instance, are usually escrow type where the client sends the funds into escrow and elance hangs on to them until they mark the job complete. At least, that way, you know that the client is good for it.

Edit: To expand on my argument that you don't need to be a master of some niche, I will suggest that you target a niche, even if you aren't a master at it. You'll compete a lot less being a Rails developer than a Ruby developer. It seems me to you'll also have better luck if you pick something that hasn't been commoditized by overseas companies (say, picking Ruby or Python over Java or PHP).

You can't desire to analyze someone from an evolutionary psych perspective, out-strategize someone, or form a deep emotional connection at different points in a relationship?

I have yet to form a deep emotional connection upon first coming in contact with another person. That's something that must grow with time. From my experience, even going in with the idea that I might get into a serious, long-term relationship with someone, there's a hurdle that I must overcome before I can get a girl to desire a deep emotional connection. The "game" is one means of overcoming that hurdle. Yes, it means adjusting your personality to fit the circumstance, but I do that all the time. Is that somehow uncouth to do so when the end-goal is a romantic relationship instead of getting funding, finding a job, making a new friend, or any other potential scenario that involves another person/people?

iPhone 4, wallet, bag of tobacco, lighter, keys, and a portable HDD.

I'd honestly suggest just playing around with Rails rather than trying to get through the reference manual that is Agile Web Development with RoR. That book seems to be well meaning, but it's slow and horribly long. I managed to get through the first 200 or so pages, gave up, and just used Google, the API, and a Rails developer I know to fill in the parts that I didn't know. I've now been a professional Rails developer for over a year, and I can't say I would be any more proficient if I stuck with the book. That said, YMMV.

An alternative is http://railstutorial.org/book, which has the advantage of being free.

Once your karma is >200, yes.

I would imagine a lot of Googlers have it written in their contract that they aren't supposed to talk about how much money they make. I know most of the companies I've worked for have at least had it in the employee handbook.

Personally, I was okay with divulging that information even when I was working for places that told me not to. I figure if a company is willing to fire or sue me over telling someone else how much they pay me, I wouldn't want to work there anyway. It seems like such a trivial bit of information.

Did the UK not have pre-order for delivery? I had my iPhone 4 a day earlier than they were released in the store, and I never had to wait in any line or even leave the house.

I find it odd that sexuality and nudity are considered to be the worst things you can expose to a child. Violence, up to a point, is tolerated, but any display of sexuality is seen as adults only. Speaking directly of GTA, yes, there was some outcry over the violence contained, but the hot coffee mod received far more attention.

I've met a fair number of people who've had sex, and have had it myself, and I can't say that many have been seriously emotionally damaged because of it [1]. I've also met a few people that have taken the lives of others [2]. The damage done to someone by them killing someone else is miles away from the damage done to someone by having sex (if there even is any).

[1]: Excluding a few people I've met who have been raped. [2]: I used to work for the military.

My algorithm is (notice new follower) -> (ignore). The thing I happen to like about Twitter is that it's curated. I've found plenty of interesting blog posts, videos, etc. by following a handful of people that interested me. Beyond that initial spike in follows when I first joined, I haven't actually followed someone because they started following me.

If I notice that someone is getting frequently RT'ed by some of the people I follow, and the original tweets are actually interesting to me, I start following them. I don't really use any other way of finding followers, and it's worked out fairly well for me. I have a fairly uncluttered twinbox, but I still get a healthy dose of interesting tweets.

I think he means that the guy from airbnb was paying $800/mo for his room. That would be $2400/mo total if there's 3 tenets each paying $800/mo.