As someone said, these are bright people and will probably make it, if not they can still go back to college.
But for 99.99% of "smart people," college is probably the best bet. Even if you had a few $million, that can go very easily over the course of decades with a few bad investment decisions, medical bills or whatever. A safe job usually provides a steady income for decades and decades.
Thiel is set for life and then some, but even if he loses the money he has a top college education to fall back on. So it's easy to make experiments with other people's lives.
> But for 99.99% of "smart people," college is probably the best bet.
Perhaps not. In the USA: Of the top 1% earners, 49% have a postgraduate education[1]. From what I could find, There are 600,000 doctors and 11,000,000 lawyers in the USA which could be said to cover the vast majority of the 49% group.
Of the remaining 51%, 23% have a college degree leaving 27% without a college education. Unless you are looking at very specific fields, it seems you are slightly better off without a degree at all if you are striving for financial success.
If your sights are not set so high, and you're happy with just a regular job: Only 30% of the population have a college degree. That means that 60% (discounted 10% to account for unemployment, which isn't even fair as many college graduates are unemployed) of the population are doing just fine without one.
With that said, you should still go to college. It is an amazing experience that comes with countless positives. Whatever happens in your future career with respect to said education shouldn't even be a consideration.
> Of the remaining 51%, 23% have a college degree leaving 27% without a college education.
Consider that some individuals who are members of households in the top one percent of income earners and have not completed a four year college degree will have married a high income earner who has completed a college or postgraduate education.
Sure, but it goes the other way too. Melinda Gates comes to mind as a prominent example. She has a degree, but Bill, who made the family's fortune, does not.
Not necessarily, it could very well be a PR trick. Going solar is trendy so they may have done it to get some press.
It pays off but maybe in extra iPhone sales /brand building
I like to think PR and costs weren't the only drivers of this...Steve Jobs was quite the hippie capitalist, so I like to think he instigated a move into this space :)
Dude, if Apple is liked and their brand loved even more, that $xxx million spent on solar there is nothing, even if it's declared a total loss. So, in theory, you can be a total capitalist and "waste money."
My point was not to assume that this makes sense economically just because Apple did it. They have other ways of getting their money back and if they lose, it's just a rounding error http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=AAPL&annual
Who cares why he made it? The internet is full of videos and posts mocking Jesus, Buddha and virtually every sect or religion or lack of religion out there. Also people mock fat people, skinny people, black, white, green and everyone in between. Do they have to blow something up to get attention from Google?
I understand that just because you can do it, you shouldn't do it, but Google is different, they did not make the film and their platform should be open to all but illegal stuff (child pppron for example).
I am upset that certain people call me an infidel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir . Google should remove those videos that cal everyone else an unbeliever or else ;).
The estimated cost projections for the bullet train project keep getting bigger. I've seen estimates as high as $68 billion
Wait until it starts, it will at least double the initial projections. It sure makes you wonder if it's just payback to certain groups or spending to create (very expensive) jobs for a while.
Suffering from hypothermia?
Many are enterprise users, and this can mean a strike against Google Apps. Many of them stick with XP because it works great for their purpose and many applications only work with IE.
Like it or not, Microsoft wins a lot of points for supporting older versions for a decade plus. They might lose a few bucks on a new Windows license but make it back on reputation and other enterprise tools.
A company still using an operating system released 10 years ago probably sees little merit in migrating to hosted email, calendars, etc. They most likely have an old Exchange system that they are maintaining alongside those XP workstations. I doubt this affects many organizations.
Windows XP might have been available for a decade, but you have to consider that Vista flopped and Windows 7 only arrived around 3 years ago.
That means large numbers of organisations were still installing Windows XP as their standard desktop around 3 years ago, and possibly even more recently than that since they wouldn't necessarily have evaluated Windows 7 and set up to migrate to it from day 1.
Moreover, the days of upgrading hardware every 2-3 years are gone, at least in typical office environments that aren't really pushing the performance limits of a typical office PC any more.
In other words, for large organisations that keep relatively up-to-date, it's still entirely possible that they have a lot of WinXP machines still around today, even if their newer machines are on Windows 7 now.
It doesn't matter that they are enterprise users. Enterprises have held back the state of the art for decades. The fact that google has to drag them into the recent past and hear this much screaming is only an indication of how backwards they are.
The world is changeing and the enterprises will have to adapt.
The carriers are also dying for a third major OS, but time will tell. Maybe the features Apple left out aren't as loved by common people as bloggers make them seem.
Personally I'd want better battery life (who wouldn't) but would not buy a phone for a stylus and 5.5 inch screen is too big for me.
People throwing screen size into the mix with battery life and NFC are confusing 2 very separate things anyway. Screen size isn't a feature. If we all want big screens, then I guess iPad wins at the the mobile phone market (obvious failings aside, like, it's not actually a phone).
And yes, wasn't the whole point of the iPhone (in the 2007 keynote no less) that it didn't use a stylus?
We may not all want big screens, but the trend with Android high end phones has been that each generation has pushed the screen size higher within limit. Presumably for a reason: People buy those models. Even the Galaxy Note, which was ridiculed, went on to sell many million.
As for the stylus: It's a selling point to not need a stylus for regular use, but for some types of use a stylus is far superior. Your fingers are no good for making precise drawings, for example, or for scribbling hand written notes. They simply don't have small enough tips.
And even the name of the Galaxy Note makes the point that it is aiming for a niche of users that want to be able to replace paper note books while still getting all the benefits of a modern smartphone, including being able to not use the stylus when it's not needed.
That's surprising to hear, because most carrier stores only seem to push Android and iOS - not Windows Phone (which is the most ideally placed to become no.3).
Google needs to be harder on these manufacturers for the good of the consumers, the ecosystem, and ultimately the manufacturers as well. What will the "Android ecosystem" become if they create bigger and bigger incompatibilities and make developers jobs that much harder?
Devil's advocate: How has Kindle Fire hurt consumers? It hasn't but it has hurt Google. This is the same (minus the market share) like Microsoft saying to Samsung, Sony and Acer "Release Android phones and no Windows licenses for you" or something to that effect, considering the Google Apps /vs Android code.
If my guess is right and "Aliyun" is an Android fork, then cry me a river -- if Acer wants to sell an official Android device they shouldn't expect to make money selling gray market clones on the side.
Lots of speculation from all of us, but assuming that the story is true, you are wrong. First Google says that Android is open source and free to improve so what's the big deal?
Secondly, Google holds a large percentage of the-mobile market through the official Android so anti-trust is listening. A clear case of anti-competitive behavior since Google would not be able to control the non-official forks.
Indeed, what's the big deal? Alibaba is free to improve Android, and they did. Google is free to sell (or not sell) their non-free additions to Android to whoever they want. They presumably choose not to sell to companies producing unbranded Android forks.
Alibaba needs to pick an unencumbered hardware partner if they want to go down this road. Amazon (and whoever the Kindle OEM is) made it work, so it's not like it's impossible.
(Edit for clarity: again, this is presupposing that Alibaba is shipping modified Google-written software without a contract with Google. It's also presupposing that there are manufacturers -- like the Kindle's -- willing/able to take business making unbranded Android devices. If either becomes untrue, then this is definitely anticompetitive.)
This is backwards. Google's closed apps aren't open source. Acer needs a license to use them. Alibaba can use whatever it wants, they just can't get Acer to manufacture a device containing their (closed-source!) modifications to Android without putting Acer's existing software licenses in jeopardy.
If Alibaba's product can't reach market, then that's a problem. But given that many unlicensed Android-derived devices are in production right now, I don't see the problem. They picked the wrong OEM (or Acer misjudged its relationship with Google, or both). Oops.
>Secondly, Google holds a large percentage of the-mobile market through the official Android so anti-trust is listening. A clear case of anti-competitive behavior since Google would not be able to control the non-official forks.
The whole Chinese market is anti-competitive to outsiders.
I think he is looking for the next Zuckenberg to say: "give me $50k and here's 25% [of the next Facebook]. What, we need to incorporate?" but YC has done the initial steps.
But for 99.99% of "smart people," college is probably the best bet. Even if you had a few $million, that can go very easily over the course of decades with a few bad investment decisions, medical bills or whatever. A safe job usually provides a steady income for decades and decades.
Thiel is set for life and then some, but even if he loses the money he has a top college education to fall back on. So it's easy to make experiments with other people's lives.
No matter what, do not expect to work for Thiel's funds without a degree and from a top college http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-05-14/wall_street/3...