"Isn't phenomenal" is hard to qualify. It's kind of relative to what you consider phenomemal.

I've always done well academically relative to my peers. Most of the courses are on some kind of curve. So I've done fine in OMSCS.

I guess what I'm getting at is...if you've done good enough academically in the past and you're willing to apply your full effort, you'll likely do well at OMCS.

edit

I also find AAA much better than crawling under my car in the middle of the night 50 miles away from anything...in general. But I know that's a personal preference.

This is what the whole "You've been served" process is about.

If you go back a little further than 100 years (in the U.S. anyway). They were also relatively likely to get together a bunch of folks with guns and weapons and murder men, women, and children and take their land to make their own.

I'm not sure the hutzpa of 100 and 200 years ago is exactly what we should aspire to.

1. http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-and...

Finally, within the context of comparison to other nation's benefits structures, you're forgetting health care expenses which are included in most western tax systems.

Health care is also regressive in that it comprises a greater proportion of expense for lower income earners and carries a 'hidden cost' in the form of employer supplemental payments. It's perfectly valid to include these costs when comparing to other nations or to alternative tax & benefits proposals which include expanded health care.

By including or excluding varying costs and expenses, the cost to earnings curves bend dramatically....even with the AMT. The fact is, the answer to this question is not a single acronym. And the discussion can't even legitimately begin until some ground truth on what services and benefits are and/or should be included.

1. browsing hacker news sees interesting article, uses ad block.

2. posts link to Facebook

3. link gets propagated across Facebook and clicked by 1000's who do not use ad block

4. x1000's

You can think of ad block users like carriers. They show no symptoms, but could be the man vector for distribution of your content. So they may have a value that can't be measured in ad clicks.

The interesting question is if they saw a subsequent fall in ad revenue indicating a correlation between ad block users and more ad revenue.

A naive response may be "well, then. I'll invest in the other 50%...".

It's important to note that no one, to date, has shown they're capable of predicting who which survive, which fail, and which beat the markets. And if such a person or persons exit that can do so they're sure as hell not sharing it with you.

This is a right of outcome. The outcome of not having violence committed against your person or property.

Rights of outcome vs rights of opportunity are a false dichotomy. All rights are a right for some specific outcome and are considered violated when that outcome does not occur.

I may be assuming too much, but in most don't really believe this.

For example, I'd wager you firmly believe you have the right to a safe and secure society such that you are relatively confident you will no be randomly murdered in your sleep with no consequences for the murderer.

This is exactly a right to the outcome of a minimum level of security in your person and property.

If you do hold this belief then you believe in right of outcome in society. Though you may not agree with others what outcomes we should be guaranteed.

If an author received a grant specifically to write a book on a topic, then I'd say yes. This is rarely, if ever, the case.

With research, however, it is the norm not the exception that they are paid for or subsidized through some form of public funding.

If you want to subsidize solar users to bootstrap that market and as a general social good, that's fine. But you have to structure it such that the utility still recoups the cost of maintenance. If they're paying market instead of spot, the paid price is not taking into account the cost of transfer and storage to the utility.

A computer science PhD, in my humble opinion, does not teach how to program anymore then having PhD of Architecture teaches you how to build a residential home. If it did, there'd be much more time spent learning about tooling and practicing programming instead of reading papers and generating novel research.

If I were hiring C.S. PhD's, I would not be judging them on the quality of their code or proficiency in any particular language.

Culture fit should be focused on areas of professional interest, general preferred work modes, and possibly professional ethos (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?).

Many interviewers and companies think culture fit applies to non-professional aspects like do they like bicycles, wear the same clothes, like the same music. Unfortunately, this is easily filtered through unconscious and unintentional racial, gender, and age biases because what the interviewer is really doing is determining if the candidate is "like me".

It's the second interpretation that annoys and intimidates candidates and is probably a root cause to much of the diversity issues faced by the tech industry.