I should have also mentioned that educational expenses and student loan interest confer tax benefits as well. Cheers.

I see your point, and the summary makes for good hyperbole, but the average student at Purdue (Main campus, 2011) who qualifies for grant aid received $5,496 in Federal grant aid, $5,158 in State / Local grant aid, and $5,405 in institutional grant aid. That's $16,059 a year, x 4 years = $64,236. Only 44% of students took out loans in 2011, at an average of $6,480 each, extrapolating to $25,920 borrowed over 4 years--which is less than many car loans, I'd imagine.
Data is from NCES IPEDS. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
Most students DO NOT pay the sticker price for higher education.

This. As soon as I read the stub, my first thought was, "This is exactly what they jailed Weev for." Mod thou the parent up.

This is the second post I've seen in as many days on Green Bank, and no mention of the fact that the NSF is planning on closing the facility to save money. Green Bank is the largest movable radio telescope in the world. If you feel--like I do--that this would be a detriment to the nation, please sign the petition or, even better, write your Congressperson.

I hope everyone on this team has read The Double Helix, so they know just how much imaginative work was done back in the day to figure out what they just confirmed visually. While writing that I also had the amusing thought that I hope James Watson calls them up and tells them to get off his lawn.

I don't know what says more about the change in the average Slashdot reader--the fact that the summary for this story assumes that the reader doesn't know anything at all about BGP, or the fact that this is the first comment to bemoan that.

This.

I would not have the career I have today if it weren't for Slack, _Running Linux_, my 486SX/33, and the friends I was blessed with those fine days.

I remember taking up a row of the 24-hour computer lab at school at 2am or so (to have an available row); I'd clear all the chairs out but one, log in to each PC, and then start downloading--FTP'ing directly to A:--like the carriage in a typewriter. By the time I had started the disk on the rightmost computer, the one on the leftmost machine would be finished downloading. Rollll to the left, repeat! Good memories.

Huh?

sha1sum blah = 5bf1fd927dfb8679496a2e6cf00cbe50c1c87145
sha1sum 5bf1fd927dfb8679496a2e6cf00cbe50c1c87145 = 9dbc5291ce0269baafbf68a6346b5510a1b30860
sha1sum 9dbc5291ce0269baafbf68a6346b5510a1b30860 = caa4e37211fda75d91b9bf3231f9fbeb434d56e8
[...]

Yes?

> There is an awful lot of need for javascript lackies so that real coders can do real work.

If the preceding comments aren't suggesting, "The people who participate in CodeAcademy won't ever amount to anything, unlike *us*," then I guess I need to read with less beer in me.

The above is NOT flamebait, o moderators. I meant it. I've been listening to, and reading, "blah, blah, stupid users never learn anything" since the 90's, and I think these criticisms are disingenuous as hell. Along comes an easy, fun set of lessons on the rudiments of programming, and people are deriding it for: too much media attention, too simple, too popular, et cetera. If your stance is, "I like being a computer geek because it allows me to look down on others," then that's your sad bag, but at least be honest about it. Only good can come from average people coming to realize that this stuff isn't some magic inborn to the 7th son of a rocket scientist; it just takes curiosity and persistence. I am calling bullshit on your defensive insecurity, and I have the Slashdot karma to burn doing it, tyvm.

Elitism: It's what Slashdot's serving for dinner.

Bidden or unbidden, EMF is present.

Eeh, typical Newsie hyperbole. I heard an NPR story this morning about Somali kids from Minneapolis going off to join Al-Shabab that described them as "leaving in droves," then went off to say there were 24 of them. I thought to myself, "That is one drove, max."

No, but I'll bet they're entirely capable of setting one up to run so it could be executed the next time Anon/Lulz did something newsworthy. Great PR on a day Google News searches are running, etc.