Vim is quite nice, but also quite... old-fashioned?
I use vanilla vim as my main editor. Today I had to search for some text verbatim, and I don't think there's a way to do this in vim: It treats everything as a regex. I'll also happily use mouse support, and really hate the bad support for the clipboard in vim. I have spend multiple afternoons on getting this to work properly and it still doesn't. So sometimes you just have to take your loss and use another editor for something.
> When I say that it was a bedroom, I don’t just mean that it would be identified as a bedroom on the condo’s floor plan, I mean that this room had a fully made up bed crammed into it next to the conference table and video conferencing unit.
I've had the same experience. After two on-site interviews, an assessment, and a series of tests. I got offered 2k/month for a full-time job (despite my current job making about 25% more at the time). I declined on the spot, then got a mail with the same offer (including the standard "we are confident we're giving you a good offer". I mailed them that I declined, got no reply, and got called the next day (during work) if I could please respond to the mail.
While we're talking about thing we don't understand: I never understand the need to scoff at people who make such a small mistake. If you have a need to call people unbelievably stupid, there are lots of better alternatives.
Looking at the pictures, there is no name or picture on the fake card. The card looks exactly the same as a normal one. The only difference is the word 'specimen', which doesn't even cover the whole card and to me does not convey the meaning 'fake, don't use'.
Is the point of free software to create as much variations of a program as possible?
I'd rather see that useful changes are merged upstream, or projects are forked. If this had happened, you wouldn't even need to patch, and this would save an enormous amount of manpower that is wasted on trivialities.
I have no doubt writing fiction isn't easy. I'm just saying that in general, a math book like I mentioned takes more time and expertise to write than fiction. Not in the first place because it requires that you have at least the level of expertise of a graduate student (which is 5 years of study). I'm not sure what Ulyssess being intensively studied has to with it. The only thing which makes a math book easier to write is that it's more accepted to distribute the work between different writers.
Some caveats apply: Many professors have teached a course repeatedly, at which they have such a level of mastery of the subject that they can just bang out the theorems and proofs (I've had one professor who wrote the 300 pages of lecture notes during the course). When the book actually contains new information, it takes much longer.
This seems to be very relevant. I have double BSc and MSc degrees in STEM fields and am still struggling to find a proper job. On my first job I made less than 2k (for 4 days a week, but still). I've had offers which were even lower as well.
I've seen people in other fields with a lot less education do a lot better. It really makes me sceptic about the shortage of developers in Europe. If there really would be a shortage, surely developers would get paid more.
My bank allows arbitrary length, but enforces certain special characters while disallowing others. Which means I can't use the (long and secure) password and have to write it down.
You make a good point: There surely is a difference between someone like Donald Knuth writing a book that is relatively niche, and a best-seller. For one, I can imagine that a page of mathematics requires more expertise and time to write than a page of fiction.
However, there are dozens of free e-books on the web, written by respectable and knowledgeable professors, and this tells me that the only real cost involved is the effort of writing itself. The distribution and marketing cost for an e-book like 'Concrete mathematics' should be nearly zero. Unless my €80 goes directly to the authors, I'm wasting money. This is defendable for a physical book, but not for an e-book.
> very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format
Either that's bullshit, or the costs are entirely artificial. I really, really want "Concrete mathematics" by Donald Knuth. I really, really don't want to pay €80 for it. A good alternative for me would be the e-book, but it isn't any cheaper. I doubt if anyone will buy the ebook for that price while there are free copies available online.