Viewing profile — thejdude

With anything (IMHO), you should first learn to play by the rules. Later on you can learn/discover when to break them. But that takes experience and judgement, which little kids ma…

As a kid in Germany, I used to eat a slice of bread with butter and jam or nutella on it, sometimes with cheese, plus a glass of OJ or milk. Sometimes cornflakes with oatmeal/muesl…

Since I'm also based in Germany, may I ask how you do marketing, where you get your gigs? Agencies, word of mouth, previous employment? What technologies do you do, do you cover th…

I never said they would. But for a while Germany had StudiVZ and MeinVZ. After a while FB became more popular, people with some international friends joined at first, and after a w…

For me there was a time where I wanted stuff to just work, to get good battery life on my laptop and still have a Unix. I went Mac OS X for a few years (X years ago). A few years l…

Well, it was a state college, I'm actually really good, and we couldn't pick graduate classes in the US, even though I was a senior already, and if you compare standards that basic…

Hm, I've heard many complain about the food quality at our mensa, and many never ate there, but overall my experience wasn't bad. No fancy restaurant quality, but better than typic…

It's not. If you finish Realschule you can still get an education at a company for a skilled job and afterwards go get your Abitur (to be able to go to college) at an evening schoo…

Free shouldn't mean that everybody attends college. Degree inflation sucks. I observe the same problem in Germany - more and more people attend school/university for more and more …

I think all German states have abolished tuition fees after lots of public outcry about them ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studiengeb%C3%BChr#Deutschland ). It says that Niedersac…

I'd say most Germans with average income pay 20-25% in income tax, another 15-20% in health insurance/unemployment/retirement taxes, and 19% sales tax (7% on groceries). Just to gi…

IME very many German people are on FB (but yes, many also aren't, because they don't care and have their circle of offline friends). Twitter, almost nobody. Among younger (20-30) G…

Not research, but in Sociology 101 I picked up that the US have a traditionally high upward social mobility and even poor kids can go to college (if only through student credit) an…

Hah, and I love your user-name :-)

If by "monk-like" you mean being distracted/surrounded by tons of incredibly hot 18y/o bombshells wearing hot- or jogging-pants (depending on the season) and flip-flops, then yes. …

In most cases, these tutoring classes are even run by students (because the professors don't want to / don't have time), so you get good explanations that you can actually understa…

That's the thing. German unis aren't schools; in fact the whole point (or at least original point before we got degree inflation) of our "high school" (Gymnasium) degree is to prep…

German here who also studied abroad for a year (US state college). Overall, there are many similarities, but also differences. I was surprised how freaking EASY everything was in t…

And you never know about critical issues coming in. I like to be notified, but if I'm reeeeally busy I don't go look at the emails. When I do, it's mostly notifications of somethin…

23+ for actual bands. Most pop music is probably made by 40+. (recommendation: listen to Porcupine Tree - The Sound of Muzak)

Funny, I'd call what you describe Permission Marketing, but then I've never heard of Nathan Barry or Brennan Dunn.

By rank I mean title/position, something like that.

Plus, most software engineers I work with every day are hardly nerds. Maybe 1/3 of them are, the rest are just wearing suits without ties but are very professional at their job and…

In general, I agree with our assessment, but let me add that I constantly got great evaluations by my superiors, but when I asked for a 10% raise they laughed in my face. I don't w…

To me that seems insane. With the work I do, at 50 hours, I would be seriously burnt out (I used to be at a previous job). NOT good for the company. By working ~40h I maintain my s…