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Well I tried this approach with my IT career. I avoided the high cost college fees by relying on commercial programming courses and my work experience (started on help desks and now I'm an independant software development consultant). I also avoided big student loans (though I did end up with about 10k owing) and basically continued to work part time or fulltime since high school graduation.
So I did pretty much exactly what you suggested but heres my problem. I wonder about the path I didn't take and the kind of interesting work I could be having now if i paid the money and went to a top tier CS college. What kind of interesting research work or product development work could I be doing now, if I had invested in a first class education?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing badly...but I wonder about the jobs I have the talent for and interest in but not the educational background...many doors are shut to me now because of a decision I made to forego college 15 years ago.
I remember reading an article about this a while back. A college admissions officer was interviewed, and she admitted to thinking something like, "Oh great, another one of these kids" whenever she saw another Asian applicant who plays a musical instrument, (insert other stereotypical activities), etc.

Your first reaction might be to accuse her of racism, but you can see why she would have the reaction she does. In certain areas, especially with large, high-achieving Asian communities, a lot of Asian children are encouraged by their parents to do essentially the same things to increase their chances of being admitted to the "top" schools. Is it any surprise that college admissions officers are getting bored of seeing very similar applications?

Not that this necessarily justifies the decisions, or that this is the only reason for this phenomenon; obviously, it is not.
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By that logic every school should admit as many males as it can. Let's not even get into race, you're cutting out most women of any color.

Turns out that making billions and winning the Nobel prize isn't what education is really about.
It is interesting that Princeton is being sued

Strictly speaking, Princeton is not being sued by anyone. There is no lawsuit here. There was a complaint by a rejected applicant to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.ht...

and while the complainant first matriculated at Yale and then transferred to Harvard the inquiry was expanded.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/09/08/21307/

There still has not been any announcement of findings from the inquiry.

The controlling law is a federal statute prohibiting discrimination by race in any higher education institution receiving federal funds.

http://www.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/raceoverview.html

(All elite institutions of higher education receive federal funds.)

Amazingly, this law has been on the books since the 1960s, but apparently most students have not been aware of their opportunity to make complaints to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in regard to the practices of privately operated colleges and universities. Previous Supreme Court cases on affirmative action have been based on a different body of law, the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution as applied to state universities.
You are looking at it the wrong way.

There is a difference between simply selecting only white males and and simply selecting based on academic merit.
I'm not thinking of a building. Really, I'm thinking of the entire neighborhood, the Starr Historical District. Half of it's vacant. Most of it is breathtaking if, like me, you have a thing for 19th-century brick, and can see past the run-down state and imagine what it should look like.

What we have is quiet. Not absence-of-life quiet, but something more contemplative in nature. Earlham College, 150 years of Quaker history, an industrial history that is mostly gone now. If you ever just wanted the world to shut up for a year while you got your startup working, this would be that opportunity. That's how I see it.

But you could put that anywhere. It's just that I know where the good houses are; I walk the dog past them every day and think, man, I could put five smart people in there. And I'd get to save another grand old house.
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That's the kind of spirit I like to hear.

If I was in a different spot, I would probably roll the dice on this endeavor. Alas, I actually have a career.

One other idea for you: Maybe you could hitch your wagon onto the Knight News Challenge somehow? http://www.newschallenge.org/

They just extended their deadline until December, which is plenty of time to build something. And a town like what you're describing seems like it'd be a great testbed for something like that.
You are looking at it the wrong way.

I'm only looking at it through the lens you presented, which was maximizing the number of billionaires and Nobel winners. If I'm looking at it wrong, it's your logic that is at fault.

There is a difference between simply selecting only white males and and simply selecting based on academic merit.

You need to reassess the idea that selecting the most academically talented students will result in the most successful graduating class.
In addition to the isolation that others have cited, there's quite an opportunity for moral hazard on behalf of the entrepreneurs you accept into your house. Not only would you have to be very good at selecting capable entrepreneurs, but you would also need to structure the incentives such that the entrepreneurs met some set of goals or else they would have to pay back the investment you make in the form of rent. Otherwise, there's nothing to prevent squatters from leaching your resourses and stringing you along in the process.
I know the feeling - I try to torrent a book and there's ten 300 mb mp3s of someone READING it but not 3 meg book itself....
I have waste collection, timed feeding and water delivery mechanized for both my cats. The devices just need maintenance every 4 days or so.
It is only by your own racist assumption that white males are the best for that.

Edit

This comment was at +4, but people are now downvoting it for looking like a non sequitur because tsally removed his racist comment.
predominantly Black Colleges have to adhere to quotas too

Actually, quotas are strictly against the law under the Bakke decision

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1977/1977_76_811/

for all state universities, and I have every reason to expect that an explicit quota would be found illegal for a private university under the general federal civil rights statute enforced by the Department of Education. But colleges appear to have suspiciously consistent numbers from year to year without admitting to having quotas.

See

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063172559-post8.html

for examples of colleges with large numbers of students officially reported to the federal government as "race unknown."
There's more to life than dollars and prizes. I went to one of these schools and as a freshman would've probably had the same reaction -- who needs forced diversity? Why admit people on factors besides the quantitative? If the rich kids score better, they deserve it more.

I'm proud to have graduated with a different outlook. The diversity of background, opportunity, and thought created by these policies is worth it. Sure, they're not perfect. Asians should not be penalized and, for that matter, we should probably just look at income rather than skin color. Nonetheless, the answer is not to eliminate "soft factors" from the process. I cherish time spent with my housemates and girlfriends who did not have the same opportunities I did in high school. They're off doing wonderful things now and will succeed by the traditional metrics.
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It seems you and I live in a same city:-)
If not for credentialism, this would quickly be recognized as the shitty deal that it is and far, far fewer people would go to today's colleges. They would instead learn through apprenticeships and other methods. In fact, there are some signs of this happening already, despite the continued credence given to credentials.
Yes, there you have worry #2.

Although I don't see this as a great deal of investment. If somebody's really acting in bad faith, they'd get terminated, but if somebody gives it a go and it just doesn't work out, then at the end of their "fellowship" they just move on, no hard feelings. Or so I see it.
It is only by your own racist assumption that white males are the best for that.

There are more male billionaires and Nobel winners than any other demographic in the world. If I wanted to maximize my output of these types of alumni in the short term, my class would overwhelmingly be male.

---

It's a subtle point, but this statement is far from racist. You should exercise more care throwing around such a serious term in the future.

EDIT: I'm going to change my statements to males in general, so you can't play the race card and obnoxiously ignore my point. Let the record show my original contention was white male, which I still stand by.
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This article lost me about half-way down with all of the over-the-top language. Google is not all that is good and just in the world, and those that manipulate its algorithms for their own ends are not all that is evil and base.

Come back when you've gained a bit of nuance.
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he should just replace the hidden fan with a smaller version of the air amplifier... and then have another smaller air amplifier for the blower in the blower, eventually he could minimize it into an ultra tiny electrostatic air mover.
Again, being willing to take risks for greater gain doesn't make you luckier.

In the case of poker, it might be smarter to pretend to play aggressively after a losing streak, but at this point, you are using reverse psychology and you are playing smarter, NOT luckier.

Ever heard of the overaggressive guy that failed a business or died in a stunt? No, of course not. You only hear the success stories which make it seem like the answer to life is aggressiveness.
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was thinking the same thing. i think i've something similar before, and something tells me it may not be practical.
We added code at least a year ago to prevent people from building gems with the name of a gem already hosted on rubyforge. That being said, the rubygem library itself really needs some type of namespacing solution to solve the problem once and for all instead of requiring gem hosts to implement hacks like we did. Fortunately, I've heard rumblings that they may be working on something.
Maybe that would be an improvement, but it sounds far from ideal. In today's world, the school would then have an incentive to send its students to Wall Street and fuel even more financialization.
I guess the biggest problem is that it's in Indiana :-P
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"There are more white male billionaires than any other demographic in the world."

So "billionaire" is a good statistical predictor for being male. That does not imply that "male" is a good predictor for being a billionaire.
So are they going to opine on whether there was discrimination by race, or perhaps not opine at all? Or is there any chance that they would look at data, like that of Thomas Espenshade, that points to widespread socio-economic discrimination? Perhaps give some guidance as to whether that is acceptable or not?
> There are more white male billionaires than any other demographic in the world. If I wanted to maximize my output of billionaire alumni in the short term, my class would mostly be white males. Old money has proven to be the most effective route here.

That is short sighted.

1. Old money does not last as frequent revolutions and redistribution of wealth have shown throughout history. By gradually enrolling minorities as they come into power, Universities hedge against their current positions.

2. The color of your skin is a worse predictor of Nobel prize winning capability than your academic performance.

> You should exercise more care throwing around such a serious term in the future.

And you should exercise more caution in down voting and throwing out 1 line knee-jerk comments and then totally rediting both your comments after being downvoted yourself.
That's an interesting perspective that honestly had not occurred to me. I've have an unhealthy interest with admissions policies for, crikey, more than a decade now. The fact that affirmative action would require a disproportionate discrimination against Asians was obvious from the public data, and much remarked upon, more than a decade ago. It was also frequently remarked that this concern was just a stalking horse for white Republicans, for what its worth.

Speaking of public data: universities have gotten very good at shutting it up like a drum because when it surfaces (in, for example, the Grantz vs. Bollinger litigation) it typically reveals that they are bald-faced liars on this subject.

Relatedly, Princeton's written Affirmative Action Plan is available for inspection only if you go to campus and read it in their presence, but you won't be allowed to make copies.
I'm not going to get into correlation does not imply causation bullshit with you. I understand statistics very well. Point is, admission committees don't care about statistical relevance, they care about simple measures. Since when was your GPA between the ages of 14 and 17 a predictor of success?
We've actually hired some employees so we do have to get an office. And we have hit ramen profitability (yay)
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Anyone who's been in a conversation with me before knows I always edit my comments after I post them. Nothing wrong with it, and I clearly acknowledge my change. I hardly care about down votes. I care about being clear about my position.

Let's get back to the original point. You claimed that Universities should be more concerned with making billionaires and Nobel prize winners than having diversity. It's an incorrect claim and I tried to show you how silly a class meant to maximize that potential would look.

You also were an idiot and called me a racist, because you seem incapable of addressing the complexities that go along with a discussion about race, gender, success, and the works. I took race out of it, and maybe you wont be able to avoid what's actually being said.
Dr. Williamson's work is surprisedly very relevant for hackers' startups. His transaction cost economics of markets vs hierarchies explains how startups can compete or sell services to big enterprises.

http://groups.haas.berkeley.edu/bpp/oew/choicetocontract.pdf
Fun challenge! I wonder when the contest closes? I'd like to blog about my solution. Hopefully my email to matasano doesn't get eaten by a spam filter :/
Sure, but then you're back to having to wait for the vendor to supply a patch.
I'd be so into this idea if it were all physically practical, wish it were easier to find similar situations.
> You claimed that Universities should be more concerned with making billionaires and Nobel prize winners than having diversity. It's an incorrect claim

How can this claim be incorrect? You might not share his goal, but does that make it "incorrect"?
No I wouldn't pay to watch a 60 second clip.
This is very interesting when working with B2B style consulting, but the real trick is to apply these MVP practices to the creation of entire new B2C markets.
I've talked to a few admissions staff and they want nothing more than to find a better predictor of success than GPA.

It is certainly not perfect, but its still better than nothing, which is why it is usually supplemented with SATs and interviews.
>Why are Tiger cheaper? Because they have stricter policies and fewer, perhaps less-trained or experienced staff, and they build a business model on those factors, not around caring for you. If you want somebody to care, be prepared to pay for it.

Exactly. That's Tiger's position in the australian budget airline market. Absolutely minimum cost - less staff, less service but they get you from point A to point B for cheap when it's economically sensible for them (they have a minimal number of services depending on seasonal demand). They have been getting a very high level of complaints this year (and apparently only allowed communication via post until recently!!!) [1].

Jetstar and Virgin can afford a couple more amenities/services and Virgin at least has tiered pricing that might allow them to offset some of those costs (including flexibility in cancellations/flight changes etc.).

1: http://www.watoday.com.au/travel/travel-news/airline-complai...
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I'm not talking about correlation vs. causation. Considering correlation alone, "most billionaires are male" does not mean that selecting only males will help maximize the number of billionaires you pick, especially since billionaires are a small group while males are a large one.

Suppose 1% of males are billionaires and 0.1% of females are billionaires. (Then if the total population is half male, this means 89% of billionaires are male.) Eliminating females from your sample will increase your "billionaire rate" from .55% to 1%.

Now suppose that 10% of billionaires are children of billionaires; half of those are male and half female. Let's say 1% of both males and females are children of billionaires. Suppose your college has two applicants, a male child of a billionaire, a female child of a billionaire, and a male child of non-billionaires. Which has a better chance of being a billionaire?

In this (totally contrived) example, "child of a billionaire" is a better predictor for "billionaire" than "male" is (even though "billionaire" a predictor for "male" than for "child of a billionaire"). The college that wants to maximize billionaire alumni should not select only males. Instead, it should choose children of billionaires over all others. Then the rate increases to 5.5%.
Sounds cool. Out of curiosity though, what is the actual record that's been set? The article isn't very clear about this.
Fair question.

If you're running a University as a business to make money, it's incorrect because attracting highly talented students capable of such feats is expensive. Far better to find less talented students that will attend and pay tuition.

If you're running a University as an educational institution it's also incorrect. Your students are not going to become deep, consciousness thinkers in a homogeneous group. Also, as an educational institution is it your goal to improve society as a whole through education? If there are minority students capable of finishing your degree program, giving it to them is going to have a far greater impact than giving it to a slightly more talented member of the majority. Minorities do not have the support structure that the majority does. They are less likely to have both parents around, less likely to have parents with degrees, and less likely to have parents with money and connections.
I believe there is another collective of designers in rural Alabama who avoids this problem by focusing on "sustainability" type projects with an emphasis on making the world a better place. http://www.projectmlab.com/

What mainly got me interested in them was their pie shop: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alissa-walker/designerati/pr...
Great points rishi. Facebook can teach us all a lesson in social networking and how to improve our own web 2.0 products.
If the obscurity of the codes impedes your capability to see the bug, then refactor it so that obstacle is removed. I think cleaning up code so bugs become clear is a skill that one may consider a prerequisite for this challenge.
"Spam" exists in most communication channels.

Telemarketers in call centers.
Automated voice messages.
Bulk SMS messages.
Bluetooth spam.
Junk mail.
Email spam.
Usenet spam.
IRC spam.
Web spam.
Word-of-mouth spam.
Celebrity “endorsements”.
Street peddlers.
Classifieds spam.
Flyer spam.
Sky writing, flying banners etc.
Huge billboards with blinking fucking lights.

I could go on for a while.

Are all of those people evil opportunistic bastard cockroaches?
I don't understand why publicly lynch some company? why not market let work out its dynamics -- if it is not worthwhile people won't buy it. I am saying this because I have attended Keiretsu forum meetings and these are very nice people.. they maintain office/staff/provide food at events and put in lot of efforts to promote startups..If you have not attended meeting then please do so..They seem to be not making profits by charging startups but covering operational costs (I don't know financial details but this is my guess). Now question is who pays for the services - I feel it is not at all outrageous for companies to pay here because the companies they select are generally already revenue generating companies, many of the companies are not in related field to a particular angel..as a matter of fact they advice you not to invest for quite a few deals when you start so you learn ins and outs..If they start charging more to angel members then the number of angels who engage in the process might drop ..may be you will say those are not right kind of investors who you want but be careful what you wish for. There are number of people in the group who are rich enough to sponsor whole thing but again, that's another model..sponsorship has its own strings attached. Coming back to my first point - just having different operational model does not equate to scam and people without getting facts falling for propaganda is no good
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Your point is well taken. There are certainly far better predictors than gender. I chose to use male as my example because it is (1) Simple (2) Something the admissions committee has access to (they may not have access to the financials of the parent) and most importantly (3) It fits within the broader discussion of race and gender.
Fair enough; you're not obligated to disclose everything up front if they don't ask. But that's a world different from making a deliberately misleading statement.

If someone says "We're actively developing this" I'm not going to just assume I'm being mislead and say, "Sure, but do you have code?" The statement implies an answer to the question, so I'll feel like I already have an answer to the question, and I'd be wrong.

So no, it's not a direct answer to a question, but it's meant to imply an answer to the question so people don't ask anything further. Deliberately attempting to mislead people is just as bad as outright lying in my book, and I can't see the way that statement is worded as anything less than an attempt to mislead the potential customer.
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Those that get lucky more often identify more opportunities to get lucky from.
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I couldn't agree more. Real backups mean that at some level you can't delete that data, no matter how much you want to, without driving out to some secure remote location and demagnetizing some tapes.
I'm assuming this is just some over 100's world record?
The world record appears to be 22 meters according to wikipedia.
60 seconds? The interview is 30 minutes.