The Gaming Den

mean_liar wrote:

A question exploring the relative value of education and experience is by no means pointless in the context of this thread, and your answer eventually boiled down to "because of my personal anecdotal experience", which was exactly what I wanted to know. As someone weighing the value of a PMI certification versus a conventional degree myself, I was concerned that you might have a compelling reason to choose one over the other.

I'm disappointed that you feel the question is not worth examining in detail, and surprised by your conduct.

echo

If you want advice on your personal situation, just ask it. You'll get better results. I don't have a problem examining the question in detail, but absent context I'm just reiterating everything I've already said.

I generally have a lot of patience, but it seems I was in a bad mood at the same time I was looking at what was, to me, a series of probing questions all re-asking the same thing absent any motive or stated point. To me it came across like you were looking for a way to start an argument based on recasting my responses, and there's enough of that shit on the Den that I'm viciously fighting against myself becoming inured to it.

To go back to the original topic, crime. While dnd style murder hobo antics won't get you very far, there are a huge variety of ways to make money easily(but riskily). Considering that you're probably white and not poor, you'll barely have to worry about the police as well.

If you're playing in the big-leagues(Wall street, Enron, Madoff etc) then you can make more than enough money to live off of forever after a year or two of work. Planning a single big job or even just a series of small jobs means that you can work really hard for a while and then just fuck off to a country like Thailand or Brazil or wherever and live forever in luxury on the proceeds of your crime. Internet scams can, when applied on a large enough scale, make tons of money as well.

If you're playing in the small leagues, chemistry training and the right raw materials will let you synthesise LSD or any number of amazing drugs which sell for embarrassingly large amounts of money. Depending on your area, a bit of "green thumbery" can make you tens of thousands of dollars if you have enough space and a small amount of labour per day(or even a tiny amount of labour per day and a bunch of cheap hydroponic setups).

Its' risky, but just about any way to make money fast is. Crime definitely wins out over a lot of things when just caring about time invested vs money received. It also works great for impressing the ladies, especially if you get away with it.

Do NOT try to synthesize your own LSD. Never ever ever ever. You will be shanked and left in the gutter. Most people don't realize this, but actual manufacture of LSD is really tightly controlled by very ruthless people. If/when they become aware of you making your own lsd instead of re-selling stuff that they made, you will be facing a very quick death ASAP.

mean_liar wrote:If you want advice on your personal situation, just ask it. You'll get better results. I don't have a problem examining the question in detail, but absent context I'm just reiterating everything I've already said.

Let's just say that my goal was more analytical than advice-related.

mean_liar wrote:To me it came across like you were looking for a way to start an argument based on recasting my responses

I'm a relatively new poster here, so I suppose I should have expected that sort of treatment. However, I can assure you that my intentions and conduct on this board are diametrically opposed to that sort of behavior. To a large degree, my presence here is of a professional nature rather than recreational, and in no small part due to your personal patronage of this board.

I don't want to derail Lago's thread any further than I already have, so let's say no more on the matter. You can send me a PM if you wish to discuss it further.

echo

Manufacture isn't controlled. Distribution is.

mean_liar wrote:Manufacture isn't controlled. Distribution is.

I don't think the suggestion was to manufacture a bunch for oneself, the suggestion was to sell it. i.e., distribution.

But if picking on my wording without any regard to the context of the conversation makes you feel better for yourself, whatever.

Do you have a bit more information about that, Arioch? From what I can tell here in Australia there's a grand total of one person who makes it in the entire country, who was arrested a little while back(which drove prices up a fair bit).

As far as Australia goes, I don't have any information.

I don't have any citations (so it's entirely possible I'm wrong), but in America LSD is pretty much controlled by a smallish (i'm thinking 6-7) LSD families. And if what I heard is correct, you have to be inducted and indoctrinated into the family's philosophy.

Granted, my knowledge of the drug culture worldwide is entirely nonexistent and even what I know in America is more than likely folklorical. However, I also don't have reason to not believe that selling LSD is way riskier than one would assume (otherwise more people would do it).

The big reason people don't synthesize lsd is because it requires some pretty out there ingredients(not many people have ergot fungus just lying around), requires a lot of time and intricate procedures to actually do, a large initial investment, and people with real chemistry training who are willing to do something this risky. Not to mention actually selling the stuff and the whole "the law" thing, who actually track all the stuff you need to buy in order to make it.

I suppose that's a decent point, you can make crank out of anything it seems.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:

mean_liar wrote:Manufacture isn't controlled. Distribution is.

I don't think the suggestion was to manufacture a bunch for oneself, the suggestion was to sell it. i.e., distribution.

But if picking on my wording without any regard to the context of the conversation makes you feel better for yourself, whatever.

My point was more that your warning was a little overly cautious given the assumption that it was aimed towards someone that would consider a life of crime as a job. I was assuming that manufacturing LSD might yet be a viable career if you were okay with the risk and law-breaking nature - just on the manufacturing side of things... though if the oligopoly of "LSD families" thing is true, then it sounds like they probably already have people in mind to do their manufacturing. Maybe not, though. That's pretty far afield from anything I would really know about.

Selling any kind of drug just sounds like a bad idea. I've known a few people to make some extra money on the side dealing, but it was always a side project. The ones that strictly sold as a career ended up in prison or burnt out. In light of the thread topic it seems that there's just way too much risk in it.

I would love to hear more about the LSD families, though. That sounds interesting. I suppose not on this thread.

This question kind of got buried in the thread, but Doom, how the hell did you become a professor with just a master's degree?

It seems that even for third-tier community colleges you need at least a PhD to get a foot in the door. Or do math/physics people get more slack?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:This question kind of got buried in the thread, but Doom, how the hell did you become a professor with just a master's degree?

It seems that even for third-tier community colleges you need at least a PhD to get a foot in the door. Or do math/physics people get more slack?

The farther you go back the more a Masters seems to take you in academia. For instance in my department we have a tenured Professor who only has his master's. Now I'm in a smaller school and he got in during the late 60's. Our department has produced way more qualified grad students that this schmuck so if he tried to get his foot in the door today he'd be laughed out. Today it seems most departments have their pick of who they hire, when a professorship became open in our department a few years back we only looked at people with stellar records in both research and teaching.

If you had a master's and a lot of experience from somewhere else you could maybe get a non-tenured lecturer position, pays pretty decent but you don't have the power or respect of a professor.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Or do math/physics people get more slack?

Yes.

Yes, much more slack. All the 'hard' fields get more slack. I mean, yeah, there are dozens of folks with Ph.D.s in English or Sociology or whatever, but when it comes to Biology, Math, or actual science, it's a different story entirely. We had an opening in math recently...one qualified candidate. We'll have an opening in English for next fall...dozens of applications already in, and still have months to go.


I'm up for associate next year, and I'm quite optimistic full professor will be three years after that.

You generally need a few hours past master's (I'm ABD at Tulane, long story), but as long as you publish (I do so after a fashion, as well as contract statistical and market economics analysis...repeat high-paying customers let me know that things aren't quite as the Den believes) and contribute to the college (I proof alot of dissertations...almost every admin is getting Ph.D.s in some obscure field or other) you can go quite far. My friends that got their PH.D.'s, I still keep in touch with them. I'm not remotely jealous at their moving every few years, scrambling to get something permanent, trying to find one more big result that will let them get in a research university.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:This question kind of got buried in the thread, but Doom, how the hell did you become a professor with just a master's degree?

I got an adunct professor position with a master's degree. Taught Computer Operating Systems in Hosftra and "Advanced" COBOL at Suffolk County Community College in the late 80's. Helped pay the bills back then.

Now a days I think you need an additional BS in POWERPOINT to be an adjunct profssor.

I've been told that even 3rd world countries now strongly prefer PHDs for university lecturers. Even for those engaged in teaching only roles.

Well, "prefer" sure, more is always better, but such isn't necessary, especially in fields where it's quite hard to get people with everything. It's more a question of supply and demand. It really depends; you can get "Conversational English" positions at Chinese universities with only a dubious degrees, if you don't mind low pay and living in a backwater province for years.

It's not the job that's the problem, it's the visa. Often the government steps in to say "no, not good enough." Although, this is just hearsay from colleagues.

Yeah, that can be a problem (thought not for China). Coming into the US, yes, it really helps to have that Ph.D.--even then, if it's a high demand field (just about impossible to get Comp Sci academics), that can be overlooked.

Other than China, I have no idea how other countries, third world or no, do things, although I suspect exceptions are made all the time when there's a need. I strongly suspect if the country is only paying $20,000 a year, they won't be too picky about whether the physicist has Ph.D. or 'just' a Master's.

echoVanguard wrote:

mean_liar wrote:

A question exploring the relative value of education and experience is by no means pointless in the context of this thread, and your answer eventually boiled down to "because of my personal anecdotal experience", which was exactly what I wanted to know. As someone weighing the value of a PMI certification versus a conventional degree myself, I was concerned that you might have a compelling reason to choose one over the other.

I'm disappointed that you feel the question is not worth examining in detail, and surprised by your conduct.

echo

If you are a qualified engineer, you have four years education AND experince in your field AND independant certification. Naturally it kicks the shit out of just independant certification.

However the grim reality here is if you've got a background in the field it's much easier to project manage it because you understand what the fuck is going on when the lead architect starts blabbing about how he never designed for multithreaded processing and it's not his fault that VMWare and the client infrastructure is an unoptimised piece of shit and the orginal demand forecast was wrong and and and and your fucked.

Any number of project management certifications won't help you sort that out.

As someone weighing the value of a PMI certification versus a conventional degree myself, I was concerned that you might have a compelling reason to choose one over the other.

The two arn't even remotely comparable. The degree is worth way more and does many more things than the certification.

It's helpful noting that Mean Liar works in a really structured industry with (many) less cowboys. The value of the certification climbs expotonetially as the number of cowboys increases. I'd expect to see a certification on an IT project manager for example. However I'm not sure how you'd even get a job with just the cert unless you have massive industry experince you are bringing to the table.

cthulhu wrote:If you are a qualified engineer, you have four years education AND experince in your field AND independant certification. Naturally it kicks the shit out of just independant certification.

However the grim reality here is if you've got a background in the field it's much easier to project manage it because you understand what the fuck is going on when the lead architect starts blabbing about how he never designed for multithreaded processing and it's not his fault that VMWare and the client infrastructure is an unoptimised piece of shit and the orginal demand forecast was wrong and and and and your fucked.

Any number of project management certifications won't help you sort that out.

The two arn't even remotely comparable. The degree is worth way more and does many more things than the certification.

It's helpful noting that Mean Liar works in a really structured industry with (many) less cowboys. The value of the certification climbs expotonetially as the number of cowboys increases. I'd expect to see a certification on an IT project manager for example. However I'm not sure how you'd even get a job with just the cert unless you have massive industry experince you are bringing to the table.

That information is significantly useful - thank you very much for your contribution. One of the things I suspect that is inhibiting our communications here is the differences with which a degree is respected in various fields - in some fields, a degree is almost considered worthless, while in others it seems that it is much more highly valued.

echo

echoVanguard wrote: One of the things I suspect that is inhibiting our communications here is the differences with which a degree is respected in various fields - in some fields, a degree is almost considered worthless, while in others it seems that it is much more highly valued.

echo

In most of the professions, a degree is a ticket to play. Engineering, Law and architecture require degrees. Accountancy doesn't technically require a degree but it does if you want to be anything other than a chump.

The same thing is happening in IT btw. Most coders have a degree now, and it certainly makes it more possible to transition into other areas of the profession than code monkey.

I was wondering, what is a good resource to find jobs? I have my own resources, but I'm looking into relocating (nowhere more specific than "where I can find a job"), and I'm looking for an assistant lab tech job. (Yeah, to most of you leaving town to make 20k a year is a bad idea, to me it's really my only option if I want to get out of the box store circuit). I would get my bachelor's, but I'm not going to be able to unless I agree to teach for 2 years after college (and I'm not sure I'm smart enough to finish my four year).

One of the few things I learned in college was that connections are more important than actually knowing stuff.