nope, these guys are dutch :>

it really depends. the czechs and slovaks used to be under a totalitarian russian regime and they have a very intelligent and subtle sense of humor and they pick up small humorous nuances, that lots of people from other countries wouldn't even get.

then there's the germans who, though having been free people for quite some time, basically have absolutely no subtleness in their humor. everything is outspoken and nothing is left unsaid. austria is directly next to germany and austrians have an extremely playful and ironic sense of humor but the overall mentality of the country is completely different to germany.

i think, that the regime plays a big role, but IMO the social environment is at least as important. people who are very organized and devoted to their leaders or their work tend not to develop a sense of humor, where irony and unsaid things are understood.

"christian science".

the fact, that it is only available on windows, makes it irrelevant for us real nerds ^^.

wrong. the reason is that by using #!/bin/sh you signalize, that the shell script should be runnable under any standard shell (i.e. that it doesn't use any bashisms).

also bash starts up much faster if it is invoked as sh. see the bash manpage about its invocation.

i think you are right in many aspects. sorry to see, that slashdotters don't even seem to try to think out of the box anymore.

'the company has driven innovation for decades.'

they are a logical consequence of reckless capitalism.

it's really sad to see what capitalism is doing to a country that had such high goals when i was first created. now it seems mostly you will get incarcerated, sued, beaten up or criminalized for things that are perfectly normal in the rest of the free world.

i think it's really cynical of american polititians to even use the word "freedom" in their campaigns since it has basically lost all meaning due to the entanglement of business, military and politics.

nvidia graphics cards under linux are a dream. anyone who ever had the misfortune of being forced to use an ati card under linux will agree. i don't agree with their binary-only policy, but my experience with their linux drivers over the last 12 years has been 100% good.

hi!

i have been in almost exactky the same situation as you are, only that i am in my early thirties and that i am already decided to go into management, after i get my degree. here's what my motivations were.

first, i have been a java/j2ee/oracle coder for 10 years now and being a very inquisitive guy i learned a lot of the tech stuff on my own. while i think i could of course benefit from CS i think the benefit of learning something that is connected to and extends my current knowledge is greater, than just to deepen what i already know.

i talked to quite a few people inside and outside my company and asked them for their opinions and the responses were also very much towards business informatics. one of the reasons is, that if you have a degree and your company does any partner-projects with other companies, they can send you in there and charge more money for your time. another reason is, that there are many business informatics types out there who have the theoretical knowledge, but have never even seen a database schema from the inside, so your tech background will give you extra credibility with both your own company and other companies. another thing is IMO, that after so many years of programming, eventually you might lose interest in it...at least this is happening to me. your choices then are to switch companies and start basically with a high wage, but few chances of advancing, or to switch jobs and start as a total noob at something, where you don't have any expertise. i thought that IT management is the most useful, seamless and natural way to go. you can get into something new, that you haven't been doing for the last 10 years AND you don't start from zero.

of course my personal story won't be the same for everyone...people who love getting into tons of details and remember millions of LOC will prolly get CS degree, but for me i think getting a business informatics degree makes sense. ask yourself if you want to write code when you're 50 or if you'd rather design application architecture or guide a team of young gifted devs and help them profit from your experience. as for the bullshit bingo...i think this is rather fun...especially if you are one of those people who actually know what the words mean because you have the background :D