>> 4. It is *highly* unlikely that having a PhD will make any kind of 
>> positive change to my employment situation. Nobody is impressed by a 
>> BSc, and I doubt a PhD will be any different. Everybody wants 
>> "experience" and/or "people skills".
> 
> Not true. If you're going for a technical position, even if it's 
> unrelated to your field of study, the fact that you are capable of 
> completing a PhD says a lot. It says you stick with the job, have a 
> capacity and interest for learning, have experience in 
> communication/dissemination, etc... and that's ignoring the 
> field-specific skills.

Yes, but... having a BSc already says all those things. I spent 4 years 
of my life studying for it, I learned all sorts of stuff, and in the end 
I did actually get my BSc. And yet, nobody gives a **** about that. How 
is a PhD different?

>>  8. Are you mental?
> 
> I've got the wrong doctorate to answer that question impartially. :-)

LOL! Nice... :-)

> Speculative queries to research groups in fields that sound interesting 
> are well worth it. You don't need to follow the impersonal rules of 
> regular employment - if you find some prof with research interests that 
> look your kind of thing, just email and ask for more information, and 
> say what you're interested in. Worst case is they simply don't reply.

Well, maybe it's worth a giggle. ;-)

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>> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only 
>> care about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)
> 
> What's interesting? Compiler optimization? Mathematics?

Anything with a neat algorithm in it? ;-)

Heh, I don't know...

>> I don't think anybody is "working" with Haskell. (As in, getting paid 
>> money to use it.) I could be wrong, but it seems pretty rare.
> 
> The guy writing GHC is getting paid for it, isn't he?

Er, NO. Nobody gets paid to work on GHC, AFAIK. It's a volunteer-led 
open-source project. (Although, as I have mentioned, the few companies 
who are using Haskell in commercial code all seem to employ people who 
are also GHC developers. But they aren't paid to work on GHC, as such.)

> In any case, by the time I graduated, I was pretty sick of the field I 
> was studying. I went to interview at Bellcore, and they talked to me 
> about it, and I said "I'm pretty sick of it, really."  And they asked 
> "What would be more interesting?"  I said "Dunno. Multimedia?"  And 
> that's where I got a job.

Heh, nice.

>> Possibly my sanity? :-} (Did you *see* the links I posted?)
> 
> Yes. And you know what? Those are people who picked a bad advisor. Pick 
> an advisor who is motivated to get you to graduate, and he'll help you 
> do so.

Hmm. Seems to me that trying to set up a PhD is almost as verilous as 
trying to set up a decent job. Except that PhDs are much rarer. :-}

>> Meh. I tried making a list of cool things, and it ended up having 
>> entries like "complex numbers. Because you can calculate stuff with 
>> them!" Pretty retarded, eh?
> 
> Not really. Keep going, is all. Spend some time thinking about it. 
> You're not going to come up with the cool stuff yourself in a couple hours.
> 
> Now when you read stuff for fun, think about "why is this fun? What's 
> cool about it?"  Give it a couple of weeks of gathering cool stuff.

Mmm, OK...

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>> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only care
>> about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)
> 
> 	You have PhD written all over you.

Heh. Yeah, that's what the guy at the job interview said. ;-)

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>> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only care 
>> about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)
> 
> I've found that when I get paid to do something it mysteriously becomes
> interesting ???

Heh. You clearly get paid very much more than I do. ;-)

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>> I wandered into lots of terms like "universal quantification" and got 
>> horribly lost...
> 
> You should look up "universal quantification" and "existential 
> quantification" on wikipedia.

I've already done this several times. I still don't comprehend. (But 
then, Wikipedia is astoundingly bad at explaining certain topics. Do 
look at digital filters, for example.)

> They're really straightforward concepts 
> with big names. It's like one step up from boolean logic.
> 
> I strongly suspect you already know what the words mean, and you just 
> don't know there's a mathematical term for what they name.

Maybe.

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> My brother and I used to fall asleep listening to episodes of the radio 
> series, and we'd quiz each other on the finer details.  Clearly I've lost 
> my touch a little bit. ;-)

You think *that* is bad?! I used to be able to sleep properly...

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>> LOL. Riiiight...
> 
> I'm serious. You're way too worried about this stuff.
> 
> Don't spend much money. Just get funding and go. You have no obligations 
> right now. It's the best time in your life to start something 
> questionable like this.

Hmm. It has a flavour.

I guess it's just that I've spent my entire life surrounded by people 
telling me how stupid I am, and generally failing at almost everything I 
try to do. And given that a PhD is something that only a tiny percantage 
of the population manage to get... it all sounds a little implausible to 
me, that's all.

>>> Plus, you'll meet girls. :-)
>>
>> Oh. My. GOD! >_<
>>
>> You cannot *possibly* expect me to take anything else you say 
>> seriously now, can you? :-P
> 
> Know what? My wife has a PhD too. Know where I met her?

Heh. What do you have a PhD *in* though?

I rather doubt there are many females who have a PhD in anything 
remotely related to computing. (I also couldn't help noticing how the 
OU's PhD prospectus didn't seem to contain *any* people younger than 35...)

>> Heh. Actually, a few weeks back I did look at MSRC. But I couldn't 
>> figure out what they were talking about. I surmised this probably 
>> means I'm too stupid to be there. :-}
> 
> No. It means you haven't done any sort of PhD work.
> 
> It's like saying "I don't want to go to school to study mathematics, 
> because every time I read a math paper I don't already understand it."

Like I say, I couldn't figure out the application process. Maybe because 
I don't have a clear idea of how this stuff is supposed to work...

>> That's pretty impressive, right there.
> 
> But that's how it works.

Heh. I can believe it.

> By the time I started actually writing the 
> thesis, I'd already published papers in three or four journals, been to 
> two countries on the school's money presenting the papers, and 
> peer-reviewed other papers about vaguely similar topics. You meet people 
> at these things, and they're expensive, so you get the school to pay for 
> it.

That's pretty impressive... I've spent years writting silly scraps of 
text, but I've never yet managed to write "a paper".

>> Taking a PhD for no apparent reason is slightly crazy, but I'm 
>> gradually coming around to the idea. Leaving the UK is an absurd idea. 
>> :-P
> 
> It's not "no apparently reason."  Think of it like taking a job doing 
> something fun, for not quite as much money as you might like, but 
> probably still more than you're making now. :-)

Well, if you put it like that... ;-)

> Why is leaving the UK for a few years absurd?

I think spending all day in a brand new, possibly hostile environment is 
quite enough to be dealing with, without living in a completely random 
country on top of all that. (Quite apart from the fact that I have no 
desire to leave the UK in the first place.)

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On 22-2-2009 10:59, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> I wandered into lots of terms like "universal quantification" and got 
>>> horribly lost...
>>
>> You should look up "universal quantification" and "existential 
>> quantification" on wikipedia.
> 
> I've already done this several times. I still don't comprehend. 

What exactly is the problem? Other than that the upside down E and A are 
not part of the ascii character set?

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On 22-2-2009 10:53, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only 
>>> care about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)
>>
>> I've found that when I get paid to do something it mysteriously becomes
>> interesting ???
> 
> Heh. You clearly get paid very much more than I do. ;-)
> 
If that is that simple, you only have to find a job that pays much more 
than this one.

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On 22-2-2009 10:17, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
> 

>> issues, is
>> to ignore them. Don't look for reasons why you can't do something as 
>> you will
>> find plenty of them. Just say to yourself, I want it I will do it. 
>> Every time
>> you have self doubts force your mind away from those thoughts.
>> I want you to never, ever post self doubting comments here again. It only
>> reinforces your weakness. Try it for a season or two.
>> Here endeth the lesson, according to uncle Stevie.
> 
> OK, but I still think there's something to be said for knowing what your 
> real strengths and weaknesses actually are.
> 
Or if you are not able to self analysis, just post a lot of biographical 
information on a newsgroup, and let them sort it out for you. 
Unconventional perhaps, but I know at least one case that did it this way.

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