hey bedr,
well in swiss and german universities, for example, there are hardly ever any courses on PhD level. at this level it is expected that you do research. there are hardly any tuition fees (something symbolic like maybe 150£/year, max) and the only costs you have are living costs/loss of income.
to get into a swiss uni as Phd student you need an average of "good" (on a scale of insufficient/fail(3.5 and below)-sufficient/pass(4)-good(5)-excellent(6) in your master's degree) and a professor who agrees to supervise you, that's about all. you arrange with the professor what exactly your working relationship should look like. i think there is no (minimum nor maximum) time limit for submission but if your thesis is not up to standard they WILL fail you, and then you CANNOT submit it anywhere else on the world legally anymore.

hm, labmonkey, you defy some economic theories! one theory goes that people are much more motivated if they do something for themselves, out of intrinsic interest, than when they do something because their boss told them to, just in order to earn money. so from that point of view you should be MORE motivated now that you are doing the same work but for yourself!
or is that the point? do you feel you are not doing it for yourself at all, but rather for your supervisor (or someone else)?
or are you troubled because it is a longer project than the ones you have worked on before, so that it seems to be going nowhere or that there are no visible benchmark steps to achieve?

after they explain the problem to him, he retires to a tent and ponders all through the night. in the morning he proudly pronounces that he found a solution. but he will only let on if they, if pleased with the solution, will then let him choose his reward.

at a loss for alternatives, the three sons agree. the old man solves the problem, everyone gets their camels and is happy, he chooses his reward and rides away again on his white camel. the sons find that he is extraordinarily just and wise.

how would you solve the problem?

indeed i did. well, what about this one:

a rich camel herder in the deserts dies and leaves 17 camels to three sons. in order to avoid fights after his death, he left a testament. in this he regulated that:
- the oldest son gets 1/2 of the camels.
- the second son gets 1/3 of the camels.
- the third son gets 1/9 of the camels.

the sons are quite confused and don't know what to do - it seems quite pointless to start cutting up the camels. so they call for an old wise man known to be good at solving problems and disputes. along he rides, on his lovely white camel, with his equally white hair blowing in the wind.

santé!

ok, i'm procrastinating, but this is fun
how about this one:

three friends like to play football together. one day they lose their ball. one of them knows that the store sells new balls for 30£, and they decide to each contribute £10 and buy a new one.
they go to the store, and how cool is that? the ball is on sale, for only £25! so they each hand over their 10£-note and get 5 1£-coins change. but how should they divide this among three?
to solve the problem, they decide to "tip" the vendor with two pounds, thus each getting 1£ change.

so let's recapitulate:
- they each paid £10 and got £1 back, so they each paid £9. 3x9 is 27.
- they gave the vendor £2. 27+2=29.
where is the last pound???

heehee...

they all sit in a triangle facing each other. each of them is given a hat on their head. they can all see the colour of the others' hats but not their own.
the wizard tells them:
i have five hats, three of them are white, two are black. of these five hats i have given each of you one, and hidden the rest. now the first of you who knows what colour your own hat is, wins the contest and will be my successor.

the three students sit there staring at each other, and after a short while, they all yell at the same time: "mine is white!"

they are all right. apparently, they are really equally smart and fast-thinking. but how did they find out?

insomniac, well, making the table took me a moment as i did it on paper. but these kind of logic puzzles i find really easy - it's like it hasn't got too much to do with logic for me, but rather with patterns and symmetries. i got stuck though, and assumend that "to the left of" does mean "immediately to the left of" - only then i managed to continue.

here's another one:
a wizard has three students and after many years of study, wants to promote the cleverest of them to be his successor. they are all very clever, perhaps equally so, and so to determine who is really the brightest, he designs an examination.

r, yes, of course, you need a glance at the child (or the information in the first sentence that it is a child). i don't see how you get 13 and 17 though - in the range of up to 20-year-olds, in August 2007, the child could be 3, 11, 15, or 19. (not 7, because the year 2000 was not a leap year). as i said, it's not "pure" logic, unfortunately, but needs some "common sense"... now, normally, no-one would confuse a 11-year-old with a 19-year-old or older. so, if the first child excludes 15, and then knows, the second child would be 11, no? it's a bit like your problem - if the second child were 19, then excluding 15 would not be enough, 23 would also have to be excluded. but if knowing that the other is not 15 is enough to know what age the second child is, then it must be 11...

now to einstein: it is the German who lives in the green house, the fourth, and who drinks coffee and smokes Prince who has fish.

this is a solution, i believe, which doesn't lead to any contradictions. but i'm not sure it's the only one as i resorted to some guess-work:
- when einstein says "the first house", does he mean the first from left?
- when he says that the green house is to the left of the white house, does he mean "immediately to the left"?
if you answer both those questions with yes, i think my solution is the only one. if not, i don't know, there might be more solutions.

well figure it out if you can! it's taken from real life!

unfortunately it's not 100% logic. in order to know the child's age, the other child has to be able to roughly judge if the child is, say, 3 or 13. to make it clearer (but still not 100% logic, unfortunately), we'd have to add this to the conversation:
beginning: it is today's date, i.e. 31st august 2007.
before the first child "knows":
the first: "well, so are you 3?" the second: "no". the first: "so, are you 15?" the second: "no". the first: "well, then you must be 11."

ok, so logically, the second could also be, say, 43 - but with common sense added to logic, anyone would be able to judge that this child can impossibly be 43, if you get what i mean.
but why?

*smug* i figured it out, literally as i was lying in bed, but sleep was escaping me. then i went to sleep easily. (the children's ages puzzle)

when thinking about it yesterday, i kept thinking about a different "problem", which i realize now is indeed no pure chance, as it is associated:

two children/teenagers meet. the first asks: "how old are you?" the second answers "i won't tell." the first: "well, when is your birthday?" (as in, what day of the year, not which year, obviously). the second: "hm, i won't tell you that either, because if i would, you would know how old i am." the first: "hmmm well tough for you, but now i know your birthday AND how old you are."

i "invented" that one by myself

hmmm... i'm supposed to be working!

the ages ascending... it's not something like if you write out 2+2+9 it looks like the symbol for infinity or such, as in, there are infinite numbers of trees out there (especially if you don't just count the plants, but also the trees as in structures)? or that when you speak aloud, twoplustwoplusnine or such will make a sound that means something else altogether? some other weird sort of lateral thinking?
why on earth should it matter if you make the sum of 2,2,9 or the sum of 9,2,2??? i'm lost...

Kollontai, don't let that depress you. In fact, your reaction, if it is indeed as you describe it, is very appropriate - DO think about why exactly you are "bothering". It helps very much to consciously know why you are doing it, and the financial renumeration/job prospects and such things are most certainly not your main reason, I'm willing to guess.
Really knowing your reasons will fortify you for those times when the going gets tough (and will make it easier to deal with such comments as above, too - this won't be the last time someone tells you that from their perspective what you are doing makes no sense. It's your perspective that matters)!

arrgh! why? why?