But Microsoft has a long history of doing this. I think the business tactic of "wait for Apple, then do that" has grown long in the tooth for the MS faithful, and they are really bad at copying otherwise good technologies.

The other problem MS has is they have low standards...they don't get what makes teh shiny desirable. Their version of teh shiny is zune brown and WinXP Fisher Price interfaces. "Close Enough" should be their corporate byline.

Probably because this "obvious answer" hasn't been accurate in probably 5-10 years. It used to be en vogue to mock how useless a Mac was, until people actually started using them. Now the argument, "look what the PC guy can do" is actually kind of a joke for millennials (and even some of us Gen X'ers) who understand productivity is no longer measured by number of spreadsheet rows or PowerPoint slides.

Immediately stop reading anytime somebody stars off with, "Dude, the zune was awesome..."

Well, that escalated quickly. Have you ever taken a class in psychology or cognition or education? Moving information from sensory input to short term memory is very well documented and understood. Moving it to long term storage and recalling that is what is still pretty much not understood. Unless you do this for a living, I suggest YOU don't know shit and you can hang your own worthless response on your fucking wall as a reminder of when to butt the hell out when you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Cunt.

This is why some people make the single-payer argument for health care. No subsidies to give out so the private interests can just raise their prices. Also political suicide (in America, at least).

This is exactly why I make the argument that state run colleges should be state-run colleges, not institutions of private interest that the state throws funding at.

I think housing is completely different. Housing is out of control because people sell their shitty orange county house for $1.2 million then move to Austin and spend their $800k in equity on a house that should only cost about $200k. Yes, House Hunters and Property Brothers are often filmed in Austin and you can see this phenomenon several times a week. Yes, this is really a thing...uppity rich folk moving here and buying dilapidated sub-standard housing in the trendy part of town and dumping upwards of $250-300k in renovations, subsequently raising the prices for all of Austin to the point those of us who qualify as "wealthy" under Obamacare law can't afford to live within 20 miles of downtown.

While I think tuition is ridiculous and a problem, a little perspective is often in order. How many engineers with $30k debt from state colleges do I know that go out and buy a $30k car with their first job? All of them.

If anyone thinks $30k in debt is a life crushing issue, I can't wait for them to grow up and come to the real world. With that, though, I've never understood why kids go to schools that cost upwards of $50k a year, when the giant state college across the street will gladly take 1/5th of that money off their hands and provide the equally useless BA/BS in Anything that most of us have, and what most employers look for (in the professional world).

This is a good argument for state-run universities to actually be state-run.

I'd be careful making judgments about the earning power of degrees. I have a degree in what most of you left-brainers around here think is useless and are quick to point me to stats indicating Education is a joke. Two of you have even suggested banning it from colleges, as it isn't worth the ROI or some nonsense. I make well over six figures and work 30-40 hours a week, mostly in an air conditioned office, sometimes from my house. I've never one day had to deal with somebody's spoiled child or our jacked up education system.

Just be careful when you start shoving little Johnny, the underwater basketweaving prodigy, into engineering, because you think college should only be about earning potential. Kids should study what their interests are. Jobs and careers will follow.

When government starts "meddling" eh? You mean government, like the ones that run states? Like a state that has a university system? Exactly how many state universities aren't run by the state?

Colleges piss money into sports for the exact altruistic reasons they piss money into the Paleontology and Art History departments. Some of them have just found a way to make a LOT of money.

You are mostly correct. A lot of schools lose money in their athletic departments, but most of the top 50ish football programs all make money...a LOT of money. University of Texas makes $100 million a year. The money is compartmentalized for the athletic department, and they don't get to use money from the University non-athletics fund either.

Who said anything about a deficit? If we cut the US military in half, we still have the largest military in the world over the next two largest countries COMBINED. Put that money towards 0% college loans, or grants, or gasp, free state-run universities like the rest of Western Civilization. Who knows? Maybe a well educated society will lead to more income tax revenue through higher paying careers?

This is the greatest, most succinct political analysis I've seen in 25 years. I might just paraphrase you on my Facebook page now...

I'd gladly put the worst Alabama trailer park up against the best Brazilian Favela.

Easy. Humans of all civilizations at all points in history (say several hundred years) have had fairly similar cognitive capabilities. Sure, we KNOW more now, but that doesn't mean our brains have evolved as such to be better processors of what we've taken in or improved on how to bring those senses in.

A basic psychology class shows the basics of how the brain processes and stores information. Cognitive science takes it even further. The immediate processing, and short term storage is very well understood. It's the long term storage and recall strategies we are still struggling with, as well as the deeper context of processing beyond moving from sensory input to short term memory and how we process information at higher levels. The great mystery is how the hell our brains actually use the stuff in our heads. How we acquire (sensory input) and how we stick it in there (short term) is well understood.