This thinking is correct if a university education is simplified to being only training for a future job. An education should provide you with more than programming or networking skills. Most people also take history, foreign language, art, or any other class that provide intangible life skills. Try having a conversation with someone you've never met if you only know the field of computer science. My non-CS classes in college have helped me everywhere from striking up a convo at the bar to understanding world politics.

University education is not just about job training. Having said that, education costs in the US are indeed ridiculous.

It's a rabbit and a hobo, but they're making a hobbit.

The hard part is looking past the indoctrination you received in college. Liberalism is not always right.

Fixed that for you. One snarky comment deserves another.

The person you quoted didn't make a snarky comment, it was simply the truth. You right wingers sure are being a bunch of loudmouths lately...

The free market is a myth. You're right, if that factory wasn't there in China the people working there wouldn't be making any money, so they should be grateful for the 60 cents an hour they do get. This is starting to sound very familiar with what's going on in the US lately (I had to take a pay cut this year, but at least I still have a job!!). The factory is exploiting the massive poverty that is found in China. The government encourages this. They love being the chief exporter of cheap crap. If employees are paid a fair wage, the costs of your precious things won't go up that much. I recently purchased some clothing made in the US, with sweatshop free labor. The cost is maybe $10 higher than what I'd pay at other stores, but the quality is noticeably higher. I think you'd find that most people would prefer to buy a more expensive quality item, than to keep buying cheap crap the breaks every other year.

I agree with the symbiotic relationship analogy. If services like Google and Youtube didn't exist, people would have no need to pay an ISP for high speed internet access. If I just need to get my e-mail, dail-up is just fine. This is just a money grab attempt.

Turkey bacon is just as bad for you, if not worse, than regular bacon. Next time you're at the grocery store, compare the nutrition information of turkey vs regular bacon. The turkey info is listed for 1/2 the serving size as the regular. Multiply everything on the turkey bacon by 2 and you quickly see that it has just as much fat, and most times even more sodium.

There's definitely more to Riddick than a chaotic evil convict out for no one but himself. He was a protector of Jack during a good portion of the movie, especially after the reveal that Jack was a girl. Remember, Johns wanted to sacrifice Jack as bait for the monsters, and Riddick ends up shooting him.

Riddick's gut instinct was survival, and he probably started out wanting to use the group to get himself off of the planet. However, at the end Carolyn convinces him to save the remainder of the crew, and is struck with guilt when she sacrifices herself to save them. Thought it showed great growth with Riddick's character, and made him much more interesting than just a morally gray killer.

I dunno, I might have saw much more into the movie than I was supposed to :)

I also have several friends that have to choose amongst a number of good IT positions. People need to stop paying attention to the media telling them how bad it is, and look at the reality. Michigan and Detroit are very much hit by the recession, more so than most of the country, but there is still opportunity here. Detroit has been my home my whole life, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else if I could avoid it. Detroit city proper has its problems to be sure, but the industrial feel to the city and the old architecture make it feel different than an other city. There's many great restaurants and hang outs within the city, so despite popular belief there is a nightlife. Also, Detroit has some of the nicest, safest, and richest suburbs of any city in the country.

Sorry, I always feel the need to defend my home town and state when there are so many negative posts and nearly no positive ones.

Who really cares about what is or is not canon in Futurama? It's a comedy show, and the writers have already admitted that when it comes to contradicting their "universe" for the sake of a good joke, they will indeed do so. Just watch the show, don't think about it too much, and enjoy.

The writers have never ceased to amuse me with their subtlety. The don't reference the whole dark matter issue the entire Green Yonder movie, until that one-liner right at the end that had me spitting my beer out. You have to trust that these writers have the plots play out the way they do for a reason.

The professor's plan to deal with high fuel prices is... to destroy fuel? So that people will come up with something better? How are they going to do that with everything shut down? Why not just invent something better? I mean, he runs a delivery company; he has the most to lose.

But the professor's plan worked! Planet Express ship is now running on low cost, clean burning whale oil!!! ;)

Now if the paid version of Hulu ends up still having ads...

... then you'd have cable TV.

Look at the nutrition facts:
http://www.panerabread.com/pdf/nutr-guide.pdf
http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html

Average half sandwich is around 500 calories, 10 grams of fat, and 5 grams of saturated fat.
Big Mac has 540 calories, 29 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat.

The panera sandwich is only a half, which won't fill up most males as a lunch or dinner, so if you want the full sandwich double that.

Panera is delicious, but don't think that its anywhere near good for you.

Why does every band have to "push the envelope" or develop something "experimental" in order to not be called worthless corporate drones. Perhaps Metallica are popular because they make good music? It doesn't matter if it isn't genre defining or something 100% original. Its fun to listen to and I have a blast every time I see one of their shows. Metallica is just one example I used because you mention it in your post, but the same goes for a lot of mainstream bands.

What I hate are music snobs that think anything "indie" is god's gift to music, and anything you can buy from a record store is trash. I've heard plenty of indie and local bands who are absolute crap, but people insist that they're "awesome and misunderstood by the mainstream."

Just for the record, I love all kinds of music, both indie, local, and mainstream. Just because a band is able to sell millions of records does not in and of itself make it crap.

Best line in Bender's Game: Is that a hobbit over there? No, that's a hobo and a rabbit, but they're making a hobbit.

Does anyone really expect that copyrights are being honored when they sign up for a facebook account? I would bet most people who use facebook aren't even aware of most copyright issues with digital media. This will be a non-issue for most of the facebook using world.

Even before this, I automatically assumed that anything I posted on facebook could be used by anyone and/or appear elsewhere on the net. That's the risk you take when posting online. To ever have a reasonable expectation of complete privacy on facebook is very naive.

Also, why would you want to kill facebook? Its just a service, if you don't agree with it or want to use it don't type facebook.com in your web browser. Personally, for no out of pocket cost, I'm able to at least stay in touch with other people I haven't seen in years. Just because its "what all the kiddies are doing" doesn't make it a bad thing.

I don't understand why firefox just doesn't offer these features as optional "official" plug-ins. When firefox was first released, I figured that was the direction it was taking. You get a bare-bones vanilla browser, and you can bloat it with whatever plug ins you want to suit your tastes and needs. I'm not understanding why certain features such as these need to be part of the official application and not just an optional plug in.

I would much rather see the firefox team work on implementing a faster javascript engine (like chrome's), and plugging known security holes than add features such as these. I don't need pretty themes for my browser, I have compiz fusion/emerald for that.