I can tell you're all republican-butt hurt for whatever reason, and I shouldn't feed the AC trolls, but the fact of the matter is the US State Department *routinely* warns American's traveling to these countries about violence/crime in these regions: they deserve greater caution than trips to say Europe. Yes, many of the people in latin american countries are warm and friendly to tourists, but many of them are also desperate and naive tourists are an easy mark. It's a good idea to be cautious when traveling ANYWHERE abroad, JUST like it's a good idea to be cautious when using the Internet.

Go back to posting your hate mongering rhetoric in whatever huffpost article on Digg's front page that you strayed from. You're just as bad as the extremists on the right who don't think American's should leave their borders. Maybe even worse since you seem to think you know better.

Their attempts to expand human rights. I mean, I'd like the right to free healthcare, free housing, and a minimum standard of living. Sure I don't know who will actually provide said healthcare, build said housing, or develop said minimum standard of living, but since I have the god given right to it I expect someone to get off their ass and give it to me. I'm just sooooo glad things like that are on the list when governments can't be bothered to permit something as simple as free speech.

Does anyone really take the U.N. seriously considering who they let in? And why the fuck are these things "rights"? Are doctors and contractors going to go to jail if they don't give you these free services? I realize this is Slashdot, but is anyone actually naive enough to believe we're ever going to achieve some star trekesque utopia without physically removing whatever region of the brain provides free will?

And you really don't see anything wrong in literally forcing everyone else to bear the financial burden of your education?

Higher education is and should be a choice, not a right, and it's unfair to force people who either don't have the ability or the desire to pursue a higher education to shoulder the burden for those who do.

That doesn't mean governments shouldn't encourage education by offering (zero or very low interest) loans to individuals for education, or perhaps limiting the interest and payment options on educational loans (although I think that will force lenders to not borrow to risky individuals). I never met someone with high interest rate student loans who hadn't previously nuked their credit prior to school, and most of the people I met who've borrowed vast sums of money for school have done so because they have an inability to manage money: they buy expensive toys (even cars) and vacations, refuse to work at all, or choose to pay outrageous out-of-state tuition fees instead of going to a state school or community college.

And while I have no doubt we'll continue our inevitable slide towards socialism/communism/whatever and continue to gain "rights" on the labor of our fellow men (because hey, it's for the greater good, right? And nothing evil has ever been done in the name of the greater good...), there are far more logical and efficient ways of educating our populace than the nightmare of throwing truckloads of money at the problem.

Maybe "society" would be better with universal healthcare/education/etc, and while I realize that you may understand that every pound your government gave you someone else had to earn, there are a hundred or a thousand others who do not. People seem to forget these days that companies and governments aren't the source of wealth, and that every dollar/pound/yuan that governments give out (be it to corporations OR individuals) at no cost to them came at some cost to some individual (or in the case of printing money, at a cost to all of us).

I can't believe America fought a war for independence and a civil war to end the institution of slavery just so slavery could be gradually and democratically reinstated over generations; not on a single group, but on everyone with the audacity to live.

So what if they do want "to get rich with no risk"? It's their money and it's not like anyone is forced into borrowing from them.

I'm guessing you're "Libertarian" in name only, since I can't imagine a libertarian demanding that a lender be forced to lend on a borrower's terms.

Who decides those qualifications? How will they be fair? Consider the FAFSA loans, which dangerously assumes your parents will pick up at least some of the tab of your education. But if your parents are well off and (*gasp*) tell you "son, you have to do this the hard way like we did" then you're up shit creek. I'm all for improving access to education for those who *deserve* it, but thinking everyone should go to college is as stupid as GWB's "No Child Left Behind" crap. Giving a generation of kids free money for college is just going to create a generation of baristas and wait{ers|resses} with communication degrees who are too busy daydreaming about their carefree glory days of the easy life in college to get your order correct.

My opinion: Improve access to science and engineering first and let the market handle the rest. Rich or poor, white or black, if you're smart and have the determination required to become a science or engineering student you shouldn't be concerned about how you're going to pay for it. Abort/drop out/fail and you're on the hook for the loan: discourage freeloaders. Scientists and engineers are the job creators: if it weren't for them we'd still be a agrarian society (or worse). So long as you give access to these loans based on ability, you'll probably never saturate or dilute the market with these skills or degrees, plus you'll still have ditch diggers and janitors.

The real problem now isn't access to or cost of higher education, it's that a bachelors degree has become the new high school diploma. This is not because we're any smarter now than we were 40 years ago, it's because everyone with a child thinks their child should go to college regardless of what their child wants and/or is capable of. Instead, a vast majority of college students are graduating with majors in communication, psychology, anthropology, etc, all of which I assume had some value 40 years ago but are now little more than very expensive consolation prizes. Even from relatively prestigious schools these degrees rarely mean little more than "I am able to google and write an essay on ______ the night before said essay is due". All we've done is cheapen what once were respectable degrees and careers, while raising a generation of people who feel entitled to success because it was given to them at such a young age. How sad is that?

Divert more kids to trade schools and community colleges. Free up Universities and private colleges for graduate programs and those dedicated and smart enough to get through community college. Don't give me that bullshit about the "college experience": the purpose of college is education, and the purpose of education is to learn; not to party, play online poker, or be promiscuous. Make science and engineering degrees available (but not free) for anyone willing and able to pursue it and you'll see the American economy take off like it did after WW2.

Finally, there's a lot more to life than school and work. Show some respect for the people who find happiness close to home or in the "simple" things in life. Don't presume that just because you've traveled all over Europe or have some initials after your name you have the right to tell someone else how to live or how to be happy: what made this country great is the freedom we have as individuals to choose our own destiny and make our own way. The more we treat people as individuals and not members of various social classes the better off our civilization will be.

No kidding.

There are tons of options:

1. Go to community college. Pretty much saves you like 50% on your tuition costs. This is such a ridiculously good idea it should be required.

2. Work during school. Yes, it's hard. But you get both work experience (invaluable if its related to your major, still good if its not) and money.

3. Don't go out of state.

4. Live at home if you can. Yeah, it sucks, but in some parts of the country it'll save you 10k/year or more.

5. Don't go to school. Contrary to popular opinion, it's not for everyone. I know a lot of psych/lit/communications/music majors that left school >40k in debt and starting below the people who worked right out of high school.

And that's the way it should be. "Society" shouldn't be the religion of the 21st century, punishing us for our success and demonizing us for our humanity, all the while demanding we tithe to a new God.

Self interest is why we're alive. It's why we have kids, it's why we fall in love, and it's why we go to work. Why isn't it good enough for a law-abiding, hard working citizen to live his or her life without the new original sin that is a "debt to society" for thier success? Maybe if everyone was more concerned about how they live *their* lives and less concerned with how their neighbors are living their's the world would be a better place.

When UO first came out (almost 11 years ago now) there was really very little grinding. Things got harder as the in game mechanics were adjusted, but macroing took a lot of the monotony out of the repetitive tasks required to raise skills.

Of course when UO came out, it was raw, untamed, and breaking new ground in gaming. There was a lot more risk involved and a lot less rules enforcing any kind of social behavior; looking back, I miss watching the enforcement of social order by the players and not the game. It was an exciting if sometimes frustrating time in gaming. As "hardcore" as games like EQ and WoW turned out to be, they don't even compare to UO in a lot of ways.

In the end, it was crushed by its own popularity - things have a way of inevitably declining into mediocrity as their popularity explodes, only to die a slow death as they breath life into new stars around them.

But if there's one phrase I would never use to describe UO, it would be "monotonous grindfest."

Can someone explain to those of us "stuck in the west" exactly what an "Asian Style" MMO is? Is it a game where the men look like women and the women are hot? Mouse-driven gaming sounds scary, kind of like using Macs before the switch to OSX and multi-button mice.

They do in California. Their unions practically own the state legislature there, so there's an unstoppable positive feedback loop fueled by "think of the children" fear mongering and the mutability of the phrase "conflict of interest".

Uh, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the threat of imminent bodily harm "I'm going to kill him" is just a TAD different than the at-best oral contract "I'll give you a million dollars if you can jump on one foot."

I'll just leave it at that.

You've made an excellent distinction, but both systems are in error.

I think class-based law is hypocritical in a nation "Where all men are created equal." Having a tiered law system smacks of "separate but equal" combined with a form of hyper-political correctness, neither of which are healthy for an open, democratic society. Discrimination is a property of Humanity, to deny it is foolhardy; all points of view have a place but are not all equal, to equate them all tips the scale in favor of anarchy over order. The concept that skinheads murdering a black man is a "hate crime", as if it were any worse than skinheads murdering anyone else, appalls me: murder is murder and the punishment for murder should be based on that fact alone. You shouldn't be punished for who you target, but for what actions you take and the consequences thereof - yet "hate crime" legislation does just the opposite.

I believe in equal protection and equal punishment. That includes things like killing law enforcers or heads of state - the balance is in the fact that we give police rights above and beyond that of ordinary citizens to protect themselves and we provide private or military security for heads of state. So you can stop wondering about that.

Lady Justice is blind, not telepathic, and we do disservice to ourselves and our society by pretending otherwise.

thanks!

Just wait until b.net starts adding xbox/wii/ps3 "features" such as avatars, achievements, etc, etc. You know, the bullshit that contributes nothing to gameplay but allows the marketing department to include "social networking" on the product description. Yup, I can definitely see how lag, random disconnects, and chat rooms full of prepubescent retards will improve the "quality" of my experience.

I had immense fun playing Blizzard's classics on LAN (and to a lesser degree on b.net), ranging from WC2 to Diablo 2. Saying I'm disappointed is an understatement; I'm fucking outraged.

I don't understand why Blizzard has arrived at the illogical conclusion that this is an anti piracy/quality measure, as loyal customers like me aren't going to shell out $60 for a crippled game and are all too familiar with b.net's "quality". If you want to stop piracy, lower prices and cease punishing your returning customer base.

Shit like b.net is just built in DRM, so that when Blizzard inevitably closes their doors all their games cease functioning as well. So much for posterity.

I don't think I'd say China is "cooperating extensively," or else they'd crack down on the massive theft of American IP/piracy and would trade "dollar for dollar," instead of the huge deficit America is incurring.

They also purposely keep their currency weak/deflated to maintain the cheap price of Chinese manufactured goods on the international market, a deliberately anti-competitive (and anti-free market) move.

Don't get me wrong, our economic relationship with China has been good for America, but it has been and will continue to be much, much better for China.