Those medieval University Professors were certainly debating each other, and did include topics such as whether two immaterial bodies (such as those of angels) could occupy the same space. They were also training students, and explaining their work to the rest of the world. In fact, one of the roles of the medieval university was to diffuse (sure, mostly religious) knowledge to all (believers).

But professors and students were engaged in a collaborative effort to describe in a unified manner the entirety of reality. Modern science has come a long way since then, but the institutions and even the notions that shaped science come from medieval universities.

The "angels dancing on a head of a pin" jab comes from the Reformation types who never saw the point in studying something not immediately applicable.

For the rest, yes, we need more education, more Ph.D.s, and the arguments to eliminate them come straight out of Brave New World: if people are ignorant of history, they'll buy the same stupid line, again and again.

... that last point is critical, and points at what I'm working towards: our Ph.D. system can't work if the only jobs Ph.D.s can get in their field are in the Universities. By having universities (often with public funds) put their resources to doing private industry research, we're not only subsidizing research, we're reducing the effective number of researchers in the field (does Bell Labs still exist?). And, yeah, at the same time our National Foundations and Endowments are turning the public route into one of paperwork and resource management.

So why give out Ph.D.s when the disagree effectively disqualifies the recipient for any job but the one held by the professor, which, by the way, has all the joys of a middle-management position except the salary, vacation time and short hours? Or, to put it another way, we should be investing our resources in a manner so that industry can complement academic research, not co-opt it.

The current focus on "relevant research" and turning university labs into money-making operations is part of the problem. While it's couched in terms of universities "Making Money" and "Doing something useful" (as the TFA appears to want), in practice, it means that university researchers pair up with private industry, doing only the things that private industry deems important (=incremental and rarely disruptive). Grant programs amplify this trend ("What are the industry applications of this research?", "Was your last research project a financial success?"). So, if the universities are paying researchers to do private-industry research, private industry has less incentive to fund its own research. As a result, we're moving from a system where we had academics engaged in fundamental research, with often disruptive results, and a thriving private industry research community, to one where a smaller pool of public-private academics do the bidding of private industry.

Too many Ph.D.s? You bet. In the name of "solving practical problems", we've moved industry research into the universities, and killed off fundamental research.

Sorry, that's wrong. TEPCO, like BP last year, has no interest in presenting an honest assessment of what's actually happening: the corporate barons got where they were by downplaying problems. The only difference between their actions as junior executives and as senior ones is that now the problems aren't human but environmental and factually verifiable. So, they've got no experience in the matter.
The takeaway from this is not that we should kill nuclear power — good grief, did you see what BP did last year with oil, or Massey coal has done for generations? What we need is a procedure to deal with emergencies that removes them early on from the control of the captains of industry who got us in this mess to start with. Because yes, a magnitude 9 Earthquake and tsunami is more than any nuke plant designed in 1971 was built for, but we need people in charge of the emergency response who are willing to acknowledge this fact on day 1.

First, a cabled keyboard that weighs at least four pounds doesn't seem like the best TV remote out there.
Second, what is this TV you speak of? Oh, you mean that tech from the twentieth century?

Seriously, a PC, and internet connection and a huge screen is becoming increasingly viable as a television replacement. Microsoft may have trouble putting Kinects on set-top boxes, but eventually, even the Cable companies and their vaunted "digital cable" will fall.

Academic IT departments are very different beasts. The bureaucracy to get things done can be much more complicated, the resources much scarcer, and the variety of tasks that people need to do/think they should have a right to do/assert that IT is born to do is vastly greater.

The more the IT people lock things down in an academic environment, the more rogue operations there are. If they go after the rogue operations, then the bureaucracy increases as the rogues fight to take the power away from centralized IT.

On the other side, if I want something done on an academic network, dealing with support in an IT department built to have work-study students explain to incompetent professors how to bring back a menu bar in Outlook (or Thunderbird, or whatever Macintoshes use, and, of course, professors will insist on the choice of which one) can be a nuisance. It'll waste a half-hour of my time (more in the phone queue), and a half-hour of thir time. On the other hand, if I screw up the MAC cloning on the rogue device I'm jacking in, or if I put it into an unauthorized drop, the competent person calls me, and we can sort the issue out. Nobody wastes any time. Of course, they'll also call me if I run an IRC client, and tell me that my PC is botted.

So, yeah, if they want a login on the box, good for them. They won't have the interest or money in administrating it. Naturally, they could be just collecting the data they need to bring a complaint.

PLATO was a pretty big and influential system. Education was its primary task, but the educational software paled compared to the games. I think Jetfight was Bruce Artwick's first flight sim (someone will wikicorrect me, no doubt), and it was multiplayer from the start. The first online, single-instance multiplayer graphical FRPG (Aka MMORPG, although probably would be more correctly called a protoroguelike) was Moria, and it featured the joys of permadeath.

The fact that it didn't really catch on as the answer to technology in education should tell us something about those who keep going back to this model for learning.

From the defense posted here:

The vulnerability was fixed and they remain in contact with us, since they were interested in hiring us as security professionals in order to make an analysis of the plataforms.

Look, here's why companies pay bounties and don't hire "security researchers" on spec, and, vice versa, here's why "security researchers" need to be very careful about how they go about getting a real job: Pointing out security vulnerabilities and asking for money IS extortion. "Gee, nice construction site you've got here. Too bad you can't afford to work 24 hours a day. Shame if someone were to vandalize your hardware while you were asleep. You know, even I could do that, let me show you*. Buy the way, I'm looking for a job. *=that's the step that's a problem; it's a double problem in the geek world, because the only accreditation that counts is being able to commit the crime that's a problem. So, sure, sleazeballs all around. What'd you expect? It's an online dating site.

Huh? A rabbit is nothing more than it component material and perhaps an organizing principle. If that material is radioactive, the rabbit is radioactive. Taking 'radioactive' to mean "significantly above background levels", then that's one hot bunny.

By the way, did Oak Ridge ever solve their hot toad problem?

But the judiciary has a rule: Even-numbered Star Trek movies have greater legal authority than odd-numbed ones.

Yes, CS degrees appear more flexible, but there are huge advantages to a serious, top-tier game-program like DigiPen:

In addition to the courses you'd encounter in a standard CS program, the curriculum includes specific classes geared towards video game development. So, in terms of formation, a DigiPen RTIS B.S. does have a CS-level understanding of "alogrithms" and "data structures in depth"; but can also do the fun stuff.

The yearly project system ensures that each grad will come out with a portfolio (aka "solid demo projects), which demonstrate not only the grad's abilities, but also her or his competencies to work as part of a team.

Finally, I don't know about FS, but the last figure I saw for DigiPen was a 99% placement rate in the first year after degree. In other words: if you want to work in the videogames industry, and you are able to stick through four years of school, you will get a job.

Some hiring managers may not care where you went to school, but when on paper one person has what amounts to a CS degree and a mod project, and the other has a CS degree plus specialized training in the field, and a fat portfolio of games, the choice is easy.

Of course, the unasked question is: Do you really want to write games? Before anyone enrolls in a games program, she or he should try something: modding, building 3D models, little games, whatever. Because making games is a hell of a lot different than playing them.

Liberal Arts = the things that are worthy pursuits for Free Citizens*. *Only slaves learn "useful" trades. Oh yeah, and don't forget the class system. $100k/year and being branded "working class" doesn't go further than $60k a year and "elite". Still, if it's earning power you're interested in, don't go to school. Make a ton of cash. Robertson's right insofar as if you spend a ton of money on an education only to become a wage slave, you screwed yourself. Still, some of us have fond memories of college. Would you rather retire at 57 and possibly enjoy 8 additional years of screwing around, or take four at age 18? Hell, I'll take those four years in the reminiscence bump, thank you very much.

The subject may not change, but the terms of the scholarly debate do. If an idea is "outdated", then there will be research on the history of the idea.

More precisely, philosophy establishes the bounds of reality. Neuroscience does a great job of explaining how brains work, but a crappy job of explaining how humans can discuss neuroscience: it's the triple question mark between underpants and profit.

If there's been absolutely no research on the topic in five years, it has no business in a 1200-entry academic encyclopedia.