"Here's our cool phone that can surf the internet no matter where you are and you can download and watch videos! Buy us! Ok, thanks. Now just don't actually do that too much."

No but how about a balance between the two. Repos for what most people want. PGP signed debs for the 3rd parties. Straight deb for all those feeling frisky. It's not hard to warn people that, "Hey you're installing a unsigned package, chances are this will ruin your computer, sure you want to do that?" If a third party wants to distribute packages the least they can do is self-sign (bottom end), get a real cert (higher end).

The inherent problem with the iPhone is that you can only go to one store to buy apps (namely iTunes). With Repos you can pick and choose which stores you trust and which you don't. Much like how I choose if I want to buy software from BigBoxMart or BestStolen. The Internet in general could (since I am using a store analogy apparently) be seen as buying stuff off the street. Yeah, the stuff looks cool and at these bargain prices you can't beat. But I do need to exercise some caution when I flash my wallet to some guy hanging out the back of a van.

So yes, I agree, I'm not too hip on the one store to rule them all policy. But I do believe that the store concept actually has some utility to offer if given the ability to go to another store should I so choose later. I obviously don't want to exclude the random vendor on the street that is selling hand made crafts, or even the random kisok by the bus stop selling phones. I do however what to keep in mind the burly looking thug over there selling "Snoby" Radios. I think it is all a matter of getting people to get inside a way of thinking.

To me, and that only applies to me, Mac OSX screams "Hey buy more shiny Apple stuff" (Security by insulating ones self by coolness). Linux says to me "Hey subscribe to a Repo because we are always changing stuff and you want to have the latest build." (Security by trust of subscription [or maybe sheer geekness]). Windows just looks like, "Hey we're cool with everyone, you want herpes? No problem we're cool with that. Want to do really neat spreadsheets? We're cool with that too." (Insecurity by being a software whore. We're just trying to please everyone.)

smeg, yes it can!

Thanks. I keep forgetting that not everyone has the same cookies I do.

Partially, I think it depends on what kind of software you're writing. I've been tasked to write a vessel track prediction algorithm using Kalman filtering, so I've been relying heavily on what I learned in Cal I and II. Before that I was tasked with some 3D graphics work, so I had to go dig out my linear algebra textbook. Before that I was tasked with designing a few pages for our website, which I sucked at, and which my computer science degree didn't help me with at all, although if I had been a design major I probably would have kicked ass. Before that I was writing SQL to talk to our Oracle database, which I think is a perfect example of blue collar programming. Someone with no college degree who had taken a few database training courses would have probably done the job much better and faster than me.

Also, college gives students an opportunity to start a job search with a little bit of experience under their belts. If you participate in research, or semester-long group projects, or SOMETHING other than just Comp Sci I, II, Data Structures, Algorithms, etc, than that's something you can put on your resume that a high school graduate with a few technical training courses under his belt won't necessarily have.

The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers

fucking amen. if i wanted to use some dodgy shareware piece of shit as the default video player for firefox, i would have fucking set it up that way myself. i mean, come on. it won't even let you goto full screen without buying the "pro" version. fuck that.

If you spend too much time reading your iPhone, your batteries will die. Then you will have no phone, and maybe get eaten by bears.

Could you make the argument that this bill would apply to windows and itunes? Both can be set up to share files on your computer.

suspiciously vague. care to offer a link to one?

In her own words, from TFA: "They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement" just...wow.

I would refer you again to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Widespread killing of civilians was common. Also, look at the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If there's one thing this decade should have taught us, it's that killing a bunch of civilians to get a few insurgents is counterproductive. Outrage over the civilian deaths always seems to generate more insurgents than you get rid of. Excessive brutality by the occupying force invariably plays into the hands of the insurgents.