We all know he will die one day. The question is whether he will die before or after the Linux kernel becomes self-aware and can maintain itself.

Testing won't fix bad design, but it might give you a handle on how bad the problem is.

Hey, where's the apps guy when you need him? Her?

Can't get out of the bathroom. His phone died.

That worked great for me until I hit a corner. So I got another block of wood. I was able to replace all the molding in my house, but I don't know what to do with all those blocks of wood. Perhaps there's a Life Hack for that...

Are we sure Dice hasn't acquired the Mozilla Foundation?

PaleMoon offers a fork of Firefox without all the recent non-sense. I use it with all the extensions I collected from my days of using Firefox and it does a much better job of living up to Firefox's original goals than Firefox has in the last few years.

Perhaps it's time for a community-driven, open--source reboot that will focus on producing a lean, mean, standards-compliant browser without all the politics and bloat, but which is very flexible and user-configurable.

Maybe we can call it, "Phoenix".

True, but you can't drive demand by increasing supply. The best you can hope for is that the supply becomes much cheaper. All those poor dopes wandering around with Women's Studies degrees, Art History degrees, etc., aren't going to be any happier if there are more of them to compete over for the jobs that don't exist.

This is an overly simplistic view which ignores economic realities and a dynamic analysis of the situation. Making all higher education free would result in a college being watered down even more than it is now, and would waste tremendous amounts of resources on people who are either not capable or unwilling to do the work.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the Harvard Entrance Exam from the late 19th century that's been floating around for the past few years. What percentage of high school grads could pass this test today? What percentage of _Harvard_ grads could pass this today?

We need to get _back_ to the point where a high school graduate can be counted upon to be literate, numerate and have a modicum of common sense and critical thinking skills. We don't need to turn college into yet another babysitting program to add on to the babysitting program of public schools.

You're absolutely right. A biggest part of the cost of tuition increasing as it has is because the government has distorted the market with student loans, particularly since it seems defaulting on them is being more-or-less ignored. As is the case with health care/health insurance, and many other industries, some (or all) of the biggest problems the government is trying to fix are the result of government intervention in the first place.

Yeah, I'd like my mortgage forgiven as well.

Perhaps these people resent having a system that results in more homeless that they have to pay for. Perhaps they don't appreciate a system that fosters dependency rather than fostering independence. Perhaps they resent the safety net, not because it is a safety net, nor because some people need it, but because it is so poorly and inefficiently run, so easy to game, and set up to be self-sustaining by making sure there is an ever increasing number of people that require its services.

Why should my taxpayers dollars be going to pay for remedial classes for subject the students were too lazy to deal with in high school?

This isn't the real problem... meaning "lazy students". In fact, the remedial classes are more likely because either the high schools did not teach the subjects adequately, or the students are simply unable to do the work. "Lazy students" shouldn't be able to be accepted into a university in the first place, or more importantly, shouldn't be able to pull off the kinds of grades in high school that can get them accepted in the first place. Grade inflation is pervasive, and the current strategy of "teaching to the test" so that the highest priority is having students pass the standard of learning tests (which is what they are called here in the Commonwealth of Virginia) doesn't mean we are turning out students who are suited, or even capable, of moving on to college.

The idea that everyone must, or even should, go to college is wrong-headed. There are a lot of people who are simply not able to work at that level. Furthermore, there are a number of other perfectly fine ways to be educated that can result in successful people with marketable skills other than universities. In fact, for a lot of fields, a university education is quite orthogonal. While a lot can be gained from a general university education, pushing someone who is not capable of this level of work, but who could succeed and prosper in a skilled trade, into trying to get a degree might be a disservice.

The biggest problem here is that a high-school diploma means far less than it did in past generations, and that's where we are really failing. The need for education is always increasing, but the education system itself is not improving to match the need.

Welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, machinists, etc.... these are people who can command good salaries, find lots of work and be very productive and successful people, but whose education and training don't necessary fall into what a university can provide. Furthermore, a lot of service type jobs honestly don't require a university education, and while such an education would certainly provide value to a person's life, undertaking the incredible expense and risk of trying to obtain a degree is often not going to be worth it, at least at the costs as they are today for a traditional four-year university degree.

You have a point, but this needs to be understood by those people who are undertaking a student loan, and the people who are loaning the money, not to mention the universities whose costs are rising faster than inflation and even faster than the cost of medical care. Despite its obvious value, a liberal arts education must be treated economically as a luxury. It's not likely to pay for itself in tangible ways, so the people who want it need to understand what they are doing. They can't expect to be rewarded with a good job, or any job at all, just because they got the sheepskin.

There is an obvious way to help remedy this idea. Take a look at the admission test for Harvard from the late 19th century that has been making the rounds for the last few years. I doubt there a a majority of Harvard _graduates_ who could pass this admission test, I know I couldn't since I don't know Greek or Latin (for starters), although I wish I did. It is not unreasonable to compare a high school graduate from a century ago to someone with an undergraduate degree today. The modern undergraduate will certainly have more specialized knowledge, but will otherwise pale in comparison. Our education system was designed a century ago to churn our factory workers, and hasn't improved significantly since. My wife works in the public education system and I am amazed and appalled at how single-mindedly the schools are rushing to adopt and teach technology, and how thoroughly they fail to understand it, and how it should be used, and most importantly why.

At this point in time, it is becoming more and more possible to get the equivalent of a university degree without going through the university system, and this is a great thing. I agree with you about the idea of "getting an education" vs. getting vocational training.

I have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science which enabled me to have a nice career and was definitely worthwhile financially, but I also recognize the incredible value of a general liberal arts education in terms actually knowing something useful, but which doesn't directly translate into a marketable skill. Some of my most valuable classes weren't related to my major.

The United States in particular is suffering greatly from an electorate that is woefully ignorant of the history of the Republic, and that of Western Civilization and the philosophical and scientific developments of the last two millennia (and more). This is complete omitting another problem which is the increasing political bias of universities and what they teach, but you're right about one thing. My computer science degree wasn't an "education" by itself, only part of one. However, given that university education costs have risen more rapidly in recent years than anything else in our economic oeuvre, including healthcare, shows that something is really wrong with the system, and some serious checks and balances are needed, specifically in terms of real competition.

That said, at the end of the day, I would never consider that a history degree or a philosophy degree or an English degree would leave you in a position to be able to easily get a decent job, compared to STEM- and business-related degrees, and no one can ignore those economic realities.

Ah, man. I did it again, didn't I?