It's certainly "fucked-up" -- but I'm not suggesting that the beta testers get ALL of the blame either. Blizzard isn't a perfect analogy here, because they're a developer that has an established history of listening to fans, and they're speaking the same language. Square seems to be dipping their toes into the shark-infested waters of usability testing, so I was trying to be constructive. It's worth analyzing what might've gone went wrong, no?

You can definitely blame this on the majority of the beta testers. I was one.

While there were plenty of other problems with the beta test itself -- abysmal build quality and unnecessarily limited playtimes were two big problems, the primary downfall was the total lack of direction from the developers and moderators. I brought up many of these same issues (particularly the UI mechanisms, as I'm a UI guy professionally) on the beta forums; a few posters agreed with me, but the majority of the replies came from slavering, rabid fanboys. These idiots took umbrage at mild suggestions or observations -- to say nothing of real, rigorous, and honest feedback -- and essentially drowned out anything useful. The most commonly repeated aphorisms were along the lines of "It'll be fixed by launch" and "How dare you suggest that anything Square produces is less than perfect."

Given that not a single one of the issues I brought up appears to have been fixed, it appears Square listened solely to the yes-men. It's also plausible that they really didn't learn anything from FFXI, as others are saying, but they did at least solicit user feedback this time.

Community colleges offer virtually the same learning experience as a full university, especially for basic education credits -- and what do most students take in their first two years, anyway? So unless you live within walking distance of a top-ten university, chances are you'll be just as challenged by the content, and you get all the benefits of geographic accessibility at a fraction of the cost. Plus, most community colleges have a maximum class size of 30 rather than 300.

Running Start

Similar program in Washington state, has been around for 20 years now. Students can enroll full-time in college and fully skip the last two years of high school if they meet the admissions criteria (though you don't get your diploma until the end of your 12th year.) This gets them an Associates in Arts and Sciences, which is immediately transferable to any Washington 4-year public university, and is guaranteed by law to fulfill their basic education (e.g. non-major) classes at that university. Alternatively, they can go part-time and simply transfer the credits, though not all are guaranteed to correspond to basic ed requirements.

Incidentally, I did the former, starting at 14. The administrator in TFA who thinks maturity is a problem for anyone who wants to do this program, though, needs to get a clue. While I'm well aware that the plural of anecdote is not data, it was an amazing program that beat the pants off the "high school experience." People at community colleges generally want to be there, and the elevated age levels mean that you're surrounded by people with experience that you can learn from.

This is incorrect. You can quantitatively measure "quality", and all it takes is a little effort to define criteria. The easiest example I can think of is measuring the average amount of time required for users to complete a task. For things like web sites, this can be gathered trivially via Analytics or any other stat program. There is nothing subjective about it -- if you do it right. Most usability professionals know how.

As for programmers working alone, though, that's something no one else can solve.

In general, sans serif fonts are more immediately legible, but serifed fonts are easier to read in larger blocks of text.

[citation needed] ;)

There's been a few studies that claimed this, but they had flawed methodologies. Unfortunately, it's lead to widespread misconceptions. Here's a relevant literature review with more information.

... someone finally makes an addon that wholly, completely, disables the StupidBar. Yes, I know about the about:config hacks and the existing addons. This is an issue I keep up with, after all.

And please, don't bother to reply if you're just going to parrot how much you LOVE the "Awesome Bar" and think I should give it an umpteenth chance. Been there, done that, still think it sucks.