No, not just a US thing, there a plenty of countries that charge large amounts for these kinds of qualifications. New Zealand to name one.

And what about those who view a life long debt and slavery as insufficient to make up for persistance on a piece of paper?

You are right in that degrees are not an insurmountable challenge to achieve, but for an increasingly competitive marketplace, you are required to accrue greater and greater levels of debt just to keep up, let alone stand out. Landed a great paying and stimulating job, right out of university? Lucky you. Many people are not so fortunate, and others still view that risk as too great, especially when its not amazingly difficult to learn the trade ones self.

the point is, however, that its probable that a certain product or commodity will be desirable by somebody, or even a group of somebodies, at some point in time, based on past interactions in the marketplace.

actually no, leave wine installed, and set the mmap_min_addr value higher.

[citation needed]

yes

no, its fine! the job posting clearly states: Experienced TAs earn more. its all there in black and white.

thanks to reading about this C&D letter, ive remembered that ive been meaning to order an arduino from sparkfun for some time. consider that done!

are you serious? watched fox much, lately?

not only that, but i would have thought that driving the copper pipes into the water table would do much more for cooling than surrounding it in concrete.

great idea. now if only we could fix the moon in place, so that the dark side is always pointing towards the probe...

The price for my country was going to be twice that in the US, let alone the UK. I dont remember any outrage about that.

Yea, it sucks, but other people most probably have it worse off than you do. Or they use linux.

i beg to differ - i dont even use a mousepad at work. a good chair is much more important. without something comfortable and high quality to sit in, you cant work efficiently.

agreed. i would much rather view real coverage by an average person on the street, than a made up fake barbie doll "talking in the sTRANGE NEWS REporter voicE We ALL KNOW. back to you, gerald."

not so much laughable as depressing imo.. the last thing we need are delays in this sort of thing, we should be out there exploring by now. so this is good news.