I absolutely agree. However, it's the other end of things to consider: Top schools want top professors which demand top salaries, and thus the tuition must be higher to cover these extra costs. There is also a certain "luxury" component to some schools with more resources -- better facilities, more extra-curricular activities, more academic support outside of class, nicer campus, etc. These are things rich kids want. They don't want to move from the lap of luxury to some grimy state university, and they have the money to pay for it.

So yes, for quality of graduates, and quality of education, absolutely, lowering tuition would have no negative effect, and possibly a positive effect.

There is also an issue that in some fields, workers are in such demand that more mediocre graduates from mediocre schools is better, overall, than fewer graduates of higher quality.

I am all for lower tuition, but there are a lot of reasons why it isn't happening, and I'm not sure how to overcome some of them.

Except useless wars and capital punishment. Just saying. Pro-life across the board or go home. I've heard that the GOP Right to Life starts at conception and ends at birth.

I thought that until recently. I had a conversation with my conservative christian mother about why she opposed "Obamacare", even while my dad depends on medicare, her sister has serious health problems and no health insurance, as does my brother. Her answer was that it would be "good" to offer health care to everyone "if it could work", but that she was afraid it would "break the whole system." I pointed out that was a very selfish way to look at it. You can't have it cause it might take away from what I have!

This is a woman who is constantly praying for this thing or the other thing, and "trusts god" to make doing the right thing work out. So I asked her, "Why don't we just give everyone healthcare, cause it's the right thing to do, and trust god to make it work out financially?" She had no answer.

These people don't really trust in prayer or god. They are just brainwashed to think if they don't do whatever the religious leaders tell them to do, they are going to burn in hell. It doesn't make sense, it's not consistent, and as much as they claim it to be the most important thing, it's not really based on the bible. In many cases, what they're told is blatantly opposed to what was taught in the gospels, and often, the policies they want to see in government are contrary to their own self-interests. But that's okay, because they have a mansion waiting for them up in heaven.

This may or may not be true if by "work harder" you mean "consume more power". The next generation of integrated video powering next generation higher resolution displays could very well consume LESS power, even though they are doing more computations.

1920 x 1200 was becoming common for widescreen computer monitors before 1080p television panels became the norm, then monitors went to that just because production was easier. 16:10 makes more sense a monitor, I think. I was using 1600x1200 on a CRT before I upgraded to a LCD, and now with 1920x1080, I have actually LOST over 10% of my vertical space. It's nice for watching movies or maybe gaming, but for reading long pages of text, the extra vertical pixels are really nice. I feel like 16:10 is a nice compromise. I've seen my laptop (16:9) against a friend's macbook (16:10), and the 16:10 looks ways more natural. My screen looks kinda squished.

I'm currently a college student, and many of my professors are sensitive to textbook prices. One in particular, for computer science, refused to make us buy a textbook (because they were a rip off), and instead provided his own materials on his website. For general physics, there were also modules online, and our professor said the textbook was optional, and suggested we buy and older edition if we wanted one, to save money. My differential equations professor provided homework assignments for both the current AND previous edition of the textbook, so that students could save money buying a used copy of the old one. Probability and statistics professor made the textbook "optional" and provided his own lecture materials -- he said he had to include the textbook because the department made him, but he wasn't going to use it, so he made it optional. Several professors have chosen their textbook based on price: when there were several reasonable options, they picked the one that was cheapest. The only times I can recall having to get a new, expensive textbook was when it was required at the departmental level.

My anecdotal experience is that while university bureaucrats may indeed have reasons for wanting to continue the textbook extortion, professors are usually very sympathetic to students. Less money in students pockets = more stress (more hours working, deciding what sacrifices to make) = harder time with academics.

I attend the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, btw. Very large public university.

You guys are missing the point! This is all about Windows 8 tablets, which are going to be on the market very soon. The Windows app store is going to be sparse, and honestly, the biggest drawback to getting a Windows tablet. With Bluestacks, you get all the Metro apps AND all your android apps. This is a HUGE deal.

Think about when Intel comes out with the next generation of ultra low power x86 processors: Windows 8 tablets running on x86. You get everything you could want: Real desktop apps, Metro Apps, and all the Android smartphone/tablet apps. Throw it in a case with a bluetooth keyboard + trackpack (or mouse), and why would anyone need or want a laptop? I think it could probably replace the desktop for many users.

I'm telling you, this is HUGE. It will allows Windows 8 tablets to overcome their barrier to entering the market: a mature app store.

We can all make lots of assumptions and see what it looks like on paper. But all that is just supposition, or at best hypothetical, until we can collect some empirical data. It wouldn't be that hard of an experiment to do. But of course, it's easier for the sugar industry to invest in marketing to convince people that corn-based sweeteners are bad than it is for them to experiment. Honestly, I don't think they don't care. They just want to make more money. If putting out bad publicity about HFCS makes the sugar industry more money, then that's what they'll do.

I suspect IBS has something to do with abnormalities with gut flora. It seems strange to me that we are, by quantity of cells, more bacteria than we are human, but I haven't seen a single gastroenterologist observing the health of bacteria colonies in the gut. But that's a random, unrelated topics.

What about me? I drink diet sodas. When I switched to diet, which I now greatly prefer, I didn't start drinking more sodas. Your hypothesis that people drink sodas to fulfill some physiological need for sugar seems, at least by my own anecdotal experiences, incorrect.

I have a brother who drank copious amounts of Mountain Dew, and ten years later, he's got bad Type 2 Diabetes. The quickly metabolized glucose didn't satiate him -- he kept on drinking. Maybe 4 liters a day. Now, I wonder if if drink had been sweetened with 100% fructose, would he have still developed diabetes? Or at least delayed it? It's quite possible. Also, drinking diet soda might have helped, too.

I really don't think he diet was particularly awful. He liked a lot of meat (usually lean and grilled), not too many starchy carbs, not too many sweets. I pretty much blame drinking excessive amounts of Mountain Dew.

I honestly don't believe that people are drinking sodas because their body is signaling them hunger cravings. People drink soda because they're thirsty and want something that tastes good.

Maybe, but the general idea is that you can use less of it to achieve the same level of sweetness, thus fewer empty calories.

I wasn't aware of this, thanks for pointing it out. I'm going to have to do some reading on research -- it's new to me. It seems pretty advanced brain science that makes more conventional thinking (such as I mentioned before) inapplicable. Still, as you said, HFCS vs. Sucrose isn't going to be much different, and people who think going back to using cane sugar as a sweetener are still wrong.

Personally, I avoid any sugary drinks -- whether sucrose or fructose. They just seem sticky and syrupy to me. It's really a preference rather than for any benefit. I almost exclusively drink artificially sweetened beverages, which is an whole other can of worms. There may be some dangers, but I don't know that they're any worse than shoving unusually large amounts of sugar (from the an evolutionary perspective) down the hatch.

From all I can tell, HFCS is almost identical to sucrose metabolically. Okay, there is a very, very small amount of extra energy used when metabolizing the sucrose: the bond between the fructose and glucose molecules has to be broken. With HFCS, you have molecules of fructose and molecules of glucose. Interestingly, the ratios of fructose:glucose are almost the same. Sucrose is 50:50 while HFCS is usally 55:45, about the same as honey.

It's also worth pointing out that fructose tastes sweeter than glucose, and is significantly lower on the glycemic index. It also has to be be metabolized into glucose, consume some of the energy provided by it. So really, fructose has advantages: you can use less, because it's sweeter, and therefore have fewer grams of sugars products, and fewer calories for the same level of sweetness. Second, the impact on you body is much less because fructose is metabolized more slowly, especially important for a diabetic. Third, some of the energy contained in the fructose is consumed by the body having to metabolize it into glucose. This is not a negligible difference, and if you think I'm bullshitting you, read the wikipedia article on the Thermic Effect of Food and read this paper specifically comparing fructose and glucose:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermic_effect_of_food

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8213608

In short, we would all probably be a lot better off if all sweeteners were switch to 100% fructose, whether the source is corn or something else.

The problem is section B.

You could have all sorts of entities refusing to provides serves unless you consented for them to access your data. Imagine insurance companies requiring access to these boxes in the event of an accident. Don't want to provide it? Then you're not covered. They'll put it in their contract.

Also, I have had a few occasions where a police officer has pulled me over on some charge, "Sir, you were going 71 mph in a 70 mph speed zone," and then wanted to search my car for contraband. Of course, if you allow them to search, they don't give you the ticket. If you tell them no, they hit you hard with as many as they think they can get away with. (Because you really are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.)

So it's not a leap of imagination to see the police asking for your "consent" to read your box. You can not give it to them, of course.

Lots of problems with the "consent" issue because of coercion to give consent, and contractual terms to give consent.

Hold on, let me put on my tin foil hat.

Okay.

Obviously, it's a government plot to seed the clouds over Africa with chemicals to sterilize the population. It's one of the uses of chemtrails. We don't have the problems over here so much because drink water that's been treated, and most of us either drink bottled water or have a filter on the tap. The chemicals they use are not transdermal, so the little bit that's in our tap water doesn't affect most people from showering, laundry, brushing theeth, etc.