I read through the thread on RequestPolicy, and you were pretty thick when it came to recognizing some key points:

1) RequestPolicy blocks all external sites by default, which means you don't need a "bad" list that needs to be constantly maintained, so it's actually the simpler and more effective solution.

2) The reason to block YouTube from 3rd party sites is to avoid tracking by Google (they own YouTube). With RequestPolicy, I can still watch YouTube videos and avoid the tracking. But that's just one example. RequestPolicy blocks all such requests, so I don't have to worry about YouTube, Amazon, or any other site that probably isn't in the "bad" list from getting tracking info from 3rd party sites by doing something as simple as embedding a link.

3) You mention speed, but give no hard numbers. If, for example, RequestPolicy does its job in less than 1ms, then it doesn't matter if a hosts file is twice as fast or even ten times as fast, because either way the difference is imperceptible. I don't have any speed problems using RequstPolicy, at all.

I'll throw in another point: RequestPolicy is open source, meaning I don't have to trust a binary from "apk" being run as an admin to manage my hosts file. RequestPolicy is also cross-platform.

You can have the last word, as engaging in discussion with you is pointlessly annoying. I'm just leaving this response so that people who are rational can make an informed judgment.

That poster would be me. Maybe if you read my original post the context would be clear.

That's the modern reason, where "education" is often synonymous with "well-rounded". I assumed his point was the modern defense, because the vast majority don't go to college anymore just for an "education" with the expectation to remain in Academia. They go there with an expectation of earning a higher-paying job. It's a checkbox on the resume.

Why? You yourself just said, "requiring students to take classes outside of their major was perhaps a historical anachronism". It's kept around on the "well-rounded" argument, which is essentially what is expressed by many of the people in the article you quoted.

I never said it was the primary goal. What I've been arguing is what I emphasized above. People today go to college expecting to get a higher-paying job, and that's been why I've been questioning the value of being forced to take courses that will most likely not be used in that endeavor. That was the start and context of the argument when you jumped in.

When being an academic meant you specialized in one field, both in research and teaching. When people stopped going to college to become academics. The only reason it makes sense now to require diverse study is for the well-rounded argument, and it's the argument given whenever I've raised this subject (except with you).

You'd think you learn your lesson. The best way to get a domain that is being squatted without paying a ransom is to not show any interest. It used to be domains could be held indefinitely, but ICANN closed that loophole a long time ago, so now it costs money to sit on it.

Let's walk this back. You said:

The bold is what I responded to, in particular the word never. Goals have changed in 400 years.

That doesn't make any sense. You can be an academic in your field of interest without taking an array of courses that have nothing to do with it.

Maybe if you weren't an arrogant asshole posting as anonymous coward you wouldn't make such statements. I've been to college and have long-since graduated. Most people go to college because it's a checkbox for higher-paying jobs and a chance to party on their parent's dime and government loans.

That's nice and all, but the vast majority of people go to college to get a well-paying job afterwards. That's what the point of the "major" is for.

College is a checkbox to get into higher paying jobs, so your suggestion of going to a "craft" school doesn't help.

Err, no, you don't when your major is something like computer science and they force you into heavy calculus courses. That's the topic under discussion. Try to pay attention.

Yeah, that's a lot of bullshit. It's impossible to become a programmer without learning. What your one-sided anecdote says is that many workers do just enough to get by, not that they couldn't improve their skills if they applied themselves.

If being well-rounded "never really was" the point of college education, why are college students force to take an array of courses outside their field of interest?

Yes, I've heard the "well rounded" person argument. I can even accommodate it, to a certain extent, but it would stop at being exposed to ideas versus having to become competent at doing calculus problems in order to pass a course. I personally am not interested in doing calculus and haven't made use of it in over 20 years of programming.

This is silly. You don't need incidental math to learn skills essential to programming. College education wastes countless hours teaching academic stuff that a great majority of programmers will not use on the job, while neglecting critical skills that could be immediately useful in a large .

If you want to teach "variable control", whatever you mean by that, then teach that in respect to programming, not high-level math that will only be used by a tiny percentage.

Many of the early employees of Microsoft became millionaires due to stock options, so they could afford to jump ship and do their own thing. I doubt that's true of the people being laid off.

Google obviously had an uphill battle trying to steal Facebook's thunder. It was stupid, then, to adopt a Real Name policy and enforce it like dicks instead of trying to differentiate themselves from Facebook.

This ties into YouTube, too. Instead of trying to hamfist their existing userbase into real names and Google+, they could have softselled an automatic, no hassle Google+ account linked to your YouTube account, as is. Instead they antagonized their YouTube base, too. Corporate fuckhead thinking.

Would it have mattered in the end? Who knows, but it was a stupid policy that only put up barriers, instead of trying to go after users who weren't interested in Facebook because of their focus on real names.