Yup, these quotes always rear their heads when an education debate sparks on slashdot. I fully concede to the fact that not everyone learns the same way. Nietzsche, Wilde, and Einstein are very unique individuals who required a different path to satisfy their curiosity and learning. Other people excel in structured formal education.

There are people who fail out of college, but are then successful anyway, and then they come complain that the formal education system is a failure because it didn't work for them.

There are others who graduated with honors from college, and lambaste those who failed out because they "didn't try hard enough" or "they just couldn't cut it."

Both parties are wrong. Formal education doesn't work for everyone, that doesn't make it inherently evil. Not all universities are extremely formal. I, for one, went to a university that catered to different kinds of students.

In the programming world, I always got the impression that, collectively, we respected the self-taught coder more than one who spent four years in school being spoon fed how to code.

I feel like comments such as this are what programmers who didn't go to college say to feel better about their decision.

Why assume that just because someone spent four years in college, that they had to be spoon fed coding knowledge? Many of my classmates were tinkerers well before college.

Higher education provides many advantages, many of which are intangibles, that help one rise above a simple "tinkerer" to someone who wants a career in a field.

not any pseudo-intellectual ivory tower nonsense. I think this is the kind of anti-intellectual thinking the article is referring to...

Remember when games used to come with feelies? Things like cloth maps, gold coins modeled after ones in game, miniature figures, etc? This is kind of the same thing. Buy the game from a certain retailer and you get a "digital feely." Most of the time, these things are insignificant in the game, and are usually available for free after the game's first patch. Now, the $7 add-on DLC on launch day is just greed. All they did was remove content so they can charge more for it. Bioware got EA'ed, and that's just really sad.

You do know that you don't have to log into twitter/facebook/google wave/IM every time you're on the computer, right? If you're feeling social, log in. If you just want to surf or play a game, log off. Not that hard, bro. I hear this argument against social networking all the time, and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Personally, twitter and facebook have been very useful beyond saying "whats up dude?" I've discovered new restaurants, met up with old friends that I've lost touch with, etc.

Facebook had to do some damage control once the national media decided to make a story about it. There was a CNN story yesterday morning warning Facebook users about what the new terms of service meant and what it means to any content they put up on their profiles. I tried searching on youtube but couldn't find a video, unfortunately.

I see your devil's advocate tags, but I need to comment regardless.

The philosophy of this country is that you should be able to make a better life for yourself than your parents. If you work hard enough, you'll be able to live a comfortable life. I see entire families struggling to put a simple meal on the table because they only pull in 20K a year. With the cost of housing, food, college for your children, and occasional entertainment (all work and no play makes a very unproductive and unhappy citizen), I'd like to see all of this come in at under 20k a year. This isn't even taking into account any savings for retirement, etc. You do realize that companies don't offer pensions anymore, right? Unless you want to live in a cardboard box when you're 65, you gotta factor that into your 20K too.

If all these companies continue to hire H1-B workers at a cut rate, the American workers who usually purchase products and services that said company produce won't be able to afford it anymore. Hiring foreign workers pay off in short term savings, but putting the American worker out of work is not investing wisely in your company's future, IMNSHO.

Also, how long do you think these H1-B workers are going to stand working for that measly 20k? They have to live somewhere, and 20k is not a living wage in this country.

The problem with "true capitalism" is that decisions are made in terms of personal gain, and not necessarily what benefits society as a whole. Greed will ultimately cause a true capitalistic society to fail, there needs to be compromise and regulation. I'm in favor of large tax hikes for companies who choose to hire more H1-B than American workers, the extra money will help pay for our unemployment checks.....

I bet you're a blast at parties...