Have you ever dealt with Paypal? I bet you're wrong. It will probably take several months of going back and forth and a few hours on the phone with multiple customer service representatives.

I tell the kids at the school I work at daily to consider trade and technical 2-year schools. A lot of them are not meant for college, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean they're going to turn out to be useless idiots. I wasn't meant for college, I don't learn the same way everyone else does, and classroom environments are ineffective for my learning methods. No one should feel as though they won't be able to make ends meet if they don't attend a 4-year (more like 5 on average now) liberal arts college and be stuck with massive loan payments for some degree they could give two shits about. If I could do it again, I would have bypassed the system entirely and independently studied and learned my trade, because my college degree has nothing to do with my job in the IT field anyway. I am 100% self-taught, and owe my education to library books and the internet. Total cost for my IT education was the cost of a monthly internet connection. College is a waste of time and money for any profession that does not require direct teacher interaction or hands-on training. And most stuff can be learned in the field on the fly if you have practical base knowledge of how things work.

Could not agree with you more. The entire system is driven by University greed and the government's ridiculous ability to grant anyone breathing with a loan so large they'll be paying it off for the rest of their lives. It has nothing to do with merit or ability or hard work. The Universities keep increasing the tuition, and the government keeps enabling it by increasing the amount people can borrow. Eventually when the student loan crisis hits (which it will very soon), the entire system is going to fall to shit.

What's wrong with Steam? I don't see it as bloated at all. Actually, I enjoy the format much better than individual installers and updaters.

Wow, what a load of crap. As technology has increase, MORE jobs have been created. We don't just simply wipe away the slate whenever a process becomes automated. It generally creates an entirely NEW industry just to run those technological advancements. Who is going to create those automated systems you speak of or improve upon them / repair them (unless you're talking about some Terminator AI scenario where robots are improving upon their own designs)? Are we going to have automated systems that repair the automated repair systems when the automated repair systems stop repairing? Who is going to watch over those automated systems? Other automated systems? If anything, our lives have become MORE complicated and cumbersome BECAUSE of our technology, and will continue to do so, all while invading on our personal freedoms and robbing us of any meaningful, real social interaction. Think about the fact that most of us cannot ever truly escape from our jobs anymore, being tethered to a smart phone, constantly checking email, and even expected to be on call at all times in some cases. In many ways, technology has done more harm than good to us. We're running on historic stress and suicide rates in the US and the rest of the world. At some point, we're going to have to make a choice. Human beings will have to be involved in some meaningful way, regardless of how technologically advanced we become. At some point, we are going to realize that just because we can, doesn't mean we should. And Humans have this wonderful ability to reason and to adapt to all sorts of difficulties. It will never be a society of waking up, living with the family, playing around with hobbies, learning, and going to sleep every day. An existence without balance of work and play is a meaningless existence. Unconsciously, human beings will not allow this, because that would completely rob everyone of the true human experience, and any real purpose of living. And can you imagine the nightmare scenario if suddenly all of those automated systems stopped working for us? I just think of the fat blobs ont he hover chairs in Wall-E with your utopian description of the tech future.

Case and point, look at the releases by John Carmack and the ID team vs some of the other game companies (EA) that rush to get their products out to the market by a specific date. Yeah, the ID games have bugs too, but nothing in comparison to some of the other games I've played... And man does their code look polished!