Is College Worth It?:
Few young people will be able to independently assess the value in advance and counter the societal and parental pressures which push them to attend college at any price. It’s imperative those with influence over young people make an unemotional analysis prior to college and point them to an appropriate path. For top students this means selecting public schools instead of private. Mediocre students should take advantage of lower cost options like Junior colleges to reduce costs and insure they are benefiting from advanced education. Both should be sensitized to the importance of selecting a high income major to increase the likelihood of a positive outcome. Half the students should be discouraged from attending college and pointed to a vocational career path. The expensive traditional 4 year liberal arts education approach is now failing the majority from an economic perspective. New approaches with a greater emphasis on direct vocational skills are required. Quick realization of the economics of college education is imperative to avoid dooming half a generation of young people to inescapable, life limiting debt.

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this is an interesting economic argument about whether college is ‘worth it’

Prokofy Neva banned from the Linden Blog:
Prokofy Neva, certainly one of Second Life’s most outspoken and energetic critics of Linden Lab and it’s policies was banned today from the official Linden Blog, apparently for his comments in this thread. He received an IM from Torley Linden informing him of the ban, apparently for ‘trolling’.
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My position is that Prokofy should be banned from the world for using too much of LL time and resources. She has the right to her opinions and the right to voice them. She does not have as she seems to claim the right to response. That she demands response, and frequently garners it, eats time and effort that is better spent elsewhere. Just set the precendent, ban her for overuse and abuse of ll resources. At this point in the game, having talked to her many times, i cannot see him as anything other than a griefer by other means. She doesn’t shoot bullets, she shoots arguments, but the arguments are all centered on her vision and interests… claimedly based on ‘research’, but in the end… she’s just griefing.

The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace — December 2006:
What happens to
your request when you click on a link to a Web site or send an email? For most
surfers, the Internet experience begins and ends with what happens on the
computer screen in front of them. However, if you follow that email or Web
request as it leaves your computer and passes down the fiber-optic cable to the
servers and routers of your local Internet Service Provider (ISP), through the
Internet Exchange Points (IXPS), international gateways, and on to the undersea
trunk cables of telecommunications companies, you will find a complex and
largely hidden infrastructure of filters and choke points.

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some of this is related to things that i’ve been saying for too long… should have written them up.

Two game Ph.D’s in two days!:
I think it must be the first time in history that two game Ph.D’s comes out of the same institution within two days, nevertheless this is what happens at the IT University exactly these days. Jonas Heide Smith and Miguel Sicart, who for a long time have been sharing an office and the pains of writing a Ph.D, have reached the end of their journey – on time! Jonas defended his Ph.D. thesis on Plans

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I remember when i met Jonas and Miguel…. It doesn’t seem like 3 years ago, but I guess it is. Congratulations to both of them.