I told you so

From the Associated Press: College for all? Experts say not necessarily. I've written about this before (somewhere.) There is a 'newly' discovered disconnect in College determinism: get a college degree = have a better life. Not necessarily so.

• Colleges want cheap money to effectively lower the price of their product; fatten their endowments and broaden their brand
• Governments want to give away college to appear egalitarian; to tap dance around the expanding gap between rich and poor
• Financial institutions want to suck from the tits of market manipulation and fees.
• Parents, pushed by their peers, long for success for their child and don't pay attention to the cost:benefit ratio; a healthy dose of nostalgia may be added - but their college experience came before the 'bubble' (like the real estate bubble) when too much money chased too few real degrees and too few jobs.
• Students want to dodge reality for as long as possible - who can blame them?

We all want to deny that hard work, curiosity, discipline, cleverness and the right parents are enough, (and necessary.)

If there was ever a time that a motivated student could manufacture his own education, network with leaders in the field and create a job that didn't exist ten years ago - today is the day.

And if there was ever a time when the lag between what could be taught from textbooks for thousand of dollars was less relevant than what can be delivered from a laptop for free - today is the day.

[Too much] More of the Same

Microsoft has unleashed another revenue release of their category dominating office suite: Office 2010. With a name like that, you just know there will be office versions in perpetuity. If only skill with a word processor was related to facility with words.

I was struck by the lambasting the multi-gigabyte/multi-hundred-dollar package received from Wired. They summarized thusly:

TIRED More bloated than the Goodyear blimp. Printing is slow and buggy. Useless spam filter even after a decade of development. Occasional system crashes. Still feels like spending hundreds of dollars for the privilege of sending e-mail and typing letters.

If only I could so successfully monetize such a stream of ponderously mediocre technology ;(

Love, browser

Why Steve Ballmer must be buying stock in Pepto-Bismol: Google's Chrome browser.