This is exactly the criticism that would be leveled by classical economics. However, that would be ignoring the fact that there's essentially no such thing as a free market when it comes to producing *most* goods - especially goods whose demand is inelastic - so the goods we already consume are already of an inferior quality relative to the goods sprinkled with magical pixie dust which the free market could ostensibly provide. However, widespread discontent with government run services either because of their inferiority or delays in receipt, could cause social discontent, which in a democracy would mean loss of power for the people generally in-charge of the government, and potentially privatization efforts (loss of employment, potentially for the bureaucrats who run the entity) for the state apparatus. It could likewise make the populace more willing to contribute additional funds or cut other programs to finance well-liked programs.

Your last question on timely manner is another question that deals primarily with the question of "equilibrium" economics. That is to say that in a standard supply and demand model there's a point at which the lines cross and create "equilibrium" that means you're providing and producing goods at the optimal level for revenue. If you were to impose some other sort of regulation (monopoly, trust, price floors, monopsony or price ceilings) the argument can then be made that you bring the market out of equilibrium and force a glut or shortage, with additional modifiers from the relative elasticity of demand. In educational matters this particular factor is really played up in the media, for example how prized test scores are in Vietnam and China, because their free in-country tuition forces students to seek out the very best grades and test scores or they won't be given the opportunity to attend the more desirable universities - intrinsically this is meant to say there's a shortage of universities with desirable qualities. You also see it in healthcare with ridiculous anecdotes about waiting for healthcare in Canada, etc.

I'll even draw a shitty graph:

http://i61.tinypic.com/2076l48.jpg

(I should note that you could also tell how much the program would cost by taking the area of the triangle formed by ceiling-supply, ceiling demand, and post-ceiling desired-supply, and doing a little calculus - so if you wanted to fund the program in advance (as most governments do) you could also find what your actual supply would be in the event that you had no intention of providing the post-ceiling desired supply)

The state has three options in the case of a shortage: raise prices, expand the supply, or let the shortage continue (planned privation/rationing etc). In the case of university being provided free to the user, you'd have only the latter two options.

In short, ideally a highly elastic good in a free market will see users switch to a different supplier if they don't like the commodity they receive. However, in a state context, instead of just switching suppliers (which may yet be possible in the form of competing private institutions or leaving the country) one could also exert pressure on the state itself through the vote, or civil disobedience. Either would work.

The government can and does make things cheaper because of their monopsony power in teh economy.

For example we have hospital A and Hospital B.

The government says "hey I only want to pay x$ for this service" hospital A says OK, and hospital B says no way..

Hospital B closes because nobody can go there unless they pay out of pocket.

Healthcare has now been made cheaper. The same scenario could be played out in any other environment where the government so chooses to interact with society.

Government programs can sometimes be inefficient, but in general, they provide services at a far lower cost than a private company can - this factor is why private entities fear government intervention in the economy more generally and why any tremendously large project (space program/trans-conintental rails, mail with horses) are government run at least at first. This is because the state doesn't have to worry about being profitable or even having a sensible revenue flow - they'll just print more money or raise taxes to cover any losses on the project, and they have a monopsony over any materials they need to buy. If you want any sufficient evidence, just walk your way down to Washington DC and look at the huge river of tears that was formed when private health insurance companies began to think that they might have to compete with a state-run insurance company - there is absolutely no way they could've survived in the long term with such an entity existing, because they'd be competing against a company that wouldn't have to worry if it made money or not.

Socially funded education simply makes sense because it's a cheaper solution than the current system, it doesn't burden a significant portion of the economy with absurd amounts of debt (over 1 trillion in total) the state has the ability to lower costs by rejecting institutions which don't charge the amount it wants (the same reason why socially funded healthcare is cheaper than our joke of a system), not to mention that just getting an education causes positive externalities throughout the economy - for which the receiver of said education will never be properly compensated for.

I also wasn't imply that simply because you got a BS/BA you should earn more, but in general, any study of persons who hold BA/BS degrees will show that, on average, those folks will earn more than folks who do not have a 4 year degree. It's not a question of should or should not, but a statement about what *is* at least on average.

:( look at what first-world countries can do.

A. It makes sense, even if you aren't a Communist like myself, to socially fund education because education breeds positive externalities for everybody in the society -) more educated population --) better society. It's not hard to figure out. People who *did not* pay for your education, in the US, will benefit from it.

B. Standards for US colleges have fallen tremendously in a drive to let in every student possible to maximize revenue - ask any old curmudgeon of a professor and they will tell you university in the US resembles day-care a lot more strongly than it used to, and that many students cruise through to degrees that are basically useless because nothing of value was learned or at least retained.

C. Not going at all has economic benefits in the short-term, particularly if you instead go to a trade school or you go to a two year program which leads directly into a job, but in general anybody with a bachelors degree *should* out-earn anybody who doesn't have one once it's aggregated out across the whole population.

D. It's relatively easy for governments to afford this kind of policy because the state has the power to dictate the tuition fees that it would pay - as universities that were free to the user would be, generally, highly preferred by the student population. It's called a monopsony (one buyer as opposed to monopoly one seller).

E. The US's debt isn't why we don't have education for all. The debt literally matters not at all. If you want a short economics lesson, the USD is in such high demand world-wide, we can literally print the stuff off with little to no real inflationary consequences, so we generally just pay our debts with money hot off the press, and whoever takes it is happy to have it lol. That, and the fact that, thanks to interest rates being 0 between some countries and the US at the moment, they're literally paying us to take their money, so most of our debt has already been refinanced lol.

The way they typically dealt with figuring out if you were dead in the 17th and 18th centuries, if it was possible, was to place a mirror or sheet of glass over the subjects face, if it were available. The other method (which wasn't preferred) was you could insert a needle into the chest of the subject and if you got the needle close enough to the heart, without actually hitting it, you could detect a heartbeat via the needle wobbling.

The main reason it's spread so fast in West Africa is that people come into contact with infected animals far more regularly than they'd ever come into contact with them in the US (pet monkeys) and the ebola is also in their food supply (bush meat aka monkey meat). The lack of healthcare facilities - and also early on the fact that a lot of people didn't believe that ebola was a thing - has also played its part in allowing the disease to spread. In general even if it does get hot and heavy in the US most people will be fine unless they try to care for sick people and get their blood all over them.

Honestly if your intention isn't to game all that often you'd be better served to buy a used laptop off of Ebay of whatever variety you so choose. If your current laptop/pc situation suites your gaming needs (since you're already on a gaming related website I assume you can play in some capacity right now) there's no reason to drop a bunch of money on a laptop that'll only be doing school work most of the time - and will *still* have difficulty running anything besides an 8+ year old game. Just pick up a used notebook on ebay for 130-200$. The battery life might be the only question there, but with the money you've saved it's not hard to acquire a proper battery. When sonny boy got to the point where he wanted to use my PC all the time that's the route I went lol, 132$ notebook off of ebay let him watch his youtube videos and PBS, and also play plants vs. zombies and minecraft lol. Then if you have more time for gaming, you'll have money laying around to buy a proper gaming machine - you'll get a lot more bang for your buck there.

I'm staying with 7 because I'm a luddite technophobe.

I can't comment on the merits of this particular project, but I see some folks have expressed worry about its funding potential (if the project doesn't get funded they get 0$ and you get a refund).

With kickstarter there are a few essential questions you have to ask yourself:

1. Who is making the project? Will their name(s) carry enough weight to bring people to the table and give up 5-30$ on a promise?

With the RPG kickstarters that got tremendous amounts of money, this was their primary selling point: we've got so and so that made the games you loved - and it's going to be a lot like those games only new! Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Torment 2, and The new Ultima, all used this as part of their appeal and received millions upon millions of dollars.

2. How well publicized is the kickstarter? What sorts of gaming "news" websites are carrying information about it. If the answer is relatively few, well things may not be going well, if you can google its name and find tons of shit about it on different websites, 300k shouldn't be challenging.

3. What other games has this team made and what were they like. If they're games that still have a following or can be remembered by anybody generally (or they were involved in well liked projects), you'll have some avenue for funding. I'm not at all familiar with quake-likes and the quake-modding community, so I wouldn't know in this case.

Best of luck to them though - I wouldn't mind having a few new shooters to mess around with. It seems like the industry is at least loosely aware that the FPS genre has delineated itself into a few different sub-genres, and that arena shooters have been sorely neglected (New UT coming out, several other arena shooter projects getting announced - quake 5 being talked about by Bethesda, etc). The other factor is that older players, who now have money of their own in many cases, want to play games like they had when they were kids, but have nowhere to spend their money.

The insolence chair is a reference to Austin Powers where Dr. Evil mentions that whenever he was insolent he was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds as a child. Also the flavor that particular day was a mixture of Cherry flavor on the bottom, a small midsection of Coke, topped off with additional cherry (he likes to make them look kinda silly). He still does the same to this day, although he sometimes mixes in other flavors lol, they have like 10 flavors to pick from.

It was delicious

I only get angry when he refuses to try :(

But na, I haven't had to actually discipline my son, Alek, in YEARS. I think all I had to do was punish him one time, and he realized that I was not to be fucked with.

(this was after the GF had left and I had him to myself - she'd have never tolerated it lol).

So, he was in pre-school, about 4 years old, which makes this story about 3 years old. We had a tradition that should he get a "green light" in preschool (they had a citizenship system, that if they did all of their work and didn't get in trouble they'd get a "green light" for the day and a "red light" if they fucked up somehow) every day of the week (that is to say 3 green lights in a row), we would go to this gas station and get any kind of junk food he wanted. This gas station has a pretty exceptional array of slushy flavors and he would typically pick to have a slushy - which I liked because they're only a dollar. I have only one hard and fast rule about public spaces - that if we're *anywhere* near a car at any point he has to either hold my hand or hold onto me in some way shape or form. This particular day he was *so* excited to have his slushy, as soon as we exited the gas station he took off running to the car. I bolted after him (being a bit faster than his tiny little kid legs) and snatched him up, put him in his spot in the car, recollected the slushy and said "What did you do wrong?"

He immediately began to cry because he realized that he was about to get dunked on. So, I recollected the slushy and put it in the front seat with me. When we arrived home, I placed him in his all metal disciplinary chair ("The Insolence Chair") which faces a blank, white wall. I sat beside him (as is my rule, when he's in time out, so am I). I drank his slushy, making sure every few minutes to remark upon how delicious and cool it was, and then asking him to remind me, why it was that I was getting to enjoy his most delicious slushy and not him. He would answer "because I ran through a parking lot" and I would nod, and say "you're right" and take another sip. The entire process took a little over an hour. Since then, he has never left my side in a parking lot, nor has he ever questioned any of my other rules.

I'm on a 4 year old 1 gig card... and my graphics are more than tolerable - if you're trying to run your games in "highest quality" a lot of games get *really* crappy at such settings because of how poorly optimized they are - so it may just be a symptom of the program itself. Have you tried lowering your settings a bit and seeing if you get an FPS explosion? It could also be heat as others have said - I don't own any of the games you mentioned - but it could just be a symptom of games not being made to perform well at such settings. I know Metro 2033 and it's sequel are both major instances of that rule (if you run that game on the highest settings it will perform poorly no matter what you do if you're not used to having your FPS locked at ~60).

I don't remember getting tons of game time when my little one was *that* little - I think around 3-4 months he started sleeping through the night and then I got a little bit more gaming time. If you can manage naps without your house falling apart that was generally when I got my gaming time during the summers.

The best arrangement I ever had was with a previous girlfriend, with whom I lived in college, where she would be solely responsible for baby at least 2 hours a day, so I would get 2 hours to do whatever I wanted, and then I would likewise repay her in kind, so that we'd get at least get 2-4 hours a day to do whatever it was we wanted to do on our own. It was a great arrangement + the kiddo liked getting so much 1 on 1 time with us. After she was out of the picture he was 2 1/2 so he was sleeping through the night as he does now. Now that he's nearly 7 he plays more video games than I do :(

Ok some disclaimers

1. I have not been a part of the UGC admin team for a LONG time (like over a year).
2. Things may have changed at UGC since I left
3. I'm not posting in any capacity with/for UGC.

I just want to explain how this kind of thing was dealt with when I was a member of their admin team. When you're running a league and somebody makes a "hackusation" the original demo provided is reviewed (it's usually an STV which is extremely unreliable for aiming bits, but it can give you a general idea of what happened in the match), and if anything there can even be loosely construed as "fishy" (such as a player on sniper getting a bagillion kills) the player's POVs are requested. I'm not sure if this particular hackusation was made via whatever guy's video or because they submitted a demo for review - usually it's required that they provide *something* that the team can look at in their own TF2.

Once it's elevated to a stage where POVs are requested the POVs are sent to a special review team who are anonymous, typically not admins (I don't think any members were admins when I was there), and are disinterested parties familiar with how various "hacks" work in the source engine. So shouting at any particular admin won't affect the process, and in general, no particular admin bias should come into play since the admins (at least when I was there) had no hand in the affair once the review team was handed the POVs.

Just because M4risa's POVs have been requested I wouldn't be particularly concerned if I were M4risa (unless she is actually hacking of course lol). With this guy posting these videos and likely having sent *something* for review, the admin team was likely forced to act in some way. I wouldn't take their inaction as a "political" type action - if the guy didn't submit anything that the team could independently review, then there's nothing to review and thus no POVs would have been requested.

When I was there *every* accusation of hacking (that was accompanied by a demo) was vetted first, and anything that wasn't just somebody wasting our time was passed to the review team - this happened at least like once a month.