I'd say the university isn't fulfilling its role, and you should definitely rally to change things. The purpose of the university network (besides supporting research communications) is to allow you to learn.

During my undergrad the university I attended provided full firewall-free internet with a *public* IP from their block for everyone who plugged in (and no-questions asked CNAMEs). The wireless was of course NAT'd but I had no problems.

This all worked because of the genius way they solved problems was genius. If IT detected any funny business, a tech would physically show up at your lab/office and ask you what was going on and make you fix the problem right then and there.

I'm a mutt user. Care to share how this is done in mutt?

This could be used as an efficient implementation of the quantum bogosort

You can create a pretty cool random number generator with a webcam and a smoke detector:

http://slashdot.org/story/06/08/13/1311238/diy-random-number-generator

Believe it or not, in the US it actually *is* illegal to wear masks in public. Do a quick search and you'll find many people arrested and charged for nothing more than this.

Here's a list of my (important) favorites:

meep (finite difference time domain electromagnetics)

FFTW (fourier transform)

MPB (photonic bandgap solver

Elmer (finite element solver)

That's awesome. You're 100% correct. I don't know how books are sorted these days, but the relevancy of nearby books is why I attend libraries.

At my (European) university we have a system where, instead of one big library, we have many small, specialized libraries. This seems to work fairly well if the librarians are good... they keep the shelves updated and know what should go near what.

That day is today, and the device is a Kindle. Can hold literally years worth of books. Battery lasts a month. The library should have the stacks for sure, but you should also be able to click a button and have the digital version sent to you.

My question would be, why aren't these things in digital form? If you've ever done any research, you'll know the signal to noise ratio can be quite low. It usually takes me scanning through 15-20 works before I find what I want. And to have to wait an hour to get your collection doesn't work.

I say, have the stacks if you want the physical copy. But everything should be digitized and searchable.

Sorry, pirating software is not stealing software. The premise behind calling it "stealing" is that, if you did not pirate the software, you would have paid for it. That is so demonstrably false I don't know where you're coming from. I know a guy who has both software he purchased legitimately (Portal 2, Minecraft) and software he has pirated (Adobe CS, Comsol). It's obvious that no sales were lost in any of the pirated cases.

They can do this in Texas, and the Adam and Eve/Genesis thing ALREADY has a place in the classroom. It's called mythology.

The Adam and Eve/Genesis creation account does have a place in the classroom. It's called mythology.

I don't see any difference between the motivations of one who would join the "Church of Filet Mingon" and any other religion (say, Christianity).

You speak the truth.

I have an idea, how about taking all of those millions spent on 3D/special effects and invest it in... I don't know, perhaps the SCRIPT. And if there's money left over you could work on the ACTING, or CINEMATOGRAPHY.

I'm beginning to wonder if Hollywood has forgotten how to make a film...

Over here:

http://www.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/

These guys are really top-class.