Plenty of people alive today will not die of natural causes. Listen for loud, sudden noises and you should be able to find a few.

The download manager for eMusic works fine - they've released a version for linux. I have had a few problems with it (probably because I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to Linux) but most can be straightened out by closing and restarting the manager. There's also a side project called eMusic J that works in linux and, of course, you can change your settings to download tracks individually in mp3 format if nothing else works for you.

I think it may be important to note that not everything needs "freshening up". Some teachers can pull off teaching the same thing every year, and teaching it very well.

For example, our department's statistics teacher uses the same powerpoint every year, same tests, and maybe even the same assignments and still manages to turn a field with very little joy to be found for most people into an interesting and enjoyable class. He also does most of the presentations for our department (materials engineering) which are enjoyed by everyone from grade-school age to adults. It's only once you see one of his presentations several times that you realize he's pretty much going through the same script verbatim.

It works very well for him, and as long as nothing's broke, I don't see any reason to fix it. On the other hand, I do agree with you that if a teacher thinks a large number of people would risk copying notes to avoid going to class and learning the material, she should probably look into alternate solutions rather than the one described.

I'm sure you're right in saying that she does not legally have the power to go into your backpack but it seems most people so far are forgetting the real power teachers have over students these days - grades.

I remember a chem class where we were "allowed" to turn in our lab notebooks for points as the labs/prelabs were going to be the same the next semester, and they wanted to prevent straight up copying if they could. I would guess the students here are in a similar, albeit worse-sounding, situation.

The students are well within their rights to refuse to turn over notes, or pull any of the copy-related stunts mentioned in this discussion. Problem is, the teacher is likely to have the power to go right home and dock them a letter grade or two, or, for example, require students to hand in notes to get the final exam. There just aren't a lot of options available to students if a professor's doing something wrong and they care about the class at all.

This may have been true in the past, but it is not anymore, at least not universally. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Iowa, not in poverty but certainly not well-off, and when I went to college, I was recruited by an old family friend to a fraternity. I was very uncertain at first, but the rush chairman was a nice guy (he ended up my "big brother" and I followed in his footsteps as a materials engineering major). I came down and stayed in the house for orientation, and after a good look at the dorms I'd be living in, I joined the house.

Honestly, living in house is cheaper than dorms, we've got several people who came in very socially inept (myself included), and I'm not a great judge of male physical appearance, but I know there's no looks category we factor in when deciding whether to rush or activate someone. In fact, the only problems we've had activating people dealt with more of the "scumbags and assholes" mentioned in an uncle post. There are several houses on our campus, chapters of our fraternity on other campus, and even our house years ago that seem to exemplify these qualities; we use these as examples what not do when we plan out what we want the fraternity to be like.

The Greek system as a whole is undergoing a lot of changes now that a lot more options for incoming students are opening up. Our chapter is one of very few on our campus that is actually growing right now, and I'd like to think it's because we don't treat people like shit.

And before I forget, as to the grandparent's point, I do think it was very beneficial in my case to live in the fraternity. I'm the type that doesn't make friends as easily, but once I do, I make good friends, and the fraternity was very conducive to this. It's also provided activities that help me branch out more. I can easily picture myself cooped up in a dorm room for four years, but thankfully that didn't happen.

The bottom line is that if people in fraternities you know do act like complete dicks, they probably are and you should steer clear of them. But if they do seem like nice guys, it could be because they are. Even little stereotypes like the ones people hold against Greeks can be damaging, so try to get to know them a little and then make a judgment. And if you have done this and happened to only run into asshats, I am sorry.

I once heard that we engineers do not see the glass as half-full or half-empty, just twice as big as it needs to be.

No shit. Do they still have any form of debtor's prison around?

How about fail-at-life prison?

6. And get everyone you know to play along.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I'm really hard pressed to believe that the readership of Slashdot is what's driving the demand for the Big 4.

I'm 20, the first computers I ever saw would have probably been an Apple II lab my school had. I can't quite remember what we did with them, I think there was a math or typing game that we loaded from those massive floppies.

I think this is the main problem with Vista now that most of the big bugs have gotten fixed. So many people are completely computer illiterate and just get by through rote memorization of the correct keystrokes/mouse clicks to do the few things they want. When that changes, even a little bit, they are back to completely helpless and hate it, making them want to downgrade.

No kidding. The railroad companies seem to get by much better on their own than auto companies do (think who builds/maintains the roads vs. rails).

I think it's been proposed earlier in the thread, but perhaps the solution to the American auto problem is to let the Big 3 die if they can't shape up and give rail companies the incentives to retool, or perhaps allow them to absorb automakers. I think it makes more sense to expand a business that doesn't rely on government bailouts than one that seems to.

I'm sorry if I came off that way, and that was not my intent. I know I'm not perfect by any means. I guess it just gets a little old when I live in a town where my (sober) friends have been fined several hundred dollars for cleaning up beer cans, or where a teenager can be driving down the street, get passed by an older driver, and still be the one who gets pulled over for speeding. It seems to me like a tremendous misuse of justice to target people who are too young or inexperienced to cause trouble.

In the same vein these stories about the RIAA targeting primarily students and others unwilling or unable to resist legal action really gets my blood going. I will admit that we are proportionally higher offenders and should therefore expect to see more lawsuits than the rest of the population. However, my point was that there are also a substantial number of us not frequenting the p2p networks, and that when the RIAA uses shaky detection methods and throws out another round of high-dollar lawsuits against people who can't defend themselves, people in the latter group are going to be badly hurt even though they haven't done anything wrong.

Although they are civil suits and the record companies seem to be within their legal rights to do so, this seems to me to be a morally bankrupt and predatory practice. I also see parallels to the earlier scenarios I described of police stereotyping or harassing younger people. The only difference is that there is something the ordinary person can do about it - refuse to support companies who practice these tactics and educate those who are unaware.

On a related note, I continue to be amazed that the RIAA continues its anti-piracy campaign in this way. Suing a small number of people for huge amounts which destroy their financial lives has not slowed piracy at all. As aussie_a pointed out, most people have next to no knowledge of copyright issues, and so the uneducated masses keep plugging right along. On the other hand, those of us who do have some understanding of the system and make a conscious effort to steer away from infringement have most likely heard of abuses of the legal system like this and are completely turned off from major record labels, if not all music. So the RIAA has effectively alienated most of its potential customer base while doing nothing to increase it.

As suggested by Mr. Beckerman later down in the comments, there are alternatives on much firmer moral/ethical ground which would probably be more effective at discouraging filesharing. If these companies would do a bit more extensive monitoring of p2p networks (I know, we hate to hear that on this site, but people need to learn that putting information out there for all to see has consequences), they could sweep out and catch more "pirates" and hit them with greatly reduced fines. Maybe something sane like "actual damages" times three plus a minor administrative cost for tracking them down. If the defendant believes they're wrongly accused they can contest or fight it, but should be made aware that losing a court case means elevated fines plus compensation for legal fees. When you hear that ten or twenty people at your university have been issued crushing fines, you're not much more likely to stop swapping music than you are to stop jaywalking because someone got hit on the street the other day. If you personally get a couple $50, $100, or $300 tickets and know you don't have a leg to stand on to contest them, you're probably going to stop.

In the same way you don't lock someone up for doing seven over the speed limit, you should not force a kid to drop out of college because they grew up listening to the radio and stupidly assumed it meant that music was free. The exorbitant fines written into copyright law are intended to discourage commercial pirate operations that make a lot of money off it. One of the reasons I still patronize MPAA movies and TV shows is that from what I've heard so far, they've been going after primarily larger offenders who were very much willfully violating copyright and usually pulling a profit from it. A good faith effort such as the one I outlined on the part of the RIAA would do a lot to convince me to come back to them, and I honestly hope they read boards like this one so they know just what we think about their tactics, and maybe plan to change. I don't hold out much hope though.

Sorry for the long post, I felt I had a lot to get off my chest.