I tried compressing most of my old files in my home directory into mp3 with LAME but nothing worked after!!

I am a current Computer Science student and even with my major, I must agree that most classes tended to waste time when we would use computers in high school. Most of the softer science teachers have kids use computers to make "Powerpoints" and "Videos" and waste a great deal of time doing fun, but generally useless stuff when we could have been learning actual history or English in a class discussion or lecture. I found the teachers that mostly avoided computers (besides the computer science teachers) were the teachers I tended to learn the most from.

However, I still think computers are needed in schools especially in a society where nearly every white collar job requires the ability to use a computer. Also, computer classes, and similar computer-centric classes obviously are going to require a computer lab (at least). I also cannot even imagine how horrific it would be to have to use a typewriter to write all my papers...it's a shuddering thought. Perhaps an emphasis on learning the necessary skills for using a computer in a real life job, rather than an emphasis on integrating computers with existing teaching techniques would create a much more efficient system, while still preparing students for the job world.

Ever heard of the placebo effect? I'll admit though I think it's an excellent ambient track, but considering there's an enormous library of ambient music out there, I suspect this "Most Relaxing Crap" is not the best out there.

Just saying...you sound like an excellent parent. Best thing you can do is always encourage his interests circumspectly, and teach not only social skills, but virtues that will make him a person that people will respect and look up to (but it all comes with time).

Well I agree with you that it is illegal and is a form of vandalism, however I've read enough history books to know that people do in fact often have a tendency to "throw a rock at their windshield" in retaliation to something of a less serious nature. You might want to say instead "One shouldn't...". Also, laws aren't always ethical or moral and should not always be followed. Sony is definitely been pretty sneaky lately and has really given a low blows to consumers. So even though I don't exactly condone it, I still won't be able to help feeling extremely happy if Sony gets mobbed by hackers again. I was being a bit playful with that first statement also..

Although think about the purging of Polio and other 19th century diseases. I can't see a virus that has had this much impact on the world to not be very financially backed by donations and continued research to make the cure cheaper. If this was a lesser known disease, then I might say you were right, but HIV has been a different beast altogether.

I doubt not. Think of all the vaccines you're covered by now. Influenza, Polio, Hepatitis, etc. Those don't cost very much. Most Americans can afford those now. The deal with this is that it is probably only going to end up being a few treatments before you're fully cured so medical bills won't rack up. The other thing about this is that HIV is so widespread there will be plenty of donation money for those who can't afford it in the case that the cure turns out to be expensive.

If Lucas is that fucking bored, he can make an Old Republic Trilogy (without loads of CGI crap. Move back to those old effects.). That would be wicked.

It would be totally awesome if you guys hack Sony's servers again, and perhaps asked them to stop being dickheads by posting it on their homepage.

The people applying for the patents (the researchers) don't stand to make much money on their inventions and ideas. Any money made usually is funneled back into the school system to help support new research and education. Universities are cash hungry in a completely different way than corporations.

Yes, but does it run Linux?

I give you....MOD 10!

And frankly it's quite sad that many of these people will allow their networked lives to become that much more decentralized. Meanwhile I'm switching to Diaspora where I actually get to control my information.

As it's been mentioned, MD5 would not work. There is no surefire way to tell your tracks are "illegally" downloaded or not. However there are several telltale signs on many illegally downloaded songs that you could use to help narrow down your search for them so that you could cherry-pick the rest. If I was to write this program, I would probably make a tier of levels of likeliness of a file being pirated. For this example I'll have a system based on integers where a higher number is more likely to be pirated. 0 would be neutral and negative would be unlikely to be pirated.

I would start by filtering out everything that you know for sure is legal. For me, that would mean all vorbis files, .wma (when I used to rip from Windows), FLAC, aac, and any other free codecs not commonly used for piracy. All these files get their likelihood variable decremented by 5 or maybe filter them out altogether based on a setting. It's worth noting that 99% of all your illegally downloaded songs will be in MP3 format.

Next, I would filter out by comments tags. Many distributors like Amazon include a non-drm comment in the ID3 tag. Filter all those out or subtract from their likelihood. If you ever include your own comments in your files, filter those as well.

Now you've gotten most of the obviously legal files out of the way. The next part will be to filter out the likely pirated music from the rest. The user would have the discretion of choosing his/her tests as they see fit. For this, I would probably increment the likelihood variable by one for each matched test.

Example Tests:
1. Low bitrate? (128kbs) to filter out most of the old crappy pirated downloads.
2. Lowercase ID3 tags? Pirated downloads often have typos.
3. Missing artwork?
4. Sketchy ID3 comments (t0rr3nted by r1ppErZ, demonoid, lots of things you could search for)
5. Missing ID3 tags (no album name, unknown artist, etc.)
6. Matching filename with ID3 tags. Often people fix their pirated tags, but the misspelled filename stays the same.
7. Subtract likelihood if bitrate is what you normally rip at
8. Song in incorrect folder. I normally put my tracks in a directory structure of artist/album. You could test the ID3 tags to the directory structure.
9. Interface with MusicBrainz and scan songs for correct tags, correct song length, and if MusicBrainz can even find it.

By no means is that all the tests you could do. Next you would list all the files high to low in a nice format for the user so that he/she could easily spot the pirated music. This solution is obviously quite preliminary and could definitely be refined, but you get the basic idea. The whole point is to make the user's task of finding and marking the pirated software much easier (and I'm sure in easily less than an hour you could find all your pirated music with such a program).

What are you smoking?