I'll stipulate for the purpose of this discussion that, of the people who know what the MPAA and RIAA are and what they've done, most believe those organization to be (at least on their way to becoming) obsolete. You can infer my argument from my caveat.

I was going to mention aphophasis, but that'd just be silly; so I won't.

It's all about context. Sure, Google delists sites all the time—for trying to game its algorithm. De-indexing a site in retaliation for some unrelated action is a different ball of wax.

They could do that, but it would be an amazingly stupid move, I think.

Google gained traction in the search engine world largely because they have an algorithm which ranks sites such that—theoretically, at least—the top listing is, by some measure, the best. Sites stand or fall on their own merits, which means that users (who have the eyeballs which are looking at Google's ads) can trust Google to give them relevant sites. If Google were to stop indexing a site—even somebody like the MPAA—that destroys that trust.

I don't know how it stands legally in the US, but lots of places I've seen have signs saying it's company policy to ask for ID when you make a credit card purchase. I've been asked to show my ID once, ever, for a credit card purchase (oddly, at a place I frequent regularly, and the cashier more than likely knew me by sight). It's just too much of a hassle to check it for every customer that comes through, I suppose.

I do get asked for ID when I buy things with checks—although the only time I write checks is out of my health savings account for prescription drugs, so there may be something else going on there.

With the mean amount per victim so (relatively) low, I guess it's just not worth it for the criminals doing it on an individual basis. All the rational criminals must be moving to more lucrative sources of ill-gotten gains.

This is one thing government gets right, I think: employees' salaries are matters of public record. In my opinion, salary information should be available to all employees of the company, and in publicly-owned companies, to the stockholders as well.

Get back to us when you get everyone to completely agree on the definition of "free" in this context.

This is nice, but...call me again when it's cheap enough to make buildings out of.

Well, to be fair, Washington, Jefferson, and Adams were dangerous radicals—preaching sedition and mutiny against the lawful government set over them.

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Well, he could set a fire in the Patent Office.

I'm not doubting you, but I've never heard this. If this is true, in such a case, while the administration might not legally be required to provide you consideration, the instructor is in my opinion morally required to make his best effort to do so.

Care to provide some citations or a pointer? If this is true in my state, I want to complain about it to the appropriate people.

Since the discussion is about laptops in class—and thus presumably for notetaking—I'm not sure “Searching, backing up, sharing snippets, [and] linking” are apropos. These are all useful things, but wouldn't they be done after a class? And if it's after class, time isn't a factor—if those things are important to you, you could scan or retype your handwritten notes (as part of your study time, even).

Also, I would argue that for some notetaking activities, pen and paper are clearly a superior tool unless you're already an expert at the computer equivalent: diagrams or quick drawings, and mathematical equations. (I did once try to take notes in a math class for a while using LaTeX. It...did not end well; I kept have to look up how to express what I wanted.)

Except that students often aren't paying their own money. It's scholarship money, or government grant money, or borrowed money.

I almost wish I hadn't commented yet on this discussion—if I could mod this up I would. Good to know someone shares (at least some of) my view of college's problems.