Seeing as how Adobe Photoshop is among the most pirated programs, I'm curious to know how hard not having formal support is really hitting many of the users. Of course, most professionals wouldn't pirate software (of course), and probably have it legally paid for and supported, but a lot of people don't use Adobe support and seem to get along just fine.

I'm not so sure. I doubt the vast majority of people who believe Internet Explorer to be the internet noticed that there was some kind of takeover. YouTube owns web video in most people's minds, yes, but it was difficult to tell anything happened even for those who did know what was going on. Even now, the bottom of the page says "© 2009 YouTube, LLC." Either way, I'm waiting for the day when YouTube uses the tag for displaying media and I can finally forget about FLV forever. Long time coming.

There's a lot of reasons Javascript (and other client-side scripting languages) are limited in the ways you described, most are for security & privacy reasons (and yet things still get through).

Give them a FriendDA?

This wouldn't be rated "Funny" if the mod knew just how sad and true this is. Even if the copies are available, the general feeling is you have to sneak around if you want to use a library to learn course material from.

Not if the program of study you're looking for isn't available at other schools, or the body which regulates the profession you're looking to enter (which also legally controls the use of the title of your profession) requires successful completion of a degree in an "accredited institution of learning," where accredited means is on a list that they maintain. That narrows your choices somewhat; add in the fact that moving to another school outside of your country includes the cost of moving, living away from home, and the fees required for international school (and don't forget a student visa!), and you've got yourself quite the bill. Which is on top of your already-mounting student debt.

Additionally, the notion of "transferring" between most schools is laughable, at best. It's difficult enough to transfer within your school without losing all or most of your credits (and consequentially, tens of thousands of dollars of your money); doing so between schools is pretty much a huge pain in the ass.

Not that I'm complaining about the system - I don't know much about it, let alone have enough experience within it to judge it - but it's not as simple to use a less expensive school.

It's just one more step to open source! I'll start holding my breath now!

I'd say the sharing of ideas doesn't seem like it has much to do with Wikipedia, it's just trying to explain what everything is for the uninformed. Sharing ideas is for places like YouTube, where people *do* share them...every idea that comes into their head, no matter how inane.

Honestly, after reading TFA, it seems like this is a Flying Spaghetti Monster or Church of the SubGenius kind of case. The whole thing exists to throw a problem into sharp relief...it's not an "Art Project" so much as a method of arguing, trying to rally support for an issue by calling their side of the arugument something normally protected, like Art or a Religion. I'm all for what they're arguing, but I really don't know why they act all surprised when someone calls their bluff or tries to dismiss the tactic.