I use both because I like keeping a dedicated email address for subscriptions and other listservs; I have just noticed AOL's spam filter isn't as good, but it suits my needs.

Todai and Tokyo are the same University so I think you're a little confused, Todai is just short for TOkyo DAIgaku (university). I'm assuming the third Japanese university you're talking about is Waseda. I studied my undergrad degree there and I can tell you the Japanese (or most East Asian) school systems are not as great as you're making them out to be. Japanese students have a real problem with critical thinking, something that American K-12 does quite well. In Japan students, from a very young age, are mostly taught how to memorize and take tests. That's what mostly gets you in to universities.

Once in University (even Todai and Waseda) students don't really need to attend classes and I found that in general the standard of critical assessment was well below American, Australian and New Zealand University standards (I've studied a little at each also).

But those kids today! And the schools! So much worse than when I was a kid! Get off my lawn! Wargle gargle!

If only I had paid the 0.99 cents I could have saved my eyes! The horror, the horror.

I think I have a complicated view of the entire copyright idea (shorter time frames with stronger enforcement is my preference I think) but here in New Zealand we have a very difficult time maintaining our local film and television industry and piracy can have a much stronger impact than in the states. Recently the film "Boy" (which is fantastic and very very local in style) has had some trouble because it's already being pirated before it has even had a chance to be released internationally. It's not like the producers wouldn't like it to have a large international release on the same day or something like that but it's just not an option with our small industry. Here's some more info on it:

http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news/boy-illegally-uploaded-internet-3606531

This boils down to a what is the difference between morals and ethics question. I think that wives of men that go to strip clubs feel that it is wrong in both ways, you would need to ask them for specifics though.

Interesting question, the people play it certainly shouldn't see it as a bandwidth waste, maybe a time waster for sure but they probably aren't thinking in terms of resources. While I would like to give the award for biggest bandwidth waste to Facebook I will have to defer it to Ubisoft, for their new DRM scheme, that to me is even more of a waste.

I really don't think MS is that quick to hurt itself, I think what they are looking to do is monetize development on their platform just like Apple does. To develop for the iPhone/Pad you need a Mac and the piece of hardware you want to develop for plus a developer's license, not only that Apple gets a cut of every sale. For Windows all you need is a copy of Windows and MS sees no money after that unless you get their development environment.

What I do see MS doing is pushing this as the best way to get software and downplaying anything Joe Internet user downloads, maybe going so far as to disable UAC for all app software to make it even more painless.