I have a dumb pay as you go phone. Costs less than $100 per year. The data plan in my country is about $50 per month. It is too high for me. We do without a cell plan. We do without TV service. We watch netflix, youtube movies and the odd rental. Google news provides superior news to TV. Radio provides superior local news to TV.

If the boss demands a smart phone, let the boss pay for the premium service! I won't even give my boss my cell phone number. It is my airtime.

I can get internet from wireless cafes and such with a regular iPod. Same for listening to music. Costs $0 per month.

The other things you mention can be done with a regular land line phone or a regular cell phone.

Most people here are talking about companies demanding your time and saying the "no email" policy flies in the face of that. You've got it wrong.

Email does not interrupt your lunch, your love life, etc. Phone calls do interrupt your life and take away from personal time.

You can bet anyone shutting down their email over a break *will* be phoning people in place of that. You didn't get more of your life back, you got more of it taken away, and immediately so. With email, one can always respond when there is a better time. That is the great thing about email. Too bad if 11 to 19 year olds don't get email. Since when are they the brains and wisdom? If we were to follow their lead we would assume you can make a living playing WOW or COD. etc.

I don't think "conflict of interest" is taught as a concept in American Universities. At least not as something which is wrong in principle. Look at Wall Street, acting as investors and bankers both (as well as gamblers - derivatives are not based on having a share of any asset like a bond or stock ). Look at Haliburton and the link to Vice President Cheney in Bush years. Completely unthinkable for such things to be allowed in many other developed countries. For example, in most developed nation governments, large procurements must be done with a bidding process, and sometimes are handled by an advisory group at arms length to the politicians.

Not all packets come from requests I make. Do I pay for getting DOSed or for spam, etc.?

What about business services? They are normally charged based on bandwidth pipe, not volume.

I don't think the proposal is well thought out.

I see people trying to guess how/why the images are different. You clearly have missed the comment under the image, or don't understand what it means. The images on those monitors were not produced by the monitors. The monitors were photographed while powered off. Then a graphic artist produces a picture for each monitor, and pastes it inside to look like a monitor producing the image. Thus "demonstrative purposes".

It is a standard marketing technique. Every TV advertised in a flyer is shown with artwork pasted in, not a picture of the TV showing the image. It is so common that if you believed that image is real, you would have to be Mr. Bean.

Dell cannot be nailed for this, because they have included the caveat phrase under the image. It means, in a fancy way, "don't take this as real evidence of the difference". It is just like a package of cookies. Big picture of the cookie on the outside, and underneath, it says "product enhanced in size for illustrative purposes".

If you don't get it, then adjust your set. It will be like this until capitalism and lies are replaced with something else.

Does your university/college provide support for Linux/BSD/etc users to connect to the on-campus wireless?

We support Mac OS X, MS Windows and Linux. Our Technology Services Help Desk has instructions for how to connect to wireless using the example of Ubuntu, but there is nothing proprietary about the wireless access which would cause issues for Linux users specifically.

How does IT support Linux users generally?

Computer Science students are given accounts on a Linux server for use in developing code, but they are also encouraged to install either a dual boot or virtual system with Linux on their laptop (all students have laptops). Students in other studies can also use Linux on their laptop and get assistance with typical Help Desk issues like network access, email client, etc. Our campus has roughly 40% Mac OS users, so we've grown to be flexible in offering whatever support we can to make things work beyond systems running MS Windows.

On the services offered at Acadia, we use quite a bit of open source and Linux. We run Debian and Redhat on a few dozen servers. Email is cyrus, webmail is horde, mail MXes are postfix with amavis, and our main web site runs Contao CMS. Our LMS system is moodle. We like using open source whereever it fits well, and it saves us money.

Have IT staff ever ridiculed you for asking questions about Linux?

I've never heard of it. Help Desk staff might be confused about some specialized questions, and seek additional assistance, but it would be unprofessional to ridicule a student for any question they might have. In our view, the student is the customer, and we seek to provide them with the support they need to succeed in their studies.