It's fun and games to paint these people as anarchists but Assange worked with major world papers about what should and shouldn't have been released. Was or wasn't this the case with the Manning files? Although I do believe after his partner was detained Glenn Greenwald has suggested he might become less selective on what gets released.

In these things, protesting just means waiting a while. Buy a used copy.

I don't know that it was ever acknowleged but as a proud Pinto owner I know the nasty visibility constraints of the rear "posts" were a problem and I've always suspected Pinto owners put themselves into position for a rear collision and explosion.

DOSBox, WINE or what?

Yes. I've already had the Aspire One netbook experience so it's a deal breaker. $30 is a mighty small investment in a better daily experience with a Nexus 7.

"Historically people like you would be allowed to flunk out of college so that the seats would be available for people who valued education."

Got that right. Saw the announcement at the little state college I attended in the early 70s for a couple of my years where they congratulated faculty on maintaining the average Freshman GPA at 2.1, within .1 of an ideal Bell curve. See if that would elicit "customer delight" today, but, then, Reagan turned tertiary ed into a "business." Back when you were expected to be motivated, the government was paying most of the tuition bill so there was an implicit contract that _you_ would perform, not that the _college_ would make you happy.

90% attrition? Sounds about right. Back when I was on the move and U of South Africa was about the only option for me to get a graduate Honours through the mail and consulate exams, I believe their attrition was around 90% too. Best advice I got was to make it "real." Buy the frackin' university sweatshirt and wear it every day at your appointed study times and whatever other gimmick you can think of like streaming the campus radio station.

Yeah, lawsuits are the American way. And farmers are so rich they can hire lawyers to easily match Monsanto's legal team.

Is it dumbed down at the secondary level? When I graduated from high school -- like, DECADES ago -- about 14% of my class where honor students. I recently decided to get the home town paper. Last year, 40+% were "honor" students at my high school. That Flynn Effect must really be working for them. The paper runs Snowflake of the Month stories: "Johnny has a wonderful attitude and Suzy is always helpful to other students." That sort of silliness would have embarrassed the hell out of me in my day.

The Reagan era turned universities into "businesses." Where's the customer delight in a failing grade?

Pretty sure that's what we'll be doing. We've been doing "one bill shall pay them all for years" but, nearing retirement, we've got more time to hold up the line than money. The credit union gives us one free box/year, so do the math and see that it pays for us to go Old School. "Good job, retailers." I also think self-check-out at grocery stores is stupid when there is someone to do the job for you. If even more people now think like I do, maybe we can keep more cashiers off unemployment and on the payroll.

It will be interesting to see whether online sales just got a 2-3% inflation jump though because I'm _sooooo_ sure this will mean lower total prices for us all in that arena. Because, you know, when has the Libertarian Dream ever failed us?

If nobody has jobs anymore we better transition to an economy where everything the robots produce is free.

Back when it was Regents, you could get a "concentration" basically just by getting an above mean score on a GRE subject test. Since I believe the guy who started the Triple Nine IQ Society had about a dozen of them, that became a bit of a fad. I picked up English Lit, Sociology, Political Science and History -- yup, accredited as long as you say it's a "concentration" -- in a year for chuckles for slightly over a $1000 total back when the economy was good to add to my traditional two majors. I always had a sneaking suspicion the college hated our guts for making fun of the process and we may have screwed it for other people. You can still get credit but, offhand, I think it's more like half a concentration for a score significantly better than mean.

Nonetheless, if you pass several GRE subjects tests, I imagine that's still a lot of elective credits received very, _VERY_ cheaply.

Of course, most of the buses have had cams for years.

And since they're phasing out the old passes and pushing the convenient web account enabled smart passes that you can charge with your credit card from home, you better pay cash if you don't want your bus route tagged.

Need I say more? A series, no less: Hour of Judgement, Prisoner of Conscience, etc. Extra points for trauma.

$5 million probably isn't enough to set up much serious biology. Maybe better than giving it to the Vatican.

They're practically indestructable.