Parental involvement... the ultimate filter of internet content. Because if little Billy or Sally were using Wikipedia for their reports on Dinosaurs and the Great Depression, one highly doubts porn would be in there.

Amazon.Com does NOT have a sales tax advantage in the eyes of the law. Yes they do not collect them, but individuals are still required by law to pay use tax on them unless the item is tax-free per state guidelines. So if the state is losing money, it is because Amazon's customers are committing tax fraud.

It is because they screwed up almost 6 years ago with the NGE patch which turned the game into a total rip-off of World of Warcraft. After a bunch of people on my SWG server jumped ship for World of Warcraft, I downloaded the demo and as I went through it and you could see where SOE copied the feature exactly. Even worse than that, they released the "new game enhancements" with the "legacy quest" that got you to level 40-something leaving you to essentially grind out the remaining 40-some levels to hit 90 (which was the cap when I quit). The worst part is after losing a massive chunk of their playerbase in the space of a month and forced to give refunds for the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack, they still refused to admit the NGE was a mistake. They did not test anything properly it seemed (anyone remember the Publish 27 Commando PvP of pointing the heavy weapon down, holding down the fire button, and then running at the person you wanted to kill?) and the game would change more radically than WoW ever has.

The irony is Blizzard's VP was quoted as saying they were actually afraid of Star Wars Galaxies because of the strong Star Wars intellectual property. However SOE, with LucasArts' assistance, managed to screw it up to the point not even the fanboys could save it

Probably because it is an attempt by a politician's followers to, in effect, rewrite history to suit the views of that politician.

Agreed. When I went to Eastern Michigan, all you had to do was register your name, dorm address, and student number automatically. This entered you into their database and then you were granted an IP lease. Whole thing was automated and did not install any spyware crap (and IMO anything that checks your system for crap like this is spyware). If problems arose they just checked the database and, since the IP was only ever given to you, they could shut it off and contact you.

You might also consider making a Windows LiveDVD with their crappy software on it. That way you can boot with it, do their moronic check, and then reboot into your real Windows installation for work.

Another avenue you have too is to contact Merit.Net which, last I knew, had a life-time contract to provide Michigan's universities with internet access and they have to abide by Merit's policies.

Bottom line though is CMU is probably not the place for you. I've met a lot of people who started out there and left ASAP for State, UMich, and even EMU. The saying "Mt. Pleasant - Neither a mountain nor is it pleasant" is quite apt.