This was exactly my reasoning. I realized that I'm close a computer or have a laptop nearby almost all the time, so why bother paying extra for a smartphone, peer pressure be damned?

I'd agree with you about repeat offenders, but making the first offense a felony is not going to help. First, drunk people are not exactly known for making the best judgment. Second, how many immature 20 year olds (probably demographic most likely to have the first DUI) will be branded felons for life for making a mistake? Third, driving drunk without causing other offense makes no harm, and while it is irresponsible and should be punished, it doesn't compare with other felony crimes. Fourth, I'm fairly sure I've driven tired enough to the point of being highly impaired on more than one occasion. It's about as irresponsible as drunk driving, yet there is no punishment. The gap between no punishment and felony for pretty much the same kind of behavior is simply too big. Fifth (and this is more about stigma rather than laws), I'm yet to see a convincing argument why society considers that people aren't accountable for having drunk sex (can't give consent), but are accountable for drunk driving.

You can find counter-arguments to each of these points fairly easily, but taken together they build a strong case.

Maybe US has more DUIs because virtually everyone drives here, and starts driving way earlier than in other countries? Maybe other countries have better public transportation for the drunks to get home after parties?

This is probably the first time I've heard that DUI is not stigmatized enough.

And what can Anonymous do? Deface/DDoS your website? While they did have some impact (leaks, protests), there is only so much you can do online.

Good universities hire dedicated lecturers to teach these core classes with high number of students, whose primary responsibility is teaching and not research. Because of that, these classes tend to be very well-organized.

Also known as "being efficient." You shouldn't make blanket statements like that.

Even if you're not "truly well rounded" or are afraid to fail the test, here is what you should do (I passed some CLEP tests this way):

0. Make sure CLEP tests are accepted (some engineering programs/colleges don't accept certain tests).
1. Find related college course at a decent university that has lecture notes online.
2. Buy the book that this course follows, read it and read the notes. Often course notes will hint at which parts of the book are most important.
3. Pass the test, submit a form to get credit for an equivalent class.

Right, so I installed a bunch of extensions to make Firefox look and behave like version 2.0... and still haven't upgraded to 5.0 because I'm afraid these extensions will break. "Power users" or "geeks" may be able to tweak their browser, but it doesn't mean we want to (especially as we get older and have more work / less time). It looks like there is at least one new extension that I need to install with every major release of Firefox to bring old 2.0 appearance back. It's not just corporations that want some stability with their software.

What qualifications are required to get into the military? I don't think they are comparable to either PE or M.D. (and thus may not induce cheating), yet military personnel in some cases may have more potential of killing "wrong" people.

I thought it was obvious to everyone that downloading mp3s is treason. After all, when you pirate mp3s, you're downloading communism.

This can be tricky (but still doable, of course) on a 32-bit OS because the counters wrap around 4 GB.

I have a similar deal with AT&T DSL. Home phone / DSL package was actually $5-10 cheaper than DSL alone (~$45). In fact it makes sense, as the landline was a negative value for me - way too many marketing/donation soliciting/incorrect calls.

This bundling practice is annoying as Internet connection pretty much makes all other services redundant.

But... but I thought nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM^H^H^H Amazon!

I agree that the whole concept of a speed limit is stupid, because actual safe maximum speed is highly context-dependent. There are so many factors that even enumerating them is pointless. Speed limits only may somewhat make sense in certain areas in the city (school zone, residential zone, shopping area).

Show me a highway where the majority of the traffic drives at or under the speed limit on a nice day. Similarly, I lost control and totaled my last car when I was going 25 mph under the limit on an interstate. While driving through a residential neighborhood or a shopping area, safe speed at night is actually higher than during the day - exact opposite of a highway. Everything depends on the context.

People will drive at the speed they deem comfortable and safe. Speed limits exist only to make everyone guilty like the parent said and to generate revenue.

I'm doing mine in CS, and the papers I enjoy reading the most are those that discuss alternatives / tradeoffs / unsuccessful directions that the authors attempted with their design. Sure, in order to be published your work has to show some improvement of the state of the art, but it is often more educational to read how people came up with a successful system rather than the result itself. I actually heard some professors claim that you should only write about what you did right because the reader would not be interested in the thought process or intermediate experiments you went through, and I find this claim completely false.