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In the 1970s Harvard cost $4K/year ( https://www.thecrimson.com/art... ) and the minimum wage was $2.50-3.00/hr? You'd have to work A LOT of hours at McDonalds to pay for Harvard in the 1970s.

Near me, In-And-Out pays $12/hr starting pay, work there 20hrs/week, more on vacations and breaks, and suddenly state college is affordable... but hey, it's more fun to push the payments off four years and act surprised when you see $500/month student loan payments for the next 120 months!

• Your link has nothing to do with global warming, so right off the bat your trolling.
• The problem is the not the science, it what he was pushing and why he was pushing it.

It was a anti-progressive rant, and linked to articles that supported his position. is links might be close to the truth, but his declarations that Google was too progressive was his personal opinion, not scientific study.

As for the NLRB, you want a few links?

• Dismantling NLRB, from 1968
• “Worse than Obamacare," conservatives demonize the NLRB
• Trump eyes union-buster for NLRB

Conservatives have always loved playing the victim while trying to undercut those less well off.

Does it not bother anybody else that these people were punished for what they wrote in a *private* group?

The problem is not what you think. You should read the original from Harvard Crimson link instead of TFA.

The chat grew out of a roughly 100-member messaging group that members of the Class of 2021 set up in early December to share memes about popular culture. Admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group.

“A lot of students were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests,” Jessica Zhang ’21, an incoming freshman who joined both chats, wrote in an email. “Someone posted about starting a chat for people who liked memes.”

Messages shared in the original group were mostly “lighthearted,” wrote Zhang, who said she did not post in the splitoff meme group and that her admission offer was not rescinded. But some members soon suggested forming “a more R-rated” meme chat, according to Cassandra Luca ’21, who joined the first meme group but not the second, and who also said her offer was not revoked.

Luca said the founders of the “dark” group chat demanded that students post provocative memes in the larger messaging group before allowing them to join the splinter group.

“They were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one,’” Luca said. “This was a just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing.”

Seems like some people that were in the chat took some screen shots. The paper mentions getting ahold of some so probably some went to the Administration too. I'm sure that someone made a comment that went too far and another person decided to end things. From the article that was linked to by this one.

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson.

The cheating is partly an indication of just how popular that course has become. (15% of the entire campus was taking the class by 2014, and it became so popular that they actually started teaching the same class at Yale.)

But I just want to say that I took it online back in 2015, and it really is a good class. They start with C, then move on to PHP, SQL, and JavaScript -- all in 10 weeks. I learned a lot, and it gave me a lot of confidence that I could actually learn any language. The course's slogan is "challenging, but definitely doable," and I think that challenge is what makes it such a good course.

That being the case, how do you explain the lack of women/certain races/people from certain economic backgrounds?

I have no idea. Fortunately, the burden of proof is not on me...

As far as women go, to stay on topic of TFA, my only speculation is that the burdens of reproduction is what prevents females from a better showing in science and other pursuits. But we can't say with any higher degree of certainty, because to even pose the question is enough to be thrown out of today's "scientific" circles.

Genetically less intelligent?

This is why I mentioned "dogma" in my original post. For you kind, races being genetically identical is even more of an axiom, than Earth rotating around the Sun. You discount our obviously visible differences — eye-shape, skin-color — as superficial. The less obvious ones — like resistance to certain diseases and ability to digest milk — are less known and you quietly ignore them.

But to suggest, that, maybe, some other such differences may play part in differences between academic and other achievement — as you are baiting me to do — is a more reliable way to lose an argument, than even tripping the Godwin's Law would be.

So, I will not make any such statement. The woeful underperformance of Blacks in today's America is much better explained by the scandalous rate of single-parenthood in Black families, for example. And let me preempt your saying "persecution" by pointing out the sad story of Jews — persecuted for centuries throughout Europe, they have a lot to complain about. But not about being underrepresented in Science (nor Chess)...

That said, we are veering off topic here, from differences between sexes to those between races. I shall not continue.

What are you talking about? Thus deuterium accounts for approximately 0.0156% (or on a mass basis 0.0312%) of all the naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans, which means in total amount of staggering proportions. Uranium is still plenty enough of to last us more than 200 years, especially when enrichment is used.

But regardless, it only really needs to breach the gap until we have Thorium plants, especially of the LFTR kind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .

And that will get us going for 10000 years AND can diminish the nuclear waste of earlier, old nuclear plants (you would expect that the greens would be all for it, but no, because it still is 'nuclear', and that word alone makes all rational decisions fruitless).

The green solutions are NOT the answer: http://www.thecrimson.com/arti... . And as long as those systems are stochastic in nature (as wind and solar inherently is), it can NEVER replace stable electricity producing plants.

The constant push and BS-talk about how the alternative energy-sources are the solutions are nothing more than deliberately (at least, by some. others simply don't realise) confabulations and delusions. It is purely ideologically defined, and not rationally or even pragmatically analysed. I always find it pretty vexing whenever I see this kind of biased zealottery promoting these energy-forms, while it simply is NOT possible to provide a large scale, stable electricity with a base load, and load-following. You NEVER see the inherent drawbacks being mentioned, such as the fact that wind and solar ALWAYS need a backup (in the form of gas, oil or coal plants) that run constantly, to fill up the discrepancies between demand and production.

There is no real reason to have alternative ways as being the best solution to having a stable energy-network, but if you really HAVE to have it, because it is PC and gives politicians a good image, I wouldn't recommend going above 10%. It gets increasingly difficult to handle, after that. And if you really want alternatives, than geothermal or water(dam)power is far more stable.

I'm getting a bit fed up with all the nonsense some people tell about it. It's usually a mixture of ignorance and being wilful obtuse, but if one would put off the rosy ideological goggles, one would actually see windmills and solar are a VERY BAD alternative, if you want to be assured a stable and predictable source of electricity for your home, factory or company.

This sort of thing is coming whether you like it or not. Freedom of speech is the freedom to oppress, and it's headed for the dustbin of history. Not accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth, but to thunderous applause.

In its oft-cited Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the American Association of University Professors declares that "Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results." In principle, this policy seems sound: It would not do for academics to have their research restricted by the political whims of the moment.

Yet the liberal obsession with "academic freedom" seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has "full freedom" in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever "free" from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of "academic freedom"?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of "academic justice." When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.

-- The Harvard Crimson, February 18, 2014

If all judges were this sensible, then those who want to imprison people for "climate change denial" will be thwarted.

All zero people.

Well probably not quite zero, there's enough people in the world that there's probably one nutjob who says something like that. I'll bet you can't find a remotely significant number of people with such views.

Crawl out from under that rock, because you're WRONG:

Read a US Senator (Democrat, natch) call for bringing RICO charges against climate deniers.

More here: Arrest Climate-Change Deniers

And here: Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?

More: Al Gore Blasts GOP Climate Deniers, Thom Hartmann Says Throw Them in Jail

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice

Death Penalty for Global Warming Deniers?

WTF? DEATH PENALTY?!?!?!

Yes indeed - death penalty. And he's not alone:

Climate “Deniers” Must Be Jailed or Killed

What States' Attorneys General Can Do About Climate Deniers (Hard to believe the Kennedy clan has fallen that far - JFK tried to depose a Communist dictator instead of sucking up to him...)

about left/right????

I only mentioned "left" (not "right") because THEY are the ones currently pushing speech codes, complaining that any speech they dislike is "hate speech" that must be suppressed, showing up at speeches and rallies (by many different speakers of many different political stripes) to shout-down the speakers, hijack the microphones, etc.

As for it being "hypocritical" - well you seem to like to troll using that accusation but you seem not to know what the word means. I should not need to cite left wing suppression of speech when it's in the news on a nearly daily basis and is all over the web and is currently the subject of another active thread RIGHT HERE ON SLASHDOT. How about liberal rag Slate DEFENDING speech codes. Even the ACLU has had to recognize the plague of liberal speech suppression on the campus. Here's the left-leaning The Atlantic defending the suppression of free speech. It's happening in all the formerly Judeo-Christian nations as they become more secular and more left-wing as can be seen at The Telegraph

The following actual or publicly-thought-of-as right-of-center people have been attacked while speaking at public events by leftists wielding pies: William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, Anita Bryant, Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz. While pie attacks have been used by leftists against other leftists for not being left enough, I have never heard of a right-winger attacking a left-winger with a pie on stage in an attempt to shut-down the speech of the left-winger.

Of course there are also the incidents where people like Condoleezza Rice, first black female Sec of State was disinvited to speak. How about this: list of stuff leftists have banned from various colleges? Here is a Harvard Crimson editorial in favor of junking free speech in favor of "social justice". If you are so inept that you cannot ferret-out even a tiny bit of evidence from the publicly-available tidal wave of evidence that the left is responsible for most of the speech suppression these days then you are the last person who should be labeling other people as trolls - apparently simply because they disagree with you (Making yourself an example of the phenomena)

Please cite the most recent 5 examples of a US College or University event where a left-of-center speaker was shut down (speech blocked/microphone seized/Pies thrown/etc) by a bunch or college Republicans or TEA Partiers. Please cite any occasions in the past 20 years when any right-leaning group has demanded a left-leaning speaker be shut up (and please exclude those very few cases where such a plea was made as part of a call for balance AFTER left-wingers successfully block right-leaning speakers) on a university campus. The university USED to be the place where all speech was welcome. This is no longer the case

Economics is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Don't know where you got the idea that it isn't. Economics is studied using the scientific method very effectively. It is a difficult field of study because of its complexity but that is no different from any number of other scientific fields such as meteorology, ecology, geology and others.

No, it's really not. Microeconomics can be studied in a more-or-less scientific way. As for macroeconomics, the day that economists start making meaningful and accurate predictions is when I'll start taking them seriously. I'm far from alone in this.

Science frequently informs and underpins laws and morals. It also can study their effects.

We don't run experiments to determine whether homicide is good. Courtrooms are not scientific trials. The "test of truth" for morality is not something decided on the basis of repeated observation. Empiricism is not a one-size-fits-all tool.

Mathematics is really a language used by scientists to describe the world. It describes the world around us with uncanny precision. It's not a science but virtually every scientific inquiry utilizes math.

You're really failing at the core concept here. Mathematics is a formal system, probably best described by rationalism. Mathematical truth is the product of logic, not observation. The real world can frequently be modeled with mathematics, and with the right chosen axioms so can many other fictional worlds.

Religion is by definition NOT rational. It is faith in an unfalsifiable concept. What rationality it does have is largely argued from false or unprovable premises. Furthermore religions do not restrict themselves to purely logical conclusions from their premises. They frequently cherry pick arguments to support whatever view they wish to hold at the time. No, I disagree that religion is a form of rationalism.

I did not say religion was a form of rationalism. However, having absurd or unprovable axioms does not mean logic can no longer be applied. But when your system of logic is not based on "objective" observation, petitio principii is hard to avoid. Wait, are we talking about religion or economics here?

Where religion makes statements about the observable world, it can and often does conflict with empirical truth. Sometimes these things are called miracles.

Those of us who are not beholden to religions call them fictional stories or sometimes unexplained phenomena instead of miracles.

And those of us who are from Alpha Centauri call them "kkrgch'n". I'm pretty sure that, assuming you understood it, you agree with the point I was making there. I guess sometimes you're just so argumentative, even a semantic argument will do.

You need a Philosophy of Science 101 course. Religion, mathematics, and empiricism are all ways to determine truth, and empiricism (practiced as science) is not without its flaws. Namely, you can only verify what you can observe repeatedly, there is no absolute truth, and given that all observations have an error factor, all observations and theories are at least a tiny bit wrong. This is why science deals with levels of certainty, not proven facts.

Proof is the realm of mathematics. Not being dependent on this reality gives it the ability to express universally true statements. It can be used to model the world very accurately, but per Gödel it can either be complete or consistent but not both. And again, with any non-empirical system you cannot be sure that your truth applies

Princeton, Harvard and Yale all now have policies that if you are accepted by the school, they will make sure you can afford it. No one who qualifies to attend those schools are turned away.

We're comparing Jordan and Iran

It's Americans wagging their finger at Iran, which is like watching Jack the Ripper telling Larry Summers that he has a bad attitude when it comes to women. The only country to have ever used nuclear weapons has spent a decade threatening to bomb a country for the nuclear weapons program the CIA says Iran doesn't have.

Wow, who is making the argument that we should "sacrifice free speech for a better society"?

The answer is this person, among others: http://www.thecrimson.com/colu...

Amen to this.

I am a "homeschooling" parent. This does NOT mean my children are taught solely by myself and/or my wife, and it does NOT mean they are taught solely at home. It DOES mean that we have personally selected and combined a number of different educational opportunties for them. These include (but are not limited to):

Enrolling in college coursework while still in high school. Example: Harvard Math 23b. The majority of students in this class are admitted Harvard freshmen, but it is also available in an open enrollment capacity through Extension for anyone of any age willing to pay tuition. I like that peer group for "socialization" a whole lot better than the kids at my local public high school.

Hiring the chair of the language department at a local private high school to come to our home to provide personalized one-on-one instruction in classical Greek and Latin.

Hiring multiple music teachers for piano, guitar, theory, and composition.

Participation in team sports at the local health club.

Engaging a flight instructor for our son to earn a private pilot's rating.

Successfully completing qualifying flights for TARC

The Internet (Obviously). Taking advantage of online educational programs such as AOPS and edX and Open Courseware

Stocking our home with thousands of quality print books and plenty of subscriptions to lots of quality print journals (e.g. Economist, Nature, Lapham's Quarterly, IEEE publications, etc.)

Buying a whole bunch of the Great Courses

Joining CTY

Plenty of socratic dialogue with Mom & Dad. And plenty of unstructured time.

Flexibility to travel (including abroad) during the school year.

Concrete advice for OP: First, read The Underground History of American Education. Make of it what you will --- just include it (or criticisms of it) as a data point. Next, decide if any your local school choices (either public or private) are awesome. Do they approach the quality of Exeter or Boston Latin or Bronx Science? Understand the concept of a feeder school and that this concept can start at the elementary level. Got great public or private school options you like and can afford? Go for it. Not so much? Then go ahead and homeschool kindergarten. I guarantee you that your drop-out wife is capable of teaching your child to read and anything else they are supposed to learn in kindergarten. I guarantee you that unless you are completely negligent that your child will (if you choose) be able to enter first grade after a year of homeschooling and do fine. And I guarantee you that after a year you will be in a much better position to understand if more homeschooling is the right choice.

Am I?

Economic theories are not falsifiable, economic theories assume a human model (homo oeconomicus) that has nothing in common with real humans. Economists don't use scientific methods for experiments. Either you can't see it because you are an economist and was brainwashed to believe that economics is a science or you are misguided by applied mathematics used by them.

First we should look at the past: In the past Harvard was in fact able to influence Exxons policy, by.... guess what? divestment http://www.thecrimson.com/arti...

As to whether or not stock price affects the company. It does, the company does not sell 100% of its stock. It is used as capital (can be sold) and even awarded employees with sign-on bonuses as well.

As for what the goals of the divestment campaign are, they do not appear to be stopping oil or driving oil companies out of business. This seems to be a strawman that you have created. In the first link I posted, the goals of divestment campaign in Stanford are as follows (ftfl):
"Thus our demands of the fossil fuel companies are simple. In order to show that
they are committed to a livable future, they must
Stop seeking new fossil reserves
Stop promoting climate change denial and lobbying against climate policy
Commit to keeping 80% of theirproven reserves in the ground

As long as fossil fuel companies continue with business as usual, they must be though of as an unethical industry, recklessly pushing us toward global catastrophe." (Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment at Stanford University)

With an ever-growing population and an increasing crunch for resources, climate change is possibly the most significant threat that humanity will face. If these students want to take an approach that is legal, nonviolent and proven successful in the past to try to influence major corporations in a better direction, I say more power to them.

That men will also be seeing a 20k bump in available work/life benefits. You know, because there is still no indication that the 'Wage Gap' exists in skilled IT positions.

A plurality of women entering the technology or engineering sectors reported that they will make between $50,000 and $69,999, while a plurality of their male counterparts said they will make between $90,000 and $109,999. And this at the beginning of their careers, when their experience level (more or less nonexistent), background (Harvard), and family status (largely unmarried, with no children) should be the same.

A 2007 study by two Cornell University professors found that when all factors (education, experience, chosen industry) are accounted for, women make about 91 percent of what men make (PDF).

Folks,

My son took the course last year as a senior in high school via iTunesU.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/co...

It's also available on EdX.

https://www.edx.org/course/har...

Heck, I took it way back thirty-odd years ago. :-)

Also, here's a link to the original article in the Harvard Crimson:

http://www.thecrimson.com/arti...

--Paul

Hey, why can't California or New York or Massachusetts have this?

Maybe they're too busy with stupid shit?

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice

There's nothing progressive or liberal about the dolt that wrote that - that's just leftist statism/fascism talking. One wonders where such a moron learned that freedom is something to be given up for her perverted idea of "justice".

Holy shit that link contains a lot of stupid.
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Modding the post down won't change the truth.

This is the crap that " gender/race/sexual-orientation sensitivity training" devotees publish:

The Doctrine of Academic Freedom

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice

...

It is tempting to decry frustrating restrictions on academic research as violations of academic freedom. Yet I would encourage student and worker organizers to instead use a framework of justice. After all, if we give up our obsessive reliance on the doctrine of academic freedom, we can consider more thoughtfully what is just.

Sandra Y.L. Korn ’14, a Crimson editorial writer, is a joint history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality concentrator in Eliot House. Her column usually appears on alternate Mondays.

"[O]bsessive reliance on academic freedom"?!?!?!

What.

The.

Fuck?!?!?

Someone majoring in the History of Science calls for getting rid of academic freedom?

Talk about a wasted education.

Hey, why can't California or New York or Massachusetts have this?

Maybe they're too busy with stupid shit?

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice

There's nothing progressive or liberal about the dolt that wrote that - that's just leftist statism/fascism talking. One wonders where such a moron learned that freedom is something to be given up for her perverted idea of "justice".

You should look at the statistics for people who attend Harvard. 30% of their students have a family that pulls in 150k or more.

These guys seem to think that 45% of Harvard students come from $200k+ families, or the top 4% of households. Are you trying to argue that either of those numbers counter the stereotype that Harvard students are "affluent?"

There's definitely a different legal system for the ridiculously rich - the 0.1% or 0.01%, but the I think you'll find that the top 50% also have different experience with the legal system than the bottom 50%. "Affluenza" isn't a binary affliction, but a sliding scale.

He probably didn't know he had affluenza. Otherwise, he would have realized he was pretty much going to get an A anyways... http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-mode-a/

In the United States, Antisemitism overwhelmingly comes from the political left, both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.

There are also significant amounts of Antisemitism among liberal black politicians. Indeed, Jesse Jackson seems to have lost no political influence after calling new York City Hymietown.

Carl Sagan did some work on the synthesis of ATP in the primordial soup. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/8/21/sagan-synthesizes-atp-in-laboratory-plaboratory/

I don't know that beer will kill microbes... read this.

Humm, well let's see.

1) RIAA and the MPAA spend lots of money lobbying congress. The MPAA for example has a former US Senator as it's current leader, Chris Dodd. Because of lobbying and influence in terms of campaign contributions we have such wonderful legislation like the DMCA.
2) Patent Trolling in the US is a legitimate business, there are examples of this going back nearly 200 years. My favorite example of patent thickets and trolling involves the Sewing Machine wars which started in the 1850s. It's an interesting read.
3) Businesses in this country derive special protection, some business practices while questionable aren't illegal. To make something illegal there has to be some law prohibiting it. If RIAA and the MPAA can go after people with John Doe cases which amount largely to fishing expeditions then that's allowed under our right of due process. Some judges have disagreed with these tactics while some still are proceeding on appeal. reference: https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
4) The tool that all of these folks use is the DMCA, which is a flawed piece of legislation. Not only is it flawed, it's also being pushed worldwide under the guises of free trade agreements like the "secret" ACTA treaty.
5) Congress really doesn't write anything, they take pieces of put together bullshit from lobbyists, change a couple of things and present it as their own bill. Others attach their bullshit, called a rider onto the Bill that may or may not have anything to do with it but makes it more "passable" because they included a mom + apple pie subsidy along with the big bad legislation. It gets out of dozens of committees and then is voted upon. It's the worst form of legislative process possible run by career politicians and staff people who have no fear of ever losing their jobs. It's no wonder that the approval rating for congress is in the low teens.

So, in simple terms. lobbying + campaign contributions + pre written legislation = DMCA
DMCA + Legal System that allow John Doe suits = (RIAA + MPAA + Big Money Law Firms) + Courts flooded with meaningless cases + defense lawyers + big fees = screwed John Doe who can't defend himself with a fine that exceeds the value of the pilfering many fold.

this is the worst possible outcome and if you download a CD from a file sharing site you could get slapped very heavily. In a word don't do it but in another word, defending yourself in a wrongful prosecution could become extremely costly. That's why John Doe cases need to be abolished, the DMCA needs to be appealed and where pirating has been found, only the value of the property illegally copied * number of copies should be the penalty. If you have kids at home, I suggest you let them know about downloading and its dangers, not just from malware and viruses but because of that knock on the door from a process server saying you're being sued.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2001/4/23/the-racial-theory-of-grade-inflation/

Not a single article mentioned any eyewitnesses

Hmm, I google "zimmerman eyewitness" and what do you reckon the first hit is?

I wonder what Google is censoring in the USA? Could be that they have strict orders to keep whatever it is secret, so nobody will even know about it.

And before anybody jumps down my throat and vaporishly wails "Oh but that COULDN'T happen in AMERICA!" please direct your attention to this post : http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/30/215-section-act-patriot/ and senator Wyden's recent comments on secret interpretations of the Patriot act.

We are really down the rabbit hole here folks.

Still misunderstanding the world I see...

Maybe you would prefer it if MSFT took the "sue your ass off" route that Apple currently uses?

And what "sue your ass off" route would that be, exactly? The only major lawsuit that come to mind that aren't countersuits are the one against Samsung for copying Apple's designs. It's quite possible there are more, but it's definitely not some sort of "route that Apple currently uses".

It is kind of funny though, you mention lawsuits that MS has undertaken, and are currently undertaking, but somehow they *aren't* taking a '"sue your ass off" route', whereas Apple, who isn't engaged in such suits, is?

Uhm.. regardless of Microsoft, Apple is considered a quite aggressive litigious company. To the extent of even suing teenage driven Mac fan sites. Which though not patent related is RIAA-level low in my view. Some other Apple lawsuits or threats (not by a long shot an extensive list, but what turned up in a quick search) in addition to Samsung suit you mentioned and not including suits like the multitouch patent suit Apple filed against Motorola, as you excluded "countersuits".

Apple sues HTC for infringing 20 iPhone patents
Apple Threatening Patent Lawsuits Over New Palm Pre
Amazon Appstore is now live, Apple is suing for the name
The Reason Why Apple Is Suing Sanho Corp. (HyperMac) Revealed


--
“And boy, have we patented it.” — Steve Jobs, 2007.

Mark Zuckerberg, for all his many faults, started the right way

So since you clearly have no clue how facebook started other than their marketing speech ...

You do realize Zuckerberg did the exact same thing when starting Facebook right?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/

He did nothing right except steal from others, he showed exactly how to be perfectly unethical and have the unwashed masses thing you're great WHILE you rape.

The Social Network movie captured the original Zuckerberg hack described in the Harvard Crimson. They just did it on a larger scale.

Universities, especially big-name ones like the Ivys, hate giving out low grades. So they don't. They get most of their money from tuition and alumni grants, and pumping the grades up keeps these two groups happy and paying out. This is particularly endemic at the graduate levels.

And, seriously, you need references? Is Google broken? 5 seconds:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/10/05/doesnt_anybody_get_a_c_anymore/
In 1950, 15% of students at Harvard got a B+ or higher. In 2007, >50% were A or higher.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/2/13/c-minus-prof-to-give-more-as/
"I was very delighted that I would find out what he thinks of my true performance while not hurting my transcript,"

Actually, parts of Harvard have been outsourcing to GMail since fall, 2007. I think GMail is official, rather than in pilot phase, for the Graduate School of Design now, but I'm not certain.

Still, in the end, raising tuition due to increasing costs isn't much of an explanation. Harvard's undergrad budget is like $1.2B. At an overestimate of $50K/student, and an overestimate that ALL 6600 undergrads pay the whole thing (in spite of 2/3 having financial aid), that means something like a quarter of their costs are paid by tuition, max. Well, nevermind, google shows me it's 20%.

Just find a company that has a clue and cares with respect to actual work done per dollar productivity. There have been multiple studies that have found a nap in the afternoon substantially boosts alertness and productivity, so the employer gets more work done for their money and the employees are also generally happier.

According to this article:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=506710

Total fees for undergraduates at Harvard were around $40,00 per year back in 2005. They've presumably gone up since then, but even at $50,000, and even if you get no financial assistance, that's "only" $200,000 for 4 years. If you graduate from Harvard with a degree in a high-demand area, and you don't make enough to pay all that back in less time than you took to incur the debt, while living a reasonable lifestyle, you're doing something wrong.

For those of us who had our sights set a bit lower, it's actually even easier to break even on your education.

Erm? Really? You cannot be serious?

You don't recall Apple suing one of its fanbase (a student & lifelong fan), a web design school (who mostly used Apple's products), New York (for daring to use an apple in a environmental awareness campaign) and of course Psystar (attempting to resell OS X).

I could go on & on. Sure. Plenty of people sue Apple (just like any other big tech corp), but Apple's penchant for pulling out the legal guns against small operators (and its fanbase) makes it stand alone in the tech crowd.

I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.

But at any rate, for the corporate media spin on this, here are a few links:
Billion Dollar Charlie vs. the RIAA
Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case
Lawsuits Brought by Music Industry Are Unconstitutional, Lawyer Says
Law professor fires back at song-swapping lawsuits (AP)
Law Professor Takes on RIAA
Prof: Penalty unfair, will help with $1M download lawsuit
RIAA defendant enlists Harvard Law prof, students
Harvard Professor: File-Sharing Lawsuits Unconstitutional

"...if such institution receives fifty (50) or more legally valid notices of infringement as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998..."

According to a recently lawsuit against the RIAA on the legality of their tactics, I would question if the notices are legally valid or not.

Advice from Harvard perhaps? Whom, as you pointed out before, the RIAA seemed to be avoiding. Maybe they finally read the advice you sent out too. The government dropped those weighted hints that the universities should work against copyright infringement in an overly broad manner and threatened funding, but if institutions like Harvard who could live without government funding for prolonged periods of time are willing to take up the fight then other institutions are more willing to stand up with them perhaps.

I really should preview.

I meant it does happen.

>I remember reading a rather stunning article a while back (would have had to have been 5+ years to be honest)
>when there was some random manufactured scandal about the Clintons taking money from a Chinese company, or
>somesuch. Well, a well known magazine at the time decided to run a cover with the Clintons and 1 or 2 other
>people all in "Chinese-face" -- their faces done up in a over the top parody of Asian facial structure stereotypes
>(exaggerated slanted eyes, sunken cheeks, etc)... And no one even took a second thought about how, this, you know, could be considered offensive.

Please -- if you are going to make outlandish claims like this at least research the facts a bit. "Random manufactured scandal?"

Anyhow, the article / cartoon in question was from "The National Review" in 1997, and they got a HUGE amount of backlash from this cartoon. I was in college at the time and there were NUMEROUS protests about this at the time. I would hope the shock was not limited to Harvard, and from talking to my friends at the time, it was not. here is a link. With a webserach, I'm sure you could find the original cartoon. As I recall, there were many protests at other colleges too, and it received quite a bit of coverage in the mainstream media.

Your post is simply too exaggerated and sensationalist... I agree there are pockets of America that remain very intolerant, but this is not speaking for all, or I would claim, not even the majority!

Already publishers & retailers of print products routinely try to put people out of business. For example, for buying your books from a discounter:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519564

I went to Harvard for college...

http://www.thecrimson.com/archives.aspx?SearchTerms=RIAA&SortField=0&PageSize=10&News=1&Opinion=2&Sports=3&Magazine=5&Arts=4

I hope the Crimson's servers stand up.

The RIAA frequently targeted students individually, and AFAIK continues threatening letters occasionally to individual students if they can figure out who you are. As you can see from the Crimson archives there was some pushback from the law school profs.

Back in the late 90's, your (fixed, non-DHCP) undergraduate IP at Harvard mapped to username.person.harvard.edu or something like that, making it trivially easy to see who was where, and you would 'magically' get spam for visiting websites, as your email was username@fas.harvard.edu. This was changed around '99 or so, now it is a roamXXX.student.harvard.edu I believe, and DHCP'd to a real IP address. This helps protect anonymity and individual student's activity, and Harvard does not give out the mapping to individual students.

Harvard internally sends curious emails reporting "excessive bandwidth" use to us, which also still continues AFAIK. Several of my friends received these, we think it was in the neighborhood of > 10 GB per day use. They basically said to quit it, or we might look further as to what you are doing, or bring you in front of a disciplinary committee. This was back in the days of i2hub (remember this?), and most of my friends just throttled their bandwidth with no further problems -- very scared of the hassle of defending yourself even if it is "legit" activity.

They actually originally filed in 2004 but it was dismissed. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503336 has details

They aren't trying to replace Office (though if they include the Google Docs and Spreadsheet and PPT thing I'd be happy) - they are trying to replace corporate mail systems. Harvard
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516036 has been looking into it and I'd be thrilled if they do use a GMail like interface because the current FAS webmail system is a piece of tripe. (I logged into it once and then went back to SSH and pine - some departments don't even have a webmail interface because the damn thing is so bad).

The added storage space and some savings you'd get from moving to Google Apps is nice but a lot of students (well in Physics,astronomy anyway) still need to be able to SSH in and start a remote X session, which I don't see happening soon, so they are still going to have to spend money on their own servers. As the article points out Google isn't without competition - Windows has Live @edu (run away) and there is .mac (which needs to allow something.edu before its going anywhere and it'd be nice to have a Windows/*nix port of Backup). Personally I think the best solution for Harvard at least is to shut up and spend money and buy additional space, and redesign the webmail client (just keep pine around).

And your point is? A non-profit needs to pay competitive salaries or they won't attract good employees. Whether or not a CEO is worth $10,000,000+ is another debate but the mere fact that the CEO makes good money doesn't mean they are in the business of "making money".

A non-profit exists to meet whatever need or provide whatever services that they have outlined in their charter. They don't exist to pay dividends to shareholders. That is the difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit.