He threatened you to either buy a new book or he would make your uni career hell, one of my mates did it, at the last exam he sent him back 5 times, the last time he went to take the exam the coordiator said "what else have you got to ask to him; he told you everything in your course; [insert name] give me the paper" he signed the paper and sent him off; the prof. Still gave him only 60/100.

I still want to slap that piece of shit.

After that i taught other people in the uni to do that; he tried to mitigate by writing over the printed title of the book; hoping that any tampering would be evident; toluene didn't touch the toner, so it didn't work

Edit: grammar mistake (thanks mac)

Nah I'm fine with spreading how to remove the sign, there are already enough people capitalizing on education here

The specific case here was the professor had a financial stake in new books being sold.

I do agree updated editions with new information could be important, but again when theres a financial incentive to sell new books, the obvious lean will be towards making new versions even if there is no new information.

Since the books can be required, they should be required to show proof they have substantially added to their edition or else relegate it to a minor revision (maybe adding sub-editions like 1.0, 1.1, 1.2; where you only need the first number to be current). Right now its a whole lot of, "Trust us you need this book and the only pre-owned versions are out of date".

As a side thought, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if they use the book costs to weed out those that will not allow themselves to be abused to that degree. This would leave only those who would conform to their leader/manager/teacher and are less likely to try to change the system.

The name of my Plex server has been "The Pirate's Booty" for about a decade 😂

Seconding the recommendation for OpenWRT - I’ve been using it for years on my routers.

I loved AsusWRT-Merlin back when I used an Asus router.

It's running Merlin, works pretty well. Then again, all it does is NAT and DHCP (and apparently the parent control thing)

To be honest, that filter is so useless I didn't even remember it was on. 😁 Can't remember if it blocked anything else ... ever

You're probably correct. It's the Internet. The Internet is for porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs

i don't know who's downvoting you. As an american who had to go through that shit, you're not at all wrong.

Selfishness and greed. Anyone that stands up stands alone, and the others are quick to lick a boot as they grovel for scraps. For some inconceivable reason too many consider this preferable to standing together and working to make things better.

North American here. Funny how it's very much less "which is it?" And more "Yeah. Basically."

We've been culturally domesticated to not cause trouble for our bosses / schools / etc. If the State steps in after you cause trouble for enterprise, it's usually to kick you back into your place.

We might not live in a State dictatorship, but that only matters so far, because that State enables many tiny, petty dictatorships that more directly affect your life and run amok unopposed.

Somehow people accept petty tyranny in everything from corporations to universities to shifts at the burger joint. They'll get all riled up that some politician they never met is bawking about foreign policy, but their tail is tucked firmly when their company tells them they can't get sick days and arriving a minute late is a fireable offense.

Many have bought the lies of rugged individualism and competition. "An insult to one is...well, that really sucks for you but I told you to just stay quiet. I'm just working hard doing what I'm told."

Like someone said before me: Even the most rebellious in us think twice about making our move, because many people simply think "That's how it is." And don't believe it can get any better.

There's not a lot of examples of collective action winning in recent history, so a lot of people don't even know how to begin to push back in the first place, besides writing an angry tweet or two.

Both.

Your university has a principal's office?

There's a lot to be learned at sea, lad.

The younger teachers were doing something similar to this. Teachers have to follow certain sets of rules to not get fired.

It was mostly the oldest, gray-haired teachers that were requiring textbooks. Stuck in their old ways.

I never said there's something wrong with paper books.

I'm even reading one right now. Lord of Rings paper version.

But for computer science students textbooks, it's heavy, inconvenient and spacey.

The internet or even PDFs are better.

Why?

It's easier to do research, CTRL+F and copy/paste some programming code.

Don't you have university library? I did most of the recommend readings through my studies and found them all there (excepted for one). Ended up being a two reference books which prove themselves to be worth it.

It became hard to update SciHub lately as people behind it are from Russia and nearby xUSSR countries.

I've wondered for a long time - why don't more Americans come study in the EU? We get people from all over the world, but so few Americans and with some of the prices I read about y'all paying at home, you could be happily renting a small apartment, pay your tuition entirely out of pocket, as you'd need to, feed yourself well, fly back home once a year and still not approach the semestral costs in the US. Are our diplomas not recognised across the ocean or is there another reason.

I see some profs trying to choose good books, but they don't seem to be able. But I'm also not in higher ed.

Exactly. We already have stuff like OpenStax. Great content, but comparatively little adoption by faculties.