Say, you know that time-honored tradition in American high schools whereby freshmen are tortured physically and emotionally on a near-constant basis by the upperclassmen? You know what we're talking about: the locker-stuffing, the swirlies, the crippling humiliation of being forced to eat your own underwear while hanging upside-down and naked from the flagpole overlooking cheerleader practice (that... that wasn't just us, right?). Outside of the whole fraternity hazing scene, it's not quite as pronounced a dynamic in higher education, but we're starting to get the feeling that the "beat on the frosh" philosophy is about to graduate to college in a big way-- at least at Duke University.

We've already mentioned how every single member of Duke's Class of 2008 would be getting a free iPod, and faithful viewer Frozen Tundra informs us that the swag has been delivered. According to The Chronicle, the iPods were distributed to freshmen "after house meetings Thursday night," complete with "Duke Class of 2008" engraved on the back of each one and preloaded with "an audio tour of East Campus, the University's alma mater and fight song, phone numbers for campus health and safety resources, and a calendar containing basic dates on the academic calendar"-- otherwise known as "stuff that has already been deleted to make room for more Limp Bizkit bootlegs."

Ha! Just kidding, folks! No doubt the iPods will be used for extracurricular auditory purposes, but they'll also figure heavily in the Duke educational process over the course of the coming school year. iPod use has already been "incorporated into the curriculum of six classes this fall," with fifteen more in the works-- and now that Belkin has announced that it's celebrating the sale of its millionth iPod accessory by donating voice recorders to all 1,650 Duke freshmen, the 'Pods can play an active role in even non-iPod-enabled classes; we're certain that iPods will be recording many a lecture while their owners catch some much-needed shut-eye.

But back to the subject of Duke's imminent rise in campus violence: the thing to keep in mind, here, is that only the freshmen received free iPods, and the upperclassmen aren't terribly pleased with the situation. Views on the subject run the gamut from "I should have gotten one" to "how come I didn't get one?" to "one should have been gotten by me." Oh, and there's a classic argument against the iPod program by a senior who expounds, "if you want to put something on your iPod, it has to be on your computer. So, if it's already on your computer, why would you need an iPod?"

Uh... riiiiight. That's exactly why there are three million people walking around out there listening to tunes on their home computers, which they're lugging around with specially-constructed trusses while plugged into Really Long Extension Cords™. (Hopefully this isn't indicative of the sort of logical thinking that three years of a Duke education brings, but if it is, hey, at least now students get an iPod out of it.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that the upperclassmen aren't at all happy, and the freshmen are a little too happy-- can anything but a double-digit increase in the student violence rate come from such a mixture? Then again, if Duke's student-bribe-cleverly-masquerading-as-academic-experiment also results in a double-digit increase in the number of applicants for admission next year-- and c'mon, what high school student won't want to go to the college where they get a free iPod?-- the administration can look upon the whole thing as a net positive. The real question is, how long will it be before other schools are forced to offer free iPods just to stay in the running? With a little luck, iPods will be standard issue at all U.S. campuses by 2009. Plan your academic career accordingly.

Hold the phone, there, Mabel-- what's the deal with the latest change to Apple's free iPod technical support? The company altered its warranty terms once before, extending the iPod's original measly 90-day coverage for hardware (which practically incited riots and murderous rampages) to a full year, which was a welcome improvement; this time, however, customers lose a little, as complimentary phone support for their new iPods and minis gets pruned back something fierce. According to the new iPod FAQ (as noted by Think Secret), instead of the 90 days of free phone support that iPod users have enjoyed since the product's inception, buyers of the latest iPod models now only get free phone support for "a single incident" within the first three months of ownership.

When you think about it, though, that isn't all that bad, since we take "a single incident" to mean that once you call in with a particular problem, all the calls about it are free until that specific problem gets solved. And really, what are the odds of there being more than a single distinct problem with a particular iPod in the first three months, anyway? Either you've got the static defect or you don't; we haven't heard of any other problems arising. Then again, that's probably a moot point anyway, since the hardware is still covered for a full year, which means that you presumably wouldn't be charged for calling Apple about an iPod that burst into flame even if it was your second or third "incident." So really, this only affects 1) Windows users for whom Plug 'n' Pray has utterly failed, so they need help getting their iPods connected up in the first place, or 2) people who call in asking how you turn on the backlight or whether you can play Internet deathmatches of Brick.

Now, keeping a "single incident" free doesn't change anything for those folks who just need setup help, and obviously Apple wouldn't bother to change its policy unless it stood to benefit from doing so-- which implies that some new iPod customers were calling Apple a zillion times a day, asking whether it's okay to play their iPods during an electrical storm (answer: "yes"), whether they can brighten up their iPods by covering them with Crest Whitestrips (answer: "no"), and why their iPod-transferred Celine Dion songs sound crappy (answer: "because they're Celine Dion songs"). Whereas earlier iPod buyers were a more tech-savvy set, the iPod is a mass-market phenomenon, now, and it's selling to a lot of people with "00:00" flashing on their VCRs; the upshot is that Apple is actually losing money because people are more likely to call an 800-number than read online help files. So this change probably won't affect most people who have bothered to do the reading and have a legitimate reason to call technical support, but it ought to cut down on frivolous calls (and Apple's tech support costs) significantly.

Of course, the change would never had been necessary if people just did their homework and learned that the proper way to whiten an iPod is by brushing it twice a day with Close-Up Gel. But you can't change human nature...

Decisions, decisions; what with it being Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day and all (shhh-- we know, but we're pretending like it's still Friday), do we do the conventional thing and add another dash of commentary to the pot of simmering Windows XP Service Pack 2 Criticism, or do we pull a slightly more exotic cookbook off the shelf and whip up a batch of "Hey, Look At Microsoft Screwing Up Geography" stew? Ah, what the heck; we're hungry, so let's make both. Toot, toot-- next stop, our thighs.

First, the SP2 thing, which you're probably all sick to death of hearing about, but we just have to make sure you heard this one little thing about it. As you probably know, SP2 finally tries to close some of Windows's more gaping security holes by turning on the operating system's built-in firewall by default. There's just one little problem with that, however; applications developers are used to Windows network ports being wide open with little flashing neon signs next to them that say "HEY HACKERS, C'MON IN, THE JEWELRY'S IN THE FREEZER"; as such, they assume that any system using their software will allow any network traffic they want to flow freely to and from wherever they want on whatever port they specify.

Since SP2 doesn't let that happen, though, apparently dozens of applications (including several of Microsoft's own) suddenly fail to work properly, or in some cases, at all. Our favorite? Symantec Corporate AntiVirus 9.0, which reportedly stops working on clients after SP2 is installed because the firewall blocks the server from "pushing antivirus definitions to clients." Now, we can't actually fault Microsoft for this, since its firewall is doing exactly what it should be doing and what it probably should have done from the start. But we still can't help but giggle when we think of the company's long-awaited service pack-- intended to reduce infections by various types of malware-- disabling corporate virus protection. It's a Charlie Brown Moment of the highest caliber.

So what about this geography thing? Well, faithful viewer Jonathan Baldwin pointed us toward a silicon.com article which reveals that Windows 95 had been banned outright from the entire country of India-- not because the product is supremely awful (which, frankly, would have made us want to emigrate), but because "when coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green," implying that Kashmir wasn't part of India, which is actually against Indian law.

But wait, there's more! According to The Guardian, Microsoft employees were actually arrested in Turkey when officials discovered that "Kurdistan had been shown as a separate entity on maps of the country." Microsoft software has also shown the Korean flag in reverse, and Microsoft employees were "questioned by police in China, where it is an offense to refer to Taiwan as a country or as the Republic of China." Tom Edwards, Microsoft's "senior geopolitical strategist" (see, they are trying to take over the world!), blames the "lack of basic geography" among his company's employees.

Actually, though, it's not only geography, but also a lack of cultural knowledge that's tripped up the company on occasion. The game Age of Empires 2 ticked off Saudi Arabia "because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques." Another game, Kakuto Chojin, included rhythmic chanting in the background that just happened to be an Arabic excerpt from the Koran, and again the Saudis protested, leading to the game's withdrawal worldwide. And due to what is described as an "unfortunate error in translation," the Spanish version of Windows XP "gave users an option to select their gender from not specified, male, or 'bitch.'" Uh, whoops.

Not that we wouldn't make any or all of these mistakes and more ourselves; heck, we can hardly get through an episode without offending either the Australians or all of Canada or both. ("Curling is a sport for the aged and infirm!!" See?) Then again, we make no claim to be able to make and sell products to a global market, so maybe we shouldn't let Microsoft off the hook so easily. In any case, here's hoping that Microsoft's new "geography classes for its staff" aren't too effective, because some of these blunders are far too entertaining not to be repeated.