Wow. HUGE thumbs up to MaconMom for hunting this down, and to SuperSlueth for putting her on the scent! After reading almost all of the links, I had a few thoughts:
1. The frequency and extent of his posts on this site, not to mention whatever other sites he may have visited, indicated just how consumed he was by all of this. These posts (particularly the "fictional" story) weren't just some off-the-cuff hypotheticals, but rather the product of some serious thought. Also, as some of you have pointed out, some of the posts were very recent. I was struck by the amount of time he dedicated to this given the pressing need to get work done and prepare for class during the school year, and more recently, to study for the bar. At first, I tried to imagine how much down time I spent doing other things and compare that to McDaniel's posts, but I still can't imagine having this much free time. Most of my decompressing was spent hanging out with friends on the weekends and maybe an occasional dinner and a few drinks during the week. Other than that, I really didn't have a whole lot of time for doing much else, although the work load does lighten significantly by the third year. That he obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this and then posting about it, given the pressures of studying and attending class, tells me a lot about just how deeply he thought about it.
2. When trying to compare, I also thought about how lots of us, some more frequently than others, would browse the internet in order to zone out in class and between classes, which then made me think about Mercer IT. At the beginning of law school, Mercer gave us all laptops. If ever anything went wrong with the laptop, we would just take it upstairs to the IT guys and have them fix it for us. This was particularly an issue around exam time, as most of us took exams on the computer. I think this may be the reason McDaniel kept his secrets on the flash drive. If I'm remembering correctly, the IT guys could also monitor students' web use/e-mails in order to prevent the spread of viruses, etc.