nopaniers

I agree absolutely. These short cuts are there because of backwards compatability. Don't use them if you can possibly avoid it. Something like 80% of software cost is on maintanance so it's worth your time to be clear about the type of a variable...

I'd like to see that happen. With Apple's excellent design teams they could produce a great little Palm, and compatible with all sorts of other Apple things. That sounds so good I might even consider getting one...Of course these sort of things are almost always rumors.

I thought this was hillarious. Some people just have difficulty understanding that not everybody is out there to make as much money as possible...

I have used a lot of different version of KDE and Gnome. Right now I normally use KDE. Having seen some of the screenshots of Gnome, it really does look pretty cool... but for some reason I'm not so worries about it anymore. I like KDE. It does what I want and I don't feel like spending the time to change over again.You guys do have a point though. I also worry about the "free"ness of KDE.Speed... nah, I couldn't care less. Both are good performance as far as I'm concerned. Nothing like when I first started and you had to sit there waiting... or when every application had a splash screen so that you didn't think the computer had frozen. We've moved on!

It will be fantastic when mono is working as smoothly as it should be. Of course, IMHO .Net is just Microsoft's way of cloning the Java virtual machine, although they did add some nice features for us programmers (I particularly like Properties and the operator overloading of C#). It will be great if you could write an application once, and have it run on Linux, OSX, and Windows all at the same time... Haven't we heard that somewhere before? In any case, I haven't used mono in anger yet, but I think it's a good project. Wouldn't it be funny if mono outperforms its Microsoft equivalent?

I don't think Google need to release an OS. What is in it for them? All they get is a war with Microsoft. I think they're quite happy building their own empire without upsetting too many people. And let's face it: their search engine is by so far the best it's not funny, gmail shook up the online mail game, and google earth and google scholar... well they're fun.I like Google, and I like Linux. It makes me happy to know that they're using all different OS's (like you'd expect). Makes me think they're nice geeks just like me.

OS-X and Unix in general has a better security model than Windows. If you've got a Unix based system set up correctly, the user doesn't have the priveleges to do anything really harmful. On Windows its not the same, and they would have to do a major rewrite to fix the problems. Of course, this sort of thing won't stop you sending out a million bogus emails, but at least your system is safe.And of course the other thing is that a larger number of people use Windows, which makes it the obvious target (for someone who wants to get a lot of attention).Nobody ever said that Apples were not vulnerable to attack, but for these two reasons, Mac users are in a much better position when it comes to viruses and worms.

It is easy to make email appear to come from a fake address (not that I have ever done that of course). Basically all do is give the server the wrong information, and it passes it along without checking (at least, most of the time it does). http://www.softoutfit.com/static/smtp.html I'm saying this here not so that people fake email addresses, but so you know how easy it is. The message is: Don't be fooled. Faking email addresses and headers is easy, and any bored teenager can do it.

I am opposed. Just look at the crime statistics. Countries with capital punishment are not more peaceful. In fact, many are more violent, for example the US has many times the violent crime of Australia. Capital punishment there does nothing to stop it.Or look at the death penalty for smuggling drugs through South East Asian countries. What does it achieve? It kills the little guy, who was probably desparate anyway. It does nothing to lessen the demand for the drugs, which is the root of the problem or to take out the big guy.But obviously I'm most opposed because it's barbaric. It's like something out of the middle ages, but it is somehting that has never worked. People are not motivated by fear of torture or death. When public hangings were a common occurance (and a spectacle) crime rates were much higher than now. Capital punishment did not work then, and it does not work now.Capital punishment does not work. It fights the symptom, not the problem.

If you're interested in flawed mathematical proofs, then there's a couple here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/FlawedProofs.html

I hadn't seen the ipod nano's before. I have to say I was really impressed. I am hanging out until a 10Gb version comes out, because they're just a bit too small right now.As for what comes next? I think first mobile phones, followed by a wirelessly networked ipod, which downloads the songs as you want them. Sounds like radio, only you get to choose the music.