Japans major export these days is weirdness.

Unlike many of the people posting here, I am actually in classes in which people bring laptops, and use them to watch youtube, play WoW, and Facebook. However, I don't find myself distracted one bit. If you find that you cannot divert your gaze from the excess flashiness of someone's game of WoW, or the boring details of their Facebook friends, then you have bigger problems than your classmates. Also, why should the professor care if people are paying attention to him? It's their money. Oh yes it is, even with financial aid. Do you really think they are going to continue paying for your education when you start failing classes? I think not.
Aside from those obvious points, there remains the many ways that laptops in class can help. For example, I've taken a laptop to one class in order to use wikipedia to fill in various details missed in the sporadic and rambling lectures of some professors. I download the powerpoint slides used by the professors so I don't have to strain my eyes trying to read badly-focused projected text from the back row (I sit in the back row to avoid distracting people, and I hate it when people look over my shoulder anyway).
Luckily, the students still hold enough of a say at the university I am attending that such ridiculous measures would never fly. But if my professors DID demand that laptops be absent from the lectures, I would be one of the few to actually be affected. Those now playing MMORPGs and Facebook games would simply find another source of distraction - perhaps cellphones (remember those? I hear they have 3D networked games and Facebook now. Amazing.) Those distracted by the laptops of others will simply find some spot of dust on the wall to attract their attention, and still not learn anything.

... who is surprised by this? Lots of fan projects have been shut down in recent years. Chrono Resurrection, Crimson Echoes, Halogen, etc. Anyone working on a fangame at this point and not taking drastic measures to ensure that they are not infringing on trademarks or copyright gets zero sympathy from me when they get their eventual C&D.

It's a sad catch-22 that to drum up interest in your game project you need to base it on an existing franchise. As long as people are willing to latch onto any small glimmer of hope that their favorite nostalgic game will be remade in modern times, there will be fangames. And they will be shut down.

The point is, he doesn't feel responsible for his student's success, or even think that he is doing them a favor. He just likes getting +5 in Slashdot when he posts about it.

"You do realize of course that the very computer you are using to bash Compaq would not be in existence if it wasn't for Compaq, right?" Yes, we'd probably be using something superior to x86. The IBM compatibles survived because they... were compatible. If Compaq hadn't reverse-engineered the PC, someone else would have, or someone would have reverse-engineered Macintosh, or something entirely different.

There's an app for that.

Wake me up when it's "over nine thousaand" teraelectronvolts.

Longerhorn.

I used MIPS, you insensitive clod!

I don't think Microsoft will keep a GPL program floating around when they could could put a few developers on the project and have an identical (Microsoft-owned) tool in a matter of days.

If it were me, I'd keep it around as a reminder to do better code reviews!

...if "Will Smith" is a typo of "Cowboy Neal".

For the last time, FOSS does not live or die based on interoperability with closed-source standards. Look at the .docx file format. How long did we have to wait go get competent FOSS text editors compatible with it? I don't know where this belief started. FOSS does not "die" when nobody uses it, because the people who use it do not develop for it. The much-anticipated "year of the linux desktop" is meaningless because very few of those desktop users will ever become a software developer.

So, Microsoft can take all the end-users they want, the real developers develop not for personal gain or furthered relations with the closed-source world... They do so out of a belief that there should be free alternatives to everything Microsoft and Co. churn out.

This is obviously the first killer app for the 3D laptop: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/14/1739214

Requiring that doctors RTFM is the first step.

I can't come out of the woodwork every time FOSS is targeted by trolls, but every once in awhile I have to make an exception. FOSS is like a reverse-idiocracy. Those who are easily swayed by popular opinion will undoubtedly leave FOSS for more PR-competent grounds (Microsoft, etc.). Those of us who evaluate software on it's merits, instead of the failings of the spokespersons for that software, will continue to use FOSS and reap the benefits.
But let's get back to developers. If you are angered by the sexism displayed by certain members of the FOSS community, you will most likely be reluctant to contribute to the projects represented by those individuals. Thus, any public outcry against those individuals should be welcomed, but sadly most of the outcry is Microsoft FUD in disguise, which is not aimed at the individuals, but the FOSS movement as a whole.