While its assertions are believable, I'd now like to see the methods and data

Yup - that is exactly what I have got at work as well. I think the half-height walls are great cos they give you your own private area where you can zone out just code - but you still have the options of standing up to have a chat with anyone else on the team.

The only problem I have with it are the L-shaped desks. These are problematic when two or more developers are looking at the same screen - which I find happens quite often, especially when making architectural decisions about the software, and when one dev is showing another dev how to do ${programmingTask}. What tends to happen is we push the chair out of the corner of the L, and both of us sit on the table, which is not ideal.

I think the best desk configuration would be a cross shape, with half height walls, and straight (not L-shaped) desks.

Oh, and throw in one pair of noise-cancelling headphones for each dev. Those are worth their weight in gold in increasing productivity.

I returned an Iphone 3G in this spirit. "I don't know any other phone were I can't resent or forward a text message".

Hmm, sighted over California? It must be the second coming of Xenu.

And why exactly do you think the explosion was in any way related to your wi-fi?

Point 1 - I bet that a good percentage of people that use their electronic devices on airplanes do not consciously turn off wi-fi.So far I haven't heard of any plane accidents that were attributed to wi-fi transmissions.
Point 2 - Lufhtansa for a while actually advertised wireless connectivity on their airplanes for web surfing during long-haul flights. At the time it was a bit expensive and extremely laggy so I only used it once. But they definitely didn't discourage it.

checking your account every few days is only prudent.

Not unless you're unemployed and therefore have a lot of extra time on your hands...

Honestly, if I have to watch my bank account like a hawk to have a debit or credit card, I'd stick to cash exclusively, and the good old monthly statement... I don't know about anyone else, but the "convenience" of a credit/debit card is pretty damn small to me.

You are confusing programming language and OS - If I were to code an app in Java or Python or C or C++, it can compile and run/interpret in Linux, Windows and Mac.

Would you be happy if another OS, let's say Linux, decided that they will only let apps written in C run in the OS? (I know this will never happen, it's a hypothetical)

Or another scenario: If you were a developer who currently develops apps for Windows, and one day Microsoft announced that from Windows 8 onwards, only apps written using Visual Studio are allowed to run on the OS, would you be happy?

In each of the above hypothetical scenarios, sure some of the developers who are unaffected by the change will be content, as they have been using the officially "blessed" programming language for the OS all along.

OTOH, there will be a boatload of developers who are not, and they will be fuming because they are faced with an ultimatum: drop support for this OS entirely or invest considerable time and energy to rewrite your applications in a different language?

These developers were indeed developing for iPhone OS 3.x. They then find out that their apps are illegal in iPhone OS 4.x. That is not very friendly to them is it? It really is a slap in the face for these developers.

Disclaimer: Do not own or develop for the iPhone – my stand on the matter is based purely on moral grounds, as well as the freedoms and rights I believe I should be entitled to when developing software.

Mod parent +1 insightful (not sarcastic) - All you have to do is read the comments on his post so far and they tell you that -

1. That he is rehashing someone else's ideas from a day earlier:
http://sachin.posterous.com/ie6-caused-the-web-to-mature-slower-than-it-w

2. That his central point is moot:
"They are not telling people to use Xcode, they are telling people they can only publish application 'originally written' in Objective C. This is quite different."

I'm often still in bed at 8:30 am :-(

But yeah, so true.

Generally some days I feel like I do around one hour of actual work, and others up to four hours. Of course you can tack on an hour or two of meetings on top of that. And, of course, browsing the web is actually just a way to sharpen your mind as you think about your current task.

Uh huh (that's mystical humanspeak for sarcastic agreement). And you just happened to be on Slashdot to tell us about it. Don't forget your free federal converter box so you can pick up HDTV!

Did any country yet starve because they were too busy playing to go to the supermarket, or go open the supermarket for that reason? No? Then why should we assume that any aliens would?

That's a good point. Thinking about it, the chances are that any members of a species too busy with video games and porn to remember to upkeep their civilization would probably be too busy to take care of their offspring, and thus would weed themselves out of the gene pool. And there would always be ones, especially in the early years of porn and video games, who would be more interested in taking care of themselves and their civilization. After enough time, presumably, only those not overly susceptible to distracting stimuli would remain, the rest having been to busy playing with their joysticks to successfully reproduce.

Welp, this does solve one problem which has plagued astronauts for years. How to capture spurting seminal fluid during the 'nauts "programmed private recreational period". Think about THAT problem and having to wash your keyboard in the dishwasher become a trivial event.

When I was in 5th grade I shot a kid using this principle. I loaded a test tube with water and stuck a thin straw into it; surrounded it with ice water; and then poured in a load of salt in the surrounding water. A stream of water jetted from the tube as it froze into a spike, which stabbed some kid. I lol'd. Slowest firearm ever, and ineffective at a distance over 5 inches anyway... my chem teacher was impressed and horrified at the same time.