Lots of oldies on Slashdot still. :-)
I am from the "Era" when people had just 1 shared family PC, connected to a dial-up phone line. I am 32 and don't consider myself particularly old. I have been reading Slashdot since about 2001 so I remember all the oldies talking about programming old mainframes, building hobby computers, getting their first AT PC etc.
My first PC was a Cyrix M2 300 which makes me a virtual newcomer, or so I thought.

I have bought probably a few thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin over the last few years that would now be worth a couple of hundred grand, unfortunately for me though I spent it all on the various bitcoin markets.
Still at least it saved me cash versus buying from the streets.

I actually would rather Bitcoin wasn't in this current bubble, a stable currency is much more worthwhile for use as a trading commodity; I suspect the vendors probably know this and convert their BTC into cash as soon as they get it

Tommy Sotomayor is right, many of these parents care more about their weave than their children's education

There are also many mods available for TA such as TA Esc that add a new tech level and many more units; the engine in TA is spectacular; each shot is modelled as a projectile with newtonian physics, so that hits/misses are calculated based on shot speed/angle etc rather than being purely hardcoded like in starcraft.

One downside to TA is the singleplayer story; Starcraft had a truly epic story with multiple sides, good character motivation etc - TA didn't really have that, it just had "here is a mission, kill the other side" - as two automated robotic armies who have been fighting for so long, they forget why they fight - there isn't much scope for heroes in a story like that

I find Bing terrible for unintended porn... I work at a school, never had a problem with Google Safesearch bringing up unwanted images, but searching for "teenage boy" in Bing even with safety on strict has probably put me on some Government list...

Those tiny mice are quite popular where I work, but then I do work in a school where most of the users have tiny hands :p
Probably the only real use for them.
I prefer a larger mouse even though I have small hands myself.

I keep getting a weird issue where Windows will behave as if the CTRL key is stuck down on the keyboard, even when it isn't (and so trying to switch app in the taskbar just selects multiple). I get this on basically every computer I've used, so it can't be a hardware problem.
Anyone else get this?

Seems they are having bandwidth problems, anyone have a mirror?
Anyone know if the passwords leaked were part of a particular service (I read something about Yahoo Voice) or are they just a random selection of normal e-mail accounts?
I work at a school and am trying to decide whether to e-mail my users with advice about changing their passwords or not (judging by outgoing smtp over half of them have yahoo accounts.. I wonder why it is so popular?)

Seconded. I find it takes about 4 or so months until I'm comfortable enough to show up to work without the "heart in chest" sensation. Once I'm settled in, I'm fine. It's the whole process of going through the interviews, being the "new guy", meeting many new faces to be daunting enough for me to not answer the phone when the prospective bosses phone up.
I was unemployed for about a year - either not bothering to apply for jobs, or working up the courage to send off my application only to claim unavailability when the interview phone call came. I decided I needed to get over my fears and applied to work in a high school. Been there over three years now.

I bought a cheap 32" 1080p LCD TV for use as my primary display and I'm happy with it so far; the main things I've had:

using VGA output sucks - I never really noticed a difference between VGA and DVI on my 22" LCD, but on this 32" LCD the colours are washed out and the text a little blurred (you see this most with red text). Using a DVI - HDMI adapter with a HDMI lead is fine. This could be VGA itself or just an issue with my cheap 32" panel.

The pixel size is fine for me, but even at 1080p resolutions in games Anti-Aliasing is still needed.

I run mine with a DPI of about 125 (as opposed to Windows's standard 90dpi) so I've upped the font size a little.
The rational for getting a HDTV was that it was practically as cheap as the cheapest 26-27" 1080p monitors were - so I opted to just go for a 32" HDTV.
I have bad eyes (bad eyes at 24 years old!) and I get headaches, I find the further away I sit from a display the better.
A few other users wonder how I can even use a display and font sizes so large. I wonder the same when I sit at their 19" displays set with tiny little fonts.

I also bought a wall-mounting kit, but the kit I have is meant for standard monitors - a standard VESA mount will not fit a HDTV as the HDTV mount holes are spaced much further apart. (you can actually tilt a vesa mount sideways and use the two top holes on the HDTV to bolt onto it... but I don't fancy having my display falling off of my wall) Bit of a dumb mistake to make on my part. :)

You will need to buy a specific HDTV mount.

I was an ordinary helpdesk drone and I had access to all of my customers e-mails. I worked for a large UK DSL ISP.
Infact, I would semi-regularly have customers phoning me up asking me to read out their e-mails, as if I was some sort of human "speaking clock".

"Do I have any e-mails from 'sonnyjim'? Oh, could you read it out to me? See, I'm not at my computer and sonnyjim is my son who's in Australia..."

I would do so if I was happy with the customers identity.
I don't recall anyone ever abusing this facility. From what I saw, the contents of every mailbox I went into wouldn't make riveting reading - it's not all "carry on" affairs in there. We had better things to do, like browsing BBC news and reading Slashdot.

Agreed, I'd much rather have a decent 22"+ plus LCD monitor than a fancy keyboard/mouse, the same goes for desk/chair also.
But, as soon as I saw Opiates on this list, it instantly got my vote, sorry 8-)

haha, so every time you close the lid on your laptop you have to carefully check it to make sure nothing's running that might disrupt the process? and you're happy with doing that?
you can't deny that the behaviour there is broken.

What's the problem with rejecting the SMTP session, with the error displaying the SMTP error code along with your phone number/error message in it?

Indeed, a lot of spam to my mail server comes from China, Korea, or India.
I see the occasional spam come from the USA, but it's a very small amount. Same with Canada.
The hostnames I often see seem to belong to residential addresses - DSL connections etc. It seems a damn botnet is responsible for sending all the "Acai berry" and Viagra/Cialis spams to my domain.

I don't shitcan the mails from "bad" countries outright, but I do increase the "weight" / probability it might be spam.
I've also whitelisted Britain, so no e-mail coming from UK IP addresses will get filtered (I am based in the UK)

Setting this up on an SMTP proxy box running ASSP took a day, and has reduced spam on my network by 90-95% - it's a no brainer, really.