I thought the bold text was a new Ask Slashdot feature to help everyone see the OPs replies! Thanks for doing that.

It sounds like any popular general purpose language will do just fine for you. There are more important concerns you should be spending your brain power on. Just flip a coin, pick a language, and do a project. If you don't have any specific goals right now, then don't worry about it. If you later decide you would like to make programming a full-time thing, then you can more carefully learn a language that fits well with the problem domain you are interested in.

As for suggestions, language that are presently popular and have have supporting libraries for just about everything include: Python, Ruby, Java, and C#. There are many more but these are a few safe suggestions no matter what platforms or types of projects interest you.

If only we could change our slashdot ids... alas!

To think, we invented the Descolada virus?

Most or all ebook formats and/or readers can now give you the location of text as it is in the printed form, which is arguably useful for citations. However, citing can be done without page numbers. MLA and APA guidelines are notoriously slow to update, but they'll catch up, if they haven't already. You could just specify by the chapter/paragraph/word count. Sticking to page numbers is like sticking to a desktop metaphor. It is a metaphor, it is limited and broken by design.

Preserved presentation only works if you're publishing on paper, or targeting a specific form factor (and thus device). iPads are homogenous enough that fixed-format magazines are available for it, for instance. You can make reflowable content work where you would traditionally use fixed layout. Reflowable doesn't necessitate linear, either, webpages can reflow so that they look similar to fixed-layout designs at wide enough resolutions, or become linear with narrow text. Those of us that have been around a while know how bad the web was when people thought they could just transfer their traditional media without redesigning... or when they thought that some high school kid with HTML experience and a copy of Photoshop could drive your online corporate image. Pushing paper design straight into eBooks has the same problem, but luckily, most of the big players have figured this out already.

That all said, yes, some works are better on something like an iPad which has good graphics, a large size screen, and touch. Others are better linear. Even books of the same sort can be written in different styles which extenuates this. Math textbooks as they're used in primary education work better on tablets, while masters-level mathematics books that concentrate on theory are better on an eReader. (As to which style is better would be a digression, lets not go there...)

There is no Javanese flag. Note that there really are a people known as the Javanese, they're not just a typo of Japanese ;-) Javanese are a majority ethnic group of Indonesians, but have no flag of their own (nor do, say, black or white people have a flag, in general). Indonesia has a flag that looks like the Polish one, upside down.

PDF is to preserve presentation. This is precisely what you do NOT want on an e-reader. ePub, which is really just HTML, is designed to provide reflow for e-readers. It can be used with or without DRM.

I imagine that a thickness gauge (which is what is *really* intuitive in the measuring-cup example) or a color-gauge would be more intuitive. The critical point here is that thicker is "more" and thinner is "less". Even with colors you can have "more red" or "less red". Numbers are a higher-form thought process. When dealing with a line system, your general intention is to gauge this same "more or less" comparions, but is abstracted through numbers which is based on a complex thought process of reading and comprehension.

Those companies are not violating the TOS, the employee is. What the company is doing is worse, the company is arguably accessing without agreeing to the TOS at all, which falls under unauthorized access and is criminal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I think. IANAL

Without any contract, you have no authority access. If you breech the contract, you have no authorization to access. Access without authorization is a felony.

I tend to agree that the other courts were probably right. Whether or not the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is too broad is another matter and something for higher courts and the legislative branch to determine.

Which was made by Samsung. This will change with the Motorola acquisition...

Username changes would be very appreciated...

The problem is that without rules on how properties are divided, they can be defined in arbitrary ways. Vague definitions are cause for disputes. Overly precise definitions based on constants such Pi are also vague. With Pi, you must, practically, round. If your property is explicitly framed in the context of Pi and your neighbor plans bushes in your yard because he estimated Pi as 22/7... do you bring it to a judge and argue precision?

It is a silly thought experiment with few practical applications. I don't see why legislators would bother, unless they're bored on the hill, or there is a particularly generous landowner with thousands of acres of property with ill-defined boundaries.

There may actually be sound reasons to legislatively set Pi to a rounded constant. One that comes to mind: Many property lines are defined along a circular arc (mine is). Pi is arguably too precise for property law, lest people might argue about a tree impeding a nanometer over their property line. Rounding it would settle those disputes. Of course, such a ruling wouldn't be broadly desirable outside that particular niche... and there are other aspects of property law that attempt to address this, such as setbacks.

someone needs to re-adapt The Crucible...