...that was (meant to be?) called Beyond the Red Line, or a different approach to making the BSG universe into an awesome space combat game?

(Downloading the source tarball right now, let's see how we get this into an unofficial Debian package...)

The hub of our communication at work is a really beefy machine running Debian GNU/Linux. Communication within the tech dept. is done mostly via IRC (our CEO is a really techy person), and email. Even some guys and gals from the Customer Relations/Editoral Staff, and the head of the Legal Department, are available via IRC at all times, which is neat. We also have a web-based issue tracker (that's controllable by email; developed in-house many years ago) that helps us keep track of things. It's pretty awesome - that kind of infrastructure is INCREDIBLY less frustrating than what we've had at companies I worked before (mainly Atlassian webapps that are all shiny and stuff, oh yay!!1!). Not as colourful and web-2.0-y perhaps, but it is fast and very much to the point. And very hackable, in the good, true meaning of the word. :)

...under "absolutely clueless" a few years ago. Can't remember the specifics as to why exactly I did right now - I think it was related to some inflammatory bullshit "articles" about GNU/Linux on CNet or something, but I have no reason to believe I misjudged him back then. So I'll pass.

... because THAT story title quite obviously is not in compliance with Adobe's Permissions and trademark guidelines!

Next time, better talk about images being "GIMPed". Just to be safe and all that ;)

Agreed! With the last part of your posting, that is: emacs, hands down. :)

Intel is doing the very same thing on their most recent "enthusiast" desktop chipsets.

For systems using the Linux kernel, there are software implementations of the very same block-level-caching-concept available - one I stumbled over is http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/

... is that it's there (and I think it's actually great and indeed vast), but it's of seemingly little use in "production" code. The aforementioned SocketServer, for instance - try asking in #python on freenode how to do this-and-that with it. Answer: ditch it, noone uses it because it's crap, use twisted instead. It seems like a solid chunk of the provided functionality is being dragged along for (mostly) historical reasons, as you're supposed to use some third-party library that doesn't come bundled with the Python runtime by default anyway if you want to do actual stuff with the language that's ready for "the real world".

I still like programming in Python a lot though, and I do make extensive use of the "batteries" it includes. Will probably pick up the book; thanks for reviewing!

The opposite of "free" (as in the GPL's definition of free) is not "commercial", but "proprietary". You can very well ask your customers for a licensing fee if you distribute your GPL'd program to them. If your product and especially the support and services around that dump of code and binaries are good enough, they'll probably give you what you ask for anyway.

There were two studies conducted by McKinsey, that both led to the result that an Open Source/Free Software desktop was feasible and a strategy that is saving the AA costs, but the powers that now be seem to disregard any evidence that suggests sticking to the solution currently in place there, because someone from MS seems to be sending in black suitcases... it's disgusting.

On top of that, they're considering switching to Windows XP now, and to a Windows 7 and Office 2010 setup later on! Migrating platforms twice within two or three years (XP support ends in 2014, mind you). This is just utterly insane.