OCD much?

I think you'll find that they are already defined as "User is cat in the dark with Mushroom on Head" and "User is ninja cat in the dark about to perform Sumarai attack", respectively.

I love PHP, it's a cool language - but there is no way I would recommend it for learning programming. There's too much freedom in it and the problem with that is that it doesn't bite back when you do bad things.

It's fine if you want to learn PHP or even web based programming...

But if these are "bright kids" then they should be trained well from the ground up, the need to learn how to program, a skill that is language independent - and as a Java programmer, I have to say that there is only one language that can teach them this properly: C.

No we shouldn't teach Latin - because, let's be honest, the old Romans really haven't made much of an effort to promote it.

Come to think of it Science isn't great a promoting itself either. It's pretty much either you accept than gravity exists or you don't.

Religion - now that's a good one. They're big into promotion. That should be taught in schools.

Facetiousness aside: teachers have a responsibility to educate themselves first and the pass that knowledge on to other. There are lot of organizations in the world (past and present) that have big budgets, but that doesn't make them right and a good teacher has an obligation to know the difference.

M'kay.

Never mind.

(D'oh)

Does Linux run on it?

(Prompting a possibly valid "In Soviet Russia" gag).

How exactly does someone who writes about "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" become an expert in history? Hey, he's entitled to his musings just as much as the next person - but it's hardly newsworthy.

What's next? An insightful review of "War and Peace" by Nobel physics winner: "It's a big book".

You can be sure that this "amazing" discovery will be touted in the newspapers as "using the breakthrough technique of Genetic Algorithms that uses human DNA to make computer think" (or some similar BS).

And when this guy actually does put together a proper GA, it will be ignored - because on the outside it's the same thing. Even though it will actually be interesting.

Lagrangian Interpolation?!

He was only fined A$3000 and required to behave himself, and no costs were awarded. So there isn't really a heavy hand here.

However, I do think the resources could be far better spent.

Embed your personal data into a porno and let bit torrent do the rest.

That may be correct - but what would they do? Destroy the economy using computers? We do seem to be doing that rather well without the need for any outside help.