I don't mean the bang command, I mean the literal character... You can search special characters in DuckDuckGo, ones that are ignored by other search engines...

For ":wq" that would search up the literal string ":wq", which is the Vi command for Writing and quitting, on Bing though, it ignores the ":" and only searches up "wq", so you get results like the Wikipedia article for "Water Quality" and other acronyms that it could stand for.

Compare:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22%3Awq%22

http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22%3Awq%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=%22%3Awq%22&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

Interesting, I wonder the correlation between Gentoo and OS X is? They are polar opposites.

I went
OS X -> Gentoo -> Arch -> Ubuntu -> Mint

Gentoo was just fun though since it was installed on an iBook (Old-style Macbook) with an INCREDIBLY FAST 500MHz PPC processor of raw power! (Because OS X broke)

Apparently Private Internet Access (VPN) is quite a popular way of getting around the great firewall of China...

It costs money, but it's pretty cheap, and apparently quite a reliable way to work around the firewall.

My only recommendation is to set it up before you get there since it requires OpenVPN, and http://openvpn.net/ is blocked within China. (The website, not the service)

You can search verbatim characters in DuckDuckGo, but not in Bing (Go ahead, search ":wq" on both, and notice that DuckDuckGo doesn't ignore the ":"), how is this done if DuckDuckGo uses Bing?

Is there something in the API maybe?

I investigated this, I really wish I hadn't...

Not because I wasn't expecting it, but because it wasn't scaled to epic proportions so I did it for pretty much nothing... :(

There was also a Minecraft Creeper chasing a miner...

References are everywhere.

I love how hilariously likely that comment is, but it also makes me kinda sad since I use Opera. :(

Year of the Linux desktop!

I find absurd names endearing in a way...

I personally much rather saying that my old Android ran "Cupcake" instead of claiming it used "1.5"... It's kinda cute in a way, and when used in conversation, it almost lightens whatever the topic is...

Really, try to sound disgruntled when saying that your phone runs on "Ice Cream Sandwich".

Remix

If you are looking for a free program to filter with... Snort does a good job. It is an IDS (Intrusion detection system), but it is flexible enough that it would work as a very good filter, allowing you to filter by keywords, domains, ports, have-at-you...

You can combine that with lists of questionable content and you'd have yourself a pretty effective and versatile system.

These kinds of rules are probably most relevant to your interests.
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.ids.snort.general/33780

It sounds like you may like Deep Freeze. http://www.faronics.com/enterprise/deep-freeze/

It costs a bit, but pretty much on every restart it will revert any "frozen" drives to their previous state, this is usually done in unison with a second partition that is "unfrozen" so people can save files... And if you want to update your system, you can turn Deep Freeze off temporarily. It also has a user permission system so some people can save files.

Fantastic for management, and as someone who was on the user end of it for a while, it wasn't that bad because of the unfrozen drive for my files. (You could permanently install with a password if you needed to)

I know this may sound a bit weird to some, but I always found Emacs org-mode to be the most effective way for me to take notes in class...
Here is a Google Tech-talk about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM

It's pretty much just plaintext, but the way org-mode handles it makes it very effective. It's one of the easiest parts of Emacs to learn, and it is known as quite a killer feature in the program. You can even export it to PDF (ala LaTeX), HTML, and a few other types of formats (Like GameFAQs style text document, complete with table of contents and headings.)

Since there really is no overhead, you are only limited by how fast you can type. It is also very easy to navigate after writing them.

Besides, I heard the movie was to die for.

I haven't written off Google+ yet... I actually quite like it...

Sure, there is less people there, but it's nice seeing only a couple posts from a few good friends as opposed to posts every couple of minutes about what some acquaintance of mine ate.

Circles was an awesome feature, I always quite enjoyed the control I had over views and who viewed what. The simple markdown interpreter worked for simple markup on posts, hangouts were awesome, that and chat completely replaced Skype for me.

I also quite like the interface better.

And recently, I have noticed a lot of people joining.