If you're going for code perfection every time. In the real world you have deadlines and have to maintain your code. Writing in assembly is going to make your code harder to port across platforms, should that happen say from PowerPC to x86.

Not saying that its never justified to use assembly. Within reason, of course.

The Diaspora guys' only real talent seems to be marketing that allowed them to raise a boatload of cash on vaporware hype and a catchy name.

I think it's a little early to make that judgement. How fast are you expecting this to be developed?

Both names don't make a lot of sense to me. If I hadn't heard of either, I would have no clue what it is or what it does. Facebook is pretty damn clear. mySpace is pretty clear. Friendster is clear. Hopefully, for Diaspora, a few good hubs will emerge with better names.

The report says Robbins turned in his laptop with a broken screen and was issued a loaner on Oct. 20, but school officials quickly moved to retrieve it due to outstanding insurance fees. So the tracking program was activated from Oct. 20 to Nov. 4 and captured 210 webcam photographs and 218 screen shots, the report said.

So they knew who had the laptop (not missing). They gave it to him (not stolen). They didn't attempt to recover the laptop by using reasonable measures (asking him for it back, calling the parents). But some how, spying on him for 15 days, off campus, is reasonable for not paying a $50 fee?

This is one of three possibilities. The other two being, they started using the code from open sourced modules and thus are still bound by that license or they contracted the work out and the copyright was reassigned to the whitehouse, in which case they can license it.

Drupal considers modules derivative works, so modules must be licensed under the GPL. Drupal Licensing FAQ. Not sure if it'd hold up in court, but thats what the Drupal community understands as their obligations.

Disabling the root password means now they only need to hijack a normal local user account, not root. You're effectively running as root, with all the security implications.

A local user in sudoers. This has been argued to death in many forums, and I don't think either side is going to back down anytime soon. No matter what, at least we're more secure than Windows, right?

And other handy things, like = and % are REALLY hidden on the BB. BTW, one of the keys on the Nokia brings up a character map.

The Curve is no different. SYM key brings up a character map, then Y or P for those symbols, respectively.

One would think that issues like keeping government IT systems up to date would transcend party politics.

I think you have far too much faith in politicians (however little faith you already have). There is not a single issue that politicians wouldn't use to score cheap political points.

Students DID notice the little green lights turning on. Many, many times. When they reported this to the district, the district said it was a "glitch."

What I'd be interested in is the frequency that the software was taking pictures. From the linked blog in TFS it sounds like this "glitch" was more common than some 40 students laptops that was reported. I wonder if it happens to all of the laptops at some interval (while outside the schools network, as the blog says), and then their server retains the images and that feature was only accessed the 40 some times. If this is how it works... I could see the school being royally boned.