Australia and Finland are planning to take over the world, don't you know. This is just the tip of the ice-burg.

Rubbish. I've been out of school for 3 years but I never used a computer much before this year. I always had very good literacy skills but struggled to remember the correct spellings for a small set of words. Since my transition into computer-nerd-dom I've found that Firefox's spell checking has helped me polish off my spelling when schooling could not. I can now spell "necessary" and "definitely" and "success" without checking.

Referring to the overuse abbreviated spelling as "newspeak" seems a little odd. Do you remember what "newspeak" originally meant?

Mine was over 100 and that's without the Ritalin that I usually take every day. and I'm only 20. :/... Maybe it was the cup of tea.

Being only 20 years old I have never owned an ink printer and I am very glad. I bought a laser printer (monochrome I admit) for $90 Australian. It's been going strong for 2 years with no issue and no refill. It gets carted 500km up the highway and back twice a year, it gets neglected for weeks at a time and still it just works. And it's fast (at least on Windows, the Linux driver is a bit dismal).

I agree. It's fantastic. There are other ways of searching history etc, but being able to type Ctrl+L, and then any little scrap of memory of what I'm after, is great. Really speeds things up. I still use bookmarks for my permanent favorites (like Slashdot), but for temporary interests, Awesomebar covers my needs.

I know... But you can't blame poor old C++ or any other language just because people abuse it.

This is what it comes down to with any language that doesn't deliberately limit the coder with enforced abstraction. Just do not do retarded stuff. And don't let terrible programmers use languages that give them low-level control. Even better - don't let terrible programmers write programs.

On the topic of the Mr Ettritch, well I think that's pretty cool. Nice to hear a story about someone dedicating years of effort to something constructive and getting recognition from authorities outside his field. I use GNOME, but still, good on him. High-five mate .

*High five*

I see your point and acknowledge it. In fact I agree. I sure as hell don't want to be a house wife. And I know that I owe my chance to be a scientist and programmer to many brave men and women who stuck up for my rights in the past. However, I know too many women who take feminism to the point of sexism, and I can't help but get a kick out of being sexist right on back and watching the outrage :P. I'm not a feminist, but I believe in liberalism, and there is much overlap. The feminist trolling is just for kicks.

Female. Not feminist. Loves trolling feminists, in fact. Still thinks this was a pretty tacky move from Yahoo.

If I was a female programmer at the event and I happened to be insecure about my looks (I'm a female programmer, but I like the way I look) then I would probably have felt quite uncomfortable in that situation.

OK, so this would make everything nice and safe... but it would ruin all the fun!

Half the charm of the Internet is that it's a jungle out there. If it were to be regulated in this way it just wouldn't the Internet anymore. You use the web at your own risk. It's like riding a motorbike - not as safe as the train but way cooler.

Cool. I just figured out how to put newlines in. Story: "Slashdot teaches young C coder HTML by accident"

I'm not for letting patents mess around with science and technology, but they do have their place. A lot of members of Internet communities seem to damn patents and copyrighting because it is so harmful to software engineering. And yes, I DO think that copyrighting and closed-source development have no place in software engineering, because keeping that kind of work hushed up does not benefit the science. But as an Australian studying both physics and software engineering I feel that there is a big difference between propriety software that has everyone on the Internet outraged and the licensing of technology. I feel that the CSIRO are an organisation that Australia can be proud of and some of their research will benefit human kind long after any patents have expired. If I end up working for the CSIRO I would want my work to be licensed. Not for the money or because it would be my "right", but because it would help with the continuation of excellent scientific research in Australia and Earth as a whole. If, however, I end up working as a programmer, I would rather give my code away and go hungry than have it all hushed up for the sake of a money hungry corporation, because transparency in software is beneficial to the science. That is not to say that software shouldn't be licensable or sellable, just that it should be visible - as the CSIRO's technologies often are. So before you all start squabbling over who should pay an extra five bucks for a wiFi card, think about what you're buying for the future. Outrage over copyrighting that stunts progress is fair, outrage over investing a few dollars into the advancement of technology is petty.

Magnetic circuit analysis deals with magnetic fields and magnetic flux etc. Not magnetic current in the sense that there is a displacement of magnetic monopoles analogous with the displacement of electric monopoles (e.g. delocalised electrons in a metal) that is electricity. It's a different idea. Yes, a magnetic field and a conductive "circuit" in a magnetic field can be analysed using a loose analogy to electricity, but the actual physical phenomena are not the same thing, unless these guys are on to something.

I disagree that albums are unhip or dead or anything like that. Anyone who is serious about their music knows that a complete LP should be, and often is, a single work of art. Many artists put a lot of effort into selecting and arranging songs on an album such that it reads like a single story. Albums may be dead among the teeny-boppers, but anyone over the age of 18 who loves music should appreciate the importance of albums. I agree with "who cares" though. I wish people would go down to their local CD shop and buy a record and support a small business instead of feeding some giant middle man like apple. Then you can read the lyrics, see the art, put the songs on your HDD, lend it to your family and do whatever you want with it. I hope albums and CD stores stay alive.