Well he need to earn a pay check somehow. I mean seriously, this is a patent-troll lawyer wannabe. He doesn't give a shit about privacy, he just want's to have a new car and a boat.

LIAR!!! My dad's colleagues do not post as ACs :P And these days were were 15 years ago :)))

Just the example I was going to use. When I was in elementary I borrowed the first edition of K&R from dad's colleague. It's still sitting on my shelf. It's still relevant, and it taught me C. It's the standard on C, been standardised by ANSI, and I'm really considering buying a new one.

Relatively small book, about 300 pages, but it tells you everything you need to know to write C. Everything. When writing docs for my own software I always use this book as a guide. Small, short and to the point. Don't shy away from explaining the implementation, but don't skip on the part how to use it also.

Also Douglas Crockford's, Javascript - The Good Parts, which is also a great book. And Demistified C++ from Kent is also very good (half of my country developer workforce literally learnt C++ based on that book). On the broad coverage scale, Java - The Complete Reference. Both as a murder weapon (1000+ pages), and in the detail of showing various features and quirks of the language and the platform.

And yeah, there was this great book about Pascal I read as a teenager, but I hated programming in Pascal (since I did a lot of C back then), so I forgot the author of the book :( Book was great, the language was not.

The flexibility in hours being the strong point. Exactly why I started my own company. I get to choose when I work, and how much I work (that tends to be more work, but I'm happier doing it, because well I reap the rewards). People like to be respected for their work. I know a lot of developers (beside myself), that get really pissed of when they do this excellent piece of software that generates $$$ for the company and don't get even a pat on the back in return, bonuses, massages and such are SF to bossess/managers that are like that. So the bottom line is, respect your people, value their knowledge and resourcefulness and give them money. Share the profits, or give them raises, but it has to be cash in these times. Teambuildings don't put bread on your table.

Fewer lines NE fewer bugs. In my experience developers who strive to do an algorithm or just a function in as few lines as possible, tend to do all sorts of mistakes and thus spend more time in debugging. This is particularly awful if you develop for the web and do stuff in PHP/JS. As ugly as Perl syntax is, you can make sense of it, and all is good. But if you have a dev who does like not naming the variables in line with their use, not commenting, and self-documenting programming is a sort of an anathema to those... I don't like such characters on my team. They are often brilliant, but writing code no one can read easily (spending time to make sense of somebody' coding is wasting time) and for superficial reasons like, well I save ten characters per line, and that makes my program run faster... Makes everybody but them miserable. In response to other questions, CS is a subset of Mathematics. Programming is not a subset of CS, nor is it exclusive to CS. Programming, like math, is trying to describe the material world (and most of our programs do this, you just have to think about it) in a standardised way, but unlike math, who does that for other humans, programming does it for the machines. This has nothing to do with CS, because programming is older than CS. It is more closely related to linguistics, and logic and ofc mathematics. All programming languages are tools that take a abstract or a physical object, or a sequence of objects, and describe it in meaningful and logical way to the computer. Then they "teach" the computer how to manipulate those objects. Mind you, I'm not talking about objects from OOP. I'm talking about objects in a dictionary way ( [object] a thing, person, or matter to which thought or action is directed), one might argue that this is not dissimilar from class-based programming objects... And it's not... And that should be a thought too ;)

Cough, cough, user-friendly, popular. Ubuntu is crapware and we only use it because idiots think good marketing = good distro. I'd use SUSE over Ubuntu any day, and I'd use Arch over any of those if I could. Linux = kernel + hardware supporting software + basic user-land tools, distro is a software distribution. A collection of packages that make your life more easy. Valve doesn't need a new distro. That is utter bullshit. Valve needs to find a way to integrate into user-land properly, and refrain from using any proprietary code beyond user-land. And even in user-land be selective what they implement with proprietary code, on what do they use public APIs and so on. Ring 3 DRM and they should not have a problem with anything.

Thumbs up. Although I find GPL good and proper. It is good and proper for some things only. As somebody here said, Valve/Steam should use public APIs to implement DRM and then lay fault on community for breaking the software, in the form of well now, I respect your policies, can't you respect mine.

half of .NET is half-baked crap. Do you remember how many GUI API-s they've gone through? With every single one promising better desktop/mobile integration. Last partially completed and then abandoned is Silverlight... I could rant about that till morning :)

Dude... For about 20-ish years, for stuff like Garage Band you'd be better off buying a dedicated USB MIDI controller/keyboard. Any professional/semi-professional musician has and uses one. Games and music are a hobby, and in rare cases lifetime profession. And if it is a profession, you use various IDE tools/DAW tools + controllers, respectively. Unless your name is Johnathan Wendel and you use Mouse and WSAD for getting paid :) For someone like me, who is a developer more/sysadmin less (but the same goes if you are more sysadmin) by trade, taking away keyboard and mouse is akin to amputating one's foot so you coud get an less usable artificial one.

Besides, Win8 doesn't do anything revolutionary, everything MS does is TAKE A PROVEN concept (Touch optimised UI, walled garden security for apps, and "new and improved" API for general purpose system programming) and POLISH it. Mark my word Win8 will be practically unusable for anyone until at least SP1, and used rarely in corporate environments. And that is where the big bucks are.

Calling it not even a remotely good is solution is proper and correct if you use computers to make money. Although I've switched away from Windows years ago, I still stay in touch with the technology, as I have a few servers that I maintain, that serve Windows Platform software. Windows 8 will bring only pain and misery. It'll be even worse if they push it to servers. Which they might.

The kids will be grateful later on for the opportunity to break out of MS lock-in, and Python is a fun, easy language to learn, though surprisingly powerful. Design the classroom so that a pair of students (as in pair programming) sit opposite each other so they can look each other in the face, not each others monitor. Give assignments per pair, not the same assignment to the whole class. Use source-code control. (So you can check on their progress after class). Give them assignments that span several school-hours, to occupy them. Not just stupid hello world/word counter programs that are too boring and don't do anything useful. Design the classroom so the pairs all see the whiteboard/projection place, yet have space enough to stretch out. Award collaboration (not cheating kind of collab), but also award individual flashes of insight. Do base your CS class on programming as it is a useful skill even for those who won't work as IT people. Meaning really, most of these kids today know how to use word processing and/or spreadsheet software, and if you captivate them with something interesting and fun, they'll be less likely to cause havoc in the classroom. If you must use Windows, somebody mentioned Faronics ... good choice. If you want to go with some fancy stuff like VDI or Thin Client enviroment (which I highly recommend) ... use something like https://fedorahosted.org/k12linux/ or even better the SUSE version http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP because of Yast (management tool, not all powerful, but just enough). Configure thin clients with LXDE or some hybrid containing Awesome WM, deploy Firefox, Thunderbird, Eclipse, OpenOffice (apps that use local workstation resources, but boot over network) and you're be set for another 4-5 years. If you must use Windows, everything here applies but you change the server from Linux Terminal Server Project to this... http://www.xpunlimited.com/ ... and deal with the clients accordingly ... probably with WPKG (http://wpkg.org/). You can do everything, even on a tight budget, you just have to have some imagination, and a good working knowledge in tinkering with various open-source software.

I really don't get this cyberstalking and cyberbullying obsession... Come on we live in an age of 13-yo posting nude pictures on F-book under their real name, not some character name, or pseudonym, and you attack Blizzard for time stamping .... f**king hilarious .... The mere notion of being anonymous on the internet makes me laugh ...

You good sir, are very much mistaken... Plain and simple :) Of course there are people who get hooked on to anything... Your college room mate is an idiot, in every sense of the word. I've never understood the allure TV provides (except for watching a good premiership match or two), never got addicted to gambling, or drugs or cigarettes. I play WoW regularly, almost every day, but it doesn't interfere with my social life. And I like to think I've done something with my life, if being a sys engineer in a big financial institution, having a fun relationship with a nice girl, having your own apartment and such accounts for something. You see, that what you are doing is called generalizing, and it's bad. If playing WoW = having no life, then I probably fit in the no lifer category. IMO, no lifer is somebody who posts trashing posts on /. about a topic he doesn't know shit about. Most WoW players are normal hard-working citizens who play for fun. Not all, but most. Online fake enviroment ... LOL ... if by fake you mean sth. not tangible, then guess what, everything on the internet is fake... Your logic is flawed and your opinions suck. And yes, you probably have a Facebook account don't you? ;) Yes, yes, you do, admit it... ;)