Which product(s) have the same specs as a RPi and cost $500?

On the projects I work on at least, the cost of the MCU hardware is almost irrelevent. In fact in most commercial projects involving microcontrollers or embedded systems, the cost of development boards is not that important. If you're rolling out a large volume of devices you're almost certainly going to be using a custom board anyway. Aside from all this, I can't imagine the cost of the board will be far out of line with similar products; as it'll need to compete when it's released for sale.

Something that has to be interacted with, through a view controlled by Javascript will not be trivial for a bot to solve. I know the typical response to this is "well I don't enable Javascript!!!" but these voices are now a tiny minority of users, who doubtless have all sorts of problems using the web now. Disabling JS in a browser is like disabling Excel's ability to automatically perform calculations on cells.

For deaf users, the choice could be from a number of sounds - maybe with filters added to prevent them being piped through an audio search engine.

I think this idea will make it harder and less profitable to run spam bots, which is always a good thing.

I used to be a regular user of Freenode, but it's a total cesspool of meglomaniacs who have somehow managed to crawl up someone's ass to get op status, and their toadies. Here's how the average conversation goes in most of the old channels I used to frequent:

A: Can any one help me with XXX?
Twat1: Why do you want to do that?
A: {explains}
Twat2: That's stupid
Twat1: Yeah, who told you to do that
A: Well, I'm just looking for help to do XXX
Twat1: Nobody does that, so why are you asking?
Twat2: Well said Twat1
A has left channel
Twat1: So I was talking to Twat3 about fish the other night...
B: I'd like some help with YYY
Twat2: That's off topic
B: Oh ok
B has left channel
Twat2: So what about fish? ... etc...

I wouldn't recommend anyone wanting any actual technical help/feedback go there.

To be honest, the OPs use case doesn't require ACID compliance. There's no need for a transaction when performing a single insert. It's also debatable to claim PostgreSQL offers better performance, at least without a qualifier. True it's (currently) faster in some areas,and (currently) equal or slower in others. As I say, I've used PG, MySQL and Oracle, although I haven't used PG for a few years now I'll admit. But it was pretty damning that I actually preferred using the Oracle command line client to PG's version! It's piqued my interest in trying it out again though :)

Most distros either come with a LAMP stack installed now, or an easy way to install one in a couple of minutes, all working out of the box. For the sake of convenience it makes sense. I'm not sure if there's an equivalent turnkey LAPP stack? I'll have to look it up!

Please don't do this (use a flat file) to store data for a web app that's likely to be accessed by more than one device at a time. Unless you implement your own file locking mechanism, you'll eventually end up with corrupt entries. Even if you do implement your own locking scheme, it's probably not going to be as efficient as using a DB. It's a 5 minute job to set up a new MySQL DB and associated query to push data in, then you can filter and report on it much more easily. It's something DBs are very good at!

Unless you have a specific need to scale horizontally, it's generally better to stick with a SQL DB for web apps. I've used MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle for this. MySQL is by far the easiest to work with, hence its popularity. I don't actually know of any advantage to using PostgreSQL; it doesn't perform any better, and is (or at least used to be) much less user friendly.

"Most IDEs I've used are stuck in a single code window at a time."

So which IDEs have you used then? Because either you haven't used any, or you haven't even bothered to learn the most basic features. One of the most popular and well known IDE's - Eclipse - can display as many code windows as you like (hint:click on tab, Window menu, then new Editor - there, that was easy, wasn't it? If that's too difficult, you can drag the tab sideways and it'll open another editor), hell you can even drag them out of the main UI and spread them all over the desktop if you like.

"Very few have anything near to the customization you get with Emacs or Vim, you're stuck with just a few tweaks to indentation style for example."

Where do you come up with this rubbish?! I've read a few of your comments now, and either you're a troll, or totally ignorant about most of the subjects you're gifting us with your opinions about (your post claiming that Windows has no scripting language is just... wow). Honestly, have you actually used an IDE in the last 10 years? You're being beyond ridiculous.

"GUIs are from the 70s, so why not claim that those are ancient relics?"

I would if they still looked and functioned almost exactly the same as the ones we have today. The fact is, that vi and EMACs were designed to be used on dumb character terminals connected over slow serial/parallel cables to relatively slow servers. They still work well over ssh, as they're pretty lightweight and there's no need for a GUI. However for developing on a desktop, it's ludicrous to use them in preference to an IDE for anything except the most basic editing.

"...why does the AVR debugger have to be a part of the IDE instead of a standalone tool..."

Here's a clue; try looking up the "I" in "IDE".

You've obviously completely missed the point of IDEs, and seem unable to accept change, even when the vast majority of professional developers do understand it. There are many things beyond a "class browser", so break out your copy of lynx or gopher and see if you can find a "search engine" like Google. You can then type stuff into it and it'll give you information. You're different and special, and quite frankly I don't have the patience.

And I'm not a "vi hater". Like I say, I've used it for over 30 years, along with EMACs (though nowhere near as often) on various flavours of UNIX and Linux - probably a damn sight more than most people here. I'm fully aware of their limitations, and the fact they cannot compare to an IDE for serious development work. If you're using them, and still manually creating makefiles in the 21st century, you're some kind of masochist, or you enjoy fiddling around with scripts more than getting stuff done(tm).

This is the most idiotic thing I've read here in a while (excepting the AC posts). An IDE is not a "glorified text editor"; the fact you believe this shows you have little, if any experience of using one. I've spent almost 30 years writing code in various platforms, in various languages, and while I've used vi and EMACS in the past, would never return to that. Those text editors from the 1970's were designed for an entirely different environment, and using them in preference to an IDE is at best like tying one hand behind your back, and at worst a deliberate and willful waste of time and money. Sure, I still use vi to edit shell scripts and config files on a server, and that's where I believe its strength still lies.

Continue to be a dinosaur if you like, swapping between text files in a "dumb" text editor, ignoring all the productivity aides an IDE can provide, but don't try to kid yourself that you're being efficient, or even smart by doing so. Things move on - we don't travel the country in horse-drawn carriages any more, and we certainly don't need to be the janitors in our own development environments.

Don't know about the US, but in Europe the turn signal (or, "indicators" as we call them) can be on either side, depending on the manufacturer. It's mostly on the left, but typically cars from Japan (for example) have it on the right. Not exactly life threatening to turn on the wipers though :)

I'll just leave you with this clue though. People keep money in banks. Govt could theoretically seize bank assets (look at Cyprus, doing it LEGALLY). Even if they needed cash - which they wouldn't - they could get it at any time. I'm sure you still won't understand what I'm saying, but at least I tried with you. That's all I can do.

Sigh. Yes you're right. At some point a tank driver would find his credit card being declined at Shell petrol station, turn round to the rest of the army dudes and say "well that's it I guess guys, time to give up and go home." - The End.

I'm going to leave you alone now; you're giving me a headache.

Exactly, I mean I'm sure they could stay in there for some time, but if they have no connection to the 'net, then really who the hell cares? In fact, why don't they cut the wires, and bury the place in concrete? They can stay in there forever :)

You were talking about funding. I replied specifically about the fact that funding is irrelevant in a war situation. If people want ammo, rations, or fuel to avoid being killed, then they'll take it by force. I didn't mention anything about motivation or allegiance, you're just trying to change the tune to dodge the issue.

Yeah good point. Because there's no way a bunch of heavily armed guys in an 80 tonne tank could possibly coerce a garage owner into refuelling it for free...

I own a Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and the latest iPad (also owned previous iPads, iPhones, and numerous other Android phones/tablets). The build quality and battery life of the iPad is certainly higher than the Nexus devices. It's pretty obvious if you've used both extensively. I've also had more glitches on the Android devices (e.g. current Google Nexus phone not ringing when people call after it's been running for a week or so, sometimes staying on lock screen when a call comes in, occasional UI quirks). Also the iPad mail app is much better than the Android offerings. Nexus 7 has terrible sound quality through external speaker - not a show stopper, but really should be addressed.

That said, I much prefer using the Android devices for day to day use. I also spend far more time developing for Android than iOS (in fact let my iOS dev license expire now) and I recommend Android to clients for the type of work I do - my apps are generally not available to the public. I hate being tethered to iTunes, forced to distribute apps via the Apple iTunes store, and Apples general lack of innovation or improvement (not adopting NFC for example).

So that's my experience; day to day I carry a Nexus 7 around with me, along with my Nexus phone. If I'm anticipating doing a lot of email, I'll either take my laptop, or the iPad2 instead. Im not a fanboi of either camp - just use what I think is most suitable.