This is the answer. In starting off with pretty much any programming language, you screw around with strings, do some match, maybe make a GUI with some buttons and stuff... With PyGame, you can make games! Or at least, you can put graphics on the screen, move things around, make noises and it's easy... but not restrictive.

Logo (and programs like GameMaker and its ilk) get the first bit right, but once you want to do something that isn't moving a turtle around you're somewhat stuck. But with Python, you can do pretty much anything. And it's portable too! You can write a script in Python on your computer and run it on your phone (if you've got a Nokia, at least).

But this story is about Australia, and we don't have a PG-13 rating.

Our ratings are (for those too lazy to click the link): G, PG, M, MA15+, R18+, and X18+. G, PG and M have no restrictions. People under 15 are not permitted to purchase or rent films or video games classified MA15+ unless they are accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. People under 18 may not buy, rent or exhibit films rated R18+. X18+ is the same as R18+ but is used for porn and illegal is some states. Anything that is "Refused Classification" is banned.

Almost. It's the setup for a bad joke; the punchline being "I'll let you know when it's finished compiling!" (But you knew that, didn't you?)

Haw haw haw. Those silly Gentoo users, always compiling stuff! Why don't they like the Ubuntu developers compile it for them like everyone else?

What I don't get is why Gentoo gets singled out for "compiling" jokes. Why doesn't anyone makes these jokes about BSD or macports?

Since you can now get 2TB drives you should be able to fit 90TB in one of these boxes :)

And I thought I was doing well with a few terabytes in my home server (but hey, ZFS should save me from silent data corruption when the drives inevitably start to fail).

That is the sort of English up with which I will not put!

I'll throw in another vote for the Nexys2. It's brilliant value, and you can program it via USB! Don't underestimate the value of that. The USB programming cable for the ML501 board I'm working with at the moment costs more than the Nexys2 board.

The toolchain is free-as-in-beer, but I've only run it on Windows. I think there is a linux version of ISE, but I don't know about the diligent programming software.

Microsoft still needs to pull their finger out. OS X gets 20-25% longer battery life on the same hardware as Windows Vista or 7: http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582

You say "by default" - do you know how to turn this off? This is one "security" feature that really bugs me - on windows and on OS X. Yes, I really want to run that executable that I downloaded. That's why I downloaded it! I think I'm smart enough not to run some random executable that suddenly appeared on my desktop/in my downloads folder.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the GSM version, and hopefully there'll be navigation software for other countries. Even without the navigation, it's an iPhone with a real keyboard and you don't need iTunes to get music onto it - I'm sold!

I'll have Verilog's ability to own my own gun and point it wherever I like over VHDL's lead shoes (so you can't shoot yourself in the foot) any day.

VHDL isn't "comparable to" Ada, it's based on Ada - which was designed to be hard to code in. While that link is a joke, it hits pretty close to home (kinda like that "C++ was invented to keep programmers employed" interview, but more believable IMHO).

I guess Verilog really is C-like in the sense that both languages' type systems don't shy away from the fact that underneath it all bits are just bits, while VHDL/Ada do everything possible to deny it.

OMFG, this annoys the hell out of me. VHDL makes it far too hard to treat numbers as bit-vectors and visa-versa. That and the two incompatible ways of doing maths make Verilog the better choice unless you're forced to use VHDL, IMHO.

The operators are the same as C operators, the comment style is the same and there are semicolons. That is the full extent of the similarity with C. The are no braces (well, there are, but they don't mean what they do in C), macros are different, constants are different, assignment can be different, functions aren't functions, switch statements are case statements, etc, etc... saying that Verilog is "C like" is only going to confuse people who know C. Verilog has more in common with VHDL that with C really (begin and end statements, two difference types of variables, two different ways of doing assignment, both languages have constructs with no C equivalent) and yet people only say Verilog is "C like".

Ok, I'll bite - what does VHDL give you control over that Verilog doesn't?

I use that key still... how do you take screenshots?

And Alt+SysReq+{R,E,I,S,U,B} can safely reboot a locked-up linux system if the "Magic SysReq Key" kernel option is enabled.