Bah, certifications wouldn't help there most likely. I'm not certified in shit, and I know all that stuff because I can read, and bothered to pick up a book and figure it out. The most valuable skill in almost any IT person is the ability to find answers to things they don't know. I never ask anyone for help, cause I never can get any. I just look shit up.

Yes, this is true. From the interface perspective it's no different. A keyboard is displayed (picture), and you must touch the right areas in the right order. It's not coded that way, but to an observing savage who can't read, the two are indistinguishable. Clearly not the spirit of the patent.. but if you wrote a password screen that acted like a keyboard, but functioned in this way (based on the position of the key rather than an ascii code), are you violating the patent?

Doesn't this apply to a displayed keyboard and an actual alphanumeric password?

I'd like to patent "A series of grunts that combined can be understood by humanoids as meaning 'Where the fuck is your toilet?'"

Seems like the problem is the venue then.. why do they have to have so many crappy seats? If the artists were smart they would play a lot more shows at smaller venues.. so the tickets were not scarce enough to warrant scalping, and the average seat was much better. The arena thing should die. I guess for the lazy pop star that's too much to ask.

Also look at what some artists do by camping out in Vegas. I'm not sure, but I bet they don't have nearly the same problem with scalping, and they have complete control over the venue.

I think this is an interesting idea. The vocabulary ("levels") would need to change.

Also interesting because there's a mechanism for giving short-term rewards for activities that really only pay off long-term. Instant gratification is a problem for lots of younger people, this is one way to combat that problem.

I'm with you on that. I'll even distill that a little more. For me, I find windows particularly annoying simply because it constantly does things I did not ask it to do. I expect a machine to do what I asked, and nothing more. Just sit there.

This is true.
On-topic: You have to credit other people's work, or suffer the consequences.

Off-topic:
Although I'd argue that covering another artist's work (music) and not worrying about it is a valid business strategy. The music is proven, therefore is more likely to get some recognition. The original artist has some incentive to see that song get airplay, since it pays them. It at least gives you a shot to have your original music heard by both wider audiences, and people in the industry who's attention is hard to get. If you suck then you won't get much further, but at least it's not because nobody heard your stuff.

This. Seems like they fixed a vulnerability, and if your machine is infected then tough shit. I like this approach, personally. Infected machines get knocked off of the network = good thing.

fortnight?

Wrong again. It's clearly Hammer Time.

Also from the Wikipedia article, the vitamin D deficiency prevents your stomach from absorbing calcium, causing rickets. So in any case, being deficient in calcium is the underlying problem.

I've seen the executable in the localsettings/application data folder on windows. Likely it's copied & executed from there on startup.

The server is generally more specific than the service. It can have a version, a location, etc. The service would be analogous to a wait staff, while the server would be a specific waiter/waitress.