The whole thing is so confused I don't think we even have the subject of CS in the Netherlands. At least, I'm pretty sure I studied IT.

Because the UK is really underdeveloped in this respect. Their current definition of "IT" is learning how to use MS Word, and that's how the curriculum is.

The Raspberry Pi guys can explain this one a lot better than I can. It's their mission statement to improve the poor state of IT in the UK, after all.

Why should he be banned for making a joke? Should you be banned for not laughing at it, then?

That was just speculation. Better reasons are given in the comments. Basically, it mostly seems to be about convenience: HBO doesn't make it very convenient for most people to get to watch the show.

...My daily Slashdot digest mail said "Diablo III unleashed". Funny.

It's all about how you divide your work. I sometime use three different desktop workspaces: two containing windows for two different school subjects, and another one for all the entertainment stuff I had open. It keeps me focused.

Flipping between them is as simple as pressing ctrl+alt+left or ctrl+alt+right, and it keeps my task bar organized, too.

If we're talking about icons, let's think a bit further and discuss other metaphors. Anyone really know what an arrow symbol comes from? Most people probably don't or they just forgot (this is a guess), but we all get the meaning of "it's pointing to something" behind it.

By the way, in case you were wondering, the arrow symbol was derived from, well, actual arrows from bows. An arrow always has a destination, just like the symbolic arrows.

I think they're still in the "make it work" stage, meaning that they haven't gotten around to "make it work fast" yet.

Of course, good design would probably have made it work quickly enough from the start.

The model is Asus K93S (or K93SV). It's also the most well-cooled laptop I've ever owned (seriously, it simply doesn't get hot at all). Comes with Win7 as a sort of bonus.

One catch for Linux with this laptop, though: you need to install and use bumblebee in order to be able to use the discrete graphics card (NVidia GT540M). This is also recommended because bumblebee can disable the discrete graphics card for you when it's not being used, which is good for battery life.

The laptop is indeed quite huge, but that's what you get for good specs, I suppose! Especially since it's about half a year old by now. With my next lappy I'll try to keep the size in account. :)

Let's not forget that good IDEs also make use of their horizontal space rather well.