In fact, as is typical on slashdot, the "news" is about 7 months old, so there are a lot more related materials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGvHxLEhC5A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwAgZ2WLQyA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEfqmBMydZw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNkCnNJuR8
YouTube link with the robots in action.

Yes it will ... it has 65x GPIO, you add the required level converters and use a bit-banging driver.

Or you can get a cheap USB-Parallel adapter if you just want to print.

h264 1080p HW-assisted playback over DVI with Audio and CEC.

Looks like your RPi is overclocked :-)

1) Have you done

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

(or "raspi-config" and select "update")

to get the newest (and fastest binaries) from those distros ? With the latest 3.6.11 kernel and optimised libs using the HW floating point and other hardware goodies, the RPi is way faster that when running the default, half-a-month old packages.

2) Have you tried overclocking ? The UK-made RPis with Samsung RAM have no issues running at 1Ghz (from the default of 700Mhz) and with RAM at 600Mhz (default 400Mhz). The Chinese ones with Hynix RAM work okay at 800-900Mhz with 450-500Mhz RAM speed.

"raspi-config" and choose the overclocking option. None of them will void your warranty (you can void it only if you edit config.txt by hand and use the higher voltages needed to reach 1.1Ghz or higher)

You can plop a RAM heatsink on top of the CPU but unless you run-it outside in the summer, it's not really required for overclocking.

3) For compiles, configure the memory-split so the GPU will get only 16Mb of RAM and give the rest to the ARM. You won't have 3D or HW Video decoding (X11 still works) but you will have lots of RAM for compiling.

Don't get too excited about a 1Gb version.
The Broadcom CPU can only access one LP-DDR memory chip.

At the moment none of the RAM manufacturers are producing single-chip LP-DDR RAM chips larger than 512Mb - and it's not cost effective for them to build one just for The Raspberry Pi Foundation.

There is a 1Gb chip in that form factor on the market at the moment but it's made of two stacked 512Mb modules and requires two chip-select lines - which the Broadcom CPU does not have.

So it will be 512Mb max for some time - play with the new dynamic RAM sizing (details on the RaspberryPi forums) that gives most of the RAM to the CPU if the GPU is not used in that moment.

Thanks ... i'll forward-it to my company's "Open Source Approval Committee" next time i'll have to get an approval for instaling GNU-licenced software.
(that's not a joke, and my company is not the only one doing this)

especially the lawyers ...

Unfortunatelly they kept the GPLv3 licence so it will never get used in any corporation large enough to have a "normal" legal team. :-(
I looks like Microsoft "educated" most of the lawyers that GPLv3 means trouble.
So Samba will be used by either small companies where the owner/CEO is smart enough that it does not care or by Google-level companies where the engineers have a word to say.
All the rest will have their lawyers say: "GPLv3 does not allow you to use Samba to manage protected information so we better buy some proprietary software without those limitations"

The ones from RS are still made in China - so you have a choice.

Get a DC Volt-meter.
While RPi is running and accesing USB devices measure between TP1 & TP2 points on the board.
If the voltage is near or below 4.75V or near or above 5.25V the fault resides in your power supply.
The ideal powersupply should be a clean 5.1V one 1A or more - as you have some voltage drops over the polyfuses.
I have two "original" 256Mb RPis Made In China and all the common USB issues i had were fixed with better power supplies (old 5V,2A PSP power brick & 5V,3A DC 7~24V to 5V step-down from dx.com)
Also - use a powered USB hub.

LinkedIn is a good way of seeing where all of your old colleagues, friends and classmates are working now.
I set-up my LinkedIn account to not accept InMail and the only contact info i gave is: "call me, i have the same phone number you knew".
I log-in once a couple of months and reject/ignore all requests from people i don't personally know (recruiters) and accept the ones from friends/colleagues/classmates ...
If i'll ever go job-seeking, with only a couple of clicks i'm open to all recruiters.

30k USD a year ?
That is a nice sallary for Eastern Europe.
That is a HUGE sallary for India or China.