I already pay extra to have higher speeds and no bandwidth caps on my Comcast Business-class service.

If the tax went toward making a ubiquitous, carrier-independent service available everywhere, even with a lower bandwidth (being free doesn't mean it has to be the best), I'd be all for having everyone who pays for more cover the costs for those who can't (or won't) pay.

Agreed. Here's the obligatory TED link, with an interesting view on how the lack of patents, and an obvious and accepted pattern (pun intended) of copying has made the industry huge.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Of course it's because of the slew of people wouldn't bother paying for apps they could build and install themselves. Or those who would take it for their own, fork it, make it better, make it worse...

Heh...fair enough...I did, however, heed the "don't go there" warning. OK, in reality, I had no intention of going there; no interest, really. Just pointing out that provided source (and they're out there) doesn't always equal actual source).

It may also be the case that the posted source has nothing to do with the actions of the site. I mean, maybe they're being really friendly and helpful, but maybe the evildoers are just smart enough to instill a false sense of security by giving you some otherwise valid source, that isn't doing what they're trying to accomplish at all.

The bit about watching what the site does with Firebug or other browser tools or network monitors, will really reveal their nefarious nature...

True enough, and this can actually weaken security as your browser then checks for the existence of .com and .net and .org and .everyOtherTLDuntilItFindsYours, one (or more) of which will have been acquired by phishermen. Using a different TLD might seem like a great way to aggregate things, but my bank doesn't use .mobi to deliver mobile content to my phone, instead choosing to use m.bankname.com (not my real bank...heh...). Maybe it'll be intuitive after a while, but at least for the purposes of browsing for "bankname" alone in the address bar, it's a bad deal.

At least some of us do this on purpose, not because we're confused by the purpose of the big box, but because we're looking for search results about the perhaps heretofore unrecognized domain that might warn us about dubious uses.

Surely you meant this to refer to politics and not to making sure we're saying nice things, right?

Looks like they're all videos. I was hoping there'd be a nice blast from the past in audio form only...it'd be just my style to change my phone's ringtone to the old modem negotiation, especially for the annoying callers...

There's a second purpose of reCAPTCHA. There are always two "words." Both are from scanned documentation of some kind. One word is known, and is used as a check to see if you're trying. The other word is unknown, usually a little wonky, and you're being used to help OCR the text for them. The pair of words is checked, and as long as you got the known word right, and gave a try to the second word, you're in good; usually, that is--if they have enough input on the wonkier one, then you're being used to group-source validate the OCR on that one.

Nice recovery.

There is more often than not a gap between the design and the actual implementation, though, that sets the "hackers" from the "engineers," to use the OP's idea of it.

I try to practice quality standards and easy to follow patterns or algorithms. KISS is the fall-back; if it's too hard to write the software, then the design isn't appropriate. Likewise, if the software is too hard to read or manage, then you didn't follow the design.

Word up. I use "Software Smithy" as many projects are trying to bang two moving projects together as it is about any kind of design or engineering. And, yeah, I got the CS thing going, but as the OP points out, the academic is nothing like the actual.

I'll cut slack for the "opinion" bit, but having a degree doesn't mean anything becomes instinct.

Or more likely that Slashdotters don't read TFA. The 13 is a reference to the number of games researched, not their age. Pac-Man is noted as a game from 1980. Neither the introduction article (first link) or the research paper itself (led to by second link) suggest Pac-Man is only 13 years old.

What does this really mean? You're old again.

I agree also on the WYSIWYG editing, but was commenting in context of OP. In general I do my editing in text editor and view results in a browser. Usually as many browsers as I can access (evil IE, FF, Chrome, and Safari usually suffice). Unless layout is of no concern (and that rarely happens) the browsers seem to have some quirk that messes up somethg.

Agreed, but I think it fails as a WYSIWYG HTML editor...and, probably for the purposes of the post, it equals vi...