Not sure what you mean by this. OS9 and anything previous to that has nothing to do with BSD.

OSX was a completely new start. "Virtually all old devices and OS's ever" is most definitely not BSD.

The important thing that the Amiga OS lacked, when compared to a more "modern" operating system was memory protection. Simply because it lacked the necessary hardware to enforce it.

Sadly, there was no provision for implementing any separation even when the necessary hardware was available, which it was on some of the later/high-end models.

I'm not so sure about this. If an important userspace application, or actually any application, has been hacked, I consider the machine tainted for all future. I'm not going to patch the holes up and keep running, because any file could have been modified and finding out which ones is just much more work than to fire up a new clean machine. If you're running a webserver and it's broken, you have in fact a fully compromised system since the only thing running on that virtual machine is the webserver.

I can see many reasons not to run this OS, but the kernel/userspace separation is not necessarily the big deal.

Though in 1996 we didn't actually have tons of free operating systems. Linux added something that was missing.

Then again, this release is hopefully nothing serious, other than a way to say that he's abandoned the project and doesn't really care if people use it or not.

While on the topic about fragmentation... Android is another type of linux.

The problem right now is that the current political mantra thinks that jobs are the most important thing, and if you don't have a job you're worthless and a problem that must be taken care of. It will be a painful period for jobless and workers alike until this discrepancy between current reality and ancient politics is gone.

Execution speed is not necessarily the only metric used to judge a compiler. As a developer for embedded platforms I mostly look at code size, and you could also judge it on how well it handles various CPU architecture varieties.

Then again, your argument still stands. He could've written "better". ;)

Getting such an account probably requires signing 30 pages of fineprint, making sure that anything you do can get your account banned.

A bigger question is why. What do PayPal gain by "randomly" freezing accounts like this?

Did you read the fine article? No you didn't. This guy is not a programmer, he's not been programming since that calculator. He's an English teacher.

His point is that iPad is a dumb device meant for passive intake of information, but many still assumes it's more advanced than the old calculators, thus a better tool for students.

Stupid Anonymous Coward - fits in the Apple Fanboy category. Users naturally see the iPad as a computer - that's what it is, right? And it's assumed that a computer can do everything than a calculator can, making the calculator obsolete. The Fine Article points out that this is not the case, and that teachers, parents and students should think about this when deciding what to promote in the classroom.

Fact is that the iPad is a gimped consumer toy compared to a computer or calculator, great for glossy illustrations in elementary school, but when it's time to do some heavy lifting, it falls short.