The AI will be horribly bored and have this terrible pain in all the diodes down it's left side

Dang. Forgot a really important link!

  * Python Quick Reference - a well-structured python reference, especially listing common variable types and functions attached to them

My personal favorite is python. It's easy to work with, logical, and really fits the way I think.

Some resources:
  * Instant python - gives a quick rundown on basic python
  * Ideomatic python - this is more about how one should use the language

Packages:
  * Bottle micro web framework - small and doesn't have the niceties of the larger python frameworks, but it's great if you just want to get your feet wet, and do something right now
  * VirtualEnv - Creates virtual python environments where you are free to experiment with different packages (and python versions) without affecting anything else.
  * PIP - package manager. Works incredibly well with virtualenv, and have some neat features (like making a list of all packages and versions installed in active VirtualEnv)

Ummm... You're not in touch with reality, I see.. Going to bed now, so I'll make this short.

First, it's not hyperbole. This relates to Xbox 360, as that's the console I have. You'll be disconnected from xbox live if you start an unpatched game, and can't go online in any way (this also, iirc, includes gamer score earnings, online scoreboards and so on). Same for system updates.

Steam : It update silently in the background, you never notice.

Drivers:
1. many driver software (especially gfx card) will tell you it's a new version, and offer a one-click button to handle the rest themselves automatically. These are the only drivers that really matter, too.
2. Windows Update will also give you new drivers, automagically if you're insane enough
3. Most websites have a online "we-check-what-hardware-you-have" test or offer a download that will check that and then get the correct one.

You sound like you're about... 7 years out of date with your doom and gloom fire&brimstone speech. Good night

* Not having to deal with endless driver updates
* Consoles "just work". No maintenance, no constant fiddling with the system.

Oh, come on now. "The console has new upgrade. Upgrade now or be forever offline".

"This game has update too. Apply now or be forever alone."

One thing I've been thinking about.. Everyone here assumes that the charging stations need to be placed out before the network of quads can start doing it's thing.

But, if you had some special mapping drones, lighter and longer reach, with terrain mapping fly out first, then make the charging stations modular..

The network could create a map of the area and build itself until it reached the target. And increasing network capacity would consist of adding more chargers and quads at the entry point,and the network could scale itself up. And when done, it can pack itself back together.

At best, they send you money..

Hash collisions...

MD5: 128bit. 2^128. 3.40282366920938463463374607431768211456 Ã-- 10^38 combinations
SHA1: 160 bits. 2^160. 1.461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976 Ã-- 10^48 combinations
SHA-256: 256 bits. 2^256. 1.1579208923731619542357098500868790785326998466564056403... Ã-- 10^77 combinations.
SHA-512: 512 bits. 2^512. 1.340780792994259709957402499820584612747936582059239337... Ã-- 10^154 combinations.

Big numbers. Comparison numbers:
estimated number of atoms in the Earth: 1Ã--10^50 atoms
estimated number of atoms in the Milky Way galaxy: 2.9Ã--10^76 atoms
estimated number of atoms in the universe: 1Ã--10^80 atoms

The chance of a random hash collision, even factoring in birthday attack, is extremely small. It's also not a problem, even if it happens. As it is paired with a login name, you don't suddenly have person A logging in as person B.

And as noted, the length of a hash is fixed for the algorithm.

As someone who hasn't written such a scalable app, but have been interested in the issues around it, this was more or less my first thought too.

App part is usually just "throw hardware at it", but DB part can be really hairy. You can get far on a one machine DB, but once you need to go past that, you got trouble. Unless you've already taken that into consideration.

Also, it's good to be familiar with the common problems and workarounds for scaling. Caching is one such thing. Often you got several possible ways to do things, and some of them lends themselves better to scaling than others. Often with little or no extra work. Or it's just a small tweak to functionality, hardly noticeable that's needed. But something that will be a royal PITA to change later on.

So my advice: Get familiar with scaling problems and solutions, keep them at the back of your mind when creating the site, but don't go out of your way. Not yet, at least. Maybe take time to make easy "hook" areas in the code where you can insert scalability later (f.x design things so it's easy to move parts of it to RPC later on, and make it easy to later add caching to areas).

I'd just like to point out that gold have had the same characteristic, in the beginning it's easy to mine/wash/find, but as time goes it's getting harder and harder as all the easy spots are cleared out. And it's only economical to mine those harder spots out because the value of gold have risen.

Would you say gold is a pyramid scheme, because it was easier in the beginning? Bitcoin is in many ways digital gold, where the rarity comes from the resources it takes to "extract" bitcoins. Gold itself is not currency, but can be bought and sold. And also have fluctuations in value.

Personally I think bitcoin will be doomed in the long run, since there's a max limit to amount of coins, and coins will slowly fall out of the system (if the cryptographic wallet key is lost, all coins in that walled will be unable to be moved to a new address - and with time and Murphy's law, more and more coins will be rendered inactive).

Then why don't you just drum up a few hundred thousand bitcoins and sell them? You'll be bloody rich, AND you will have the pleasure of crashing BitCoin market and show everyone how right you are and how wrong they were.

From here:

So the supply is rather fixed globally. If the demand is higher than the supply, there will be scarcity, and prices will rise. They might bounce up and down while the market adjusts, but as long as the demand is higher the average price will rise, until it's high enough that the demand is at the same level as the supply.

But it does hold more data than your "It's so unsafe it will fall down and break horribly any moment now" statement :)

Anyway, it's a habit, and my personal experience tells me it's far less of a problem than your guessing says it should be.

You shouldn't hold your breath, I've had this phone since November, and I still haven't lost it while holding it that way.

Maybe I'm just not as clumsy as other people, but hey, no one is judging.

I got the Note 2 and I can use it one handed just fine.

But, your test is actually invalid, because it makes wrong assumptions.

That's not needed, finger tips just needs to be beyond the balance point at the middle of the back. Combine that with resting the phone edge to theflat of the hand, and you actually got a pretty decent grip.

That's funny. You know why? Because here in Norway you can't use USD to pay for anything except amongst a tiny group of people.

Not unless you convert them into real money first. I guess this shows that USD is just a toy currency and will never amount to anything in it's life.