Port forward, via telnet?

Perl is far too heavy in certain applications where speed and efficiency is required (mail processing, for example)

Thats a rather broad claim - My mail server of choice is written in perl and is very very efficient.

I'll see your six and raise you one.

My version of The Lord of the Rings comes in seven distinct volumes: 1-6 are the book itself, and all the appendices are in volume 7.

The problem with "notes" is that they might be contradictory, or fragmentary. Perfect examples of each would be Christopher Tolkien, and Brian Herbert respectively.

I think I've learned my lesson now - Regardless of how attached, disappointed, or involved I am I'll never buy or read any work which was created by somebody else after the author's death. They're always a disappointment, even if they shouldn't be.

(For example the upcoming "Douglas Adams" novel.)

Never look at thedailywtf.com then!

With a bit of luck we could be back in the days of sidetalkin!

I did read that - I meant rather that you should try getting another insurance company to cover you.

I'm not sure where you're located but here in the UK there are several options, thats ignoring household content policies which can often be used to cover phones.

Losing a phone once I can understand, but after the first time I'd be taking a lot more care where I put it!

If nothing else you should consider getting phone insurance - the premium won't be huge and if you lost phones as often as you suggest it practically pays for itself.

I had a similar progression:

Basic -> z80 assember -> DOS -> i386 assembly -> C -> Perl -> bash

These days I get oddly nostalgic about writing assembly under DOS (3.3ish), but mostly I'm pleased I started on a z80 which made the jump to i286/i386 assembly less painful than it would have been from a different starting point.

(Because zilog people were ex-intel I guess?)

Typo in the summary:

The reearcher believes that this renewable, environmentally friendly energy source could be deployed in coastal areas and could provide another addition to the green-tech roster

Obviously that should be "researcher"

And we could call that "unstable", right?

Actually launchpad for Debian would suck - we shouldn't have to sign up to a site to submit bug reports.

Almost certainly killer net - it was a two-parter.

I had vaguely good memories of watching it and bought the DVD - it wasn't as good as I remembered, but it does cover the confusion between "real" and "Just a game" well.

That reminds me of Killer Net, not a great film but it does cover the premise quite well.

I guess the old adage is true:

Swearing trumps proof.

To my mind the GPL is free. People can see the source, and providing they promise to make it available to others too they can use it themselves. Sure that's not free as in public-domain, and it forces people writing closed applications to rewrite existing code. But people writing closed applications aren't contributing to freedom in any meaningful sense.

If you want to argue about how FREE different licenses are then I will leave you to rant alone...