There is also MCServer, which was written by a kid in college in his spare time, uses LUA scripting, and is now open source.

MC-Server.org

Honestly just being curious here... is it possibly because you were just used to the imperfections and the nuances of records before? It seems similar to the 24fps argument (true movies have flicker and motion blur so 48fps without the same motion blur seems amateur and soap opera-like). I had to readjust my perceptions when I thought of it that way. Your brain can trick you in to feeling that the better quality looks unprofessional.

I wish so much that companies were not allowed to advertise their prescription medication in the US. There are way too many hypochondriacs with access to WebMD that see a medicine and badger their doctor in to giving it to them. Half the time the advertisement doesn't even say what the medication is for! It expects people to go looking for it. It's completely irresponsible. I would hope if I really needed some sort of medicine that my doctor would tell me. If he doesn't there is always a second opinion. I realize that certain people would find out on their own and badger anyway, but this would greatly cut it back.

Google Talk and Google Hangout are good obvious alternatives. If you insist on running your own solution, I've had very good experiences with using Elastix. It has everything built in to one package that takes advantage of Asterisk VOIP. I've set it up for multiple companies as their corporate phone system, including some that used it in fairly large call centers. It's also free and has a decent community behind it. They're pretty helpful, and when I was starting out with it I got a lot of good advice on their IRC channel. VOIP, IM, Videoconferencing, and it has good hardware support for all of the telephony devices.

The only way to handle sensitive issues like this is to have standards in place to begin with. Configuration Management including coding standards and honest peer reviews. If the developer didn't follow standards, he fails his peer review. It doesn't even have to be personal. Not "Your code is horrible, fix it.", it's "We need code written this way to comply, please fix". It gives you a leg to stand on rather than dramatic phrases like "Your code is like a war crime".

With at least regards to Columbine, I don't think it would matter. I was in highschool at the time and I read a lot about the shooting. There were many descriptions of them casually walking about the school, setting off their bombs, reloading, even video of Eric Harris calmly dropping on one knee to take aim and pick people off. I don't think a magazine size restriction would have made any difference to those two.

I have a smart TV. I also have a blu-ray player, which replicates basically all of the functionality of the smart TV. I also have a 360, which does exactly the same as all of the above. The only one of those devices that has netflix, youtube, etc and doesn't drag its feet is the 360. It is also the only device that gets regular updates. I didn't buy the TV because of the smart features, but the features it has could have been cool. It came with a separate remote that can be used similar to a wii-mote and is pretty handy for using the interface. Sadly, bad coding and slow chips in it kill the experience.

I've been following MenuetOS for years now. I love the fact that it can run uncompressed on a single floppy. It has a fairly modern UI and can do a lot of the same tasks that most major operating systems do, but in a far smaller footprint. It's also very fast. It makes me feel like any other operating system is just being wasteful.

Every time something like this happens, they try to blame video games for it. Other things too, yes, but one of the main targets is video games. I know the point is to pretend they've accomplished something, but people see that, right? It's like professional wrestling... we all know it's mostly soap opera mixed with some jumping around in speedos. How long can they keep this up? Imagine the time and money wasted for these people that are doing this. Think about all of the other issues that have been ongoing that they are ignoring to rush for the attention grab. I would like to think these people are not really that out of touch with the public that they think something like Starcraft would make him want to murder innocent children. If they are that out of touch, it's time they retire from politics.

It made me remember the old mobile Windows operating systems. Microsoft thought everyone would want a normal start bar, etc on their mobile device. It didn't work out well as history has proven. Now they're trying the other way around... force the mobile UI on the desktop. They don't fathom that people want desktop (and at the very least non-touch laptops) to have one UI, and mobile devices to have another.