The GP didn't exactly explain it well, but they (I assume) are referring to the manufacturing process. There's a lot of reported issues about QA controls. If you buy a bottle of asprin, it's pretty safe to say that each pill will have very close to the same amount of active ingredient as every other pill. The tolerances are pretty low because of tight regulation.

Herbals don't have the same level of regulation, if any at all. You have to take on faith that the manufacturer is being truthful that any given pill contains the exact amount, or even of the exact herb, they say it does. If you google "fake herbal medicines" you get report after report of various places selling false herbal medicines.

Even with a legit manufacturer, it's still up to their own internal processes to get things right because there is almost no external oversight.

I've found it easier to make vim a good IDE than to try to make an existing IDE more vim-like. Vim has a great :make command which will compile your program and jump to any lines with errors. It's great. If you want to run the program after a build, just put that in the Makefile too, or create a "make run".

Oh the irony! Or sarcasm.

No.

Worry when they start trying to control tens of thousands of square miles, not a few dozen.

Yes you can. There were bunches of CS mods which, if you 'camped' an area, would do anything from shining a bright light on you / make you emit a beeping noise, to physically launching you through the air.

Team Fortress 2 is an excellent example of coding the douchyness out of a game. Makes it less fun to be douchebag though :(

Some cross platform tools I use both under Linux and Windows:

• Firefox with PermitCookies extension (to easily enable cookies on trusted websites) and BugMeNot extension (to avoid compulsory registration at popular websites)
• When really needed (since it's pretty slow) Tor + Privoxy to surf anonymously
• Thunderbird + Enigmail for email
• Gaim + gaim-encryption plugin for IM
• Truecrypt for disk encryption (latest version runs great under Linux too, although there is no GUI yet)
• Throw-away email accounts like mailinator.com

But most importantly: /dev/brain

If you care about your privacy, don't give away your data to everyone!