+1 for the Stevens and Perlman books. I haven't read Halsall's book, but I might now that I see it placed next to those two.

Bravo, good sir. Bravo.

I absolutely agree with everything you just said.

Nah man, snakes are cool. "Playing with Ruby" makes it sound like your eleven-year-old hired a whore, or perhaps a drag-queen.

I second the python recommendation. Have a look at this (free, available in dead tree format as well as online) book:

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

That would have been satisfactory.

The way I read things, if Stallman had asked for financial support, he would have got it. And no one on the Israeli side of things would even think to prevent him from speaking at whatever Palestinian venue that he might have lined up.

However, he just said "Sorry, I'm not coming". He needs to ask for something in order to get it.

Nursing homes?
Funeral houses?
Grave diggers?

They seem to be doing fine...

... WTF does RMS have to do with the kernel?

I get MSDNAA at the Technion (.il ... )

Visual Studio, Windows 7, Server, and so on...

Well, yes, you're right, the internet is at it's core a point-to-point protocol, but its patterns are not the same as telegraph.

Telegraph didn't have a storage mechanism, while the internet does. You couldn't use telegraph to do something as basic as a webpage or an FTP server - the cost of having a living person handling the requests was too high. Telegraph was basically used as a messaging system, like SMS but with less spam.

Another difference is the number of points of access. The internet scales much, much better than telegraph. Even 3rd world countries usually have some sort of access to the internet, at public libraries or such venues. It's also vastly cheaper than telegraph ever was.