No problems with Telugu characters on Ubuntu and Windows for several years now. Apple is just now starting to support this language?

Surprised to see that the Slashdot review did not include a comparison of this book with The Code Book by Simon Singh (http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323).

Shoot..you outslashdotted me!! I thought about GATTACA almost instantly :). Scary. Can there be reasoned policy making and/or regulation on this before the invisible hand of the market moves rather rampantly in the direction of GATTACA??

As far as overcoming interruptions and context switches between programming tasks, you could take look at Tasktop.