When I was 12 or 13 (around the same time as above), I was told I was getting something "very special" for Christmas. I thought it was a drumset, and I was PSYCHED. Turns out it was a Sony CLIÉ.
Still though, it was pretty nice. I still remember trying to figure out how to develop games for it. My household didn't have the internet at the time and my access to the library was limited (we lived on a farm), so in the end I was just a 13 year old who had a machine with all of his classmates' names and birthdays organized on it.
The idea here though is that mobile devices will eventually become versatile enough to be used in these environments. My phone has an HDMI output and bluetooth capability, what, other than current usage patterns, is keeping Android/iOS from allowing you to plug in a monitor and hook up a keyboard to a phone? Hell, they are already doing it (albeit poorly): http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and...
The point is, I already carry around a phone in my pocket, and eventually, when I get into the office, I will hook it into my monitors/keyboard/mouse, and work away. The PC cannot keep up, and will eventually be replaced by this paradigm.
I'm skeptical. I don't see more than a tiny fraction of corporations allowing their employees connection to the corporate network with a personal device. And they're not going to give you something that easy to lose if it's a key to their data. Too many privacy and security headaches.
Then there's the question of computing power. Recent mobiles look powerful, but that's because you're comparing them to older mobiles and not to desktops/laptops. The MIPS you can squeeze into a mobile will always be constrained by heat, and you're just not going to get anything like the same snappy response you would from a dedicated machine.
I treat obfuscated code as a kind of puzzle. "Given a crazy string of seemingly random semicolons and numbers, can you discover what it does and how it works?" It's like a magic eye puzzle for a programmer.
Regardless of whether he was being a dick or not, the issue is still there. A helpful dick is still valuable, and banning him is really only hurting the project as a whole.
Most people don't tend to respond well to these types of complaints.
I used to work as customer service for a website and would constantly get sarcastic help requests. It made me hate them and I certainly didn't want to help them. In fact, I either ignored the ticket or just responded slowly as I handled tickets with more reasonable people.
The people saying this is a "great" ticket and wish more reports were given this way are full of it. You will very quickly get tired of it because you realize you are doing everything you can to help them and they really don't care enough to give you enough respect to speak with you as a human being in a conversation. Instead choosing to be sarcastic and insult your efforts to help.
I see this the other way around. I am thankful a huge bunch of volunteers spend many hours of their day creating software I use daily without having to pay for it. They don't deserve to be treated like this.
Still though, it was pretty nice. I still remember trying to figure out how to develop games for it. My household didn't have the internet at the time and my access to the library was limited (we lived on a farm), so in the end I was just a 13 year old who had a machine with all of his classmates' names and birthdays organized on it.
What a time to be alive.