Well hardware floating point sure sounds like something that could be useful

Well, it depends on what you are trying to do. Hardware FPU is obviously faster, but then 0.2+0.2+0.2+0.2+0.2 is not equal to 1.0 and this baffles people (even if absolutely correct if you go by IEEE specification).

Wild guess: Prizm uses it in assembly programs do draw graphs and such, but not in BASIC (to not confuse people).

But with the interrupts masked, what could interfer?

Most probable cause is caches. Read this - does it look like what you are seeing?

It looks evil.

What do you expect from language named after eight circle of hell?

I don't think I'll ever touch that language...

I think you are missing the point. Nobody uses Malbolge (or Brainfuck, for that matter) for "real" programming. They exist to show that questions like "what can pointers do that variables can't?" are just incorrect. The answer is always the same: "nothing". You can rewrite any program in Brainfuck and/or Malbolge - and it'll do the same thing still. All constructs which exist in many languages are always about convenience and [sometimes] efficiency, not about pure implementability.

As Joel wrote in this article "understanding pointers in C is not a skill, it's an aptitude", but it does not mean you can avoid them if you are not using C. There are tasks which are easy to implement with pointers and hard without them - and you can write them in any sane or insane language - including TI-Basic or Malbolge.

Not sure how many will find this information useful, but... here goes: for the next three (four?) days you can grab C++ Beginner's Guide for free. Looks like decent C++ tutorial to me, although I had no time to study it in details.

The Mono website does not do a good job of explaining how I can use Mono to run a VB.net application on Macintosh and Linux.  Can anyone enlighten me?

I never used Visual Basic so it's hard for me to see what's wrong <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/VisualBasic">with explanation</a>. Perhaps you can explain what you tried to do and what happened?

As for getting less viruses on Opera I guess it could be because fewer people use it so virus creators won't bother as much. I may be wrong, though. Was it that reason why Mac OS got so few viruses compared to Windows?

Well, it was. Before MacOS X security in MacOS was even worse then in Windows - yet it had less malware. MacOS X raised the bar so today it makes even less sense to try to write something for Mac. The popularity and percentage of vulnerabile systems are meaningless by itself: malware authors are attracted by product of these two measures. Because this is expected value (mathematical term) of "fresh meat" for buildbots.

Actually the most popular vector of attack is not even browser! It's Java plugin! It does not auto-update (well, it offers to do that but does not auto-update by itself), it often comes preinstalled but rarely is used (often people forget they even have it installed), so if you have out-of-date Java plugin then it does not matter what kind of browser you are using and how secure that browser is. Then there are three contenders for the next position: IE6, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader (AKA Acrobat Reader) - and only after that come other browsers. IE6 is less secure then Flash or Reader but it becomes increasingly less common, too, so it's probably number three or four by now, but real disaster are Flash and Reader: many sites can not be used without them so you can not just disable them like you can do with Java, they are supplied by just one vendor, so you can not switch to other implementation (well, there are some Reader replacements - but they have compatibility ptoblems... there are nothing for Flash). That's why recent versions of Chrome include Flash and PDF plugins: they can not make them secure like the rest of browser, but they at least can keep them up-to-date!

However, I can almost believe that IE is safer on Windows, since it is connected to Windows itself, HOWEVER, this can also make it more easier for hackers to get to the OS

This is true for IE7 and below. And they are security disasters. IE8 is not tightly tied to an OS... that's why it's significantly more secure - but much slower as well.

Read this. Note that only Chrome was "left standing", but also "Neither the iPhone exploit nor the IE8 exploit managed to escape the OS-supplied sandboxes that protect these platforms. Without escaping the sandboxes, the impact that flaws can have is reduced, preventing, for example, writing to hard disk (and hence, preventing installation of malware)."

So yes, IE8 is more secure - this is not only Microsoft's boasting. But "the most secure browser on the market"? No, for now it's Chrome. Will the IE9 be able to retake this crown? Who knows.