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Aye. I've often wondered why there are no equivalents to Windows Script in the open source world.

What excites me about it in general is its usefulness for desktop applications. For example, the Klient IRC client uses it to support 6 separate languages with very little effort. If you want to do something similar for non-Windows platforms, you're pretty much stuck implementing a separate engine/interface for every single language yourself.

Once you have a basic architecture like that in place, you can add security controls to it (like PHP's deprecated "safe mode", or a pervasive version of Perl's taint system), and end up with something useful in the browser. Even non-web apps have uses for this sort of thing; PostgreSQL has similar needs and has ended up with "trusted" and "untrusted" language plugins.

Now Microsoft is working on the same thing for .NET, which is what the DLR is for. Their approach of using verifiable code in a VM sandbox is sound, and provides some much needed security. However, between Microsoft hate and NIH syndrome, I suspect the open source world will ignore the idea of DLR (even with Moonlight around), and we'll be yet again left without a decent common framework for scripting languages.

Which means getting such a thing in even the top 3 browsers will be impossible. Sigh.

There's a few good IRC clients for windows.

Klient also requires a registration fee, but its pretty nice.

Bersirc is a free client. It was licensed under the QPL, but I think that may change, it looks like they're dumping QT in favour of their own custom GUI toolkit.

Honestly, I don't understand why anyone would use X-Chat on Windows. The other clients look and feel much nicer.

What I'd really like is a viable alternative to X-Chat Aqua on OS X. Snac seemed OK, but, it's not free. So, my search continues...

Mozilla, powerful and free web browser/mail suite.
OpenOffice, powerful office suite.
Ad-Aware for keeping spyware (Gator etc) out.
BitTorrent for all your P2P needs.
ZomeAlarm a good firewall.
Avast! Antivirus good AV app, free for home use.
TextPad powerful and easy-to-use text editor.
SmartFTP powerful and free FTP client.

On top of these, I always install these non-free apps (non-development related):
Paint Shop Pro all the relevant functionality from Photoshop at a much better price.
Klient the best IRC client. Ever.

Some people have mentioned:
CygWin - a home, non-dev PC doesn't need it
VNC - a home, non-dev PC doesn't need it, and it has security issues
Dev-C++ - not needed on a home PC, it's for development.
NetHack - huh!?
Boingo - the article submitter didn't mention anything about having a WLAN card, so why would he need to find hotspots?
Winamp - redundant since Microsoft released WMP9, which I've found to be just as fast, more stable than WA3, and better at playing movies. Of course, YMMV, and some people prefer to stay away from MS stuff for ideological reasons.

Klient beats mIRC in functionality and in pretty much everything else. Only problem is, it's not free (mIRC isn't either, but Klient, unlike mIRC stops working after the trial period). www.klient.com - try it.

The cool thing about ActivePython is that it plugs into the Windows Script system.

This means anything using the Windows Script Host can use Python, including general system automation as well as things like IE and certain IRC clients.

Have you seen Klient?

Yes, this looks like the ideal addon for an IRC client. Especially Klient :)