Being a windows developer who dabbles in linux I accidentally smack ctrl+s a dozen times a day when vimming. I've only just recently got used to to recovery mechanism:
Ctrl+q to recover the terminal, a stiff drink to recover my nerves.
From a comment above, I think you'll be able to put
stty -ixon -ixoff
in your .profile (or .bashrc or whatever) and ctrl+s/q won't be a problem anymore.
