I'd argue that on the usual scales of internetiness, only 1.5 order of magnitude from Google is definitely close to close, and some would argue that it is even closer, perhaps even close. Especially given the fact that more effort is put into typical status updates than typical googling.

And this comes from someone who loathes Facebook as much as he loves Google.

Er ... "fort" would only be correct if it came from French and was specifically referring to a feminine word. But it was almost certainly imported from Italian (because it is a very common term in music, where Italian is the lingua franca), in which case "fortay" would be much closer to the origin. Even better would be "forteh".

Anyway, a sufficiently used pronunciation of any word in any language is correct, by definition. "Fortay" is now correct. Live with it.

As always, xkcd is way ahead of us all.

You obviously don't read Slashdot on a WXGA screen like I do. After a few indent levels in a popular thread, the margins are wide enough to easily accommodate Wiles' general proof of Fermat's last theorem.

Thank God we have enlightened ACs teaching scientists how to do things! I'm sure they never considered the points you raised.

To address your point: they do NOT assume that life needs oxygen. However, the presence of significant amounts of oxygen in a planetary atmosphere is a strong indicator of life. This is because the gas is so reactive that it gets removed from the atmosphere very quickly. The only reason we have oxygen in our air is because it is continuously put there by photosynthesis.

Naw, too messy.

On a side note, can someone tell me the best way to clean my monitor?

I think my mom is a typical Joe Sixpack computer user. She uses Firefox to access Gmail and read some newspapers. Chromium would be great if this was all she did. However, she also uses the computer to store and view her photos. Does Google seriously want us to upload all this data to the cloud? Several gigabytes every time you empty your camera or digital camcorder? What's Google's plan for multimedia?

Personally I think that with C-like syntax, Javascript-like garbage collection, closures and general simplicity, ridiculously straightforward concurrent programming constructs, a novel relaxed approach to Object Orientation and backing by Google, this will be a language to keep an eye on.

It almost certainly will be frozen over, so weather won't be a problem. But with a population of 352, I suppose lack of infrastructure could be a problem for having Winter Olympics in Hell.

The game may well be the most difficult to master of all games in history, but it is simultaneously one of the easiest to learn and to enjoy. Which actually does bode well for the language. If Go (language) is to C as Go (game) is to chess, then they nailed it.

But, as I just posted in another thread here, there are other problems with the naming.

Yeah, why couldn't they use unambiguous names like all other programming languages, like C, Java, Python and Ruby?

Sarcasm aside, I agree that the naming is unfortunate (although I love the Go Ogle debugger pun). The parent was probably referring to the common verb, but this will also make it much harder for Go players like myself to find books and stuff for the board game. This guy isn't happy either.

My ex-girlfriend is Norwegian. Once when I visited her in Norway I was treated to a traditional family dinner, consisting of pig's head on a plate - one head per person. Does that answer your question?

I can only imagine that Mr. and Mrs. McDonald were forbidden to use contraceptives and were *not* happy to have the baby. What other reason can there be for the cruelty in naming their son Donald?

This is right up there with the American soccer player in the 1994 World Cup called Tom Dooley ...

I take it "serendipity" means "shit".

Buzzkill.