Car analogy alert: Why should a non-mechanic driver learn the basics of internal combustion and what the spark plug thingie does?

Agreed, I didn't know about that one!

Thank you very much for your extremely useful skills. I never would have guessed! If you think I haven't tried dozens of permutations of same and not constantly come up with hits based on stray letter 'R's, well... you haven't really done anything challenging with a search engine before. (I'm not talking about cases where you're trying to just get basic facts about R, but when you want to look up some arcane error messages etc. that the stray R's doom many searches).

Yeah, you think this is funny until you try to google any particular bit of specific info on 'R'.

And don't get me started on looking up using 'R' with 'c'. (actually, that one works much better than it used to).

Bwahaha!

1. I trust my "datestamps" (and yes, my father's too :) ) far more than I trust all the possible personal computers over the years that could have stamped them (i.e. before NTP was part of every modern personal OS). I mean, my various CMOS batteries lost charge at least a few times in the last 30 years.

2. Either is probably easily within the accuracy of this poll.

3. I just re-read the poll question *very* carefully. I have a folder of legal paperwork from the 1960s with a clear notary's stamp on them. ('get' requirements, indeed).

Why is it that new programmers think everything has to be electronic? I, too, have a magnetic strip calculator. I still have some strips. And on some, the date is written in nonfading ink on the strip. I mean, the date is actually on the underlying data. How does that fail to associate a "timestamp" with a program? Sheesh, those newfangled e-whatevers aren't even true "stamps".

And sometimes, a well-funded opponent who finds results politically inconvenient can paralyze the process by demanding the data constantly be defended against frivolous "challenges" and nonexistent "flaws".

Given the number of people reading the comments, odds are that someone would be able to say they predicted 3 of 4. It just happened to be you this time.

That's because the best-studied ones are the ones we either eat or compete with.

Actually, there's one on Boing Boing.

Sounds to me like a case of the Existential Blues.

I don't know about the GOM specifically, but models of oceanography of most regions around the U.S. have been under development, availability, testing, and use for quite a while, and substantial toolkits exist, so it's just a matter of putting some fluid of the right density in the right place and getting present starting conditions. The crunch is really getting the computer time to run the models which is what the new money addresses.

And yes, there's also a lot of graphical toolboxes so whipping together a quick display isn't B-movie territory (though using VB is contraindicated: Xwindows and fortran are preferred).

Well, then, that's a welcome relief from the current "you're surrounded by terrorists and child rapists panic Panic PANIC!!" news dystopia.

Nice try. But actually, think non-academic (though Ph.D. filled) biomedical-type private, staid, serious lab environment with scientists who don't go in for the overt "geek == games == internet == star wars posters" ethos. Not up on the internet geek memes. Generally older, wife, kids, watch sports/BBQ on the weekends, not "social rejects" at all. But as scientists they look at these cartoons and say "how true."

That said, I'll be the first to admit to the percentage of meme-driven XKCDs that aren't that funny to me. But being hit-or-miss is a sign of originality, not the obverse, when the hits are true hits.

My test is this. I work in a scientific establishment - not a super-geeky-web type place but an "old established science" type place. Over the last 2-5 years, "xkcd's on the door" have largely replaced the yellowing Far Sides... maybe about 1/4 of the doors around here are thus infected independent of each other.

On my own door is this and let me tell you I get more people just stopping to say how funny that is -old guys nearing retirement shaking with laughter and saying "how true" - than with any cartoon I've had up over the years.