I also learned on the same model of Teletype as those famous guys.

It was Fall 1973 at MacDonald High School in the West Island, and we Grade 10s had access to a PSBGM [1] system over a 110 baud modem. Under watchful eye of Mr. Seddon, we programmed in BASIC and his own invention, MALASIM [2], with its own instruction set. You could also sign up for time after school, and the fights for the time slots were sometimes violent. (You know you're a geek when ..)

The first major code I actually saw written on this platform was a program that my Dad wrote, to see how the distribution of blood types changed over generations. He's an actuary, so being able to simulate something was fascinating for him. Conway's Game of Life (as first seen in the pages of Scientific American) was also fascinating to him.

Part of my early fascination in programming was reading through the entire BASIC manual, trying to understand all of the available syntax. Thus, when our assignment was to format our output, I used an IMAGE statement (PRINT USING ..), and was able to get very fine control for an invoicing assignment. Two of the four terms in Grade 11 I got perfect, but due to PSBGM's lame report card application, they'd only left two digits for marks, so it had to be recorded as a 99.

Good times.

1. Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal.
2. MAchine LAnguage SIMulator. It may have been MALASYM, I don't remember.

I have both Firefox and Chrome open in multiple desktops. Each window has 4-8 tabs open, except for this one which has just Slashdot, which I read during lunch. After I've caught up here, I'll move on to Google News, Perlmonks, and Feedly.org if I have time.

Either the site's slashdotted already (after twelve minutes, on a Sunday afternoon?), or it's The Most Boring Movie Ever Made.

Average ping time about 28ms. And I'm a Canadian, you insensitive clod!

This sounds a lot like I Crave TV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICraveTV). Only 13 years ago, and already ancient history. Interesting. Time moves quickly.

It seems stunning that the British military would go ahead with a purchase like this without any field trials, especially for something as critical as a 'bomb sniffer' -- lives depend on this piece of equipment to work properly.

Madness.

I suggest you go visit a local barbershop chapter and see if performing is what you'd like to do. Go visit http://www.barbershop.org/ to find a chapter near you with http://ebiz.barbershop.org/ebusiness/Public/ChapterProximitySearch2.aspx.

I sing with an awesome chorus, the Northern Lights ( http://www.northernlightschorus.com/ ). We've been ranked in the top five internationally for the last twelve years, but we're kinda fanatical about our singing. There are other groups near us that are less fanatical -- but all of us have fun. And it's fun for both sides of your brain!

My involvement with the hobby began when I got dragged out to a meeting by my brother almost twenty years ago. I had a great time then, and I continue to enjoy singing, fellowship, and performing on stage with my brothers. Try it -- you might just like it!

Musk was smart -- the logs don't lie, and they don't jibe with what the reporter said. Now, this was in print, in the new York Times -- I'd be fascinated to have seen the same story reported with in-car cameras. I have a funny feeling it would turn out differently.

And for Top Gear to film a bunch of people pushing the Tesla they were test-driving -- implying that it had run out of go, when in fact it still had some juice left -- that's just rotten. Entertaining TV, but crummy journalism, and cheap.