My truename appears in the list of "Multicians". I still have my copy of The Design of the Multics Operating System.

One of the things that Multics did better than anything since was a feature called dynamic linking. In Multics, linking to a DLL was done via a symbolic reference resolved at runtime, rather than a reference to an ordinal (as in Windows). The Multics file system allowed you to have multiple names on the same file. The combination of those two features resulted in the ability to hot-plug DLLs. Here's how:
1. You have a program which wants to take a sine function. It's got a link to "fortran.lib:sin" (no, the Multics syntax for the entry point was different, but you get the idea).
2. The fortran guru decides he wants to upgrade the fortran library while your program is running.
3. When your program first invoked the sin() function, the symbolic link is resolved to the existing fortran.lib DLL and it's loaded into your pdd (process space).
4. The fortran guru adds the name "fortran.lib_bak" to the existing library file.
5. The fortran guru creates his library as "fortran.lib_new".
6. The fortran guru moves the name "fortran.lib" from the old library to the new one.
7. Immediately, user programs which have not already linked to the old DLL will now link to the new one as symbolic references are encountered and resolved.
8. The fortran guru removes the name "fortran.lib_new" from his new library, which has no effect except to free up that name for use in a future upgrade.
9. Eventually, all user programs which referenced the old library finish and the old library can be deleted. Everyone now uses the new library,

When I first learned about this, I thought is was really cool. 35 years later, I still do.

I have maintained for years that if you want to assess a society's technological level there are two fields you need to examine. The first -- and sadly, probably the most obvious -- is weaponry. But the second is music-making. No matter what the level of technology a society is capable of, the highest available tech seems to always wind up in their musical instruments. If you have a stick and a hollow log, you make a drum. If you can make a bow, you make a one-string guitar. If you can drill a hole in a piece of wood, you make a flute. If you can smelt brass, you make a horn. Or a gong.

One example: one of the first electronic musical instruments was the Theremin. It was invented when the ink on the patent for the vacuum tube was barely dry. Another example: one of the earliest computer programs played music.

Disclaimer: I am not an anthropologist. I'd be interested in knowing a counterexample, though.

He wrote an essay pointing out that the biggest problem with his three laws of robotics was that a robot might well have trouble defining "human". His test cases -- if I remember right; it was 40 years ago that I read the essay -- were (1) a baby [human but not competent to give a robot an order], (2) an adult with mechanical prosthetics [human only if you examine the right parts], (3) another robot and (4) a chimpanzee. The problem is a lot more complicated than the Three Laws makes it sound!

When the technology reaches the point where you can use a 3D printer to decorate a cake or make fancy chocolates by the dozen (hopefully, make both and other things besides) in a matter of minutes then a 3D printer will find space next to the coffee maker. At least in the sort of home where a gourmet kitchen would see daily use.

I built this kit in 1965. I'm still using it. It has operated flawlessly since the day I put it into service.

The heartbleed bug could inform you of that, perhaps.

Yup. Simple. It's the engineering that's not so simple. :)

...hope that I never have to learn how to mine coal. Despite what Heinlein said about specialization, I'm much better at writing code than at mining. (And yes, I did a little recreational mining a couple of decades ago when I was into mineral collecting as a hobby.)

...is the longer Martian day (sol). What will that extra 1/2 hour (approximately) do to a species evolved for a shorter day? I suspect this will be another source of stress, especially as "interplanetary" communications schedules will fall in and out of step with sleep schedule.

by Robert A. Heinlein postulated a solar cell that would emit light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.... The story came at it from the opposite direction -- a lighting panel that turned out to also work as a photovoltaic cell. Heinlein's story was published in 1940. Only took 3/4 of a century for engineering to catch up with science fiction.

But the goal of OLPC wasn't to teach programming but rather to provide a programmable platform that was good for teaching. As a contributor to the OLPC activities library, I'm a little sad to see the project die "not with a bang but a whimper". (My contribution was a set of four programs that taught the night sky.)

I started programming 45 years ago. Over the years, I've learned to write code in about 12 languages, six of them professionally. I coded in PL/1, Fortran, BASIC, lisp, Pascal, Ada, FORTH, C, C++, Delphi, Java, Python and a bunch of assembly and shell script languages. I admit that I find it harder to learn a new language nowadays but some of that is because the languages have become more complex. It's been about five years since I had to learn a new language (that one was Python), so I expect I'll be teaching myself something new soon -- and I'm 65. So, I guess I'd have to say you have no excuse not to study another language.

I was born in 1948, so I grew up in the era of the "space race". Back then -- at least in the suburban public school system I attended -- the system did emphasize academics for those who scored above average on the standardized tests. (Not that it prevented us nerds from being excluded from the social circles that courted the football jocks.) Science club, math club -- we had them. Local, regional, state and national science and math fairs were common and us over-achievers were expected to participate. AP science, math and English were offered. Yes, the system wasn't as PC as today. But most of the kids who graduated from high school could at least name all the planets in order of distance from the sun.

Except its those over-65-ers like myself who grew up in the glory days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo who are NASA's biggest fans. So your proposal would be self-defeating, I think.