For anyone wanting to see the original discussion of this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bohemian_Rhapsody/Archive_2#Analysis_by_Two_Music_Scholars

If you want to play with a free compiler, try OpenCOBOL at http://www.opencobol.org/.

There is a list of other free COBOL compilers at http://mainframewizard.com/content/free-cobol-compilers but some of them look pretty old.

True, but nobody tries breaking into a system by logging in ten thousand times a second to a single account. The recent well-publicised break-ins resulted from the hashed password file being publicly available, either stolen through a vulnerability or maliciously leaked. If the attackers have the hashed passwords they can try them at a rate of millions or billions of attempts per second for as long as they want.

I wrote this a while ago but I will continue to post it as long as stupid people exist: You Do Not Have A Facebook Page!. Facebook has a page on you.

I signed up to Facebook and occasionally update Facebook's page on me, I find the service quite useful for keeping in touch with people, but I am under no illusions as to why Facebook provides this service. Anyone who uses Facebook with anything they expect to keep private has seriously misunderstood their relationship with the company.

Enough of this namby-pamby nuclear rocket talk. What we need is Project Orion to be restarted. Imagine lifting oil-tanker sized craft from the ground into space using only a few hundred nuclear bombs, what could possibly go wrong?

Speaking of HTML5test, I just ran a before and after test with firefox 15 and firefox 16:

Firefox 15: 346 out of 500
Firefox 16: 363 out of 500
Chrome 22: 437 out of 500

I don't think we were taught anything about computers in class, but there was a computer programming club. We used PORTRAN, which is a cut-down version of FORTRAN - I think it stands for Port-a-punch FORTRAN. The cards were sent away to a computer a few hundred km away, and a syntax error listing came back by the following week. It wasn't exactly a productive environment, so we competed to see who could get the most different errors in a single program.

Nobody uses everything in C++, I estimate that most programmers only ever use 75% of the language. The problem is that everybody uses a different 75%. For instance, diamond inheritance can be a pain, but is occasionally unavoidable and I am glad it works. STL algorithms are the best part of C++, complex problems reduce down a few lines of code.

Your one example that is actually bloated is iostreams, which is slow and overkill for almost any program. I wish more C++ text books would ignore iostreams and spend more time on STL.

Facebook has reached the pinnacle of social networking - the only place to go now is downhill unless they change. They already have every user who wants a page, the only new users are young kids just getting online - not Facebook's target demographic. Also, they have just gone public which puts pressure on the company to make more money.

I predict Facebook will start to branch out into video and music more and more in an attempt to get more pages views - it must be galling for Facebook to see people sharing videos with YouTube advertising instead of Facebook's. They are going to have to be careful, users don't like change.

(One thing users don't want is a whole slew of different social networks. I am on Facebook and G+, but I would only use one if either gave me full control over who sees what. I think projects like Diaspora are always going to be niche ideas)

Far more countries than that involved. Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Kenya, Zambia, Mauritius and Madagascar will all have dishes too.

Bingo. Facebook is a reasonably good service, but all it doesn't take much to launch a competitor. Sooner or later another site will become the next Facebook and Facebook will become the next MySpace. Personally I think the biggest threat comes from mobile, all it would take is for a few of the mobile providers to get together and launch a service aimed at teenagers (who are not as invested in FaceBook) and in a few years FB is the old-persons network.

FaceBooks only saving grace is that the mobile providers all hate each other and couldn't provide an appealing service if their lives depended on it (which, somehow it doesn't - I've never worked that out).

Yes, but not for this reason.

Filmgoing Public

This goes for all social networks (including Slashdot) but I will use Facebook as an example:

You do not have a FaceBook page.

No you don't.

Facebook has a page on you, which you update for them for free. You are a product that Facebook produces for its customers. The customers of Facebook are the advertisers, not you. This is not necessarily a bad deal for you. You get to show people Facebook's page about you, and derive pleasure from interacting with Facebook's pages about your friends. All for free.

But don't get upset when Facebook decides to improve things for its customers, because they can (and should) put them first. Facebook owes you nothing.

Regulating social networks seems like an exercise in frustration. What counts as a social network? Does my blog count? Do I need to let users download all their comments in an "industry standard format"? Do MMO's count? Can I download my +5 firesword?

Sometimes I wish Slashdot would let me download my mod points in an open format and use them on another web site. I have some Facebook posts in mind that need down-modding.

That NASA link is 50 times as interesting as this lame story. Thanks.