And you seemed to completely overlook the really unique aspect of the Occupy movement in that it was truly of international scale. You referred only to US aspects of it. It is still occupying in other countries, as well. When did that ever happen before?

You really do not know much about this topic.

This Basic4Android looks pretty slick. It is NOT putting Basic on an Android device. The development is done in an IDE on a Windows machine. The code of the app is written in what looks to me like Visual Basic. It is not the old BASIC of Bill Gates and Woz like we learned 30-40 years ago. The IDE then generates APK code to install on the Android device, and it runs there like other apps. If I were interested in ever doing development again, I might get it, but I am a better Java coder than VB anyway.

I think they have the same kind of security process at the departure points for El Al, no matter where they are. I have been to Israel 4 times, and each time experienced a much more effective-seeming security process than anywhere else I have travelled to/through. And 3 of my trips to Israel were before 9/11. Even flying British Air out of Heathrow one time was very rigorous -- they did not even post the gate for the flight, you had to ask an official. And you should have seen the ruckus in the gate area when an untended bag was discovered!

Going through Frankfurt one time was similar, and that was for a Lufthansa flight to Tel Aviv. The only way you could find the gate was to look for the uniformed soldier standing outside it with machine gun in hand. Then once inside, my luggage, both checked and carry-on were opened and searched by hand 3 times before getting on. And one had to point out your bag to the loaders as you walked through the tunnel to the plane. On arrival the plane was surrounded by a ring of armed soldiers with weapons and eyes pointed away from the plane. One felt protected getting off.

Another time I flew El Al out of JFK, and was grilled mercilessly by an Israeli security person before getting my boarding pass. They take it all very seriously, and they implement it well. Knowing the real danger their nation and planes are in, I could not complain.

The TFA says that TSA is doing positive bag matching. How is that done? I have experienced nothing in my travels in the US that I can identify as bag matching. Where in the process of disrobing and taking off my shoes does that happen?

And we won't talk about the ludicrous procedures that the US TSA imposes on foreign airport processes for US security theatre purposes.

I chuckled a bit to myself when this posting came up in the Yahoo blog reader with a Google ad for steel and aluminium trench-shoring solutions.

After complaints of sloppy inaccuracy over the DMCA meaning, I took a look at NZ. The writers seem to have it backwards about the "notice fee". As I remember the arguments at the time the law was passed, the rightsholders are charged BY the ISP a fee to help compensate for their work in determining the offender and the delivery of the notice. The text on the website says the rightsholders charge the ISP, which makes no sense at all.

I was quite perturbed when the act was passed "under urgency", which means debate and committee consideration of the bill are curtailed somewhat. There was really no "urgency" for the matter that I could detect.

Come on down to Nelson, New Zealand, and visit the Ernest Rutherford Birthplace memorial in Brightwater. It's a very interesting recognition for the man who is credited with discovering atomic nuclei. Afterwards you can enjoy some truly beautiful scenery, walks, and boating experiences in nearby National Parks.

These are interesting numbers, and yes, I verified them with my own calculator.

But it has been stated here that the race is fastest time over a fixed course, not a nose-nose competition between multiple vehicles. That makes the short difference of distance not very relevant.

The 1960s were when engineering and science in the US was being built up. Remember Sputnik happened in 1957, and the US suddenly woke up to being behind in science/math/engineering. The post-Sputnik reaction to rapidly build-up and enhance US technical capabilities happened mostly in the 60s. I saw all that happening, and had some advantage when my undergraduate classes were enhanced by government aid during that time. The decline you mention happened more in the 90s, I think.

That's the secret to a long career! You always have to keep learning and doing. I am retired now, turned 69 a couple of weeks ago. I took on my last job in 2004, when I was 61. Most of my co-workers at that company were in their 20s and 30s. In that job I was constantly learning new technological things, largely by talking to co-workers and by buying and reading lots of books, and by reading lots of code. Learned PERL and VXML and XSLT. I had learned Java in my previous job (from age 58), and designed and implemented a plug-in for Eclipse. Since retiring in 2006, I have dabbled a bit still with Eclipse, and helped some local activists build a website. Learned and used PHP (why do /.'ers badmouth PHP so?) to do it.

If you love doing it, keep stoking the fires and shovel in all the learning you can. You do not have to be over the hill at 40.

As for what to tell young people about CS: I found that all the things I knew about CS (self-taught) were enriching to my thought processes, and discrete mathematics often gave ideas for programming solutions.

The one consistent answer I have always given to any student who asked me "what should I study?" is "Learn to write clearly". After all, your legacy will be the writings you leave behind.

I believe I have shared before on /. my story about battling a production system that automatically restarted itself every midnight and had an O(n^2) process embedded in the startup sequence (no, I did not put it there) which worked against an ever-increasing set of data. Eventually the startup time was clearly headed to become 24 hours+. CS knowledge certainly helped solve that one, though it took several all-nighters to do.

I have to agree. I have used Skype for years, mainly because of its what other people use. I find it actually works very poorly, dropping calls at random in every session. Oops, start again!

I know there are millions and millions of Skype users who use it for video calling all the time. My experience, however, is that video calling with Skype just never works. I have been through several different cameras on several different computers over the years, and I always use Skype with the camera turned off. If I turn it on, within seconds the call will be dropped, dead. For me, it just does not work.

6 years ago I was working on a project where I had to use the Skype Windows API to build an interface to Skype from another app. I found that Skype had the lousiest developer support mechanisms of any company I had ever experienced. Microsoft should be able to do something about that, I hope.

The Civil Rights act of 1964 was put in place by a Democratic administration. Kennedy and Johnson were Democrats, not Republicans. Or else your accent prevents me from understanding what the crap you are talking about.

Wow, you really have trouble with 19th century dates.

If he was born in 1791 and the work was done in the 1880s, he was an old man with a lot of stamina. I did not see 1880 anywhere in the article, but there are many other sources which put the plans for the Analytical Engine in 1837, a much more reasonable date for someone born in 1791.

I, too, live in NZ. When the new law was being put in place earlier this year, I read the bill itself, watched much of the televised debate, and have read numerous commentaries since -- and I still do not quite know what the proscribed behavior is. It is not spelled out in the bill, but every discussion seems to focus on torrent. The parliamentarians were apparently briefed on torrenting, and little or nothing else. It would seem that downloading copyrighted material via html or ftp is perhaps OK. But we know that torrent is used to distribute many files that are not violating copyright by doing so. Will we get hit for that?

And the law as written does not impose many requirements on the "copyright owner" to prove they legally are entitled to redress.

Back in olden times, before cards were common, it was very normal for banks to charge a fee for each check paid, as well as often a fee to buy the blank checks, too.