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.

My actual physical, and trusty HP-48SX is still sitting on my desk doing calculations (including fully-programmed routines I wrote) for just over 20 years now, the last one yesterday. "Calculator" my eye, it has more horsepower than the Apple ][, Commodore etc. IIRC.

As a business traveler I avoid Hilton like the plague for its tacked on rates for everything. I just don't like feeling gypped even if I'm not paying (and sometimes I am, like for exercise room access). Even when the conference is at the Hilton I'll stay a mile away. There's usually plenty of business-class hotels that don't nickle-and-dime like this.

Last time I was booked into a Hilton for and there truly wasn't a choice, from the 8th floor I could pick up several free WiFis, and took pleasure in doing so.

Does Toyota work in metric or imperial? Because we might all be screwed.

Are you kidding? Out of all our games of chess I've only beaten him once... the rebels do great prosthetic arms by the way.