Well, we knew most of this same information in the 60's/70's. Not exactly news now, we knew that sperm "aged" and degraded.

More work happened in the 90's. http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/8/1251

Meanwhile, this article pretty well describes the reason that most slashdotters have (or will soon have) pattern baldness: http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/Consequences_of_over_masturbation_a589_f0.html

And to top that off, the blogger's whole blog post was off-target. He completely ignores that fact that we've been in a recession, especially the news industry. How are they going to come up with the huge investment capital to move their systems over to clouds at a time like this? Basically, the blogger is a troll.

The most annoying part is that some of the carriers, such as US Cellular, disable some of the handset features so that you have to use their costly services to, for example, share a photo. US Cellular provides good service in their areas of coverage, but I had phones from them over a number of years that blocked USB syncing. So even though I paid for some good phones, I could not do something so simple as use the Motorola desktop software to sync contact information with my email addressbook. US Cellular worked with Motorola to completely disable the ability to write data to the phones. I only found this out, of course, after I purchased the d*****d software. They did the same thing with Nokia phones, as well. So, I laughed hard when I saw US Cellular whining about phone models. If they carried the iPhone, by the time they got done locking it down, it would be equivalent to a Motorola RAZR.

You have a good argument. I had an advanced data structures course in college many years ago. We got 7 programming assignments over the semester, building on the previous ones. The teacher released a "working program" after each due date, so that you had a choice of building on his or on yours if you couldn't get your last one working. Except he was incredibly lazy. He only showed up for the lecture portions, talked a bit about some data structure and pointer handling, and then left.

This was a top University, so he only "taught" 3 classes and had 5 TAs to help him, and he mostly researched. We didn't get graded assignments back until after the semester was over. And he didn't publish "correct" output from the code in advance, so we were all left wondering whether what we did was what he was looking for in our results. I took to burying comments about him in my code. I got an A, and there were no marks on any of my printouts when I got them back. I honestly think he just looked at the final exams.

As will be the way in these kinds of things, he was awarded a "top teacher" award the following year.

Learn to read. This is the second time I had to note this for you. I said Fortran was one of the best. And I said, "No way I'd use Python for serious large data set numerical calculations." That's obviously a personal preference. I never said Python was bad at it. I really wish more /.'rs could read.

But then I have to install F2Py if it's even available. Look at the systems I might be using: an older Burroughs or Honeywell used for numeric calculations? CDC? Not every engineer has a pc with Python running on it. Fortran is available and installed in most engineering operations already.

I really just meant from Fortran 90 like the previous poster. 95 is really pretty minor in changes. 2003, yeah, big changes. How many systems are likely to have 2003 on them? I can usually find a Fortran 90 compiler freely available for lots of platforms, and lots of the companies I know that use it use 90 or 95 because they had it already for their older legacy hardware. Specifically, I prefer Gnu and its current production release (4.30) really isn't 2003 compliant yet. http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.0/gfortran/Standards.html#Standards

Granted. But it's still easier to write simple, basic Fortran code to solve a quick engineering problem and to use/incorporate some of the nice math libraries. If you're really good, you can wrap it all in C and includes to bring in Fortran libs, but why bother for an undergrad's first course? The student only has 16 weeks to learn the basics, while taking other classes. There is always opportunity for more advanced coursework. Plus, Fortran is readily available on lots of systems, new and old. Even C isn't available on every system in every organization where a new engineer could be employed. So start with the basics, and then advance.

I believe I stated that it was still "one of the best, fastest, most optimized" languages. I did not say in any way that it was "the best" but I did imply that it was a good one. I offered that as a response to the OP OP.

If you want citations, find your own. I only offer this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language) - note that Python is considered primarily a scripting language even by today's wiki authors. If you have an issue with that, correct wiki.

There are plenty of newer languages with better features. C and C++ are both in the same category, although you can argue that it's a bit more complicated to write your first C program than your first Fortran program if you're new to programming. C++ offers a few more challenges. Remember that we're talking about engineers here and not computer scientists. They don't all arrive at college with programming backgrounds.

Specious argument given the readability and additional expertise required to manipulate registers and stacks in Assembly.

google Fortran tutorial download

How new does the book need to be for the language standard when it hasn't changed much in 2 decades? It's a simple, easy to use tool for serious engineering.

Fortran is still one of the best, fastest, most optimized tools for number crunching. It's also very easy to write simple programs in it. No way I'd use Python for serious large data set numerical calculations.

Odd. Just the opposite for me. When I'm able to get to the network, I usually have a slashdot window open, and I feel my IQ drop.

all the CB (citizen's band) radio operators of the 70's that built or acquired linear amps and bumped their power up from the legal maximum of 10W to more than 100W. Many homes got invaded without warrants in those years. Most amplifiers made were cheap, and bled over into other frequency ranges, even at the IF level. I know of one CBer with a huge amp that the local church asked not to transmit on Sunday morning. His signal was so strong that 2 blocks away, it overdrove the church's PA system, and in the middle of the sermon the congregation would hear his transmissions at tremendous volume. "Yeah, meet you at the choke-n-puke good buddy!"

I've been in the tech business for 30 years. I can tell you this much - you're obviously going to get a lot of conflicting discussion here, but keep in mind that's because each of the respondents has different job goals.

Generally the master's pays off in the long run. It can get you an additional $20k/year initial salary, but it's more common to see around $5-10k. So you may or may not see an ROI in the first couple of years out of school, and that's a goal you'll have to consider. But you will see an ROI if all other things are equal, and it will make a bigger difference in your future, everything else being equal.

More importantly, it opens doors. Many jobs at the supervisory level require or highly prefer a post-grad degree. This does vary by region, so doubtless you'll get arguments to this. Public sector, such as government jobs (NASA, state and federal jobs, military civil service, and public sector colleges, for example) typically require master's degrees for higher level positions. Notice I said "typically." Some require Ph.D.s.

So the question is more one of what do you want to do with your life? If you'd like to be in management some day, you better your chances with higher degree. It's much easier to get the degree while you're still in the college routine, and it's much harder to fit it in later in life. I got mine right after my bachelor's and my wife got hers 20 years afterwards, even though we were in college together. It took me 1.5 years to complete, and it took her 5 years. Evening and weekend classes, much tougher when you have a job and kids. Plus, read back articles in /. and you will see that your brain develops and learns faster while you're still young.

Finally, getting the advanced degree will teach you things you won't learn quickly in the career field. I've had lots of young grads come to me with wonderful new things they had developed, which were really nothing new. How new can round-robin process scheduling be? I have to hand them a book and a reading assignment to show them that they're 40 years behind the times.