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Comment Re:COBOL: Why the hate? (Score 1) 270

I would not be surprised to learn that a large percentage of existing Cobol is one of the archaic dialects that cares about which column you put things into; further, that most of the users of said dialects have no interest in the expense and risk of modernizing their code to a less painful version of the spec.

Besides that, there's the sheer verbosity of the language. Writing out DIVIDE 20 BY 4 GIVING RESULT vs. x=20/4, for instance, is simply annoying.

Education

ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children 981

mpicpp sends this news from CNN: In swaths of Syria now controlled by ISIS, children can no longer study math or social studies. Sports are out of the question. And students will be banned from learning about elections and democracy. Instead, they'll be subjected to the teachings of the radical Islamist group. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished." ISIS revealed its new educational demands in fliers posted on billboards and on street poles. The Sunni militant group has captured a slew of Syrian and Iraqi cities in recent months as it tries to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, spanning Sunni parts of both countries. Books cannot include any reference to evolution. And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws." Update: 09/18 16:26 GMT by S : CNN has pulled the story over "concerns about the interpretation of the information provided." They promise to update it when they get the facts straight.
User Journal

Journal Journal: My foes list

If anyone cares, my foes list is made up largely of two groups:
1) Climate-change deniers, the sort for whom nothing will change their minds.
2) THE STATE IS ALWAYS WRONG AND EVIL fringe libertarians, ditto.

Comment Re:It's getting hotter still! (Score 1) 635

And you'd be factually wrong. There is such a thing as being so open-minded your brains fall out, and you're unwittingly demonstrating this with your false equivalence.

His "argument" about Al Gore was hardly nuanced, he's just giving the argumentum ad Goram cover because he happens to sympathize with the deniers, and that's enough in my book.

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