The SAP R/3 kernel is written in C. The application layer is written in ABAP and can be extended in ABAP or Java. So, the the claim with COBOL is BS.

From time to time we hear news about parents who do not want to get their children medically treated, even if they suffer of serious diseases. This is a human right, too, isn't it? The doctors in the hospital are all quacks, aren't they? I find the whole concept of parents determining childrens faith and beliefs questionable. Transporting values by giving a good example, ok. But forcing membership in a religion by dubbing the little lads before they even know what's going on? That's perverse.

I created a small shell tool for myself. I'm entering some characters and the tool performs a incremental search in a file containing login identifiers (e.g. kleinesRaedchen@slashdot.org). Then it asks for a master password. At its core the tool creates a login specific password like this:

PASSWD=`echo "${login}${masterpasswd}" | openssl dgst -ripemd160 -binary | openssl dgst -sha1 -binary | openssl base64 | head --bytes 8`

The password is stored in the KDE klipper for 20 seconds afterwards.