Watching a dropped ball was a historical way of setting a marine chronometer up and until the advent of radio signals. Pre 1920 watching a dropping ball was essential tech.

from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer

It was common for ships at the time to observe a time ball, such as the one at Greenwich, to check their chronometers before departing on a long voyage. Every day, ships would anchor briefly in the River Thames at Greenwich, waiting for the ball at the observatory to drop at precisely 1pm.

But goofing off by who? Perhaps by those who are raising the SEX issues... could be...

These people are going to be because it is politically popular to use this issue to raise money and support based on the hot button issue of SEX and probably because SEX beats GREED in a head to head competition. So an issue such as those "GREEDY people at Goldman" will likely be displaced by "All that SEX at the SEC". The Devils Casino is a look at internal culture at Lehman Brothers in reputed to combine GREED and SEX so we need to through SEX at the SEC to remain "fair and balanced" .

I think the real big issues here are Systemic Risk, To Big to Fail and undoing of Glass-Steagall there should be a debate about those types of issues. Remember The Republicans claimed at the time that Bill Clintons attempt at an attack on Bin Laden was just an attempt to divert attention from the Lewinsky Scandal sex scandal. This is playing politics on the short side as seen after Sept 11, 2001.

Beware of the SEX card

Just wait a dumber one is on the way!

This is SLASHDOT! Agreement is futile!

Actually you were the closest to my thoughts as I read down the thread. The right way is code AND optimize with the least amount of resources, that is if you are paying programmers to do a job. There are trade off in most choices including maintenance and the cost of keeping brains who know how your system is coded which is a lot higher for keeping asm updated.

Unless I can find a expressive asm routine or a real need to cut processor cycles C is preferred IMHO. I have coded and debugged at "switch panels" we have higher level languages is because of the labor involved with direct machine interaction.

And not enough people or companies do it the right way, they just pay and waste programming brains, and because of this program language wars will just go on and on. Pointless because the method of code,test, measure and optimize is the economic/engineers way to work.

php v perl v C v asm is a waste of time.... oh, I forgot this is SLASHDOT!

Test how it runs then optimize the most used sections and repeat until you have the best results you can afford.
Don't waste time avoid pieces of code that don't matter find out the most used sections by testing, optimize those portions.
Perhaps this is how it should be done in the real world perhaps this what Facebook is doing. Who cares what management thinks we are the coders of slashdot...

resistance is futile or V/I ?

I looked at specs for a new data center last week and the cost of electricity for the servers is followed closely by the cost for electricity to run the HVAC equipment. In a few more years it is likely the will become HVAC the major cost. So from a cost point of view the "lock in" is the HVAC equipment will become the major problem. This type of system will start to look real attractive and if we can get good leak detection within the server cabinet most of the problems will be manageable.

When concrete sets it shrinks and tends to crack, most concrete slabs will crack, joints are often placed by cutting with a saw to control where the cracks should be but this is not always perfect to control. I also believe that the minerals in the concrete will attack the copper.

I lived in a house with 70 year old plumbing and leaks did happen. I would consider using PEX or placing copper underneath a drywall section you still need to use nail guard which are metal strips that protect the pipes from nails driven with hammers or drywall screws....

I think this comment profoundly restates this entire threads argument. The construction industry suffers from what would be called in the software industry level 1 companies. Most for profit construction companies have adopted nail guns over two decades ago. Nail guns are clearly more productive and level 1 companies understand this when they see this. But this isn't really the point most construction delays and costs are associated with management of the job as a whole and getting the right pieces from the suppliers ( and checking an reordering them if incorrect) and knowing that the specs will chance of that cost saving material has required you to redo work "completed" a month ago.

Companies have legacy code in FORTRAN and COBOL and few new programmers fluent in either, this makes the legacy costs even higher. Sure rewrite it all in the newest language is the programmers dream but it will never happen. The newest nailgun makes little difference to the companies with these legacy problems and programmer call for call these new languages. Let em starve it was those guys who got us these legacy problems in the first place is the corporate attitude.

FORTRAN IV was old when I learned it in 1975 a semester early so I could breeze through the spring term, I bought the textbook and went down to the computer center and punched the cards, and typed on the terminals like any good hacker to be. It was easy for me I had studied machine language in 4th grade from a book I purchased, computer are just dumb machines doing step by step stuff these languages just translate one set of instructions to another...

FORTRAN is worth teaching as was pascal and C and java and lisp and PERL.

Language wars are a waste of time.

State Courts sometimes have a different take on the constitution. IANAL, but here in Pennsylvania the State Appeals courts don't consider themselves bound by rulings of the Federal Courts only by the US Supreme Court. After all the State Courts here are older than the US Court...

When you read some of the background material on this (http://www.banthebomb.org/newbombs/fogbank%20material.doc) you find:

Fogbank is like part of the "interstage" between the fission primary and the thermonuclear secondary. Design contraints for the W76 make the use of exotic aerogels such as Fogbank necessary. The need to recycle and refurbish the warheads past their design lifetime require use to deal these materials again and again.

Fogbank was likely only produced at one place the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge TN.

Fogbank was produced at Building 9404-11 from the mid '70 to 1989. The Building 9404-11 was decomissioned and a new "Purification Facility" at building 9420-1 was finally constructed from 2003 until 2006.

The need to produce more Fogbank was likely found relative to the W76 warhead in 1996 to 1999 review when the life extension of the W76 was deemed the thing to do.

There are those who would like the production of a reliable replacement weapon (RRW) which would (or could) bypass the need for Fogbank.

The nuclear genie can't be put back in the bottle and these difficult decisions will continue for decades. The nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and who knows where else will just continue the problems.

In contrast we don't operate Nike missle batteries anymore with acceptable US civilian casualty rates of 25% in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphi, Pittsburgh....