Can't it just be "it was really neat down there and we found some awesome new bugs"? Does it always have to have implications for the origins of life on earth and other planets?" Stupid press release writers. Come'on - it's the frickin' Marriana Trench. You don't have to draw "deeper" implications.

Great questions and very well-written answers.

This seems to be an advert for some sort of sorry Windows admin tool. WTF?

Makes much more sense.

Also, why would anyone be reading Ender's Game to a bunch of 14 year olds? Can't they read it themselves?

Everyone just jumped on this bogus article because it fits the "oh, dear, censorship is prevalent" motif. Baloney.

I'd offer advice, but you mentioned "I've just spent the majority of my adult life coding, with no other major skills to fall back on". That's your problem. If a developer is not continually growing skills outside of just cutting code, they only be cutting code until the day they grow obsolete. Which is usually pretty quick.

Have you learned an industry? Learned how to manage a project? Developers can move into product development consultant or general management. But if you have 20 years experience doing the same thing over and over again...good luck.

A well written review from the poster. My shorter one: If you were to drop this book into a black hole, the information content of the universe would not change.

On the flipside, Michael Moore had to hire a handful of bodyguards after he released Fahrenheit 9/11.

Or how about Jesse Helms stating that Bill Clinton had "better bring a bodyguard" if he comes to North Carolina?

Parent true. Also, Enron was not a broker. Enron was a principal on transactions. Which Google will no doubt be.

Lesson learned: there is no market for proprietary CPUs on MPP supercomputers. It's gone. If Cray and SGI couldn't do it, how are a couple guys from DEC and Novell going to pull it off?
It's always sad when someone's dream fails, but come'on guys. You're pursuing a 15-years-ago market, just like DEC and Novell did when they died (okay, Novell exists, but it is irrelevant).

Supercomputers are commodity processors increasingly in commodity boxes running commodity open-source software. A supercomputer running slower processors is not going to cut it.