That's good, right?

Can someone explain to me why all these program manpage references have e.g. "(1)" after them?

It's the manpage section. Section 1 is general commands, for example, while section 3 is library calls. Thus, if you want to see the man page for the printf command, you can say "man 1 printf", while if you want to see the man page for the printf system call, you can say "man 3 printf".

I might start using ./ a lot more now.

I suppose you could say you learned about ./ on /.

How exactly is 1500-15000 worth of equipment 'hobbyists'? /blockquote

I can think of several hobbies that can rack up those kinds of costs. Flying model airplanes leaps to mind.

Great Wall of China... Mongols. I rest my case.

Yeah, that worked real well.

It's not just branching. You also run into difficulties when a following instruction needs to use the results of the precending one.

So what was C written in?

C. At the beginning of the tool chain, there'll be a bootstrap compiler written in assembler, but full production C compilers are written in C.

"Secular decline" is sometimes used to describe a long-term trend of overall decline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

How can express the movement of the north pole in terms of north or south, given that it is the pole itself that defines those terms?

How does Bikini Atoll show how to remove an island? It's still there. It may show you how to *evacuate* an island and make it uninhabitable, but that's not the same thing.

I go running on the side of the road a lot and I pay careful attention to hear cars come up behind me

Actually, if you're running on the side of a road without a sidewalk, you're supposed run on the left side of the road so you can *see* the oncoming traffic.

Nuts & Volts is still around, too.

Dealers serve a purpose. They need a reasonable profit.

If they serve a purpose, they deserve a reasonable profit. For the life of me, I cannot see what that purpose is. Perhaps you can enlighten us.

"Living History". Japan invaders were thrown out of China some *75 years ago*. Not too many people left who have personal memories of it, any more.

I likes to go swimmin with bow legged wimmin.