It's just a glitch in the Matrix.

You can still compile and run FORTRAN programs--in fact, if you run Linux, you might have a FORTRAN compiler installed and not know it (I'm in Windows, so I can't see if I do right now).

Hmm.....let's see:

[rgenter@at41 rgenter]$ f77 --version
GNU Fortran (GCC 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU Fortran comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute copies of GNU Fortran
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING
or type the command `info -f g77 Copying'.
[rgenter@at41 rgenter]$

Yup. FORTRAN, check. :-)

I did. I make less money, 75K as opposed to 120K, but I get more time to enjoy my life.
after 25 years, I was real tired of pointless 60 hour weeks and day long meetings.

You really don't understand people. I pity someone that places all value someone could possible have on their salary.

I dont think he meant that all software used by the government must be built by the government coding office, but rather that all software created for government should come from the theoretical government coding office. If that is what he meant, it makes sense to me. Most shops wouldnt let the marketing department, for instance, hire a group of programmers to build some software for them without at least involving IT, and really most shops would require that the software be created by developers in the IT department. Having programmers or contractors working for every government agency imaginable, reporting to people who dont specialize in managing software development, is silly.

This is why any serious test gives you probabilities and not yes/no answers. Of course any scientist is aware that most diseases are not linked to a single gene that acts as an on-off switch and that in most cases a cluster of multiple genes might influence the susceptibility for certain diseases, which, then is further modulated by environmental factors. You are perfectly right in that this has no place in the drugstore - even if it gives results in the form of possibilities, this will only instill unjustified panic in people who get told that they have an increased probability to come down with, say, colon cancer, but who have no idea what this actually means.

It isn't a matter of making enough software. Nobody is suggesting that the government code up five different word processing packages and sell them to the highest bidder. It's about knowing that the software running our essential government functions is reliable.

No it isn't. It's a tool that lets people get their jobs done.

Depends on what fails.

If the word processor on some senator's desktop dies, I doubt if anyone is terribly inconvenienced.

If something big and important breaks at the IRS, it may very well be a very big problem.

Software used for essential functions of the federal government probably shouldn't be off-the-shelf. It probably should be somehow verified or authenticated. It might be a very good idea to bring the development of that software in-house, rather than to outsource it. Because if that software fails badly enough, it can render those essential functions essentially disabled.

Why bother flying a plane into a building if you can do as much, if not more, by simply breaking a bit of software?

You don't *want* to blow the satellite to bits because then you have a million little destructive satellites to track instead of one big one. The 2008 situation was a special case: the satellite was already falling back to earth, so all the little bits would burn up in the atmosphere.

Galaxy 15 was in geostationary orbit and is still at roughly that distance. The space shuttle can't reach geostationary orbit; it's too far away and the shuttle isn't built for it. When the shuttle deployed similar satellites, it released them in much lower orbits and they used a combination of small fuel burns and several months of waiting to reach the much higher geostationary orbits.

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think that the number of people already on facebook is definitely an obstacle, but just look at its own history. You just need to create momentum, which is difficult to do but not impossible. When I first joined facebook, hardly anyone I knew outside of one specific circle of friends were on it. But I would tell my other friends about it, and eventually they'd try it out, and presumably do the same to others. I don't doubt it would change, but I doubt it would change like facebook did, at least in regards to privacy. The set-up alone would make that seem like a non-starter. All facebook needed to do was change its TOS. That doesn't seem like it'd work here. What I think their biggest challenge is going to be is to make it as easy to use/join as the more centralized social networks. Anything that starts out by saying "allows you to set up your own node" is going to turn off a vast majority of people.

You're right; I'd forgotten (it's been a few lifetimes). From dmesg:

[some stuff snipped...]
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 448.980 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 894.56 BogoMIPS
Memory: 253148k/262144k available (1340k kernel code, 6548k reserved, 999k data,
  128k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Pentium III (Katmai) stepping 03
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
[more stuff snipped]

I think it replaced my previous system, which was a 200MHz Pentium Pro, and that's where I got the old MHz from...no wonder this system seems so fast ;-).

That is fair enough. But, what happens when the patent holder isn't the same entity as the one that sold you the product?

What if the patent wasn't available to be read (ie. unknown, and still sitting in the 2 year processing cycle at the patent office)?

Now, both they guy that sold you the device and you are infringing the patent. The patent holder has legal recourse (which is the purpose behind the whole patent system) to stop all parties from infringing on their patented process.

Note: this only applies to process patents that describe a method that just happens to be implemented by a device. Likewise, it probably doesn't apply to a patent for direct physical attributes of the device itself. ie. what the device does versus what the device is.

Why should behavioral decisions become protected with special legislation?

I am sorry but those "academics" allowed themselves to become political and the consequences are they now get treated like politicians.

No matter if you think the climate change theories have merit or if you are a "denier" you must admit there has been a great deal of poor scientific practices and fraud where climate change research has been concerned. Its provable that lots of data is coming from stations to close to man made radiators by standards set and then ignored by the same researchers. Some of the climate-gate allegations were true; even though most of the worst were not; and the hockey stick theory was shown to be total bunk and the people who put it forward knew it.

The scientists and academics allowed themselves to become political; and now the existing body politic no longer sees them as off limits and will subject them to their rules. Welcome to the dark ages 2.0 regardless of who brought it on.

The problem with these schemes is that managers can manipulate events to keep them off the books until bonuses are dispersed... in a way that could seem reasonable.

Fresh out of college, I had a friend who quit a job as an accountant at the local instance of a fortune 500 company because of exactly these kinds of shenanigans. The managers and accountants were all "in" on it, but not explicitly. They would just talk about when the proper time was to put things on the books. It happened to work out to maximize bonuses, shaft certain people, and displace blame. My friend thought it was unethical. Oh, to be young and idealistic again!

I have a 14-year-old Dell tower with a 200 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB of RAM and a 100GB HD (that I added much later, obviously). I use it as my home CVS, web and database server. Running Linux, of course.

I don't think that's true at all. You could follow Lost perfectly well simply by watching it and paying attention.

Of course you get more from it by seeing what other people noticed - just like anything else with any depth at all.