A few thoughts come to mind:

1) I imagine the same thing could more or less be said about libraries. After all, the vast majority of books in a large library go unread at any given time

2) Eventually our current nation-states will grow old and die. The cultures that replace them might find it useful to destroy whatever archives that they can find, or it might happen by warfare or accident.

3) LOCKSS. Lot's Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. Too bad the Library of Alexandria didn't have a redundant offsite backup location.

sr

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

Remember when getting Slashdotted meant that *another* site had problems?

Your last place would have found greenbar printouts useful.

I've seen 3 or 4 attempts to make the nested logic correct and/or readable. The statement with the goto's was easy to understand. Immediately. I think it proves the point that sometimes goto's have a place, and actually may be a better solution.

Absolutely. It took me about 5 seconds to understand the snippet with the goto's. The one with brackets is just ugly, though indentation would have made it clearer and easier to match up the brackets (which of course, the OP may have done and /.'s editing tools failed to render). I imagine that a bracket mismatch could provide for some debugging hilarity, just as an errant goto. Both get the job done, though. As long as the goto logic is nice and tight, it can provide for both hard- and meat-ware efficiency.

Funny link. (warning, ads, of course).

sr

“The facts have a well-known liberal bias” Rob Corddry

One never forgets when munitions come their way.

I agree. I like Brian when he's off the cuff, or doing other stuff other than news; I find him funny, and often "smart" funny. When he does news, he talks in that slow...clear...Mr. Rodgers voice which bores the hell out of me.

I feel that the most effective gags were the ones where they actually showed video of talking heads. Just last night they had various commentators expressing their admiration for Jordan's king. One or more actually said that they wished Obama was more like him (a muslim king!? Really?). I imagine they could have been taken out of context, but sometimes the statement is the context.

Funny post. The replies, on the other hand, really flew off on a tangent.

sr

"There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."
Yogi Berra

Excellent post, sir and/or ma'am. You've reeled in three and counting...

Ok, tell the truth now: From just reading the headline, how many of you had interesting/disturbing/funny/twisted mental images of how one would test HIV with a smart phone?

For a long time I've had the ability to turn off ads for /. I left them on because I didn't mind helping them pay their bills. I could just ignore it if I wanted, or I'd occasionally click on some interesting bit of geekery.

Today an ad started auto-playing a vid, with audio. I've turned off the ads now.

I should probably go back to usenet. Threaded readers that work.

Interesting thought. It reminds me of quantum mechanics and probabilities. Perhaps teh Big Bang was just another iteration of rnd(God).

We had a drinking game. Whoever figured out the commercial first won. Everyone else had to take a drink. Great fun was had by all.