I know that nobody is looking at this two weeks later, but...

Why do you think that changing your password frequently would help? If the baddies get your password, the money's gone within a few minutes.

Software is not a product of nature. .... It must be written, you don't just discover it.

Go back and read PoIR's essay linked to above. He proves the exact opposite of what you just said (Goedel numbers, Turing equivalence, etc.).

Patent protection has promoted the free sharing of source code on a patentee's terms--which has fueled the explosive growth of open source software development.

The first part may arguably be true (although I don't believe so, since patentees never seem to actually reveal their patented source code). But the second part is the bullshit that the GP was referring to.

Hey, my WordPress hosting is on DreamHost. There's no way that will take less than 3 seonds per iteration. So I'm safe from your DOS. Oh, wait...

I heard a story once (no idea of the truth) that the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) used to be called the Vertical Assembly Building. But they got tired of dumb tourists asking "What's a vertical?".

It's ok - it's SimWitty. Good work Slashdot editors!

I've never heard of simwiddy and Google returns nothing except this article. Anybody???

That, and he probably wouldn't recognise it as beer...

I've just been having a discussion with our service people about something similar. I write software that interfaces to a number of third-party hardware devices. When I get an error code from one of these, I log it. The service people want the software to interpret the codes for them. So, for example, I get an error code that says "timeout". They want me to translate that into "check the comms cable between A and B, check the power supply at C, look at the LED at D and if it's green, replace E". And it's not even that simple, there are about a dozen other possible causes - but they're less likely.

The combinatorial aspect of it's bad enough, but you're always certain to miss possible causes. I've told them that they should have some kind of knowledge base that matches symptoms to solutions. That way, they can add to it as they find causes and solutions.

So, when your car says "fuel mixture rich", it's reporting what the sensors tell it - it's not attempting to diagnose the cause. If it was going to do that, it would need a zillion more sensors (that could all go wrong, and would raise the cost of the car). Be thankful you get the clue that you did and take it to someone who knows what their doing. Or diagnose it yourself.

I certainly hope that's not the Australian meaning of "root"!

Sorry - forget my above comment. I didn't read yours properly.