This would be on my short list as well.

Also add "I, 2, 3, Infinity" by George Gamow

Absolutely agree. I just use my remote machine as a device to connect to my at-work machines where all the work is actually done. No corporate data is ever stored on my laptop, just personal stuff in a few encrypted files.I occasionally tinker with code on my laptop but everything serious is done on my real servers.

Four years from now I'll be using a one year old machine. :-) Any developer that I'm paying good money to is worth a new computer every three years. Compared to salary and benefits the cost of hardware is minimal.

Earlier this year HP announced the end of the line for VMS. That was certainly connected with the Itanium retirement as well.

Well, I did walk up hill both ways to and from the high school! :o) Our house was on a hill and I walked through the valley about a mile and a half to the high school up on another hill. LOL

Bill

PS: I did program analog computers in college (you know, plugging in actual wires and turning knobs with the output on an oscilloscope), and also a PDP-8 that required using the front panel switches to bootstrap the loader program to read the paper tape. Can't say that "I liked" either of these but I sure learned a lot.

My high school was part of a pilot project for rural schools in Minnesota in 196x. We got boxes of pre-punched, numbered (in columns 73-80), FORTRAN statements and would assemble programs from them. The teacher would send the student programs down to the Univ. of Minn. via bus and we'd get the printouts back for the next week's class. It got me hooked for life.

Civil War had more American military deaths than WW2 by around 50%.

Hanford has nothing to do with nuclear power. It has everything to do with nuclear weapons.

Not unless they've got a contract that says so. Their authority stops at my router unless I've given them permission.

They can ask me to conduct my own testing or they can ask if they can test.

I'm not a clinic but banks have similar laws.

Absolutely agree with this. I accumulated things for over 25 years and have spent the last 10 slowly throwing things out. I'm a lot more selective now on what is actually worth the space in my house.

In 1986, Pacfic Northwest (National) Laboratory won an R&D 100 award for:

"Computer Aided Genetic Engineering/Genetic Engineering Machine (CAGE/GEM)—;Richard J. Douthart, James J. Thomas

CAGE/GEM is a software toolkit that can help researchers design genetic structures before performing expensive laboratory experiments. By using the system, scientists can analyze sequences from both a broad and specific viewpoint with integration of expert knowledge. They can isolate a genetic element in DNA sequence, then graphically manipulate the element to create and explore new genetic constructs."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC339405/figure/F1/ shows some screen shots.

It was written on Dec MicroVAX computers and was a complete GUI environment back when those were still rare. It could do all of the design and analysis work but there wasn't any technology to actually create the resulting physical constructs. It merely provided guidance to the laboratory folks doing gene sequencing and early genetic manipulation experiments. DOE installed the software at quite a few universities as part of some research projects.

I owned two Vegas. Both were fine cars. The basic thing was to never let the engine overheat. Part of this was keeping on top of oil and filter changes, etc.

Or maybe I was just lucky.

The real problem is that uneducated people get to vote too, but they might not understand the pros and cons of what they are voting for. A good, well rounded, basic education is required for a democracy to be successful in the long term. This certainly should include some mandatory science classes.

Good list. I'd add: Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens and Software Tools by Kernighan and Plauger

This!