This CIA (Culinary Institute of America) used to be in New Haven. Maybe this explains why so many Bulldogs became spooks.

Matlab is obviously designed by someone who hates computers and FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language.

Matlab was designed as a wrapper around library routines. Obviously you've never written in a modern Fortran. It has modern flow control, whole array operations, generic functions, user defined types, polymorphism and so on. AND a modern Fortran compile will still compile the dustiest decks from the early 60's.

Us old farts are trainable. I've forced myself to use Fortran 77, 90/95/2000/2003 to replace the FORTRAN I learned back in '62.
So keep off my lawn!

I do a lot of engineering software and a lot of that is in Fortran. A few years ago I migrated a system with 400 thousand lines of VAX-Fortran code to Linux, using g77. Recently I had to install this system in a new computer, running Ubuntu Lucid. To my dismay, I learned that Lucid doesn't have the g77 package anymore, the gcc compiler suite has been "upgraded" to gfortran. And gfortran does not support the VAX extensions that g77 did.

Luckily there's still a way to install g77 in Lucid using the Hardy repositories, but how long will this last?

Had the old engineers said, "OK, Fortran is dead, let's just keep a legacy compiler to run old code" everything would have been fine. But no, they insist on "improving" Fortran by putting C language features, e.g. pointers, into it. Why can't they just learn to program in C and let the old compilers do what they are good for, which is running legacy code?

I once signed a petition to retire Fortran [fortranstatement.com],

1. Horse puckey. Find a distribution that contains g77. Or compile g77 from source for your target platform. If you have maintained a 400 K LOC program then building g77 should be no problem.

2. gfortran goes out of its way to compile old g77 code.

3. Don't knock Fortran 90/95/2000/2003 etc because YOU can't write standard conforming code. Learn to use the tools properly instead of bitching about them. Modern Fortran gives you the facilities to replace almost all VAXisms. The only thing I know that will not convert well are VAX extensions that involve various RMS files. BTDT. If you are using keyed or ISAM files on the VAX, then you deserve to be hosed.

4. I don't care how Atlas is optimized. For me, having true multidimensional arrays indexed the way I want them brings me more optimization than C could ever do. Plus the "read only" code that C and C++ encourages creates horrors even worse than the oldest dusty program from FORTRAN IV days. Modules etc catch all sorts of errors that C/C++ compilers happily allow.

5. None of this justifies paying junior developers more, but your level of CRI does.

6. I was programming in Fortran long before you were born. So get off my lawn!

Operator: Can I help you?
Skype: YES, all of our peer-to-peer servers just went down. We have 23 million users offline right now.

Actually it's more like this:

Skype customer service. This is Peggy.....

The mark of the beast is 616.

If this is so, it explains a lot. 616 is the original area code for Western and Upper Michigan. This has now been split into 4 area codes, but 616 still covers Grand Rapids, Holland and Wyoming. If you want to look for the most extreme religious fundamentalists in Michigan, that's where they still are!

Now why did I get rid of my tricked out Apple 2+?

google totally sold out and lost their mojo.

I get link farm sites from the first page that SHOULD be weeded out

1. First, the idea that you could substitute some sort of "herd" mentality for the evaluation of web sites instead of actual ratings by real subject experts is bunk.

2. Google does not care. They crapped up net-news and don't care. 99+% of the usenet groups I still read are drug and counterfeit merchandise spam posted through google groups and/or g-mail accounts. You would think with all of the supposed AI and computing power available to them that it would be easy to filter out newsgroup spam. I new read net news using a news reader, but the g-mail spam is so overwhelming that even the news server's filters don't keep it out.

3. Even when I do read net news through google, the quality of ads on the right side of the page is abysmal.

4. As a business owner, I have voted with my wallet. I will NEVER do business with Google. I will never buy ad-words. I will never spend a dime on anything that even remotely smells like SEO.

Why do people say "the Ukraine" and "the Netherlands"? You don't say "the Russia" or "the Spain".

For the same reason people say "the Bronx" and Brooklyn.

"When the U.S. embargoed oil to Japan in July, 1941 it was almost a certainty that war would soon follow."

Only because of Japanese expansionist imperial policy and the invasion of Manchuria made it clear what Japanese goals were in the pacific. And their attack on Pearl Harbor later that year didnt help.

I was not trying to justify the actions of the Japanese at all. I once studied the diplomatic history of the events leading up to Pearl Harbor in geat detail. My point is that the US could have been better prepared for war.

My second point is that nations do go to war over such things, even if there are other factors involved.

"And then World War 3 was fought over dirt."

When the U.S. embargoed oil to Japan in July, 1941 it was almost a certainty that war would soon follow.

Just wait for lawyers to start patenting their particular model of "lawyering" and then the fun REALLY starts. :p

I can't wait for James Sokolove to get a business method patent.

But aren't these risks, for the most part, kind of obvious? It's sort of like saying your employer might exploit you for free labor from your unpaid internship. Duh!

How is this situation different from any other so called "talent" contest? Look at the dancers who did not win on "So You Think You Can Dance?". It's the same reason for the spread of "reality" TV. These shows are inexpensive to produce - just like game shows were.

I cringe every time I hear the word 'tweet'.

I cringe whenever Slashdot blows up whenever I try to post.

When I hear the word "Twitter" or "Tweet", on the other hand, the first word that comes to mind is "twat".

I cringe every time I hear the word 'tweet'.

I have to restrain myself from calling the "tweeters" twats.

The article in USA Today has a nice little gem in it: "The authors acknowledged possible inaccuracies in the survey from the fact that participants were asked to remember how much and on which ear they used their mobiles over the past decade. Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible."" Now, I don't know why, but something about this statement seems kind of important.

Using a survey after the fact is not a particularly reliable way to quantify exposure. It may also lead to "recall bias".

This type of study is usually better at finding possible risk factors rather than determining the relative effect of a particular factor.

If you want to read something alot more entertaining and you're happy with it being spread across multiple pages, read the pages at TV Tropes instead: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalComputer [tvtropes.org] It includes all the ten tropes in the list, plus many more, without obnoxious advertising.

It's much funnier, has exhaustive examples, and will ultimately ruin your life.

Yes, the linked website hits one of my favorite classic computer no-nos "slot machine passwords". Remember the movie "Wargames"? In it, the WOPR locks on to individual characters in the pasword, one at a time. Tension builds as 9 are guessed and finally all are guessed. Of course such a keyboard search would take almost no time at all in real life.