...The design of the Zumwalt solves that problem by using off-the-shelf hardware—mostly IBM blade servers running Red Hat Linux...
I actually can't think of a sequel he's done *except* for the Matrix series. He's notably turned down Constantine 2, Speed 2, a 3rd Bill & Ted movie...
You can't think of any sequels other than the Matrix series?!? I think you can. Here's a hint from your post: He turned down a 3rd Bill & Ted movie.
Come on..... You can do this.....
The defining characteristic of life is the fact that data has meaning to a it.
I'm guessing most biologists would disagree.
- Anything else?
Under what has been lost: $300 in purchase price.
Under what has been gained: PS Home, PS Store video rental/purchase, & Netflix.
I think you are mistaken regarding what most undergraduate science students actually do (they are not maintaining/upgrading old fortran libraries). Most of the high performance capability that undergrads need involves matrix computations, FFTs, convolution, etc., all of which are included in the python numpy/Numeric module (which is a wrapper around fortran libraries, so they're just as efficient). And since they'll likely spend as much time analyzing data as producing it, python + numpy + matplotlib is a perfectly suitable solution.
I'm not suggesting that fortran isn't of value to some scientists in some situations but many science students will never have to touch fortran code unless they're forced to take a class that teaches it. As you said: "They're being taught to program as a mere tool for the important stuff being taught." Which is why it makes sense that their intro language is one that is easy to learn, supports multiple programming paradigms, has efficient numerical libraries, has easy-to-use visualization tools, an interactive interpreter, and can be used as a general purpose programming language. And while I personally prefer python for a high level language, there are others that could serve the same purpose.
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol