112377
submission
__aaclcg7560 writes:
The New York Times is reporting the death of John W. Backus, 82, creator of the FORTRAN programming language. From the article: 'Mr. Backus and his youthful team, then all in their 20s and 30s, devised a programming language that resembled a combination of English shorthand and algebra. Fortran, short for Formula Translator, was very similar to the algebraic formulas that scientists and engineers used in their daily work. With some training, they were no longer dependent on a programming priesthood to translate their science and engineering problems into a language a computer would understand.'
37742
submission
__aaclcg7560 writes:
The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that only one percent of web pages are sexually explict. From the article: 'A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Microsoft's giant Internet indices showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material. [...] The ACLU said the analysis, by Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, did not appear to substantially help the Department of Justice in its effort to prove that criminal penalties are necessary to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit information on the Internet.'
27876
submission
__aaclcg7560 writes:
The New York Times is reporting a federal investigation of the the Venezuelan owners of Smartmatic Corporation, a voting software company, and whether the anti-U.S. government is trying to influence the U.S. midterm elections. According to the article: 'Government officials familiar with the Smartmatic inquiry said they doubted that even if the Chávez government was some kind of secret partner in the company, it would try to influence elections in the United States. But some of them speculated that the purchase of Sequoia could help Smartmatic sell its products in Latin America and other developing countries, where safeguards against fraud are weaker.'
26762
submission
__aaclcg7560 writes:
Call me an old fart but I been trying to find a brand new manual typewriter at a reasonable price so I can fulfill my Hemingway fantasy of writing on a typewriter and drinking a shot between pages. (The MacBook is nice but falls a bit short in the fantasy department.) There seem to be only one model from two different vendors (the MS 25 from Olivetti and Royal). Does anyone know if there are other manual typewriters available?
7936
submission
__aaclcg7560 writes:
The BBC is reporting that the American Bluegills fish is being used as an early warning system for dangerous substances in the local water supply. From the article: 'A small number of fish are kept in tanks which are constantly filled with water from the municipal supply. The computerised system registers changes in the fishes' vital signs and sends an alert when something is wrong. Since 11 September 2001, the US government has taken the threat of attacks on water supplies seriously.'
