Saturday morning cartoons! This is the slashdot crowd, right?

Did they try to use something else besides parens? Growing up, to solve math problems, I had to fill in a square box, or place the answer above an underscore. Parens actually have meaning in mathematical notation, so perhaps that is the real source of confusion, and not the equal sign.

I briefly worked at a company which used a hand scanner in lieu of a badge. It was unwisely put between your desk and the restroom. It's no secret not everyone washes their hands after relieving themselves, so I avoided eating lunch at my desk unless I had a bottle of hand sanitizer with me.

Now imagine 4 year olds, touching everything and sucking their thumb, and then checking out a book.

Technologically, scanners work well enough. Implementation, however, is done by the foolish.
 

What alerted me was "womanizing." Clearly, the DECAF author doesn't know the slash dot audience. :P

Regardless, I've learned with proselytizers, the problem is more within them, than with the people they try to convert (through lying and manipulation and fighting, of course).

Did anyone else read this headline about an intergalactic people verifying Einstein's theories?

I knew a co-worker who programmed lotto machines. He later joined a major stock exchange. Last I heard, he was happily coding for a hedge fund. What all the employers were keen on were his Linux skills -- which were pretty sharp. Maybe working in the gambling industry didn't hurt him because gambling and "investing" are not too different. :)

You'll find him in "Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers. That book was published by Microsoft Press back in 1986.

Yes, the stats neglect to mention that safety is measured over miles. An airplane covers a lot more miles than a car, so of course it comes out safer on a per mile basis. A better metric would include take-offs and landings versus the number of trips one makes in a car.