For the exact same reason that you mentioned, however, another dude higher in the comments argues that even if the complete software is implemented in hardware, it's still an algorithm, and thus shouldn't be patentable. I guess it really is a political decision in the end.

whatever...

I agree with what you say, and I have respect towards your low-number UID. However:
You might want to cut the kids some slack now and then. Here's my own anecdote: When I was still a student, I once went to a Professor and asked him to have a look at my code, because I wanted it to run faster. I told him I have written an equation parser in Fortran. Instead, he tried to explain that this could not be done, while I could only insist that it could be done, since I had already done it. I had the code in a diskette, and he only had to take a look. Hell, he had wasted enough time arguing with me already. At the end he sent me to a grad student to take a look at my code, who was totally uninterested and just copied my files on his disk. I never heard of them since.
Now, my parser was definitely not optimum (that's why I was there in the first place) and I'm definitely not the best Fortran programmer. This is not my point. My point is: Treating people with arrogance is not the best barrier for minimizing your waste of time. Of course, my example is not an exact analogy: the professor was there to teach me (which he pretty straightforwardly refused to do); you are not there to teach newbies. Nevertheless, who says that you can't also, like Hawkins, have stages for reaching the top-notch gurus? Have a separate email list, dedicated to sieve the newbies out. The ones that make it though will be worth the effort.

I think Linux has too many applications, not too few. We have hundreds of distros because everyone feels that their distro is the best collection of applications and the best combination of UI/package manager/whatever. And we cannot change that, because it's just how the Linux ecosystem works.

We need to decide on a collection of applications and make them standard. But good luck with that...

What?! Now you demonstrated his point. Android is a phone OS, not a desktop OS. Get a grip.

This is why I program in Fortran. Who said anything about Java? A Fortran programmer won't touch an interpreted language with a 30-foot pole. Are you even replying to the correct post?
Now get outta my sight before I unleash the dogs!

A good programmer can write Fortran code in any language.

The OO paradigm has been supported since Fortran 90, albeit somewhat primitively. Dying? I finished writing my latest Fortran program last week!

Concerning backwards compatibility though, there are some features of Fortran 77 that have been deleted in the latest versions. Not anything that anyone will (or should, for that matter) miss, since I am talking about very archaic features here. I am sure that compilers will still support them though.

Also, kudos to the gfortran people for the good work on the compiler, if anyone is reading this. I have been keeping an eye on the progress and it was dramatic in the last years. Also, the g95 compiler looked dead and I thought that Andy gave up, but now I see an update made on the source in Jan 2013 after 2.5 years. Can someone share an insight?

It is nice to see that in this world of plenty (at least as far as system memory and CPU speed goes) some people find joy in efficiency; and they go so far as to pull something like that off, just for the fun of it. Needless to say, the dude that did this is a real programmer.

I guess it is a genuine Microsoft implementation then.

Although the Win8 start screen does such balls, I have learned to completely ignore such things. A long time ago, I wanted my menus well-organized, my HDD defragmented and my beer cold... Now, a lot of computer generations later, I figured that OEM crapware and decision-making GUI-designers are never going to let me have that, so I gave up, but I trained myself in completely ignoring their shit. I still like my beer cold though.

A soon as I got past the start screen and got into the desktop "mode" (and after some downloading and installing), I set up all the shortcuts of the stuff I needed on the desktop (Even a shortcut to "My Computer", because that is where I found the computer settings first. It took me a while to discover the popping-up crapware menu). Now I will never have to glance on the start screen again. It is just another thing that has to get out of the way. And I stopped storing my files in the designated Windows folders a long time ago, as soon as I discovered that they get infested with "random" files and folders. Keeping installations at bay got far too annoying. All my files are under C:\Stuff now.

It all went awry when the meaning of the verb "to sell" evolved from "ownership transfer" to "licensing".

Slightly off-topic note: In the company where I work for we got a written offer for one-year software licenses from the software provider. In the offer, it stated that the mentioned prices were for "leasing" the software. Our legal department went ape with this (due to the very specific legal issues involved in leasing, like interest rates etc.) and the two parties later decided that "rent" was a more exact term. Go figure...

Actually, the suffering makes the meat taste worse :

Actually the actual Liberator was a really crappy pistol to begin with.

But at least it was made of metal. And it still cost only a couple of bucks to produce.

Give me a link where I can upload my preprint on a Google server.