The space race was never about that. It was a dick-measuring contest between two superpowers. Ambition and curiosity were good for the rousing speeches but not much else.

Not even if I put you over a barrel?

This reminds me of another great book (from which I learned most of my C): "The C Book" by Mike Banahan. It is out of print now, but it has been made freely available at http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book

I liked it a lot.

Ah. A temperature scale based on what's convenient in Iowa. Good choice.

... using the expertise of a bunch of German rocket scientists.

... thanks to the jet engine, invented by a Brit.

America's special talent seems to be taking inventions from others and making them fit for mass consumption(*). But I'm not so sure they're the great innovators you claim they are.

(*) A trend that was curiously reversed with the Internet and the World Wide Web.

That's half an inch, you insensitive clod.

Replace Code Complete with "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike (yes, that Kernighan. Yes, that Pike) and you've got something. You can keep Code Complete for when you can't sleep (IMHO, YMMV).

Realistically? None. But the alternative is that HP sticks the whole project on a tape, plasters it with copyright notices and lets is rot for ever more in a vault somewhere. So good for them for open sourcing it.

Oh, sure. First violate another country's airspace, then compound the error by sending in an airstrike to destroy the property you so carelessly lost. If another country did that to the US, there'd be hell to pay.

Honestly, it's no wonder the US has such a bad rep in some parts of the world. Maybe you shouldn't have been flying your precious drones over another country if you didn't want to lose them.

First of all, it's not a book. It's a PDF. Second of all, the Netherlands is a member body of ISO, so I have already paid for it through my taxes. I should be able to use the fruits of ISO without additional cost (or maybe some nominal fee). Third of all, an ISO standard has the status of a law: you'd better do it this way, or else. So they're telling me the law has changed, and then charging me 300 euros to find out precisely what the new law is. I believe that's called extortion.

No, that's "Vodka Fry". Different thing altogether.

For as long as you keep walking, I guess. As long as you produce a Joule each second, you're producing 1 Watt.

The potential energy in a gravitational field is m * g * h, so if you sink 5 mm with every step, you're producing 9.81 * 0.005 = 0.04905 Joule for every kg of body weight at each step. If you take p(ace) steps per second while walking, you're producing p * m * 0.04905 Joules per second, i.e. Watts, as long as you keep walking. So an 80 kg (~160 lbs) person who walks at 2 steps per second could theoretically (i.e. at 100% efficiency) produce 2 * 80 * 0.04905 = 7.8 Watts. So 2.1 Watts means a 30% efficiency. Doesn't seem unbelievable to me.

<Snort>Sure, that'll work</Snort>

If they had gone with the embedded length option we'd be sitting around bitching about how short-sighted it was to use just two bytes for the length. Including how Dennis Ritchie supposedly said "64K strings should be enough for anybody".

Then maybe not revoke, but "suspend pending an investigation". That would at least get the attention of the international press.