Classic Atari 2600 game Yar's Revenge does something similar -- when you beat the bad guy on any given level, the screen explodes with what looks like random static, but is actually the program code for the game represented as a bitmap.

Um, so: Curiosity? Multiple orders of magnitude more sophisticated hardware. Not to mention we are still -- simultaneously -- running Opportunity! More competition in space is a good thing for everyone, though, so long as we're not completely redundant in our efforts.

The programmer appears to be confusing the 'eq' and '==' operators; the 'eq' operator in Perl is used for string comparison, while == is used for numerical comparison. The result of using '==' on two strings, e.g. "M" == "F" will always be true, in the sense that 0 == 0. The 'eq' operator *can* be used to test whether 1 == 1, but will report that "1.0" does not equal "1".

Example:

$ perl -e 'print "M" == "F", "\n";'
1

Recommend developing a battery of tests using Test::More to verify the author's assumptions.

Not to mention that we haven't developed faster-than-light communications yet. Maybe there's a party line on subspace/ansible/quantum-radio where alien scientists from all over the galaxy talk shop while trying to level-up their weird non-pointy-eared fantasy characters...

I've had a Mi-Fi (dedicated 3G Wi-Fi access point) from Verizon since the summer. Works great (trouble-free video conferencing from rural Virginia!), but there are consistently charges for SMS messages "received" -- which are not from anyone I know -- given that there's no way to retrieve them, seems kinda disingenuous.

I turn my computer off every night. It's good for it. It's good for the planet. Of course, all my code editing sessions are running inside screen on a server downstairs that we never turn off, so arguably I'm the schmuck wasting power using two computers all day and leaving one of them on all night.

I'm sorry that today isn't April 1st. I remember signing a petition to get the Sci-Fi channel carried by our local cable operator way back in the early 1990s. It's sad that they don't want to stick with us geeks who helped get them started.

Abandoning their niche isn't the way to gain ground, they should be bettering their niche instead. With the budget they currently spend on the CG equivalent of rubber monster movies, they could hire real SF writers to create high-quality Science Fiction -- less frequently than the crap, sure, but it would build an audience. Imagine two BSG series and no weekly monster movie. I think that's a win-win.

Seems like it's too late now. The old Sci-Fi is dead. Long live the new Sci-Fi (pass the petition, willya?).

Yup. I did this for my family when they first hooked their Windows PCs up to a persistent network; they don't have a password on the admin account, but they all know not to run programs there; they only use it if they can't install an app under their user accounts. It's been over a decade now, and no virus or malware issues. The only really annoying thing was that they started with XP home, and I had to configure their file perms with cacls and its bevy of ugly switches. *barf*

Jamie Zawinsky talked about the dirt under the shiny Yelp logo recently: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html

I do think Stephenson "gets it" but Cryptonomicon is less technically impressive after you notice how much of it was a fictionalization of David Kahn's excellent non-fiction work, The Codebreakers. Read them one after the other and you'll see what I mean.

Stephenson's one of my favorite authors; I've felt a compulsion to read passages from his books aloud to friends and family on many occasions. He has some bad habits, like the way his last chapters tend to splice all the loose ends together (no matter how insignificant) in the last chapter in a usually unsatisfying meltdown. FWIW, Anathem's ending is better than that -- and if you're interested in words and their origins, you shouldn't listen to the detractors, the vocabulary is part of the fun.

Uh, Israel has large minorities of non-Jews. It's not a pure culture, and it doesn't herd people (though it does keep them out). Compare with the Muslim theocracies nearby (most of which *used* to have minority populations, especially of Zoroastrians and Jews in Persia (Iran)). See who you think is really doing the ethnic cleansing.