Thank you for your warm welcome. You will be rewarded with a slight decrease in delta-s.

In my opinion, absolutely. He gets into programming later in the book as he describes how you give instructions to this 8-bit machine he has basically built in the book. Getting a basic understanding of memory, instructions, and the logical constructs used in computers, I think is critical to any programmer. Otherwise inheritance is just "oh I can use this stuff in my class magically" without understanding what is actually happening—which will make other concepts like pointers, multiple inheritance, and polymorphism very confusing.

Charles Petzold's book, Code, is one I recommend to anyone who asks me about getting into programming. Actually I recommend it to anyone interested in computers in general. He uses flashlights, relays, and the like to "build" logical gates, accumulators, memory, and so on. A great read that really lays out how computers work.

Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Also, Beggars in Spain.

"Message from Curiosity: Landed safely. Initiating primary directive - kill cats."

Now that's funny. +1 internets Sir! Nothing beats a good bit of geek humor in the morning. Congrats to NASA, indeed congrats to humanity. It was exciting to watch and hopefully some additional people will be inspired to help keep the pursuit of knowledge through exploration a priority.

The Birthgrave - Tanith Lee. Her first book.
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanislaw Lem.

I don't know, would you rather be a Hydro-Ceramic Technician or Dishwasher?

Doesn't mean it's any more likely. Water is known to be quite abundant in the universe. While finding a whole shitload circling around a black hole is pretty cool, it would be more significant to find a shitload of water on a planet in the so called "Goldilocks Zone" around certain types of stars—for at least the type of life that we know of.

Wow that's a lot of data. Can't wait to see more of the results published.

IIRC XBox 360 has 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of Video RAM. That's pretty low-end by today's standards.

Who wants to order a 30.48 cm sub at Subway?

"Nelson’s philosophy toward computing is widely reported on being that a user interface should be so simple that in an emergency, a beginner is able to understand it within ten seconds."

Sounds like he's looking for the return of Microsoft's Bob! Time for Melinda Gates to break out that project manager hat and return to her former glory!

I get excited...and arrested.

I believe it is also quite dependent on the mass of the black hole which affects the Schwarzchild radius. In the case of a super-massive black hole, spaghettification would occur well after passing the event horizon. With smaller black holes the spaghettification would occur before hitting the event horizon.