Pascal? Bah.

I'll see that and raise you an entire year's worth of requirements in Prolog.

OTOH, this same degree required a course in statistical analysis, because it was being offered by an engineering department and statistics was a blanket requirement. It's been way more useful to me than the year of calculus everyone makes you take.

It's worse than that

Well said, but I wish to argue with the assertion that this sort of thing has only been going on for 30 years. See the Church Committee report: http://aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm

Any publicity is good publicity?

One thing that's not clear from any of the linked stories is whether those are total mentions or if there's some attempt to distinguish positive and negative ones. I mean, Doraemon would probably look pretty popular even if you just counted comments saying "OMG why is a fossil like Doraemon still taking up airtime when it could be given to my favorite interesting new show that just got cancelled".

It's that time again

44 comments and no one's thought to mention "nanofossils" yet?

We go through this every few years, shame that one one ever seems to remember the last time...

Nanoseconds!

I'd heard about the nanosecond wires before, but not that they were hers.

Easy to predict in 1995...

...given that the CoS had largely lost the war (which at the time had taken the form of trying to remove discussion from Usenet through faked control messages) even then.

Watched it live on TV...

...as the SO is a car fan, that was pretty much the only thing on TV at home last week. The best part was hearing the apology from one of the TV commentators who'd been complaining they were giving too much attention all week to something that was never going to be a big seller. Never underestimate the power of fandom...

Nothing good ever came from competition?

So, Infoseek should have just been handed the search monopoly and everyone else should have said, "Well, that's solved-- let's do something else"?

Mine's the cloak made from raw sheepskin...

I have doubts about its usefulness to me

"Graph search is different from web search in that it doesn't link to the answer to a search, it just gives it, he claims."

So, to improve on the dodgy information you can find with any Web search, they'll offer dodgy information with no way to figure out the source. Uh, great!

(What really bothers me, actually, is realizing that most people won't mind not knowing the provenance of their answer.)

"Results are ranked based on how important the person is to you."

I dunno about that. I mean, Sir Isaac Newton is important to me, for instance, but I bet they won't find him in my social graph.

Woohoo!

So how far does this move us along the path to a working space elevator?

And on the textile side, what does one cut these threads with?

Leslie Fish was right!

cf. "I Believe the Cats are Taking Over".

As for the license fee...

That £145.50 ($237) fee may sound cheap to the author, but I can't see a lot of people in the US going for the iPlayer at a price like that.

OTOH, there are a ton of people who are fans of one individual show or another. I for one would be happy to fork over $1.99 per episode for a chance to watch Top Gear unmangled right after it airs in the UK, rather than months later with almost a third of it hacked out for commercials.

15/16, really?

I've come across a few exotic time signatures in the course of my amateur choral career, but 15/16 is a new one to me!

Of course, having read the article, now I don't dare search the Web for an example...

Hadn't realized it was quite this active

I guess next year's hot tech accessory will be the "go bag".

Ah, Infoseek

Infoseek has a special place in my heart for being the first search engine ever to refer someone to one of my Web pages.

I miss the random link

AltaVista, I believe it was, used to have a feature where you could request a random link in one of 9 categories that included "Science", "Games", and "Elvis Sightings". I found some fascinating stuff that way...

Try Death Valley

The obvious place to check in the US is Death Valley, which has seen enough trouble from people using more reliable mapping systems that the National Park Service actively warns people off using any form of electronic navigation, as on this page:

http://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm

Kids: This is your brain on drugs

This whole saga has become one of the finest arguments I've ever seen for avoiding mind-altering substances.

What kind of a two-bit operation is this...

"My "double", carrying on a North Korean passport under my name, was in fact detained in Mexico for pre-planned misbehavior, but due to indifference on the part of authorities was evicted from the jail [...]"

How incompetent do you have to be make a deliberate attempt to be arrested in Mexico while carrying an almost obviously forged passport... and fail at it???

What, no Rogue?

Or any of its multitudinous variations?

"Curiosity's middle name is patience"

So, is Curiosity its first or last name? Inquiring space junkies want to know!

Summer Wars, anyone?

How about "Love Machine" from Summer Wars, managing to mess up an entire nation's infrastructure before it's defeated?

(Not a standalone computer? Well, neither is at least one item on the list, the Master Control Program.)

So to sum up...

The "secret sauce" is made of PEOPLE!

Exploratorium, wow!

Well, being associated with the Exploratorium makes up for any amount of fashion failings in my book! The computers I was around in the '80s were mainly a couple TRS-80s, an Amiga, and my cousin's Commodore, so the articles don't bring back much for me, but the Exploratorium sure does!

Romans? Not likely...

"On a 2008 visit, your correspondent was informed by locals that a later eruption, said to have taken place around 200 AD, altered global weather patterns to such an extent Roman literature noted an unusually cold period."

That's actually Krakatau (Krakatoa) and circa AD 500. No volcanic cloud produced that far south of the equator is going to trouble Europe.

And it's actually Taupō that blew up in AD 200; see here: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/historic-volcanic-activity?source=rel_more%3Fsource%3Drel_link&setlang=mi

"I am a geek wallowing in my geekiness"

For those comment threads that get taken over by obscure Doctor Who trivia, Goon Show references, etc.

Being a hardcore sf fan, the first icon that suggests itself to me is the multicolored propeller beanie, but I suppose you could go for wider mainstream comprehensibility (at least for British readers, anyway) with an anorak.

Huzzah

Between this and the Nate Silver thing, it looks like it was a pretty good election day for geeks.

Zork: Nemesis

Scariest thing I've ever played.

Not so much for actual chills produced by the game, but for the shock horror of what they were doing to the Zork series.