] Earlier this month, I described a friend of mine who was
] responsible for a corporate network notable for its aging
] applications infrastructure. At the end of the column
] I proposed a contest and asked you all to send in your
] own entries to qualify for the "oldest living software"
] application. Needless to say, I got some great entries.

classic.

Winners Of The 'Oldest Software' Contest

Kinda adds new dimension to the tech term "fat pipe", no? :]

] The human genome is about 3,120,000,000 base pairs long,
] so half of that is in each spermatozoa -- 1,560,000,000
] base pairs.
]
] Each side of these base pairs can either be an
] adenine-thymine or a guanine-cytosine bond, and they can
] be aligned either direction, so there are four choices.
] Four possibilities for a value means it can be fully
] represented with two bits; 00 = guanine, 01 = cytosine,
] and so forth.
]
] The figures that I've read state the number of sperm in a
] human ejaculation to be anywhere from 50 to 500 million.
] I'm going to go with the number 200,000,000 sperm cells,
] but if anyone knows differently, please tell me.
]
] Putting these together, the average amount of information
] per ejaculation is 1.560*109 * 2 bits * 2.00*108, which
] comes out to be 6.24*1017 bits. That's about 78,000
] terabytes of data! As a basis of comparison, were the
] entire text content of the Library of Congress to be
] scanned and stored, it would only take up about 20
] terabytes. If you figure that a male orgasm lasts five
] seconds, you get a transmission rate of 15,600 tb/s. In
] comparison, an OC-96 line (like the ones that make up
] much of the backbone of the internet) can move .005 tb/s.
] Cable modems generally transmit somewhere around 1/5000th
] of that.
]
] If you consider signal to noise, though, the figures come out
] much differently. If only the single sperm cell that fertilizes
] the egg counts as signal, you get (1.560*109 * 2 bits) / 5 s =
] 6.24*108 bits/s, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 78 Mb/s.
] Still a great deal more bandwidth than your average cable modem,
] but not nearly the 5,000,000 Mb/s of the OC-96.

Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems

Elonka wrote:
] Hey there, good to see you on Memestreams!
]
] Elonka :)

Hey E!

Yea... I'm already addicted! This is gonna be fun!

See you at D*C!
Patrick

Most likely the sons and daughters of the same people that want the confederate battle emblem put back on the Georgia Flag.

] A year after holding that school's first racially
] integrated prom, Taylor County High School in rural
] Georgia has returned to its segregationist ways and will
] be holding two proms again- one for white students and
] one for all students.

Nice job kids! You've done a fine job of perpetuating the stereotype that all southerners are racist rednecks.

Laughing Boy

Open Invitation for Georgia to Join This Century

SING Won't you be my NEO? (Near Earth Object) /SING

] PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Mister Rogers now has an asteroid
] named in his honor.
]
] "Misterrogers,'' formerly known as No. 26858, honors Fred
] Rogers, creator and host of public television's "Mister
] Rogers' Neighborhood.'' Rogers died Feb. 27 at age 74.
]
] "I doubt that there are many who have not been touched in
] some way by the life and work of Fred Rogers,'' said John
] G. Radzilowicz, director of the Henry Buhl Jr.
] Planetarium & Observatory at the Carnegie Science Center,
] which made the announcement Thursday.
]
] The science center worked with Family Communications
] Inc., the production company Rogers founded, to produce a
] planetarium show for preschoolers called ``The Sky Above
] Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.'' The show now plays at 15
] planetariums across the country.
]
] "Misterrogers'' can be found between the orbits of Mars
] and Jupiter, and is about 218 million miles from the sun,
] which it takes about 3 1/2 years to orbit. It was
] discovered in 1993 by E.F. Helin at the Palomar
] Observatory in California

Asteroid Is Named in Mister Rogers' Honor

And here I cringe at the mere thought of wearing contacts and having to touch my eyeball. :o

] MOAB, Utah (AP) -- A Colorado climber amputated his own
] arm Thursday, five days after becoming pinned by a
] boulder, and he was hiking to safety when he was spotted
] by searchers, authorities said.
]
] Aron Ralston, 27, of Aspen, was in serious condition late
] Thursday at a hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado.
]
] Ralston was climbing Saturday in Blue John Canyon,
] adjacent to Canyonlands National Park in far southwestern
] Utah, when a 200-pound boulder fell on him, pinning his
] right arm, authorities said.
]
] He ran out of water on Tuesday and on Thursday morning,
] he decided that his survival required drastic action.
]
] Using his pocketknife, he amputated his arm below the
] elbow and applied a tourniquet and administered first
] aid.
]
] He then rigged anchors, fixed a rope and rappelled to the
] canyon floor.

Climber amputates his arm, hikes to safey