[Beowulf] Threaded code (& Fortran)

[Douglas Eadline, Cluster World Magazine]

> Sure, after enough people abandoned fortran for the work of the devil
> that it is and embraced the true and pure light of C (why hide the
> religious nature of this discussion:-), its dark masters began to
> embrace the forms and rituals of the true faith in order to win souls
> back to its satanic creed.  Surely you've noticed that "fortran" is an
> anagram of "rant for" (or "nor fart" or "torn rat"), which must mean
> something.  The latter especially.  Who would use a language that has a
> hidden message encouraging the torturing of ugly animals?  Even animals
> associated with dark rites and witchcraft...

With respects to Dan Brown:

Well actually FORTRAN 1 was invented by Da Vinci and not as you assume the
work of the devil. It was kept a secret until the first digital computer
was built with steam engines in the basement of a monastery in northern
France in 1872.  Outlawed by the local clergy, the "proof calculator" (or
PC) sat there until a local loom operator noticed that the dress in the
Mona Lisa (the neck line) had a binary code that would run on the machine.
It was never noticed before because it was written backward in Da Vinci
style. The program was a "Do Loop" that went on forever (at least it has
not completed yet, the steam engines were converted from wood to coal in
1932) There was rumored to be a secret society that wanted to keep FORTRAN
a oout of the hands of the masses because they new that if word got out
about FORTRAN, someone would surely write a BASIC interpreter for small
computers made by MSTI in New Mexico. Furthermore, based on a modern
reinterpretation of the binary code on the Mona Lisa's dress (after dry
cleaning) a alternate sequence of ones and zeros was tried and the program
reported a result of "42" and halted immediately.

In order to keep people from learning about these results, the secret
society reportedly put out a fake theory by someone named Kurt Godel in
1931 implying that mathematics was at its core stupid and therefore
useless. While many were not convinced, another fake theory was put forth
by Alan Turing that said, you can't stop computers unless you pull the
plug. Which is what many people believe Da Vinci was trying to say.
Although the "42" result is curious to say the least.

Doug