So then, Brashear, Phil says this: [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > Well, if it had been a Fortran, COBOL, Java, or C++ question of the same > level, I think it would still be considered obscure by most contestants and > audience members. We're specialists in a pretty small area, relative to the > world at large! I think this was an appropriate high-value question, and > would not have been appropriate at a low value (say $64K or less). > > I guess a similarly obscure COBOL question would have been "What was the > highest military rank achieved by the primary developer of the COBOL > language?" I don't think your typical outstanding quiz-show contestant > would know that offhand. > > Philip W. Brashear > EDS Conformance Testing Center > 4646 Needmore Road, Bin 46 > P.O. Box 24593 > Dayton, OH 45424-0593 > (937) 237-4510 > [log in to unmask] > http://www.eds-conform.com > Although just about any Navy technical rating could answer that one... In fact, I think I recall that one from several rating exams ;) -- Scott Ingram Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory