Viewing profile — andrewl

The site doesn't give you printouts you can fold into a globe, but it is very informative. You highlight countries, drag them around, and their size adjusts to whatever degree of d…

I think Bash won as Bityard says above, in the sense that COBOL won, which was because it was everywhere (approximately) and then when another system was being built to do somethin…

Quoting from an earlier comment in this discussion: There's always some nincompoop who brings that up. Al Gore deserves credit for what he did as a senator and vice president. He h…

To me they look oppressive and bleak. They are interesting , to be sure. But I don’t find them beautiful. And aesthetics are subjective, of course. I can well believe others find t…

The linked article does not say what happened to him, but if you Google his name there are lots of hits. This one says he was fired: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/monroe-coun…

I think it's that they need humidity or else they dry out. So hot and humid is fine. Hot and arid is what they have a problem with.

Can you give us some more detail on the nematodes, or point us to an article?

It’s impressive. To admit fallibility is to be honest. It represents confidence.

Your link to the security page is broken because of the capital H in your URL. It should be: https://www.sqlite.org/security.html

The January 6, 2022 date at the bottom of the page is not the date the page was last updated. It is the date problem 8.9 (Boundary value error in the secondary journals used by nes…

“They have phones in booths now? Finally! I don’t have to lug this cell phone around.” Hermes Conrad, Futurama Season 6, Episode 6: Lethal Inspection

Then there is the tromboon , created by P.D.Q. Bach, which is a real instrument but should not be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Q._Bach#Tromboon

Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice explains the subtleties, mathematical and otherwise, of both Alice books in engaging detail. It explained things I never understood, and showed…

The subhead on the article is: Animals that feed on dead matter perform an important service. Without them, we’d live in a world of putridity and pestilence.

That was a bizarre performance.

This is the first I’ve heard of straight-tusked elephants, which are almost twice the mass of modern day elephants. You’d need a lot of cooperation and coordination to kill one of …

Byte was great. For years it was the highlight of my month. And I thought the cover art was amazing. The Smalltalk hot air balloon logo came from the cover of the August 1981 issue…

The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy. …