The best way to get a good answer is probably to ask the man on anything cuneiform, Dr. Irving Finkel.

“the”, “a”, “and”?

I was just using it. But the behavior/reaction to button presses showed me that a button was obviously connected to the wrong function.

I don’t know how to see a memory bug in an out of order elevator, but I once saw and reported a wiring error of a working elevator. It was an interesting talk at the reception desk, but as I could precisely describe what was wrong and the verifyable consequences, they took me seriously. And sent me a “Thank You” email later ;-)

Back then, the internet was a thing of trust and cooperation. We got an assigned port number the same way. Current problem: Our company changed over the decades, and I no longer have the email address that would identify me to the IANA as the one who requested that number reservation.

Well, lets call it an armed robbery, then.

Can’t be that big, as the difference in mass close to the instrument only varied in the several tons category, but obviously enough to puzzle the scientists.

Maybe Andy Stone should avoid high buildings and invitations for a coffee from strangers in the foreseeable future.

See Wikipedia for this.

Rounding of constants always depends on what you are calculating. Getting a rocket into orbit is a case to use the actual local value of g with a bunch of digits (and the change with height, too). If you build a precision tool, some more digits of PI are no bad idea.

But to calculate the lenght of fence to buy to surround a round pond, I actually used 10/3 for “PI plus safety margin” once.

Just don’t make the same mistake as one physics lab did. They made a series of measurements and their results showed that gravity quickly increases in fall, falls slowly over winter, and back to about pre-fall levels very slowly in summer. It took quite a while to figure out the reason of this unexpected result. They turned their equipment inside out to find a mistake to no avail. Then they realized that the university stored coal for the central heating and hot water in the basement under the lab…

Ahh, the good old RFCs dated April, 1st. This one is number 1149 ( A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers), and got later updated in RFC 2549 (IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service).

I had a number of occasions where Windows on my work PC f-ed up. None of the times, the windows “troubleshooting” wizard was anything but a waste of time before calling IT or digging into the problem myself.

He is the Cardinal of the archdiocese of Cologne in Germany. He made a seriously bad figure with regards to investigations intosexual abuse by priests and is a serious opponent of any change in the church.

There is an old contract between the church and the state in Germany. One provision in this contract is that priests in the archdiocese are only to be trained at Bonn University. He considered this “to worldly” and tried to set up a more conservative seminary from a number of funds designed for totally other purposes and in breach with this old contract that might put the whole role of the catholic church in German society into turmoil.

Many lay people but also members of the church want him gone ASAP. People turn their backs to him in church when he preaches. And thousands of people leave the catholic church primarily because of him.

The next one he needs to kick out is Cardinal Woelki.

Indeed I did. Not completly, as it started to dismantle itself (one leg was broken at the hips, and the arms were not much better), but of course I placed it into the recycling bin last, just before the pickup.

A life-sized cardboard skeleton. I bought it as a kind of “paper model kit” with a lot of little plastic and metal clips included, and it used some clever tricks to get all those bones into their proper shape. Intended as a training / learning aid for medical students, it was labeled with all the latin names of everything.

It experienced several outings and trips in it’s “lifetime”, always riding shotgun and waving to the people I overtook. It attended a math and a computer sciene lecture in university (I doubt it understood a single thing from it), enjoyed a day at the “beach” (properly attired with a speedo), and a number of Halloween acts.

It lived in my room for a good decade, moved into the study in my house later, but started falling apart and requiring repairs so it was retired to the paper recycling bin one day.

I wonder where they are going to test those weapons. Maybe in Kyiv?

I actually never picked sides in that conflict. Both sides are nuts, the Hamas are terrorists, the IDF commits war crimes, they are both evil.

I propose putting a wall around the whole area and wait for the noise to stop, either by them getting their acts together, or by having killed each other.

Well, you can say exactly the same about COBOL…