npsomaratna

Over here in Sri Lanka:

1) I've seen calendars with both starting days (Sunday/Monday). Anecdotally, calendars with Sunday as the first day seemed to be more popular when I was a kid; now, calendars with Monday as the first day seem to be more common.

2) The 12-hour system is far more popular here than the 24-hour system. Not that we don't use it, but in my experience, 24-hour tends to be mainly used in professional settings; 12-hour is used essentially everywhere else.

About 40% (Australia's pop. is ~25M). It is, however, close to 50% of Australia's adult population (~20M). What a mess.

Anyone here remember the 1990 video game?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.R.R._Tolkien%27s_The_Lord_of...

Yup, Dikatana is what came to mind when I read the heading!

On a separate note: after seeing the constraints imposed on Warshaw, I have nothing but sympathy for him. Fault of the management, not the programmer.

Tried watching the recent series ("The watch"). Not Pratchett.

I hesitate to use the word "unwatchable", but this series comes close. It is both an awful adaptation of the Discworld universe—and awful even otherwise.

On a tangent re: immortality: reminds me of the names you'd see in splash screens of various products. After one too many years of seeing “Seetharaman Narayanan” in the Photoshop splash screen, I just had to look him up.

https://www.ironicsans.com/2006/09/interview_seetharaman_nar...

Amen!

Postmark works well for transactional email. We've seen consistently good deliverability over time.

Probably bad luck, or more likely, your being in a tourist hotspot.

Putting ethical and moral values aside, your average person on the street (in say, Colombo, or any other "normal" area) has no interest in (or potential gain from) directing anyone towards a scam.

Sri Lankan here. I'm not sure why you have the impression that asking a random person on the street for directions will result in your being scammed. That's certainly not the culture here. In fact, the many foreign friends I've hosted over the years tell me that your average Sri Lankan will go out of their way to help a foreigner—no fees, compensation, or other inducements needed.

You do want be wary of anyone who starts a conversation with you (as opposed to your starting the conversation with them). And yes, if you're in a "touristy" area, you do have a significantly higher chance of meeting someone aiming to rip you off. But these are true of essentially every country in the world—not just Sri Lanka.

Same here. Simple, focused, and easily usable by non-tech people. We adopted Bookstack several years ago, and we've never looked back.

When I visited the Pyramids, I first felt underwhelmed—they looked like mere piles of rocks. Coming from Sri Lanka, the ancient hemispherical stupas of my country seemed to be more complex structures (in an engineering sense).

...then I realized that when our stupas were built, the Pyramids were already ancient.

Something I find just as impressive is how far south ancient Egypt extended—not just to the border of contemporary Egypt ("Khemet"), but also to modern Sudan ("Wawat" and "Kush").

Given that this was 4000+ years ago, the logistical and administrative challenges of maintaining such a vast empire must have been incredibly challenging.

Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't realize that an option like this existed; and I'll be considering it the next time I have to redo a parking area.

Check out Laravel Livewire: https://laravel-livewire.com/ — this is based on a similar concept. (If course, you do need to be using Laravel in the first place!)

I agree. If you look at, say, Ancient Egypt from the start of the old kingdom to the end of the middle kingdom (a 1000 year period), people's lifestyles changed very little.

Compare the start of the 20th century to the start of the 21st (a mere hundred year period)—the differences are amazing. Air travel, radio and television, computers, cars being universal (in developed countries at least)—the list just goes on, both big and small.

Same thought. Not only is this unprofessional and unethical, he's also put himself on the hook for both civil and criminal liability. If he used his employer's resources for this, his employer might also end up in trouble.

I think that longer = more rowers; less wide = less mass.

Wouldn't that mean a more powerful and agile ship?

Out of curiosity: suppose a modern tank was (magically) transported to WWII. Would it be essentially invincible against the weapons of that era?

(Addendum: I do appreciate that repeated weapons impacts will degrade any type of armor over time.)

Plus, this would a contract of adhesion—and courts hate contracts of adhesion and try to interpret them in favor of the consumer as far as possible.

Commodore 64 -> 286 -> 386 -> 486 -> Pentium ?

(Can't remember the rest afterwards...)

Agreed. Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies did a fantastic job in WC III. Makes total sense to go with "real" cutscenes if you can get actors of that caliber on board.

Just woke up, saw this title, rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things—and then realized what type of cardinal this was!

No. "Capacity" means enough independence to be able to conduct your own foreign relations.

Whether any foreign powers want to conduct relations with you is point #5!

When studying international law, I learnt that a "nation-state" (in layman terms: a country) needs to have the following:

  1. A defined territory.
  2. A permanent population.
  3. A government.
  4. The capacity to enter into relations with other states.

In practice, there is one more requirement, which is perhaps the most important of all:

  5. Recognition by other nation-states.

In other words: a cargo ship does not a country make.

Reference: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/explorin...

Yup, this is why we use PHP/Laravel for our stuff. Stable language + powerful framework = can focus on solving business problems.

I was about to ask this myself. I think their simple design is quite intentional—and it perfectly fits it's purpose.

Addendum: plus being accessible (essential for any govt. service).

Addendum: unfortunately, this is something that my country, Sri Lanka, does as well. One price for locals, and another price for tourists. The latter is typically 10x as much as the local price, but does not confer much (if any at all) additional privileges or facilities.

Indonesia has a similar policy—higher prices for foreign tourists—but when I visited Borobudur and Prambanan I was pleasantly surprised to see that the higher price I paid did buy me extra amenities: a separate entrance point and some refreshments. Sure, the Indonesians came out better from that deal, but at least I didn't feel ripped off.

I can remember visiting Egypt (many years ago) and being frustrated about how expensive the fees were for foreign tourists. Being from a third world country, and not having much personal wealth at that time, I was forced to skip the Tutankhamun exhibit in the Cairo museum—something that I regret even today.

Note: I was in Cairo as part of an official delegation (i.e., my country paid for my travel, and the sponsor organization in Egypt paid for my bed + board). At that time, I couldn't have afforded either.

Exactly. I cringed when I read that. I'd never treat one of my employees that way (or allow an employee of mine to treat a subordinate that way).

Reminds me of having to use (CSS) floats to position stuff. CSS grid and flexbox have made positioning (in particular, vertical positioning) so easy.