That was my first thought too.

I think I might be doing it wrong, because I didn't do any looping. I'm a bit too lazy and impatient for that, who wants to spend their afternoon adding all those numbers up even with a computer.

  [joe24pack@staropramen ~]$ python
  Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, May  1 2012, 13:52:17) 
  [GCC 4.4.6 20110731 (Red Hat 4.4.6-3)] on linux2
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  >>> def gauss(x):
  ...   return (x+1)*(x/2)
  ... 
  >>> gauss(10)
  55
  >>> gauss(1000000000)
  500000000500000000
  >>>

Hmmmm, make that:

    def gauss(x):
        return (x+1)*x/2

(consider gauss(11), for example)

You gotta admit, on an article about the difference between integer and floating-point arithmetic, that's pretty ironic!

It's odd that the odd numbers slipped my mind. Thank you for your gracious correction.

When EPA and Department of Agriculture have their own SWAT teams, you know that SWAT teams are more for status display between high level bureaucrats than for any real need to fight off the nefarious activities of Dr Evil.

Hipster huh? Well what about Lycos, remember that search engine?

Remember the search aggregators, like Magellan (maybe Columbus? Something like that) that searched X different engines and aggregated the results in a desktop app for you to use?

Then I found Google, and I never used anything else again.

That was Copernic. (After Copernicus) I remember using it and there was a list of perhaps 20 engines. I remember the first to return (like, would return in 1 second not 30 seconds for the rest) was google.

Every single time, google was the first back. It wasn't always ranked the top result back then, but it was fast.

Yes! That's it. Yeah, Google came and blew everything else out of the water. I remember searching for an ocx file for something that wouldn't run, and everything kept returning some spam sites. I somehow stumbled upon Google, after some recommendation, and tried it, and the first result was a legitimate download of the actual file.

It's not hard to see why everyone switched to it.

That's what Dogpile did - at one point - albeit as a regular browser search engine, which was its allure to me. I often got better results than on Google, which must have been around their formative stages.

HotBot was where it was at.

Oh yeah. Vividly.

And you don't think the EU isn't already doing pretty much the same thing?

Beautiful clear skies here in Berks County PA. I'm supposed to be able to see the auroras, but there is nothing yet to see.

Code Spells? Sheesh, sounds a _lot_ like Land of Lisp, but done with Java. Wonder what Conrad Barski thinks of this.

The search for quiet and some peace, maybe that is why I like to go hiking in remote places during colder weather. Yes there is still sound, but for some reason I find the sound of water or a light wind far more peaceful than the sound of people and the machines and gadgets they bring along.

Looks like some weird space station plans

it's also a risk that might not work out.