HAL (was: ISO8601 (was: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.))

[Robin Houston]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:48:42PM +0000, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL?

Supposedly because
  join ("", map chr(1+ord), split"", "HAL") eq "IBM"

though apparently that's accidental.


"When someone pointed out the spurious
 association between HAL and IBM, Kubrick wanted to change the
 computer's name and refilm the scenes but was dissuaded because of
 production costs."

--http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/learn/html/e.8.1b.html

 .robin.

-- 
"It really depends on the architraves." --Harl