jpollock

77 ms·

721.
by jpollock 13y ago
Didn't I just see a story about quadcopter design, and how helicopters were actually more efficient due to the single large rotor? Here it is: http://www.geek.com/science/weve-been-designing-quadcopters-...
722.
by jpollock 13y ago
Ever since I spent a week wondering why my main loop only ran 3 times, I always turn syntax highlighting on. This is what my code looked like: // Initialise for (i=0;i<3;++i) { /* Do initialisation here! nift
723.
by jpollock 13y ago
It's secretive because politicians can't have discussions and make deals if everything they say is picked over by their constituents and enemies. While they may end up at a trade deal that people want, they won't necessarily
724.
by jpollock 13y ago
The hot split problem is an example of a poor grow/shrink algorithm, and the contiguous stack would exhibit the same behaviour if the growth and shrink thresholds are the same. How about avoiding hot split by changing the deallocation
725.
by jpollock 13y ago
When you come to a pedestrian crossing with someone already there, do you wait patiently, assuming that they have pressed the button, or do you push the button? I tend to push the button, but that doesn't stop me feeling guilty about i
726.
by jpollock 13y ago
Yes, in a lot of jurisdictions, that's the generator cost. Generation is typically < 1/3rd the total cost of electricity. Here in NZ, I get a generation charge, a national lines charge, and a local lines charge per kwh. Then
727.
by jpollock 13y ago
In phone networks, the difference between peak and average load is typically at least one order of magnitude higher. Every day there is a difference of 4x between min and max, with the peak being sustained for multiple hours. That's w
728.
by jpollock 13y ago
If the hardware meant they could get rid of the sysadmin, it was probably a good deal. The loaded labour cost (salary plus facilities, insurance, redundancy payments, etc) is probably upwards of 200k per year. That means the hardware is ch
729.
by jpollock 13y ago
I read how TeamCity did their incremental builds and wrote my own script. I drop an anchor, detect changed files and then build up a list of modules that need to be rebuilt. I then tell maven to build those modules and their downstream de
730.
by jpollock 13y ago
even funnier, the US hasn't passed a budget since '97.
731.
by jpollock 13y ago
Ouch, my bike locks are always under tension. If I walk past and it unlocks, that means I can't walk past my bike without locking it again!
732.
by jpollock 13y ago
Those numbers are NZD, and from less than 2 months ago. :) To convert to USD, multiply by 0.8. I just looked on the home hardware website, and they don't sell any MR16s that are more than 6.5W. The 12W bulb is a 650 lumen and sells f
733.
by jpollock 13y ago
I'm confused. The story talks about manufacturing and transport. However, I don't care about that. As a consumer, I want to know $/lumen. That's it. The last time I looked, the energy savings for LED were swamped by t
734.
by jpollock 13y ago
That is very cool! As a user, I'd be careful about throwing a lot of messages through a single phone though, you will likely trigger a carrier's anti-arbitrage systems. You might find your business cut off with no warning, comple
735.
by jpollock 13y ago
That he felt it was a loss to not drink alcohol, and that he was consuming sufficient amounts to be worried about withdrawal.
736.
by jpollock 13y ago
Here in NZ, they have started putting up signs that show your speed instead of taking a picture and issuing a fine. They have found that displaying a vehicle's speed has a much stronger impact on speed (and accidents) than tickets.
737.
by jpollock 13y ago
In New Zealand, there is typically no tipping (it reflects excellent service, instead of expected), it's already built into the price - not even listed as a fixed service charge percentage. Perhaps the complaints have more to do with s
738.
by jpollock 13y ago
Plutonium is manufactured in a reactor, not processed from ore. The dominant source for plutonium for deep space missions was the US government, and they dominant reason for producing it was bombs. However, the US govt. doesn't need t
739.
by jpollock 13y ago
Actually, there are limits, as I was informed in the Solaris 11 launch. I didn't pay too much attention because it didn't affect me, but the guys it did affect weren't that impressed!
740.
by jpollock 13y ago
Sun/Oracle have been championing containers (Zones) for a long time now. They have their places. However, businesses still want full virtualised systems (LDOMs). Businesses like treating applications like appliances. They want to st
741.
by jpollock 13y ago
When you get towards the bottom of the article, it actually says that this is a strength of emacs, and not a weakness. The claim is that the weak lisp interpreter encourages work to be done in other processes (reference to the awesome Tramp
742.
by jpollock 14y ago
I can see that. I just look at the NZ market and see competition working. :) You're right, $1.20 feels expensive and we all grumble about it. Even so, I did some math and found out it was cheaper to stream video at $1.20/GB than it was to
743.
by jpollock 14y ago
Yes, you are correct about minimum account fees being required to avoid a subsidy in the other direction (large->small). NZ packages typically work out to about US$24 + $US1.20/GB, although the per GB price is dropping. We're getting f
744.
by jpollock 14y ago
Perhaps there should be a feature on resubmissions to preload the discussion with high-rated comments from the previous discussions?
745.
by jpollock 14y ago
This is charging per byte. They're implementing an amount of traffic bundled with the base package, throttling when it's exceeded and the ability to purchase additional full speed traffic blocks. Charging per byte is a "good thing". It enc
746.
by jpollock 14y ago
It was off by a good decade for me.
747.
by jpollock 14y ago
Any code that I haven't executed in test will dump core in production. No matter how innocuous it is, it will cause a problem. I have learned this lesson after many years of having it repeatedly pounded into my head. :) Over, and over and
748.
by jpollock 14y ago
Gold can be inflated the same way as any other currency. Since people don't typically trade in physical gold, but in certificates used to represent the gold, it is possible to print more certificates than you have gold. While this is a fr
749.
by jpollock 14y ago
I'm sounding really negative, I apologize. :) I love that you've got your upgrades to 15s, that's a powerful place to be!
750.
by jpollock 14y ago
It sounds like a shard collapsed down to a single database instance? Otherwise, you wouldn't have had to turn off requests to the shard, you could have quiesced one of the nodes, taken it out of service and brought it back up with the new

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