rst

94 ms·

931.
by rst 14y ago
Orbital Systems Corp. has an air-launched booster, Pegasus, in regular service (launched off a converted L-1011 airliner). I'm not sure Rutan or Scaled Composites had much to do with it, though. (OSC is also the "other" commercial cargo pr
932.
by rst 14y ago
There's still the potential for security problems, as the OP acknowledges: "It still has to go through our security review since just having an open socket can drive the browser is quite scary and an opportunistic hacker could just run a s
933.
by rst 14y ago
IANAL, but I believe that prior art can still kill a patent. The patented stuff is still supposed to be the inventor's original work. (The patent office may not be terribly diligent about searching for prior art, and establishing prior
934.
by rst 14y ago
This wasn't government arranging favors for large, well-connected businesses. It was large, well-connected businesses arranging favors for each other, at the expense of everyone else. What's happening now is the government putting a stop
935.
by rst 14y ago
It depends what else the phones are being used for. If they are regularly pulling down audio data for the web, or even fat, non-mobile-ized web pages, on a regular basis, then the incremental bump from a few dozen spam emails a day might b
936.
by rst 14y ago
Most of the content is being pulled in from jobvite via an iframe, but the iframe doesn't have sufficient vertical space and is getting cut off (just above the "engineering" jobs, which is particularly awkward here). Here's the unadorned li
937.
by rst 14y ago
Clearly not current law in California, or Apple itself would have started to distribute its $100 billion cash hoard as dividends under Jobs, instead of just letting it pile up. (Tim Cook announced this spring that he'd be giving out half o
938.
by rst 14y ago
Tesla's also doing drive trains for Toyota, for the electric RAV4. Which isn't exactly cheap (about $50k), but clearly not aimed at the status-symbol market. (Tesla itself is probably headed downmarket as well; the announced strategy has a
939.
by rst 14y ago
Kijiji was the would-be Craigslist killer that eBay built internally after acquiring a minority share of Craigslist itself, and then finding out that Jim and Craig were not interested in the full merger that eBay had expected would follow i
940.
by rst 14y ago
Turing was a brilliant mathematician, but he wasn't a businessman or a charismatic leader. He did have a go at leading a computer development project (the ACE project) at a government lab, but got frustrated enough with the project and his
941.
by rst 14y ago
The jury made no decision on fair use, and the judge declared a mistrial on that portion of the case. His subsequent ruling moots the whole issue (no copyright, no infringement) --- but if that ruling were reversed, there would be a new tr
942.
by rst 14y ago
The usual arguments for someone to settle a legal case are avoiding the costs of litigation, and a potentially ruinous award. From Google's perspective, though, these may not be operating the way they usually do. Google, and particularly A
943.
by rst 14y ago
Desktop Windows does, but stock windows apps generally don't work well in tablet mode without adaptation. Metro (in the form of Windows Phone 7) is lagging. Windows 8 seems to be something like the two of them running on the same kernel,
944.
by rst 14y ago
Apparently, they're not above acquiring IT staff by kidnapping and forced labor. Like the Nextel techs described here, who are probably being forced into maintaining one cartel's private cell phone network: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/09/1
945.
by rst 14y ago
"This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this."
946.
by rst 14y ago
Steve "Four Steps to the Epiphany" Blank's series of blog posts on "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" is a good read on this subject. A short summary is that a lot of the early firms were either got mentors from or directly spun out of
947.
by rst 14y ago
If anything, that would make it worse --- it's anything but proper for law enforcement officers to detain people on a whim to satisfy "professional curiosity".
948.
by rst 14y ago
Graham doesn't think Mr. Market is always reasonable to begin with. But I'm not sure it's fair to attribute that valuation to "the market" as a whole. It was set by the underwriters, who might have been expecting a flood of "greater fool"
949.
by rst 14y ago
It's not blogger itself, but blogs with certain new formatting templates. (Which don't seem to do much obvious for the reader, other than display those silly spinning gears if the browser isn't up to snuff or has some kind of NoScript plug
950.
by rst 14y ago
Or perhaps Mr. Market thinks it's a solid, say, $25 or $35 billion company that was just way overvalued at the IPO valuation of $100 billion plus. There's certainly a whole lot of commentary along those lines in the financial press, like t
951.
by rst 14y ago
Vulnerable to the same attack as Captchas: paying humans to solve them for a few cents a pop. Cultural factors would probably require training for some of the puzzles --- but I don't think that helps much. Someone from the Chinese countr
952.
by rst 14y ago
It might well happen then if everything goes well, but I'm not sure they've ever given a specific date. In public statements that I've seen, Elon's been pretty consistent about saying he wants a "steady cadence of launches" before a public
953.
by rst 14y ago
They'll probably still be landing in depopulated areas --- you want to minimize damage on the ground if the propulsive landing system fails. (In which case, by the way, the plan is to still use parachutes as a backup.) However, in case of
954.
by rst 14y ago
For what it's worth, a lot of what they print on the book machine isn't one-offs from Google books; instead, it's small print runs for self-published authors, professors' course materials, and the like. As to seeing the machine in use, it
955.
by rst 14y ago
Only if parties with majority control are willing to sell. (Which can be a lot less than majority ownership --- see Facebook for an example[ ].) And there have certainly been hints that when (if?) SpaceX actually does an IPO, Elon will t
956.
by rst 14y ago
ISS video of the Dragon is from above, so upward thruster firing wouldn't be visible (that thruster would be on the other side of the vehicle).
957.
by rst 14y ago
Latest from SpaceX management, in a press event last week: they're building it this year, but expect to launch sometime in 2013. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=b4bab31...
958.
by rst 14y ago
In fact, SpaceX has a technical debt to Apollo which they've been quick to acknowledge --- pointing out, for instance, that the Merlin engine injector design uses techniques pioneered on the Apollo LEM descent engine. What's odd here is the
959.
by rst 14y ago
The semi-formal term of art is RUD --- Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
960.
NODB --- Uncle Bob on planning without databases(blog.8thlight.com)
23 points by rst 14y ago|4 comments

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