zb

32 ms·

271.
by zb 15y ago
You need four because you must solve for 4 unknowns, the fourth being time. Note that getting the time is the whole point in this case. None of the satellites are in a polar orbit. The orbits are inclined at 55° to the equatorial plane.
272.
by zb 15y ago
1) You need 4. 2) They all orbit in the same direction. 3) There are a number of different orbits, but they are all inclined at the same angle. The illustration on that page was, I'm afraid, drawn by someone with no clue what the constellat
273.
by zb 15y ago
Nobody from New Zealand would ever refer to a kiwifruit as a Kiwi ;)
274.
by zb 15y ago
Which is why the GP called it an apocryphal quote.
275.
by zb 15y ago
The L1 carrier is spread over a 2 MHz bandwidth and its strength at the Earth's surface is -130 dBm. Thermal noise power in the same bandwidth is -111 dBm, so a GPS signal at the receiving antenna is ~ 20 dB below the noise floor. This is
276.
by zb 15y ago
As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested. Really? You've never read an article that you didn't feel compelled t
277.
by zb 15y ago
He starts off by claiming there's no hidden conflict of interest because Arrington has no editorial control over the site. Then this: > Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site. Which is it?
278.
by zb 15y ago
Fair enough, but it sounds a bit like you may be committing the opposite mistake - accepting Taylor at his word without consulting other sources. BTW, I recommend Robert Kanigel's biography of Taylor, The One Best Way . It gives a pretty b
279.
by zb 15y ago
Because "Link" only means "link" in English, whereas "WWW" means "WWW" everywhere the web is.
280.
by zb 15y ago
There's a very good interview here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/200808... with Jim Flynn (discoverer of the Flynn Effect - essentially IQ inflation) where he talks about how we value different kinds of intelligen
281.
by zb 15y ago
This reminds me of the Italo Calvino short story "The Light Years". http://issuu.com/martuxa/docs/thelightyears
282.
by zb 15y ago
I was in total agreement up to this point: there really is no 'right' formulation and no 'right' answer. These are problems that cannot be engineered. On the contrary, engineering is 100% about addressing these kinds of problems (not all
283.
by zb 15y ago
Some people believe that price and value are the same thing. Others, not so much. It's not inconceivable that Ted here holds the latter opinion.
284.
by zb 15y ago
You haven't described the circumstances, but if you haven't been paid it most likely that the client is short on money, and that means there's probably a bunch of other people who haven't been paid either. The one to get paid first will be
285.
Sept. 11 Revealed Psychology’s Limits(nytimes.com)
2 points by zb 15y ago|0 comments
286.
by zb 15y ago
"Any globally-minded entrepreneur is eligible to apply, regardless of his or her nationality and all applications will be judged under the same criteria."
287.
by zb 15y ago
You make a good point about the applicability of this model. However it's overreaching to ascribe this much of the difference between political climates in the US and Australia to compulsory voting. For example, New Zealand - which does no
288.
by zb 15y ago
You haven't addressed his actual point, which is that progress is not inexorable—it may not even be monotonic—and it certainly does not occur through the pure application of reason and logic. Your view is of course a very popular one. In fa
289.
by zb 15y ago
Unless the title of the article has changed, there's some editorialising going on in the headline here of a type that is usually frowned upon on HN. And the result is, in a sense, completely absurd. Most people have no idea what the word ha
290.
by zb 15y ago
Fortunately giant legacy codebases are well known for their excellent automated test coverage, otherwise this comment would sound ridiculous.
291.
by zb 15y ago
Exactly. If a blown tyre is enough to kill everyone on board, it's not an especially safe design. Note that tyres had burst on at least 4 previous occasions, so that was not exactly unforeseeable.
292.
by zb 15y ago
> Not all technology is created equal: there is a difference between Pong and the Concorde Yes, Pong was simply a clever design making use of existing technology that made shirtloads of money for a bunch of people and spawned entire ind
293.
by zb 15y ago
I think one of your biggest mistakes was to only mention your ideas about how to reduce double parking, I mean cheating, right at the end of a very long essay with a linkbait title that was basically the equivalent of "Why I'll never write
294.
by zb 15y ago
On the other hand, Yahoo Messenger is huge, and Yahoo mail is even bigger (bigger than GMail). And Yahoo has built, for all intents and purposes, an entire clone of Facebook into them. And do you know who cares? Nobody, that's who. So while
295.
by zb 15y ago
> Ok, seriously? That isn't a bug in an implementation somewhere, No. > but in fact a feature that Apple actually is proud of? Not just Apple, but I imagine also Microsoft and Sun. They were so proud of it that they wrote a stan
296.
by zb 15y ago
That already is the definition of "gender". The issue here is whether there should be an option to make the data non-public.
297.
by zb 15y ago
10 - learn to count in hex instead of binary.
298.
by zb 15y ago
It's much better to ignore the files generated by your own tools with a global exclude file than to add them to every project's .gitignore. git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
299.
by zb 15y ago
Yes I would, because part way through he changes the definition to talk about Hipmunk, then attempts to draw conclusions based on the pun.
300.
by zb 15y ago
Sigh. Yet another otherwise-smart person who appears completely oblivious to the distinction between design and "making stuff look pretty".

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