WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

lukecampbell's comments

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: what features do you want in a geocoder?

Simple.

I've worked in GIS for a number of years. I've worked on marine and scientific data management on top of GIS support. From google maps/earth to ArcGIS and pulling data from KML to OGC services.

If a service takes me nearly a month to learn to use, I'm going to push adamantly to use something else.

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: How to throttle the FCC to dial up modem speeds

I don't think the entire FCC, and all of their employees are really out to get you and I. A few maybe but I think it's somewhat too broad an approach to punish the few by punishing everyone associated with the FCC.

Their IT staff probably doesn't deserve this either.

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

I believe in this case that the driver existed as one piece or module and each hardware version was handled as a different case in branch logic in an attempt to keep the code consolidated and modular (code sharing). As the hardware matured and new versions came to be it gets harder to reuse existing code and that's the context of this thread.

Linus wants to split the driver and create a new module to house that handles only that specific flavor of hardware instead of adding new edge-cases to the existing code.

At least, that's how I read it. I wasn't working on the Kernel back in 2000 so I can't say.

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: Nvidia submits patches to open source driver

"Let me also stress that although very exciting, this effort is still experimental, so I would like to make sure that nobody makes excessive expectations based on these few patches. The scope of this work is strictly limited to Tegra (although given the similarities desktop GPU support will certainly benefit from it indirectly), and we do not have any plan to work on user-space support. So do not uninstall that proprietary driver just yet. ;)"

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: Is Valve’s SteamBox a contender for the next developer workstation?

To my knowledge, I don't think Valve has ever had any intentions of developing serious developer tools for software (not games). Apple and Microsoft both have suites of tools for developers to use and Linux is one big developer tool kit.

The purpose, as stated by Valve, is for gaming not development. I think that this article is reaching a bit far.

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: A simple no-brainer approach to patent trolls

I'm not an actuary so I probably can't accurately attest to this, but I would think it would still be a feasible approach. If an insurance agency were to accept the risk, they would have to do their homework and have their lawyers and agents dig through the intellectual property of their clients and do their own determination at the risk of legal troubles and charge the client(s) a fee which yielded profit over a span of time where the mean loss was less than the income.

lukecampbell | 12 years ago | on: Armchair air crash investigator

I've never flown a B777 or any heavy aircraft so I can't comment on their typical flares, but in a Cessna 172 the flare doesn't induce a positive rate of climb, it simply slows the vertical descent speed to something manageable for touch down, a positive vertical speed seems counterintuitive to me as a good flare. What I want to know is what his IAS (indicated air-speed) at the decision altitude.

Again the only thing I've flown are parachutes and some hours in a C172 and a C182.

lukecampbell | 13 years ago | on: I used Google Glass

Does anyone know if the visual component can be setup on the left side? I'm blind in my right eye and the product would be almost useless for me otherwise.

lukecampbell | 13 years ago | on: Man suspected of wearing 'bomb' watch at airport released, no charges filed

Improvised explosive devices can be designed cleverly to resemble common items such as smart phones or wrist watches, or even the sole of a shoe. The triggers for these devices can sometimes be very elaborate. I believe that the TSA has every right to investigate suspicious devices, and a watch with fuses and wires protruding from it warrants further inspection.

A true explosive device trigger is likely to have wires on it . Explosive devices will also have resistors and perhaps a fuse (can't see why exactly) but to an average TSA employee any device which looks out of the norm with wires is immediately suspicious.

And honestly, if you're going to go to the airport, don't be an idiot. Everyone knows the TSA is hypersensitive and quite ignorant of engineering concepts or art in this case, don't push the limits when you know that this is likely to happen.

page 1