Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try one L in mili?
Didn't work.
@girvo suggested installing gnu units, which does the trick.
> brew install gnu-units > gunits
The 500-mile email (2002)
91–100 of 145 posts
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#92Shouldn't this account for a round trip, and the speed through copper (~ 2/3rd of the speed of light)? That would lower the radius to much more than 500 miles.
I had this thought when reading this before as well. I imagine that the "3 milliseconds" they determined from testing was a typical number, maybe the median/mean, and that the actual timeout varied considerably depending on CPU load at that particular moment. Add in a number of retries for the server to attempt sending each email, and the effective timeout might have been a few milliseconds more... or at least it must have been, because `(2 * 500 miles) / (2/3 speed of light)` works out to about 8 milliseconds (where the 2X is for the round trip, and 2/3 is a rough multiplier for the speed of light traveling in either copper or optical fiber).
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#93I'm wondering how many hits that email address got at the bottom of the page :)
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#94Shouldn't this account for a round trip, and the speed through copper (~ 2/3rd of the speed of light)? That would lower the radius to much more than 500 miles.
I had this thought when reading this before as well. I imagine that the "3 milliseconds" they determined from testing was a typical number, maybe the median/mean, and that the actual timeout varied considerably depending on CPU load at that particular moment. Add in a number of retries for the server to attempt sending each email, and the effective timeout might have been a few milliseconds more... or at least it mus…
The FAQ answers this question. Basically; it was a long time ago, and the point of the story isn't in the detail. :)
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#95I didn't know about the units program. Is there any resource out there that lists these little *nix utility programs?
ls /usr/bin
Unless `units` doesn't happen to be installed by default, which is the case at least for Arch Linux.
Though it doesn't contain `units` either, here's a Wikipedia list of the standardized (IEEE 1003.1-2008) unix commands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_commands
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#96I'm wondering how many hits that email address got at the bottom of the page :)
Was this just a clever way to let people know he was looking for a job?
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#971 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176458 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296201 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114391 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489
Maybe the submitter is one of the ten thousand https://xkcd.com/1053/ Bet there are a few more that will find this submission too.
I learned about diet coke and mentos from that cartoon. It was wonderful.
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#98old but gold
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had this thought when reading this before as well. I imagine that the "3 milliseconds" they determined from testing was a typical number, maybe the median/mean, and that the actual timeout varied considerably depending on CPU load at that particular moment. Add in a number of retries for the server to attempt sending each email, and the effective timeout might have been a few milliseconds more... or at least it mus…
The FAQ answers this question. Basically; it was a long time ago, and the point of the story isn't in the detail. :) http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
And this is why we can't have nice stories.
I felt for the author as I got deeper into the faq, and recognized this pattern of cynicism, then decided the author was so generous and thorough, not out of obligation (make the emails stop!), but because that is the type of detailed person he is -- and good at dinner parties too!
Re: The 500-mile email (2002)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had this thought when reading this before as well. I imagine that the "3 milliseconds" they determined from testing was a typical number, maybe the median/mean, and that the actual timeout varied considerably depending on CPU load at that particular moment. Add in a number of retries for the server to attempt sending each email, and the effective timeout might have been a few milliseconds more... or at least it mus…
The FAQ answers this question. Basically; it was a long time ago, and the point of the story isn't in the detail. :) http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
Harumph. :/ Yes, I'm a terrible story-teller for this reason. To me, the details (especially in making sure the numbers line up with reality) are important.