dbcurtis

6 ms·

1.
by dbcurtis 1mo ago
I worked at the Roseville, MN, plant in the early 80's as a CPU designer. 100K ECL. The machine was the Integrated Scientific Processor, an attached processor that could be added to an 1100/80 system. Max configuration was 4 CP
2.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
Most systems to that. Empty-cab strategy is a programming option in the controller. If all cabs are idle (very rare) they are typically spread out.
3.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
This does happen. I also once worked on a destination-dispatch elevator system installed in a high-end condo building (high-end, as in concierge and parking valet for residents). Anyway... the resident's key card would of course auto
4.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
It's pretty much throughput. The cap-ex of a single cab swamps any other cost, so the only way to reduce total number of cabs is optimizing for throughput.
5.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
One other thing to add: It isn't the elevator scheduling software being obtuse, that software gets a huge amount of thought. But elevators are expensive, and building owners do not over-spend on a whim. Typically, they have just enou
6.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
I have done several third-party elevator integrations (software that talks to the elevator controller) for coordinating other equipment with the elevator. One thing that always struck me once I had full visibility into the location and mot
7.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
even more pedantically, would remove 3 and 4 from the stack before pushing 7
8.
by dbcurtis 2mo ago
If you are in Sili Valley and want to see a Shay, cross the hill to Felton to Roaring Camp for one of their excursion trains.
9.
by dbcurtis 3mo ago
Almost true. For many plants, a hybrid is naturally unstable, and can often be stabilized with one extra cross. (But isn't, as it serves as intellectual property protection for the seed company.) But some plants, soy beans being a bi
10.
by dbcurtis 3mo ago
Well, as an Iowa farm boy (and farm land owner) I have a more nuanced view. There have been hybrid maizes for many decades. It is possible to create unstable hybrids of normal field corns, which serves as a form of intellectual property p
11.
by dbcurtis 3mo ago
My kiddo has perfect pitch, and for them listening to a baroque period organ is kind of trippy because back in those days A was more like 436 Hz than 440. OTOH, absolute pitch means that learning a fiddle tune by ear takes only a couple of
12.
by dbcurtis 3mo ago
> Alzheimer’s is driven by the buildup of toxic proteins called amyloid-beta. Isn't the current thinking that amyloid-beta buildup is a marker, not a cause? The therapy may be working here, but it isn't clear whether clearing
13.
by dbcurtis 4mo ago
It was part of the culture in the 1960's, and only started to change somewhat during the 1970's. Everybody had ash trays, even in non-smoking households, so that you could bring them out for guests. Nobody gave it a second thoug
14.
by dbcurtis 4mo ago
Do we know if the pilots are OK? Yes, ejection can save your life, but even in a best-case scenario the forces on the human body are incredibly ugly. I know a former combat-rated RAF pilot that had to eject from a Harrier because of a low
15.
by dbcurtis 4mo ago
> Which CAD program? I'm confused Clue here: > Our proposed GenCAD architecture... So, at this point, it seems like this will work with all CAD programs, since they have yet to encounter any systems that they can't work with
16.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
No. I got it set for distance vision. There are modern implants that are "multi-focal". But they work by spreading out the light, so everything is less bright at any distance. My two pieces of anecdata are: 1. A friend with mu
17.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
It seems to me there is a broad range of "normal", as in well within the standard spec sheet tolerances for humans. It is more about what is average or median.
18.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
Who else tried with both eyes? A few years ago I had an implant to treat cataracts. It was notable at the time that the "new" eye was less yellow-tinted than the aged-in-place eye. I was told that the lens does yellow with age.
19.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
> Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, however its a great source of joy/emotions/slop. I suspect you are not looking very hard. I have learned a tremendous amount about everything from stone cutting to metalw
20.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
The burning question is whether or not it qualifies as a new DXCC entity.
21.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
? No, you need to educate yourself. The gestation period of a cow is approximately 9 months, similar to humans, by coincidence. Only a cow that has given birth to a calf will produce milk. The normal lactation period is 305 days before th
22.
by dbcurtis 5mo ago
That will vary by person. My father-in-law bred and milked pedigreed Holsteins. They had a 1 gallon pasteurizer and would just dip a gallon out of the bulk tank for household use when needed. So, most of the time they had pasteurized, no
23.
by dbcurtis 6mo ago
The thing about LR parsers is that since it is parsing bottom-up, you have no idea what larger syntactic structure is being built, so error recovery is ugly, and giving the user a sensible error message is a fool’s errand. In the end, all t
24.
by dbcurtis 6mo ago
I was just going into the second quarter of compiler design when the dragon book came out. My copy was still literally “hot of the press” — still warm from the ink baking ovens. It was worlds better that anything else available at the time.
25.
by dbcurtis 6mo ago
It seems to me that compared to your phone, a power brick dangling off a charging cable is much more likely to slip off your lap unnoticed and get wedged in the seat hinge only to get subsequently punctured. I recently took a flight where I
26.
by dbcurtis 6mo ago
he he... is that the equivalent of when I was a kid we differentiated by "drive-in", "paper-napkin restaurant" and "cloth-napkin restaurant" in order of how much trouble you would be in if you embarrassed your
27.
by dbcurtis 7mo ago
It is easy to underestimate how much one relies on senses other than vision. You hear many kinds of noises that indicate road surface, traffic, etc. You feel road surface imperfections telegraphed through the steering wheel. You feel acc
28.
by dbcurtis 7mo ago
No, I don't think that will be successful. Consider a day where the temperature and humidity is just right to make tail pipe exhaust form dense fog clouds. That will be opaque or nearly so to a camera, transparent to a radar, and I w
29.
by dbcurtis 8mo ago
Thanks! That is much farther back than I thought, even 200 kYA.
30.
by dbcurtis 8mo ago
When is the first evidence for cooking?

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