Mokka mit Schlag

Sleepycat asks some interesting questions about a non-standard persistence API they are developing. By the way, non-standard is good. Ideas like this should be tried out in open source products first before baking them into standards. I applaud Sleepycat for taking this route instead of rushing into the JCP. Indeed standardizing in advance of implementation experience explains a lot of the problems in JEE that APIs like this one are designed to replace. Anyway, on to the questions:
Read the rest of this entry »

One Fox Sparrow, Three White-throated Sparrows

Prospect Park, 2007-02-17
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the cold weather I made a quick spin around the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and Prospect Park Lake for the Great Backyard Bird Count. My best birds were a Northern Pintail that’s been hanging out in the lake and one male Bufflehead, both the first reported in new York State for this count. The wind off the lake was bitterly cold so I didn’t stay out long, but I did tally 22 species and close to a thousand individual birds (mostly gulls and geese):
Read the rest of this entry »

Loop Rumors reports that “Unlike today’s Mac Pros, the cooling system will direct hot air through vents at the top of the machine, much like Apple’s Cube of yesteryear.”

I expect and hope that Loop Rumors is wrong. The problem with vents on top is that I (and many other users) put things there.

Putting the exhaust vents on top blocks useful space. By contrast the space on the back of the machine where the vents are now is relatively free.

How many more stories like this one are we going to have to hear before Congress does something? The fundamental problem is that it is cheaper and simpler for the airlines to keep passengers crammed in deep vein thrombosis-inducing seats for ten hours on the slim hope that they might be able to take off than to allow them to get off the plane. Never mind what the passengers want.

Here’s a modest proposal: any plane that spends two hours on the ground after passengers have boarded must return to the terminal and disembark. No exceptions. No leeway for “We’re now tenth in line” or “We think the weather’s clearing up now. Just a few more minutes.” If the plane isn’t taxiing down the runway, it goes back to the terminal. If the gates are full, then pull up the stairs and let the passengers walk. This would give passengers who want to leave or make other arrangements the opportunity. Other passengers could at least walk around, use a full-sized toilet, get something to eat or drink, and so forth.

Frankly I’m hesitant to suggest additional regulations for such a marginal industry that’s usually about one broken propeller away from bankruptcy, but sometimes the egregious nature of an industry’s own incompetence and customer hostility demands action, even if it pushes a marginal company or two over the edge.
Read the rest of this entry »

I just did a quick check with LogValidator on the pages at this site for Refactoring HTML. Besides telling you where the markup is screwed up, LogValidator also figures out which pages are the most popular. The results were not what I would have guessed. After throwing away index pages, favicon.ico’s, Atom feeds and the like it turns out the most popular story of the last year is:
Read the rest of this entry »