Memory is cheap. Sometimes it's just plain faster and simpler to allocate an oversize fixed-size-array than to mess with dynamically allocating and freeing memory.

Fixed size arrays explode if N ever gets above your array size. There are many cases where you should NEVER do this... anything safety-critical or crash-critical or anything which might come under attack. However there are cases where you can assign an acceptable real-world practical limit on N and simply allocate an abundance of memory for it.

No no, it's like when you go outside and get wet. That causes it to start raining.

My believe is that they intend to fly hundreds of these. If you have 100 tethers from 0 to 60,000 ft or so, I believe that you would have many aircraft accidents. Recall that the British used tethered balloons to protect themselves from German air raids. There is no way that you could see those tethers while flying, until you were very close to them -- then it would be too late to avoid.

There are a dozen or so tethered balloons around the border of the US now, so far there have been no incidents that I know of -- but the border is a place where pilots are very observant. Also, the balloons are only at about 10,000 ft or so, so most planes are far higher.

While the parent is Anonymous coward, please rate him up, as that is correct.

Facebook is either going to fly a few thousand WiFi drones or thousands of WiFi satellites to cover the entire planet. Why would they be doing that?

While I think that Pirate Bay guys suck hard (I spent my life creating content that they pirated), I don't think in this particular case he's wrong.

Fuel cell cars all have significant-size traditional batteries as well, because during acceleration or climbing of hills you need more power than a practical fuel cell can provide.

OTEC has been "coming" forever, I went to a presentation that reads astonishingly like that Wikipedia article 40 years ago when I started college. The mechanisms were the same, the idea of using the energy to generate chemicals rather than send electricity through long cables was the same (back then they were suggested ammonia rather than hydrogen, but that's in the Wikipedia article too.)

Curious that the efficiency could be up to 6% -- now, granted, we're not using that temperature difference at all now, but still -- 6%? Solar panels can be up to 30% or more now.

If we were going to use OTEC for hydrogen to power, say, 10% of the cars in the world -- wouldn't we need tens of thousands of plants, each costing millions of dollars?

I was flying along the coast, just south of San Francisco, when a small dot caught my eye. Flying is typically 99% boring and 1% terrifying -- this was the 1% that day -- I thought it was another plane headed right for me.

About a second later, it was clear that it was a small balloon, and I flew right past it. Just for fun, I entered a 360 degree turn to see it again -- the fun part was that as I came around it was still caught in the vortex from my wing, and was spinning madly! I was surprised, as it probably took well over a minute to make the turn; I didn't realize that even 1,500 lb Cessnas would generate vortices with that much endurance. I treated big jets with a lot more respect after that.

Actually, the last 6 months were the hottest of those six months on record. And not by a little bit -- recent 'record heat' has been tenths of a degree hotter, now it's like a whole degree hotter. Not just hotter than average, the hottest ever. April will certainly be the next one. Sorry Charcharodon -- you're just wrong.

Funny how is number of users is 2^10 + 2^9 - 1. 'Lot of code smell in this article.

This seems to me to be an article promoting the new (probably very expensive!) BART train cars I have to say that they look pretty good. The first ones are due toward the end of this year.

It's so easy to justify consuming almost anything, because there are thousands of web pages that say "that is good for you!" Coffee, chocolate, fruit juice, whatever. Some of these are, of course, created by the companies that sell these foods and drinks -- but I think most of it comes from the fact that everybody eats -- and while almost any other subject will only address a fraction of people, foods and drinks are obviously part of everybody's life. So, there's talk about food every day in the newspaper, on the news cable channels...and now on Slashdot.

One of the most essential parts of the 'immersive' experience of VR is 3D. Many VR cameras, like the Nokia OZO, do good 3D -- the cameras are spaced reasonably close to the distance between eyes, and the cameras are wide enough angle that you can calculate good 3D info from the multiple views. It's odd that Samsung is putting out just a 360-degree camera, not one that captures depth, when their display will clearly show 3D.

Davide, I think you make a very good point.

There have been recent incidents where nominees give up after months of nothing happening.

People aren't looking very far ahead. Immediately all the GOP leaders said that they won't confirm a nomination, and many have asked Obama not to make a nomination. On the other hand, Obama immediately said that he will make a nomination. So, that's likely to be the first public thing to happen.

Obama will likely pick somebody with impeccable credentials, but more importantly, a toughness to survive 11 months of vitriolic attacks -- because he's going to insist that the nominee maintain his or her determination to be confirmed. If he nominates somebody who pulls out after a few months, that would be devastating to Obama and the Democrats. And while that might limit the number of nominees to 10% of what they would be in normal (or, perhaps, historic) times, Obama will find somebody. It will likely be somebody who isn't strongly politically polarized.

And the GOP will immediately insist that they won't confirm him or her. Little question about that. That's when it gets interesting.

Obama will likely use the fact that the GOP Senators are blocking a reasonable candidate to attack them, and likely attack the ones who are at most risk to lose their elections this year. If Obama can make these senators look more like jerks -- and I think he probably can -- then things may change.

I think that the most politcally reasonable thing for the GOP to do would be to vote on the nominee, and just vote him or her down. Obama can probably nominate three or four people during the next eight months, the GOP taking a few months to evaluate each one would be typical and easily defensible.

I don't like it, but that's what I think will happen.