Comment by fbnt
11 years ago
Shouldn'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.
11 years ago
Shouldn'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).
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!
8 replies →
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.
1 reply →