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Domain: brad.ac.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to brad.ac.uk.
Comments · 6
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Observatory on the webThe Bradford Robotic Telescope is a web enabled telescope in West Yorkshire, England. It's open to anyone (registration required). You submit a request for an observation, the request is queued, and the telescope automatically makes the observation when conditions are favorable. You get an email informing you that your image is available.
If you're into immediate gratification, the most recent 500 observations are also available. The Yorkshire weather isn't always cooperative, so it might be a while before you get your image.
It's not the same as putting your eye to the lens, but I don't have room for a 46cm telescope, and viewing conditions are far from ideal anywhere in New Jersey!
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Re:Who uses java.
These are my last posts in this thread. I grow weary of debating this. I'm not even sure why I'm bothering.
No you werent right.
Sorry, but you are totally wrong. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of the C standard to quote directly from it. However, at this link, I quote:
Minimum Type Limits
Any compiler conforming to the Standard must also respect the following limits with respect to the range of values any particular type may accept. Note that these are lower limits: an implementation is free to exceed any or all of these. Note also that the minimum range for a char is dependent on whether or not a char is considered to be signed or unsigned.
Type Minimum Range
signed char -127 to +127
unsigned char 0 to 255
short int -32767 to +32767
unsigned short int 0 to 65535
int -32767 to +32767
unsigned int 0 to 65535
long int -2147483647 to +2147483647
unsigned long int 0 to 4294967295
Type Minimum Precision
float 6 digits
double 10 digits
long double 10 digits
The Standard also specifies that these limits should be present as preprocessor macros in the header fileAnd by the way, C++ has the same limits. I quote from Bjarne Stroustrap, The C++ Programming Langauge, Second Edition, Page 50: "In addition, it is guaranteed that a char has at least 8 bits, a short at least 16 bits, and a long at least 32 bits".
There, is that good enough for you?
Dont use 64 bit arithmetic. Use bitwise operators. Thats pretty simple.
It's pretty hard to do a compare operation with bitwise operators. And even if one could, I shouldn't have to.
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El Nino = more lightning?
1997-98 EL NIÑO EVENT INCREASED LIGHTNING ACTIVITY
"The 1997-98 El Niño Event and Related Wintertime Lightning Variations in the Southeastern United States" was selected as one of the "Highlight" articles appearing in the February 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The paper describes the increase in lightning activity in the northern Gulf of Mexico Basin in response to the 1997-98 El Niño event. The authors use two data sets to obtain this information. One data set was a 10-year (1989-99) database of U.S. cloud-to-ground lightning activity. The NASA Lightning Imaging Sensor on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Observatory was also used. The LIS gives the total (in-cloud and cloud-to-ground) lightning activity data recorded from space. Results showed that during 1997-8 a 100-150% increase in lightning days year-to-year and a nearly 200% increase in lightning hours (compared to 1996-7 and 1998-9) in the basin. They attribute these changes to an enhanced synoptic-scale forcing associated with ENSO and a stronger than normal upper-level jet stream. They also find good agreement between most of the recent warm ENSO events and cyclogenesis within the basin.
Cyclogenesis: Process of initiation or intensification of a cyclonic circulation in the atmosphere (source)
ENSO event: ENSO is the term currently used by scientists to describe the full range of the Southern Oscillation that includes both SST increases (a warming) as well as SST decreases (a cooling) when compared to a long-term average. (source) -
We make the futureThe Movie. It seems very clear to me, having watched the original in a real theater in Super-Cinerama/Super Panavision 70 that the various mutiliations to get it down to television haven't helped it. All the same, it was 1966-1968 and we'd yet to land on the moon. Look at the images they thought that they'd see and what ultimately was seen on the moon. They came damn close. So look at the special effects and understand that Star Wars was still 9 years off and doesn't look nearly as functional.
Perhaps those of you who don't get it should look at what you have for an imagination and what you have for an attention span. This is a thinking person's movie, not a movie that will whack you over the head with "get it, moron!". Further, until you've made a movie and dealt with all the problems that come with one, ponder what you say. This was a spectacular thing that we're still talking about 32 years later.
The Technology. My bigger bitch is with the people here that bitch about the technology. Perhaps you've been standing behind the door, but it is you and I that make the technology happen. If we want video phones then we should get off our collective asses and code the damn things up.
And, if we want the things this movie guessed would happen, they're not beyond the edge of our technology. All it takes is a political will to do these things and it will happen. What happened to the US space program, post Apollo 11, can only be considered a travesty. There was a viable team of very smart, can-do people that attained a spectacular goal. What did we did to the team? We laid most of them off and said, 'thanks guys'. That NASA was capable of all sorts of cool things but instead the press and hence the country looked at Vietnam instead.
So if you want the BIG technology this vision of the future offers, argue for it with your government critters. They will listen if you will take the time to clearly state the case. They're actually there to do the right thing, if only they can figure out what that is.
--Multics
P.S. don't whine at me about the Space Shuttle either. They went from an Apollo command module (think row-boat) to a reusable space truck (think modern cargo ship) in one step. They're allowed to have made (and continue to make) some blunders along the way -- after all this is rocket science.
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MP3's, ZIP's ACE's and other "dodgy" files
I am disturbed by the original post. An ISP shouldn't assume just because a file has extension MP3 it is inevitably ripped-off (illegal) music. How about ZIP's, ACE's etc? Are they automatically Warez? Howabout
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Re:I just got back from OOPSLAWhat's wrong with a little Eiffel? Or some Algol even? What's wrong with COBOL for that matter?
He's right. Learning some things will definitely help the way you think about things. The incredibly strong typing of something like pascal will definitely kick your *ss if you've been doing nothing but C for a while, and I think that's actually a Good Thing. Learning Eiffel if you already know smalltalk is a very different experience.
Even something like Algol will probably change your views and get you closer to the hardware in many respects (not that you can get Algol to run on most machines anymore....;-)
What about Ada? Programming by Contract really will teach you something serious about how you actually interact with the rest of your application, and while you'll curse it ("I KNOW what I'm trying to do and it's correct, dammit!") you'll be happier for learning it. Older, but happier.
And as long as the languages keep coming, there'll pretty much never be a chance to really run out.
My list would include:
