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http://home.mira.net/~bytey/PC-TaskScreen.html

(Thinks to self: I think it was still visible up north, except that it wasn't anywhere near as bright.)

I'm sure you folks up North must you're kicking yourself having to wait this long. No, really, I'm sure you must be green with envy by now...

Well just in case you aren't, I can't wait to look at this in Dad's 12" telescope. With a tracking planetary gearbox. And a nice 360 stand. We only had a 10" back in 2003, and we didn't have the CCD camera... not that I am trying to make some people here jealous. Oh noes, humble little me would never do that. Far be it for someone with my ego to fall that low...

...

Ok, perhaps not. ;-)

The GPS sentence of interest is $GPZDA. I don't use this sentence - but I do rely on the reported UTC in other sentences. Some GPS receivers do not provide this sentence, and I don't want to make the assumption in my program that all do.

Times reported by GPS receivers are sometimes UTC, sometimes GPS time, and sometimes it is not even clear what they are.

I haven't expereinced the problems you are describing.

Converting the GPS-calculated position to a timezone is very difficult (it at least requires a detailed description of the timezone borders, and those are not even constant). Providing DST information is even more difficult, as this article explains.

Yes, this is difficult. The main point is that one should rely on the computer system to provide accurate UTC and local time, and the computer should be synchronized to some reliable source which provides correct DST information. This may be a main time server that the computer listens to which does all the 'hard work', or it may be the system that the program is running on. Either way the program itself should not be changed - it should trust the computer time.

The main time server should be synchronized to a correct UTC time source (such as GPS) and either another source of DST information or keep DST information locally such that it is easy to adjust DST parameters. Thus only one program on one system needs to be adjusted instead of auditing all the programs and systems in the organization.

So please explain me (as the clever programmer you undoubtedly are, putting down your fellow programmers as stupid) how you are going to solve this with a GPS receiver.

I'm sorry to have insulted those programmers who choose to make poor assumptions, and cause me (and others) problems down the road. However, I stand by my opinion that they are making poor, shortsighted decisions. Perhaps some are not in a position to choose the ideal path and it is not their fault.

-Adam

Ahem! That should've read:

From the excellent Southern Skywatch Page

Forgot to close the link (doh!)

I must confess I don't have it any more.. a few years ago when I moved I gave it to a cousin of mine who is a bit of an audio-phile. It was a Leak TL/12
12 watt power amp & pre-amp. It was built in 1950 and probably is worth a lot - I just didn't have room for it and wanted it to stay in the family because it was my grandfathers. As far as I know it's still going. I must ask him some day!

Yup was the common snipers suck rant, anyway he gave us a much better link at least :D

Muchkin

Yep. The filter calculations are carried out in more bits in order to prevent roundoff errors, but the output is in 16 or maybe 18 bits resolution at this high sample rate. Google for "dac oversampling bits spectrum", there are plenty of web pages that explain things, e.g. oversampling filters and noise spectra. (I have seen better ones, but I'm not sure what exactly I googled for last time)

It is next to impossible to make a DAC that can create a voltage with more than 18 bits resolution because of the tight tolerances that are required. In a 1-bit DAC, the voltage-resolution problem is translated into a kind of duty-cycle modulation with just 1 bit of resolution. Those DACs oversample with 64x or more and run internally at 3 MHz. It's amusing when people complain that sound cards have too much RF interference with the mother board while the DAC itself is running at 3 MHz together with a DSP processor (pentium-100 performance) integrated on the same chip. This DAC is designed to generate noise in the 200 kHz+ region with a 5 V amplitude... (Cheap-sound-card noise comes from a noisy power supply and a cheap buffer amplifier between the filter and the connector, not from RF interference)

As a historian, nothing irritates me more than the neo-conservative hogwash that Regan or Bush Sr won the Cold War. The Cold War lasted from 1945 (actually 47 if you ask most historians) to 1991. As such, I don't find it unreasonable to assume that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter also had something to do with that victory.

That said anyone who's studied the Soviet Era can tell you exactly how much sense the "Regan won the Cold War" theory makes. The X Telegram (George Kennan) stated in no uncertain terms that the Soviet Union must expand or collapse from within. Based on this document, it was the official position of the United States to contain the spread of communism. This was not a four or eight year process, but a stand which took decades. If Regan won the cold war for what purpose did our servicemen give their lives in Vietnam? In Korea?

All this aside, the argument I hear most frequently is that Regan's "genius" in backing the Star Wars program forced the Soviet Union into a spending spiral that caused internal collapse of the economy and thus the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

Unfortunately, this is totally unsubstantiated. First off, the Soviet Union consistently spent huge sums of money on the military. Many will toss figures at this argument quoting between 40% to 70% of Soviet GDP in the late 1980s. Realize two things when you see this argument. First, as a (officially) communist State the USSR has no GDP. No numbers were every kept to this extent in the USSR and any numbers we have are based on the (somewhat) biased estimates of the US armed forces and defense contractors (who have a vested interest here).

Secondly, earlier estimates from the Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Johnson administrations indicate Soviet Military spending at around 40% of the countries production capacity (think Civilization shields here, since we still don't have a real GDP here). Unfortunately I've been unable to locate decent links for this data. Apparently it only exists in dead tree media.

So what did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union? The answer is pretty obvious once you think about it... The Soviet Union caused it. Khrushchev started the ball rolling when he gave The Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. When Khrushchev released political pressures in the Soviet Union the result was what you'd expect. Give them an inch they take a mile. Khrushchev tried to clamp down on this movement, but was only able to stem its tide. Hard-line elements in the Soviet Government were less than pleased with this, and this was one of the factors that pushed Khrushchev to the now infamous military aggressiveness exhibited during his tenure.

After Khrushchev hard-line elements regained power in the Soviet Union and by instituting a Geritocracy favoring those who followed in the traditions of Stalin these elements kept the dissidents in perilous check.

Gorbachev changed all that. His policies of Glasnost and Perestroika snowballed. These policies were intended to allow some of the internal pressures to abate while keeping the Soviet system in power and the country under control. However, much like punching a hole in a dam, the tiny valve soon became a rushing torrent. Civil War erupted and on December 25 1991 the Soviet Flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time.

What caused it? More than anything else it was the tide of political conservatism in the Soviet Union. This tide wasn't encouraged by Star Wars or Stealth Technology. It was the result of Coca Cola and McDonalds, the product of Ford and General Motors. The Soviet people wanted what the United States had... prosperity.

And just as Kennan said, the Soviet model couldn't maintain a decent standard of living without expanding.

So my apologies to Regan and his crew. And in answer to your question "what was Regan's legacy?" The answer is as follows. Regan was in the right place at the right time and managed not to screw it up to badly. It's a foreign policy the right has been following ever sense.

the lizard featured on the cover of the oreilly book advertised off to the side of this article is a frill-necked lizard

native to that land of weird and wonderful animals, terra australis

and this lizard is one little terror australis - have a look at some of the pictures on this page

"World's most recent press release..." is probably more like it.

here

Some interesting info here: http://home.mira.net/~radacorp/ground_effect.html

Here's a good site on how the ground effect works: Ground Effect

What is ground effect, you ask? Karma Whore to the rescue!

From the company (might be slashdotted sooner or later)
A good site
More info, no pics.

Here are some links to help out with gps:
(nothing to cosmic, I just did a google search)

Nulling Antennas:

Navy
Mayflower
Owego

How GPS Works

Info about L1, L2, p-code, etc

Some info on GPS NMEA sentences

-jim

Actually, the older non-12-channel garmin receivers do limit the speed -- I know, I tested my garmin 45. Aparently, the gps 38 does, too. When I bought mine, it was an amazingly cheap receiver -- the magellan one I used at work was just a bare board (no screen, case, or antenna - you talked to it with a terminal program running on a laptop) and cost $500; for $280 from garmin I got the whole shebang.

I've been happy with it, but garmin claimed it was nitrogen filled and waterproof. Friends of mine bought a pair for a sailing trip, and thought it would be a good idea to test the waterproofness since they didn't look too rugged. They drowned two of them in buckets and returned them for warranty service before getting back one with all sorts of extra glue on the seams!

I think 574 mph hurts my little brain, too.

What's really sad for geeks is that 16-bit, 44.1 or 48kHz sound (CDs and DAT) aren't a patch on the quality of a good gramophone record, let alone a 15ips analogue mastertape. Though i accept that convenience is occasionally a little more important than quality.
- Derwen