The Beagle's got a 42-cell Lithium Ion power source, so assuming that was previously charged (why wouldn't it be?!) then it should last for some decent amount of time.
FYI, the load on the batteries is much more significant than just the transmitter and electronics.
The temperature drops low enough at night that a heater is needed to keep everything from cooling past their spec'd temperature range. And you can only imagine how many amp-hours are chewed up driving the heater at night.
There isn't supposed to be. I believe the military does have the ability to selectively block or degrade the signal based on rough geographic location, though... so depending on the exact timing of your friend's travel, it's possible something was going on in the world that made the U.S. choose to degrade things in Chile (or perhaps all of South America).
Additionally, most GPS units come with a basemap for only one continent. In particular, most sold in the US only have a north american basemap. If you took such a unit to south america (and didn't load any additional maps onto it), the unit wouldn't give you anything more than latitude and longitude while you were there. No roads or other features would be visible on its map screen.
What resources aside from MSKB and google searching do slashdot readers use for troubleshooting strange problems?
I have a site I visit regularly that tends to have helpful advice. They even have a dedicated section for asking such things.
Re:6 million digits can be stored in under 6 megab
on
40th Mersenne Prime Found
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Because that involves an actual conversion between bases, which means that re-extracting (to print the digits out in base 10 again, for example) takes a non-trivial amount of time.
On the other hand, the number was probably originally calculated using base-2 arithmetic (I'm assuming), so storing in binary might be more natural anyhow.
It takes 6 megabytes to store 6 million digits if you encode them in ASCII... but this is highly inefficient.
It would be far more efficient to store them in binary coded decimal (BCD, google for it if you don't know what that is), which requires only 4 bits per decimal digit without sacrificing accessibility of the decimal data. In that case it would only take 3 megabytes.
At present, the only global satellite system available to civilians is GPS, but it is accurate only to 100 metres (325 feet) for civilians, or 22 metres (71 feet) for the military, and is under the control of the Pentagon.
What the hell are they talking about? With off-the-shelf equipment and a clear sky, you can easily get under 10-foot accuracy (I do on a very regular basis). With averaging and/or fancy equipment you can easily exceed that, too.
If they're talking about accuracy while the military has implemented that signal degredation stuff, it's misleading not to mention that fact. But either way, the military would still be able to do a hell of a lot better than 71-foot accuracy... that's ridiculous.
For truly large (and changing) CD collections, to me the only way to go is sleeves. I've been using these things for many years now... I own around 900 CDs, and they all fit in a small space in my closet inside sleeves inside plastic containers, including liner notes.
But it really is a great simple product! (I'm not just the owner, I'm a user:).
For any CD storage system (sleeves, jewel cases, whatever), tabbed plastic dividers come in pretty handy when you need to organize hundreds or thousands of CDs: http://discdividers.com
If you're broadcasting, then your exact location can be determined WITHOUT A DATABASE! You're sending out an easily-triangulatable radio signal. So why is having an address in a searchable database so much more invasive?
Certainly from a practical standpoint it makes harvesting easier... but on the "principle" of the thing is seems to me that any HAM operator is already publishing their location simply by broadcasting.
Right after posting I realized I could've used a "my %x" instead of the assignment. Combine this with a re-ordering of the hash key and you get 3 bytes less: #!/usr/bin/perl -p s|([a-z])([a-z]+)([a-z])|my%x;$x{%x.rand}=$_ for(split//,$2);join"",$1,values%x,$3|gei
I had tried the "%x.rand" ordering before, but I could've sworn it seemed considerably less random. However testing now I don't see any problems with it.
I really REALLY wish that the iTMS would credit you for the single tracks you buy, if you want to "upgrade" to the whole album.
When I'm curious about a new artist, I'd be more inclined to buy the few tracks I know I like if I know that initial investment can go toward a future purchase of the whole album.
I would think such a policy could only help to sell MORE music.
No, they only sell the rights to use it in binary form.
That's precisely what the GPL prohibits. I cannot take proprietary code, link it with GPL code, and sell the resulting binary unless I put the entire thing under the GPL.
By their own admission, SCO is apparently now distributing a "properly licensed" version of linux containing their IP alongside the GPL'd "portions" of linux (according to them).
If you distribute anything that's linked with GPL stuff, you MUST provide source and allow modification/redistribution... that's the single-sentence summary of the entire GPL.
Okay, so SCO just licensed a product containing (according to them) their proprietary source code combined with GPL'd source code. By the very act of bundling the two, doesn't this now give the licensee the right to modify and/or redistribute said work?
In other words... SCO can claim (*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*) that they had no idea their IP was in linux when they distributed it previously, but now that they have SPECIFICALLY given someone rights to their particular IP, in a product bundled with GPL'd code, aren't they now EXPLICITLY releasing their IP as GPL?
That's almost spooky... Avogadro's number is approximately 600 sextillion.
What if it turns out that, after taking into account all the dark matter, the universe contains Avogadro's number of "large objects"? (stars, planets, whatever)
Could the universe turn out to be nothing more than one mole of stars?:)
30-60 sextillion: The combined number of cells in every living human being on the planet.
51 sextillion: The number of grains of sand it would take to cover the entire planet once.
-- CALCULATED FROM -- There are 6 billion people on the planet. Web searches yielded varying figures of approximately 50-100 trillion cells per human being. The "average" grain of sand is 100 microns across (and I grossly approximated a sand grain as being square).
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The Beagle's got a 42-cell Lithium Ion power source, so assuming that was previously charged (why wouldn't it be?!) then it should last for some decent amount of time.
FYI, the load on the batteries is much more significant than just the transmitter and electronics.
The temperature drops low enough at night that a heater is needed to keep everything from cooling past their spec'd temperature range. And you can only imagine how many amp-hours are chewed up driving the heater at night.
"Lisa, in this house... --[fuck it, nevermind]--
When/what was the first mention of the word "internet" in US law? Anybody?
There isn't supposed to be. I believe the military does have the ability to selectively block or degrade the signal based on rough geographic location, though... so depending on the exact timing of your friend's travel, it's possible something was going on in the world that made the U.S. choose to degrade things in Chile (or perhaps all of South America).
Additionally, most GPS units come with a basemap for only one continent. In particular, most sold in the US only have a north american basemap. If you took such a unit to south america (and didn't load any additional maps onto it), the unit wouldn't give you anything more than latitude and longitude while you were there. No roads or other features would be visible on its map screen.
What resources aside from MSKB and google searching do slashdot readers use for troubleshooting strange problems?
I have a site I visit regularly that tends to have helpful advice. They even have a dedicated section for asking such things.
Because that involves an actual conversion between bases, which means that re-extracting (to print the digits out in base 10 again, for example) takes a non-trivial amount of time.
On the other hand, the number was probably originally calculated using base-2 arithmetic (I'm assuming), so storing in binary might be more natural anyhow.
It takes 6 megabytes to store 6 million digits if you encode them in ASCII... but this is highly inefficient.
It would be far more efficient to store them in binary coded decimal (BCD, google for it if you don't know what that is), which requires only 4 bits per decimal digit without sacrificing accessibility of the decimal data. In that case it would only take 3 megabytes.
At present, the only global satellite system available to civilians is GPS, but it is accurate only to 100 metres (325 feet) for civilians, or 22 metres (71 feet) for the military, and is under the control of the Pentagon.
What the hell are they talking about? With off-the-shelf equipment and a clear sky, you can easily get under 10-foot accuracy (I do on a very regular basis). With averaging and/or fancy equipment you can easily exceed that, too.
If they're talking about accuracy while the military has implemented that signal degredation stuff, it's misleading not to mention that fact. But either way, the military would still be able to do a hell of a lot better than 71-foot accuracy... that's ridiculous.
I'm scare to ask, but are you screaming in agony or screaming in orgasm?
Hrmmm.... is the term "clippyphile" already taken?
For truly large (and changing) CD collections, to me the only way to go is sleeves. I've been using these things for many years now... I own around 900 CDs, and they all fit in a small space in my closet inside sleeves inside plastic containers, including liner notes.
But it really is a great simple product! (I'm not just the owner, I'm a user :).
For any CD storage system (sleeves, jewel cases, whatever), tabbed plastic dividers come in pretty handy when you need to organize hundreds or thousands of CDs: http://discdividers.com
With anything "vital", I just make sure to tear it up in two separate pieces/piles, and ensure that each pile makes it to a separate garbage can.
As long as you're careful enough to split all the important information between your piles (not that hard to do), this feels safe enough for me.
I REALLY wish I had mod points... somebody moderate this guy up!
If you're broadcasting, then your exact location can be determined WITHOUT A DATABASE! You're sending out an easily-triangulatable radio signal. So why is having an address in a searchable database so much more invasive?
Certainly from a practical standpoint it makes harvesting easier... but on the "principle" of the thing is seems to me that any HAM operator is already publishing their location simply by broadcasting.
Right after posting I realized I could've used a "my %x" instead of the assignment. Combine this with a re-ordering of the hash key and you get 3 bytes less:
for(split//,$2);join"",$1,values%x,$3|gei
#!/usr/bin/perl -p
s|([a-z])([a-z]+)([a-z])|my%x;$x{%x.rand}=$_
I had tried the "%x.rand" ordering before, but I could've sworn it seemed considerably less random. However testing now I don't see any problems with it.
Please, we're talking PERL here... there are shorter (though not necessarily simpler :) ways to shuffle:
$ _
#!/usr/bin/perl -p
s|([a-z])([a-z]+)([a-z])|%x=();$x{rand().%x}=
for(split//,$2);join"",$1,values%x,$3|gei
Definitely one of the least useful perl 1.5-liners I've written in awhile!
There are numerous known methods for disabling that feature, such as 1, 2, 3
If the kid died because mom was too engrossed in a mystery novel series, I doubt very much that anyone would blame the book or its author.
This is ridiculous.
I really REALLY wish that the iTMS would credit you for the single tracks you buy, if you want to "upgrade" to the whole album.
When I'm curious about a new artist, I'd be more inclined to buy the few tracks I know I like if I know that initial investment can go toward a future purchase of the whole album.
I would think such a policy could only help to sell MORE music.
No, they only sell the rights to use it in binary form.
That's precisely what the GPL prohibits. I cannot take proprietary code, link it with GPL code, and sell the resulting binary unless I put the entire thing under the GPL.
By their own admission, SCO is apparently now distributing a "properly licensed" version of linux containing their IP alongside the GPL'd "portions" of linux (according to them).
If you distribute anything that's linked with GPL stuff, you MUST provide source and allow modification/redistribution... that's the single-sentence summary of the entire GPL.
Okay, so SCO just licensed a product containing (according to them) their proprietary source code combined with GPL'd source code. By the very act of bundling the two, doesn't this now give the licensee the right to modify and/or redistribute said work?
In other words... SCO can claim (*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*) that they had no idea their IP was in linux when they distributed it previously, but now that they have SPECIFICALLY given someone rights to their particular IP, in a product bundled with GPL'd code, aren't they now EXPLICITLY releasing their IP as GPL?
yes.
That's almost spooky... Avogadro's number is approximately 600 sextillion.
:)
What if it turns out that, after taking into account all the dark matter, the universe contains Avogadro's number of "large objects"? (stars, planets, whatever)
Could the universe turn out to be nothing more than one mole of stars?
30-60 sextillion: The combined number of cells in every living human being on the planet.
51 sextillion: The number of grains of sand it would take to cover the entire planet once.
-- CALCULATED FROM --
There are 6 billion people on the planet. Web searches yielded varying figures of approximately 50-100 trillion cells per human being. The "average" grain of sand is 100 microns across (and I grossly approximated a sand grain as being square).
They are tabbed plastic dividers for organizing your CDs.