Here you a grown adult and can't do third-grade arithmetic. I'm going to hazard a guess that you went to public school.
Suppose you're using the most common satellite form factor, the cubesat (or tubesat). You spend $10,000 building it, and if needed you can build a replacement for $10,000. You can either spend $40,000 to launch it on a time-tested rocket, or spend $20,000 on a less established vehicle.
If it goes well, your total cost is $50,000 for the old rocket, $30,000 on the new rocket. New rocket wins by a large margin.
If the new rocket blows up the first time and you have to try again, total cost for two launches on the new rocket is $50,000. The old rocket doesn't save you any money even if the new rocket fails the first time.
As I said, if you have a $100 million payload, you should use the most reliable rocket. Otherwise, you need to use arithmetic to decide.
Are you confusing the cost of one SEAT on a Soyuz vs the cost of the entire Falcoln 9? Even if so, the whole Falcoln 9 isn't three times the cost of a seat on a Soyuz.
The Soyuz 2 costs about $57 million to take 7,000 pounds to GTO. The Falcon 9 is about $62 million to take 18,000 pounds. So about the same total cost per launch, but the Falcon 9 FT carries over twice as much.
I your satellite is 7,000 lbs or less, you can either split the cost with another customer and pay about $30 million on the Falcoln, or pay $57 million on Soyuz. Falcoln wins on cost. If your payload is over 7,000 pounds, Soyuz won't get you there at any cost, unless you split it into multiple launches at $57 million each. Falcoln wins again.
On the other hand, IF you spent $100 million building the cargo, you might prefer to spend more on the Soyuz due to its proven track record.
In GENERAL businesses should focus on their core competency. To what extent depends on a) available cash and b) projections for future growth in the core competency.
Google has a shit ton of cash. More cash than they can reasonably spend on search and adwords development. How about question (b), the future of search?
> The moment a better search engine is released their goose is cooked.
Indeed there have been many kings of search. Yahoo was on top at one point, and Altavista, and Hotbot. As you say, Yahoo fell when Google came up with a better search, and when someone else comes up with a better search, where will Google be? Google will have the #1 most used operating system in the world, a successful mapping and navigation company, a successful online office suite (Google Docs), the most popular email service in the world, etc etc.
In fact, "the moment a better search engine is released" Google will still be making $40 billion / year from its non-search businesses.
> I know the Google Security Team guys well (I work for Google, on security
I've been working in internet security for 20 years, and of course Google stands out as possibly a very interesting place to work. You Googlers do some really neat stuff. I'd be interested to hear anything more you have to say about working for Google on security. Do you enjoy it? Any suggestions for someone who might end up working there sometime relatively soon?
I'll let them say that providing online communication is just like selling walkie-talkies. So they plan to sue Walmart for selling walkie-talkies? No, that would be ridiculous? Yep, same as this.
> US laws only apply to events within US jurisdiction. > A company operating from New Zealand does NOT fall under US jurisdiction.
Extradition is governed by treaties, which are law in both countries. They tend to be either list type, which explcitly list extradictable offenses, or "common criminality" type, in which someone guilty of a crime can be extradicted if it's a crime in BOTH countries.
The US - New Zealand treaty, which is law in New Zealand, is the list type. It says people can be extradited for specific acts such as "receiving or transporting unlawfully obtained money". (That one applies, via the Berne Convention on copy rights.)
> What you're implying, would make Saudi Arabian law enforceable in the US.
No for two reasons. First, there's no US-Saudi extradition treaty. Second, if there were, it would be either a "common criminality" treaty which applies to acts which are criminal IN THE US, or a list type, which lists the acts. Neither applies the law of Saudi Arabia, unless the US has the same law.
> should be enforceable
I'm confused. You started with. "US laws only apply...", and "does not fall"under the jurisdiction"n making (very incorrect) claims about what the law -is-. Then right at the end you say "should be". Are you talking about what the law -is- or what you think it -should be-?
Actually it's suprisingly common to confuse the two. I very often read people declaring what the law is, and explaining why it should be so. Of course those are two mostly unrelated things. You may have great ideas about what the law -should- be, and it's tempting to forget that has no bearing on what the law actually is.
On that note, my explanation above is concerning what the law is, not what I think I should be. I didn't write the law, I only read it.
Having people writing scripts to make their job easier can be great. Sometimes you don't need to actually know what you're doing to write software.
It only becomes a big problem when either a) it's exposed on the internet, where hacker bots hit it a thousand ties per day (headline: Acme Corp exposes 12 Million Credit Cards) or b) the data is actually important to your business. Example you write "rm $file", that's no problem until someone puts a * in a file name and it deletes everything in the folder.
If it's going to be on the internet, or deal with mission-critical data or resources, it's good to have it done by people who know what they're doing, who know what the common errors are and how to avoid them*.
* Not everyone with the word "developer" in their title is qualified. Does their education include systems development, or do they have a chemistry degree?
The first one is an Intel processor instruction. Nothing really to do with either Linux or viruses.
The second points out that executables contain unused bytes. In theory,there is space for someone to add code without making the file bigger.
The third never existed in the wild, as far as I can tell.
The fourth is a legit virus.
The fifth is another research curiousity - it allows root to break files. It's supposed to demonstrate a concept for a trojan, but instead if makes them not run at all.
The sixth is somebody's homework, which they titled "a good natured virus". Again, not a virus ever seen in the wild.
The seventh is in a language I can't read.
The eighth is the same site as the second - again talking generally about how someone could go about adding a trojan to an executable. Not a virus.
So one actual virus, in the first eight. I got bored after that. On the other hand, there are over 100,000 known Windows viruses.
> If you spend your time avoiding visiting unsavoury websites and have the knowledge not to downloading/open questionable files
The number 1 source of infections is compromised ads on mainstream sites like Slashdot. Avoiding "unsavoury websites" isn't protecting you. Noscript and an ad blocker would provide much more protection, along with automated offsite backups in a pull configuration (your computer must not be able to delete/overwrite the backups, for ransomware protection).
If he did -nothing- about security, that would be true. That's not likely the case. More likely, he's using protective strategies that are appropriate for his environment and the threats most prevalent in that environment. The most common threats for Linux machines aren't viruses. Viruses specifically are more of a Windows thing. Not that there are no threats that affect Linux, they are -different- threats.
On Linux, he may use the firewall, Tripwire or another IDS, some form of IPS if only fail2ban, SELinux, etc. Also of course browser-specific things like an adblocker and NoScript. Linux has long had good support for good partition and file encryption, so he might use that, and scheduled offsite pull backups protect against ransomware.
ClamAV runs -on- Linux, but normally -for- Windows - you install on on your Linux mail server to remove viruses before your Windows clients download their mail, etc.
I notice that there are quite a few comments posted already. It's currently the middle of the work day in the US, and we're spending our time on Slashdot.:)
What you said is certainly true. Also, I would bet the dolls don't wake the girls up every two hours and apply a clamp to the their nipples for 30 minutes. I would bet that while changing the doll, the girls didn't get a squirt of diarrhea to the face.
By misrepresenting the difficulties, you encourage them to have babies rather than discouraging them.
> They should have been far more aggressive in getting their service in as many places as possible.
Maybe. Or maybe if it didn't sell well in Kansas City, and it didn't sell well in Austin, and it didn't sell well in Provo - it doesn't sell well. More cities would have been more fail.
Kind of like politicians in places that have been 100% controlled by one party, representing one viewpoint, for decades and it hasn't worked, places like Detroit, Chicago, etc. While campaiging the same politicians stand up there and point to the same problems, while supporting the same "solutions" that they've been doing for 30 or 40 years. If it's not working, maybe it's not going to work; maybe try something else.
It may be very wise for Google to say "well, that didn't work, we'll try something else" rather than doing more failure faster.
> All the money is taken off the top and the real work is done for a skilled-labourer wage.
True, for government contracts a small percentage of the money goes to people with screwdrivers in hand. ALSO, the people reading and writing 1,000 page documents are doing work. It would certainly be good if we could eliminate some of that work, but it's real work that is required by the federal processes.
Most of these requirements were created to encourage fairness of one kind or another. I personally can go buy a computer in just a few minutes. When the feds buy a computer with your money, you want to know they aren't buying it at triple the normal price from Hillary's brother, so there is process involved. Another taxpayer wants the feds to favor companies that are (nominally) owned by women, so there's more process involved. Another taxpayer wants them to favor people whose great-great-grandparents probably lived in Africa - more process, more work.
Of course organizing 1,000 contractors all over the country to upgrade all of the post offices is also real work.
If you didn't notice, my explanation was intended for easy understanding. It was high-level view avoided any technical terms like "attenuation", RMS or even "ohms". In this high-level view, the gain control (which works by attenuation) is part of the amplifier circuit. The fact that it's often physically a seperate chip is quite irrelevant to the topic of clipping.
Well, there has been precisely one nuclear nuclear accident with significant casualties (31 killed, about 2,000 have shortened life expectancy). It seems you've already decided you wouldn't trust any investigation overseen by International Atomic Energy Agency or other internationally recognized safety agencies, so I guess you don't trust the investigations of Chernobyl.
On the other hand, 230,000 people were washed away by the Banqiao hydroelectric disaster.
>How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.
They are very good at what they do - they get contracts. They handle thousands of pages of government forms, years of meetings, and of course donating to the right organizations.
I was a contractor for a company which did most of the on-site work for HP, called TCML. HP's competence was getting government contracts. TCML's competence was finding and contracting somewhat competent techs. My competence was with servers, switches, desktops, etc.
I'm not competent at preparing a XYX-7273-HDH-98(b) package for a federal RFP. HP isn't competent at upgrading a router.
> most likely the result of the small bandwidth they can work with due to the computer not being booted up or something - because for example the "BIOS" can only receiver commands at 1kb/s or something
That, or since it's low on power, the data rate is much lower than max. (That's to be expected, over long distances, lower power signals need to be slower.)
As you said, it's entirely possible that the main computer can do that data rate, but the IPMI/DRAC/ILO is far slower, or the lack of available power dictates a slow rate.
You're right. I interpreted that "20 seconds" as meaning 20 seconds delay. That would indicate a distance about 12-13 times as far as the moon. As you mentioned, the craft is actually roughly on the opposite side of earth's orbit, near where the earth will be in 5-6 months. That's a much further distance, about 16 minutes at the speed of light.
TFA quoted one of the NASA engineers "If we turn on the computer, which is the only way we can get insight into the current state of the spacecraft... what got us into this mess in the first place could turn back on again."
It seems that in order to really know what commands to send, they first need to query some data from the computer. So something like:
Query the most interesting parameter. 20 seconds to rx the reply. (1:40 remaining) Decide what to query at next. 10 seconds to think and decide. (1:30 remaining). Decide on a fix and get it sent off, 1 minute. (30 seconds remaining). Commands take 20 seconds to reach the spacecraft (10 seconds remaining). Craft executes the instructions, changing its orientation or whatever is required. Unpucker.
> The internal DAC on the prius seems like it works well for CDs and BT, but not on it's auxillary inputs. Thoughts?
The AUX as in the 3.5mm jack that connects to your (analog) headphone jack? THIS headphone jack?:
> It doesn't seem to have that great of a headphone DAC as it sounds mediocre on everything I plug it into.
If you're plugging from a regular headphone jack, the DAC in the car shouldn't be involved - it is already analog.
As for the "bad DAC", trying turning the volume down considerably on the source and compensating by turning it up on the amp. Any modern DAC should have distortion below the threshold humans can detect in music. HOWEVER, the tiny amp for the headphones or the input it is plugged into could very well be overdriven. Turning down the volume on the source may very well fix your problem.
Here's what happens, when things are right and when they're wrong. When levels are right: DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp. Volume is set at 5, so: Headphone amp multiplies by 5 and sends 0.7V to car input. (Car input sees near maximum loudness, line-level car input maxes out at 0.77 volts). Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 14 volts to speakers.
How things go wrong:
DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp. Volume is set at 10, so: Headphone amp multiplies by 10 and tries to send 1.4 to car input. Headphone amp can only manage 1volt, so the tops of the waves get cut off. Car input gets 1V, but sinces it maxes out at 0.77V, it chops even more off the top of the wave. Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 15 volts to speakers, but not as a smooth wave, the tops are chopped of square. Speakers try to move in smooth motion, not chopped, distorting the sound even more.
Having the level TOO low on the source creates a different problem. Suppose there is 0.05V of noise in the source and the wire. Source outputs 0.2V of music. Car set to amplify by 40 (to compensate for low source level) also amplifies the noise by 40X. 2V of noise goes to speakers, along with 8V of music.
That reminds me of when I thought I was far too late in starting my first web business, in 1996. I lamented that there would have been a lot of potential if I had gotten in early, but the web had already been around for five years. Why hadn't I gotten in early, darn it!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Here you a grown adult and can't do third-grade arithmetic. I'm going to hazard a guess that you went to public school.
Suppose you're using the most common satellite form factor, the cubesat (or tubesat). You spend $10,000 building it, and if needed you can build a replacement for $10,000. You can either spend $40,000 to launch it on a time-tested rocket, or spend $20,000 on a less established vehicle.
If it goes well, your total cost is $50,000 for the old rocket, $30,000 on the new rocket. New rocket wins by a large margin.
If the new rocket blows up the first time and you have to try again, total cost for two launches on the new rocket is $50,000. The old rocket doesn't save you any money even if the new rocket fails the first time.
As I said, if you have a $100 million payload, you should use the most reliable rocket. Otherwise, you need to use arithmetic to decide.
Are you confusing the cost of one SEAT on a Soyuz vs the cost of the entire Falcoln 9? Even if so, the whole Falcoln 9 isn't three times the cost of a seat on a Soyuz.
The Soyuz 2 costs about $57 million to take 7,000 pounds to GTO. The Falcon 9 is about $62 million to take 18,000 pounds. So about the same total cost per launch, but the Falcon 9 FT carries over twice as much.
I your satellite is 7,000 lbs or less, you can either split the cost with another customer and pay about $30 million on the Falcoln, or pay $57 million on Soyuz. Falcoln wins on cost. If your payload is over 7,000 pounds, Soyuz won't get you there at any cost, unless you split it into multiple launches at $57 million each. Falcoln wins again.
On the other hand, IF you spent $100 million building the cargo, you might prefer to spend more on the Soyuz due to its proven track record.
In GENERAL businesses should focus on their core competency. To what extent depends on a) available cash and b) projections for future growth in the core competency.
Google has a shit ton of cash. More cash than they can reasonably spend on search and adwords development. How about question (b), the future of search?
> The moment a better search engine is released their goose is cooked.
Indeed there have been many kings of search. Yahoo was on top at one point, and Altavista, and Hotbot. As you say, Yahoo fell when Google came up with a better search, and when someone else comes up with a better search, where will Google be? Google will have the #1 most used operating system in the world, a successful mapping and navigation company, a successful online office suite (Google Docs), the most popular email service in the world, etc etc.
In fact, "the moment a better search engine is released" Google will still be making $40 billion / year from its non-search businesses.
> I know the Google Security Team guys well (I work for Google, on security
I've been working in internet security for 20 years, and of course Google stands out as possibly a very interesting place to work. You Googlers do some really neat stuff. I'd be interested to hear anything more you have to say about working for Google on security. Do you enjoy it? Any suggestions for someone who might end up working there sometime relatively soon?
I'll let them say that providing online communication is just like selling walkie-talkies. So they plan to sue Walmart for selling walkie-talkies? No, that would be ridiculous? Yep, same as this.
> US laws only apply to events within US jurisdiction.
> A company operating from New Zealand does NOT fall under US jurisdiction.
Extradition is governed by treaties, which are law in both countries. They tend to be either list type, which explcitly list extradictable offenses, or "common criminality" type, in which someone guilty of a crime can be extradicted if it's a crime in BOTH countries.
The US - New Zealand treaty, which is law in New Zealand, is the list type. It says people can be extradited for specific acts such as "receiving or transporting unlawfully obtained money". (That one applies, via the Berne Convention on copy rights.)
> What you're implying, would make Saudi Arabian law enforceable in the US.
No for two reasons. First, there's no US-Saudi extradition treaty. Second, if there were, it would be either a "common criminality" treaty which applies to acts which are criminal IN THE US, or a list type, which lists the acts. Neither applies the law of Saudi Arabia, unless the US has the same law.
> should be enforceable
I'm confused. You started with. "US laws only apply ...", and "does not fall"under the jurisdiction"n making (very incorrect) claims about what the law -is-. Then right at the end you say "should be". Are you talking about what the law -is- or what you think it -should be-?
Actually it's suprisingly common to confuse the two. I very often read people declaring what the law is, and explaining why it should be so. Of course those are two mostly unrelated things. You may have great ideas about what the law -should- be, and it's tempting to forget that has no bearing on what the law actually is.
On that note, my explanation above is concerning what the law is, not what I think I should be. I didn't write the law, I only read it.
> fact that the author didn't know anything about mutex or acid or race conditions will be a re-run of the mid to late 90s
Some of the code I've dealt, it appears the author knew all about acid. And mushrooms. :)
Having people writing scripts to make their job easier can be great. Sometimes you don't need to actually know what you're doing to write software.
It only becomes a big problem when either a) it's exposed on the internet, where hacker bots hit it a thousand ties per day (headline: Acme Corp exposes 12 Million Credit Cards) or b) the data is actually important to your business. Example you write "rm $file", that's no problem until someone puts a * in a file name and it deletes everything in the folder.
If it's going to be on the internet, or deal with mission-critical data or resources, it's good to have it done by people who know what they're doing, who know what the common errors are and how to avoid them*.
* Not everyone with the word "developer" in their title is qualified. Does their education include systems development, or do they have a chemistry degree?
18 U.S. Code S 2319 - Criminal infringement of a copyright
As well as several other crimes.
Sometimes, facts come in handy.
> What are these?
The first one is an Intel processor instruction. Nothing really to do with either Linux or viruses.
The second points out that executables contain unused bytes. In theory,there is space for someone to add code without making the file bigger.
The third never existed in the wild, as far as I can tell.
The fourth is a legit virus.
The fifth is another research curiousity - it allows root to break files. It's supposed to demonstrate a concept for a trojan, but instead if makes them not run at all.
The sixth is somebody's homework, which they titled "a good natured virus". Again, not a virus ever seen in the wild.
The seventh is in a language I can't read.
The eighth is the same site as the second - again talking generally about how someone could go about adding a trojan to an executable. Not a virus.
So one actual virus, in the first eight. I got bored after that. On the other hand, there are over 100,000 known Windows viruses.
> If you spend your time avoiding visiting unsavoury websites and have the knowledge not to downloading/open questionable files
The number 1 source of infections is compromised ads on mainstream sites like Slashdot. Avoiding "unsavoury websites" isn't protecting you. Noscript and an ad blocker would provide much more protection, along with automated offsite backups in a pull configuration (your computer must not be able to delete/overwrite the backups, for ransomware protection).
If he did -nothing- about security, that would be true. That's not likely the case. More likely, he's using protective strategies that are appropriate for his environment and the threats most prevalent in that environment. The most common threats for Linux machines aren't viruses. Viruses specifically are more of a Windows thing. Not that there are no threats that affect Linux, they are -different- threats.
On Linux, he may use the firewall, Tripwire or another IDS, some form of IPS if only fail2ban, SELinux, etc. Also of course browser-specific things like an adblocker and NoScript. Linux has long had good support for good partition and file encryption, so he might use that, and scheduled offsite pull backups protect against ransomware.
ClamAV runs -on- Linux, but normally -for- Windows - you install on on your Linux mail server to remove viruses before your Windows clients download their mail, etc.
I notice that there are quite a few comments posted already. :)
It's currently the middle of the work day in the US, and we're spending our time on Slashdot.
What you said is certainly true. Also, I would bet the dolls don't wake the girls up every two hours and apply a clamp to the their nipples for 30 minutes. I would bet that while changing the doll, the girls didn't get a squirt of diarrhea to the face.
By misrepresenting the difficulties, you encourage them to have babies rather than discouraging them.
> They should have been far more aggressive in getting their service in as many places as possible.
Maybe. Or maybe if it didn't sell well in Kansas City, and it didn't sell well in Austin, and it didn't sell well in Provo - it doesn't sell well. More cities would have been more fail.
Kind of like politicians in places that have been 100% controlled by one party, representing one viewpoint, for decades and it hasn't worked, places like Detroit, Chicago, etc. While campaiging the same politicians stand up there and point to the same problems, while supporting the same "solutions" that they've been doing for 30 or 40 years. If it's not working, maybe it's not going to work; maybe try something else.
It may be very wise for Google to say "well, that didn't work, we'll try something else" rather than doing more failure faster.
> All the money is taken off the top and the real work is done for a skilled-labourer wage.
True, for government contracts a small percentage of the money goes to people with screwdrivers in hand. ALSO, the people reading and writing 1,000 page documents are doing work. It would certainly be good if we could eliminate some of that work, but it's real work that is required by the federal processes.
Most of these requirements were created to encourage fairness of one kind or another. I personally can go buy a computer in just a few minutes. When the feds buy a computer with your money, you want to know they aren't buying it at triple the normal price from Hillary's brother, so there is process involved. Another taxpayer wants the feds to favor companies that are (nominally) owned by women, so there's more process involved. Another taxpayer wants them to favor people whose great-great-grandparents probably lived in Africa - more process, more work.
Of course organizing 1,000 contractors all over the country to upgrade all of the post offices is also real work.
If you didn't notice, my explanation was intended for easy understanding. It was high-level view avoided any technical terms like "attenuation", RMS or even "ohms". In this high-level view, the gain control (which works by attenuation) is part of the amplifier circuit. The fact that it's often physically a seperate chip is quite irrelevant to the topic of clipping.
Well, there has been precisely one nuclear nuclear accident with significant casualties (31 killed, about 2,000 have shortened life expectancy). It seems you've already decided you wouldn't trust any investigation overseen by International Atomic Energy Agency or other internationally recognized safety agencies, so I guess you don't trust the investigations of Chernobyl.
On the other hand, 230,000 people were washed away by the Banqiao hydroelectric disaster.
>How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.
They are very good at what they do - they get contracts. They handle thousands of pages of government forms, years of meetings, and of course donating to the right organizations.
I was a contractor for a company which did most of the on-site work for HP, called TCML. HP's competence was getting government contracts. TCML's competence was finding and contracting somewhat competent techs. My competence was with servers, switches, desktops, etc.
I'm not competent at preparing a XYX-7273-HDH-98(b) package for a federal RFP. HP isn't competent at upgrading a router.
> most likely the result of the small bandwidth they can work with due to the computer not being booted up or something - because for example the "BIOS" can only receiver commands at 1kb/s or something
That, or since it's low on power, the data rate is much lower than max. (That's to be expected, over long distances, lower power signals need to be slower.)
The transceiver is capable of up to 427 Kbps or 720 Kbps, depending on the source you read.
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/im...
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/sp...
As you said, it's entirely possible that the main computer can do that data rate, but the IPMI/DRAC/ILO is far slower, or the lack of available power dictates a slow rate.
You're right. I interpreted that "20 seconds" as meaning 20 seconds delay. That would indicate a distance about 12-13 times as far as the moon. As you mentioned, the craft is actually roughly on the opposite side of earth's orbit, near where the earth will be in 5-6 months. That's a much further distance, about 16 minutes at the speed of light.
TFA quoted one of the NASA engineers "If we turn on the computer, which is the only way we can get insight into the current state of the spacecraft ... what got us into this mess in the first place could turn back on again."
It seems that in order to really know what commands to send, they first need to query some data from the computer. So something like:
Query the most interesting parameter. 20 seconds to rx the reply. (1:40 remaining)
Decide what to query at next. 10 seconds to think and decide. (1:30 remaining).
Decide on a fix and get it sent off, 1 minute. (30 seconds remaining).
Commands take 20 seconds to reach the spacecraft (10 seconds remaining).
Craft executes the instructions, changing its orientation or whatever is required.
Unpucker.
> EE nazi here. ... grammar Nazis may now commence in attacking the previous sentence
Is that nazi or Nazi? Please decide. :)
> P.S. Fair game ... as well as this one.
Style guides differ on whether PS should be followed by a colon, if it it should be an en-dash.
Here's one even worse - I lied about the DAC voltage level too. :)
> The internal DAC on the prius seems like it works well for CDs and BT, but not on it's auxillary inputs. Thoughts?
The AUX as in the 3.5mm jack that connects to your (analog) headphone jack? THIS headphone jack?:
> It doesn't seem to have that great of a headphone DAC as it sounds mediocre on everything I plug it into.
If you're plugging from a regular headphone jack, the DAC in the car shouldn't be involved - it is already analog.
As for the "bad DAC", trying turning the volume down considerably on the source and compensating by turning it up on the amp. Any modern DAC should have distortion below the threshold humans can detect in music. HOWEVER, the tiny amp for the headphones or the input it is plugged into could very well be overdriven. Turning down the volume on the source may very well fix your problem.
Here's what happens, when things are right and when they're wrong. When levels are right:
DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp.
Volume is set at 5, so:
Headphone amp multiplies by 5 and sends 0.7V to car input.
(Car input sees near maximum loudness, line-level car input maxes out at 0.77 volts).
Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 14 volts to speakers.
How things go wrong:
DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp.
Volume is set at 10, so:
Headphone amp multiplies by 10 and tries to send 1.4 to car input.
Headphone amp can only manage 1volt, so the tops of the waves get cut off.
Car input gets 1V, but sinces it maxes out at 0.77V, it chops even more off the top of the wave.
Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 15 volts to speakers, but not as a smooth wave, the tops are chopped of square.
Speakers try to move in smooth motion, not chopped, distorting the sound even more.
Having the level TOO low on the source creates a different problem.
Suppose there is 0.05V of noise in the source and the wire.
Source outputs 0.2V of music.
Car set to amplify by 40 (to compensate for low source level) also amplifies the noise by 40X.
2V of noise goes to speakers, along with 8V of music.
That reminds me of when I thought I was far too late in starting my first web business, in 1996. I lamented that there would have been a lot of potential if I had gotten in early, but the web had already been around for five years. Why hadn't I gotten in early, darn it! :)