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The 500-mile email (2002)

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Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#41

Post by anonfunction »

kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

I had the same thing happen to me. From the manpage I gathered that units uses the definitions defined in /usr/share/misc/units.lib, by running cat /usr/share/misc/units.lib | grep light I found I only had lightyear and it's shortcut ly defined. I added lightsecond, and since milli prefix is already defined it worked a treat.

Here's the line you'll want to add:

lightsecond lightyear / 365.25 / 24 / 60 / 60

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#42

Post by dang »

nathancahill wrote: post #2

1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176458 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296201 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114391 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489

Reposts are fine when a story hasn't had significant attention in the past year or so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#43

Post by anonfunction »

kaishiro wrote: post #37
kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

Not an embellishment at all. Via 'man units': "The conversion information is read from a units data file that is called 'definitions.units' and is usually located in the '/usr/share/units' directory." Via definitions.units (L. 223), you can see the milli- prefix: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f06769de95e0c7f9e658#file-... Via deifnitions.units (L. 1060), you can see the lightsecond unit: https://gist.github.com/a…

Some distributions only support lightyear so adding this line to your units file (which you can find with man units) will give you support for *lightseconds:

lightsecond lightyear / 365.25 / 24 / 60 / 60

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#44

Post by kaishiro »

anonfunction wrote: post #43
kaishiro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an embellishment at all. Via 'man units': "The conversion information is read from a units data file that is called 'definitions.units' and is usually located in the '/usr/share/units' directory." Via definitions.units (L. 223), you can see the milli- prefix: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f06769de95e0c7f9e658#file-... Via deifnitions.units (L. 1060), you can see the lightsecond unit: https://gist.github.com/a…

Some distributions only support lightyear so adding this line to your units file (which you can find with man units) will give you support for *lightseconds: lightsecond lightyear / 365.25 / 24 / 60 / 60

Nice!

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#45

Post by girvo »

bpp wrote: post #29

Another of the 10,000 here - this is such a delightful story. Also just discovered the "units" conversion program and disappointed that the default Mac library has only 586 units. And shockingly there don't seem to be compatible libraries out there.

`brew install gnu-units` should do it :)

Edit: You'll then want to run it with `gunits` rather than `units`

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#46

Post by fabulist »

th0ma5 wrote: post #33

This always reminds me of the email around the world: http://phrack.org/issues/41/4.html

Thanks for a good read. Its strange to think about a time when there were a myriad of incompatible networks, and their different capabilities could be exploited.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#47

Post by fabulist »

jen729w wrote: post #32
geuis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea. Have a system where a community can mark something as important, and to have it automatically reposted at preset intervals. Community members could be allowed to additionally repost, or the system can politely say it's already archived and will be shared again on such & such date. Use it as a way to reinforce community history.

Sounds like we already have exactly such a system, no?

People forget culture is the original technology.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#48

Post by frivoal »

kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

I don't know about what "units" support, but if you ever need picolightseconds in your web design, CSS got you covered:

http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-egg/#astro-units

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#50

Post by oaktowner »

girvo wrote: post #45
bpp wrote: post #29

Another of the 10,000 here - this is such a delightful story. Also just discovered the "units" conversion program and disappointed that the default Mac library has only 586 units. And shockingly there don't seem to be compatible libraries out there.

`brew install gnu-units` should do it :) Edit: You'll then want to run it with `gunits` rather than `units`

Now I know where the rapper got his name.
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