If we're talking efficiency, I wonder why he didn't consider Morse code. Well I guess that's easy, even though it's faster it takes a skilled operator to read it in realtime, and he had little time to write any individual bit of information down (cumbersomely writing in sand is slow)
If you're going to require 2 digits, then that can be done with 2 decimal digits as well. So there's no need for hex, and no need for ascii tables.
However, if you need more than just the 26 letters, e.g. if you also need numbers and/or punctuation, then ascii might be useful, and hex might be useful to encode ascii into 2 digits.
Why do I need to send it to you 2 digits at a time? It's valid hex that converts to ascii, only 1 symbol at a time, which is how he communicated.
He could've done it with just a card for 0 and another for 1 if he really wanted.
The points of my previous comment:
* Ascii is only needed if we need to encode things other than just letters (or if case matters).
* Hex is only better than decimal if hex allows the number of digits to be reduced. If we need to only encode 26 elements, then hex doesn't reduce the number of digits compared to decimal, so hex has no advantage over decimal in the 26-element case.
Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal.
He had more than 26 things to encode, I believe he started with numbers, letters and a question mark.
> Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal
Using 0 or 1 decreases that to only 3 cards (including question mark), and increasing the safety margin to 120° on the setup he had. It'd take longer but be more robust.
Ok, then hoten's comment had an error which propagated to my comments:
>26 division of a circle was too much for reliable determination of which sign the camera was pointing at
for (unsigned char i = 0; i < 127; i++) { printf("%x: %c\n", i, i); }
bash: spaceman: command not found
The turning around and returning to Mars bit may have been realistic. They would have needed fuel to get into Earth orbit. (That said, the timing to return to Mars in any sane trajectory would likely be off.) The real problem would be getting into Mars orbit at the end of the return journey.
As for the ASCII table, I wouldn't be surprised if it is one of the most commonly reproduced data tables in print and I would be surprised if it wasn't the mostly commonly reproduced table digitally. Virtually every *ix system will have a copy of it. The documentation for most development tools will probably have it. All you need is someone technically inclined in your life, which you will almost certainly have on a mission to Mars, and you will likely have a copy of an ASCII table (whether anyone knows it is there or not).
We already have precident on that topic via that short story about the reverse isekai airplane carrier to ancient Rome that was written on Reddit in early 2010s.
By writing the original on a social media platform you've effectively given full copyright to this company. If royalties need to be paid, they'd be paid to yc, not you
... do you mean precedent of a scifi premise from social media being turned into a movie? or the precedent of a piece of media using a piss-tank's levels as a means of communication?
you're giving full copyright to the social media website you're posting on. If someone wanted to buy a licence to use this - whatever it might be - the discussion would be between the social media platform and the licensee. the original author of the work would not have any stake in that theoretical situation.
If you were wondering which specific case I'm referring to, ForHackernews linked to the wiki article. there is a small note on the licensing issue at the end there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509955
From what I remember, he had gotten a WB offer - which ultimately didn't pan out because a licensing agreeming couldn't occur. He'd have had to rewrite the story off-reddit for them to be able to license it. And that never happened.
(Well, he did rewrite it - but probably took too long, so the window of opportunity had already closed and it was never made into an actual movie)
A social media site typically takes a soft licence allowing it to store and reproduce your content (which is needed to be able to function), and maybe use it in marketing. Some go a little further, but please show me one mainstream site that takes over all your (copy)rights when you post?
What I feel comfortable stating is however that we have precident for the exact scenario the person I responded to (wanting royalties for a storyline they posted on a social media website) and this precident showed that are least the lawyers of WB were of the opinion that a rewrite outside of any social media platform was necessary.
Can you please talk about this some more? A cursory search did not give me anything. What short story are you talking about and which adaptation of it?
> On October 21, 2011, Reddit administrators explained that the licensing terms were designed to protect the site from potential legal action, and that they did not intend to block the production of the movie.
Danny Boyle - 28 Lightyears Later.