First of all, I apologize for taking so long to answer these questions. I’ve been quite busy recently and haven’t had the time to do any research. Here are the four answers to the four questions that have been posted since I last updated.
I can’t find any research to back me up, but the fade after an LCD is powered off seems to be a result of the GBA not forcing all the pixels to clear as it loses power. In order to understand this, a little knowledge of LCD technology is required. Each pixel in an LCD screen is composed of 3 separate layers: a polarizing filter, liquid crystal, and another polarizing filter. When electrical current is applied to the liquid crystal, it “twists” the light passing through it to match the second polarizing filter which allows light to pass through. Without electricity, the crystal doesn’t change the light and the initially polarized light doesn’t pass through the second filter. A color LCD works the same way except that there are three sets of filters instead of one. If the electrical current isn’t actively set to 0, it can slowly fade to 0, which might cause the fading to blank that you notice.
According to Apple, the best way to clean your LCD screen is to slightly dampen with water a soft, lint-free cloth and gently wipe the screen. Don’t use anything with alcohol or ammonia (like rubbing alcohol or Windex) because they might scratch the screen. Source:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60446
You said both “area code” and “country”, so I’m not sure which you’re referring to since area codes only apply within a country (or, in the case of North America, all countries on a single continent). A search of area codes in the
North American Numbering Plan Administration’s database reveals that no area within North America has the area code 143. A similar search in Wikipedia’s
International Dialing Codes article shows that no country has the international dialing code of 143.
As you know, x! = (x * (x – 1) * (x – 2) * … * 2 * 1). You can see that this definition can only apply to positive integers. The special case 0! = 1 came about due to the heavy use of factorial in statistics. Given x objects, there are exactly x! ways to order them (Ex: {1, 2, 3} can be ordered in 6 ways: {1, 2, 3}, {1, 3, 2}, {2, 1, 3}, {2, 3, 1}, {3, 1, 2}, and {3, 2, 1}). Logically, there is exactly one way to order 0 items (the only way to order the empty set, {}, is {}), therefore 0! was defined to be 1. If you try this in your calculator, you’ll see that the factorial is defined on the whole range of complex numbers (a + b * i, where i = sqrt(-1)), except for negative integers, because of a special function known as the gamma function, which is the generalization of factorial: x! = gamma(x + 1). This fits the special case as well: 0! = gamma(1) = 1. An unusual byproduct of this relationship is that (-0.5)! = sqrt(pi). Source:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Factorial.html
Finally, this is my notice that I no longer plan on answering any Ask Chromus questions. It’s been a great 3 years of answering questions, but I don’t have the time in the future to do so. If anyone else wants to step up and take my place, I’ll be happy to help. In case you have any more questions that need answering, check out
Wikipedia or
Google. Both are incredible sources of knowledge if you have the time and patience to search them. Additionally, answers to math questions can be found by looking at
MathWorld. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, “So long, and thanks for all the fish”.