> (Programmers can often be obcessive compusive... like the guy
> walking down the street who has to touch *every* parking meter.
> If he misses one, his mind will give him *no* peace. As supposedly
> Charles Steinmetz once said: "No matter what your job is, or how
> much you are being paid, you are always working for yourself."
> *You* are the one that has to be pleased with what you do.
> Otherwise, you have trouble "living with yourself".)
Some people, especially today, consider that attitude quaint.
--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
>> I consulted to my current employer for 18 years.
>> Now I'm working there for almost as long.
>>
>> Yes, I took the money, no I didn't run.
>
> I knew that someone would come up with a counterexample.
> Yes, competent consultants exist. But I spent a lot of
> time cleaning up after ones whose sole competence was
> in shmoozing the brass.
The calls I hate are we need your help to make this work
This is followed in the next breath by way we are out
of time and budget and so you have to help us within
those constraints.
There is no definition of *this* and when it comes it is
missing a key fact they have known for years that only
majically appears after the quote.
The last consultant was incompetent or they told them
what they wanted couldn't be done (true)
The start of a project from hell.
The other side of the coin is companies we have been
doing business with for years who call with a new project
ending with we are probably going to need a quote for
the bean counters but I assume the pricing formula is
going to be similar to the last projects. Followed by
an open PO to bill with a price listed as TBD.
Once upon a time, Charles Richmond <numerist@aquaporin4.com> said:
> NASA recenlty tested a new (but original) engine from a Saturn V rocket...
The just fired the gas generator, not the whole engine (and calling an
engine part built in the mid-to-late 1960s "new" is not really correct).
> the same engine as the ones used to send Apollo 11 into earth orbit. These
> engineers wanted to see if the engine could be adapted for use on *future*
> missions to the moon. Where did NASA get the late 60's rocket engine???
> They got it back from the Smithsonian!!! Heaven forbit that NASA themselves
> might retain such hardware for possible future needs. DUH!!!
NASA has lots of various pieces of F-1 engines. One of the few that was
still fully assembled was on loan to the Smithsonian, and it was still
together _because_ it was in a museum (actually in a museum's storage,
not on display). The Smithsonian is "America's Attic" and has
warehouses full of stuff stored from various government agencies.
When the Space Shuttle was still flying, NASA came and took the SRB
nosecones off the Space Shuttle display at the US Space & Rocket Center,
because it was cheaper to build fake replicas, replace the real ones on
loan, and refurb the real ones than it was to build new real ones (in
dwindling budget conditions).
You'd probably complain about NASA building warehouses to store every
last piece of equipment they'd ever built, rather than keep rocket
engine pieces around for 50 years just in case somebody ever wanted to
look at them again.
Dynetics and Rocketdyne are looking at the F-1 engine design to use as
the basis for a new engine for SLS. They are seeing what it will take
to start with the original F-1 designs and bring them up-to-date with
respect to materials, manufacturing, and control systems.
--
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
>>> AFAIK IBM has stopped selling dead tree versions of new PoOps
>>> editions.
>>>
>>
>> Good thing. The last one I got was HUGE, maybe four inches or more
>> using professional-grade paper (thinner than standard Xerox paper).
>>
>
> ISTM that IBM documentation was printed on what is known as India
> paper. It's the same type of paper that Bibles are printed on. Before
> the advent of India paper, all Holy Bibles (old and new testaments
> together) had to be printed in two *volumes*! Yes, that included the
> Gutenburg Bible.
The number of volumes is up to the owner and bookbinder, not the
printer. Prior to the 19th century, the general practice was that books
were sold as collections of pages but not bound. The first owner would
hire a bookbinder to bind them in one or more volumes, in the leather of
the owner's choice, with more or less elaborate stamping on the leather
depending on the owner's taste and budget.
The Gutenberg Bible is in larger type than typical today, intended to be
read by elderly scholars without eyeglasses.
>>> NASA recenlty tested a new (but original) engine from a Saturn V rocket...
>>
>> The just fired the gas generator, not the whole engine (and calling an
>> engine part built in the mid-to-late 1960s "new" is not really correct).
>
> "NOS" ("New Old Stock") is a term that anybody who maintains
> antiquated systems knows :) In this context, "new" means "never used".
Well, this one was fired before. It was originally slated to be on the
rocket for Apollo 11, but it had a glitch during testing and never made
it to space.
--
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
> You'd probably complain about NASA building warehouses to store every
> last piece of equipment they'd ever built, rather than keep rocket
> engine pieces around for 50 years just in case somebody ever wanted to
> look at them again.
>
Me??? You should see what's in *my* garage!!! I have *no* cause to complain
about NASA holding on to junk!!! :-)
To my way of thinking, most everything in the world goes away *too* fast.
It did *not* take long to move from vinyl records to CD's to MP3 players.
And the older technology dwindled away to almost *nothing* pretty fast!!!
>>> Either that or she complains I don't show her how to do something,
>>> only sit down at the keyboard and type stuff, when I try to explain
>>> that I'm trying to figure it out myself.
>>
>> I don't think many people realize just how many answers we work out
>> on the fly, not really knowing them at the time they ask a question.
>> I'm often reluctant to explain this; given their mindset it might
>> destroy their faith in the infallibility they need us to have.
>>
>
> Yes, Charlie...it's akin to telling an innocent that "there is *no*
> Santa Claus". Still, this process relieves the "innocents" from having
> actually to do the work of figuring it out for themselves. They leave
> that work for you, me, and others to do... All they have to admit is
> "I'm *not* good with computers".
>
> --
>
> numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
>
A target can be attacked from the front, left, right, top, bottom and if
it is really though out flanked and attacked from the back. Before
attacking investigate and find its weak spot. An expert can do any of
these.
one of the most devilish i have ever come across was a several hundred
line long section of code, all commented out, directly following the
declaration of a data structure.
the structure was updated in various parts of the program, and
manipulated in strange ways, quite difficult to see what was going
on. The commented out code was a long running, memory intensive
implementation of a straightforward algorithm, quite easy to understand.
they both did the same thing, but understanding why the structure
worked was nontrivial, took me a week or two to figure out with pencil
and paper that the data structure and assorted operations on it did
the job in a fraction of the memory and time.
this was in an ancient program, written by someone who was still
alive, unfortunately retired half a world away, in the days before
cheap telecom. I wrote a letter, but worked it out myself before the
reply arrived, which was a good thing since he disclaimed all memory.
>>> I don't make that assumption because making it is how knowledge gets
>>> lost.
>>
>> Knowledge of how to do the fine detail of technology
>> that no one uses anymore ALWAYS gets lost.
>
> Who could make a tube radio today?
Quite a few people I would think. The components are still
available.
> Without integrated circuitry, we'd be lost. I am glad I was not born
> before the integrated circuit. Not that I'd know any different....
Hardly lost, personally I came into electronics after valves, but I
could certainly still design and build a radio with discrete transistors.
I'd have to think hard to reproduce the classic 6 transistor superhet
design, but a simple TRF with RF stage, detector and amplifier would be no
problem.
> Not saying that making an authentic tube radio (eg. 1930s style) is
> impossible, but I guess it starts with finding a book or schematic
> from somewhere.
Anyone who learned their electronics about a decade earlier than me
can probably still work out a schematic for one. There are probably several
people in this froup who can. A quick hunt with a search engine quickly
revealed a UK outfit selling kits for valve radios.
> But then there's fabricating bakelite and other materials. Not
> forgetting the manufacture of the vacuum tubes themselves.
Bakelite would perhaps be a problem, but the valves can be bought
still. The chassis was usually just bent steel or aluminium - that's easy.
> Perfectly sound technology, but dead technology. Probably never to be
> rediscovered.
Valve based audio amplifiers are still made and sold, there's a
fairly strong following for them in the HiFi world - some of them are
It's not quite dead technology yet.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
>> According to the Wiki article, the Gutenburg Bible is at least two
>> volumes.
>
> Another lie.
To quote directly from the wikipedia article:
"Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine
copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound
in either Mainz or Erfurt.[19] Most copies were divided into two volumes,
the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were
heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four
volumes.[1]"
So, most copies were bound in two volumes, but some were bound in three or
four ... it sounds to me as if "at least two volumes" is an accurate
summary of the information in the wikipedia article.
>>>> > Only in recent years have I begun to be impressed by modern computers.
>
> I switched on a Compaq 486-SX in September, that had not been booted
> up since 1999. It worked fine. The battery was still alive! The clock
> was several days behind actual time.
>
> Now that's impressive!
At this moment I'm working Compaq on a 486-SX which is booted almost daily
for the last fifteen years and working without problems. Only thing that
got replaced was the disk, at some point W'95 had made such a mess of
itself that it wasn't able to boot anymore. I could have re-installed
Windows, but replacing it with an bigger disk which came out of another
machine was easier.
I had also a Deskpro with a Pentium for quit some time , but that one got
retired last year.
--
| Hy doet het niet, die deur.
Jan v/d Broek | Wat een akelige deur. balglaas@xs4all.nl | De deur die stuk was.
| Jan jr. 28-III-'04
>>> I don't make that assumption because making it is how knowledge gets
>>> lost.
>>
>> Knowledge of how to do the fine detail of technology
>> that no one uses anymore ALWAYS gets lost.
>
> Who could make a tube radio today?
>
Just as we are "old computer folk", there exists on the internet "tube
circuitry folk". There are websites with plans on how to make a *cheap*
tube radio called an All-American Five. It's cheap because it runs with a
rectifier circuit, but *no* heavy and expensive power transformer. The
heater voltages on all the tubes add up to approximately 110 volts, so the
heaters an be connected in series directly to the US line voltage.
All this being said, the tube radio is far, far away from being
"mainstream". It's certainly a specialty thing these days.
> Without integrated circuitry, we'd be lost. I am glad I was not born
> before the integrated circuit. Not that I'd know any different....
>
> Not saying that making an authentic tube radio (eg. 1930s style) is
> impossible, but I guess it starts with finding a book or schematic
> from somewhere.
>
I have finally learned (and I'm a *slow* learner) that the *first* place I
look for information or solutions... is Google or another internet search
engine.
> But then there's fabricating bakelite and other materials. Not
> forgetting the manufacture of the vacuum tubes themselves.
>
Many vaccuum tubes are still being produced in Russia and China, and
companies in other countries import them for things. More expensive to use
tubes than before, but still the tubes are there. Check the following
guitar and amp sales website for ordering guitar amp tubes:
> Perfectly sound technology, but dead technology. Probably never to be
> rediscovered.
>
As a practical, everyday technology... I do mourn the loss of tube
equipment. There are still people with the expertise... but those folks are
dying off. Then I'm *not* sure if the knowledge will survive. Perhaps in
the depths of some dusty library shelves... researchers of the future may
find this kind of stuff.
>>>> AFAIK IBM has stopped selling dead tree versions of new PoOps
>>>> editions.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Good thing. The last one I got was HUGE, maybe four inches or more
>>> using professional-grade paper (thinner than standard Xerox paper).
>>>
>>
>> ISTM that IBM documentation was printed on what is known as India
>> paper. It's the same type of paper that Bibles are printed on. Before
>> the advent of India paper, all Holy Bibles (old and new testaments
>> together) had to be printed in two *volumes*! Yes, that included the
>> Gutenburg Bible.
>
> The number of volumes is up to the owner and bookbinder, not the
> printer. Prior to the 19th century, the general practice was that books
> were sold as collections of pages but not bound. The first owner would
> hire a bookbinder to bind them in one or more volumes, in the leather of
> the owner's choice, with more or less elaborate stamping on the leather
> depending on the owner's taste and budget.
>
> The Gutenberg Bible is in larger type than typical today, intended to be
> read by elderly scholars without eyeglasses.
>
Blackletter type is also naturally a fair bit larger than type used
today. Today's designs are the result of lots of refinement to achieve
a balance of small size and readability.
>>>> The question is not "could they?" since MacOS has been tweaked
>>>> to run on non-Apple hardware. The questions is "would they?"
>>>> since the Mac hardware is very profitable. I don't know about
>>>> the running windoze part - I assume it's possible (Wine, does
>>>> it run on Mac?)
>>>
>>> No need for Wine.
>>>
>>> Apple support running Windows natively on Macs, and it is also
>>> possible to run Windows under OS X in a virtual machine.
>>
>> You could also take a small 5-pound sledge hammer and smash your
>> other hand with it. But *why* would you want to inflict that kind
>> of damage and pain on yourself willingly??? :-)
>
> Who said anything about "willingly"?
You may need functionality that only exists on Windows, special
purpose programs with small user base that are not worth developing
for Macinti. And you can run Windows 8 with a Macintosh interface.
That is called "Unity". M$ has a thing called Snap that allows you to
run 2 (count 'em) programs at once. Brilliant!
He left out including the OS your seeking help for, and it can take
longer to run through all the menus and sub menus than half an hour,
and I'd move up Googling in priority.
>>> OTOH, many photos 150 years old or so are still in file condition.
>>> Will the computer stuff still be readable? {old nit returns)
>>
>> It will - provided it's been copied onto more up to date media as
>> it becomes available and before the old media is unreadable.
>
> It's not just the media, it's the file format. You're making the
> assumption that, in the future, there will still be software capable of
> reading the format.
If future software cannot read JPEG files, that's a sign of worse
problems, like WW3, a zombie invasion, or a culture completely
disinterested in the past.
The format is well-known and stable, and free, portable
implementations in C exist. And just as important: they are
*everywhere*.
Data preservation is an important problem, but let's not exaggerate.
There's a tendency to believe technology shifts so quickly that
everything is soon completely unrecognizable. I don't think that is
what will happen.
Disclaimer: I focused on photos. Of course people who save all their
stuff in exotic, proprietary file formats or databases will have
problems. My old Amiga games won't ever run again, and so on ...
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
>> Not saying that making an authentic tube radio (eg. 1930s style) is
>> impossible, but I guess it starts with finding a book or schematic
>> from somewhere.
Well, that would be easiest. Not reinventing the wheel, and all that.
Many old radios had schematics pasted inside of the case, too. Or
just google for "tube radio schematic".
>
> Anyone who learned their electronics about a decade earlier than me
> can probably still work out a schematic for one. There are probably several
> people in this froup who can. A quick hunt with a search engine quickly
> revealed a UK outfit selling kits for valve radios.
I've built 'em. Receivers and transmitters both. Mind you, it was 50
years ago, and I'd need to do some brushing up if I was to do it again.
>
>> But then there's fabricating bakelite and other materials. Not
>> forgetting the manufacture of the vacuum tubes themselves.
Bakelite was just the plastic of its day. In later years (e.g. the
1960s) it had been replaced by other plastics (bakelite was heavy and
rather brittle). The Russians (and maybe others) still make tubes.
Sell for a lot more than they did in the old days, though. You might
have to wind your own coils and IF transformers, but that's doable.
But if you're going to take things to the fabricating level, it's
possible to make your own tubes
but I don't see any youtube videos on how to make your own ICs from
scratch.
On Fri, 2013-01-25, Charles Richmond wrote:
....
> Java conventions (and some in C++ and Pascal) say variables should be like:
> LinePrinterOutput.
It would be interesting to read a full analysis of that: how symbol
naming conventions originate and spread. It's not just programming
language; also the OS, influential books and so on.
> In C, I prefer the style: line_printer_output.
I prefer it in C, C++, Python, shell script ... although sometimes you
have to adapt to other people's style.
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
> Disclaimer: I focused on photos. Of course people who save all their
> stuff in exotic, proprietary file formats or databases will have
> problems. My old Amiga games won't ever run again, and so on ...
Maybe, maybe not. Those game cartridges just contained proms which
should be quite readable if they haven't self-erased yet. The hardware has
likely been emulated in software by now (most of the early game consoles
have). It would be a faff but it's probably not too late to save them -
unlike my collection of BBC games on CPN discs which are completely gone
because the discs got thrown out several moves ago. Similar games can
probably be found, but some of that collection contained interesting hacks
that weren't in the copies that got sold.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
On 26 Jan 2013 18:36:33 GMT, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-01-25, Charles Richmond wrote:
> ...
>> Java conventions (and some in C++ and Pascal) say variables should be like:
>> LinePrinterOutput.
>
> It would be interesting to read a full analysis of that: how symbol
> naming conventions originate and spread. It's not just programming
> language; also the OS, influential books and so on.
In all the Pascal books I've read LinePrinterOutput would be the
convention. This carries over to Modula and Oberon of course.
(Reserved words are all UPPERCASE).
The books "Programming in Modula-2" by Niklaus Wirth (1982) and
"Programming in Oberon" by Niklaus Wirth and Martin Reisner (1992)
follow that convention. Sadly I no longer have the Pascal book, but I'm
sure it was the same.
Pascal dates from around 1969 and Modula from 1977 so it goes back
that far, at least. Whether you can blame Wirth I wouldn't like to say,
he worked on ALGOL before Pascal, how does ALGOL do things?
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr plan.b .at. dsl .dot. pipex .dot. com
> Java conventions (and some in C++ and Pascal) say variables should be
> like: LinePrinterOutput. In C, I prefer the style: line_printer_output.
Nitpick - the Java conventions (often borrowed in other OO
languages) have LinePrinterOutput for classes and linePrinterOutput for
variables, methods and member names.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
>> (Programmers can often be obcessive compusive... like the guy
>> walking down the street who has to touch *every* parking meter.
>> If he misses one, his mind will give him *no* peace. As supposedly
>> Charles Steinmetz once said: "No matter what your job is, or how
>> much you are being paid, you are always working for yourself."
>> *You* are the one that has to be pleased with what you do.
>> Otherwise, you have trouble "living with yourself".)
>
> Some people, especially today, consider that attitude quaint.
Ha! Today we stand on the edge of complexity catastrophe. The are n
entities -- people, programs, organizations, agencies within
organizations, corporations, programs and automated systems, groups
and sub-groups of all sizes -- (n a very very large number) that are
components of the economy/society/world and each of the n-sub-i,
interacts with m-sub-i other entities (m a largish number). Skipping
oner a lengthy rant that might include comparisons with the complexity
of the brain and more or less applicable metaphors, all this stuff
happening -- when the interactions between entities become numerous
enough, we (TINW) increasingly need managers, forms to fill out [1],
PHBs, hierarchical and other relationship structure,...(catalog
elided).
This was probably first realized during WW II when there was just a
stunningly vast amount of stuff and people being shipped all over the
world and a similarly stunning number people doing things with
inherently unpredictable potential outcomes. And we've come a long
way since then, astronomicaly exacerbated by compters and telecom and
ca. 3-fold increase in population. Now, the superstructure of
management, finance, organization, law and the like arguably upstages
making or doing useful stuff, maybe by an order of magnitude. Some
large percentage of an individual's time and effort must be devoted to
such "meta" aspects of h{is,er} life.
In that context, the attitude attributed to Steinmetz by Charles
Richmond is *at best* quaint. At worst, it's self-defeating and puts
you on the street with a shopping cart.
Personally, I'd go for "Live in a shack. Or live in a cardboard box if
you have to. Just do without things that invoke major increments of
your m-sub-i. But whatever you work out or work on, make it good work,
good art, make it so you can live with yourself."
Of course, YMMV. And I live in a shack. It's a rather nice 150 year
old shack, well appointed for my needs but "quaint" doesn't half do
it justice. :-) OTOH, my main thing is a craft and I have to live with
myself, y'know?
Tnx, Charles & Charlie I'll post the above-quoted exchange to a mailing
list [2] where such observations are on topic.
[1] Forms are not a way of gathering information so much as a way of
restricting the information submitted so that it conforms to some
rubric or model.
They even put together hard- and software to aid in archiving data from
floppies in various formats, by reading the flox transitions for later
processing in software:
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