OT.... but I need help

[Ken Blake]

How often do you need temperature more accurate than 1 degree C

For the man in the street, almost never, as you suggest. But some
people do--for example those measuring precision machined parts with
very low tolerances. Or those doing chemical reactions that work
differently at different temperatures.

and in
those rare cases, don't you need it more accurate than 1 degree F? (I
still remember that nominal body temperature was 98.4F, for example.)

98.6°F.

And by the way, despite how precise 98.6 may sound, it's a conversion
from the original determination that it should be 37°C--a number that
sounds much less precise.

 

[Ken Blake]

I sure hope that "60 kph" was a typo!

It sure was! I meant 90 kph, a rounding of 88kph.

 

[Ken Blake]

Although wasn't that the origin of the computer "bug in the program" -
insects in the relays?

Supposedly, but who knows whether it is true. It was supposed to have
coined by Grace Murray Hopper
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper), who I once met, about
35-40 years ago.

 

[Ken Blake]

"Load" a program comes from when a program was held on punched cards,
and they had to be literally loaded into the card hopper.

Yes.


What happened in actuality was that an operator would carry them across
the room, trip over one of the wires, scatter the cards all over the
floor, pick them up and put them in the hopper.

LOL! Sometimes true.

But bear in mind that there were normally no wires on the floor.
Computer rooms normally had (presumably still have) raised floors with
all the cables, and air-conditioning, under the floor.

Next day the programmer would arrive at work and be told that his
program run had produced strange results!

But that's never true. It might depend on the machine, but in most
case as long as the first few cards remained at the beginning and the
last ones at the end, all would be well.

And if those few cards were not at the beginning and end, it would not
load at all. So the question was whether the program would run at all,
not whether it would run properly.

But if the order of the cards in a *source* program was screwed up,
yes, compiling the program, no running it, could have all sorts of
strange results.

 

[Ken Blake]

The legend goes that a female member of the armed forces (US Navy?) came
up with the "bug" bit, based upon an actual insect in the works.

Yes, Grace Murray Hopper, and yes, she was in the Navy. See the
message I just sent in this thread. And yes, it's a legend--maybe
true, maybe not.

 

[gordonlr]

You probably are just asking jokingly, but my son, daughter-in-law,
and grandson all do, and I know *many* others who do.

Yes, my cell phone can tell me the time, but taking it out of my
pocket just for that purpose is a nuisance.

Yes there are a lot of other clocks around, but whether there are any
where I am depends on where I happen to be. There very often none
around.

I'm going back about 30-35 years, but I used to have a friend I worked
with who made a point of never wearing a watch. He used to frequently
ask me what time it was. It didn't take me very long to stop answering
his questions.

I can empathize with you on this. I also had a coworker who regularly
asked one of us what time it was. We joked about this for a while
then we all decided to counter his request with the answer, "Time for
you to get a watch of your own, and wear it."

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:50:21 +0000, John Williamson

[snip]

For what it's worth, all my Casio watches of various ages consistently
gain about a second a day, and have done from new.

So mine is not the only one gaining time, eh? It gains about 1/2
second per day.

Unless you don't reset it until several weeks have gone by, and you
are talking about an average gain, how could you possibly know?

That is exactly what I do. I check it against my computer's
clock just after I have resynced it with an Internet time server.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

In message <[email protected]>, Gene Wirchenko
[snip]

I do. I turn 52 tomorrow. I do. I turned 52 in April.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Happy birthday, Gene!

Thank you. Unfortunately, I got an E-mail over the weekend that
my work hours are going to be drastically cut, so my birthday is
rather more stressful than happy. Your greeting helps just a bit
though.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[choro]

It sure was! I meant 90 kph, a rounding of 88kph.

Gentlemen, let us be precise...
55mi = 88.513920km
Now, you see how stupid the metric system is? ;-)

 

[Char Jackson]

You probably are just asking jokingly, but my son, daughter-in-law,
and grandson all do, and I know *many* others who do.

Yes, at least half jokingly. Where I work, the dress is business
casual and roughly 95% of my coworkers wear short sleeves, usually
polo shirts with vendor logos. I can see at a glance that no one wears
a watch. Not one or two here and there, but no one in my area at all,
and that's a sample size of about 60-80 office workers. Since my day
job is in the telecom field, specifically wireless data, we usually
have our phones out and therefore accessible. When I'm in the car or
on the motorcycle, I have a dashboard clock in front of me. When I'm
at home, I have clocks all over the place, with 4 in the kitchen alone
and others scattered throughout. Even two of the three bathrooms have
clocks. When I'm in front of the computer, there's yet another clock.
When I'm outside and don't want to pull out my phone, I can glance at
the sun and be within 30 minutes or so, plus there are always other
clues for people who wish to observe them. I know what time certain
people leave for work and arrive back home, I know what time the mail
carrier comes, and I know what time the UPS truck makes a swing down
my street, just to name a few, and that only scratches the surface.

There's a rather tasteless saying that comes to mind, about how you
can't swing a dead cat without <fill in the blank>, in this case
without hitting a few clocks. That's my life, anyway. I realize
everyone has a different perspective, which is why I asked half
jokingly. As I observe the people around me, I see some elderly men
wearing watches and I see some women (of any age) who wear a watch
when they go out for the evening, more as jewelry I suspect than as a
timepiece, but it's extremely rare for me to see anyone in my age
group (20 years younger than your age group) or younger wearing a
watch. I have to believe that standalone watches are a quickly dying,
or at least shrinking, industry. In an age of always-on data, it's
just a redundant relic of the past. With exceptions, of course.

 

[Char Jackson]

Gentlemen, let us be precise...
55mi = 88.513920km
Now, you see how stupid the metric system is? ;-)

No, that doesn't illustrate how stupid the metric system is.
Logically, the metric system makes far more sense than what the US
uses now. How about we convert 90 KPH into MPH to illustrate how
stupid the other system is?

Still missing the space after "--".

 

[John Williamson]

I'm going back about 30-35 years, but I used to have a friend I worked
with who made a point of never wearing a watch. He used to frequently
ask me what time it was. It didn't take me very long to stop answering
his questions.

"Time to buy a watch."

 

[Ken Blake]

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:50:21 +0000, John Williamson

[snip]

For what it's worth, all my Casio watches of various ages consistently
gain about a second a day, and have done from new.

So mine is not the only one gaining time, eh? It gains about 1/2
second per day.

Unless you don't reset it until several weeks have gone by, and you
are talking about an average gain, how could you possibly know?

That is exactly what I do. I check it against my computer's
clock just after I have resynced it with an Internet time server.

As I suspected. But that very small error wouldn't bother me at all.

Ken

 

[Ken Blake]

There's a rather tasteless saying that comes to mind, about how you
can't swing a dead cat without <fill in the blank>,

Perhaps some people use the saying that way, but it was a cat, not a
dead cat, and doesn't refer to an animal, dead or alive. The cat in
that saying is a cat-o-nine-tails, a tool that was used for flogging
sailors in the British Navy.

I have to believe that standalone watches are a quickly dying,
or at least shrinking, industry.

Could be. I have no opinion on this because I've never noticed. But
I'll try to keep my eyes peeled for it in the future.

 

[Ken Blake]

"Time to buy a watch."

I might be wrong, but I think he owned a watch; he just never wanted
to wear it, for whatever reason.

But I never said that, or anything else, in reply to his questions. I
just ignored him. He eventually got the message and stopped asking me.

 

[Ed Cryer]

LOL! Sometimes true.

But bear in mind that there were normally no wires on the floor.
Computer rooms normally had (presumably still have) raised floors with
all the cables, and air-conditioning, under the floor.





But that's never true. It might depend on the machine, but in most
case as long as the first few cards remained at the beginning and the
last ones at the end, all would be well.

And if those few cards were not at the beginning and end, it would not
load at all. So the question was whether the program would run at all,
not whether it would run properly.

But if the order of the cards in a *source* program was screwed up,
yes, compiling the program, no running it, could have all sorts of
strange results.

Computers of a generation before us had even object programs held on
punched cards; and written in machine code too. If you just interchanged
two middle cards (say a shift-left-logical command and a subsequent XOR)
then the thing would run but produce wrong results.

Two more actualities in the cause of computing history.

1. One major machine kept dying. It took ages to find the cause.
Eventually they discovered that when a certain door was thrown fully
open it hit the emergency power-off button.

2. We were getting random strange run results for ages until we
discovered the cause. A batch of memory boards had been replaced by
incompetent staff who'd simply slid them out; but that dropped iron
filings all around the place, and these were moving around with the
current fluxes and shorting things out.

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

No, that doesn't illustrate how stupid the metric system is.
Logically, the metric system makes far more sense than what the US
uses now. How about we convert 90 KPH into MPH to illustrate how
stupid the other system is?

Yep! I completely agree.

And, as I said before, we should not be the odd man out, and should
measure things the way almost everyone else in the world does.

 

[Char Jackson]

Perhaps some people use the saying that way, but it was a cat, not a
dead cat, and doesn't refer to an animal, dead or alive. The cat in
that saying is a cat-o-nine-tails, a tool that was used for flogging
sailors in the British Navy.

Thanks for that. I think I first heard the saying back in the 80's,
and for me since then it has always been as I described it. It sort of
guts the whole thing of its visual/mental impact if you take the dead
animal out of it.

 

[Ed Cryer]

Computers of a generation before us had even object programs held on
punched cards; and written in machine code too. If you just interchanged
two middle cards (say a shift-left-logical command and a subsequent XOR)
then the thing would run but produce wrong results.

Two more actualities in the cause of computing history.

1. One major machine kept dying. It took ages to find the cause.
Eventually they discovered that when a certain door was thrown fully
open it hit the emergency power-off button.

2. We were getting random strange run results for ages until we
discovered the cause. A batch of memory boards had been replaced by
incompetent staff who'd simply slid them out; but that dropped iron
filings all around the place, and these were moving around with the
current fluxes and shorting things out.

Ed

Apropos which, I've just found this picture.
LOL.
http://tinyurl.com/brpjvee

Ed

 

[Paul]

I might be wrong, but I think he owned a watch; he just never wanted
to wear it, for whatever reason.

But I never said that, or anything else, in reply to his questions. I
just ignored him. He eventually got the message and stopped asking me.

Maybe this person was illiterate ?

Some illiterates are very good at hiding their situation,
substituting a friendly exterior as a means to pump
the people around them, for the information they can't
read for themselves.

If you'd kept an eye on him, he probably ended up
pestering someone else for the time.

If you'd caught him wearing a watch, you'd want to check
the time on it, to see if it was set properly. That would
be a giveaway, because a person who can't read the time,
can't set the watch either.

Paul