OT.... but I need help

[Paul]

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

Ed

Now, that's a programmer.

And she did all that, before lunch.

That's about 15x more cards than I punched,
in my entire time with punch cards.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake]

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.

I understand, and sorry to have to take the impact away.

 

[Ken Blake]

Maybe this person was illiterate ?

No, not at all. He was very smart, well educated, and very good at his
job.

He was only weird in this one respect, as far as I know.

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.

Maybe some, but not him.

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

I'm sure you're right.

 

[Char Jackson]

I understand, and sorry to have to take the impact away.

No apology necessary, I don't plan to use your version. ;-)

 

[Ken Blake]

Computers of a generation before us

Not a generation before me. I'm 75, and my computer experience goes
back to 1962.

had even object programs held on punched cards; and written in machine code too.

Yes and yes. That was my experience back in those days.

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.

But that depends on what computer it was. It wasn't true with the 1401
I worked on from 1962 to 1966.

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.

LOL! That's a funny story, but one I can readily believe.

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 A batch of memory boards had been replaced by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.

Another funny story.

I once had an IBM rep, one who had been bending over, straighten up
and hit his head against the emergency power off switch. It put us
down on two 370s for many hours.

 

[Ken Blake]

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

LOL! I remember piles of cards like that very well. But they were
always cards we no longer needed and were getting rid of.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

[]

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

Since mine isn't, I don't.

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.

(By "bathroom" I presume you mean the US use of the word, one that
doesn't necessarily have a bath in it.)

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

I can glance at the sun - very occasionally! I presume you live in
Florida, California, or similar.

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.

Wow, you _have_ filled your mind with a lot of times! And perhaps don't
stray very far from where such things occur. Walking down the street in
most UK towns, I would say I'm _not_ in easy view of a public clock -
they're quite rare. The odd church tower, jeweller or similar shop - but
certainly not visible from, I'd say, over 95% of street positions;
certainly not ones that are less effort to find and see than just
turning my wrist. Let alone a walk in the country, which your 95%
presumably don't do!

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

Certainly, the precision mechanical timepiece industry has been
struggling to survive for a decade or three - such items now being more
a collector's or show-off's luxury. But the other end of the price scale
is thriving, at least here: most street markets have a stall selling
watches, both electronic and mechanical (though the latter will be
battery-powered rather than spring), with the majority of the offerings
say between 5 and 12 pounds.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

For the man in the street, almost never, as you suggest. But some
people do--for example those measuring precision machined parts with

And, as I said below, don't those people need it more accurate than 1 F
too, thus killing any argument that F is better than C.

very low tolerances. Or those doing chemical reactions that work
differently at different temperatures.




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.

And, in fact, it isn't that precise anyway; even in healthy people
(those without a fever, in other words) it varies (a) throughout the day
(b) between individuals a little - I think by more than a degree (on
either scale).

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On 04/11/2012 19:46, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []
And for those (wine, at least - can't say for liquor), the strange unit
the centilitre (cl) is used, which isn't used anywhere else in the
metric system! (At least, in UK it is.)

cl = cc

No it doesn't. I'm glad you're not my doctor (-:

OK. My mistake, I admit...
1 cl = 10 cc

In the MKS and SI unit systems, the unit is ml, though 1 cc _does_ equal
1 ml.

cl is 1/100th of a litre as the name suggests; and cc is 1/1000th of a
litre. And don't worry. I am NOT in the medical profession!

I DO wish they'd stick either to one or the other for marking bottle
and can capacities in supermarkets. There is really no need to use
cl's. lt and cc will suffice. No need to complicate matters.
Indeed.

BTW, I also detest markings of sizes in mm rather than the more easily
remembered cm's. One can, after all, use a decimal point if more
precision is required in giving out size measurements.
41.9 x 26.7 is certainly more easy to remember than
419x267

Not sure I'd agree with the last point, but certainly using mm for
everything is daft; do they do that in US too? I always thought it was
only British industry that did that. I imagine a conversation went
something like this: "we've got to go metric." "OK - what's the metric
unit of distance?" "The millimetre." "OK, we'll use millimetres." With
the result that _everything_ is done in mm - I've even seen a switchyard
(the area outside an electricity substation) dimensioned in mm
(thousands of them, of course); these people obviously don't understand
one of the main points of the metric system, the use of prefixes (m-,
k-, and so on).

and rulers and tape measures are marked in cms in any case with
divisions for the mm's.--
choro
***** []

You need a space after the two dashes.

You also need a newline before: It has to be: newline, dash, dash,
space, newline. Or, to put it another way, "dash dash space on a line by
itself."

 

[Bob I]

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?

Way too easy to join the 200 club in metric, and even 300 is fairly
achievable.

 

[Ken Blake]

And, as I said below, don't those people need it more accurate than 1 F
too, thus killing any argument that F is better than C.

And, in fact, it isn't that precise anyway; even in healthy people
(those without a fever, in other words) it varies (a) throughout the day
(b) between individuals a little - I think by more than a degree (on
either scale).

Right, but you are talking about accuracy, not precision.

If someone says something is 99 and it is actually 100, he is more
accurate than someone who says it is 98.

But precision is different. The numbers 100 and 100.0 may have the
same value, but they are very different in precision. 100 means it is
closer to 100 than 99 or 101. But 100.0 means it is closer to 100.0
than 99.9 or 100.1.

So 98.6 sounds much more precise than 37 does.

 

[Ken Blake]

Not sure I'd agree with the last point, but certainly using mm for
everything is daft; do they do that in US too? I always thought it was
only British industry that did that. I imagine a conversation went
something like this: "we've got to go metric." "OK - what's the metric
unit of distance?" "The millimetre." "OK, we'll use millimetres." With
the result that _everything_ is done in mm - I've even seen a switchyard
(the area outside an electricity substation) dimensioned in mm
(thousands of them, of course); these people obviously don't understand
one of the main points of the metric system, the use of prefixes (m-,
k-, and so on).

No, when the metric system is used in the US, it's the same as
everywhere else. Nobody would dream of specifying the distance from
New York to Los Angeles in millimeters.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

[snip]

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.

Well, I figure that if I am going to use a watch, that it should
have the correct time to within about one minute.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

I understand, and sorry to have to take the impact away.

The real reason that there is no impact is that there is not any
room to swing the cat. So flog him abovedecks where there is room.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

[snip]

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

They do not look to be stacked very securely. How many seconds
until they tumbled down?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Right, but you are talking about accuracy, not precision.

If someone says something is 99 and it is actually 100, he is more
accurate than someone who says it is 98.

But precision is different. The numbers 100 and 100.0 may have the
same value, but they are very different in precision. 100 means it is
closer to 100 than 99 or 101. But 100.0 means it is closer to 100.0
than 99.9 or 100.1.

So 98.6 sounds much more precise than 37 does.

They should have just said 99, no decimal point and no decimal fraction.

Or they should have just used Centigrade back in the day (Celsius
today).

I have no idea who "they" are

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I imagine a conversation went
something like this: "we've got to go metric." "OK - what's the metric
unit of distance?" "The millimetre." "OK, we'll use millimetres." With
the result that _everything_ is done in mm...

The metric unit of distance is the meter (metre), but there's an
alternate system in which it is the centimeter (centimetre).

They're called MKS and CGS: meter, kilogram, second vs. centimeter,
gram, second systems, to use left-side spellings - it keeps the spell
checker happy .

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 11/4/2012 8:27 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message <[email protected]>, Ed Cryer
[]
We called them "thermionic valves" if anybody ever asked us what a
"valve" was.
When I started as a computer programmer one of the women in the office
told us how she programmed first-generation machines; and she used to
"hide from her boss in the memory cupboard".
I should think it was quite hot in there.

Ed

Depends; if it was core storage, maybe not ...

but full of bugs !!

That earns a golden groan

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

No.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

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.

Tim Slattery in this part of the thread got it exactly right.

 

[Char Jackson]

Way too easy to join the 200 club in metric, and even 300 is fairly
achievable.

My motorcycle is governed to top out at only 250 KPH. :-(

On the bright side, of course, there are other bikes that have a much
higher limit, but they aren't affordable to me at the moment.