OT.... but I need help

On 05/11/2012 17:22, charlie wrote:
On 11/5/2012 2:40 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Gene E. Bloch
writes:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:07:19 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:

On 11/4/2012 8:27 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ed Cryer
writes:
[]
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?

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. If
memory (organic) serves, she retired as one of the highest ranking
females in military service. Relays were a common part of the early
"fire control" computers, although I really don't remember the details.

Perhaps the strangest system I ran across while working for a GE lab was
a system that was on the borderline between hardwired logic and a
computer as we think of it. Programming was done with cards and jumpers.
The "flip flops" were something called a "Mag Amp", used for one bit
storage, and decisions. It was old in the early 60's, and used to
control industrial systems. A later, also obsolete system was full of
miniature "crystal can" relays and transistors, with a few tubes and
stepping relays thrown in for good measure. It used IBM punch cards.
A PDP-8 was about the latest and greatest at the time. Mainframe disk
drives were physically huge, heavy, and movable only with a fork lift.


PDP 8 were great machines. You needed to load the bootstrap loader with
toggling those data switches!

charlie wrote:


The legend goes that a female member of the armed forces (US Navy?)

Admiral (but not at that time) Grace Hopper.

came
up with the "bug" bit, based upon an actual insect in the works.

She taped an insect she'd removed from the hardware into a logbook.
Electrical engineers, and most likely others, had been using "bug" to
mean a glitch in the system for a long time before that.

If memory (organic) serves, she retired as one of the highest ranking
females in military service.

No doubt true. Hopper was also a member of the Codasyl committee,
which designed COBOL.

--
Tim Slattery

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:06:26 -0800, Gene Wirchenko
wrote:

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

[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?

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:51:07 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

I stopped wearing a watch in 1983, when a motorcycle accident stopped
my Timex dead in its tracks at 3:08 PM. I've found that I don't need a
watch, especially in the past decade or longer, since cell phones can
tell time and there are always lots of other clocks around.

Does anyone under the age of about 60 still wear a watch?


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.

On Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:27:28 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


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.

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:48:45 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:36:17 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 19:07:56 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

Though I still regret the US's aborting the shift to the metric
system...

Me too, although it was never even started sensibly. Changing a speed
limit from 55 mph to 88 kph made no sense, as far as I'm concerned; it
should have been changed to 60 kph.

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


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

On Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:40:31 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


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?


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.

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:18:15 +0000, Ed Cryer
wrote:

"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.

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 11:22:38 -0500, charlie wrote:

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.

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:55:36 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:51:07 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

I stopped wearing a watch in 1983, when a motorcycle accident stopped
my Timex dead in its tracks at 3:08 PM. I've found that I don't need a
watch, especially in the past decade or longer, since cell phones can
tell time and there are always lots of other clocks around.

Does anyone under the age of about 60 still wear a watch?


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."

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:49:01 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:06:26 -0800, Gene Wirchenko
wrote:

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

[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

On Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:43:02 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Gene Wirchenko
writes:

[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

On 05/11/2012 18:07, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:48:45 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:36:17 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 19:07:56 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

Though I still regret the US's aborting the shift to the metric
system...

Me too, although it was never even started sensibly. Changing a speed
limit from 55 mph to 88 kph made no sense, as far as I'm concerned; it
should have been changed to 60 kph.

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


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? ;-)
--
choro
*****

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:55:36 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:51:07 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

I stopped wearing a watch in 1983, when a motorcycle accident stopped
my Timex dead in its tracks at 3:08 PM. I've found that I don't need a
watch, especially in the past decade or longer, since cell phones can
tell time and there are always lots of other clocks around.

Does anyone under the age of about 60 still wear a watch?


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

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:36:46 +0000, choro wrote:

On 05/11/2012 18:07, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:48:45 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:36:17 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 19:07:56 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

Though I still regret the US's aborting the shift to the metric
system...

Me too, although it was never even started sensibly. Changing a speed
limit from 55 mph to 88 kph made no sense, as far as I'm concerned; it
should have been changed to 60 kph.

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


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? ;-)

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?

--
choro
*****

Still missing the space after "--".

--

Char Jackson