"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
- Edsgar W. Dijkstra.
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense."
- E.W. Dijkstra.
"In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included."
- E.W. Dijkstra.
And I hate debugging those long stretches of spaghetti code written 30 years ago by people without a clue about programming. And modified 25 times since. Without a single comment.
Some time ago I found a big bug that when removed increased the rain in some satellite data by 30% ! Guess how it was handled ? "Put it back in !"
"The evolution of languages: FORTRAN is a non-typed language. C is a weakly typed language. Ada is a strongly typed language. C++ is a strongly hyped language."
- Ron Sercely.
"You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers."
- Steven Feiner.
"FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular."
- Ken Thompson, "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
"In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included."
- E.W. Dijkstra.
"Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice."
- Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual.
"FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer."
- A.J. Perlis.
While in Antarctica (OK, it's not wet and salty, but the cold and static electricity are pretty rough on the machines) I've used repeatedly computers from Kontron. They make laptops for the military, for industrial use (think refinery)...
But they're not all that rugged. One LCD screen failed when a snowcat started just next to it. And I had to use my backup indoor machine outdoor; an old HP Vectra that had to sit outside for 4 hours while I uploaded firmwares into weather forecast systems. With gloves.
one recipe based on nothing but 3 cans of various potato soup.
another that starts with a big Mac or somesuch.
...
Have you ever heard of fresh products ? You know, basic things that you can use to make a real recipe, just like computer instructions that you put together to write a full program...?
Anyway, there are already plenty of recipe website everywhere. I even have one big help file with 10 thousand recipes. And it's freeware, so no need to reinvent the wheel. Only catch: it's all in French...
There's a molecular biologist named Hervé This who writes a monthly column about scientific cooking in the french edition of Scientific American. He explains everything, like what is a mayonaise, why do you need to knead bread, how to invent new cooking methods...
Some of his recipes are online; at least try the chocolate mayonnaise.
And for those of you who want a big classic list of recipes, I have 10000 of them in a big Windows Help file (5Mb), still all in french. He, at least that's one thing this language is good for!
The technology is very neat but, I dont quite understand why it was needed. Was it really neccesary for the physician in the pole to be talked through the operation. I am truely curious about this and would like to know more.
It is necessary because in Antarctica in winter there is usually one doctor per station, and that guy is a general doctor, not a surgeon. There is on average one surgery every 3 winter over, except at the Australian stations that seem to have an appendectomy a year.
When I wintered over at Dumont d'Urville in '93 we broke all records with 7 surgeries, including one appendicitis. I have more info on how we coped with it and pictures as well on my site.
At the time all the doctor could rely on was a satellite voice link and a motley crew to assist him. Still much better than what the pioneers had to rely on. In Port-Martin in 1951 they did an appendicitis with sharpened kitchen knives and there's a great story about it but the link seems to be gone.
A russian doctor had to take out his own appendix in Antarctica in 1961.
One of the most serious studies of this type was done by the speleologue/caver Michel Siffre who stayed 3 months underground in 1962 and several other times.
OK, this is 100% pure spam, and I'm a bit worried about slashdot reaction, but I figure you are going to need penguin pictures, right ?
I just started selling a CD of Antarctic pictures, royalty-free.
If they ran this experiment from the south poles they would have a sunset/rise that can last for several days during the equinox, very clear sky and a bunch of other advantages. Have they considered it and dismissed it for some reasons ?
When I first set foot in the US, I couldn't believe that on each banknote and coin was written "In god we trust"... In the supposedly most advanced country in the world !?! A lot of other countries chopped priests heads off two hundred years ago to get rid of this nonsense, and now, in full control there's still remnants of the darkest times of mankind. What's wrong with the US that they can't leave this behind ?
Debugging from Antarctica...
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 1
I spent two years writing a data acquisition system using DSP cards for a Sodar (remote sensing) device. Then I was sent to Antarctica several times to install it and run it.
On the last trip, in 2000, we bought two new PCs just for that purpose. I checked the systems before leaving but couldn't run a real time check because all the instrumentation was already on the ship.
So I get there and install the stuff. Lo and behold, all the acquisitions run 4 times too fast. I spent 10 days and nights... err, no, no nights there... debugging the crap out of it. Apparently each time an external interrupt was called, the motherboard would generate 4 interrupt calls instead of one.
Tech support calls over a satellite phone from Antarctica were costing about 20$/minute ["Please hold." NO!!!]. I never solved it but rewrote the interrupt routine (wearing gloves) to throw out interrupt calls that came too close to each others. Never could figure out what was wrong with that motherboard. Lost 10 days of data but saved the next two months.
Excellent comment by slewazimuth. Only thing I can add are a few pictures of weather balloon launches, both of the described kind and also tethered balloons.
Download the Web Enhancement for Internet Explorer (if that's what you're using). You can configure it to call from the command line. For instance I have:
"g keywords" to do a google search on the keywords
"img icebergs" to do an image search
"w someone" to do a person search in groups.google
Plenty of other possibilities. I hardly type urls anymore and I never see the google main page (so I missed the cool logos).
The google cache threads on the muddy water of copyright. Do you feel like you are going to run into trouble because of it ? Some conflicted opinions about it are:
It serves copyrighted pages without the author's consent
It serves pages without the original site's knowledge
It's very useful
If a page is on the web, it can be archived/cached...
Why limit this list to physics ?
Movies can turn anything wrong for the sake of the (often bad) story. Climbing ? Look at Vertical Shitmit or Cliffbanger to convince yourself that not only the laws of gravity are being raped, but also common sense.
Due to the amount of computer savvies around here, I won't even talk about computers in movies, which fortunately no longer have big spinning tapes since, ho, a good 5 years ago.
And I'm sure lawyers laugh themselves senseless when they see one of those movie trials, as will do anything from fireman to house painter.
"Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" may be a good idea, but only if you have a good story in the first place. Anyone can suspend disbelief, but not if you have to turn your entire brains off, as happens way too often with Hollywood. The problem is that most people don't notice any problem with faster than light spaceships, people jumping down the 10 floor of a building or people being hit by 10 big calliber bullet and fighting on.
Now about the page, they talk about exploding cars. I used to agree with what they say, gasoline being fairly safe and all, until two years ago. A moron on a cell phone ran into us while we were stopped in traffic. At about 140 km/h. Our car exploded in a big fireball instantly just like in the movies. I've been thinking about the physics of that ever since: the tank was full, it was very hot (about 40C), but still it was enough to give me a one year suntan. And we ran fast out of the fireball. Bah! enough!
I have used the Orbcomm system, and I must say it's the worst communication system I've ever used. Yes, worse than SMS messages.
Messages are limited to about 200 characters !
more than half the messages we sent got lost.
more than half the messages that were sent to us got lost
the synch is archaic to say the least.
An email sender must first find a satellite than will pass above you in the next 36 hours (IIRC) and send it the message. When the satellite passes above you, if your unit is on it squirts the data down. Otherwise it's lost. You need a separate program to compute satellite passes and there's no inter-satellite communication. Long delays. It's so complex, there's no way Joe Schmuck can send you an email.
From a moving unit to a ground based station is a little easier: keep your unit on until a satellite passes overhead, that's all.
2 years ago I wrote a small C program to synchronize a Windows PC to a Trimble GPS: easy. A RS232 library, a quick look at the Trimble communication protocol and it was done in under 4 hours.
Last week I've been synching my SGIs using ntp (Network Time Protocol) and I saw in the documentation that it can also synch to a GPS. Didn't look at the details though, but probably through the serial port. And ntp is free.
Then if there's so much loss of quality between copies and if it's so expensive to go all digital, why don't they make the final edit on digital and then 'flash' each theatre copy digitally (onto normal film).
The flashing process (creating a slide from a film) is classic in photography, why not in the movie industry ? It would be both cheaper (only the studio needs to upgrade) and better quality (direct copy).
A bit OT but funny:
I once ordered a bunch of Freshettes in the US for the women of our Himalayan expedition. It was blocked at the Italian customs because they considered it "medical equipment".
I had to jump through all kind of legal loops to get those little pieces of plastic without being a doctor...
Yeah the stations on the high Antarctic plateau may not have too much power requirements but they use mainly diesel generators.
The Americans used a nuclear generator taken from a Sub years ago but they kept having problems with it and it's now been removed because the Antarctic Treaty forbids it.
In summer there's plenty of sun, so solar panels are used, but in winter there's none. In the center of Antarctica there's not too much wind (I studied at Dome C where most winds are 'born' and there's not enough to power a fan. On the other hand, on the coast you get demented winds that will break anything.
The French experimented with a heat transfer system that had it's highest efficiency in cold winds. The colder and faster the better. But it wasn't too conclusive.
And if you just want power for your palmtop, take L91 Lithium Energizer batteries, the only ones that work below -50C...
I find this problem very similar to problems facing compression software: you can prove that it's impossible to have a compression algorithm that compresses everything (read the compression FAQ), but on the other hand a compression program (ZIP, ARC...) will work great on real world examples: text files, images... It just won't work on random data.
I strongly suspect it's the same here: if you have vague random specs from your boss, it's impossible to give an estimate. If you have precise estimate and know your stuff well, then here you go...
Slashdot Mirror
And I hate debugging those long stretches of spaghetti code written 30 years ago by people without a clue about programming. And modified 25 times since. Without a single comment.
Some time ago I found a big bug that when removed increased the rain in some satellite data by 30% ! Guess how it was handled ? "Put it back in !"
But they're not all that rugged. One LCD screen failed when a snowcat started just next to it. And I had to use my backup indoor machine outdoor; an old HP Vectra that had to sit outside for 4 hours while I uploaded firmwares into weather forecast systems. With gloves.
- one recipe based on nothing but 3 cans of various potato soup.
- another that starts with a big Mac or somesuch.
...
Have you ever heard of fresh products ? You know, basic things that you can use to make a real recipe, just like computer instructions that you put together to write a full program...?Anyway, there are already plenty of recipe website everywhere. I even have one big help file with 10 thousand recipes. And it's freeware, so no need to reinvent the wheel. Only catch: it's all in French...
He has several books out that I'd recommand to any french-speaking cooking geek: Casseroles et éprouvettes, Traité élémentaire de cuisine, Les Secrets de la casserole...
Some of his recipes are online; at least try the chocolate mayonnaise.
And for those of you who want a big classic list of recipes, I have 10000 of them in a big Windows Help file (5Mb), still all in french. He, at least that's one thing this language is good for!
Sorry, it took me a while to find the link to the story. It's in french but well worth the read.
When I wintered over at Dumont d'Urville in '93 we broke all records with 7 surgeries, including one appendicitis. I have more info on how we coped with it and pictures as well on my site.
At the time all the doctor could rely on was a satellite voice link and a motley crew to assist him. Still much better than what the pioneers had to rely on. In Port-Martin in 1951 they did an appendicitis with sharpened kitchen knives and there's a great story about it but the link seems to be gone.
A russian doctor had to take out his own appendix in Antarctica in 1961.
One of the most serious studies of this type was done by the speleologue/caver Michel Siffre who stayed 3 months underground in 1962 and several other times.
OK, this is 100% pure spam, and I'm a bit worried about slashdot reaction, but I figure you are going to need penguin pictures, right ? I just started selling a CD of Antarctic pictures, royalty-free.
If they ran this experiment from the south poles they would have a sunset/rise that can last for several days during the equinox, very clear sky and a bunch of other advantages. Have they considered it and dismissed it for some reasons ?
But read what one of the best of all, Douglas Adams, had to say on the subject.
On the last trip, in 2000, we bought two new PCs just for that purpose. I checked the systems before leaving but couldn't run a real time check because all the instrumentation was already on the ship.
So I get there and install the stuff. Lo and behold, all the acquisitions run 4 times too fast. I spent 10 days and nights... err, no, no nights there... debugging the crap out of it. Apparently each time an external interrupt was called, the motherboard would generate 4 interrupt calls instead of one.
Tech support calls over a satellite phone from Antarctica were costing about 20$/minute ["Please hold." NO!!!]. I never solved it but rewrote the interrupt routine (wearing gloves) to throw out interrupt calls that came too close to each others. Never could figure out what was wrong with that motherboard. Lost 10 days of data but saved the next two months.
Excellent comment by slewazimuth. Only thing I can add are a few pictures of weather balloon launches, both of the described kind and also tethered balloons.
- "g keywords" to do a google search on the keywords
- "img icebergs" to do an image search
- "w someone" to do a person search in groups.google
Plenty of other possibilities. I hardly type urls anymore and I never see the google main page (so I missed the cool logos).Why limit this list to physics ?
Movies can turn anything wrong for the sake of the (often bad) story. Climbing ? Look at Vertical Shitmit or Cliffbanger to convince yourself that not only the laws of gravity are being raped, but also common sense.
Due to the amount of computer savvies around here, I won't even talk about computers in movies, which fortunately no longer have big spinning tapes since, ho, a good 5 years ago.
And I'm sure lawyers laugh themselves senseless when they see one of those movie trials, as will do anything from fireman to house painter.
"Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" may be a good idea, but only if you have a good story in the first place. Anyone can suspend disbelief, but not if you have to turn your entire brains off, as happens way too often with Hollywood. The problem is that most people don't notice any problem with faster than light spaceships, people jumping down the 10 floor of a building or people being hit by 10 big calliber bullet and fighting on.
Now about the page, they talk about exploding cars. I used to agree with what they say, gasoline being fairly safe and all, until two years ago. A moron on a cell phone ran into us while we were stopped in traffic. At about 140 km/h. Our car exploded in a big fireball instantly just like in the movies. I've been thinking about the physics of that ever since: the tank was full, it was very hot (about 40C), but still it was enough to give me a one year suntan. And we ran fast out of the fireball. Bah! enough!
An email sender must first find a satellite than will pass above you in the next 36 hours (IIRC) and send it the message. When the satellite passes above you, if your unit is on it squirts the data down. Otherwise it's lost. You need a separate program to compute satellite passes and there's no inter-satellite communication. Long delays. It's so complex, there's no way Joe Schmuck can send you an email.
From a moving unit to a ground based station is a little easier: keep your unit on until a satellite passes overhead, that's all.
Emperor penguins at play...
For those interested, I have other RadarSat pictures on my website.
2 years ago I wrote a small C program to synchronize a Windows PC to a Trimble GPS: easy. A RS232 library, a quick look at the Trimble communication protocol and it was done in under 4 hours.
Last week I've been synching my SGIs using ntp (Network Time Protocol) and I saw in the documentation that it can also synch to a GPS. Didn't look at the details though, but probably through the serial port. And ntp is free.
Then if there's so much loss of quality between copies and if it's so expensive to go all digital, why don't they make the final edit on digital and then 'flash' each theatre copy digitally (onto normal film).
The flashing process (creating a slide from a film) is classic in photography, why not in the movie industry ? It would be both cheaper (only the studio needs to upgrade) and better quality (direct copy).
A bit OT but funny: I once ordered a bunch of Freshettes in the US for the women of our Himalayan expedition. It was blocked at the Italian customs because they considered it "medical equipment". I had to jump through all kind of legal loops to get those little pieces of plastic without being a doctor...
So how do we get power down there ?
Yeah the stations on the high Antarctic plateau may not have too much power requirements but they use mainly diesel generators.
The Americans used a nuclear generator taken from a Sub years ago but they kept having problems with it and it's now been removed because the Antarctic Treaty forbids it.
In summer there's plenty of sun, so solar panels are used, but in winter there's none. In the center of Antarctica there's not too much wind (I studied at Dome C where most winds are 'born' and there's not enough to power a fan. On the other hand, on the coast you get demented winds that will break anything.
The French experimented with a heat transfer system that had it's highest efficiency in cold winds. The colder and faster the better. But it wasn't too conclusive.
And if you just want power for your palmtop, take L91 Lithium Energizer batteries, the only ones that work below -50C...
I find this problem very similar to problems facing compression software: you can prove that it's impossible to have a compression algorithm that compresses everything (read the compression FAQ), but on the other hand a compression program (ZIP, ARC...) will work great on real world examples: text files, images... It just won't work on random data.
I strongly suspect it's the same here: if you have vague random specs from your boss, it's impossible to give an estimate. If you have precise estimate and know your stuff well, then here you go...