For those wondering how wild colors and stripes on ships would hide them from U-Boats -- it didn't. It made it hard for the U-Boat captains to properly evaluate their targets. The colors and pattern would disrupt the length, angle, and speed clues seen though binoculars at a distance, and through the periscope when preparing to fire torpedoes.
Radar didn't exist during WWI, so U-Boats cruised on the surface with lookouts who could eyeball ships or ship smoke at 10 miles, maybe 20 on a good day. Given their 15-18 knot surface speed and 6-8 knot submerged speed, the U-Boat now had only 30 minutes or so to get into proper position ahead of the approaching ship -- about 4000-6000 yards (2-3 nautical miles) ahead and to one side of the approaching target. WWI German torpedoes could travel 6600 yards at 36 knots, for a max run time of just over 5 minutes. A target ship moving at 12 knots would move 400 yards in a minute. A 600 foot ship travels it's length in only 30 seconds. It's this tiny window that the Razzle-Dazzle would screw up. If the U-Boat captain guessed wrong on the ships movement due to painted false bow waves and extra bow/stern lines, the firing solution would be bad.
Remember that the ship view from the U-Boat was usually against cloudy skies of some sort in the North Atlantic. Add in the blue haze with distance, and the yellows, purples, and pinks start to blur into the background blue-gray sky. Now think of that sight through a wet periscope a few feet above the water, and you get the idea.
WWII had a brilliant camoufalge example in the bizarre sounding Pink Spitfires used for reconnaissance. The pink shade was selected to blend against the just-past-sunset twilight sky and clouds when those aircraft flew, and it was very effective.
The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value.
Hear hear! For all the "Management Science" out there, what actually does work? The Waterfall method is hugely limited in software development, and upper management without a clear view is crippling. I was once part of a project where six teams had each developed their own printer drivers for their modules because management neither thought of it or noticed the duplication. Team isolation prevented sharing as well, so six freshly re-invented wheels.
What is it they are crunching on anyway? Did somebody's new skin break the display engine? Did fixing a wall error crump edge detection or LOS calculations? Did a weapons tweak make the ballistics engine puke? Was there a pent-up demand for crawling ants lighting on a display instead of just a glow? Where are the edges of accountability for these things, and which manager is (not) paying for their miscues?
Granted, starting with a well behaved engine or other project module is always going to be risky when you push it to do new or different things. The upper echelons should be aware of this in their design plans. But flogging the oarsmen when you're completely off course is the wrong way to go -- fix the navigator!
More to the point, peer review is NOT theory validation -- it is supposed to be a final edit by an impartial party to find errors of fact, reason, and presentation. It is never supposed to be the "Stamp of Approval" about the topic, it is only a filter to weed out papers not yet ready for publication.
Theory validation comes from those who read the papers and use the information to test, retest, or modify their own experiments to either confirm, deny, or suggest alternatives to the information presented.
I remember a early 1990s (?) story where a national bus company installed a front bumper radar to enforce a safe following distance for their drivers. It would activate the brakes automatically when the driver got too close to the car ahead based on the speed. The problem was other drivers cutting in front of the bus would make the system stomp on the brakes, thus dumping the people in the bus and causing tailgaters to rear end the vehicle.
Like any early age training, make it a game, and Mavis Beacon does. My kids loved it and were proficient typists by the fourth grade. When my son discovered he could enhance an on-line game he enjoyed by writing macros, he was on his way.
Lovely! This goes along with a recent discovery that the Appendix serves as reservoir for the gastrointestinal system's supply of friendly microbes which help digest our food.
The striped nature of the cloud features is probably because the data was gathered by the DMSP Weather Satellites using their low light detection sensors. These do not take a full-earth view of the world as the sun-synchronous GOES satellites do. DMSP vehicles operate in a lower orbit but a high angle and circular orbit. This brings them near the poles, and they cross the equator at roughly 9AM or 3PM locally to take advantage of the sun angle and shadows on clouds. They scan a wide path beneath them in visible and infrared channels, and have been used for years to do night light intensity mapping, such as for light pollution surveys.
The stripes are the paths from the several vehicles in orbit assembled over time when they passed near the poles.
Ah, but you did hit bottom. Your fear of changing was overcome by your fear of NOT changing! Obsession is overwhelmed by compulsion -- the need to make the pain you saw in others go away. In short, your motivations changed for the better! Well done!
The only issues in helping another hit bottom is how hard and how fast. You're not out to ruin them -- they've done that to themselves already. You're out to help them see, as happened to you. And they're not going to like what they see, ever. That's the point.
He's playing the game because it gives him something he can't find or get enough of in Real Life. Behind the keyboard he can be daring, bold, brave, clever, and receive a regular helping of the success, joy, and adulation that come with those things. There are puzzles to solve, people to help (damsels in distress?), buds to hang with, and he can get it all, now.
How can Real Life compete with that? What are those things that make life worth living if the computer is more validating than your regular existence? That's the problem. Real Life becomes a maintenance issue serving to allow time with The Game. Now you are dependent on the game -- You're avoiding the Real Life stuff, The Game has become your buffer, your filter, your shield -- You are addicted. You don't merely need it, you require it. The Game is How you Live.
What now? The Game is dominant, but it's skills don't translate much to Real Life. Trying to deal with Real Life is an embarrassment. It doesn't work the way The Game does -- no reset, second chances, saves, spells -- you can't get and keep the upper hand. The physics don't match, the interactions aren't predictable, and you can't hide behind the keyboard. People see you, not your avatar. How can you live up to that? Why don't they understand? In The Game, they do...
See "Social Phobia" to appreciate how grasping at the one good (they think) thing in one's life can screw up the rest of it.
Based on the idea that COBOL is reasonably mature -- which is to say that the various versions and flavors are not going through the language version update of the quarter -- how about an overlay UI in some appropriate flavor (Java/Python/Turbo Pascal/whatever).
Dreamweaver was great because it hid all the Javascript stuff and HTML. It did the grunt work for you. Likewise, the current crop of CMS programs hide the base code by letting the user go straight to functionality. So, how about a COBOL tool that would:
- translate source into equivalent (language of choice) code
- identify loops, variables, constants, and so on.
- etc, etc, to suit.
Do you code directly in assembly or use an editor? It's like that. How deep do you have to go to polish the code enough to get reasonable speeds? If you have to play directly with the stacks, sure... you have to know all the bits and bobs. But if it's just consolidating a swarm of assigned constants into a table and letting them be modifiable, is COBOL really that opaque?
There is always money in a better mousetrap and more effective user/maintainer interface. COBOL could sure use one from the sounds of it!
In 1957/58, scientists worldwide held an International Geophysical Year, during which they collected as much weather info as they could.
Show me the computer model which starts, say, 1 Jan 1958, and correctly forecasts global weather to any degree of accuracy for 1 Jan 2008. If they don't work over 50 years from a known starting point to a known ending point, why believe them implicitly for 100 years?
I don't care how much money and which drugs they would lock me in a room with, I never, never would have come up with a Jamaican beach luau version of "Roxanne."
You push it in the slot, push Play, and it works. No menus to wander, no special features to get in the way, no Director's Cut, no frigging mind games with some dinky remote with tiny print and bitty buttons to poke at to get the bloody thing to play, now. Get off my lawn! Damn kids these days... Harumph. Where did I put my bifocals?
This message sponsored by AARP, because you'll be old someday, too!
OK -- 52.220 kWh and you can charge it in 5 minutes or so. How?
Even if you have a dedicated 220 vac connection, how many amps do you need to draw to feed this beast in only 5 minutes?? Or are we going to need 460 vac connections at home?
Yes, Jefferson chose free speech over a regulated media, and we reap the benefits of that in spite of the pain it can cause. Still, it seems the media falls into two camps:
- Illuminate, Educate, and Illustrate
- Titillate, Castigate, and Prevaricate
One pays better than the other, but one is much better for society in the long run.
Don't forget the multi-billions of termite mounds and herds of flatulent herbivores that have been cranking out
the methane long before humans figured out fire -- way back when forest and prarie fires ran unchecked for years at a time.
In a deck of 100,000 cards, it can be a mistake to concentrate on just one being responsible for all the action.
Slashdot Mirror
For those wondering how wild colors and stripes on ships would hide them from U-Boats -- it didn't. It made it hard for the U-Boat captains to properly evaluate their targets. The colors and pattern would disrupt the length, angle, and speed clues seen though binoculars at a distance, and through the periscope when preparing to fire torpedoes.
Radar didn't exist during WWI, so U-Boats cruised on the surface with lookouts who could eyeball ships or ship smoke at 10 miles, maybe 20 on a good day. Given their 15-18 knot surface speed and 6-8 knot submerged speed, the U-Boat now had only 30 minutes or so to get into proper position ahead of the approaching ship -- about 4000-6000 yards (2-3 nautical miles) ahead and to one side of the approaching target. WWI German torpedoes could travel 6600 yards at 36 knots, for a max run time of just over 5 minutes. A target ship moving at 12 knots would move 400 yards in a minute. A 600 foot ship travels it's length in only 30 seconds. It's this tiny window that the Razzle-Dazzle would screw up. If the U-Boat captain guessed wrong on the ships movement due to painted false bow waves and extra bow/stern lines, the firing solution would be bad.
Remember that the ship view from the U-Boat was usually against cloudy skies of some sort in the North Atlantic. Add in the blue haze with distance, and the yellows, purples, and pinks start to blur into the background blue-gray sky. Now think of that sight through a wet periscope a few feet above the water, and you get the idea.
WWII had a brilliant camoufalge example in the bizarre sounding Pink Spitfires used for reconnaissance. The pink shade was selected to blend against the just-past-sunset twilight sky and clouds when those aircraft flew, and it was very effective.
The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value.
Hear hear! For all the "Management Science" out there, what actually does work? The Waterfall method is hugely limited in software development, and upper management without a clear view is crippling. I was once part of a project where six teams had each developed their own printer drivers for their modules because management neither thought of it or noticed the duplication. Team isolation prevented sharing as well, so six freshly re-invented wheels.
What is it they are crunching on anyway? Did somebody's new skin break the display engine? Did fixing a wall error crump edge detection or LOS calculations? Did a weapons tweak make the ballistics engine puke? Was there a pent-up demand for crawling ants lighting on a display instead of just a glow? Where are the edges of accountability for these things, and which manager is (not) paying for their miscues?
Granted, starting with a well behaved engine or other project module is always going to be risky when you push it to do new or different things. The upper echelons should be aware of this in their design plans. But flogging the oarsmen when you're completely off course is the wrong way to go -- fix the navigator!
The second attempt caught fire, fell over, and sank into the swamp. The third attempt was more successful!
You forgot:
6 - Profit!
More to the point, peer review is NOT theory validation -- it is supposed to be a final edit by an impartial party to find errors of fact, reason, and presentation. It is never supposed to be the "Stamp of Approval" about the topic, it is only a filter to weed out papers not yet ready for publication.
Theory validation comes from those who read the papers and use the information to test, retest, or modify their own experiments to either confirm, deny, or suggest alternatives to the information presented.
To an IPhone near you: Measles and Angry Measles!
A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his own truck. His truck is a "workplace" you see, and you're not allowed to smoke at work.
Beware! Definitions have consequences!
I remember a early 1990s (?) story where a national bus company installed a front bumper radar to enforce a safe following distance for their drivers. It would activate the brakes automatically when the driver got too close to the car ahead based on the speed. The problem was other drivers cutting in front of the bus would make the system stomp on the brakes, thus dumping the people in the bus and causing tailgaters to rear end the vehicle.
Needless to say, it was removed pretty quickly...
Mavis Beacon
Like any early age training, make it a game, and Mavis Beacon does. My kids loved it and were proficient typists by the fourth grade. When my son discovered he could enhance an on-line game he enjoyed by writing macros, he was on his way.
National Air Force Museum, Dayton, Ohio. Everything from a Wright Flyer to a Mach 3 XB-70 Valkyre and all in between.
Lovely! This goes along with a recent discovery that the Appendix serves as reservoir for the gastrointestinal system's supply of friendly microbes which help digest our food.
No news yet on earlobes.
Does the inventor of the shovel have a property right to every hole that's ever been dug?
The striped nature of the cloud features is probably because the data was gathered by the DMSP Weather Satellites using their low light detection sensors. These do not take a full-earth view of the world as the sun-synchronous GOES satellites do. DMSP vehicles operate in a lower orbit but a high angle and circular orbit. This brings them near the poles, and they cross the equator at roughly 9AM or 3PM locally to take advantage of the sun angle and shadows on clouds. They scan a wide path beneath them in visible and infrared channels, and have been used for years to do night light intensity mapping, such as for light pollution surveys.
The stripes are the paths from the several vehicles in orbit assembled over time when they passed near the poles.
Your tax dollars at work!
Ah, but you did hit bottom. Your fear of changing was overcome by your fear of NOT changing! Obsession is overwhelmed by compulsion -- the need to make the pain you saw in others go away. In short, your motivations changed for the better! Well done!
The only issues in helping another hit bottom is how hard and how fast. You're not out to ruin them -- they've done that to themselves already. You're out to help them see, as happened to you. And they're not going to like what they see, ever. That's the point.
He's playing the game because it gives him something he can't find or get enough of in Real Life. Behind the keyboard he can be daring, bold, brave, clever, and receive a regular helping of the success, joy, and adulation that come with those things. There are puzzles to solve, people to help (damsels in distress?), buds to hang with, and he can get it all, now.
How can Real Life compete with that? What are those things that make life worth living if the computer is more validating than your regular existence? That's the problem. Real Life becomes a maintenance issue serving to allow time with The Game. Now you are dependent on the game -- You're avoiding the Real Life stuff, The Game has become your buffer, your filter, your shield -- You are addicted. You don't merely need it, you require it. The Game is How you Live.
What now? The Game is dominant, but it's skills don't translate much to Real Life. Trying to deal with Real Life is an embarrassment. It doesn't work the way The Game does -- no reset, second chances, saves, spells -- you can't get and keep the upper hand. The physics don't match, the interactions aren't predictable, and you can't hide behind the keyboard. People see you, not your avatar. How can you live up to that? Why don't they understand? In The Game, they do...
See "Social Phobia" to appreciate how grasping at the one good (they think) thing in one's life can screw up the rest of it.
Negligent Endangerment.
Based on the idea that COBOL is reasonably mature -- which is to say that the various versions and flavors are not going through the language version update of the quarter -- how about an overlay UI in some appropriate flavor (Java/Python/Turbo Pascal/whatever).
Dreamweaver was great because it hid all the Javascript stuff and HTML. It did the grunt work for you. Likewise, the current crop of CMS programs hide the base code by letting the user go straight to functionality. So, how about a COBOL tool that would:
- translate source into equivalent (language of choice) code
- identify loops, variables, constants, and so on.
- etc, etc, to suit.
Do you code directly in assembly or use an editor? It's like that. How deep do you have to go to polish the code enough to get reasonable speeds? If you have to play directly with the stacks, sure... you have to know all the bits and bobs. But if it's just consolidating a swarm of assigned constants into a table and letting them be modifiable, is COBOL really that opaque?
There is always money in a better mousetrap and more effective user/maintainer interface. COBOL could sure use one from the sounds of it!
In 1957/58, scientists worldwide held an International Geophysical Year, during which they collected as much weather info as they could.
Show me the computer model which starts, say, 1 Jan 1958, and correctly forecasts global weather to any degree of accuracy for 1 Jan 2008. If they don't work over 50 years from a known starting point to a known ending point, why believe them implicitly for 100 years?
I don't care how much money and which drugs they would lock me in a room with, I never, never would have come up with a Jamaican beach luau version of "Roxanne."
Wonderful! Can I get this installed on my personal airborne transportation system? Because then I can truly say: Where is my flying car?
Almost as sad as the people still using it.
You push it in the slot, push Play, and it works. No menus to wander, no special features to get in the way, no Director's Cut, no frigging mind games with some dinky remote with tiny print and bitty buttons to poke at to get the bloody thing to play, now. Get off my lawn! Damn kids these days... Harumph. Where did I put my bifocals?
This message sponsored by AARP, because you'll be old someday, too!
OK -- 52.220 kWh and you can charge it in 5 minutes or so. How?
Even if you have a dedicated 220 vac connection, how many amps do you need to draw to feed this beast in only 5 minutes?? Or are we going to need 460 vac connections at home?
Yes, Jefferson chose free speech over a regulated media, and we reap the benefits of that in spite of the pain it can cause. Still, it seems the media falls into two camps:
- Illuminate, Educate, and Illustrate
- Titillate, Castigate, and Prevaricate
One pays better than the other, but one is much better for society in the long run.
Ah -- 6 billion humans, eh?
Don't forget the multi-billions of termite mounds and herds of flatulent herbivores that have been cranking out the methane long before humans figured out fire -- way back when forest and prarie fires ran unchecked for years at a time.
In a deck of 100,000 cards, it can be a mistake to concentrate on just one being responsible for all the action.
Perhaps we're entering another Maunder Minimum for a phase of Global Cooling.
The next few centuries could be fun!