casette shifting, again

wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 8:54:50 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get
amazingly lucrative offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically
undersupported and in the case of major bank mainframes,
irreplaceable.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Well, living in the land of Silicon Valley and working with major
companies and research facilities I have never even once saw anyone
looking for anyone to maintain obsolete programming languages but to write all new code.

If I owned a major corporation with a billing system consisting of a half-
million lines of COBOL and needed to add an "e-mail address" field to my
printed invoices, you can bet your ass I'd be looking for a retired COBOL
programmer instead of rewriting the system from scratch in the language du
jour.

On 12/16/2018 11:24 AM, wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 8:54:50 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get
amazingly lucrative offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically
undersupported and in the case of major bank mainframes,
irreplaceable.

Well, living in the land of Silicon Valley and working with major companies and research facilities I have never even once saw anyone looking for anyone to maintain obsolete programming languages but to write all new code.



https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-us...-idUKKBN17C0DZ

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 15:33:49 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 23:24:39 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
Note: The velocity of the bullet or round at the end of the effective
range is what delivers the energy. Muzzle velocity is of interest,
but the damage is done at the other end of the flight path.

True, but generally rather difficult to measure velocity of a
projectile way out yonder. Much easier to measure it close in and
calculate the probably velocity a half mile away.

If it is of interest, the original method of determining muzzle
velocity was a ballistic pendulum, hang the gun up and measure how far
it recoils when fired. Or vise versa, fire the gun toward a pendulum
and see how far the pendulum moves.

Yep, that works. I think it was Count Rumford (Benjamin Thomson) who
used that method (not sure and too lazy to check).

There are other ways. If we know the maximum height and range that
the round achieves, and we ignore air resistance, it is possible to
calculate the muzzle velocity.

Acceleration of gravity = g = 32 ft/sec/sec
Let's say the trajectory height is 100 ft and the range is 1000 ft.
sqrt(height/0.5(g)) = time_of_flight
sqrt(100/0.5(32)) = (10/4) = 2.5 sec
At 1000ft, the muzzle velocity would be 1000/2.5 = 400ft/sec

Or something like that.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 19:04:39 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 8:54:50 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get
amazingly lucrative offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically
undersupported and in the case of major bank mainframes,
irreplaceable.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Well, living in the land of Silicon Valley and working with major
companies and research facilities I have never even once saw anyone
looking for anyone to maintain obsolete programming languages but to write all new code.

If I owned a major corporation with a billing system consisting of a half-
million lines of COBOL and needed to add an "e-mail address" field to my
printed invoices, you can bet your ass I'd be looking for a retired COBOL
programmer instead of rewriting the system from scratch in the language du
jour.

Years ago I met an English fellow who had been part of a group that
wrote a complete "operating system" for an international oil company,
inventory, sales, billing, etc. The system was written in some
esoteric language and after some years he was the only one that the
oil company could locate capable of making modifications in the
system. As a result he had an almost permanent job traveling here and
there to make modifications in the system to suit local requirements.

At the time I knew him he had just arrived in Thailand and he was here
for about three years and then off to another country.

cheers,

John B.

On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 15:13:00 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 15:33:49 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 23:24:39 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
Note: The velocity of the bullet or round at the end of the effective
range is what delivers the energy. Muzzle velocity is of interest,
but the damage is done at the other end of the flight path.

True, but generally rather difficult to measure velocity of a
projectile way out yonder. Much easier to measure it close in and
calculate the probably velocity a half mile away.

If it is of interest, the original method of determining muzzle
velocity was a ballistic pendulum, hang the gun up and measure how far
it recoils when fired. Or vise versa, fire the gun toward a pendulum
and see how far the pendulum moves.

Yep, that works. I think it was Count Rumford (Benjamin Thomson) who
used that method (not sure and too lazy to check).

Invented the method, some 270 years ago :-)

There are other ways. If we know the maximum height and range that
the round achieves, and we ignore air resistance, it is possible to
calculate the muzzle velocity.

But you can't ignore air resistance. Given that most firearm's
projectiles are supersonic ( 1,125 ft/s ) air resistance is very
significant.

It is a rather complex study but look up "external ballistics"


Acceleration of gravity = g = 32 ft/sec/sec
Let's say the trajectory height is 100 ft and the range is 1000 ft.
sqrt(height/0.5(g)) = time_of_flight
sqrt(100/0.5(32)) = (10/4) = 2.5 sec
At 1000ft, the muzzle velocity would be 1000/2.5 = 400ft/sec

Or something like that.

You are ignoring the effect of air resistance which means that the
speed of the projectile decreases with time during it's flight. And,
as the decrease in velocity results in an effective decrease in air
resistance the velocity decrease is not linier from muzzle to target.
For example, taken from a radar generated ballistics table a test
projectile fired at an initial velocity of 2,723 ft/s drops to 2,332
at 300 m, 1981 at 600, 1663 at 900, and 1384 at 1200. The decrease in
velocity and therefore the decrease in drag is 391 ft/s at 300 M, 351
from 300 to 600, 318 from 600 - 900 and 279 from 900 - 1200.

:-)

cheers,

John B.

On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 10:54:49 -0600, AMuzi wrote:


Why in the world would anyone want to use Emacs, (by the way the proper
name is "GNU Emacs") an application that is 40 years old. Yes, I know
that it can do many strange and wondrous things but when you get right
down to it, it is hardly the weapon of choice for writing a book,
posting to USENET or keeping one's shopping list current.

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get amazingly lucrative
offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically undersupported and in
the case of major bank mainframes, irreplaceable.

When I was younger, I had a semester of Cobol in a degree course, but
never sought work as a cobol programmer. Worse, after having to hack a
few cobol programs to produce extra reports for a company where I was
doing other stuff, I unwisely listed it on my resume as a side skill.
Offers of work flooded in and I quickly emoved any mention. My major
objection was that it was largly the financial sector and I just didn't
want to work in that field.

Yes, companies will pay big money for "obsolete" skills and hardware when
the cost of replacing the program/hardware/system is expensive. I once
sold about 15 ancient Network Interface Cards for about ten times the
price of newer, faster better NICs because their integrated
manufacturing factory relied on these ancient cards for interfacing.

YMMV.

On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 23:01:48 +0100, Emanuel Berg wrote:

AMuzi wrote:

Blah blah blah, you have told me this at least a dozen times by now.
Probably because it is easier to be didactic/demeaning than to
actually answer the questions.

Sincerely, Frank's advice is excellent. Visit a used book store and
find a basic physics textbook. It's well worth a few Krona and a few
hours of your time, if only to posit questions here!

I spent 6 years, 7 months, and 12 days at the university. My degree
project [1] is 153 pages.

YMMV, but I'm sure I spent many more years in continuing educationation
in places of higher learning after high school, but occassionally I have
to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bicycle_parts to make
sure of my jargonn rather than talking about the do-hicky on the thing-a-
majig.

Weirdly, I've found that talking the jargon of "the situation" gets more
help, but I do draw the line as indentifying as a MAMAL.

On 12/16/2018 7:28 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:


You are ignoring the effect of air resistance which means that the
speed of the projectile decreases with time during it's flight. And,
as the decrease in velocity results in an effective decrease in air
resistance the velocity decrease is not linier from muzzle to target.
For example, taken from a radar generated ballistics table a test
projectile fired at an initial velocity of 2,723 ft/s drops to 2,332
at 300 m, 1981 at 600, 1663 at 900, and 1384 at 1200. The decrease in
velocity and therefore the decrease in drag is 391 ft/s at 300 M, 351
from 300 to 600, 318 from 600 - 900 and 279 from 900 - 1200.

Yep. It's far from simple. If it were, lots more people would be good shots.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 12/16/2018 6:15 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 19:04:39 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 8:54:50 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get
amazingly lucrative offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically
undersupported and in the case of major bank mainframes,
irreplaceable.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Well, living in the land of Silicon Valley and working with major
companies and research facilities I have never even once saw anyone
looking for anyone to maintain obsolete programming languages but to write all new code.

If I owned a major corporation with a billing system consisting of a half-
million lines of COBOL and needed to add an "e-mail address" field to my
printed invoices, you can bet your ass I'd be looking for a retired COBOL
programmer instead of rewriting the system from scratch in the language du
jour.

Years ago I met an English fellow who had been part of a group that
wrote a complete "operating system" for an international oil company,
inventory, sales, billing, etc. The system was written in some
esoteric language and after some years he was the only one that the
oil company could locate capable of making modifications in the
system. As a result he had an almost permanent job traveling here and
there to make modifications in the system to suit local requirements.

At the time I knew him he had just arrived in Thailand and he was here
for about three years and then off to another country.

https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-06-10

Once, I had a project of re-writing software controlling four big
robotic workcells. Each workcell performed the same sort of task, but
the contractor who installed them had apparently used three different
programmers, with two of them probably referring to the first package as
a sort of urtext, but adding individual quirks. Some of the quirks were
pretty massive - as in, certain functions were controlled by the PLC on
one line, but controlled directly by the robot controller on another
line. The systems all ran pretty well, but when anything went wrong,
almost nobody could diagnose and fix it. Occasionally the original
contractor would be paid to come in to help.

It took me weeks to understand the code, and months to re-write it all
and "commonize" it. I also added lots of documentation and feedback so
the line operators could fix most problems, and any plant engineer could
fix the rest.

I suppose the original author was disappointed that his code was cracked.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 12/16/2018 7:38 PM, news18 wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 10:54:49 -0600, AMuzi wrote:


Why in the world would anyone want to use Emacs, (by the way the proper
name is "GNU Emacs") an application that is 40 years old. Yes, I know
that it can do many strange and wondrous things but when you get right
down to it, it is hardly the weapon of choice for writing a book,
posting to USENET or keeping one's shopping list current.

Well, John, customers of our s who are 'retired' get amazingly lucrative
offers to rework/rewrite COBOL systems.
Some of the 'obsolete' languages are critically undersupported and in
the case of major bank mainframes, irreplaceable.

When I was younger, I had a semester of Cobol in a degree course, but
never sought work as a cobol programmer. Worse, after having to hack a
few cobol programs to produce extra reports for a company where I was
doing other stuff, I unwisely listed it on my resume as a side skill.
Offers of work flooded in and I quickly emoved any mention. My major
objection was that it was largly the financial sector and I just didn't
want to work in that field.

Yes, companies will pay big money for "obsolete" skills and hardware when
the cost of replacing the program/hardware/system is expensive. I once
sold about 15 ancient Network Interface Cards for about ten times the
price of newer, faster better NICs because their integrated
manufacturing factory relied on these ancient cards for interfacing.

We had an ancient CNC milling machine in one school laboratory. The
machine was in great shape mechanically (school machines accumulate very
few hours compared to industrial ones) but the controller gave more and
more trouble as the years went on. The faculty member who worked with it
had a harder and harder time getting support.

Finally, one time he called with yet another problem, he was told "The
only guy here who knew that controller has died."


--
- Frank Krygowski