combination spanner: drop forged steel vs. chrome vanadium

John B. wrote:

The present consensus is that Hawaii and the
Polynesian Island were first populated in
about 200 BCE and Hawaii in 300 BCE.
Hawaii had a known second wave of settlement
in about 1,000 CE.

OK? Well, the consensus before Kon-Tiki was
that it was impossible the make the journey,
and Heyerdahl & Co. proved that wrong with
their project.

If you don't plan things than you make a lot
of errors.

If I would make a list of the ten best things
I ever did not as single one of them was
planned. All the computer systems I just did
one function, one script, one configuration at
a time. For sure, I had a general idea what
I wanted but I never drew boxes on whiteboards
or studied specifications if that is
"planning". The bike workshop I've built in the
last year I also did one tool at a time, one
chain at a time and one hook to put a rim, and
so on.

On the contrary, I see many pitfalls in
planning. Often you don't know enough to make
a good plan. It is too hard envision what will
happen and how. Instead if you focus on the
everyday problems to be solved you know at
least they will be solved, and they don't
eventually collide and blow up, on the contrary
it looks like I had a plan how to create order
and how to organize stuff, but actually I did
it one day at a time.

Also whenever other people are involved
planning is often contra productive as many
people like to plan and pretend to work but
actually it is just a waste of time.
For example the place where I work there is
a "garden group". The have meetings every week
or month (?) but the garden looks like
a jungle. Once now I then I just take the
scythe and wave it down. It is like on hour!
If they did that instead of planning and
talking it would be a French rather than
English garden a long time ago!

In computing, there is something called formal
verification where you build a model which can
be quantified and mathematically verified.
This takes ages! And when it is done, what
happens is the formal verification only proves
that *the model* is correct - it doesn't say
one iota about the actual software, which at
that point isn't even written!

Then engineer approach of automated testing
where you bombard the software with random (but
valid) inputs is much better as it test the
real thing!

But even that isn't optimal. What is optimal is
having lots of people using the actual thing
for actual problems, and then they will tell
you when it fails. Lacking lots of people,
those people can be you alone just using the
software every day. So what if it breaks
a couple of times? Fixing that takes sometimes
just a couple of minutes compared to the hours
and weeks and months some people put into
planning and verifying and testing...

The Soviet Union had a planned economy and what
happened was insane bureaucracy and the advance
of people who liked to push papers and put
stamps on them and feel important about it, at
the expense of people who were passionate and
enterprising about work and the realization
of ideas.

I suspect that in the early years that like
all of Europe the economy was very much
subsistence farming and pay the Jarl his
taxes. I would guess very little cash was
in circulation.

There was cash around but also many other types
of riches which served the purpose of cash
today, so it wasn't as standardized as today
obviously but there was no problems telling who
had and who didn't.

A ship is difficult to estimate but Soren
Nielsen, the builder of the Sea Stallion
estimated that in the Viking era, it would
have taken about 10 skilled ship builders and
5 untrained hands, about 6 months to build
a large Viking long ship. Which apparently is
only the actual ship building. Logging out
the timber, would have taken, probably
a whole winter.

Indeed, not a business for a bunch of lamers...

I think that as in Europe at the time these
expeditions were probably a family project.
I got a ship, my brother in law has a ship
and my wife's sister's husband is building
a ship. Lets go down there to that big island
and we'll all get rich :-)

Yes, I would think so.

As for "working your way up? Given that the
crew of say a 20 bench ship would be about 40
oarsmen, a couple of steersmen a Captain and
perhaps the Jarl and some of his men. How to
work your way up? If you read the Sagas they
seem to be largely about the actions of "the
boss" and his men.

There were success stories and from rags to
riches then as it is today. I'm not sure it is
easier today than back then. Probably much the
same tho it is very hard to say and it depends
what you mean. But safe to say that people who
were ambitious and capable back then weren't
locked to poverty just because their parents
were poor, but obviously just as today they
would be at a disadvantage from the get-go...

--
underground experts united .... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
Emacs Gnus Blogomatic ......... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/blogomatic
- so far: 64 Blogomatic articles -

On Sat, 30 Jul 2016 02:41:55 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. wrote:

The present consensus is that Hawaii and the
Polynesian Island were first populated in
about 200 BCE and Hawaii in 300 BCE.
Hawaii had a known second wave of settlement
in about 1,000 CE.

OK? Well, the consensus before Kon-Tiki was
that it was impossible the make the journey,
and Heyerdahl & Co. proved that wrong with
their project.


Not to demean Thor, but the fact that it has been proved possible for
man to travel to the moon and return doesn't prove that mankind
originated on the moon.

If you don't plan things than you make a lot
of errors.

If I would make a list of the ten best things
I ever did not as single one of them was
planned. All the computer systems I just did
one function, one script, one configuration at
a time. For sure, I had a general idea what
I wanted but I never drew boxes on whiteboards
or studied specifications if that is
"planning". The bike workshop I've built in the
last year I also did one tool at a time, one
chain at a time and one hook to put a rim, and
so on.

Planning is not necessarily drawing boxes on whiteboards. In fact a
lot of planning is probably just thinking about things, and how you
are going to do them.



On the contrary, I see many pitfalls in
planning. Often you don't know enough to make
a good plan. It is too hard envision what will
happen and how. Instead if you focus on the
everyday problems to be solved you know at
least they will be solved, and they don't
eventually collide and blow up, on the contrary
it looks like I had a plan how to create order
and how to organize stuff, but actually I did
it one day at a time.

Also whenever other people are involved
planning is often contra productive as many
people like to plan and pretend to work but
actually it is just a waste of time.
For example the place where I work there is
a "garden group". The have meetings every week
or month (?) but the garden looks like
a jungle. Once now I then I just take the
scythe and wave it down. It is like on hour!
If they did that instead of planning and
talking it would be a French rather than
English garden a long time ago!

In computing, there is something called formal
verification where you build a model which can
be quantified and mathematically verified.
This takes ages! And when it is done, what
happens is the formal verification only proves
that *the model* is correct - it doesn't say
one iota about the actual software, which at
that point isn't even written!

I can only say that I knew some IBM people who were building and
installing a computer system, hardware and software, for a large bank
here. They told me that they would expect to spend as long as a year
verifying the software.

It seems as though that banks get very testy when your software says 2
+ 2 = 3.99999 :-)

Then engineer approach of automated testing
where you bombard the software with random (but
valid) inputs is much better as it test the
real thing!

But even that isn't optimal. What is optimal is
having lots of people using the actual thing
for actual problems, and then they will tell
you when it fails. Lacking lots of people,
those people can be you alone just using the
software every day. So what if it breaks
a couple of times? Fixing that takes sometimes
just a couple of minutes compared to the hours
and weeks and months some people put into
planning and verifying and testing...

The Soviet Union had a planned economy and what
happened was insane bureaucracy and the advance
of people who liked to push papers and put
stamps on them and feel important about it, at
the expense of people who were passionate and
enterprising about work and the realization
of ideas.

The problem with all political systems is that they don't account for
the human factor. The Communist theory, "from all according to their
ability and to all according to their needs" is a perfectly logical
social policy. But, as far as I know it has never worked.

I suspect that in the early years that like
all of Europe the economy was very much
subsistence farming and pay the Jarl his
taxes. I would guess very little cash was
in circulation.

There was cash around but also many other types
of riches which served the purpose of cash
today, so it wasn't as standardized as today
obviously but there was no problems telling who
had and who didn't.

A ship is difficult to estimate but Soren
Nielsen, the builder of the Sea Stallion
estimated that in the Viking era, it would
have taken about 10 skilled ship builders and
5 untrained hands, about 6 months to build
a large Viking long ship. Which apparently is
only the actual ship building. Logging out
the timber, would have taken, probably
a whole winter.

Indeed, not a business for a bunch of lamers...

I think that as in Europe at the time these
expeditions were probably a family project.
I got a ship, my brother in law has a ship
and my wife's sister's husband is building
a ship. Lets go down there to that big island
and we'll all get rich :-)

Yes, I would think so.

As for "working your way up? Given that the
crew of say a 20 bench ship would be about 40
oarsmen, a couple of steersmen a Captain and
perhaps the Jarl and some of his men. How to
work your way up? If you read the Sagas they
seem to be largely about the actions of "the
boss" and his men.

There were success stories and from rags to
riches then as it is today. I'm not sure it is
easier today than back then. Probably much the
same tho it is very hard to say and it depends
what you mean. But safe to say that people who
were ambitious and capable back then weren't
locked to poverty just because their parents
were poor, but obviously just as today they
would be at a disadvantage from the get-go...

The unfortunate thing is, that in spite of all the talk about income
inequality and the other examples of how unjust the social systems
are, the real reason the some people win and some people lose isn't ,
at least in most cases, who their daddy was, it is whether they got up
and did things.
--
cheers,

John B.

John B. wrote:

Not to demean Thor, but the fact that it has
been proved possible for man to travel to the
moon and return doesn't prove that mankind
originated on the moon.

The Kon-Tiki expedition didn't prove anything
except that the journey was possible.

It probably had many other good side-effects
tho. Reading about such thing as a child or
youth and you'll be a man of action and
a positive person (sometimes).

The world in 1947 probably needed this kind of
stuff even more!

Planning is not necessarily drawing boxes on
whiteboards. In fact a lot of planning is
probably just thinking about things, and how
you are going to do them.

OK, when you put it that way, I'm all for
planning

I can only say that I knew some IBM people
who were building and installing a computer
system, hardware and software, for a large
bank here. They told me that they would
expect to spend as long as a year verifying
the software.

If someone pays me, I'm very happy to do that
with my software as well As no one is,
I rather spend that year writing new software
and fixing the occasional bug in the old stuff
as it turns up.

The problem with all political systems is
that they don't account for the human factor.
The Communist theory, "from all according to
their ability and to all according to their
needs" is a perfectly logical social policy.
But, as far as I know it has never worked.

The problem with the Communist system in
particular is that it advances people that are
careful, gets along with everyone and never
does anything without a stamp from the bureau
above. This much unlike the ruthless, dynamic
altruists that carried out the revolution...

Sometimes the Communist system works like the
Sputnik and Gagarin stuff but most often such
things require guys like Heyerdahl who did his
thing despite everyone telling him not to
do it.

The unfortunate thing is, that in spite of
all the talk about income inequality and the
other examples of how unjust the social
systems are, the real reason the some people
win and some people lose isn't , at least in
most cases, who their daddy was, it is
whether they got up and did things.

100% correct.

--
underground experts united .... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
Emacs Gnus Blogomatic ......... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/blogomatic
- so far: 64 Blogomatic articles -

On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 23:45:11 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. wrote:

Not to demean Thor, but the fact that it has
been proved possible for man to travel to the
moon and return doesn't prove that mankind
originated on the moon.

The Kon-Tiki expedition didn't prove anything
except that the journey was possible.

It probably had many other good side-effects
tho. Reading about such thing as a child or
youth and you'll be a man of action and
a positive person (sometimes).


The part I liked was Thor and the boys sitting around trying to figure
out, how in the world primitive people could move the stone heads all
over the island. Finally one of the local guys asks Thor what the
problem was and Thor tells him they were trying to figure out how the
stone heads were moved and the local looked at him, probably in
amazement, and says, "You don't know?" Thor says it has been a problem
among scholars for some years and no one can figure it out and the
local guy says, "O.K., tomorrow we'll show you". The next morning the
local guys show up and they not only move a head to an auspicious
location but they stand it up and put the "hat" on it.

The world in 1947 probably needed this kind of
stuff even more!

Planning is not necessarily drawing boxes on
whiteboards. In fact a lot of planning is
probably just thinking about things, and how
you are going to do them.

OK, when you put it that way, I'm all for
planning

I can only say that I knew some IBM people
who were building and installing a computer
system, hardware and software, for a large
bank here. They told me that they would
expect to spend as long as a year verifying
the software.

If someone pays me, I'm very happy to do that
with my software as well As no one is,
I rather spend that year writing new software
and fixing the occasional bug in the old stuff
as it turns up.

Every time someone talks about "programming" I think abut Word Star,
perhaps the most successful of the early word processes. It was a
monolithic program in assembly language and ran on the Z-80 processor,
on the CP/M operating system. It was written by a guy named " John
Robbins Barnaby", in four months. 137,000 lines of assembler code.

Perhaps the most telling point is that there weren't, as far as I
know, any up-dates or bug fixes or other changes until version 3.3 was
released for the IBM-PC about three years later, a totally different
operating system.

But in all honest I also remember a procurement tracking system I
wrote in C (a new programming language :-). It worked flawless for a
year and than stopped. As this was most of the records for a large
maintenance contract it was, somewhat of an emergency.

It took me about 20 minutes to find the problem, a single "delete
line" to correct it and the rest of the day to concoct a usable
explanation :-)

What I had done, when testing the program, was insert a line "if X
10000 than exit(1)" to prevent the test program from running forever
and when it was successfully tested.... I forgot to remove the line. )
When we entered the 10,000th procurement order the whole thing stopped
:-(

The problem with all political systems is
that they don't account for the human factor.
The Communist theory, "from all according to
their ability and to all according to their
needs" is a perfectly logical social policy.
But, as far as I know it has never worked.

The problem with the Communist system in
particular is that it advances people that are
careful, gets along with everyone and never
does anything without a stamp from the bureau
above. This much unlike the ruthless, dynamic
altruists that carried out the revolution...

Sometimes the Communist system works like the
Sputnik and Gagarin stuff but most often such
things require guys like Heyerdahl who did his
thing despite everyone telling him not to
do it.

I think, perhaps, that all political systems, and probably very large
companies too, have their moments. The Sputnik program, the AK-47 and
perhaps the T-34 tank were all superlative accomplishments. The
Collectivization, on the other hand was a less successful scheme.
--
cheers,

John B.

John B. wrote:

The part I liked was Thor and the boys
sitting around trying to figure out, how in
the world primitive people could move the
stone heads all over the island. Finally one
of the local guys asks Thor what the problem
was and Thor tells him they were trying to
figure out how the stone heads were moved and
the local looked at him, probably in
amazement, and says, "You don't know?" Thor
says it has been a problem among scholars for
some years and no one can figure it out and
the local guy says, "O.K., tomorrow we'll
show you". The next morning the local guys
show up and they not only move a head to an
auspicious location but they stand it up and
put the "hat" on it.

Ha ha, the local being the boastful and
intolerable "long-ear" mayor who pained
everyone with his tiresome brag, but whose wood
carvings by all means were by far superior to
anything else on the island

This is another book for the record, a book
even more (?) wonderful than the Kon-Tiki one,
in Swedish:

@book{aku-aku,
author = {Thor Heyerdahl},
publisher = {Bonniers},
title = {Aku-aku. Påsköns hemlighet},
year = 1957
}

Every time someone talks about "programming"
I think abut Word Star, perhaps the most
successful of the early word processes.
It was a monolithic program in assembly
language and ran on the Z-80 processor, on
the CP/M operating system. It was written by
a guy named " John Robbins Barnaby", in four
months. 137,000 lines of assembler code.

You see? Straight long-ear!

What I had done, when testing the program,
was insert a line "if X 10000 than exit(1)"
to prevent the test program from running
forever and when it was successfully
tested.... I forgot to remove the line. )
When we entered the 10,000th procurement
order the whole thing stopped :-(

Crazy!

I think, perhaps, that all political systems,
and probably very large companies too, have
their moments. The Sputnik program, the AK-47
and perhaps the T-34 tank were all
superlative accomplishments.

Good examples, again for the record now we only
mention the superstar moves, obviously there
were countless of which we will never know.

The Collectivization, on the other hand was
a less successful scheme.

Perhaps less successful in terms of
agriculture but in terms of punishing the
entire population prior to the world war...?

--
underground experts united .... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
Emacs Gnus Blogomatic ......... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/blogomatic
- so far: 66 Blogomatic articles -

On 8/14/2016 1:04 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 23:45:11 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. wrote:

Not to demean Thor, but the fact that it has
been proved possible for man to travel to the
moon and return doesn't prove that mankind
originated on the moon.

The Kon-Tiki expedition didn't prove anything
except that the journey was possible.

It probably had many other good side-effects
tho. Reading about such thing as a child or
youth and you'll be a man of action and
a positive person (sometimes).


The part I liked was Thor and the boys sitting around trying to figure
out, how in the world primitive people could move the stone heads all
over the island. Finally one of the local guys asks Thor what the
problem was and Thor tells him they were trying to figure out how the
stone heads were moved and the local looked at him, probably in
amazement, and says, "You don't know?" Thor says it has been a problem
among scholars for some years and no one can figure it out and the
local guy says, "O.K., tomorrow we'll show you". The next morning the
local guys show up and they not only move a head to an auspicious
location but they stand it up and put the "hat" on it.

The world in 1947 probably needed this kind of
stuff even more!

Planning is not necessarily drawing boxes on
whiteboards. In fact a lot of planning is
probably just thinking about things, and how
you are going to do them.

OK, when you put it that way, I'm all for
planning

I can only say that I knew some IBM people
who were building and installing a computer
system, hardware and software, for a large
bank here. They told me that they would
expect to spend as long as a year verifying
the software.

If someone pays me, I'm very happy to do that
with my software as well As no one is,
I rather spend that year writing new software
and fixing the occasional bug in the old stuff
as it turns up.

Every time someone talks about "programming" I think abut Word Star,
perhaps the most successful of the early word processes. It was a
monolithic program in assembly language and ran on the Z-80 processor,
on the CP/M operating system. It was written by a guy named " John
Robbins Barnaby", in four months. 137,000 lines of assembler code.

Perhaps the most telling point is that there weren't, as far as I
know, any up-dates or bug fixes or other changes until version 3.3 was
released for the IBM-PC about three years later, a totally different
operating system.

But in all honest I also remember a procurement tracking system I
wrote in C (a new programming language :-). It worked flawless for a
year and than stopped. As this was most of the records for a large
maintenance contract it was, somewhat of an emergency.

It took me about 20 minutes to find the problem, a single "delete
line" to correct it and the rest of the day to concoct a usable
explanation :-)

What I had done, when testing the program, was insert a line "if X
10000 than exit(1)" to prevent the test program from running forever
and when it was successfully tested.... I forgot to remove the line. )
When we entered the 10,000th procurement order the whole thing stopped
:-(

The problem with all political systems is
that they don't account for the human factor.
The Communist theory, "from all according to
their ability and to all according to their
needs" is a perfectly logical social policy.
But, as far as I know it has never worked.

The problem with the Communist system in
particular is that it advances people that are
careful, gets along with everyone and never
does anything without a stamp from the bureau
above. This much unlike the ruthless, dynamic
altruists that carried out the revolution...

Sometimes the Communist system works like the
Sputnik and Gagarin stuff but most often such
things require guys like Heyerdahl who did his
thing despite everyone telling him not to
do it.

I think, perhaps, that all political systems, and probably very large
companies too, have their moments. The Sputnik program, the AK-47 and
perhaps the T-34 tank were all superlative accomplishments. The
Collectivization, on the other hand was a less successful scheme.


Thank you.
We pause with teary eyes to remember CP/M WordStar.

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

AMuzi wrote:

Thank you. We pause with teary eyes to
remember CP/M WordStar.

There is an Emacs mode (built in, actually):

wordstar-mode
Command: Major mode with WordStar-like
key bindings.

Is that the same? Sounds like it.

For the real deal tho one would get a Z-80 CP/M
emulator to run... or a time machine.

--
underground experts united .... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
Emacs Gnus Blogomatic ......... http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/blogomatic
- so far: 66 Blogomatic articles -

On Sun, 14 Aug 2016 08:23:56 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. wrote:

Snipped

amazement, and says, "You don't know?" Thor
says it has been a problem among scholars for
some years and no one can figure it out and
the local guy says, "O.K., tomorrow we'll
show you". The next morning the local guys
show up and they not only move a head to an
auspicious location but they stand it up and
put the "hat" on it.

Ha ha, the local being the boastful and
intolerable "long-ear" mayor who pained
everyone with his tiresome brag, but whose wood
carvings by all means were by far superior to
anything else on the island

This is another book for the record, a book
even more (?) wonderful than the Kon-Tiki one,
in Swedish:

@book{aku-aku,
author = {Thor Heyerdahl},
publisher = {Bonniers},
title = {Aku-aku. Påsköns hemlighet},
year = 1957
}

I read that also - in English :-)

MORE SNIPPED


I think, perhaps, that all political systems,
and probably very large companies too, have
their moments. The Sputnik program, the AK-47
and perhaps the T-34 tank were all
superlative accomplishments.

Good examples, again for the record now we only
mention the superstar moves, obviously there
were countless of which we will never know.

The Collectivization, on the other hand was
a less successful scheme.

Perhaps less successful in terms of
agriculture but in terms of punishing the
entire population prior to the world war...?

I find it interesting that Russia freed their "slaves", i,e., Serfs in
1861 by decree of the Emperor while the U.S. had to fight a disastrous
war to free theirs in 1865.

--
cheers,

John B.

On Sun, 14 Aug 2016 16:30:11 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

AMuzi wrote:

Thank you. We pause with teary eyes to
remember CP/M WordStar.

There is an Emacs mode (built in, actually):

wordstar-mode
Command: Major mode with WordStar-like
key bindings.

Is that the same? Sounds like it.

For the real deal tho one would get a Z-80 CP/M
emulator to run... or a time machine.

Emacs? Good Lord! I thought you had to be an over aged hippie to use
that :-)

WordStar was designed to be used on the "dumb terminals" of the time
and most of the commands were CTL-something, and a four key
up-down-right-left system on the left side of the keyboard. See
https://www.editpadpro.com/manual/pr...dwordstar.html or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W...Screenshot.png for a
picture.

There is a WordStar look-a-like called "Joe" that is available for
Linux.
--
cheers,

John B.

On 8/14/2016 7:39 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2016 08:23:56 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. wrote:

Snipped

amazement, and says, "You don't know?" Thor
says it has been a problem among scholars for
some years and no one can figure it out and
the local guy says, "O.K., tomorrow we'll
show you". The next morning the local guys
show up and they not only move a head to an
auspicious location but they stand it up and
put the "hat" on it.

Ha ha, the local being the boastful and
intolerable "long-ear" mayor who pained
everyone with his tiresome brag, but whose wood
carvings by all means were by far superior to
anything else on the island

This is another book for the record, a book
even more (?) wonderful than the Kon-Tiki one,
in Swedish:

@book{aku-aku,
author = {Thor Heyerdahl},
publisher = {Bonniers},
title = {Aku-aku. Påsköns hemlighet},
year = 1957
}

I read that also - in English :-)

MORE SNIPPED


I think, perhaps, that all political systems,
and probably very large companies too, have
their moments. The Sputnik program, the AK-47
and perhaps the T-34 tank were all
superlative accomplishments.

Good examples, again for the record now we only
mention the superstar moves, obviously there
were countless of which we will never know.

The Collectivization, on the other hand was
a less successful scheme.

Perhaps less successful in terms of
agriculture but in terms of punishing the
entire population prior to the world war...?

I find it interesting that Russia freed their "slaves", i,e., Serfs in
1861 by decree of the Emperor while the U.S. had to fight a disastrous
war to free theirs in 1865.

Britain outlawed (most?) slavery in its empire only about 30 years
earlier than the U.S.

And around 1900, at least one famous British company was still relying
on products produced by slaves, according to this book
https://www.amazon.com/Chocolate-Tri.../dp/082141626X

written by a good cycling friend of mine.

- Frank Krygowski


--
- Frank Krygowski