not OT : fear

mandag den 1. august 2022 kl. 19.59.55 UTC+2 skrev Phil Hobbs:
> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote: 
> > On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 17:43:10 -0700, Don Y 
> > <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote: 
> > 
> >> On 7/31/2022 5:37 PM, rbowman wrote: 
> >>> On 07/31/2022 12:51 PM, Don Y wrote: 
> >>>> We're targeting the "junior high" crowd -- 11 - 13yo. The thinking being 
> >>>> that you want to get them "pointed" in a STEM direction before they start 
> >>>> their high school education (which, in many places, requires students to 
> >>>> choose 
> >>>> a business vs. college vs. vocational path for their curriculum -- prior to 
> >>>> that, everyone is largely treated the same) 
> >>> 
> >>> That makes sense. I assume some slurp it up and ask for more while the bulk 
> >>> stumble along. 
> >> 
> >> We have "magnet schools" here that "specialize" in particular subject 
> >> areas. Students can freely attend *if* accepted. You'd not want a 
> >> kid to get interested in STEM in his final year in the school system 
> >> and have missed out on those years when he *could* have received a 
> >> more targeted education (if his interest had been developed sooner). 
> >> 
> >> The goal of the education system should be to provide the best 
> >> education appropriate to the needs/desires of the student. 
> >> 
> >> Did *you* know what you wanted to do with your life when you were 14? 
> > 
> > I did when I was 10. Electrical engineer. 
> >
> Age five for me, courtesy of a post-Sputnik kid's science program called 
> "Discovery 64". They were interviewing some character in a lab coat who 
> said something along the lines of, "Scientific knowledge is growing so 
> fast that in the future, we'll need people who can bring together 
> several fields--'synthesists'." (I remember that last coinage quite 
> vividly.) 
> 
> The show went off the air the following year, IIRC, so I know when it 
> was to pretty good accuracy. We chronically underestimate bright 
> youngsters. 

if it is this one it say it ran from 1962 to 1971
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(American_TV_series)
quite a few on youtube, https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDBnbzk6gA0j2HtXlW5sQF7ap56kWqztY

On 8/1/2022 9:26 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On 08/01/2022 03:06 AM, Don Y wrote:
>> On 8/1/2022 1:51 AM, Don Y wrote:
>>
>>> You have to "declare" a "course" (their name for a "major") in your
>>> freshman year.  Prior to that, everyone is taking the standard
>>> engineering
>>
>> s.b. "END of freshman year"
> 
> RPI's core was two years. For example we used Resnick & Halliday for physics 
> (Not that Robert Resnick being a RPI professor had anything to do with it).  By 
> the spring of the sophomore year you got to the juicy stuff, quantum. The final 
> two years often revisited the core curriculum in more depth. Thermodynamics, 
> electromagnetic theory, strength of materials, and so forth weren't strangers, 
> although they did tend to separate the sheep from the goats.

Too many years ago for me to remember which *classes* ("courses" meaning
something else) were:
- required for all
- required for EE
- required for specific "subflavor" of EE

But, I recall a normal load was ~60 units -- a "real" class being typically
12 (unit = hour of work per week) or roughly 5 classes/semester.  I recall
72 units of "humanities" req'd to graduate (though no real constraints on
what you took).  So, that's a bit over a semester of "required fluff"
(non-engineering courses).  And, some number of phys ed classes (I can still
feel the pain in my feet from Maggie's class -- Christ!).

I know two semesters of Calculus (Thomas), two of Fyzix (H&R), some common
EE classes (for the EE core), abstract algebra, diffeq's, probabilistic
systems analysis, some sort of material science class, AI (Winston),
digital lab (Lee), advanced algorithms, compiler design, etc.  There were
also requirements for "labs" (I recall designing/building a CDI and a
two-player version of BreakOut, among other things)

Not much leeway in terms of what you could take that wasn't somehow tied
to a requirement (school-wide, department-wide or course-wide).

Except, of course, for the humanities and phys ed stuff.  (actually, one of
my most memorable classes was an Amer Hist class taught by an economics
professor -- put an entirely different spin on all of the Amer Hist I'd
learned in primary school!  Another was something like "The social and
economic consequences of computers" -- not something you'd typically expect
engineering to be concerned with!)

What you took, and when, was something that you sorted out based on
what you'd personally got behind you and *when* they were offered
(some weren't offered in Fall; some not offered in Spring).

On 8/1/2022 9:12 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On 08/01/2022 02:51 AM, Don Y wrote:
>> It's nice to see my education was prescient and not obsolete the day the
>> degree
>> was awarded!  (pity the folks taught about *today's* technology and
>> wonder how
>> they'll forever be playing catch-up)
> 
> One of my senior projects was a thought experiment to design an automated 
> library retrieval system. We were thinking in terms of microfiche in concrete 
> terms but the media was TBD. About 40 years later when the library installed 
> their new system to spit out your desired DVD it was somehow familiar.
> 
> Like aircraft designers waiting for lightweight IC engines the seeds were there 
> waiting for the technology to develop. There were dead-ends like bit slice 
> processors or bubble memory but eventually we got there.

Bubble was a foregone conclusion -- too many advances in semiconductor
memory already appearing on the market by that time (core being the
established medium).

Bit slice imposed too much of a structure on the processor you were
implementing.  I used many of those concepts in my designs (Mick&Brick)
but so many application specific instructions that didn't lend themselves
easily to that sort of architecture (e.g., serial multipliers, etc.)

What I most lament is the loss of variety in processor designs of that
era.  In 6.3, you studied different processor architectures and implementations
with an eye towards the advantages they afforded to the hosted code.  You'd
need to understand the role of a TLB in order to write code to *use* it!

"With VMM we can offer these features to the runtime..."
"With CoW we can offer these features..."
"With DSM we can offer..."
"Instruction pipelining gives us..."
"I/D caches give us..."
"Tagged memory gives us..."
"Segments give us..."
"Protection domains give us..."
"Capabilities gives us..."

The B5000 line would have been exciting to watch flourish (instead of
flounder)

And, I would have thought that the *variety* would have TAUGHT developers the
value of writing portable code (in HLLs), *sooner*.  MULTICS certainly learned
that lesson painfully -- IIRC the estimate was 30 man years to port the code
from the 36bit architecture to a more commodity-oriented 32b platform
(no wonder it exists no longer!)

The same can be said about early MPUs.  Now we've got just a handful of
offerings to address a variety of applications, markets and preferences.
But, with the "coder mentality" that's now commonplace, this is probably
a "business win" (finding people that can fluidly move from architecture
to architecture poses a bit of a hiring hassle).

OTOH, now I can *easily* have the power and capability of a hundred VAXen
for a couple of dollars and a couple of watts!  (someday, folks will
actually start using these capabilities)

> The art of thinking was the important takeaway. Otherwise you're looking at a 
> glorified trade school turning out Maytag repairmen. That's not to say we don't 
> need repairmen.

Yes.  An early employer once commented that he hired Northeastern (Univ)
grads if he was looking for someone to address a TODAY need; an MIT grad
for TOMORROW!  (there were several of us on staff).

On 8/1/2022 9:35 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On 08/01/2022 07:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> Computer Science seems to have little to do with computers.
> 
> Nor does it have much to do with practical coding in its pure form.

CS *now* likely has very little to do with engineering.
That's why we have "programmers" and "coders" -- instead of
"software engineers".  Business wants to dumb down their
needs (why so many COTS "hardware modules"?  what's so hard
about those designs/fabs that you need to rely on someone
else to design them -- plus the support firmware -- instead
of rolling your own?)

It's also why productivity varies so much between application
level, system level, OS level and RT -- because of the relative
lacks of specific skills to address those ever demanding
"markets".

And, why so many folks sit down and write code without having any formal
documents to describe WHAT the code must do and the criteria against
which it will be tested/qualified!  <rolls eyes>

I'd enjoy watching a "programmer" design a VMM system with
what he likely DOESN'T know about the machine hardware.  Or,
tell him he has to treat all of his RT requirements as SRT
(unless he can claim "it can't be done" -- and substantiate
that!)

Wanna bet few even consider the value of cache wrt
the design of their data structures and code layout?

[I spend a shitload of time thinking about how to design
these to maximize cache and TLB hits -- otherwise, why
*pay* for that hardware?]

Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
> mandag den 1. august 2022 kl. 19.59.55 UTC+2 skrev Phil Hobbs:
>> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>> On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 17:43:10 -0700, Don Y
>>> <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/31/2022 5:37 PM, rbowman wrote:
>>>>> On 07/31/2022 12:51 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>> We're targeting the "junior high" crowd -- 11 - 13yo. The thinking being
>>>>>> that you want to get them "pointed" in a STEM direction before they start
>>>>>> their high school education (which, in many places, requires students to
>>>>>> choose
>>>>>> a business vs. college vs. vocational path for their curriculum -- prior to
>>>>>> that, everyone is largely treated the same)
>>>>>
>>>>> That makes sense. I assume some slurp it up and ask for more while the bulk
>>>>> stumble along.
>>>>
>>>> We have "magnet schools" here that "specialize" in particular subject
>>>> areas. Students can freely attend *if* accepted. You'd not want a
>>>> kid to get interested in STEM in his final year in the school system
>>>> and have missed out on those years when he *could* have received a
>>>> more targeted education (if his interest had been developed sooner).
>>>>
>>>> The goal of the education system should be to provide the best
>>>> education appropriate to the needs/desires of the student.
>>>>
>>>> Did *you* know what you wanted to do with your life when you were 14?
>>>
>>> I did when I was 10. Electrical engineer.
>>>
>> Age five for me, courtesy of a post-Sputnik kid's science program called
>> "Discovery 64". They were interviewing some character in a lab coat who
>> said something along the lines of, "Scientific knowledge is growing so
>> fast that in the future, we'll need people who can bring together
>> several fields--'synthesists'." (I remember that last coinage quite
>> vividly.)
>>
>> The show went off the air the following year, IIRC, so I know when it
>> was to pretty good accuracy. We chronically underestimate bright
>> youngsters.
> 
> if it is this one it say it ran from 1962 to 1971
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(American_TV_series)
> quite a few on youtube, https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDBnbzk6gA0j2HtXlW5sQF7ap56kWqztY
> 
> 
> 
They changed the name every year.  It was Discovery 64 or possibly '65, 
but not later than that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

-- 
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 10:35:35 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

>On 08/01/2022 07:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> Computer Science seems to have little to do with computers.
>
>Nor does it have much to do with practical coding in its pure form.
>
>> Disk drives were expensive and unreliable at first.
>
>What, you didn't like the 2311, 7.5 MB in a package the size of a 
>washing machine? Removable media, how cool is that?

I had a 64 Kword fixed-head swapping drive on my PDP-11.

And later an 8" floppy drive that cost $4K. Neither was reliable.

On 08/01/2022 01:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
> CS *now* likely has very little to do with engineering.
> That's why we have "programmers" and "coders" -- instead of
> "software engineers".  Business wants to dumb down their
> needs (why so many COTS "hardware modules"?  what's so hard
> about those designs/fabs that you need to rely on someone
> else to design them -- plus the support firmware -- instead
> of rolling your own?)

I never did figure out all those fine distinctions although at various 
times I have identified as 'software engineer' etc depending on whatever 
the person I was talking to wanted to here or which business card I had 
presented. I've always worked for smaller companies where the 
organizational chart was flexible.

That happens even in larger companies. My brother was a VP at Thiokol or 
whatever it was known as at the time. He said it was nothing special but 
NASA types preferred talking to VPs.

Then there was the model where programmers were the peasants laboring in 
the field and analysts were their overseers.

On 08/01/2022 11:59 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
> jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 17:43:10 -0700, Don Y
>> <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/31/2022 5:37 PM, rbowman wrote:
>>>> On 07/31/2022 12:51 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>> We're targeting the "junior high" crowd -- 11 - 13yo.  The thinking
>>>>> being
>>>>> that you want to get them "pointed" in a STEM direction before they
>>>>> start
>>>>> their high school education (which, in many places, requires
>>>>> students to
>>>>> choose
>>>>> a business vs. college vs. vocational path for their curriculum --
>>>>> prior to
>>>>> that, everyone is largely treated the same)
>>>>
>>>> That makes sense. I assume some slurp it up and ask for more while
>>>> the bulk
>>>> stumble along.
>>>
>>> We have "magnet schools" here that "specialize" in particular subject
>>> areas.  Students can freely attend *if* accepted.  You'd not want a
>>> kid to get interested in STEM in his final year in the school system
>>> and have missed out on those years when he *could* have received a
>>> more targeted education (if his interest had been developed sooner).
>>>
>>> The goal of the education system should be to provide the best
>>> education appropriate to the needs/desires of the student.
>>>
>>> Did *you* know what you wanted to do with your life when you were 14?
>>
>> I did when I was 10. Electrical engineer.
>>
>
> Age five for me, courtesy of a post-Sputnik kid's science program called
> "Discovery 64".  They were interviewing some character in a lab coat who
> said something along the lines of, "Scientific knowledge is growing so
> fast that in the future, we'll need people who can bring together
> several fields--'synthesists'."  (I remember that last coinage quite
> vividly.)
>
> The show went off the air the following year, IIRC, so I know when it
> was to pretty good accuracy.  We chronically underestimate bright
> youngsters.

I don't remember that one. I was in 6th grade in '57 and they definitely 
ramped up the science and math components for 7th and 8th grades. (no 
junior high / middle school at least in that school).

High school had 'enriched curriculum' program that dug a little deeper 
than the standard classes. RPI was more or less across the street and 
they had frequent open houses in the various disciplines to lure in 
students.

My impression is the educational system went back to the same old stuff 
after a brief spurt until it suddenly became fashionable to talk about 
STEM again. It may be another buzzword but STEAM sounds promising:

https://educatingengineers.com/resources/steam-education#history

On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 10:52:52 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

>On 08/01/2022 07:24 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> My dad delivered milk. My mom worked in a cafeteria. I was the first
>> in the family to go to college. But I had a source of dead tube TV
>> sets and neon sign transformers and WWII surplus radars and flashtubes
>> so played with them. There's not much a kid can do now with a dead
>> cell phone.
>
>My uncle had a radio and eventually a TV store so there was an entire 
>backroom full of dead chassis, plus a big box of questionable tubes that 
>needed testing. He'd started the store with a guy he'd sort of adopted. 
>Joe, the guy, would make house calls to repair TVs, with a station wagon 
>full of parts. The dreaded words were 'I have to take it back to the 
>shop' where my uncle would dig into the guts.

My uncle Sheldon had a tv repair shop and liked to baby-sit me. He
couldn't solder because he always had a cigarette in one hand and a
beer in the other, so I'd sit in his lap and solder for him.

And I had an infinite source of dead TVs. He also had a shed full of
surplus stuff that he stole from the Army.

He had some guys that made houlse calls and brought the sets back to
the shop. Sometimes he'd Windex the screen and charge for a new
picture tube. Rascal.



>
>> Hey, I'm having troubles with Dropbox and don't trust it to get files
>> from home to work. So, use a memory stick? I just realized that my
>> cell phone can work as a memory stick. Duh.
>
>One of the MS things I've come to like is One Drive. We have a corporate 
>one plus the personal. I used to put files on our ftp server but now I 
>copy them to One Drive. It's also handy for work in progress.
>

On 08/01/2022 08:11 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> My uncle Sheldon had a tv repair shop and liked to baby-sit me. He
> couldn't solder because he always had a cigarette in one hand and a
> beer in the other, so I'd sit in his lap and solder for him.

I don't remember my uncle smoking but the beer was definitely there. He 
had a stroke which left his right arm useless. He would have to chase a 
can of beer around with the church key before he got it corralled but he 
got good at it.

> He had some guys that made houlse calls and brought the sets back to
> the shop. Sometimes he'd Windex the screen and charge for a new
> picture tube. Rascal.

Color TV was his waterloo. Most people couldn't adjust the colors for 
shit and he was one of them. Then there was explaining the facts of life 
to the suckers.  There were mail order ads offering a cheap conversion 
from B&W to color:

  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/358317714078297150/

Er, lady. you've been took. There's no adjusting that. Just get used to 
the Lone Ranger having a blue face.


There was a similar scam during the cutover to digital TV, and 'digital' 
antennas. I'm still using a rabbit ear antenna meant to be clamped to 
the rain gutter that I bought at a truckstop in the '90s.  There's only 
5 OTA stations left, not counting the subchannels and they all come in 
fine. Sometimes after a windstorm I have to rotate it, which means going 
out and twisting the 2" PVC mast it's clamped to.

I won't go into the BestBuy solid gold HDMI cables etc. As Barnum said...