Odd IRS point-missing
For the record, just in case:

Got a letter from IRS this morning, saying that I paid but didn't file a return.

I went back through bank statements and found that I did pay the same amount they say. The check for $673.15 was cashed Feb 18.

My records also show all the forms filled out in PDFs. I'm getting old and this year is hellish, so I might have forgotten to send the return at all, or forgotten to include the check. Those are plausible options. But I wouldn't send ONLY A CHECK. I always send the forms with the check folded inside.

How did IRS process the check but not the 1040 and other forms wrapped around the check? This makes me wonder if they're trying to set up a "crime".

I'll resend the forms and hope they get processed this time.

Later after reprinting the PDFs and resending: I noticed that I had left off the SSN on one of the schedules. Fixed it this time. Maybe their error indication is all-or-nothing, interpreting one missing element as NO_FORMS?

Labels: Bemusement, TMI

  ¶ 10:40 AM

  Are bots conscious?
Two weeks ago I noted a consistent pattern among the bots that "read" this blog. There was a steady baseline around 100 per day, plus a peak that happened exactly on odd-numbered days. I speculated that there were two bot centers, one running constantly and the other hitting this blog on alternate days. I published that note on Oct 28.

Here's the pattern as I saw it then:



Now the alternate-day peak has disappeared.

When did it disappear? Oct 29.



Are the bots reading and thinking? Did they realize I was detecting their pattern?

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, Bemusement

  ¶ 6:07 AM

  An odd type of identity theft
Sometimes I'll look at an old article on a website and see a comment that looks like something I'd write. Hey, there's a kindred spirit! Then I notice the name and realize it WAS me, under the handle of Polistra or one of my older Ockham-style handles.

What's the opposite? Seeing a comment that DOESN'T look like something I'd write, then checking the name and seeing it was posted by Polistra.

The latter doesn't happen often because most websites don't allow you to pick a name that's already used.

Apparently Unz doesn't follow that rule. I hadn't been commenting much there because I got tired of the false flags. Nearly everything on Unz is obvious 'controlled opposition', steering dissidents into positions that can be tinfoiled.

Now I'm seeing prolific comments under my handle, and they're NOT the sort of thing I'd write. Many of these comments are being 'moderated'.

I don't think there's any meaningful way to take action, and the spoof is probably harmless unless the spoofer gets seriously illegal. Unz's moderators are pretty careful about seriously illegal stuff.

All I can do is post a notice, here and at Unz, that 'the original Polistra' will never comment again, so everything under this handle from now on will be from 'the spoof Polistra'.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 5:41 AM

  HTML oddity
Irrelevant but odd. When I wrote previous item, I accidentally copied the last line over and over and over with the Bold and Big tags at the start of each line but not at the end.

Unexpectedly, Firefox considers Big and Bold to be cumulative or additive tags. This doesn't happen with Italic. The first Italic turns on Italic, and then there's no 'morer Italicer' from further unclosed Italic tags.

Here's the result. It conveys the idea of cumulative repetition nicely, but it's unreadable.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 8:50 AM

  Just puzzled
Disclaimer: China's internal political system is not my department, not a subject I understand at all.

Just noticing 'out of character' behavior by China.

Several parts of China are getting forced and frequent power blackouts, not induced by extreme weather or sudden increases of load. Most sources attribute the blackouts to the loss of Australian coal imports. The process, and the bureaucratic "messages", sound just like what happened here in June.

The numbers don't seem to justify such a widespread crackdown. China gets 2/3 of its power from coal, but only 1/10 of the coal is imported, and only part of that is from Australia.

Why is Australian coal missing? Australia decided to "investigate" the Chinese origin of the "virus", which is a false flag. Australia has been destroying itself for a full year "because" "virus", even though the alleged numbers of the actual "virus" are nowhere near other countries. China then responded by blockading Australian coal.

The origin doesn't matter because the "virus" doesn't matter. The lockdowns and ballgags were a planned worldwide funfest for psychopaths. That's all. Nothing else. Orgasms for demons.

Australia has already strangled its own people far more than most countries, and now it sabotages what's left of its economy by unnecessarily offending China.

On the other side, China knows what's going on, and its own local psychopaths have been running the same scam, though nowhere near as harshly and violently as Australia.

Self-sabotage is a long tradition in the Five Eyes countries. We've been handing our own economies and skills to China for 40 fucking years, in order to enrich the rich and slaughter the poor.

Self-sabotage and blockades are NOT typical of post-Mao China. Some people say that Xi is returning to ChairmanMaoThought, and this might be related.

Labels: Bemusement, infinite STUPID

  ¶ 10:51 AM

  Enticement point-missing
The web's "telepathy" works well in some places and not at all in others.

Youtube certainly knows what I like, but the Suggested For You column rarely includes anything I like. It seems to be stuck on old TV comedians like Rodney Dangerfield, who I never watched on live TV and never watched on Youtube. Totally uninteresting.

Now Quora is doing the same thing. In the last few months when I was in survival mode, not creating much, just spewing out bile, I was spending ENTIRELY TOO MUCH TIME on Quora. They should have learned what I want to see and what I hate. They know what makes me click.

This week they're switching over to part subscription mode, with about 10% of the items grayed out to entice you. None of these items entice me. They don't belong to the category that triggers serious and knowledgeable answers, and they don't belong to the category that triggers a FUCK OFF reaction. They're just uninteresting and unclickworthy.

After reading their explanation: Oddly, they're not trying for clicks. They're only monetizing a few "chosen" writers. Well, I didn't choose any of them, so FUCK OFF. This is a WEIRD business model! Quora is asking the customer to pay for products the management likes, but not for products the customer likes.

Reminds me of Detroit's attitude in the late '50s when Nash was proving that a significant number of drivers wanted plainer and smaller and more practical cars. Detroit wanted to sell only what the management liked. Finally and grudgingly they offered competitors to Rambler, but their attitude was: WE KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU. PRACTICAL CARS ARE HORRIBLE. WE'LL MAKE SURE YOU KNOW GOOD AND GODDAMN WELL THAT YOU ARE DRIVING A HORRIBLE CAR.

Labels: AI point-missing, Bemusement

  ¶ 11:27 PM

  Lots of money sloshing around!
As the fall semester starts, I'm getting the first courseware debug requests. Last year I sorted out most of the real internal problems, so I'm expecting Murphy stuff now. Inadequate instructions or misunderstood instructions.

The steady rentalization of the world is affecting my debugging ability. Blackboard, the biggest and best of the e-learning systems, has always offered a free 'testbed' where developers could try out and debug their products without any actual students. They've ended the service now, so I'm trying to find alternatives.

As usual with web services, there's no middle ground, no correlation of quantity and price. Pay for value is obsolete.

Before the web, most services had analog prices. For instance, you could get 1000 copies of a pamphlet printed for about $100, then after the setup you could get the second thousand printed for another $20.

The web has eliminated the concepts of price per unit and amortization. You get nearly full service for free, or full service for MEGABUCKS.

How MEGA is Blackboard? They don't publicize their pricing structure, but one author acquired a close estimate from 'sources'. An average university pays $150k per year to Blackboard, or about $1200 per student.

That's MEGA. Entirely out of my range.

I've been using a 'bite-size' service from ScormCloud for many years, costing about $1000 a year. This service is fully professional. It can handle any amount of courseware, and (IIRC) about 20 students. So the cost per student is $50, not $1200. A very small training school or business OJT class could function with this level of service, and some do.

BUT: ScormCloud doesn't have the same peculiarities as Blackboard or Moodle or Canvas. ScormCloud is more resilient. A project that runs perfectly on ScormCloud will NOT necessarily run on the major commercial services. So I'm still looking for a bite-size way to test with the ACTUAL peculiarities of Blackboard.

Later thought: ScormCloud also offers larger-scale services for larger bucks. I don't know their pricing, but their service would be a better deal for the same price BECAUSE of the broader resilience. More flexibility means less hassle for instructors and developers. Oddly, their marketing runs backwards.... they advertise that their service is stricter than the big brands. They say that if the package runs on ScormCloud it will also run on the other brands.

Labels: Bemusement, Experiential education

  ¶ 5:54 AM

  Afghanistan weirdness
Biden fakely pulled out some of our troops so we could justify sending more troops back in. This was drably predictable. Parkinson. Create a problem so we can waste more money creating it again.

We never leave a country after we invade it. We always occupy forever. Leaving is unthinkable because leaving ends the flow of money to the Pentagon and mercenaries. Parkinson.

The media response to this predictable move is NOT predictable. I don't watch regular media, but Quora typically gives a good echo. Quora bots are flooding the zone with messages favoring a hard and heavy return to Afghanistan to obliterate the Taliban. A verbatim repeat of Bush's idiotic message in 2001. If we don't wipe out the terrorists, the terrorists will follow us home.

In Persuasion, Jonathan Rauch defends our 20-year occupation and says it was worth the effort. Rauch has been a clear and objective observer of politics for a LONG time. He has been uniquely correct about many important trends. But he's missing the point on this one.

I'm VASTLY less wise than Rauch. I take entirely too long to figure out political crap. But this particular piece of crap was obvious even to my dull mind, four years before I got rid of the whole anti-Islam poison.

Later: I've been narrowing down my input too much. Mental OCD, trying to ward off all hints of tyranny. Broadening the horizon and looking at some comments on other videos about Afghanistan, it's clear that the vast majority of people understand the futility and stupidity of the war. Many of them are seeing it in Parkinson terms. Experts who try to defend the war are given no slack.

Later again: Now I'm seeing some Quora questions that openly idolize Bush by name. Makes me think these are generated by an organization serving the Bush family. In other words, CIA.

Labels: Bemusement, Parkinson

  ¶ 8:10 PM

  Restoring sanity....
I took an extra walk to clear out the NAZI DEMON vapors and restore sanity after the NAZI STOMP.

Normal humans, both black and white, are sitting on porches and doing lawn work. Nice sanity. I should resume the habit of extra walks, which I stopped in June when afternoons got too hot.

A neighbor has a brand new Subaru with a bumper sticker:

Destroy the patriarchy, not the planet

Well, let's see how the purchase accomplished the goal. Subaru is a Japanese company, and Japan is one of the few remaining real patriarchies in the world. Women have specific subordinate roles. Buying a new car uses vastly more materials and energy than keeping an old car. Driving a car uses oil from Saudi, another REAL patriarchy, and oil from Texas, viewed as a patriarchy by the hippie idiots. We don't buy any oil from 'progressive' countries or states.

Good work! Subsidizing an actual patriarchy and wasting material and energy!

This is an old and tired trick. Back in '68 my rich roommate drove his Mercedes to an Alpo dog food plant, along with many other rich hippies in Cadillacs, to protest the "fact" that poor people had to eat Alpo. Aside from the obvious irony, canned dog food is more expensive than Campbell's Soup, so poor people DON'T eat dog food.

Fortunately this type of slogan is so stupid that even the hippies eventually realize what they're doing.

Labels: Bemusement, Equipoise

  ¶ 9:08 AM

  Nonbarking Cuomo
Just carrying on a tradition of noticing nonbarks. Cuomo's resignation seems to have caused a remarkably small ripple in the media world. Admittedly I no longer accept direct media input, but my indirect echoes "should" have been picking up louder sounds.

Krystal and Saagar had been focusing intensely on the gradual erosion of Cuomo's authority. So far they haven't uploaded a piece on the actual resignation. The usual Twitterites are also paying little or no attention.

Maybe it's the old 'Buy the rumor, sell the news.' Rumors and potentials stir more anxiety than completed events, so rumors are bigger stories.

Or maybe the resignation is closely related to brother Chris, who is a 'star' on CNN. Media would be circling the wagons to protect their own.

In general a resignation "for sexual harassment" is a front for other reasons that can't be stated publicly, or wouldn't look important enough to list publicly. In bureaucracies a "sexual" firing usually means the official simply didn't get along with his superiors and subordinates. At the level of governors and presidents, the real reason is more serious.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 2:24 PM

  Pink sombreros
Recently Avista has been doing some street work in the neighborhood, putting in natural gas lines. Their workers wear the usual luminescent green vests, and they also wear WEIRD pink sombreros. These sombreros appear to be made of flexible translucent plastic. I've also seen a city street cleaner wearing the same sombrero.

I suppose the hats are described as sunshields, but I'm certain they have more to do with Woke symbolism. Frankly they remind me of tinfoil hats. Protection against the Deplorable Witch Rays in this neighborhood, not protection from the sun's UV rays.

Googling 'pink sombrero sun shield' finds some cloth and straw women's gardening hats, but not the weird translucent plastic.

Incidentally, and more seriously, the "pipe" they're putting in the ground is also plastic. It's more like flexible hose than pipe. No wonder it gets punctured every week or so.

Labels: 2000=1000, Bemusement

  ¶ 5:03 AM

  Odobots
The vast majority of "questions" on Quora are generated automatically by human bots in India who are picking up a little bit of money. The automatic nature is easy to suspect and hard to prove... but not always. Quora lists similar questions, not yet answered, under one question that is answered.



Like a fucking odometer.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 4:24 AM

  Offhand mentions
A couple of details from 1938, casually mentioned, clearly not viewed as significant at the time.

= = = = =

1. From Gernsback's Radio Craft July '38, a detailed look at the mysterious '38 Olds dashboard. The futuristic dash disappeared next year (regressed to mean). Its shape finally came back in 1950, and the side-facing controls didn't return until 1990. The article doesn't mention GM or Olds, only the method of production.

Newest in automobile plastic moldings is the so-called "safety unit" here illustrated. The right-hand end of this molding incorporates radio controls as illustrated. To make the molded shell of this new control unit a "cannon" exerts 790, 000 lbs. pressure at 350 degrees.

= = = = =

2. This seems to be the first mention of tape recording in English. It's in the British Wireless World, March '38, just a small section of a larger article about various new recording methods used in Germany.

The Magnetophone recorder recently introduced by the R.R.G. is shown below. It makes use of a non-inflammable film 6.5 mm. wide which is coated with a thin layer of powdered metal. The recorded film can be stored and transported, being unaffected by jolts in moving vehicles.

The author thought mobile use was the only real advantage of tape. Open reels were never practical in cars. Cassettes were developed by Philips in 1950, but didn't reach cars until the late '70s, after a brief interregnum of 4-track and 8-track cartridges, first introduced by Madman Muntz.

= = = = =

Musing: Tape NEVER had a real advantage. It was always less convenient, less 'calibratable', more messy and hackable**, and less accessible, than either disks or cylinders. Poulsen's original wire recorder used reels, but Poulsen also tried a magnetic disk at the same time. Cylinders are unquestionably best for finding the proper track. Dictaphones were already common in 1890 before the magnetic inventions even started, so there was no excuse for missing the concept. Dictaphones had precise control of tracks on both record and play, so they could have been used in a car without jumping grooves on a bump.

Cylinders are also uniform in resolution and speed from start to finish. A disk, whether grooved or magnetic, has more resolution in the outer part than the inner, so the recording and playing have to compensate in various ways. On a cylinder, you can calculate the location of a specific second with a simple division. Locating things on a disk is much more complex.

Combining these two items serendipitously: the cylindrical control on the Olds dash could have been a Dictaphone cylinder holder. Slip a cylinder on the dash, press the record pedal, and dictate.

Dictaphones didn't need electricity, so they could have been used in the earliest autos before electric starters and generators, and could have provided entertainment for passengers before broadcasting arrived in the '20s.

It's a safe bet that some execs had dictaphones in their limos, but I can find only one mention in a trade journal:

The limousine carries five passengers in the rear compartment, and is equipped with all the usual fittings of a car of this class and also has a dictaphone for communication with the driver.

This clearly wasn't an actual dictaphone but just a loosely described speaking tube.

** Hackable: Tape can be erased from a distance by a magnet. Grooved media have to be physically destroyed by a live spy.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 1:43 AM

  The engineer's mind
Randomly looking at Gernsback magazines. Radio News, June 1924.

As usual with Gernsback, nice cover!


The original owner made a note for his own reference. Look at picture on page 7.

What's on page 7?


Obviously more interesting. I guess.

See also.

Labels: Alternate universe, Bemusement

  ¶ 10:43 AM

  Random auto thought
Why did it take 50 years to extend the body beyond the wheels?

From 1890 to 1947 all passenger cars had separate fenders for all four wheels, and the envelope for passengers was strictly inside the wheels.



In '47 Crosley



and Kaiser merged the fenders to make just one fender per side, but the inner body was still inside the wheels. The roof and windows didn't stretch out horizontally until the 1960 Valiant.

There were always examples of full-width envelopes. Streetcars and railcars went WAY out beyond the wheels in both directions. Railroads have the same wheel-to-wheel width as autos, but the typical railcar is 10 feet wide.



Box vans always enclosed the rear wheels entirely, with insets for the rear wheels when needed.



Since the idea and example were available BEFORE cars had motors, there's no logical reason for the delay.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 11:42 PM

  Odd little jackpot
Short on sleep, I decided to delve into old books for a bit of sanity as usual. Combining the two hashtags in previous item,

defensible thymes + defensible times = SPICE CLOCK.

Try SPICE CLOCK in Google Books.

= = = = =

First, a little 1893 schoolbook called 'Geographical Spice', aimed at teachers who wanted to spice up their lessons with fascinating bits. Many of these bits are similar to the historical oddities dramatized by Hix or MacHarrie.

One item matched and improved a Hix piece that had caught my full attention earlier.

MYSTERIOUS MUSIC FROM THE SEA.

Pascagoula, in Mississippi, on the Louisville Rail road, is one of the few places in the world where one can hear in the lonely night-time a weird, sad music from the sea; not the music of washing waves and singing sands, but a monotonous hum, which naturalists say comes from a vast multitude of fish of the drum species; although visitors of a poetical turn of mind prefer to attribute this mysterious music to the sighs of mermaids and the wild wails of spirits of the deep.

Hix didn't know or didn't mention that naturalists had explained the music. He called it mysterious, most likely because his source did. Hix didn't let drama interfere with facts when known.

I thought I was COOL! I thought I was getting ahead of the old inadequate knowledge when I cited modern observations of fish songs. Nope, the 1893 naturalists already knew what was happening.

Another item is interesting in a similar way:

Almost everyone has heard of the blind fish of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, but not so much has been said about the blind rats of that cavern. The rats are quite numerous but very timid. They are of a bluish color, with white abdomen, neck, and feet. Their hair is very soft, and they have large, brilliant, sightless eyes, destitute of an iris. These rats have never been known to visit the upper world. Agassiz held the opinion that they were created with a structure adapted to their home, although some physiologists are of the opinion that the rats found here were not originally blind, but having found their way into the cave at last lost their vision.

Note again the DUAL SYSTEMS, the proper respect for both real and Darwin views. Couldn't happen now.

= = = = =

The second book that popped up on SPICE CLOCK was just plain fucking weird. The Book of Spice, 1906, Wallace Irwin, has nothing at all to do with spice.

Here's the sample text that showed in Google:



WTF? Why would a 1906 author write a combination of glossolalia, Roman numerals, Thai characters, Dutch words, binary digits, and Hebrew, and then a sentence in plain English?

Here's the underlying page:



Google's AI decided the squared-off crude sketch was text, turned its "eyes" 45 degrees leftward to match the rows of "letters", and tried to interpret it as text. Pretty smart in a mechanical way.

The title page of the book:



Note that the 1906 librarian filled in the author's real name. Human librarians knew what they were doing.

Most of the book is equally awful art combined with some wise sayings that couldn't be said now:

Labels: Bemusement, Entertainment

  ¶ 9:00 PM

  More rambling on GenRad
Since I'm on a GenRad kick today, I'm still puzzled by pricing for calibration equipment. There's a whole lot of GenRad on Ebay right now, and it divides sharply between regular 'vintage electronics' pricing and 'luxury goods' pricing. The 'vintage' pricing makes sense for hobbyists and collectors who prefer old equipment.

I noticed the difference several years ago when I bought my 1565B sound level meter from Ebay. The 1565B is the successor to the 1565A shown in previous item, and seems to have started around 1973. It's still being produced and sold now. Same functions in a smoother package, like the change from Ford Fairmont to Taurus. I bought mine for $50, and the new ones from IET are $3500. It was an excellent deal at $50. Still functions perfectly, still usable for real science.

The difference makes sense when you're buying from IET, which continues the GenRad services. You're basically paying a retainer for legal services to a company that will back up your claims of accuracy in a regulatory or legal conflict.

The difference doesn't make sense for the Ebay items seen now.

Example: Standard inductors, all fairly old-looking and all simple devices, range from $1000 down to $200. Both are supposedly tested. Some listed as 'parts only' are also around $200. None of them are from an official calibrating service like IET, so they don't include a 'lawyer retainer'. For comparison, plain non-standardized inductors from Jameco range from 50 cents up to $2.50 for a fancy one. Unlike sound level meters, there isn't any practical use for standardized inductors. You can't possibly use them in a real circuit. Even in the '30s when everything was bigger, these giant boxes couldn't have lived inside a radio. You'd only need them for QC testing if you were manufacturing fancy coils, and in that case you wouldn't be buying through Ebay.

= = = = =

After detailing the meter face in my model to match the original more closely, I wondered why the meter says "DECIBELS. SOUND LEVEL METER." Seems like unnecessary clutter in a small space. When you're using the SLM, you know it's an SLM and you know you're measuring dB. The lawyer aspect illuminates the reason. Before computers and web-connected equipment, you'd create an evidentiary chain by photographing the meter along with the factory or highway you were measuring. The photograph is better evidence if the name of the tool and the meaning of the measurement are intrinsic. The upper dials are also designed for photographic clarity, so you can include the weighting and band setting in the closeup. (As shown nicely by the picture on the front of the GenRad booklet below.)

COBOL was designed with the same purpose in mind. "Overly verbose" code is self-documenting, making it easy for auditors to check what the program is trying to do.

Was this internal metadata technique widespread in instrumentation? I don't think so.

It's certainly common in other legalistic uses of photography. Mugshots always include a title card with the name and other data, often held in the suspect's hands for 'intrinsicness'. Cities used to document real estate for tax valuation with photos. Each house had an easel in front carrying the relevant info.

Skimming through GenRad catalogs, I don't see any other uses of the technique. The later 1565B, the 'Taurus', no longer has the label, and the weighting is done by pushbuttons that woudn't be easily visible in a photo. The classic Bruel & Kjaer 2203, from the same era, comes close to the same labeling and grouping for photo clarity:



Considering the added value of this design in the intended legalistic use of instruments, it's surprisingly rare.

= = = = =

Separate random note: The manuals for all of these old instruments are easily available online in PDF form. I can get all the info and pix I need to "build" the models, including details of meter faces. When I was working in academic labs, whether acoustics or speech and hearing, we RARELY had manuals for old equipment. Sometimes I was able to write to the manufacturer for schematics, sometimes not. Mostly I had to figure stuff out on my own. I don't know where the manuals went; maybe grad students took them, maybe profs kept them in their offices. In either case the manuals weren't kept with the equipment.

Later and even more rambly: The 1565A struck me as unusual because the meter face is white on black. Most meter faces are black on white. The other applications of intrinsic metadata are also white on black. Mugshots and property tax photos formerly used blackboards, white chalk on black slate. More recent mugshots use 'marquees' with magnetic letters, also typically white on black. Is there a photographic reason for this? Can't find it online. Discussions of UX seem to think that white on black is more readable to the eyes, but I can't find any comments related to film photography in old periodicals. White on black is NOT more readable to my eyes.

Labels: Bemusement, coot-proofing, Metrology

  ¶ 2:48 PM

  COBOL musing and bemusing
I've been playing with COBOL for a couple weeks. The more I play, the more I like. The advantages go beyond the proper handling of integers and decimals. COBOL's way of describing and using data structures was clearly the best and most intuitive from the start. Other languages departed from the intuitive and only recently came back to similar power, but still without the intuitive approach.

I've been using the GNUcobol compiler, which runs smoothly and quickly on the command line. The developers have been working together for several years, and the project is highly active.

BUT: There's one extremely basic thing missing. I was puzzled by it, and kept trying to make it work from various angles, then located a note in the GNU documentation that verifies the basic thing is missing.

This one missing function blocks everything I would want to do with COBOL.

COBOL has a built-in way to process an entire array at once, using the ALL keyword. For instance, you can take the median of TABLE1 like this:

COMPUTE MEDIAN1 = FUNCTION MEDIAN (TABLE1(ALL)).

Other languages don't have a built-in median function. Median is the ONLY VALID STATISTIC, and it's tricky to code properly. COBOL implements the correct accounting way of taking a median, along with the correct way of finding Midrange. I use Median and Midrange often in graphics programming.

What's missing? The ALL keyword is missing. There's no way to process an entire array in one step. GNUcobol doesn't handle it, so GNUcobol can't do the things that COBOL does best.

There are several other COBOL compilers for Windows. Some are way too expensive ($25000), some are way too simple (old 16-bit progs that won't run on Win 7). I'm willing to pay for value, but not thousands. So far I haven't found Mama Bear, but I'll keep looking. (There's probably a workaround for the missing ALL, but I haven't learned it or figured it out yet.)

= = = = =

Later: Here's what I mean by intuitive. In all other languages, starting with Fortran, an array or list has a name but the things IN the array don't have names. If you define an array with 12 items, the items are just index points inside the array. If each of the 12 items has its own contents, those are just a second index.

COBOL focuses on the things IN the array, not on the array itself. Simple example with eggs in a carton.

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
        PROGRAM-ID.  EGGS.

       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
        01 CARTON.
          05 EGG OCCURS 12 TIMES.
             10 YOLK PIC 9 VALUE 1.
             10 ALBUMEN PIC 9 VALUE 1.
             10 SHELLCOLOR PIC XXXXXXXX VALUE "WHITE".

       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
        MOVE 2 TO YOLK (2).       
        DISPLAY EGG (1).
        DISPLAY EGG (2).

       STOP RUN.

The carton is just a carton. The things IN it are eggs, and we make room for 12 of them. Each egg has measurable things or qualities IN the egg, which also have their own names. I decided to use the number of Yolks (normally 1 but could be 2) and the number of Albumens (always 1) and the color of the shell. I made Egg 2 a double-yolk egg.

The DISPLAY lines tell the computer to display the contents or qualities of Egg number 1 and Egg number 2.

The PIC stuff is non-intuitive but necessary in a strongly column-oriented system like a ledger or a computer memory. PIC is a 'picture' of the columns or memory cells needed for this particular value. 9 represents any digit, and X represents an alphanumeric character. PIC 99.99 would mean a dollars and cents number like 24.36 with no overflow allowed.

Labels: Bemusement, Real World Math

  ¶ 10:01 AM

  Mother-in-law, cliff, Cadillac
Mixed feelings department.

Popup ad seen this morning:



On one hand I'm SUPER HAPPY to see advertisers recognizing that IMMUNITY EXISTS, and that you can improve immunity by proper diet and vitamins, along with sunlight and exercise and fresh air. This is a BASIC TRUTH which the entire monstrous holocaustal empire of "science" and "medicine" has now wiped out, along with wiping out millions of lives.

As I noted earlier, experiential learning about immunity pretty much stopped around 1970 after vaccines took out the most serious viruses. It appears that schools haven't been teaching about immunity either. The gradual fade of both real learning and book learning opened the gate for the demons to wipe out the entire concept.

Before the fade, advertisers commonly touted their products as improving immunity. Some of the products might not have helped much, but the MESSAGE ITSELF helped. Same in this case.

= = = = =

On the other hand, the typo immuntiy spoils the sense of legitimacy and opens the ad up to disputation and censorship. I wish they had paid more attention to details.

Labels: Bemusement, Experiential education

  ¶ 6:14 AM

  Some odd constants
In engineering and electronics, e and pi tend to show up in many constant patterns, even when the patterns have no obvious relationship to exp curves or circles or sines.

I've been noticing a few odd constants in the auto industry.

1. The market for limos is constant. Not the total market, but the market for each brand. When a carmaker decides to (more or less) mass produce limos, it can expect to sell 2000 per year. Before 1950, when GM and Chrysler and Packard were all serious about limos, each sold 2k. After Chrysler and Packard retired to occasional handbuilts, Caddy was still selling 2k, not 6k. When Lincoln finally entered the market in '61 with the parade phaeton, it sold 2k.

2. The Ford manopause. Henry had a sudden shift of personality late in life, which writers attribute to a stroke. The same thing happened to Henry's son Edsel, then to Edsel's sons HF2 and William Clay. Each started out as an innovative and sharp manager, then suddenly shifted to a moody recluse who couldn't be bothered with management. The later generations were drinkers, which sometimes accounts for such a change, but Henry Senior was an absolute non-drinker. The shift looks more like a genetic constant.

Labels: Bemusement, constants and constants

  ¶ 6:12 AM