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On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:30:27 -0600, "
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:06:21 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:



Right, but business IT is a small corner of the world of programming. A
rather important corner for IBM, however, who still like PL/I (and
derivatives) quite a lot. ;-)


I highly doubt that. Most of us engage in many business transactions
every day.
Just guessing, but my estimate is 90% of programming is
business/finance related.

One of the C programmers under my umbrella when I was an account
manager, and whose technical skills I respected, told me it was a dead
end, since the functions had all been written, and that's where the
"fun" was. That was mid-nineties.


"All the functions have been written" is rather like "everything that can be
invented, has".


He was a nerd that way, but I saw his point.
There are only so many common math functions used in business.
That's not to say new processing needs don't arise or the work ends.
He just found doing anything twice boring.
And IT is basically repetition of the same concepts over and over.
You get some new stuff now and then, like new database structures and
access language, OOB and the like, most recently html and .net, blah,
blah.
I was working SAP data warehouse and ABAP when I retired, but wasn't
young enough to be excited about it.
Same old. Input, move, tweak and present data.
BTW, SAP is a fast-spreading German enterprise-wide IT solution, and
the Indians have 2 legs up on running it.
They train in India assiduously. Don't know if the Indian government
has a hand in IT training, but the Indians sure have a plan and a goal
to employ as many in IT as possible.
I see nothing like that here in the U.S.
Despite rampant unemployment.
In fact the U.S. corporate trend is to continue offshoring work,
Obama's bull**** notwithstanding.


Everything I did was assembler, Cobol, and a smattering of other
languages that got sold to IT managers as the latest panacea.
A preferred language is often just tradition or "religion."

No issues with that.

I could do any mathematical function in COBOL that Fortran could do
by making a subprogram call.

Wrong. By your own admission you don't even touch a huge area of mathematics.

Believe me, you don't need to know higher math in business IT.
That's what mathematicians and accountants are for.
All you have to do is put their formulae in code and test it.
They wouldn't have it any other way.


Again, not the point. I'm sure you're very good at what you do.


I see what you're saying there, and you're correct.
But I didn't mean to imply that COBOL and Fortran are equal, or that
business processing touches all the scientific math areas.
My point was more to how languages gain fans in their own communities,
and that Fortran could easily be replaced by COBOL with calls to
assembler sub-routines. No Fortran at all in the mix.
But why bother disturbing Fortran fans? If it's working for them
that's good enough.

General Engineering. Don't ask me what they do.


Design armys? ;-)


hehe. I recommended he join the FBI when he got his degree.
He looked at me like I was crazy.


Right. That accounts for real 15% unemployment.


There is a big difference between manufacturing and manufacturing employment.
The US manufactures more than it ever has. Manufacturing is a lower
percentage of employment, however, as one would expect.

http://www.uschina.org/public/docume...ufacturing.pdf


You can twist figures however you want.
This might be of interest.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/...ing-losing-out


You're far more cynical than I.


More like realistic.


No, cynical.

I'll cop to skeptical. That's it.

I was a steelworker, autoworker and had other mfg jobs before I went
into IT. Saw the writing on the wall.

Sure. Unions are dead, except those on the public dole.


Unions were a part of it.

They're the single reason the auto and steel industries are all but dead. "All
but", only because of domestic non-union car manufacturing.


Sure. The GM engineers were designing quality products, and GM
management was taking good care of customers.
It was all the workers fault with their evil unions.
Bet you liked your Chevy Vega except for the worker labor part.
BTW, my first job out of the Navy in '67 was at U.S. Steel South
works.


Now look at salaries, benefits, and union productivity obstacles, not to
mention union thuggery. It was *not* all management's fault that GM sank.
...and it will continue, perhaps even more rapidly now.

Same union at Ford, but huge difference in outcome.
"Union thuggery." Funny.
You going to trot out a story about how your dad was beaten with
baseball bats because he refused to strike.
Already heard that one.

Decrepit blast furnaces while the rest of the world had moved to BOP.
The millwrights I worked with could shave babbitt bearings and the
sweethearting Steelworkers union got them all of 3 bucks an hour.
There was a book written how the CEO drove that company to ruin.


A lot of that is tax policy, too, as well as union work rules.

After that I went to IH building dozers and dealt with the management
incompetence there. Another place that went bust, but I won't bore
you with my personal observations.
They involve production and the QC thereof, so don't count..
A book was written about how Archie McCardle drove IH to ruin too.
Never read either book, but since I was at both places as a
Steelworker and Autoworker I guess it was all my fault and I got the
blame. *******s.


You see nothing that the unions did wrong here?


Nope. There were never fat wages at U.S. Steel or IH.
Just incompetent management. I was there.
No "work rule" impediments either.
Biggest difference was when a foreman at U.S. Steel told you do
something that would get you killed, you might do it.
At IH you would tell the foreman to go **** himself.
Nothing wrong with that "work rule" to me.
Details upon request.


But most of the non-union manufacturing is gone too.

No, it's not. It's just different.


You mean just because "Made in China" is stamped on damn near
everything a consumer buys, it's different?
Okay, I'll go along with that.


Oh, cut the bull****. We were talking about US manufacturing. There are a
*LOT* of cars made by non-union shops, right here in the US and quite
competitively


You get off the union bull****. I was talking manufacturing and now
you're ragging on unions.
Plenty of non-union manufacturing was offshored.
First off I only buy union made cars, because I like Chevys.
No choice.
But most Chevys are union-made - in Canada, a foreign country.
I guess I could buy a German or Jap union-made import, or a non-union
one made here, but I'm sticking with Chevys.
Anyway cars aren't a big expense for me since I get them used and
cheap. My car costs don't even come close to $300 a year.
I wrench and so does my kid.
I just got off the phone ordering a Mexican-made Kenmore fridge for
$700 to replace the $500 Mexican-made fridge I bought about 5 years
ago and which just started making serious noise today..
A Mexican fridge for a Mexican fridge.
A few years ago I spent $600 on a Mexican GE washer and another $200
on a warranty for it.
Earlier this year I spent about a $1000 in computer components to
build a new box.
Nothing made in the U.S.
I probably spent $1000 this year on various electronic gifts for my
kids.
Nothing made in the U.S.
Spent a few hundred on power tools. None U.S.made.
Got a U.S. made nail set and hammer. Big whoop.
My next expense will be a flat screen TV.
Probably another $500 for small, at least $1000 for big..
Tell me where to find one made in the U.S.
Anybody can read a balance of trade chart for manufactured goods.

As you see if you read the article above, some of U.S. manufacturing
is non-tradeble products.
So I buy U.S. made toilet paper. All the junk mail I get is U.S.
made. That's all part of your American "manufacturing" claim.
I don't have the figures on tradable vs. non-tradable, but it's easy
to read balance of trade charts for manufactured goods.
Don't need to though when you can see everything you're buying is made
elsewhere.
Where the hell are you getting U.S made products besides Jap and
German cars made here?
You buying Boeing airplanes?
Good on you.
But you might soon be buying Chinese airplanes. Non-union made.


The biggest part was U.S companies could get cheap labor offshore, and
better management that paid attention to quality.

You've obviously never dealt with offshore production.


You might notice that imported items are getting higher marks than
Ford, GM and Chrysler in general.
That boat has sailed.


A lot of those "imported items" are not.


Easy claim to make, but if there's no U.S. made counterpart to compare
against what's the difference?
You don't have a choice.
Ok, I'm done with this. It never goes anywhere.
You take the last shots.

--Vic
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The Daring Dufas writes:

On 12/30/2010 10:36 AM, notbob wrote:


Fury I named Christine because you couldn't kill it. :-)


LOL!.....
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On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:47:49 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:06:21 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:10:12 -0600, "
wrote:


The point being that your "Both those languages were basically dead in 1980",
is false. Both live to this day, though are, and always have been,
specialized.


Actually my original point was in reference to Nate saying he was
being taught PL/I and Fortran in a mid-nineties CS class.
Most CS grads were going into the business IT world, and those
languages were useless and dead for business by then.
An engineer type has no problem picking up a language like Fortran or
PL/I to suit his needs.
No sense quibbling.
I take what I said back, and now say, "Both those languages were
basically dead in the 1980 business world."



A lot of the programs the major insurance companies run on -
particularly the actuarial stuff in the life insurance business is
STILL Fortran. Same programs developped in the '60s, still running
with modification after modification.


Maybe so. But I spent years at Allstate and CNA insurance and knew
State Farm and Farmers Group employees and talked shop with them.
Those are major insurance companies.
It was 90% COBOL and assembler.
That covers a gamut of the usual insurance company processing, and I
worked in the major insurance processing areas - premiums, claims,
accounting, investments. Did payroll elsewhere, all COBOL.
Never saw a Fortran app anywhere, and I got around to most areas.
Doubt there was any tucked away either, unless somebody was running
Fortran from a PC.
I had access to the system libraries and would have seen it.
Pretty much knew all the programming tools where I worked.
Might have been tucked away somewhere.
I never say never.
And though casualty isn't life, most insurance processing is as i
said.
You run into "scientist" users who prefer a language, but they are a
small part of business processing. I had a client at McDonalds
corporate marketing who liked using SAS for some day-part analysis.
He got no help from me.
Marketing staff there were still using Macs and they got just a little
help. But that's not why I was there.
McDonalds actually did analysis on what was sold at different hours of
the day. Massive amounts of data coming in from POS terminals.
First time I heard the term "terrabyte" but I left before they got the
IBM drives in. Boucoup expensive.
Now anybody can get multiple terrabytes cheap at Best Buy.
Reminds me of the data management boss there.
First day there I grabbed maybe 100 cylinders of disk to run
something. That was no big deal in my previous shop, and about the
same bytes as what I had on my big PC hard drive at home.
I get a call from data management a few minutes later asking what's
up. I told them what's up, and that was that. They asked me to call
first next time I want that much space.
Later that day I'm out front for a smoke and I get introduced to the
data management boss.
"Vic? Rings a bell. You the guy who hammered my space?"
"C'mon," I said. I got that much on my PC hard drive at home.
"Bring it in." he says.
Not much for words, but I liked him and we got along fine.

Closest to actuarial I got was working for an epidemiologist at
International Mineral and Chemical.
Similar mortality study to actuary I think.
He loved me, because I built a huge table and report process for him
for a study he was doing. Used COBOL.
At that time COBOL - ANSI 74 I think - had a 32k max for indexed table
size. I needed to store and access about a dozen times that.
About 18,000 deceased employee vitals, work site and job position.
Mostly Florida phosphate workers.
I started a Rube Goldberg of multiple tables to handle it, mentioned
my predicament it to an "old-timer" who was really sharp, and he
showed me how to trick COBOL by defining filler area beyond the
allowed table size in working storage and subscripting into it.
Slower than the binary search on the search end, but it ran fine.
Never met another programmer who knew that one.
It was a good start to my IT first job, and I won't forget Mike.
Lots of ggod guys I learned from, and I tried to pass it all on.
God dammit! Gimme another beer and a hanky!

--Vic



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On 12/27/2010 10:30 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
Fornication for sainthood? Man, that's some messed up cult.



It's likely one of the more popular reasons for starting a cult. Lot of
ministers like that free loving.

Anyways, Whats up with your news reader in that it drops all the
original post below your sig (where it subsequently gets lost)?
Everybody is used to this by now, but it is wrong, and why is it that way?

Jeff


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On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 20:46:30 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:30:27 -0600, "
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:06:21 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:



Right, but business IT is a small corner of the world of programming. A
rather important corner for IBM, however, who still like PL/I (and
derivatives) quite a lot. ;-)


I highly doubt that. Most of us engage in many business transactions
every day.
Just guessing, but my estimate is 90% of programming is
business/finance related.


I think you would be wrong, considering that even toasters have a computers in
them, today.

One of the C programmers under my umbrella when I was an account
manager, and whose technical skills I respected, told me it was a dead
end, since the functions had all been written, and that's where the
"fun" was. That was mid-nineties.


"All the functions have been written" is rather like "everything that can be
invented, has".


He was a nerd that way, but I saw his point.
There are only so many common math functions used in business.
That's not to say new processing needs don't arise or the work ends.


He was myopic.

He just found doing anything twice boring.


That part I understand.

And IT is basically repetition of the same concepts over and over.
You get some new stuff now and then, like new database structures and
access language, OOB and the like, most recently html and .net, blah,
blah.
I was working SAP data warehouse and ABAP when I retired, but wasn't
young enough to be excited about it.
Same old. Input, move, tweak and present data.
BTW, SAP is a fast-spreading German enterprise-wide IT solution, and
the Indians have 2 legs up on running it.
They train in India assiduously.


That's something kids here don't do. They don't do *anything*, other than
perhaps Nintendo and maybe round-ball, assiduously.

Don't know if the Indian government
has a hand in IT training, but the Indians sure have a plan and a goal
to employ as many in IT as possible.
I see nothing like that here in the U.S.
Despite rampant unemployment.
In fact the U.S. corporate trend is to continue offshoring work,
Obama's bull**** notwithstanding.


They really have no choice. It's too expensive to hire people here. Obummer
is piling on a *lot* more crap, too.

Everything I did was assembler, Cobol, and a smattering of other
languages that got sold to IT managers as the latest panacea.
A preferred language is often just tradition or "religion."

No issues with that.

I could do any mathematical function in COBOL that Fortran could do
by making a subprogram call.

Wrong. By your own admission you don't even touch a huge area of mathematics.

Believe me, you don't need to know higher math in business IT.
That's what mathematicians and accountants are for.
All you have to do is put their formulae in code and test it.
They wouldn't have it any other way.


Again, not the point. I'm sure you're very good at what you do.


I see what you're saying there, and you're correct.
But I didn't mean to imply that COBOL and Fortran are equal, or that
business processing touches all the scientific math areas.
My point was more to how languages gain fans in their own communities,
and that Fortran could easily be replaced by COBOL with calls to
assembler sub-routines. No Fortran at all in the mix.
But why bother disturbing Fortran fans? If it's working for them
that's good enough.


Sure, but it's fun to tweak the zealots. Me? I do assembler (don't care
what) and VHDL. But I don't do much programming, per se. C ruined that fun.

General Engineering. Don't ask me what they do.


Design armys? ;-)


hehe. I recommended he join the FBI when he got his degree.
He looked at me like I was crazy.


One of our embedded programmers left a year ago to join the FBI. They asked
him whether he wanted white-collar or counter-terrorism detail. He chose
counter-terrorism. smack!

Right. That accounts for real 15% unemployment.


There is a big difference between manufacturing and manufacturing employment.
The US manufactures more than it ever has. Manufacturing is a lower
percentage of employment, however, as one would expect.

http://www.uschina.org/public/docume...ufacturing.pdf


You can twist figures however you want.
This might be of interest.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/...ing-losing-out


It's not twisting anything. The fact is that we *are* producing more than
ever, albeit with a smaller percentage of the workforce. Since more people
are doing non-manufacturing work, this is expected. COmpanies are off-shoring
because they simply can't afford to hire people here, and it's not only
because they want too much money. Our government forces the issue.

Prestowitz' article has a lot of holes in it.


You're far more cynical than I.


More like realistic.


No, cynical.

I'll cop to skeptical. That's it.


No, skeptical means you're still looking for the strings. ;-)

I was a steelworker, autoworker and had other mfg jobs before I went
into IT. Saw the writing on the wall.

Sure. Unions are dead, except those on the public dole.


Unions were a part of it.

They're the single reason the auto and steel industries are all but dead. "All
but", only because of domestic non-union car manufacturing.


Sure. The GM engineers were designing quality products, and GM
management was taking good care of customers.
It was all the workers fault with their evil unions.
Bet you liked your Chevy Vega except for the worker labor part.
BTW, my first job out of the Navy in '67 was at U.S. Steel South
works.


Now look at salaries, benefits, and union productivity obstacles, not to
mention union thuggery. It was *not* all management's fault that GM sank.
...and it will continue, perhaps even more rapidly now.

Same union at Ford, but huge difference in outcome.


Not really. Ford was on the ropes a short couple of years ago but did get
some concessions that GM didn't get. Why? ...if the government is going to
hand the keys over to you.

"Union thuggery." Funny.


That's exactly what it was. Unions colluded to strike one company, forcing it
to knuckle under. If the companies had done the same they'd the bosses would
be in jail.

You going to trot out a story about how your dad was beaten with
baseball bats because he refused to strike.
Already heard that one.


My father would never have worked in a union shop. Neither would I. They're
vile.

Decrepit blast furnaces while the rest of the world had moved to BOP.
The millwrights I worked with could shave babbitt bearings and the
sweethearting Steelworkers union got them all of 3 bucks an hour.
There was a book written how the CEO drove that company to ruin.


A lot of that is tax policy, too, as well as union work rules.

After that I went to IH building dozers and dealt with the management
incompetence there. Another place that went bust, but I won't bore
you with my personal observations.
They involve production and the QC thereof, so don't count..
A book was written about how Archie McCardle drove IH to ruin too.
Never read either book, but since I was at both places as a
Steelworker and Autoworker I guess it was all my fault and I got the
blame. *******s.


You see nothing that the unions did wrong here?


Nope. There were never fat wages at U.S. Steel or IH.
Just incompetent management. I was there.
No "work rule" impediments either.


You're blind.

Biggest difference was when a foreman at U.S. Steel told you do
something that would get you killed, you might do it.
At IH you would tell the foreman to go **** himself.
Nothing wrong with that "work rule" to me.
Details upon request.


But most of the non-union manufacturing is gone too.

No, it's not. It's just different.


You mean just because "Made in China" is stamped on damn near
everything a consumer buys, it's different?
Okay, I'll go along with that.


Oh, cut the bull****. We were talking about US manufacturing. There are a
*LOT* of cars made by non-union shops, right here in the US and quite
competitively


You get off the union bull****. I was talking manufacturing and now
you're ragging on unions.


Unions aren't part of manufacturing? You whine about management, but want the
poor unions left alone? yikes!

Plenty of non-union manufacturing was offshored.


Sure. I've talked about government policy as the other shoe.

First off I only buy union made cars, because I like Chevys.


Wouldn't touch one, particularly now. I had one, hated it.

No choice.
But most Chevys are union-made - in Canada, a foreign country.
I guess I could buy a German or Jap union-made import, or a non-union
one made here, but I'm sticking with Chevys.
Anyway cars aren't a big expense for me since I get them used and
cheap. My car costs don't even come close to $300 a year.
I wrench and so does my kid.
I just got off the phone ordering a Mexican-made Kenmore fridge for
$700 to replace the $500 Mexican-made fridge I bought about 5 years
ago and which just started making serious noise today..
A Mexican fridge for a Mexican fridge.
A few years ago I spent $600 on a Mexican GE washer and another $200
on a warranty for it.
Earlier this year I spent about a $1000 in computer components to
build a new box.
Nothing made in the U.S.


That's funny. The appliances I've bought in the past couple of years were
made in the US.

I probably spent $1000 this year on various electronic gifts for my
kids.
Nothing made in the U.S.


I'll bet the processors were.

Spent a few hundred on power tools. None U.S.made.


Few are. Some are surprising, though. I just bought a router lift, made in
Canuckistan.

Got a U.S. made nail set and hammer. Big whoop.
My next expense will be a flat screen TV.
Probably another $500 for small, at least $1000 for big..
Tell me where to find one made in the U.S.
Anybody can read a balance of trade chart for manufactured goods.


We still are the #3 exporter of manufactured goods. The balance of trade is
horrible primarily because of fuel imports. Nothing will be done about that,
other to than put us deeper into a recession.

As you see if you read the article above, some of U.S. manufacturing
is non-tradeble products.
So I buy U.S. made toilet paper. All the junk mail I get is U.S.
made. That's all part of your American "manufacturing" claim.
I don't have the figures on tradable vs. non-tradable, but it's easy
to read balance of trade charts for manufactured goods.
Don't need to though when you can see everything you're buying is made
elsewhere.


Everything *YOU* buy is made elsewhere.

Where the hell are you getting U.S made products besides Jap and
German cars made here?


At Lowes, in fact.

You buying Boeing airplanes?
Good on you.
But you might soon be buying Chinese airplanes. Non-union made.


The biggest part was U.S companies could get cheap labor offshore, and
better management that paid attention to quality.

You've obviously never dealt with offshore production.


You might notice that imported items are getting higher marks than
Ford, GM and Chrysler in general.
That boat has sailed.


A lot of those "imported items" are not.


Easy claim to make, but if there's no U.S. made counterpart to compare
against what's the difference?
You don't have a choice.


Certainly you have a choice. You don't even take it when it's offered.

Ok, I'm done with this. It never goes anywhere.
You take the last shots.


So, you write a long screed, much of it in error, and run off? Whatever.
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On 12/27/2010 9:18 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
?
"Molly Brown" wrote
Ed Pawlowski wrote:

So you'd really rather have a 19" B & W TV instead of a flat screen HD
with
a 47" screen? My family lives better with more air conditioning,
computers, bigger and better refrigerators.

The point that I was trying to make was that his evidence supporting
his postulate that things are better now is faulty for the exact same
reason that you stated of appliances being “more, bigger, better” In
other words he is comparing apples with oranges. We did not have
computers or color TVs then but we also didn’t have to call the repair
person or mechanic almost every day when those so called “better”
appliances and cars crammed with more and more idiotic“ amenities” or
“water and energy saver” features break down.


I recall changing tubes in the old TVs frequently while the newer ones
go for many years with no repair. I typically drive my cars over 150,000
miles and change spark plugs one time at 100k. Maintenance on newer cars
is a bit more complex, but it is needed far less. I remember cleaning
spark plugs every 5000 miles and replacing them at 10,000 miles, along
with point and maybe wires. And resetting the timing along the way and
adjusting points after a few thousand miles.


I had a 70 MGB. You'd get to work on that almost any day, particularly
if you needed to get home!

Everything last so much longer on a car today. Certainly internal
engine parts. Cars really are a lot better. So are TVs, what you had to
go through when color first came out. Now some of those old products
were substantially built, and money was spent on appearance (chrome
bumpers, furniture cabinets for TVs), but technology has made them a lot
more reliable and less of a pain to own and operate.

Jeff


No thanks, I'll keep my
newer cars that are cheaper to operate than any of my older cars.

My other appliances are just as good as they were in the past. You can
buy a decent basic gas or electric range for about $400 to $500. You can
also get better quality for $4000 if that is your desire.


Did you include the cost
of what you pay to the service technician or the parts supplier or
store for renewing every two years that cheap made in China garbage
when you said “But since we can more easily afford appliances, we can
more easily afford that bag of potatoes.


The last time I had an appliance serviced was about 20 years ago. Maybe
you need to buy better brands. I did just replace my dryer that was 29
years old and a few years ago, we opted for a new gas range rather than
fix the 25 year old one.


When I said I wish I could buy the same appliance I used then I wasn’t
referring to a TV set, computer or microwave oven but a range,
dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer or the early self defrosting
refrigerators which were substantially durable than what we have now.


I'm not so sure. Other than your perception, do you have evidence? Seems
to me that appliances did go through a stage about 5 to 10 years ago
where they were less reliable, but they seem to have rebounded. That is
my perception, not something I can prove.


I can even make a point about color TVs, computers and text messaging
cell phones which have killed social skills, conceptual thinking and
the English language if you like. The last genius we had was Einstein
with E=MC2. I dare you to name one Shakespeare, Beethoven or Da Vinci
since then. You don’t even see anymore polymaths like our founding
fathers anymore. What we have are bored so called “professionals” who
only want to go home and play SimCity or Call of Duty. Why do you
think that is?


While I agree with you there, it has nothing to do with reliability and
quality of a refrigerator. Many do say that TV has destroyed the human
species. That would be a different thread though.


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Not sure. Others have mentioned it to me.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Jeff Thies" wrote in message
...
On 12/27/2010 10:30 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
Fornication for sainthood? Man, that's some messed up
cult.



It's likely one of the more popular reasons for starting a
cult. Lot of
ministers like that free loving.

Anyways, Whats up with your news reader in that it drops
all the
original post below your sig (where it subsequently gets
lost)?
Everybody is used to this by now, but it is wrong, and why
is it that way?

Jeff


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?
"Jeff Thies" wrote

I had a 70 MGB. You'd get to work on that almost any day, particularly if
you needed to get home!

Everything last so much longer on a car today. Certainly internal engine
parts. Cars really are a lot better. So are TVs, what you had to go
through when color first came out. Now some of those old products were
substantially built, and money was spent on appearance (chrome bumpers,
furniture cabinets for TVs), but technology has made them a lot more
reliable and less of a pain to own and operate.

Jeff


Oh, the MG, Healy, and a few others wee nice care if you could keep them
running.
I didn't mention it, but care from the early 50's would often need a ring
job (and maybe bearings) at 50,000 miles. Today, 200,000 is nothing.




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"
wrote:

There is nothing wrong with either but don't expect any guarantees. Don't go
deep into debt to get the paper.


OK so what abt health care?

Such as a biochemistry degree.... or pharmacy degree?

Something for a 40 something to switch careers to?
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?
wrote in message
...
"
wrote:

There is nothing wrong with either but don't expect any guarantees. Don't
go
deep into debt to get the paper.


OK so what abt health care?

Such as a biochemistry degree.... or pharmacy degree?

Something for a 40 something to switch careers to?


Pharmacy is something like 5 years. Pays well though, seems steady as we
get older.

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On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:32:30 -0500, "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:

?
wrote in message
.. .
"
wrote:

There is nothing wrong with either but don't expect any guarantees. Don't
go
deep into debt to get the paper.


OK so what abt health care?

Such as a biochemistry degree.... or pharmacy degree?

Something for a 40 something to switch careers to?


Pharmacy is something like 5 years. Pays well though, seems steady as we
get older.


....and will be completely controlled, lock, stock, and salary, by Obamacare.
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On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:10:50 -0500, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

Not sure. Others have mentioned it to me.


Dumbass, it's because you insist on top-posting.


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In article ,
" wrote:

...and will be completely controlled, lock, stock, and salary, by Obamacare.


For the better paying jobs, the PharmD is really becoming the entry
level degree.

--
"Even I realized that money was to politicians what the ecalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter and something to crap on."
---PJ O'Rourke
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"Ed Pawlowski" wrote:

Pharmacy is something like 5 years. Pays well though, seems steady as we
get older.


yes I am thinking a pharmacist can be an old man
job.... that is work part time even into your 80s and
still make decent money

yes?
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Vic Smith wrote:
....

Just guessing, but my estimate is 90% of programming is
business/finance related.


By what measure? Unless it is in a nonprofit or academic setting, one
could say that _everything_ is business related since that's what
companies are about.

OTOH, if one is talking of either LOC or other measures of actual code
generation, I'd venture direct financial or business applications still
remain a subset.

....
and that Fortran could easily be replaced by COBOL with calls to
assembler sub-routines. No Fortran at all in the mix.
But why bother disturbing Fortran fans? If it's working for them
that's good enough.


What one really shouldn't do is to make rash assertions w/o some basic
knowledge of the area at all.

"Theoretically possible" doesn't come even close to equating to
"easily". I would venture that you're not even aware that there is
still active development of the Fortran Standard and modern features
continually being added to the language that include object-oriented
features, etc., etc., etc., ...

What Fortran has that none of the alternatives you've mentioned have is
support for vector processing and other features suited to massive
computing that are simply not amenable to the models you've outlined nor
are there suitable compilers for much of the hardware used in those
computing environments of the type. If you were to take and try to
accomplish the computation in a fashion as you've outlined above,
besides taking orders of magnitude longer to develop you'd find that it
wouldn't have adequate performance to be of any use in the end, anyway.

--
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On Dec 26, 6:52*pm, Molly Brown wrote:
On Dec 26, 1:38*pm, Dean Hoffman wrote:

* * The links are to the Carpe Diem site. *It's written by an economics
professor. *He is comparing what Americans could buy back in the 60s
with what we can buy now. * Things are better now.


* *http://tinyurl.com/2bal4ta


* *http://tinyurl.com/3y79pgq


* *The stuff in his examples are used in the home.


Mr. Mark J. Perry should take off his idiot cap and compare how many
hours we have to work to buy the same EXACT things we use today with
the same EXACT things we used then. You can no longer buy the same
exact appliance you used then; in fact I wish you could because it
lasted ten times longer. Here are some examples of some things that he
REALLY should have compared instead:
A five pound bag of Potatoes
A pound of 20% fat Ground beef
A pound of plain rice
Seeing a doctor
Seeing a dentist
Seeing a lawyer
Trash pick-up service (once a week)
A kilowatt of electricity used
A cubic foot of water used
A cubic foot of natural gas used
All these have stayed exactly the same.


You're probably getting by fairly cheaply on food compared to in
the past.
A couple tables here from the United States Department of Agriculture
if you're interested:
http://tinyurl.com/25c6tbe
http://tinyurl.com/29d89lh
One more here using 1988 as the baseline:
http://tinyurl.com/2c22yl7


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On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:34:23 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

Just guessing, but my estimate is 90% of programming is
business/finance related.


By what measure? Unless it is in a nonprofit or academic setting, one
could say that _everything_ is business related since that's what
companies are about.


By "business" I mean business transaction processing, and the
"non-scientific" internal business needs such as accounting, planning,
projections, inventory, payrolls, etc.
It would take a library books to lay them all out, and though I've run
across many of them, I'm far from an expert.
The only measure I used, and the only one I know of, is demand for
programmers and analysts, in my experience only.
I spent about 15 years with CGA and CTG, big programmer body shops.
We also did project work, but it was mostly providing bodies.
And I knew folks in other big outfits, like EMS and smaller.
Sometimes I was in management and a lot of reqs went through my hands.
I say "sometimes" because I always worked as a programmer or analyst
at a client site, but had "management" responsibilities as a field rep
and moved around quite a bit.
Suffice it to I never saw a req for a Fortran programmer.
Not saying there never was one.
I left that to take a staff position with a client about the time we
were getting reqs for C ++, late '90's.
Of course I'm near Chicago, with a lot of business corporation HQs and
processing centers, so I understand my view is skewed.
That's why I said "guessing."
Bell Labs and Argonne are nearby, but I don't recall ever serving
them.
My brother worked at Bell Labs and told me the language he was using
for switch design was proprietary - don't remember what it was called.
He's an egghead with various engineering and CS Masters degrees.
I suppose engineering types like my brother and son just use whatever
language serves their math needs.
Business uses relatively simple math and is mostly processing simple
but massive amounts of transactions.
Anyway, I knew all the big business programming shops in this area and
the approximate size of their programming staffs.
It was a massive number.
I'm sure Silicone Valley, NASA and others have quite different overall
needs.
Just going by my experience, that's all.
Anybody else can relate theirs.


OTOH, if one is talking of either LOC or other measures of actual code
generation, I'd venture direct financial or business applications still
remain a subset.


I don't know. Like I said, my only measure is bodies doing
programming.
LOC is meaningless. I can code a "Hello World" in one line or a
thousand.
What I do know is every time I make a move with
my CC or bank or cell phone that movement gets processed
by millions of lines of code by the many business applications I
mentioned.
OTOH I'm a gamer, and my games use what I assume is advanced vector
processing, and I probably execute more instructions playing games
than my financial transactions create.
I sometimes read the "programming staff" scroll after a game.
Not many programmers at all.
All kinds of ways of looking at it.

...
and that Fortran could easily be replaced by COBOL with calls to
assembler sub-routines. No Fortran at all in the mix.
But why bother disturbing Fortran fans? If it's working for them
that's good enough.


What one really shouldn't do is to make rash assertions w/o some basic
knowledge of the area at all.

"Theoretically possible" doesn't come even close to equating to
"easily". I would venture that you're not even aware that there is
still active development of the Fortran Standard and modern features
continually being added to the language that include object-oriented
features, etc., etc., etc., ...


Ok, I take "easily" back.
Yes, I was aware that Fortran continues to add to the package.
Also know that there has been some implementation of COBOL OOB.
And that there are still plenty of RPG AS/400 apps out there.
I really thought RPG would be gone by now.
I coded some, and found it atrocious using a transparent plastic
template as an aid in coding.
But it's still with us.
Then again I was always happy that I would be out of IT before Y2K
rolled around. I was wrong on that projection too.

What Fortran has that none of the alternatives you've mentioned have is
support for vector processing and other features suited to massive
computing that are simply not amenable to the models you've outlined nor
are there suitable compilers for much of the hardware used in those
computing environments of the type. If you were to take and try to
accomplish the computation in a fashion as you've outlined above,
besides taking orders of magnitude longer to develop you'd find that it
wouldn't have adequate performance to be of any use in the end, anyway.


I googled a bit and it looks like most video games - which use vector
processing - use C ++.
Also new hardware architecture provides vector support.
This is all above my pay grade.
I don't care if Fortran guys argue with C++ guys.
You can google those arguments.
Very few people care that Fortran might crunch the numbers you need in
10 minutes while C ++ takes 10 minutes and 6 second - or 12 minutes.
Usually just accurate results with available programming skills win
the day.
I dealt with relatively simple but massive business apps.
I found long ago that unless it affects the work at hand it's
pointless to argue about language.

Since hardware speed improvement allows what is commonly called
"bloatware," the language's user interface and maintainability is
often more important than efficiency for most processing.
Otherwise most code running would be BAL or its platform equivalent.
I heard of one large business CICS app in my area which was converted
from BAL to COBOL, then they had to reinstall the BAL app because the
COBOL was too slow.
Don't have the details. Might have been all BS propagated by an
assembler fan.

On my first IT job I was chastised by the boss - an old BAL programmer
- for putting the open/close files routine out of the way at the
bottom of the program. They were running an IBM 370 model with VM.
Just did what I was taught in college - structured instead of
top-down.
He said it might cause paging in the CPU memory segment.
I tested it both way, and there was no difference in CPU utilization
time, but I didn't tell him, just followed his suggestion.
His criticism was useful though, because after that I looked hard at
anything that ran long, and earned some kudos for it.
Won't bore you with details, and you probably know that CPUs are
frequently overtaxed by bad coding or flawed processes.
That first shop still preferred you eyeball - desk check - your code
for syntax/spelling errors instead of running it through the compiler.
Got your knuckles rapped for too many compiles.
Really backward in that respect. They had plenty of juice.
But most of management and programmers had teethed on 360's.

Things change. In the business world I went through the transitions
from BAL to COBOL, ISAM/VSAM files to IMS and DB2, then OOB and
eventually SAP.
There were many unmentioned languages in between.
Now, except that SAP is the "big boy" commonly used at some outfits,
and there are plenty of COBOL apps still running, I don't know
anything.
I'm retired. The headhunters even gave up on me.
Do still have a mild interest in what's happening though and still in
limited contact with the business.
And I still have my prejudices and what I think are sensible views.
One of those views is "use what works best for you."
I don't want to argue this stuff, just chatting.
Only know what I know. IT moves fast and has passed me by.
And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.
It was mostly just how I made a living. I was never highly technical
or one to make up computer jokes.
Just knew enough to be successful at it, and I'm happy at that.
My real loves were always women and beer.

--Vic
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Vic Smith wrote:
....

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.


....

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...

--
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On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:51:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.


...

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...



Haven't heard you relate one iota of experience in the field of
programming, or any numbers, so maybe you're not the best one to be
telling me what to do or not do.
In COBOL I would code that as ****-YOU in working storage.

--Vic

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Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:51:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.

...

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...



Haven't heard you relate one iota of experience in the field ...


No you haven't heard.

40 years, BSNE, MSPhys(NucSci)

20 years eng'g code maintenance/development w/ various organizations
beginning w/ nuclear power generation design codes on mainframes (Philco
2000 series followed w/ CDC 6600/7600/Cyber w/ FORTRAN 66 thru Fortran
F77 in conjunction w/ Philco assembler and CDC Compass as required).
From there to 20 years as consulting for various clients from field of
robotics and man-replacement equipment and instrumentation for nuclear
utilities to evolving to support in I&C R&D for fossil utilities.

Not that it's any of your business.

--
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On 1/1/2011 11:34 AM, dpb wrote:
Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:51:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.
...

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...



Haven't heard you relate one iota of experience in the field ...


No you haven't heard.

40 years, BSNE, MSPhys(NucSci)

20 years eng'g code maintenance/development w/ various organizations
beginning w/ nuclear power generation design codes on mainframes (Philco
2000 series followed w/ CDC 6600/7600/Cyber w/ FORTRAN 66 thru Fortran
F77 in conjunction w/ Philco assembler and CDC Compass as required).
From there to 20 years as consulting for various clients from field of
robotics and man-replacement equipment and instrumentation for nuclear
utilities to evolving to support in I&C R&D for fossil utilities.

Not that it's any of your business.

--


Cool, I wish I knew as much about programming as you do but there's only
so much room in my fat head. :-)

TDD


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On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 11:34:33 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:51:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.
...

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...



Haven't heard you relate one iota of experience in the field ...


No you haven't heard.

40 years, BSNE, MSPhys(NucSci)

20 years eng'g code maintenance/development w/ various organizations
beginning w/ nuclear power generation design codes on mainframes (Philco
2000 series followed w/ CDC 6600/7600/Cyber w/ FORTRAN 66 thru Fortran
F77 in conjunction w/ Philco assembler and CDC Compass as required).
From there to 20 years as consulting for various clients from field of
robotics and man-replacement equipment and instrumentation for nuclear
utilities to evolving to support in I&C R&D for fossil utilities.

Not that it's any of your business.


Then keep your mouth shut about it if you don't want to reveal it.
Not interested in such a weak programming "resume" anyway.
Figured you were a Fortran fan and narrow engineering type by your
reactions to my reasonable comments.
No business programming knowledge at all.
I readily admitted I had none in the scientific arena at the outset.
You were too arrogant to state your programming background until
pressed. You're just so special.
And you're a rude stuffed shirt unable to carry on a civil
conversation.
I would suspect nuclear engineers don't have to be civil if I didn't
have a nuclear physicist cousin who is ever the gentleman.
So you get no slack from me.
Guess what? I don't have to be civil either.
You've responded with nothing but rudeness and combativeness, and shed
no light on anything, except YOU like Fortran, and that YOU think it's
the cat's meow for crunching numbers and vector processing.

Sorry I hurt your sensitive feelings. That's a lie, BTW.
And I thank God I'm retired and no longer have to deal with assholes
like you any more, as I did for years.
This is the last thing I'll say to you. In Fortran, your fav..
Copied straight from Wiki with slight changes, because I haven't coded
it since my time was wasted with it in college.
I'm sure this program will last longer than any other I've coded.

program fu
print *, "**** YOU!"
print *, "AND TELL YOUR POCKET PROTECTOR TO GET ****ED TOO!"
end program fu

Most sincerely,

--Vic


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The Daring Dufas wrote:
....

Cool, I wish I knew as much about programming as you do but there's only
so much room in my fat head. :-)


I think so, too, any more... I returned to family farm when Dad
passed away about 10-12 yr ago, now...continued consulting w/ EPRI (aka
Electric Power Research Institute) which had been primary customer for
several years at their I&C Center located at the Kingston Fossil site
(TVA, west of Knoxville, TN) altho was also doing some work for CSI on
products for them thru which I was running the consulting work while
technically an employee in the new products engineering group (had just
released the wireless accelerometer product line to manufacturing the
month Dad passed away which you can look up for an idea of it altho it's
modified significantly in the 10 years hence). While most work over the
years was proprietary or internal R&D that doesn't have directly
referenceable material, another product after the switch from the
commercial nuclear to consulting was the software for a predecessor of
the Remotec ANDROS robot that you can find quite a lot of info on the
current products. The incarnation I worked on was a combination of the
base vehicle w/ a manipulator arm and instrumentation package for
man-replacement purposes in nuclear generating plants and was
Westinghouse-purchased for use in some of their units in S Korea. This
was while Remotec was still privately held by its founders (from ORNL
there in Oak Ridge) several years before was purchased. (Showing my
age, that version consisted of an onboard VME-bus two-processor 68000 w/
another operator console system w/ only a single processor. The system
ran under CP/M w/ the operating code all LMI Forth. That was my first
consulting job on own w/ one other fella' nearly 30 yr ago, now.)

I've several technical reports on models and evaluations of reactor
safety and primarily incore instrumentation which was my specialty area
outside the code maintenance (I was/am, after all, primarily an
engineer, not a programmer despite almost continuous involvement in
code-related work) while at the commercial reactor vendor. These are,
however, not of much general interest altho a couple of the papers
presented at ANS annual meetings did end up being referenced in a major
textbook on radiation detection and instrumentation which was kinda'
kewl...

I won't pretend that discussions on statistical analyses of samples of
reactor containment vessel material evaluation for radiation-damage
lifetime extensions of their concomitant reactors is a worthy subject
for a.h.r so won't provide any report numbers of them or similar work...

Similarly, the evaluations of the nuclear design codes in comparison to
physics startup measurements at the Oconee-class reactors submitted to
and defended in front of the NRC ACRS for final licensing approval to
allow power operation is somewhat esoteric and rather dull for those
outside the field...

The more recent stuff is all pretty much tied up in EPRI owing to their
licensing agreements and can't say too much about it. The last major
task was development of technique for measurement of pulverized coal
mass flow rates in individual pipes (typically 14-20" diameter) to large
power boilers using advanced nonlinear signal processing techniques to
infer the flow from the non-stochastic but chaotic (look up Lorenz
attractor for the idea of non-random but non-repetitive processes)
turbulence noise in the pipes as picked up on a high-frequency
accelerometer.

Anyway, enough geezer talk...

--
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Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 11:34:33 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:51:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
...

And I never was involved on the "scientific" side of it.
...

So, don't try to pontificate on what you know nothing about...

Haven't heard you relate one iota of experience in the field ...

No you haven't heard.

40 years, BSNE, MSPhys(NucSci)

20 years eng'g code maintenance/development w/ various organizations
beginning w/ nuclear power generation design codes on mainframes (Philco
2000 series followed w/ CDC 6600/7600/Cyber w/ FORTRAN 66 thru Fortran
F77 in conjunction w/ Philco assembler and CDC Compass as required).
From there to 20 years as consulting for various clients from field of
robotics and man-replacement equipment and instrumentation for nuclear
utilities to evolving to support in I&C R&D for fossil utilities.

Not that it's any of your business.


Then keep your mouth shut about it if you don't want to reveal it.
Not interested in such a weak programming "resume" anyway.
Figured you were a Fortran fan and narrow engineering type by your
reactions to my reasonable comments.
No business programming knowledge at all.


No, and I didn't claim any unlike your claims in areas outside your
areas of expertise
I readily admitted I had none in the scientific arena at the outset.


So, you then went on to make absolutely ridiculous claims _IN_ the area
which is all I was calling you on.

You were too arrogant to state your programming background until
pressed. You're just so special.


No, not arrogant; it simply didn't matter.

And you're a rude stuffed shirt unable to carry on a civil
conversation.


I'm not the one who introduced profanity nor have I stooped to it yet
nor have I resorted to ad hominem attacks. I did (and do) suggest you
should recognize the limited scope of your own expertise and stick to it.

....

Guess what? I don't have to be civil either.


No, nor have you been, unfortunately. I've ignored your boorishness and
stayed w/ the factual subject matter.

--
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On 1/1/2011 1:29 PM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

Cool, I wish I knew as much about programming as you do but there's only
so much room in my fat head. :-)


I think so, too, any more... I returned to family farm when Dad
passed away about 10-12 yr ago, now...continued consulting w/ EPRI (aka
Electric Power Research Institute) which had been primary customer for
several years at their I&C Center located at the Kingston Fossil site
(TVA, west of Knoxville, TN) altho was also doing some work for CSI on
products for them thru which I was running the consulting work while
technically an employee in the new products engineering group (had just
released the wireless accelerometer product line to manufacturing the
month Dad passed away which you can look up for an idea of it altho it's
modified significantly in the 10 years hence). While most work over the
years was proprietary or internal R&D that doesn't have directly
referenceable material, another product after the switch from the
commercial nuclear to consulting was the software for a predecessor of
the Remotec ANDROS robot that you can find quite a lot of info on the
current products. The incarnation I worked on was a combination of the
base vehicle w/ a manipulator arm and instrumentation package for
man-replacement purposes in nuclear generating plants and was
Westinghouse-purchased for use in some of their units in S Korea. This
was while Remotec was still privately held by its founders (from ORNL
there in Oak Ridge) several years before was purchased. (Showing my age,
that version consisted of an onboard VME-bus two-processor 68000 w/
another operator console system w/ only a single processor. The system
ran under CP/M w/ the operating code all LMI Forth. That was my first
consulting job on own w/ one other fella' nearly 30 yr ago, now.)

I've several technical reports on models and evaluations of reactor
safety and primarily incore instrumentation which was my specialty area
outside the code maintenance (I was/am, after all, primarily an
engineer, not a programmer despite almost continuous involvement in
code-related work) while at the commercial reactor vendor. These are,
however, not of much general interest altho a couple of the papers
presented at ANS annual meetings did end up being referenced in a major
textbook on radiation detection and instrumentation which was kinda'
kewl...

I won't pretend that discussions on statistical analyses of samples of
reactor containment vessel material evaluation for radiation-damage
lifetime extensions of their concomitant reactors is a worthy subject
for a.h.r so won't provide any report numbers of them or similar work...

Similarly, the evaluations of the nuclear design codes in comparison to
physics startup measurements at the Oconee-class reactors submitted to
and defended in front of the NRC ACRS for final licensing approval to
allow power operation is somewhat esoteric and rather dull for those
outside the field...

The more recent stuff is all pretty much tied up in EPRI owing to their
licensing agreements and can't say too much about it. The last major
task was development of technique for measurement of pulverized coal
mass flow rates in individual pipes (typically 14-20" diameter) to large
power boilers using advanced nonlinear signal processing techniques to
infer the flow from the non-stochastic but chaotic (look up Lorenz
attractor for the idea of non-random but non-repetitive processes)
turbulence noise in the pipes as picked up on a high-frequency
accelerometer.

Anyway, enough geezer talk...

--


I have some understanding of the work you've been involved in enough to
know how important it is to the safety of nuclear plants especially when
it comes to predicting failure of the infrastructure. Tell me if I'm
wrong in assuming that some of the testing involves actually sort
of listening to the pipes to ascertain the condition? A good pipe has
a particular (sound) or characteristic reaction to fluid flow when it's
in good shape? I've worked with vibration sensors to monitor bearings in
chiller plants before so the early signs of failure could be detected
and equipment could be shut down and repaired before a failure
could cause catastrophic damage. I'm also wondering about the types of
failure that could be caused by high pressure, high velocity fluid flow
in pipes in a plant that's running 24/7? You mention turbulence so I
guess cavitation would be another concern? Do the high frequency
vibrations cause stress fractures in the metal of the pipes, flanges
and welds?

TDD
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?
"dpb" wrote in message
I won't pretend that discussions on statistical analyses of samples of
reactor containment vessel material evaluation for radiation-damage
lifetime extensions of their concomitant reactors is a worthy subject for
a.h.r so won't provide any report numbers of them or similar work...


Well, thanks for nothing. At the New Years party last night I was
discussing that with a couple of ladies and I promised to get back to them
with some reports. My chances of getting laid just went down now thanks for
you. They were really excited too when I talked about differing containment
materials. .



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Ed Pawlowski wrote:
?
"dpb" wrote in message
I won't pretend that discussions on statistical analyses of samples of
reactor containment vessel material evaluation for radiation-damage
lifetime extensions of their concomitant reactors is a worthy subject
for a.h.r so won't provide any report numbers of them or similar
work...


Well, thanks for nothing. At the New Years party last night I was
discussing that with a couple of ladies and I promised to get back to
them with some reports. My chances of getting laid just went down now
thanks for you. They were really excited too when I talked about
differing containment materials. .


Chuckle, snicker...it's a bummer, ain't it?

--
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The Daring Dufas wrote:
....

I have some understanding of the work you've been involved in enough to
know how important it is to the safety of nuclear plants especially when
it comes to predicting failure of the infrastructure. Tell me if I'm
wrong in assuming that some of the testing involves actually sort
of listening to the pipes to ascertain the condition? A good pipe has
a particular (sound) or characteristic reaction to fluid flow when it's
in good shape? I've worked with vibration sensors to monitor bearings in
chiller plants before so the early signs of failure could be detected
and equipment could be shut down and repaired before a failure
could cause catastrophic damage. I'm also wondering about the types of
failure that could be caused by high pressure, high velocity fluid flow
in pipes in a plant that's running 24/7? You mention turbulence so I
guess cavitation would be another concern? Do the high frequency
vibrations cause stress fractures in the metal of the pipes, flanges
and welds?

TDD


That particular work wasn't terribly related to each other -- the
pressure vessel samples are chunks of the reactor vessel material that
are placed in special specimen holders designed into the vessels on
initial installation and then removed after a specified set of intervals
and tested. The primary test for these samples is for ductility
(testing against radiation-induced embrittlement) to, as you inferred
correctly, determine that the vessel and other high pressure components
have not undergone excessive degradation so as to still be capable of
withstanding operating pressures and temperatures.

The accelerometer measurements in piping I referred to earlier were for
the pulverized coal flow distribution pipes in coal-fired boilers, not
nuclear plants. These are fairly low pressure but high air flow volume
pipes and the air is both for coal transport and is also a major
fraction of combustion air. Since it isn't liquid fluid flow and is
blown not pumped, cavitation isn't an issue there. The turbulence noise
here is simply a byproduct of the transport system that we were using w/
the characteristics that fluid transport/flow isn't stochastic but
chaotic to find information regarding coal and air flow rates buried in
that ultrasonic signal we could pick up via the accelerometer. It had
the major advantage of being non-invasive as coal dust is extremely
abrasive so it's a major hassle to try to keep instrumentation alive
that can survive inside a pipe. Being as how there is no free lunch,
the counter problem was that the processing was quite intensive.

Back to your question regarding flow noise and measurements in nuclear
plants -- in general, the answer is "yes, stuff like that is done" and
is done routinely as you're familiar with for preventive maintenance and
other various mechanical systems. If you've worked in the area much at
all you've probably come across my last employer that I mentioned above,
CSI (Computational Systems, Inc) in Knoxville, TN, now a subsidiary of
Emerson Electric in the Rosemount catalog of instrumentation.

As for other similar measurements in reactors, the secondary piping and
so on wasn't particularly my area of expertise. I'll note, however,
though, that other than the reactor itself, the rest of the plant is
really no different than are the other large generation plants in
pressures and/or flow; in fact, super-critical fossil boilers run at
much higher pressures and temperatures than do pressurized water
reactors. The containment of such fluids was pretty much routine long
before commercial nuclear power came along.

There is routine monitoring of primary reactor coolant pumps for such
problems as you would expect. As a complete sidelight, interestingly,
the reason the TMI accident progressed to the point it did was that the
operators misinterpreted some pressure/temperature data and fearing
cavitation in the RCPs turned them off, thus cutting off forced
circulation in the core for several hours. The accident sequence was
brought under control and began to be stabilized when the SRO of the
subsequent shift recognized the issue and had the pumps restarted as
well as the HPI (high pressure injection) system and recovered the core
and reestablished core cooling. If the first crew had simply kept their
hands in their pockets and let the safety systems and control systems
"do their thing" there would have been no event other than a reactor
trip and a manual reset of the PORVs and the plant would have gone back
to normal operation in a week or so after some routine maintenance. A
case where an event can be turned into a major one by a combination of
mistakes after a mechanical failure (which wasn't terribly uncommon nor
is unexpected, particularly, for a PORV to not automatically reclose
which not being manually closed after it failed to reseat and not being
recognized was open was the source of the primary coolant loss).

Some of the things that are unique to nuclear units that are done to
monitor for early signs of failure or mechanical problems in the reactor
include "loose parts monitors" and "neutron noise analysis". The first
of these uses a group of accelerometers mounted in various places on the
reactor vessel and primary coolant piping and "listen" for impact noises
that could be the result of some reactor internals failure or similar.
They are tied into systems that use a triangulation method on time of
arrival for impacts to try to localize where within the plant any
particular noise might actually be coming from. Did do the software for
a prototype one of these systems for TVA way back when, too...just after
the REMOTEC work. Unfortunately, then was about the time TVA was
pulling back so only the one prototype was ever finished and by the time
things picked up again, technology (and I) had moved on...

"Neutron noise" is a very interesting and intellectually and
computationally challenging area -- it uses the small fluctuations in
the signal of the excore neutron detectors and signal processing to
infer things about reactor internals such as the movement of the core
inner liner or fuel assembly vibrations. As the inner barrel moves
slightly (on order of tens of mils), the change in water density owing
the that slight change in thickness is discernible in a very small
fluctuation in the neutron flux at the detector. By monitoring this in
time, if something were to happen to one of the studs that holds the
barrel in place, one could detect a larger amplitude of barrel motion
(this has happened at at least on reactor I'm aware of). By knowing
this before either the next outage or larger damage became apparent, one
can monitor the situation and determine when or if an early shutdown
would be required.

There are any number of other monitoring systems and instrumentation
besides for almost all systems and certainly for those that are directly
safety related.

Again, undoubtedly, far more than one might care about in ahr...

--
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On 1/1/2011 4:38 PM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

I have some understanding of the work you've been involved in enough
to know how important it is to the safety of nuclear plants especially
when it comes to predicting failure of the infrastructure. Tell me if
I'm wrong in assuming that some of the testing involves actually sort
of listening to the pipes to ascertain the condition? A good pipe has
a particular (sound) or characteristic reaction to fluid flow when it's
in good shape? I've worked with vibration sensors to monitor bearings
in chiller plants before so the early signs of failure could be
detected and equipment could be shut down and repaired before a failure
could cause catastrophic damage. I'm also wondering about the types of
failure that could be caused by high pressure, high velocity fluid flow
in pipes in a plant that's running 24/7? You mention turbulence so I
guess cavitation would be another concern? Do the high frequency
vibrations cause stress fractures in the metal of the pipes, flanges
and welds?

TDD


That particular work wasn't terribly related to each other -- the
pressure vessel samples are chunks of the reactor vessel material that
are placed in special specimen holders designed into the vessels on
initial installation and then removed after a specified set of intervals
and tested. The primary test for these samples is for ductility (testing
against radiation-induced embrittlement) to, as you inferred correctly,
determine that the vessel and other high pressure components have not
undergone excessive degradation so as to still be capable of
withstanding operating pressures and temperatures.

The accelerometer measurements in piping I referred to earlier were for
the pulverized coal flow distribution pipes in coal-fired boilers, not
nuclear plants. These are fairly low pressure but high air flow volume
pipes and the air is both for coal transport and is also a major
fraction of combustion air. Since it isn't liquid fluid flow and is
blown not pumped, cavitation isn't an issue there. The turbulence noise
here is simply a byproduct of the transport system that we were using w/
the characteristics that fluid transport/flow isn't stochastic but
chaotic to find information regarding coal and air flow rates buried in
that ultrasonic signal we could pick up via the accelerometer. It had
the major advantage of being non-invasive as coal dust is extremely
abrasive so it's a major hassle to try to keep instrumentation alive
that can survive inside a pipe. Being as how there is no free lunch, the
counter problem was that the processing was quite intensive.

Back to your question regarding flow noise and measurements in nuclear
plants -- in general, the answer is "yes, stuff like that is done" and
is done routinely as you're familiar with for preventive maintenance and
other various mechanical systems. If you've worked in the area much at
all you've probably come across my last employer that I mentioned above,
CSI (Computational Systems, Inc) in Knoxville, TN, now a subsidiary of
Emerson Electric in the Rosemount catalog of instrumentation.

As for other similar measurements in reactors, the secondary piping and
so on wasn't particularly my area of expertise. I'll note, however,
though, that other than the reactor itself, the rest of the plant is
really no different than are the other large generation plants in
pressures and/or flow; in fact, super-critical fossil boilers run at
much higher pressures and temperatures than do pressurized water
reactors. The containment of such fluids was pretty much routine long
before commercial nuclear power came along.

There is routine monitoring of primary reactor coolant pumps for such
problems as you would expect. As a complete sidelight, interestingly,
the reason the TMI accident progressed to the point it did was that the
operators misinterpreted some pressure/temperature data and fearing
cavitation in the RCPs turned them off, thus cutting off forced
circulation in the core for several hours. The accident sequence was
brought under control and began to be stabilized when the SRO of the
subsequent shift recognized the issue and had the pumps restarted as
well as the HPI (high pressure injection) system and recovered the core
and reestablished core cooling. If the first crew had simply kept their
hands in their pockets and let the safety systems and control systems
"do their thing" there would have been no event other than a reactor
trip and a manual reset of the PORVs and the plant would have gone back
to normal operation in a week or so after some routine maintenance. A
case where an event can be turned into a major one by a combination of
mistakes after a mechanical failure (which wasn't terribly uncommon nor
is unexpected, particularly, for a PORV to not automatically reclose
which not being manually closed after it failed to reseat and not being
recognized was open was the source of the primary coolant loss).

Some of the things that are unique to nuclear units that are done to
monitor for early signs of failure or mechanical problems in the reactor
include "loose parts monitors" and "neutron noise analysis". The first
of these uses a group of accelerometers mounted in various places on the
reactor vessel and primary coolant piping and "listen" for impact noises
that could be the result of some reactor internals failure or similar.
They are tied into systems that use a triangulation method on time of
arrival for impacts to try to localize where within the plant any
particular noise might actually be coming from. Did do the software for
a prototype one of these systems for TVA way back when, too...just after
the REMOTEC work. Unfortunately, then was about the time TVA was pulling
back so only the one prototype was ever finished and by the time things
picked up again, technology (and I) had moved on...

"Neutron noise" is a very interesting and intellectually and
computationally challenging area -- it uses the small fluctuations in
the signal of the excore neutron detectors and signal processing to
infer things about reactor internals such as the movement of the core
inner liner or fuel assembly vibrations. As the inner barrel moves
slightly (on order of tens of mils), the change in water density owing
the that slight change in thickness is discernible in a very small
fluctuation in the neutron flux at the detector. By monitoring this in
time, if something were to happen to one of the studs that holds the
barrel in place, one could detect a larger amplitude of barrel motion
(this has happened at at least on reactor I'm aware of). By knowing this
before either the next outage or larger damage became apparent, one can
monitor the situation and determine when or if an early shutdown would
be required.

There are any number of other monitoring systems and instrumentation
besides for almost all systems and certainly for those that are directly
safety related.

Again, undoubtedly, far more than one might care about in ahr...

--


I think I understand about the pulverized coal. Ultrasonic transducers
are used to measure the flow of material through the pipes because a
paddle wheel would quickly disintegrate? Rereading what you wrote it
seems that you were listening for a specific resonance or you were
trying to separate the sound of the airflow from the noise of the flow
of the pulverized coal mixed with it. Is that what all the processing
power is required for? It kind of reminds me of what modern military
sonar systems do. Heck, I find everything interesting, back in the last
century BI, "Before Internet", I spent a lot of time in libraries
reading every sort of engineering, scientific or medical journal I could
get my hands on. Years ago, there was a Star Trek convention in
Huntsville, Alabama hosted by NASA engineers and instead of looking for
Mr. Spock, I was hanging out with the engineers looking at and
discussing all the neat stuff they had on display like cross sections of
the Space Shuttle fuel tank showing the different layers in its
construction. Don't worry about the subject matter, I find it all
interesting, besides, it will make me go searching The Web for more
information. :-)

TDD
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The Daring Dufas wrote:
....

I think I understand about the pulverized coal. Ultrasonic transducers
are used to measure the flow of material through the pipes because a
paddle wheel would quickly disintegrate? Rereading what you wrote it
seems that you were listening for a specific resonance or you were
trying to separate the sound of the airflow from the noise of the flow
of the pulverized coal mixed with it. Is that what all the processing
power is required for? It kind of reminds me of what modern military
sonar systems do. ...


Anything like a paddle wheel wouldn't make it 5 minutes.

In an early stage of the work, I tried a hardened steel drill rod as a
sounding rod in one small-scale test facility. The test duration was
only for a couple of days and it came out oval in cross-section in even
that short a time frame with a good third of the frontal surface gone.
The utilities are very reluctant to insert stuff into the coal pipes
that could fail and either block the flow in a pipe w/ a resultant high
pressure event back at the pulverizer or block a burner nozzle in the
furnace and cause an event there. The air:fuel mixture is right at the
limits and so it's a real danger of fire or explosion if something goes
wrong outside the boiler or in a coal pipe. Needless to say, an open
14" pipe w/ a burn out isn't a desirable event... In at least few
cases where they have happened the flame has actually melted the side of
a boiler containment and ended up w/ an entire boiler open. That wreaks
havoc in a plant _very_ quickly.

As far as more explanation of exactly what the computations are,
unfortunately, the actual technique is proprietary but it does not look
at the signal in a conventional sense at all; it is not, as I've stated,
based on frequency components per se, but on the fact that turbulent
flow is chaotic, not random. It doesn't repeat exactly, but there are
certain patterns and we have identified some 30 scale-invariant measures
that can be calculated from the broadband ultrasonic signal as picked up
by a passive accelerometer as minute vibrations transmitted through the
pipe wall. We do not introduce any additional energy into the pipe at
all as does a classic ultrasonic detector.

There were some other research teams looking at other techniques such as
microwave and/or more approximating conventional ultrasonics but our
technique was/is unique.

--


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On 1/1/2011 8:30 PM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

I think I understand about the pulverized coal. Ultrasonic transducers
are used to measure the flow of material through the pipes because a
paddle wheel would quickly disintegrate? Rereading what you wrote it
seems that you were listening for a specific resonance or you were
trying to separate the sound of the airflow from the noise of the flow
of the pulverized coal mixed with it. Is that what all the processing
power is required for? It kind of reminds me of what modern military
sonar systems do. ...


Anything like a paddle wheel wouldn't make it 5 minutes.

In an early stage of the work, I tried a hardened steel drill rod as a
sounding rod in one small-scale test facility. The test duration was
only for a couple of days and it came out oval in cross-section in even
that short a time frame with a good third of the frontal surface gone.
The utilities are very reluctant to insert stuff into the coal pipes
that could fail and either block the flow in a pipe w/ a resultant high
pressure event back at the pulverizer or block a burner nozzle in the
furnace and cause an event there. The air:fuel mixture is right at the
limits and so it's a real danger of fire or explosion if something goes
wrong outside the boiler or in a coal pipe. Needless to say, an open 14"
pipe w/ a burn out isn't a desirable event... In at least few cases
where they have happened the flame has actually melted the side of a
boiler containment and ended up w/ an entire boiler open. That wreaks
havoc in a plant _very_ quickly.

As far as more explanation of exactly what the computations are,
unfortunately, the actual technique is proprietary but it does not look
at the signal in a conventional sense at all; it is not, as I've stated,
based on frequency components per se, but on the fact that turbulent
flow is chaotic, not random. It doesn't repeat exactly, but there are
certain patterns and we have identified some 30 scale-invariant measures
that can be calculated from the broadband ultrasonic signal as picked up
by a passive accelerometer as minute vibrations transmitted through the
pipe wall. We do not introduce any additional energy into the pipe at
all as does a classic ultrasonic detector.

There were some other research teams looking at other techniques such as
microwave and/or more approximating conventional ultrasonics but our
technique was/is unique.

--



In other words your sensors were passive listening devices not active
like the ultrasonic flow sensors I'm familiar with? I'm guessing you
were looking for a semblance of a pattern in the white noise of the
chaos. Am I getting warmer? :-)

TDD


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The Daring Dufas wrote:
....

In other words your sensors were passive listening devices not active
like the ultrasonic flow sensors I'm familiar with?


Yes, as I said they were/are simply high frequency (75 kHz resonance)
commercially available accelerometers...

... I'm guessing you
were looking for a semblance of a pattern in the white noise of the
chaos. Am I getting warmer? :-)


Except white noise implies a stochastic process whereas a chaotic
process, while not strictly repeatable, is not stochastic. Hence,
typical statistical measures used for such processes are not effective
and the measures used in the analysis are, as mentioned, nonlinear and
then combined in other nonlinear ways for prediction. (I know, that's a
lot of mumbo-jumbo unless one already knows the answer, but as I say,
the specifics are proprietary so can't really reveal much more about the
details).

Suffice it to say that there is information buried in the audible and
supersonic noise of the flow and that can be related to the actual air
and coal flow rates in a given pipe over a range of operating conditions
and air:fuel ratios and flow rates by a set of specific operations on
the recorded waveform. One important feature of these computations is
that they all produce quantities that are independent of the actual
magnitude of the signal itself (iow, they're self-normalizing). This is
a key feature in that it means that simply a level change from a
location difference doesn't affect a given signature. It also means, of
course, that simple measures such as the mean aren't what is giving the
actual correlations. But, from those correlations a prediction of
flow is possible for a given new set of measures computed for the same
pipe from any set of operating conditions and this has been shown to be
valid over a range of operating conditions and at various power plants
of differing sizes and styles and manufacturer (albeit the correlations
are at least to this point plant-specific, the measures used in those
are for the most part the same ones of of the total set of those
identified as candidates).

--
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On 1/1/2011 11:26 PM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

In other words your sensors were passive listening devices not active
like the ultrasonic flow sensors I'm familiar with?


Yes, as I said they were/are simply high frequency (75 kHz resonance)
commercially available accelerometers...

... I'm guessing you
were looking for a semblance of a pattern in the white noise of the
chaos. Am I getting warmer? :-)


Except white noise implies a stochastic process whereas a chaotic
process, while not strictly repeatable, is not stochastic. Hence,
typical statistical measures used for such processes are not effective
and the measures used in the analysis are, as mentioned, nonlinear and
then combined in other nonlinear ways for prediction. (I know, that's a
lot of mumbo-jumbo unless one already knows the answer, but as I say,
the specifics are proprietary so can't really reveal much more about the
details).

Suffice it to say that there is information buried in the audible and
supersonic noise of the flow and that can be related to the actual air
and coal flow rates in a given pipe over a range of operating conditions
and air:fuel ratios and flow rates by a set of specific operations on
the recorded waveform. One important feature of these computations is
that they all produce quantities that are independent of the actual
magnitude of the signal itself (iow, they're self-normalizing). This is
a key feature in that it means that simply a level change from a
location difference doesn't affect a given signature. It also means, of
course, that simple measures such as the mean aren't what is giving the
actual correlations. But, from those correlations a prediction of
flow is possible for a given new set of measures computed for the same
pipe from any set of operating conditions and this has been shown to be
valid over a range of operating conditions and at various power plants
of differing sizes and styles and manufacturer (albeit the correlations
are at least to this point plant-specific, the measures used in those
are for the most part the same ones of of the total set of those
identified as candidates).

--


The only problem I'm having is grokking the difference between
stochastic and chaotic. I suppose there must be a enough difference
between random and disorderly for your system to work. I love this kind
of stuff. :-)

TDD
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The Daring Dufas wrote:
....

The only problem I'm having is grokking the difference between
stochastic and chaotic. I suppose there must be a enough difference
between random and disorderly for your system to work. I love this kind
of stuff. :-)


Indeed, there is a fundamental difference.

The beginning of the following link is on the line of the way I used to
try present it to the bleary-eyed utility guys who really only wanted to
know enough as to whether they thought it (the R&D project; EPRI is a
utility self-funded research organization so we had to have buy-in from
the member utilities to continue to have the resources to support the
effort) made enough sense to continue or not and like you, wanted at
least a grasp of the concept.

http://www.math.tamu.edu/~mpilant/math614/chaos_vs_random.pdf

I'd not read the Wikipedia entry on chaos; so often they're not of much
help so did--it's not terrible reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

For a non-technical read if you're interested in such things, I'd recommend

_Chaos: Making a New Science_ by James Gleick

It's the best written of several of the popular expositions imo for a
general overview of chaotic systems in natural processes.

For more esoteric approach, Benoit Mandelbrot is a stretch but two of
his at least summarized rather than actual papers include
_The_Fractal_Geometry_of_Nature_ and
_Fractals_and_Chaos:_The_Mandelbrot_Set_ and_Beyond_

Of course, there's an almost unlimited literature on turbulent flow but
other than how it's touched upon in some of the above as a field I don't
know of any popularization of the subject itself. The pneumatic
transport of solids is, of course, a subset within it with another whole
literature/history...

None of those will explain the processing we're doing; but they are an
interesting introduction into a whole (relatively) new way of looking at
much of the physical world.

--
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On 1/2/2011 9:23 AM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

The only problem I'm having is grokking the difference between
stochastic and chaotic. I suppose there must be a enough difference
between random and disorderly for your system to work. I love this
kind of stuff. :-)


Indeed, there is a fundamental difference.

The beginning of the following link is on the line of the way I used to
try present it to the bleary-eyed utility guys who really only wanted to
know enough as to whether they thought it (the R&D project; EPRI is a
utility self-funded research organization so we had to have buy-in from
the member utilities to continue to have the resources to support the
effort) made enough sense to continue or not and like you, wanted at
least a grasp of the concept.

http://www.math.tamu.edu/~mpilant/math614/chaos_vs_random.pdf

I'd not read the Wikipedia entry on chaos; so often they're not of much
help so did--it's not terrible reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

For a non-technical read if you're interested in such things, I'd recommend

_Chaos: Making a New Science_ by James Gleick

It's the best written of several of the popular expositions imo for a
general overview of chaotic systems in natural processes.

For more esoteric approach, Benoit Mandelbrot is a stretch but two of
his at least summarized rather than actual papers include
_The_Fractal_Geometry_of_Nature_ and
_Fractals_and_Chaos:_The_Mandelbrot_Set_ and_Beyond_

Of course, there's an almost unlimited literature on turbulent flow but
other than how it's touched upon in some of the above as a field I don't
know of any popularization of the subject itself. The pneumatic
transport of solids is, of course, a subset within it with another whole
literature/history...

None of those will explain the processing we're doing; but they are an
interesting introduction into a whole (relatively) new way of looking at
much of the physical world.

--


Thanks for the links, I may comprehend it yet. :-)

TDD
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dpb dpb is offline
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The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 1/2/2011 9:23 AM, dpb wrote:

....

None of those will explain the processing we're doing; ...


But the validity of the processing inherently requires that the
underlying process be chaotic, not stochastic; it (the method) is simply
a way of making approximating functions that are indirectly related to
things like the Lyapanov numbers, etc., that can be measured and
computed in sufficient quantity and speed to be the basis of an instrument.


Thanks for the links, I may comprehend it yet. :-)

....

It is indeed a fascinating field w/ almost as many bizarre features as
string theory and higher dimensions.

Enjoy...

--
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