[bg;EN] Като нещо се случи *** When Something Hits

„Чак като нещо се случи, глупецът тогава го вижда.“

(Омир)

Сигурно сте чували:

„Очаквай неочакваното.“

Действителният смисъл на това е:

Помнете, че каквото и да очаквате,

напълно възможно е да пропускате нещо,

затова не се учудвайте много, ако то се случи.

_________

Цитатът в началото са думи на Ахил към Еней на бойното поле, преди които Ахил казва: „Търся Хектор, не тебе, бъди разумен и се махни от пътят ми, да не те махна аз“.

***

"Even a fool sees something when it hits him."

(Homer)

You have surely heard:

"Expect the unexpected."

The actual meaning of this is:

Remember that no matter what you expect,

it is quite possible that you are missing something,

so don't be too surprised if that happens.

_________

The quote in the beginning are words spoken by Achilles to Aeneas on the battlefield just after Achilles says, "I am looking for Hector, not for you, be smart and get out of my way before I remove you".

[EN] A Stylish Picture

Picture from Facebook group At the Controls.

IBM 702.

Early 1950s, first production installation: 1955.

[bg;EN] Musica longa, vita brevis

Рейчъл Флауерс, сляпа пианистка и протеже на Кийт Емерсон, се разплаква на пианото на концерт в негова памет.

<https://youtu.be/Zb7G_K5iRBk>

_________

Кийт Емерсон, пианист и композитор, е най-известен с участието си в триото Емерсон, Лейк и Палмер (ELP), които свиреха прогресивен рок.

***

Rachel Flowers, a blind pianist and a protège of Keith Emerson's, cries at the piano at a concert in his memory.

<https://youtu.be/Zb7G_K5iRBk>

_________

Keith Emerson, pianist and composer, is best known for being a member of progressive rock trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP).

[EN] Queen Forever

Picture by Koh Hasebe, 1975; distributed by Elektra Records; via Wikipedia

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote in Good Omens that any cassette tape left for a sufficiently long time in a car's glove compartment turns into a recording of Queen.

I am a witness of that.

At home, years ago, there was a cassette tape player left on a table for who knows how long, nearly forgotten, but plugged in. One day the cat walked over it, before my eyes. She stepped on the play button.

And played... More of That Jazz.

Queen, the Jazz album, 1978.

Written and sung by the drummer, Roger Taylor.

If you'd like to listen to it again:

<https://youtu.be/-vcOwUT4v5U>.

[bg;EN] "Historia magistra vitae"

Снимка: Наполеон Сарони чрез Уикипедия.

Picture: Napoleon Sarony via Wikipedia.

„Историята е учителка на живота.“

Когато се изучават войни, трябва, преди всичко, и за много войни единствено:

Първо. Да се учи броят на убитите и ранените (и от двете страни).

Второ. Да се учи стойността на разрушеното (и от двете страни).

Трето. Да се учи цената на въоръжаването (и за двете страни).

Разбира се, наивно е да се очаква, че би станало.

Освен това ще трябва да се прави в целият свят и да се смени поне едно поколение, преди да има някакъв ефект.

В едно изречение:

„Днес тук има много момчета, които гледат на войната все като слава, но, момчета, тя е все ад.“

(Генерал Шерман)

_________

Войната е пример и за дилемата на затворникът.

Най-добре е, ако и двете страни гледат на войната като ад.

Но ако за едната страна войната е слава, то и другата страна трябва да вярва в това, за да не бъде унищожена.

***

"History is life's teacher."

When teaching about wars, what must be taught before all and, for many wars, solely, is:

First. The number of killed and wounded (on both sides).

Second. The cost of destruction (on both sides).

Third. The price of armament (for both sides).

Of course, it is naive to expect that this will happen.

Besides, it will have to be done worldwide and it will take at least a generation change before it has any effect.

In a single sentence:

"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell."

(General Sherman)

_________

War is yet another example of a prisoner's dilemma.

It's best if both sides believe that war is hell.

But if one side believes that war is glory, the other side had better believe that as well, lest it be destroyed.

[EN] Physical ≠ Virtual

hardware, noun, uncountable

That part of a computer system which can be kicked.

Or dealt with even more decisively:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And plunged it deep into the VAX.

Don't you envy people who

Do the things you want to do!

(Traditional)

_________

As they used to say:

Nothing sucks like a VAX.

This has two meanings, since a vacuum cleaner was once advertised with it (the latter as a variation of an old Electrolux slogan, where the Swedes were apparently well aware of the meanings of the verb).

The Book of Knowledge about the DEC VAX:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX>

and about the vacuum cleaner and the slogan:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vax_%28brand%29>.

[EN] Thou Shalt Get Scientists, Though Thou Be None

Thesis: Shakespeare begat several sciences and a psychological condition.

If "though this be madness, yet there is method in't" is the beginning of chaos theory (thus spoke a professor of sociology),

then "the winter of our discontent turned into glorious summer" is the beginning of climatology,

"till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane" is the beginning of ecology,

and "wherefore art thou Romeo" is the beginning of semiotics.

Finally, "rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of" is the beginning of softwareupgradophobia...

_________

The title of this post is perhaps a little obscure.

After the Witches tell Macbeth he would be king, one of them tells Banquo (his companion): "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none." (get is short for beget here).

[EN] The 'Net on a Page

Picture from Facebook group At the Controls.

There was a time when a map of the whole 'Net could fit on a page.

The ARPANET in 1977; PDP-10 hosts in yellow.

[bg;EN] Старо злато *** Old Gold

Снимка: Регионален исторически музей Варна.

Picture: Varna Museum of History.

Украсена със злато керамична паница, Пето хилядолетие пр.Хр., Варненски енеолитен некропол, гроб 4.

Праисторическа култура Варна.

Най-старите златни предмети в света.

Иван Иванов, откривател и ръководител на археологическите разкопки (1970-те години).

_________

(енеолит = халколит = каменно-медна епоха)

***

Gold-decorated ceramic dish, Fifth Millennium B.C., Varna Eneolithic Necropolis, burial 4.

Varna prehistoric culture, Balkan Peninsula, South-East Europe.

Oldest gold artefacts in the world.

Ivan Ivanov, discoverer and lead archaeologist of the excavations (1970s).

_________

(Eneolithic = Chalcolithic = Copper Age)

[EN] Bill Gosper in His Habitat

Picture and text from Facebook group At the Controls.

This 1970 photo shows Bill Gosper using the MIT AI Lab's PDP-6 and DEC 340 vector display during the night to hack John Horton Conway's Game of Life. The diagonal dots streaking across the screen are gliders created by several "Gosper's Glider Guns".

[EN] HAKMEM 174 and LLM

HAKMEM ITEM 174 (Gosper, Nelson)

(1 of 4) The question:

Try posing it to your favorite LLM, perhaps like this:

This is a question about computer programming and internal computer representation of numbers: how to find a positive number whose 64-bit IEEE 754 floating-point representation has the same bits as its representation as a 64-bit machine integer?

(2 of 4) The number:

Quite easy to find it with a computer program (as opposed to proving uniqueness, which doesn't seem quite trivial, though it doesn't seem hard, either).

On little-endian x86_64, the 64-bit integer value is 4886674138783273204 (for 32 bits, 1318926965).

(With the relevant facets of the PDP-10 36-bit floating-point format mimicked by a simple throwaway program, the HAKMEM result is of course easily reproduced as well.)

NB: for the purpose of demonstrating uniqueness, 64 bits are out of the reach of brute force. I haven't calculated whether brute force would have worked on the PDP-10.

_________

This item is included in the HAKMEM sample in the Jargon File: <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/HAKMEM.html>.

See also a HAKMEM facsimile e.g. at <https://w3.pppl.gov/~hammett/work/2009/AIM-239-ocr.pdf>.

(3 of 4) An LLM's answer:

Google's product, for example, apparently "understood" the problem, because its response included:

The Goal:

We want to find a positive number that, when represented in both formats, results in the same bit pattern. This means the exponent and mantissa in the floating-point representation must be such that they effectively "mirror" the integer representation.

But I couldn't make heads or tails of the approach presented after that, which did not seem to provide an adequate answer; I reproduce here just the last line:

...

Number = (2^52 - 1) * 2^63

Needless to clarify: this is the 115-bit number 41538374868278611804871933778984960 (hexadecimal 7FFFFFFFFFFFF8000000000000000) and when it is represented as a 64-bit floating-point number, its bits are 5125096375947624446, i.e. this number is most definitely not the solution.

_________

(I guess a full solution or analysis has not been published on the Internet; I found, for example, an incorrect claim that such a number does not exist in 32 bits.)

(4 of 4) General remark:

I am inclined to believe the claims that today's LLMs have reached the limits of their capabilities (but not the limits of their usefulness, of course).

Naturally, the billion-dollar questions are what the next breakthrough will be, when, and whether there will be another AI winter before that.

[EN] Supercomputer Hardware Support Toolbox

Picture and text verbatim from Facebook group At the Controls.

(Just think about the equivalent in software support.)

The Lawrence Livermore National lab resident supercomputer field engineer (Mr Contento) had this toolbox for when the [CDC] 7600 broke down, which was about once a day, sometimes more! Items included:

* bag of 6 metal open rectangles with alligator clip on each end.

* yellow plastic ruler

* bag of small tools: screwdriver, picks, probes, brush, file

* 2 boxes of small blue tubes with a piece of metal in the middle

* hand drill

* a bag with a lock and two metal objects

* Wire wrap wires - some blue and some white.

* a bag containing a connector with twisted pairs of wire wrap wires connected and more white and blue wire wrap wires

* two cooling pipe connectors

* a bag of metal rods, some with plastic tube attached at one end, and flat metal rectangles. A label on one rode says "Do not use" The label on another says "153-7600 PIN STRAIGHTNER"

* a bag with

smaller bag with 10 wire crimp connectors

a round box labeled 01530400

a small tube labeled "Bendix Besley H. S. Steel Drills"and various numbers

a small plastic box labeled ""Razor Blades 6" containing 4 razor blades

a small plastic box labeled "5-1-78. solder sleves, large, 15"

a small plastic box labeled "100 Pins, 113-8100"

a small plastic box labeled "9-3-81, 7, DRILL CONECTOR REPAIR, 200-6700

* a bag containing

two drill bit chucks

third drill bit chuck in a plastic bag labeled 0152-7100"

the upper part of a drill bit chuck

two boxes of drill bits. One has a label "Cle-Forge High Speed, Straight Shank Drills, Set No. 420-88, 2301-8111, Size 61 thru 80"

* a bag containing

a bag of 6 connectors labeled "201-2100, 6"

6 loose connectors

a small bag of brass shims labeled "SHIMS, 25 X 375"

a bag of brass shims labeled "152-2800, 24"

a bag labeled "Buzzer Tipis"

a bag of 4 connectors labeled "152-1700, 3"

* a bag of three test probes. One is labeled "0219-9200, CONTINUITY"

[bg;EN] Кому ръкопляскаме? *** Whom Do We Applaud?

Picture credit: Giovanni Boldini via Wikipedia

Когато дойде време за ръкопляскания на края на концерт, би трябвало да изнасят най-отпред портрет на композитора (освен ако не дирижира).

Едно 150-годишно произведение:

„Покой вечен дай им, Господи.“

<https://youtu.be/eaebqmzm0RA>

Николай Гяуров, 1967:

<https://youtu.be/4xD6H7mYNp4>

***

When the time for applause comes at the end of a concert, they should bring out to the front a portrait of the composer (if not conducting).

A 150-year-old work:

"Rest eternal give them, O Lord."

<https://youtu.be/eaebqmzm0RA>

Nikolai Ghiaurov, 1967:

<https://youtu.be/4xD6H7mYNp4>

[bg/ru] Любимец на музата, но не на самодържеца

Изображение: Orest Kiprensky чрез Wikipedia

Не сме всички като Евгений Онегин:

„Везде поспеть не мудрено.“

(Онегин бил канен поне на две места всяка вечер и за него не било трудно да отиде навсякъде, а ние често успяваме само на едно.)

_________

„Онегин, добрый мой приятель,

Родился на брегах Невы.

Там, может быть, родились Вы

Или блистали, мой читатель.

Там некогда гулял и я.

Но вреден Север для меня.

_________

Писано в Бессарабии. [бел. авт.]“

(Където Пушкин е бил заточен за свободомислие; по сегашните мерки, леко се е отървал.)

_________

„У Пушкина жила, не выходя.“

(Музата, както пее Высоцкий.)

[EN] How Many Generations?

Social changes need many generations, as is well known.

To illustrate, here is a conversation that happened in Italy (some thirty years ago).

Italian:

"Don't talk to me about Pisans, they are unrefined peasants."

Foreigner:

"Why is that?"

Italian:

"There was a war, Pisa lost, its population was exterminated, and Pisa's current population are descendants of peasants from the surrounding villages."

Foreigner:

"Oh... And when was that?"

Italian:

"In the 14th century."

[EN] LLM "Knows" about `getpid'

Picture credit: Michelet B via Wikipedia.

Beware of the spoiler after the asterisks below, if you want to think about the answer first.

A process that retrieves and handles a large volume of data from a database, while making millions of calls to `read' and `write', also calls `getpid' a few million times interspersed with the former: why?

The program is written in Python and runs on Linux.

Embarrassingly I couldn't figure that out (and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on that), so I asked LLM, to test it, too.

Its answer was quite satisfactory.

*

*

*

Answer (shortened):

A program or library that does or is prepared to do multiprocessing may need the pids of its processes or threads in order to manage mutual exclusion.

[EN;bg] November 11 before May 9 *** Единадесети ноември преди Девети май

Freiheit was censored, so Freude was substituted.

To remember how it is spelled, I use this mnemonic:

France — European Union — Germany: FR-EU-DE.

_________

Glossary: freedom; joy.

Just the fourth movement:

<https://youtu.be/hdWyYn0E4Ys>

_________

My grandfather was a prisoner of war in World War I.

_________

Bulgaria, Germany, and Hungary are the three countries that lost both world wars.

***

Цензурата забранила „Freiheit“ и тя била заменена с „Freude“.

Помагам си да запомня как се пише чрез:

Франция — Европейски съюз — Германия: FR-EU-DE.

_________

Речник: свобода; радост.

Само четвъртата част:

<https://youtu.be/hdWyYn0E4Ys>

_________

Дядо ми е бил военнопленник през Първата световна война.

_________

България, Германия и Унгария са трите страни, които са изгубили и двете световни войни.

[bg] Софийски графити

(Около 2020 година; оградата на 120-то училище на десният бряг на Перловската река малко нагоре от улица Милин камък; забележете зеленото V върху F.)

(Около 2022 година; трамвайната спирка на улица Вишнева под Семинарията.)

За следващите нямам снимки, уви.

„Рангелова (по география) е курва.“

(Около 1991 година; мостът на Витошка над булевард България; скобите си бяха там.)

„All watmen are bastards.“

(Около 1988 година; стената на Семинарията до тогавашната трамвайна спирка.)

„Убий човек! Един по-малко ще ти диша въздуха.“

(Около 1988 година; навес на автобусна спирка на булевард Вапцаров.)

„Егеят и Вардарот бугарски ке са.“

(Около 1990 година; стената на тунелът под НДК.

Ядранот не беше споменат.)

„Truth remains.“

(Около 2010 година; стената на главната сграда на Софийският университет.)

[EN] Once Upon a Time in the Golden Age

Picture via Facebook group At the Controls.

Jet propulsion engineer Emma Davis

working with MATH-MATIC by Grace Hopper

to model gas flow in a turbofan aircraft engine.

Computer:

UNIVAC II by Sperry Rand (1959);

Lockheed Aircraft Company, Marietta, Georgia 1960s.

Word size: 72 bits (twelve 6-bit characters).

Clock rate: 2.25 MHz.

Speed: 3000 operations per second.

Hardware: 5,200 vacuum tubes consuming 190 kW, 1,200 transistors, 18,000 crystal diodes.

Memory: 184,000 bits, ferrite core (tenfold improvement over the mercury delay-line tanks of the previous model).

Further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Corporation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATH-MATIC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressible_flow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_models_for_CFD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_TF33

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-141_Starlifter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNISERVO_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_58

[EN] Who Is Clever, Actually?

犬道

Finally I understand why dogs are our best friends:

dogs don't talk nonsense.

Canis sapiens.

_________

I took the liberty of constructing the Japanese expression above: inu-do, "the way of the dog", by analogy to bushi-do, "the way of the warrior".

I hear that the dogs of this breed are called "samurai dogs", because they are very faithful and trustworthy.

(The proper name of the breed photographed above, shiba-inu (柴犬), means "brushwood dog": they flush game out of undergrowth for hunters.)

[EN] Shakespeare Hits Bull's Eyes Again

"So are they all, all honourable men."

And women.

And nobody is a demagogue, none whosoever, not then, not now...

The first one is performed by Brando twenty years before Don Vito.

<https://youtu.be/101sKhH-lMQ>

<https://youtu.be/0bi1PvXCbr8>

<https://youtu.be/P8slDtT-Hhg>

Furthermore.

Remember Hamlet's words?

"The law's delay,

the insolence of office

and the scorns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes."

As then as now.

Even more so...

[EN] "Gang Aft Agley"

Picture credit: Andy Morffew via Wikipedia

"Miracles don't happen."

It is significant that Donnie won.

But the following two are even more significant:

(1) the reasons why he won;

(2) the reasons why Devi lost.

Both points would have remained even if the election had gone the other way.

_________

The Democratic party is undemocratic.

The Republican party is unrepublican.

Never mind the echoes of the Ministry of Truth...

Included in (1) is the simple fact that many people have had more than enough, even though many of them believe in the wrong savior.

Reject Gore and McCain, get Donnie and Joe...

_________

Contesting the results would merely say, loud and clear, "we are as bad as the opposition".

And 51:47 is a decisive majority.

[bg] „Кой ще цивилизува Шопско?“

— Какво можеш?

— Моем да копам.

— Какво друго?

— Моем и да не копам.

— Защо копаеш седнал?

— Яз опита̀х и легна̀л, ама не ми е удобно.

Он че ми каже той на мене дека джамо бил стъкло.

Кое си требе, оно си сака.

Оти да се ко̀сим, като че ми мине.

За пълнота, четирите класически максимума:

От София по-големо нема.

От Витоша по-високо нема.

От Искъро по-глибоко нема.

От Цариград по-далеко нема.

[EN] Same TLA, New Meaning

UTC: Universal Time, Centralized

The time at the center of the Earth.

Advantages:

Eliminates a vestige of British imperialism.

Does away nicely with leap seconds, too.

Disadvantage:

Geocentric.

[EN] Consumerism

I heard about it, and about the harm from it, for the first time in Italy in 1995.

With fresh memories of the scarcity of Soviet socialism, I didn't get it then.

I get it now.

Consumerism is a Bad Thing.

Consumerism begets pollution.

Consumerism begets garbage, both as produce and as waste.

Consumerism is a kind of greed and deserves to be declared a mortal sin.

Consumerism is a scourge.

[EN] Real-time Programming

Picture via Facebook group At the Controls.

When the Apollo 13 flight went into emergency mode, it became necessary to program the unexpected trajectory calculations to return the spacecraft under these extraordinary conditions. That was real-time programming under pressure with the hardest possible deadline!

Frances Northcutt was one of the people who did the work.

This wasn't her only achievement: see

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Northcutt>.

[bg;EN] Главните задачи на училищното образование *** The main tasks of grade school education

Да дава основни умения: четене, писане, смятане (в дълбочина: функционална, а не само повърхностна грамотност).

На предмета математика:

Да развива ума.

Не да научи учениците да решават уравнения или да преобразуват тригонометрични изрази: това са само средства за развиване на ума.

Който е с развит ум, по-трудно може да бъде излъган (хмм... cui prodest?).

На предмета литература:

Да посее семената на „разумното, доброто и вечното“, макар и те не винаги да поникват.

Не да научи учениците какво са написали изучаваните автори, хеле и да го разберат.

***

To teach essential skills: reading, writing, arithmetic (in depth: functional and not just nominal literacy).

Of the subject mathematics:

To develop the mind.

Not to train the students to solve equations or transform trigonometric expressions: these are merely means to the end goal of developing the mind.

Those with a developed mind are harder to cheat (hmm... cui prodest?).

Of the subject literature:

To sow the seeds "of reason, of the good, of the eternal", even though they do not always grow.

Not to teach the students what the authors in the curriculum wrote, never mind to understand it.