Help me to love stocks!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Uh...I think we're going to use a stunt double. But someone is going to say it...

I almost want to go back to work for a couple of weeks to put together the transition plan to migrate people to the new max hardware platform.

 

[poyet]

Don't get me started.

I know of at least one serious submerged collision that was directly related to a "magic" AI black box. I hope that wasn't yours! It'll make TH very happy to know that was the one time the Navy experimented with Macs... afterward everything reverted to MILSPEC, IBM, HP, or Sun.

Interesting contribution Nords. No it was not my AI magic box, not that it did work but because it never went into the hatch for many reasons, one being that I was upstream designing "demonstrators". After having spent days and nights for 3 years programming with my team Symbolics, TI explorers and many LISP systems (of our design i.e. Le_Lisp and not the Common, Scheme or others...) mixed with op real-time code, FORTRAN and others (target motion analysis stuff, etc.), that we had sometimes re-written, and sweating bullets to make all that work we came to two interesting situations:
1) we had identified critical bugs into the functioning of the operational systems (which we used as a starting point) but the navy had no means (or budget or will) to correct the running weapon systems on time and to budget, so software and report went to a reinforced cupboard so that no one would know of the disaster(s) potentially looming ahead. Hopefully we might not necessarily have to use these WS in those unfavorable set of conditions that we had proven to exist...
2) Sub captains working with the system to decide what would be useful to make use of into operational conditions, not really coming to terms with what the AI magic black box was doing (perhaps hopefully for them with all these Mike, Akula, LA, etc. kept asking to remove code, and remove code etc... to make things simpler, to the point where I asked myself why I had spent so much time designing a nice and working system to destroy it slowly (torture) under request.

Therefore I left and moved to something else !
End of this great (and extremely frustrating) period for me.

As an aside comment the board is lucky to get rid of me for sometime as I'll return skiing tomorrow !

 

[Nords]

1) we had identified critical bugs into the functioning of the operational systems (which we used as a starting point) but the navy had no means (or budget or will) to correct the running weapon systems on time and to budget, so software and report went to a reinforced cupboard so that no one would know of the disaster(s) potentially looming ahead. Hopefully we might not necessarily have to use these WS in those unfavorable set of conditions that we had proven to exist...
2) Sub captains working with the system to decide what would be useful to make use of into operational conditions, not really coming to terms with what the AI magic black box was doing (perhaps hopefully for them with all these Mike, Akula, LA, etc. kept asking to remove code, and remove code etc... to make things simpler, to the point where I asked myself why I had spent so much time designing a nice and working system to destroy it slowly (torture) under request.

Gosh, I can't believe I'm reading such things about the geniuses who backed Ada as the global gold standard of programming languages. In the Navy, your steps (1) & (2) are called "operational test & evaluation". Sometimes they're also called "Just in time for the deployment, aren't you the lucky guys, be sure to tell us how much you liked it in your mission report!"

We had other, more pithy names for it. Unfortunately most of them were edited out of the mission report.

You should hear what the professionals at other programming labs called the Navy's contact-management database software used by all the afloat/aviation communities. (You know it as JOTS, NTCS-A, JMCIS, GCCS-M, or whatever we're calling it in the 21st century to hide the skeletons.) I used to teach the courses that trained west-coast sailors/officers how to use their shiny brand-new systems. I was actually paid for a day of travel from San Diego up to San Luis Obispo to look a USMC flag officer and his incredulous programming staff in the eyes and say "Yes, sir, that's the way it works. As a matter of fact I do have a degree in computer science. Yes, it is a kludge. Yes, it is unreliable. Yes, it frequently locks up, falls apart, and won't reload. No sir, it doesn't like mud or sand-- it doesn't even like warm air. Yes, it's the best we have!" I went so far as to recommend that the Marines adopt a program that the Air Force was using, and then they knew that we were really screwed.

And I'm sure Bill Gates runs Microsoft better than MILSPEC, right?

 

[HFWR]

You're supposed to love stocks, just not LOVE stocks...

(Obscure and twisted reference from "The Truth About Cats and Dogs")

 

[poyet]

"Yes, sir, that's the way it works. As a matter of fact I do have a degree in computer science. Yes, it is a kludge. Yes, it is unreliable. Yes, it frequently locks up, falls apart, and won't reload. No sir, it doesn't like mud or sand-- it doesn't even like warm air. Yes, it's the best we have!" I went so far as to recommend that the Marines adopt a program that the Air Force was using, and then they knew that we were really screwed.

And I'm sure Bill Gates runs Microsoft better than MILSPEC, right?

Well, seems we had the same kind of problems trying to make a match between what computers could offer and what users expected or thought they could expect (not more in fact, but something else often, not necessarily grabbing power / weaknesses of the tool).

But, I must confess Nords, this period ended 16 years ago for me, so I tend to keep the good memories of the nice "simulators" we built on these "primitive" computer systems as compared to what is available today.

And I have thousands times more power on my PC today to run unbelievable applications like the trading automation system which took me three years to make working. But I'm still amazed, as when I was a young computer scientist, to look at the machine "doing it alone", whatever "the doing" is given the AI app you deploy.

Cheers.