I'm done with this ridiculous time vampire of a game.

[Spidery]

A keypunch was the thing used to punch a card, except that where I worked you sent a coding sheet (must be written in green) to the operators who sent you back two sets of cards. Then there was a manual device you could use to make changes or punch a new card by knowing the appropriate coding.

I guess the term "deck" comes from the original use as Hollerith cards to drive looms with each deck being like a stacked deck of cards used for a single setting of the loom.

From recollection, for small programs we used an elastic band; for larger programs the cardboard boxes in which the cards were originally delivered. If there was some special box that should have been used, I doubt the Government would buy it.

To add fun to life, the keypunches used were IBM make and the cards ended up slightly curved. The card reader was an ICL make and needed straight cards, so first you had to carefully flatten the cards.

Paper tape was more fun to work with because you edited it by splicing sections of tape together.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Symon

ORIGINAL: geofflambert
You're ancient. I started with Fortran and stacks of punch cards five inches thick to simulate a game of tic-tac-toe. [:D]

Ok. Lots of people pretend to know about the old days. This is a test. They weren't stacks, they were called decks. Why? There was a specific machine that made them, What was it called? There was a container that people carried, that identified them as geeks. What was it? What color was it? And then, once upon a time, in a place far away, you could hook up with the Dartmouth computer center using a Beehive. What was that? And how was it different? And how could you whack your Phys Prof to give you a cookie?

Now that is just plain old "crazy talk." You are not the only one who watched Dr. Who..[:D]

[crsutton]

My mother's first job in the industry was as a keypunch operator. She use to bring the discarded cards home for me to build things with. She went back to school and got her master's in Computer Science. Her original degree was in Civil Engineering but nobody was going to hire a woman in that field in the early 1960's. The computer industry being nascent did not carry the same old boy biases and was fairly open to the few women in the field.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

I'm all digital. I can count to ten. Then I get stuck. [:(]

Well, you've got 6 fingers on your left hand, 7 on your right...why stop at 10? [&:]

They are offended at being called fingers, they are claws.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Symon

ORIGINAL: geofflambert
You're ancient. I started with Fortran and stacks of punch cards five inches thick to simulate a game of tic-tac-toe. [:D]

Ok. Lots of people pretend to know about the old days. This is a test. They weren't stacks, they were called decks. Why? There was a specific machine that made them, What was it called? There was a container that people carried, that identified them as geeks. What was it? What color was it? And then, once upon a time, in a place far away, you could hook up with the Dartmouth computer center using a Beehive. What was that? And how was it different? And how could you whack your Phys Prof to give you a cookie?

I was in High School at the time. I think the thing I typed on was a sickly yellow ochre. I think it was called a compiler. No, that was what I put the "deck" of cards into. It went pthpthpthppthp etc. real fast like the actor from "The Man from Uncle" shuffling playing cards. You know, the guy playing Napoleon Solo. As I remember the punch machine had a Qwerty keyboard so I didn't have to look at it when I was typing (I got up to 120wpm on a Selectrix by the way). The equipment was all at UMSL so I had to drive there to do a job. UMSL = University of Missouri at St. Louis. I can't remember what the punch thing was called. Also I had a circular slide rule (I still have it). The compiler wasn't the thing that I fed the cards into (there was a stainless steel thing you put on top of the stack), that was just the reader; I think the compiler was a module that was about 6' high that the reader fed the info into. I've had too much beer and wine since then to remember much more. I think I learned a little COBOL but never used it. I taught myself BASIC on my first PC, namely a 64k IBM PC that I got as soon as they came out. No Apple. I had a TI-99-4a as well and a Commodore console that I could hook up to my TV set. In '76 I got a TI scientific calculator but not the kind that would accept software from something you could plug into it, I forget. Someone in my frat was making money creating programs for those. Missouri School of Mines, then known as UM Rolla.

[geofflambert]

I got unstuck in time there, I got the PC in '83? I think.

[geofflambert]

Never hooked up with Dartmouth. I'm sure she was a honey. [:'(]

[geofflambert]

I can't remember what was plugged into those calculators. There was some kind of little hopper you plugged in (I think) then you put the media in that (a little disc? I can't remember).

[geofflambert]

Don't remember the container. Why deck? Is it because they had to be in order (which they did)? I think the punch thing was in a different room but nearby the reader and I don't remember needing a container. In fact I know for sure. We put rubber bands around the "decks".

[geofflambert]

Oh, a beehive is what Marge Simpson's hairstyle is called.

[geofflambert]

I had a Physics prof at Rolla but I never whacked him and he never gave me a cookie.

[pontiouspilot]

Wow!!…all of this cause poor Chaz had a rant!! He may still have won the battle and doesn't know it. If he is the Allies and the transport convoy he sunk was loaded with troops headed somewhere important then it may have been a reasonable exchange. If he is the Japanese…yah ok pout.

On the topic of "wacking" profs I should say that those of us in the gentlemanly faculties saw that as sick and wrong!!

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
But truthfully, in this era, CV battles were a crap shoot at best. Looking at early war outcomes, getting into a CV battle generally meant both sides took a beating. This is based upon the '42 CV battles through Midway. Yes, IJ had the worst, but most unbiased assessments of each battle fought (meaning not Morison [;)] generally conclude that a few minutes here, a couple of minutes there and outcomes change dramatically. Those razor thin margins are, I beleive, well modeled in the game.

Point being, most air combat, and particularly naval air combat, had a lot of variable NOT controlled by the commanders. Weather being first, but FOW being right with it. Intel was far from perfect. Because of these two factors alone, coordination was measured in double digit minutes, not seconds like today. I think that, more than anything, is what many [younger] players struggle with. They have never been in a situation where absolute, total control was not possible. Products of the digital age, the whole concept of analog is just foreign.

Anyway, just thoughts of an analogue Neanderthal.

There is a book out in the Osprey Duel series that looks at all the CV battles of 1942. The USN doesn't stack up all that well. Strategically the USN won the day, the battles kept Port Morseby, Guadalcanal, and Midway in Allied hands, so on a strategic level the USN was victorious, but tactically, the USN essentially lost Coral Sea, the Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz.

At Coral Sea the US traded one CV sunk and another badly damaged for a small CVL sunk and one CV damaged. Both sides had very heavy air group losses.

The Eastern Solomons was the closet thing to a draw. The IJN lost a CVL they were using for bait in exchange for damage to the Enterprise.

At Santa Cruz the US lost a CV with another damaged badly enough to put it in the yards for a while and the Japanese had one CVL and one CV damaged.

The only time the US had a clear CV victory in 1942 was at Midway where blind luck put the SBDs in the right position at the right moment. Even at that, poor direction on the part of the air group commander from the Enterprise almost left the Akagi unscathed. If it hadn't been for some quick thinking on the part of Commander Best, the Akagi would have been spared.

Luck did play a major role. Better Japanese range, better training, and more experience also gave Japan an edge in those early battles. That had completely flipped by the carrier battles of 1944. The IJN air power was a shadow of what it once was and the US had most of the edges in numbers and quality. Even then the USN didn't manage to close the deal at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. That battle was probably the best example of a defensive battle for the USN. Fighter direction that day was near perfect. The largest carrier force in IJN history was only able to score one bomb hit on the South Dakota in exchange for staggering losses. Still the USN was not able to score much damage to the IJN ships and the carriers got away (except those picked off by subs).

This is a good page for the rundowns of various battles:
http://combinedfleet.com/battles/

OT: I was having a conversation at a picnic this past weekend with an MIT EE graduate (21 yo wunderkind) and we were talking about programming etc. He was expressing his disdain for any language except C#. When I told him my digital programming start with the 4004 and I was happy with any compiled language he looked at me with a blank look. Pretty sure he had no idea what the 4004 was nor that it was programmed with machine language only initially. Nothing else was available at that time. [;)] I wonder what he would have done if I had told him about analogue computers that I programmed? [:D][:D][:D]

C#? Really? That's a pretty narrow language to put all your energy into. As far as I know it is only supported by Visual Studio for Windows. It also needs .NET, which I really don't trust. It's gotten better, but a language that is completely dependent on an external library that can be changed at any time to do anything is going to have problems.

I prefer to program for long term reliability. It means I'll be spending less time down the road trying to figure out what I did 5 years ago. Which IMO is a good thing.

The first programming I ever did was machine code on the 6400. I went on to do embedded programming for about 15 years before teaching myself Windows programming. The good thing about programming a higher level programming language/OS is I don't need a lab to get my work done. I can write code at home, which is a good thing because I'm currently working for a company in California and I live in Washington State.

I never worked with the 4004, but I know what it is. I have heard it is still used in street light controllers, but I have never verified that.

Bill

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Here is a vampire squid. It preys on the weak.

I just want to add that I'm done with this vampire of a squid!

[Mundy]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
Even at that, poor direction on the part of the air group commander from the Enterprise almost left the Akagi unscathed. If it hadn't been for some quick thinking on the part of Commander Best, the Akagi would have been spared.

Midway was not Hornet air group's finest hour. They contributed next to nothing during the battle. Waldron was the only one to make contact, and he abandoned the others to do it.

Ed

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Here is a vampire squid. It preys on the weak.

I just want to add that I'm done with this vampire of a squid!

But he's not done with you.

[geofflambert]

By the way, I had to do a lot to cut that down to 500kb. That thing is beautifully awesome. I can email the larger version I have for you to enjoy.

[geofflambert]

Also, though he's called a Vampire Squid, he's really not a squid at all, having eight arms and no tentacles. He's also not an Octopus, though he has eight arms. They've given him his own Order, of which he's the only extant member.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
Even at that, poor direction on the part of the air group commander from the Enterprise almost left the Akagi unscathed. If it hadn't been for some quick thinking on the part of Commander Best, the Akagi would have been spared.

ORIGINAL: Mundy
Midway was not Hornet air group's finest hour. They contributed next to nothing during the battle. Waldron was the only one to make contact, and he abandoned the others to do it.

Ed

What would have happened if the air group commander had been Waldron rather than Stanhope Ring? The Hornet air group may have been the heroes who drew first blood.

Bill

[geofflambert]

All the war stories you've ever read or will ever read tell the same truth. Individuals matter. Without characters who inspire all within earshot or eyeshot, everybody can collectively turn into a mass of jelly. It doesn't matter what the rank of the individual is who helps the unit snatch victory from otherwise certain defeat, just that there is that one and everyone can cohere on that. Routing units achieve no glory, it takes everyone together to succeed. The officer who can impress upon the soldier the idea of leadership so when the situation arises when everything counts, the soldier doesn't need the officer to be standing next to him to know what he's supposed to do and do it, but furthermore knows what the others around him need to do and can see that they do it, that officer is made of gold. One of his methods will be to do what is required of every soldier in full view of them, under fire. Very hazardous, but you only need do it once and you will have spawned others who will do it later.