Stars less than magnitude 4?

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:11:23 -0400, Davoud wrote:
Paul Schlyter:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly
difficult.

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time, including /anything/ I have read about flat Earths, 6000 y.o.
Universes, non-orbiting planets, a Poughkeepsie-centric Universe,
and
the Earth's 27-3/4 hour rotation period.

If you think it's so ridiculous to write a small and simple piece of
software, then what are you doing on Usenet? It runs on similarly
ridiculous pieces of software.

Regarding your other utterly ridiculous suggestions: constructing
complex pieces of hardware is much much more difficult than writing a
simple program. And making your own watch and then call it a "Rolex"
is even illegal......

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 15:19:48 -0400, Davoud wrote:
Dear Mr. east is west, up is down, black is white, sky is green and
grass is blue contrarian: It's a terrible suggestion because such
applications are a dime a dozen

Should people refrain from making their own notes too? There are
already so many books out there, so nobody needs to write anything
more .... right?

FYI: not all programs which are written need to be published. I write
a lot of small programs myself which I run a few times and then throw
away. Should I need it again then I can write it again, it's faster
than trying to administrate a lot of small programs, most of whom
will never be used again.

and because the overwhelming majority
of computer users (that's users, meaning people who have work to do,
not geeks, not nerds, not experimenters) have /no/ programming
skills
whatsoever, and, not coincidentally, do not require any programming
skills whatsoever.

If you have a computational need which no canned program will do for
you, then you suddenly got a need for some programming skills. You
can then choose to educate yourself, pay someone to do the
programming for you, or refrain from doing the computation (few
people seem to have the patience to do computations by hand these
days, but that's of course also a possibility).

If you learn some rudimentary programming skills in e.g. Excel,
you'll get a lot of flexibility regarding unanticipated computational
needs. You argue against this, i.e. you argue for ignorance. I
disagree very strongly with your stupid arguments!

On Sep 16, 8:11*am, Davoud wrote:
W. eWatson:

wrote:
I'd like to get a list of stars below mag 4 at a specific time of
night.
I need the az/el for them. The Sky 6 seems befuddled by this
attempt
with their Data Wizard. Maybe there's a freebie program that does
this.

P.S. I think there's a modestly price program that is something
like a
night sky planner for something like $50. I've forgotten the name.
SkyPlanner?

Paul Schlyter:

Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly
difficult.

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time, including /anything/ I have read about flat Earths, 6000 y.o.
Universes, non-orbiting planets, a Poughkeepsie-centric Universe, and
the Earth's 27-3/4 hour rotation period.

"I think I'll go out and buy a Rolex." "They're very small and it can't
be difficult for the average person to build one from scratch. Why not
make such a watch yourself?"

"I need a new car." "Why buy one when you can mine some ores, cast and
bore an engine block, machine, mold, or extrude, or otherwise fabricate
a few thousand other metal parts, make some plastics and safety glass,
manufacture some fibers and weave them for upholstery, refine some raw
latex from Malaysia to make the tires, cobble together some light bulbs
and a few other parts, and just make such a car yourself? It's not
particularly difficult?"

"I'm hungry for a steak and baked potato, maybe with some sour cream."
"You should buy a cattle ranch, which you can do just about anywhere.
You ought to go to Idaho or Maine to get your potato farm. I would
recommend buying your dairy farm in Wisconsin. So why not produce your
own steak and potato with sour cream? It's not particularly difficult.
You can easily enough make yourself a porcelain plate and some
flatware. I assume you know how to harvest wood and make charcoal or
build a stove and oven."

The answer to your utterly ridiculous question and my brilliant and
mildly hyperbolic analogues is that it makes no sense for a consumer to
reinvent what someone else has already made very well. Uncountable
planetarium programs, including the obsolete TheSky6 and a number of
free applications that can be downloaded in moments can do this.
Suppose W. eWatson decides at 1900 hours that he wants his software at
1930 hours the same day? Or wants his Rolex or his car or his steak in
less than 10 or 20 years?

Now, why don't you set about writing yourself a Usenet client that can
quote without garbling? It's not particularly difficult and you should
be able to finish it by lunchtime.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Paul and most other ZNR oligarchs (aka FUD-masters) think they are
funny.

On 9/16/12 3:09 AM, Paul Schlyter wrote:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly difficult.

Excellent suggestion, Paul!

Shell scripts are easy to put together, which is how I usually
work with data.

Paul Schlyter:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly
difficult.

Davoud:
That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time...

Chris L Peterson:
It's not a bad suggestion, and it requires very little in the way of
programming skills...

Davoud:
Dear Mr. east is west, up is down, black is white, sky is green and
grass is blue contrarian: It's a terrible suggestion because such
applications are a dime a dozen and because the overwhelming majority
of computer users (that's users, meaning people who have work to do,
not geeks, not nerds, not experimenters) have /no/ programming skills
whatsoever, and, not coincidentally, do not require any programming
skills whatsoever. And they don't build their own wris****ches or cars
or grow their own potatoes.

Now I know you well enough to know what comes next: everyone you know
makes wris****ches, builds cars from piles of metals ores and and
organic chemicals, and grows their own potatoes, and you are sticking
to that assertion.

Mike Collins:
Davoud
You are right to point out that there is so much free software available
(and very cheap apps for smartphones and tablet PCs) that writing software
is not necessary. However it's not difficult. I'm no mathematician but I
wrote software in the 1980s for both the ZX81 and BBC micro to plot the
positions of the planets on star maps and print rising and setting times,
RA dec etc.
It was not difficult when books like Astronomical Formulae for Calculators
and Practical Astronomy for Calculators were available.

Yes, I know. I used Jean Meeus's "Astronomical Formulae for
Calculators" and similar resources to assist me in writing programs in
interpreted BASIC for my Osborne I. I was quite proud of those crude
programs, especially where I could compare the output to the
Astronomical Almanac and my results agreed with their figures to four
decimals. I no longer program, I don't know C++, and, as you point out,
rolling your own is no longer affordable except for hobbyists who don't
really do anything with computers. My time is worth a great deal more
now than it was then, and I could buy a very nice computer loaded with
astro software for what it would cost me to write a program that
someone has already written and is giving away free. Duh!

But it's no longer a cheap option since my time writing software costs a
lot more than the couple of quid for an iPhone app.
I do grow my own vegetables but I have to admit that I bought my car and
wris****ch.

Exactly my point. My wife and I have been truck farmers, but we didn't
build our own tractors.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

"Paul Schlyter" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:11:23 -0400, Davoud wrote:
Paul Schlyter:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly difficult.

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time, including /anything/ I have read about flat Earths, 6000 y.o.
Universes, non-orbiting planets, a Poughkeepsie-centric Universe,
and
the Earth's 27-3/4 hour rotation period.

If you think it's so ridiculous to write a small and simple piece of
software, then what are you doing on Usenet? It runs on similarly
ridiculous pieces of software.


I would imagine he is using a program written by somebody else.

What about you? Now that you have raised this as a valid analogy, did you
write your own newsgroup client or do you use one somebody else has already
written?

(Rhetoric question: You use Groundhog, and therefore didn't write your own).

As you didn't write your own newsgroup client, your own analogy completely
undermines your argument. In this case you downloaded Groundhog rather than
writing your own "ridiculous piece of software". Isn't that the exact
opposite of what you are trying to argue?

Couldn't you have picked an analogy that didn't demonstrate the exact
opposite of the point you are trying to make? Did you think about the fact
that your analogy demonstrates the exact opposite of the point you are
trying to make before you posted it? (More rhetoric questions. Clearly you
didn't. You should think about what you say before you post it. You make
this mistake constantly.)

Paul Schlyter:
Should people refrain from making their own notes too? There are
already so many books out there, so nobody needs to write anything
more .... right?

As usual, you missed it by a mile. Writing an original thought or an
original book is not analogous to writing a piece of software that
scores, if not hundreds, of people have already written, and that some
are even making available for free. A visual comparison of these
programs will reveal that the number of ways in which this data can be
presented is quite limited if it is to be a useful analogue of the
night sky. But you go ahead and write a better one and get it on the
market before the next New Moon, and I'll buy a copy.

FYI: not all programs which are written need to be published. I write
a lot of small programs myself which I run a few times and then throw
away. Should I need it again then I can write it again, it's faster
than trying to administrate a lot of small programs, most of whom
will never be used again.

That's fine. You're a hobbyist and a Windows user who is accustomed to
using second-rate, throw-away software. I'm a computer /user/ and I
need programs that perform. I have to sort through about 300
promotional photos that I recently made for a client who renovated her
place of business, and I have to choose the 10 best and prepare them
for publication, and I have to do it soon. Naturally, I'll be using
Aperture and Adobe CS6 Design Premium running on a Mac. Do you think
the client wants to hear "I'm just a hobbyist, so I'll get the product
to you as soon as I can write my own equivalents to the world's best
graphics software?"

Let me repeat, there is nothing wrong with being a hobbyist and playing
at whatever it is, but that won't play if you've got work to do.

(few
people seem to have the patience to do computations by hand these
days, but that's of course also a possibility).

I have on one of my computers a nine-layer image from a 23 megapixel
professional camera. Add the adjustment layers and it's about a 900 MB
image The lens was a Canon 8-15mm zoom @ 15mm. It covers the full 24 x
36mm frame and it encompasses 180 degrees from corner to corner. So I
can certainly empathize with the above. This image has over 200 million
total pixels and it covers a lot of landscape. I don't have time or the
skill or sufficient paper to do by hand the the trillions of
calculations needed to make minor color and contrast corrections to
this photo before flattening it and handing it to my client. And if I
could do the calculations for each of those 200 million pixels by hand,
how would I translate the resulting numbers to changed pixels? That's
why we have Photoshop.

If you learn some rudimentary programming skills in e.g. Excel,
you'll get a lot of flexibility....

Being a Mac user, I was programming for Excel and writing Word macros
in a windows environment while you were still wondering what to type at
the C: prompt.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Paul Schlyter:
If you think it's so ridiculous to write a small and simple piece of
software, then what are you doing on Usenet? It runs on similarly
ridiculous pieces of software.

You aren't very good at analogies, are you? The question is, with many
quite satisfactory Usenet clients available, some of them free, why
would *I* write my own Usenet client? That I should want to reinvent
wheel is the ridiculous part.

You keep forgetting that I'm a user, not a hobbyist, and I have already
said that if re-inventing the wheel is your hobby, be my guest. Bundle
your best-of breed Usenet client with your best-of-breed
planetarium/mount-control/camera-control application and I'll buy them
both.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

In article ,
says...

"Paul Schlyter" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:11:23 -0400, Davoud wrote:
Paul Schlyter:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly difficult.

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time, including /anything/ I have read about flat Earths, 6000 y.o.
Universes, non-orbiting planets, a Poughkeepsie-centric Universe,
and
the Earth's 27-3/4 hour rotation period.

If you think it's so ridiculous to write a small and simple piece of
software, then what are you doing on Usenet? It runs on similarly
ridiculous pieces of software.


I would imagine he is using a program written by somebody else.

What about you? Now that you have raised this as a valid analogy, did you
write your own newsgroup client or do you use one somebody else has already
written?

(Rhetoric question: You use Groundhog, and therefore didn't write your own).

As you didn't write your own newsgroup client, your own analogy completely
undermines your argument. In this case you downloaded Groundhog rather than
writing your own "ridiculous piece of software". Isn't that the exact
opposite of what you are trying to argue?

Couldn't you have picked an analogy that didn't demonstrate the exact
opposite of the point you are trying to make? Did you think about the fact
that your analogy demonstrates the exact opposite of the point you are
trying to make before you posted it? (More rhetoric questions. Clearly you
didn't. You should think about what you say before you post it. You make
this mistake constantly.)

No, Peter, I didn't write my own Usenet client. Nor did I write my own
TCP/IP protocol stack, or the OS on which I run my Usenet client, or my
protocol stack. I didn't design and construct the hardware of my computer
either. And I didn't run my own wires all over the world to be able to
communicate with others. I also didn't construct all these wires,
routers, gateways, servers, etc from ore I myself extracted from the
ground. Et cetera et cetera..... there's no need to do all that stuff,
since it's already available from others.

I never suggested that everyone should always use only what they've
constructed themselves. Mankind wouldn't have gotten very far if
everyone had refused to cooperate.

However, if you have some special needs, and you cannot find a solution
to your needs among the stuff made available by others, then it's quite
reasonable to try to provide your own solution. Particularly in the case
when a solution is to write a simple and short piece of software.

In article , says...

Paul Schlyter:
Why not write such a program yourself? It's not particularly
difficult.

Davoud:
That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read here in a long
time...

Chris L Peterson:
It's not a bad suggestion, and it requires very little in the way of
programming skills...

Davoud:
Dear Mr. east is west, up is down, black is white, sky is green and
grass is blue contrarian: It's a terrible suggestion because such
applications are a dime a dozen and because the overwhelming majority
of computer users (that's users, meaning people who have work to do,
not geeks, not nerds, not experimenters) have /no/ programming skills
whatsoever, and, not coincidentally, do not require any programming
skills whatsoever. And they don't build their own wris****ches or cars
or grow their own potatoes.

Now I know you well enough to know what comes next: everyone you know
makes wris****ches, builds cars from piles of metals ores and and
organic chemicals, and grows their own potatoes, and you are sticking
to that assertion.

Mike Collins:
Davoud
You are right to point out that there is so much free software available
(and very cheap apps for smartphones and tablet PCs) that writing software
is not necessary. However it's not difficult. I'm no mathematician but I
wrote software in the 1980s for both the ZX81 and BBC micro to plot the
positions of the planets on star maps and print rising and setting times,
RA dec etc.
It was not difficult when books like Astronomical Formulae for Calculators
and Practical Astronomy for Calculators were available.

Yes, I know. I used Jean Meeus's "Astronomical Formulae for
Calculators" and similar resources to assist me in writing programs in
interpreted BASIC for my Osborne I. I was quite proud of those crude
programs, especially where I could compare the output to the
Astronomical Almanac and my results agreed with their figures to four
decimals. I no longer program, I don't know C++, and, as you point out,
rolling your own is no longer affordable except for hobbyists who don't
really do anything with computers.

My time is worth a great deal more
now than it was then, and I could buy a very nice computer loaded with
astro software for what it would cost me to write a program that
someone has already written and is giving away free. Duh!

I guess you no longer watch the starry skies either. It takes too much
time to do it, and no-one pays you for your skygazing, right?

I'm surprised that you're here on Usenet. Doesn't it take too much time
to read the posts here in s.a.a? Not to mention the time it takes to even
*r*e*s*p*o*n*d* to some of the posts. Since your time is worth so much
these days, does't the time you spend on Usenet make you almost bankrupt?
Think of all the $$$$$$'s you could have earned instead during the time
you now waste on Usenet....

Isn't it boring to live a life where your taximeter is always ticking,
leaving you very little of really free time when you really can decide
for yourself what you want to do?

But it's no longer a cheap option since my time writing software costs a
lot more than the couple of quid for an iPhone app.
I do grow my own vegetables but I have to admit that I bought my car and
wris****ch.

Exactly my point. My wife and I have been truck farmers, but we didn't
build our own tractors.

I'm surprised you even drove them -- there are drivers who can drive them
for you....