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#21
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
Davoud:
Exactly my point. My wife and I have been truck farmers, but we didn't build our own tractors. Paul Schlyter I'm surprised you even drove them -- there are drivers who can drive them for you... I can tell that you're a person who wakes up in the morning surprised by a hell of a lot of things. -- 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 |
#22
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
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#23
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
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#24
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:08:36 -0400, Davoud wrote:
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. So where do you find software which outputs alt+az of all stars down to mag 4 for a location of your choice? Locating it may take longer than writing your own code to compute it. -- 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 |
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
On Sep 17, 2:25*am, Davoud wrote:
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?" I like you for your middle class snobbery as I thought a computer was just a computer apart from being an old one or a new one,when I started up my old computer it sounded like a tractor compared to the new one and I remember there was a time when you could go out for a cup of coffee waiting for a single page to load until one day they introduced broadband to the Long Island area and the transformation was startling.Even though my computer is now falling asunder and I will eventually have to replace it I would be reluctant to do so as like an old car I am comfortable with the idiosyncrasies. Now what you are actually drawing attention to is that astronomy exists today as a magnification exercise with its own pretension and this is fine if you move in these homocentric circles.An observer looking at his equatorial mount and using the equatorial coordinate system will watch the telescope track a star in circumpolar motion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJP1L_eF9fg No point in calling you or anyone else silly for attempting to chain the Earth to the clockwork system of Ra/Dec by believing you are running daily and orbital motions off a single axis even though it is utterly unproductive. I certainly wish somebody could raise themselves to a standard presently where they can truly enjoy the astronomical event presently where the polar coordinates turn through the circle of illumination thereby effectively recognizing another axis of the Earth.The machine they put on Mars should have had a decent telescope to look out on the phases of the Earth just as we look out on Venus and see something which has never been seen before but is easy to predict - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...precession.svg The idea of axial precession has to give way to the orbital trait where the polar coordinates act like a beacon for the orbital behavior of the Earth and it is not going to be achieved by people who are taking that late 17th century shortcut using stars in daily circumpolar motion,snobbery or not snobbery. |
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
On Sep 17, 5:13*am, Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article , says... Davoud: Exactly my point. My wife and I have been truck farmers, but we didn't build our own tractors. Paul Schlyter I'm surprised you even drove them -- there are drivers who can drive them for you... I can tell that you're a person who wakes up in the morning surprised by a hell of a lot of things. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you're inconsistent.... Tell me,does it make sense to you that the motion of stars day in and day out reflect variations in orbital speeds ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJP1L_eF9fg For an astronomer,stars in stellar circumpolar motion reflect the useful information of constant axial alignment for an annual orbit but not rotation as an independent motion,the principles which maintain rotation as an independent motion to 24 hours are far more intricate and complicated than lunging at a conclusion using a watch and the daily return of a distant star.The primary reference for all timekeeping is the annual return of a specific star which bookends the number of rotations in an orbital cycle and then the central Sun as the next reference as it contains the orbital variations in speed by which rotation as an indepedent and constant motion is extracted as an assertion,not as a direct observation. Write all the software you wish,none of it is up to human interpretation which can combine and separate two different motions when it is needed and for different purposes.No offence to the guys in the late 17th century,this is the early 21st century and there is too much to do to dwell on their errors. |
#27
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
On 17/09/2012 02:25, Davoud wrote:
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?" Adobe Photoshop is vastly overrated for what it is. Their main claim to fame is that it is used by graphic arts professionals and the settings for eg JPEG saves have been tweaked to mostly save them from themselves. I was surpised recently how much damage Photoshop's quirky choice of quantisation tables can do to certain contrasty images with sharp edge transitions if the user chooses the wrong quality level to save at. 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 No it has at most 23 megapixels consisting of RGBalpha and however many other redundant layers of the same format Adobe has added to it. Some of them quite likely held in the same grossly oversize format despite the fact that they consist of a single colour graphic line artwork. 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. There was a time before Photoshop and indeed before digital imaging when to do this sort of stuff required rolling your own software. I was manipulating 4Mpixel monochrome images in the days when VAX11/780s had something like at most 8MB of main memory and were timesharing. We tried to stay under 1Mpixel to keep the computational time reasonable. 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. However, you seem to be entirely taken in by Adobe's marketing hype. The learning curve for Photoshop CSn is excessively steep and most people will not use a fraction of its capabilities even if they boast about being "Graphics professionals". In fact the more they boast about it the less they seem to know. Anyone that doesn't have money to burn and wants to parade the latest CS6 version in front of their customers should consider Corel's PaintshopPro (I don't often recommend it as I dislike other features but it is way more cost effective than the bloated and overpriced PS). I am with Paul on this one for stars brighter than mag 4 too. A simple spreadsheet that sorts stars by magnitude and works out their altitude would not be too hard for someone who was interested in the answer and would be very educational. Spherical trig is no longer taught in schools which is a pity it is perhaps more relevant now as an introduction to non Euclidean geometries than it ever was. Jean Meuss's book or Duffett-Smiths (or a web search on HA-dec to alt-az conversions would provide the formulae). Why does everyone expect to just download an app for everything now? -- Regards, Martin Brown |
#28
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
"Davoud" wrote in message ...
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. ============================================== - Schlyter can’t eat steak. His teeth are fine but he’d rather go hungry than buy a new knife. - This message is brought to you from the keyboard of Lord Androcles, Zeroth Earl of Medway |
#29
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
Martin Brown
Adobe Photoshop is vastly overrated for what it is. Their main claim to fame is that it is used by graphic arts professionals and the settings for eg JPEG saves have been tweaked to mostly save them from themselves. That's not a bad claim to fame. Photoshop has had competitors. Users voted and Photoshop won. I was surpised recently how much damage Photoshop's quirky choice of quantisation tables can do to certain contrasty images with sharp edge transitions if the user chooses the wrong quality level to save at. That's another way of saying that software has to be used correctly to provide the desired results. I learned that lesson within the first five minutes the first time I tried to use a computer. There was a time before Photoshop and indeed before digital imaging when to do this sort of stuff required rolling your own software O, jeez, here we go. There was a time before digital imaging when there was film and there was a time before film when there was only hand-made art and there was a time when the only graphic art was on cave walls and so on. I've heard all that. I don't live in the past. I'm going to work and play with tools of my own choosing. However, you seem to be entirely taken in by Adobe's marketing hype. If you have a problem with Adobe, take it up with Adobe. I am not their advertising rep, their customer-service rep, or their tech-support. If you don't like Adobe products, don't buy Adobe products. Is there anything in that that is unclear to you? Is there anything that is unclear in "I'm going to work and play with tools of my own choosing?" The learning curve for Photoshop CSn is excessively steep and most people will not use a fraction of its capabilities.... That's like saying that I shouldn't own a saw because all I need for the task at hand is a screwdriver. When I install a screw I am using only a fraction of the tools that I have available to me. I will choose among the available tools to complete the job at hand. Anyone that doesn't have money to burn and wants to parade the latest CS6 version in front of their customers... You're nuts. My customers have no idea what software I use, but I imagine they know that "Photoshop" is a synonym for quality digital photo processing. I'm not even a professional; I fell into computer graphics for pay by accident when a business owner saw a newsletter I was producing for a club that we both belonged to and asked if I could do a catalogue for his company. "Maybe," I said, "but I'll have to learn how to do it as I go along." And I did it and he saw that it was good and he took it to a trade show and others saw that it was good and asked him who did it and that's the way it happened. As a retiree I don't care to do a lot of paid work, so I don't accept new clients except in special cases where the work looks really interesting to me--usually cases like the first one, where I tell the client that I don't know how to do what s/he wants done, but maybe I can learn. I limit myself to only about four clients. I don't do this for the money, though it is obvious that a person who was willing to advertise her/his services in this geographic area could make a living at what I prefer to do as a sometimes hobby. I am with Paul on this one for stars brighter than mag 4 too. A simple spreadsheet that sorts stars by magnitude and works out their altitude would not be too hard for someone who was interested in the answer and would be very educational. Spherical trig is no longer taught in schools which is a pity it is perhaps more relevant now as an introduction to non Euclidean geometries than it ever was. That's not that idiot's contention. He contends that one shouldn't use an existing spreadsheet. One should write one's own spreadsheet application. I readily conceded that he should do that if he wants to, but he wants me to live by his rules and he's quite knotted up because I'm going to continue live by my own rules. You would save yourself much anguish by learning that I won't play by your rules, either. Why does everyone expect to just download an app for everything now? We've been through this. It's for the same reason that people don't build their own wris****ches or cars or stoves or refrigerators. Because it works, it's convenient, it's cheap, it's a proven way of getting the best products extant, it's fast, and it frees the user to do what s/he does best while others do what they do best. This is called "division of labor," part of a rare phenomenon called "eusociality," and it's the foundation of human civilization. -- 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 |
#30
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Stars less than magnitude 4?
On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:25:57 -0400, Davoud wrote:
That's not that idiot's contention. He contends that one shouldn't use an existing spreadsheet. Don't lie. I never said one should avoid using an application that's suitable and available. I merely suggested that writing your own application is a feasible way too, and it can even be faster than trying to locate something suitable written by someone else. And since you're talking about an available spreadsheet suitable for this particular case: where is it? Or are you just babbling? One should write one's own spreadsheet application. I said "could", not "should". It's a non-mandatory option. And I also said "program", which is a wider category than "spreadsheet application". You may prefer spreadsheets, but I don't. I readily conceded that he should do that if he wants to, No, you requested me to write my own Usenet client, build my own car from ore I extracted myself from the ground, build a "Rolex" watch, and other similar nonsense. And you expressed a very strong opinion about this -- go back and read your own posts! but he wants me to live by his rules Look who's talking...... By all means, do live by your own rules! But don't require others to live by them too... |
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