The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth General => Topic started by: Username on April 25, 2012, 10:55:30 AM
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http://kottke.org/12/04/source-code-for-apollo-and-gemini-programs
We should build (in the long term) a system to run this software in a type of emulator. Right now, I'm just interested in how much interest there is with you guys. If theres none, I'll just do it myself and tack on a chapter to my book in the more computer sciencey section.
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http://kottke.org/12/04/source-code-for-apollo-and-gemini-programs
We should build (in the long term) a system to run this software in a type of emulator. Right now, I'm just interested in how much interest there is with you guys. If theres none, I'll just do it myself and tack on a chapter to my book in the more computer sciencey section.
Ah, another excuse to keep the plausible denial of publication going for another year at least. Well done.
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Stop harassing me.
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Stop harassing me.
I'm not harassing you, I am extremely keen to read your book, but I genuinely believe you are not telling the truth when you say it exists. This is based on the evidence you have provided that it exists, which is -273.15 degrees celsius. This is a zetetic observation, you should be pleased I am using this method to ascertain the existence of your book.
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Stop harassing me.
Sorry that you got harassed (at least in your opinion), but you did invite the comment. I was going to say exactly the same.
This plan is doomed from the start. If you get it to work you will say that it was done as part of the simulation of the whole fake mission, to tell the conspiracists what to claim happened. If you fail, (which is the most probable scenario) you will use your failure to show that a Lunar Expedition is impossible, and therefore faked by the Conspiracy.
But most probably you will tell us, year after year, that you are at the verge of cracking the whole Conspiracy, and that you just need another few months to perfect the simulator. And that you have 11 boxes of papers with your work on the simulator, almost ready to publish.
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Stop harassing me.
I'm not harassing you, I am extremely keen to read your book, but I genuinely believe you are not telling the truth when you say it exists. This is based on the evidence you have provided that it exists, which is -273.15 degrees celsius. This is a zetetic observation, you should be pleased I am using this method to ascertain the existence of your book.
You are harassing. It slides because this is the internet and we all have to have a bit thicker skin that in real life. It's well known that when people can converse anonymously (or at least very near) they are dicks. But you do not HAVE to act this way. Imagine that you knew someone in real life that was working for years on publishing a book, which is hard work. He's not getting paid to do it and has to find time to balance the work between a job, a family, and a life. Now, this person wishes to tell his peers about an aspect of his project and every time he does, you chime in by calling him a liar. I seriously doubt you would say the things you say to someone face to face, it's simply not socially acceptable. Again, I know this is the internet, but that does not mean you need to forgo all sense of social decency.
On a side note, imagine you were watching the exchange described above in real life. Someone says something about their book (real or not) and another immediately, and in this case, persistently, accosts the author about what they feel is fraudulent. What opinion would you form about the accuser?
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Stop harassing me.
I'm not harassing you, I am extremely keen to read your book, but I genuinely believe you are not telling the truth when you say it exists. This is based on the evidence you have provided that it exists, which is -273.15 degrees celsius. This is a zetetic observation, you should be pleased I am using this method to ascertain the existence of your book.
You are harassing. It slides because this is the internet and we all have to have a bit thicker skin that in real life. It's well known that when people can converse anonymously (or at least very near) they are dicks. But you do not HAVE to act this way. Imagine that you knew someone in real life that was working for years on publishing a book, which is hard work. He's not getting paid to do it and has to find time to balance the work between a job, a family, and a life. Now, this person wishes to tell his peers about an aspect of his project and every time he does, you chime in by calling him a liar. I seriously doubt you would say the things you say to someone face to face, it's simply not socially acceptable. Again, I know this is the internet, but that does not mean you need to forgo all sense of social decency.
On a side note, imagine you were watching the exchange described above in real life. Someone says something about their book (real or not) and another immediately, and in this case, persistently, accosts the author about what they feel is fraudulent. What opinion would you form about the accuser?
Internet or no Internet, feelings hurt. This does not change the fact that John Davis has used his soon to be published book as evidence of a myriad wonderful (or magical) phenomena and has promised his book all this time. He could have refrained from using his book as evidence, but he has not. He can stop the alleged harassment by not using it as evidence. Or, he could give even a slight piece of evidence that he is really working on it, to shut his detractors up. If he has lots of boxes filled with evidence, he can find a few documents he can share without endangering his whole copyright.
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This thread is not about John's book. It's about peer reviewing the NASA source code. Does anyone here speak machine code?
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Stop harassing me.
I'm not harassing you, I am extremely keen to read your book, but I genuinely believe you are not telling the truth when you say it exists. This is based on the evidence you have provided that it exists, which is -273.15 degrees celsius. This is a zetetic observation, you should be pleased I am using this method to ascertain the existence of your book.
You are harassing. It slides because this is the internet and we all have to have a bit thicker skin that in real life. It's well known that when people can converse anonymously (or at least very near) they are dicks. But you do not HAVE to act this way. Imagine that you knew someone in real life that was working for years on publishing a book, which is hard work. He's not getting paid to do it and has to find time to balance the work between a job, a family, and a life. Now, this person wishes to tell his peers about an aspect of his project and every time he does, you chime in by calling him a liar. I seriously doubt you would say the things you say to someone face to face, it's simply not socially acceptable. Again, I know this is the internet, but that does not mean you need to forgo all sense of social decency.
On a side note, imagine you were watching the exchange described above in real life. Someone says something about their book (real or not) and another immediately, and in this case, persistently, accosts the author about what they feel is fraudulent. What opinion would you form about the accuser?
Internet or no Internet, feelings hurt. This does not change the fact that John Davis has used his soon to be published book as evidence of a myriad wonderful (or magical) phenomena and has promised his book all this time. He could have refrained from using his book as evidence, but he has not. He can stop the alleged harassment by not using it as evidence. Or, he could give even a slight piece of evidence that he is really working on it, to shut his detractors up. If he has lots of boxes filled with evidence, he can find a few documents he can share without endangering his whole copyright.
Exactly. And if I was writing a book about something, and was accused of lying about it, I'd present some sort of evidence to my detractors. And if I was unwilling to do so, then I would be throwing away my right to be indignant when accused of making the whole thing up. If you refuse to make any attempt to prove me wrong, you are tacitly admitting tolerance of my accusations.
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This thread is not about John's book. It's about peer reviewing the NASA source code. Does anyone here speak machine code?
Thank you.
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I wish I was more computer literate, John.
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Stop harassing me.
I'm not harassing you, I am extremely keen to read your book, but I genuinely believe you are not telling the truth when you say it exists. This is based on the evidence you have provided that it exists, which is -273.15 degrees celsius. This is a zetetic observation, you should be pleased I am using this method to ascertain the existence of your book.
You are harassing. It slides because this is the internet and we all have to have a bit thicker skin that in real life. It's well known that when people can converse anonymously (or at least very near) they are dicks. But you do not HAVE to act this way. Imagine that you knew someone in real life that was working for years on publishing a book, which is hard work. He's not getting paid to do it and has to find time to balance the work between a job, a family, and a life. Now, this person wishes to tell his peers about an aspect of his project and every time he does, you chime in by calling him a liar. I seriously doubt you would say the things you say to someone face to face, it's simply not socially acceptable. Again, I know this is the internet, but that does not mean you need to forgo all sense of social decency.
On a side note, imagine you were watching the exchange described above in real life. Someone says something about their book (real or not) and another immediately, and in this case, persistently, accosts the author about what they feel is fraudulent. What opinion would you form about the accuser?
Internet or no Internet, feelings hurt. This does not change the fact that John Davis has used his soon to be published book as evidence of a myriad wonderful (or magical) phenomena and has promised his book all this time. He could have refrained from using his book as evidence, but he has not.
Show me where I have used my book as evidence supporting phenomena in, lets say, the last 6 months.
Stop harassing me.
Sorry that you got harassed (at least in your opinion), but you did invite the comment. I was going to say exactly the same.
This plan is doomed from the start. If you get it to work you will say that it was done as part of the simulation of the whole fake mission, to tell the conspiracists what to claim happened. If you fail, (which is the most probable scenario) you will use your failure to show that a Lunar Expedition is impossible, and therefore faked by the Conspiracy.
But most probably you will tell us, year after year, that you are at the verge of cracking the whole Conspiracy, and that you just need another few months to perfect the simulator. And that you have 11 boxes of papers with your work on the simulator, almost ready to publish.
I don't believe in a conspiracy. And I certainly did not invite the comment.
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I wish I was more computer literate, John.
Yeah, I figured most of those who were interested would not have the necessary skills. Who knows though ;).
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This thread is not about John's book. It's about peer reviewing the NASA source code. Does anyone here speak machine code?
I don't think you can really 'read' machine code. It's too raw to translate.
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You can read machine code. I've had to do it in some undergrad classes and in a few personal projects. Clearly the CPU "reads" machine code ;). Hopefully (I haven't had a chance to look this over much) there are some specifications to aid in our reading of it however as without a machine it might be hard to reverse engineer.
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As it turns out, the site that has the source code also has an emulator for the AGC.
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
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This thread is not about John's book. It's about peer reviewing the NASA source code. Does anyone here speak machine code?
I speak several machine codes, from 8080 microprocessors to more advanced 80x86 current microprocessors, and from old IBM/360 machine code to UCSD and Java pseudo-machine codes. The problem would not be understanding the machine code, it would be understanding the Input/Output structure connected to the processor. If you have both a description of the machine language and a description of the equipment it controlled, including its I/O interfaces, the code should be partly understandable. Without those documents, it is gibberish.
As a computer science expert with a soft spot for history I might have a look at the code, just to see how similar it is to known machines. But unless it is accompanied by literally thousands of pages of I/O interface descriptions and thousands of diagrams, I would not even care to give my opinion on whether the code is what they say it is.
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But unless it is accompanied by literally thousands of pages of I/O interface descriptions and thousands of diagrams, I would not even care to give my opinion on whether the code is what they say it is.
The site seems to have a pretty good documentation page:
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/assembly_language_manual.html
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stop harassing NASA and the good hard working people that work for it, and other space agencies.
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How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
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In such simulators, the code is usually real but the hardware is fake.
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How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
I imagine we would find that out while working with it. NASA is prone to mistake.
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I'm going to spend some time this weekend hopefully looking this code and documentation over. I'll then see what we can do reasonably based off the response I get here.
Speaking of which, people are always yelling and crying about us never doing any serious work. When I suggest a reasonable project to review NASA, instead of reasonable friendly responses the majority of what I get are unsupported jabs concerning my book and attacks calling me a conspiracy theorist despite myself not being one. Rather than possibly have an opportunity to learn and change one's worldview, apparently the typical round earther would rather resort to off-topic nonsense and attacks thrown from their dilapidated ivory tower than to actually practice, in any way shape or form, the science they hold as religion.
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stop harassing NASA and the good hard working people that work for it, and other space agencies.
Who exactly is harassing NASA?
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stop harassing NASA and the good hard working people that work for it, and other space agencies.
Who exactly is harassing NASA?
Here's one harassing post:
How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
I imagine we would find that out while working with it. NASA is prone to mistake.
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stop harassing NASA and the good hard working people that work for it, and other space agencies.
Who exactly is harassing NASA?
Here's one harassing post:
How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
I imagine we would find that out while working with it. NASA is prone to mistake.
Unless they are aware of my posts, which I seriously doubt they are, I would hardly call that harassment. Though as markjo pointed out, this isn't about harassment and its not about my book. I should have returned to the original topic, though I will now; I urge others to follow my belated example.
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I'm a software developer, so I might be able to help clarify things. Although assuming it's adequately documented, I don't see why you would need any expert help.
Is there anything specific you're hoping to discover through this?
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I also develop software. But yeah, I imagine so. Though like I've said, I haven't looked at it at all yet really.
And no, nothing specific.
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How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
How would we know the contrary?
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How do we know that this is the actual source code and not merely the source code for the training simulator that simulated the craft?
How would we know the contrary?
And more importantly, what does it matter? Tom Bishop seems fundamentally confused about what software is. His question is akin to looking at a physics equation and asking "how do we know if this is an equation for a car or a bicycle?" It doesn't make a difference -- only the variables change. The code would have needed a simulated environment during development before being deployed to the real hardware anyway. Source code inherently has nothing to do with hardware.
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fixed: High Level/Abstracted Source code inherently has nothing to do with hardware.
This is more accurate, and the difference could be important here due to the low level nature (from first glance) of the material. Also, it matters on the design mentality used. If they built it specifically for the hardware they are making, rather than properly restraining hardware specific code to a modular sort of design the hardware itself could make a huge difference. Especially if they have custom designed parts for specific functionality to replace common programming. Due to the design of the memory alone (again from first glance) I think we can agree this is very likely. Sure, hardware doesn't matter *as much * in usual programming except where one accounts for it, but when its a highly specific and engineered mechanical computer designed from the ground up for a set of tasks and touched by countless folks over several years, administrations, and general design philosophies, I imagine the specifics of the hardware are extremely important and will throw us all sorts of loops. From past history their code and mechanical design will favour clever hacks and brut coding that at times will drive us / me insane. If you've seen the way some mathematicians or engineers that aren't programmers by training code like I have (especially in legacy code) it could be a bit like a complicated, sometimes annoying, but often rewarding puzzle game.
Of course, whether you are an expert and can read machine language or not is irrelevant; reading the machine language of a complicated program is a task beyond a reasonable timeframe and is a bit of a silly notion, even with a group of educated individuals. Its a bit naive and uninformed to think we will be able to read the machine language itself like a book however this package is set up. We'll likely have to come up with a few clever bruts of our own.
In fact, whatever your skillset it is irrelevant. If you want to learn how to do this while we work on it, I'll be happy to provide training as needed and allowed by my schedule.
I'll be looking over it all later on tonight and will get back on ideas for reasonable plan of action for any of those interested. Just be wary, they didn't lose so many astronauts because they always followed good practice I'm sure.
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Well yes, there's going to be low level hardware interaction here, but I think the statement "source code inherently..." holds true. The famous quote about computer science and telescopes (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science) comes to mind. I guess what I want to say is: All code is tested in a simulated environment (it's not as if they launched an actual rocket for each debug run), so the distinction between simulator code and "real" code is meaningless (and it's probably mostly the exact same code). The question is, is the code correct? Could it work if applied to real hardware?
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But unless it is accompanied by literally thousands of pages of I/O interface descriptions and thousands of diagrams, I would not even care to give my opinion on whether the code is what they say it is.
The site seems to have a pretty good documentation page:
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/assembly_language_manual.html
The assembly language is the least of the worries of whoever tries to make a simulator. The description of the equipment that is directly controlled by this computer and the description of the Input/Output interfaces to it are the real mind benders.
This machine or assembly language is quite specialized, having not-quite floating point operations as single instructions and highly specialized registers for the main positional parameters of the spaceship. With the explanation given the simulator of the CPU seems a very manageable project. The writing of the interpreted part of the yaYUL is more involved and time consuming.
But still the documentation of the equipment attached to this computer is something nobody in this forum has even said they might understand, much less simulate.
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I don't believe in a conspiracy. And I certainly did not invite the comment.
Oh, but you do believe in a conspiracy. Just by saying that the Moon is nothing even close to what real Science tells us you are leaving for yourself only one alternative: that NASA is lying when they say that they followed the well-known model of the Solar System and used it to put a man on the Moon.
Every engineer, physician, mechanic or specialist who heard how the spoken answers of the astronauts came about two or three seconds after the the end of the question, just to mention one specific detail, was either lied to or lied when talking about that. Every single live filming of the astronauts in different moments of the journey, where the time between the sent messages and the answers corresponded to the supposed distance of the ship from Earth was either staged or real. If it was real, the ship was hundreds of times further away than every FE model predicts. If it was staged, there was a conspiracy.
From the men who calculated the fuel, to the men who calculated the food, oxygen and water, to the men who designed the zero-gravity toilet facilities, not to mention those who calculated the expected orbits, temperatures and other critical mission parameters, every one of them is either a total liar, the victim of a conspiracy or a scientist who helped in a real mission from the real, round Earth to a real, round Moon.
You cannot just say "I do not believe in a Conspiracy, go harass others about the Conspiracy". If you want to claim that the Earth is flat, you also have to explain what other FE'ers attribute to the Conspiracy.
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Calm down, Trig. This thread isn't so much about debating the conspiracy as it is about peer reviewing some of the technology allegedly used by the conspiracy.
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...Oh, but you do believe in a conspiracy. Just by saying that the Moon is nothing even close to what real Science tells us you are leaving for yourself only one alternative...
There are more things in heaven and earth, Trig, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You make a string of wild assumptions and false dilemas without evidence or reason and use them as some sort of warrant for your thinly veiled and impotent attacks. Don't tell me what I believe. You have neither the right nor the sense to make such calls. All this and, as markjo points out, this is neither the time nor place for this childish behavior.
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Well yes, there's going to be low level hardware interaction here, but I think the statement "source code inherently..." holds true. The famous quote about computer science and telescopes (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science) comes to mind. I guess what I want to say is: All code is tested in a simulated environment (it's not as if they launched an actual rocket for each debug run), so the distinction between simulator code and "real" code is meaningless (and it's probably mostly the exact same code). The question is, is the code correct? Could it work if applied to real hardware?
Good point and I totally missed it. Thanks.
However, I imagine the technical information concerning the mechanics are important. In reality though, if the assembly language was properly documented and described, then I don't see the issue. I am doubtful it is completely documented however.
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Instead of making a Virtual CPU simulate all the code, it could be easy to make an actual CPU, with all I/O and we would not have to simulate nothing: just ctrl+c, ctrl+v, and some translating work. And we could use the data gathered by NASA to directly run the machine