John Ings writes:

If you're flying in combat and see a missile coming up behind you
however, it won't be so funny, because that IS how they work.

In fact, if you listen carefully, it's pretty obvious that this is a
text originally written with specific symbols signifying missile and
target positions at certain times during trajectory, describing how
the missile uses relative positioning information, in an integrated
feedback loop, to chase its moving target. The symbols have been
replaced by words, so that, say, the position of the target at the
first discrete point in time of the sequence being studied is called
"where it isn't" ("it" being the missile) when discussing that point
in time, and "where it wasn't" when discussing the next point in time,
i.e. the next loop through the integration process. (That is: "where
it wasn't" means "the position of the target during the previous round
of calculations" or "where we wanted to get to the last time round".)

Try to visualize the calculations as you hear it, and it makes sense.

There is, however, an error in the translation. Can you pinpoint it?

-tih
--
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, Senior System Administrator, EUnet Norway
www.eunet.no T: +47-22092958 M: +47-93013940 F: +47-22092901