But is it the compiler's job to teach the student?
The two frameworks have equivalent issues here. Verilog just doesn't warn you about the type issues. But VHDL requires that you go through hoops to solve them. They BOTH require some level of understanding to solve the problem. That's where the instructor comes into it.
Nonsense. Teaching the tool is the job of a vocational program. The theory of HDL will long out-last any particular errors or syntax that come about.
Any course that targets a specific tool moves from being a life-long asset to being an educational experience that lasts only as long as those tools or languages are in-style.
An HDL course should focus on the theory and practice of HDL. The choice of which HDL to use should be made based on which tool allows you to accomplish that goal as well as possible. The widespread use of both Verilog and VHDL make them good choices. But (I feel) that for most fundamental classes, VHDL involves too much unnecessary verbosity.
In more advanced HDL work, VHDL begins to offer more. But with Verilog-2001, still not quite enough.
Well, if I have to spell it out for you, "more familiar" is meant to mean "statistically more familiar" since the vast majority of people learning HDL come from a C/Java/C# background in some manner. VERY few people have familiarity with Pascal and even fewer with ADA.
If taught right, the "appears like C" doesn't involve a catch at all. (and by your argument, the fact that VHDL appears like Pascal would involve the same catch) HDLs are hardware description languages. It is extremely important to make that distinction early on. The appearance of an HDL like a procedural language is not a catch if taught in proper context. But this is the task of the instructor and is not associated with the particular HDL chosen.
You can do about 99% of what most HDL folks do for FPGAs using Verilog and VHDL. Verilog does it in a more familiar syntax. VHDL requires considerably more pomp and fluff to accomplish the same goals.
It's true that VHDL *may* be more appropriate for bigger, careful projects. But students need to learn principles without tools and other things getting in the way.
Teach principles of HDL with the least roadblocks, then allow more in-depth study to accomplish more. The relatively few students that go on to use what they learn in a class in depth will learn as necessary. If you can get through to ALL of the students using simple tools and languages, then you can teach the fundamentals of HDL and that will stick with them for a long time to come.
Actually, I'm convinced SAP saves big companies millions of dollars. They do so by losing invoices or making it so difficult for other companies to invoice them that these invoices never get paid. Companies using SAP have much higher payment aging than other companies.
It's somewhat like WD-40. It is non-conductive and can be sprayed directly on electronics. It forms a hydrophobic barrier between the electronics and the elements and may help.
It is typically used as a preventative. Often used in the aviation market to protect wing/fuselage interiors, it is also sprayed directly on avionics to reduce corrosion.
(1) "Usability" is in the mind of the user. If you learned how to use some other system first and now expect that any other way of doing things isn't "usable" enough, that's just plain old resistance to change. It says more about you than it does about the usability of the software in question.
(2) "Designers" who can't code have absolutely no business "working" in software. If you think you really know how an interface should work and look, then learn to code it. Otherwise, you're just a critic of the kind that the NYT doesn't hire.
Hm. Time for someone to read a little Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. First of all, quality can be judged by those that are not necessarily able to produce quality.
Second, quality is not all about the eye of the beholder. There are some objective measures that can be established.
A good way to judge the quality of writing, for example, is to read a lot. You basically program yourself to recognize good quality writing.
Perhaps a good way for you to become a better judge of usability would be for you to use a lot of different kinds of software. I, personally, find it self-evident that some software is far more usable than other software, regardless of the user using it.
Yes, but the assertion that this somehow circumvents copyright law is pretty ridiculous.
The composite of the entire system allows one to store data in a retrievable fashion, just as the composite of a hard drive, magnetic head, source coding strategy, filesystem, and operating system allow one to store data in a retrievable fashion -- despite the fact that it is fragmented on the drive and source coded.
The scope of the system may be different, but it accomplishes the same.
Sharing the "recipe" for assembling the blocks is the same as sharing the original file. It's just a definition of terms. You could say that a compressed (.zip) version of a text file is really just a recipe for algorithmically creating the original text file. The zip version and the original are treated the same under copyright law, as far as I know.
Perhaps they meant to say the third quarter of the second half which puts it firmly at the third half of the third quarter.
WSJ says fourth quarter. Google says second half. Last I checked, Q4 falls in the 2nd half of the year. Perhaps this ass-clown didn't do so well with fractions.
Perhaps this should be the the impetus for a new "contract with society".
In the event that I am lost and my cell phone or GPS bracelet or other tracking devices are the only way to find and save me, I agree to just sit there and die. In exchange, I want my privacy back and do not want such records made available to nearly anyone who asks.
I appreciate your attempt to explain how difficult this could be. But loggers and counters and reliable computers are not beyond our current technology.
Truth is, the system can be very well defined. You only have a certain number of ways to interface with the user. You only have to record a few things.
It's not hard to log something 3 times to different banks. It's not hard to write a good, error-free logger. These aren't web browsers parsing millions of lines of code written by thousands of people in different ways. You can't walk into a voting booth and try to cause a buffer overflow by voting too much for the same candidate.
These are systems that any competent senior design student could handle in a semester.
I'm with the original poster. I really don't get it. We must be missing something with this.
Yep. I've done work for clients where the client's client mandated that all resistors be 1%. This included, for example, resistors used as pull-ups and LED current-limiting resistors.
Ridiculous. Of course, the resistors don't really add much to the cost. It's the gratuitous use of industrial parts and other things that raise costs.
Yes, perhaps it's just that the TYPE of people that own cats are less likely to die from heart disease.
I'm just making this up, but perhaps cat owners are more likely to be vegetarians / vegans than dog owners and therefore less likely to die from heart disease. But those steak-and-cheese-eating cat owners are no better off just because they own a cat.
I think this is pretty much known about Amazon. It has happened to me twice. Once for a "Little Giant" ladder. I don't remember the other situation. It was a couple years ago.
I'm not generally in the habit of taking screenshots of all my online orders.
Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?
I don't see how this one got modded "Funny," buy anyhow...
I'm not suggesting that Google has (yet) applied any anti-competitive practices as Microsoft did. I'm just suggesting that it's a good idea to keep an eye on all monopolies from an early stage before things get out of hand.
Most of the posts thus far seem to note that MS "should know about monopolies". But, does the fact that MS is the one filing the complaint here make it any less true?
Really, folks. Lets discuss the merits of the argument.
Monopolies should be regulated before their damage is done. We arrived too late on the scene to stop the damage Microsoft had done to the marketplace. Perhaps we should start thinking ahead a little.
...and 4. reliance on software which creates a derivative reliance on Microsoft Windows.
Most companies rely on a significant amount of software which is only available for Windows. The competition for these pieces of software on non-MS platforms is not noteworthy.
Consider graphic design... Adobe (and similar) products aren't available on Linux (but are for Mac). Don't even try to argue for Linux-based alternatives.
Consider engineering/architecture... 3D design packages and PCB design packages are all Windows. Again, Linux (or even Mac-based) alternatives are child's play.
Walk into almost any medium to large company and see what software they most rely on. In most cases, it will not be Word or Internet Explorer. It will be some other application which is solely Windows-based and the competition is likewise.
Software development companies are a twist on this. Their dev tools are mostly available for other platforms, but their markets aren't.
I use Open Office extensively and have never installed MS Office despite having an MSDN subscription which provides it for "free" for the last 5 yrs. I do this out of principle, but this decision has cost me. There are incompatibilities present that have cost me time and effort.
I own Adobe Photoshop because Gimp would cost me dearly in time and effort. I've tried many times, but Gimp is really not a PS replacement.
And while Linux is "free" and my company's products support it, the userbase is comparatively small to our Windows base and the costs of using it, learning it, keeping up with it, and maintaining product support are astronomical (per user capita) compared to Windows.
That said, there are a huge number of open-source packages that are not only free but save me an enormous amount of time and effort. Thunderbird is far more time-friendly than Outlook has been to me. Firefox. Python. Ruby. Ruby on Rails.
Others save me money by proxy. My web host uses Open Solaris, for example.
Open Source software has a very important niche within enterprise and home use. But a large number of the mainstream packages that most home users would use will frustrate those folks with quirks. Some things are only free if you value your time at nothing.
Yeah, and after looking at this list, I can see why. Everything on there looked like your run-of-the-mill crap. A bunch of "because we can" designs that really don't further the state of the art in tech or usability.
Ah, I briefly thought you were referring to the Harvard architecture. But then, the idea really did sound pretty obvious, so I figured it had been applied to desktops somewhere.
I really wonder what could be gained by allowing the software installer to choose its storage media. Of the 200 GB of software I have installed on my machine, I can't imagine that more than 20-30% of that is accessed on a daily or weekly basis.
Then again, it's almost always the case that systems with cache intelligence are better at deciding these things than people are. If a file hasn't been tagged as used for a couple weeks, shovel it off to a spinning disk and make more room on the flash disk.
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Yes, this is legal in Verilog and not in VHDL.
But is it the compiler's job to teach the student?
The two frameworks have equivalent issues here. Verilog just doesn't warn you about the type issues. But VHDL requires that you go through hoops to solve them. They BOTH require some level of understanding to solve the problem. That's where the instructor comes into it.
Nonsense. Teaching the tool is the job of a vocational program. The theory of HDL will long out-last any particular errors or syntax that come about.
Any course that targets a specific tool moves from being a life-long asset to being an educational experience that lasts only as long as those tools or languages are in-style.
An HDL course should focus on the theory and practice of HDL. The choice of which HDL to use should be made based on which tool allows you to accomplish that goal as well as possible. The widespread use of both Verilog and VHDL make them good choices. But (I feel) that for most fundamental classes, VHDL involves too much unnecessary verbosity.
In more advanced HDL work, VHDL begins to offer more. But with Verilog-2001, still not quite enough.
Well, if I have to spell it out for you, "more familiar" is meant to mean "statistically more familiar" since the vast majority of people learning HDL come from a C/Java/C# background in some manner. VERY few people have familiarity with Pascal and even fewer with ADA.
If taught right, the "appears like C" doesn't involve a catch at all. (and by your argument, the fact that VHDL appears like Pascal would involve the same catch) HDLs are hardware description languages. It is extremely important to make that distinction early on. The appearance of an HDL like a procedural language is not a catch if taught in proper context. But this is the task of the instructor and is not associated with the particular HDL chosen.
Strongly disagree here.
You can do about 99% of what most HDL folks do for FPGAs using Verilog and VHDL. Verilog does it in a more familiar syntax. VHDL requires considerably more pomp and fluff to accomplish the same goals.
It's true that VHDL *may* be more appropriate for bigger, careful projects. But students need to learn principles without tools and other things getting in the way.
Teach principles of HDL with the least roadblocks, then allow more in-depth study to accomplish more. The relatively few students that go on to use what they learn in a class in depth will learn as necessary. If you can get through to ALL of the students using simple tools and languages, then you can teach the fundamentals of HDL and that will stick with them for a long time to come.
Actually, I'm convinced SAP saves big companies millions of dollars. They do so by losing invoices or making it so difficult for other companies to invoice them that these invoices never get paid. Companies using SAP have much higher payment aging than other companies.
Look for a product called Corrosion X.
It's somewhat like WD-40. It is non-conductive and can be sprayed directly on electronics. It forms a hydrophobic barrier between the electronics and the elements and may help.
It is typically used as a preventative. Often used in the aviation market to protect wing/fuselage interiors, it is also sprayed directly on avionics to reduce corrosion.
It's cheap and is worth a shot.
System Up Time: 0 Days, 21 Hours, 32 Minutes, 58 Seconds
Windows Update :( Not "off" but restart.
Hm. I run both Windows and Mac. I can't remember the last time I did any update to a Mac that didn't require a restart. It's really pretty annoying.
Windows has gotten much better about not requiring restarts for updates. A huge change from its Windows 95/98 and NT days.
(1) "Usability" is in the mind of the user. If you learned how to use some other system first and now expect that any other way of doing
things isn't "usable" enough, that's just plain old resistance to change. It says more about you than it does about the usability of the
software in question.
(2) "Designers" who can't code have absolutely no business "working" in software. If you think you really know how an interface should
work and look, then learn to code it. Otherwise, you're just a critic of the kind that the NYT doesn't hire.
Hm. Time for someone to read a little Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. First of all, quality can be judged by those that are not necessarily able to produce quality.
Second, quality is not all about the eye of the beholder. There are some objective measures that can be established.
A good way to judge the quality of writing, for example, is to read a lot. You basically program yourself to recognize good quality writing.
Perhaps a good way for you to become a better judge of usability would be for you to use a lot of different kinds of software. I, personally, find it self-evident that some software is far more usable than other software, regardless of the user using it.
Yes, but the assertion that this somehow circumvents copyright law is pretty ridiculous.
The composite of the entire system allows one to store data in a retrievable fashion, just as the composite of a hard drive, magnetic head, source coding strategy, filesystem, and operating system allow one to store data in a retrievable fashion -- despite the fact that it is fragmented on the drive and source coded.
The scope of the system may be different, but it accomplishes the same.
Sharing the "recipe" for assembling the blocks is the same as sharing the original file. It's just a definition of terms. You could say that a compressed (.zip) version of a text file is really just a recipe for algorithmically creating the original text file. The zip version and the original are treated the same under copyright law, as far as I know.
Perhaps they meant to say the third quarter of the second half which puts it firmly at the third half of the third quarter.
WSJ says fourth quarter. Google says second half. Last I checked, Q4 falls in the 2nd half of the year. Perhaps this ass-clown didn't do so well with fractions.
Perhaps this should be the the impetus for a new "contract with society".
In the event that I am lost and my cell phone or GPS bracelet or other tracking devices are the only way to find and save me, I agree to just sit there and die. In exchange, I want my privacy back and do not want such records made available to nearly anyone who asks.
I appreciate your attempt to explain how difficult this could be. But loggers and counters and reliable computers are not beyond our current technology.
Truth is, the system can be very well defined. You only have a certain number of ways to interface with the user. You only have to record a few things.
It's not hard to log something 3 times to different banks. It's not hard to write a good, error-free logger. These aren't web browsers parsing millions of lines of code written by thousands of people in different ways. You can't walk into a voting booth and try to cause a buffer overflow by voting too much for the same candidate.
These are systems that any competent senior design student could handle in a semester.
I'm with the original poster. I really don't get it. We must be missing something with this.
Yep. I've done work for clients where the client's client mandated that all resistors be 1%. This included, for example, resistors used as pull-ups and LED current-limiting resistors.
Ridiculous. Of course, the resistors don't really add much to the cost. It's the gratuitous use of industrial parts and other things that raise costs.
Yes, perhaps it's just that the TYPE of people that own cats are less likely to die from heart disease.
I'm just making this up, but perhaps cat owners are more likely to be vegetarians / vegans than dog owners and therefore less likely to die from heart disease. But those steak-and-cheese-eating cat owners are no better off just because they own a cat.
I think this is pretty much known about Amazon. It has happened to me twice. Once for a "Little Giant" ladder. I don't remember the other situation. It was a couple years ago.
I'm not generally in the habit of taking screenshots of all my online orders.
Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?
I don't see how this one got modded "Funny," buy anyhow...
I'm not suggesting that Google has (yet) applied any anti-competitive practices as Microsoft did. I'm just suggesting that it's a good idea to keep an eye on all monopolies from an early stage before things get out of hand.
Most of the posts thus far seem to note that MS "should know about monopolies". But, does the fact that MS is the one filing the complaint here make it any less true?
Really, folks. Lets discuss the merits of the argument.
Monopolies should be regulated before their damage is done. We arrived too late on the scene to stop the damage Microsoft had done to the marketplace. Perhaps we should start thinking ahead a little.
Hm. A quad-core Jake. Sweet.
Because they don't all work for the Onion.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930
And the irony in it all is that the "free" alternatives would cost these companies so much more than just joining the borg.
Love it or hate it, the brilliance of Microsoft was embracing and coddling the developer.
...and 4. reliance on software which creates a derivative reliance on Microsoft Windows.
Most companies rely on a significant amount of software which is only available for Windows. The competition for these pieces of software on non-MS platforms is not noteworthy.
Consider graphic design... Adobe (and similar) products aren't available on Linux (but are for Mac). Don't even try to argue for Linux-based alternatives.
Consider engineering/architecture... 3D design packages and PCB design packages are all Windows. Again, Linux (or even Mac-based) alternatives are child's play.
Walk into almost any medium to large company and see what software they most rely on. In most cases, it will not be Word or Internet Explorer. It will be some other application which is solely Windows-based and the competition is likewise.
Software development companies are a twist on this. Their dev tools are mostly available for other platforms, but their markets aren't.
Not all open-source software is completely free.
I use Open Office extensively and have never installed MS Office despite having an MSDN subscription which provides it for "free" for the last 5 yrs. I do this out of principle, but this decision has cost me. There are incompatibilities present that have cost me time and effort.
I own Adobe Photoshop because Gimp would cost me dearly in time and effort. I've tried many times, but Gimp is really not a PS replacement.
And while Linux is "free" and my company's products support it, the userbase is comparatively small to our Windows base and the costs of using it, learning it, keeping up with it, and maintaining product support are astronomical (per user capita) compared to Windows.
That said, there are a huge number of open-source packages that are not only free but save me an enormous amount of time and effort. Thunderbird is far more time-friendly than Outlook has been to me. Firefox. Python. Ruby. Ruby on Rails.
Others save me money by proxy. My web host uses Open Solaris, for example.
Open Source software has a very important niche within enterprise and home use. But a large number of the mainstream packages that most home users would use will frustrate those folks with quirks. Some things are only free if you value your time at nothing.
Yeah, and after looking at this list, I can see why. Everything on there looked like your run-of-the-mill crap. A bunch of "because we can" designs that really don't further the state of the art in tech or usability.
Ah, I briefly thought you were referring to the Harvard architecture. But then, the idea really did sound pretty obvious, so I figured it had been applied to desktops somewhere.
I really wonder what could be gained by allowing the software installer to choose its storage media. Of the 200 GB of software I have installed on my machine, I can't imagine that more than 20-30% of that is accessed on a daily or weekly basis.
Then again, it's almost always the case that systems with cache intelligence are better at deciding these things than people are. If a file hasn't been tagged as used for a couple weeks, shovel it off to a spinning disk and make more room on the flash disk.