I've been in the electronics industry for more than 25 years, am (as they say) "not unknown in my field" and consulted by senior management in one of the largest electronics corporations in the world.
Once again, because this bears repeating, Microsoft licensed Roxio's Easy CD Creator for Windows XP. Roxio is NOT going to go out of business because people aren't buying Easy CD Creator.
... despite the massive advertising, you're not required to go with MSN. I'm in Phoenix, have Qworst DSL, and use CyberTrails, who are quite reasonable and actually Linux-knowledgable. There's quite a list of other ISPs who can take care of you, too.
Keep in mind that the Qworst/MSN deal actually requires that you use Windows -- even Mac users are No Longer Welcome.
I chair a JEDEC committee. JEDEC's legal office reserves the right to define "reasonable" in our RAND clause.
Since all of our standards apply to hardware with well-understood costs of manufacture, the royalty structure most often adopted is "fixed percent of OEM price." This is a necessity in a market where semiconductor prices drop with Moore's Law, and a trivial royalty one day dominates the price the next.
In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.
The alternatives, as we've already seen, can be as extreme as one-time charges in the millions of dollars. For Microsoft, able to amortize a flat-fee across hundreds of millions of units, the royalty would indeed be "reasonable." For Joe Startup, it would be prohibitive.
So, my question: what prospects do we have that RAND will be clarified, preferably with guidelines such as "percent of ASP," but at least with exclusion of abominations such as flat-fee?
I'm rather disappointed that nobody remembers some of the original lightning/rocket work done at New Mexico Tech's Langmuir Research Center. They've been "drawing down lightning" there for fifty years.
Besides, Tech has some of the best green chile con carne around. Especially for a University cafeteria!
Fabric softener is your friend. A dilute solution on all fabrics in the area (esp. carpet) can save a fortune.
Ferrite Is Good. A clamp-on ferrite (much easier to find in Japan than in the USA, dang if I know why) around a cable does wonders to slow down current edges so that the ESD devices have a chance to swallow the charge. No, it won't hurt your signal speed (differential vs. common-mode propagation.)
Common Ground. It's amazing how often you have two devices hooked together by (e.g.) a USB cable but plugged into different outlets. This makes the grounding at one useless-to-dangerous to the other.
As soon as he started reading the minds of the users who switched. It would be bad enough as pure speculation, but if he'd done his homework he would have found out if someone had already accounted for the change. As it happens, someone has.
Apparently, a major client (IIRC including NSI) switched hosting companies from an Apache shop to an IIS shop. Host enough domains and that will do it, but it only reflects a business decision on the part of one company almost totally divorced from technical issues.
Not because the first wasn't good, but because frankly the sequels will ruin the story for people. They not only don't live up to the measure of the first book but actually drag it down. (Watch the down-mods pile up.)
For what it's worth, I read Dune when it first appeared in Analog as two serialized short novels, Dune World and Prophet of Dune. I read, and still have, all three in their original serializations.
I have to agree with the review that Dune Messiah received in Analog all those years ago: Dune is about a world, while Dune Messiah is about a man. A great man, perhaps, but still a man; and no man, however great, can compete with a planet.
The sequels, in turning the focus of the story from planet to man, necessarily reduce the scope of the drama. Worst of all, they redefine the original story in a way that to me diminishes it as well. I've read a lot of science fiction in over forty years, and a lot of it wasn't worth reading. Dune Messiah is one of the very few books that was worse than a waste of time, and I sincerely wish I had never read it.
Translation: we want that legendary legion of eyeballs to do their magic contributing freely to lowering our costs and speeding up our schedule. Of course, it would be Un-American to give up our absolute rights to the results.
So, exactly, what part set off your BS detectors? (Not that you have any reason to believe this, but I do transistor-level CMOS design for fast reasonably fast circuits -- about 3 Gb/s I/O -- and it's all pretty standard stuff.)
Seriously, I know we are a bunch of nerds around here, but I think the only people who understand this are the engineers. Did anybody try running this through BabelFish:)
So how many f-sub-tau Ghz do curent 1Ghz clock speed processors have? It's difficult to see how much of an improvement this is if you're not an engineer.
That depends a good bit on how much power you're willing to burn. The transistors in current-generation processors (~1.5 GHz clocks) run with Ft in the 10-20 GHz range. The harder you push the limits, the more stages you need to get the same result so the power goes up from architecture, and you also get some second-order effects from having both P- and N-channel devices on at the same time. IOW, process improvements alone won't help the power all that much except by reducing capacitance and supply levels.
Keep in mind that the IBM devices are bipolar, not CMOS. They operate with a continuous current draw of 1 mA per device. A current-generation processor has tens of millions of devices, which would add up to thousands of amps. You had better have one HEROIC thermal design to deal with that little problem. That, or only use thise suckers very judiciouly.
At the speeds these little sweeties work, there is no such thing as digital. (Actually, there's no such thing as digital, period, but at low speeds you can squint and pretend.) The 210 GHz number is what's called the Ft (that's f-sub-tau) or unity-gain crossover frequency. At 210, the device takes as much power in as out, so an amplifier chain loses everything above that.
In practice, you need quite a bit more than unity gain. So you operate the thing down in the 50 GHz region as a front-end amplifier and demultiplexer for OC-768 fiber interfaces, which are currently ruled by indium-phosphide devices. IBM is the only outfit with a SiGe process that plays in this game. The advantage isn't in running the whole bag at outrageous frequencies, it's in running the front-end and back-end at the high rate and being able to put low-power, low-speed CMOS (low-speed=3.125 GHz or so) on the same chip.
The question isn't what ROXI is doing to make me pay extra for each cut on the mix CDs I'm making for a trip this weekend. The question is what is going into CD-RW drives to make me use Roxio or forget about burning anything at all.
For instance, a court recently held (and the issue was not appealed) that CSS is a technological measure that effectively controls access to movies.
I infer that the court in question is the Southern District of New York, and the case is Universal v. Corley. If not, oops.
The case itself is under appeal, and although there were no arguments heard on the "effective TPM" issue that was at least in part because the lower Court refused to allow arguments on that point. The matter is, if I read the appeals briefs correctly, being challenged by way of objection to the lower Court's ruling on the matter without testimony or argument.
Their Chairman views everything as a very high-stakes competion. It is how he is wired. As a result the entire company is built off of the, "If they are not for us, they are against us" philosophy.
Incomplete.
If they're not for us, they're against us. Kill them now.
If the suckers are for us, they can wait. Kill them later.
Seriously.
Stop laughing, I mean it. Orgasm has to be about the most effective treatment for lower back pain there is, the procedure isn't objectionable (which isn't the same as "it doesn't suck") and several of the better methods do some pretty good muscle stretches as well.
Now what we need is a Company benefit that covers it.
I turned down an invitation to speak at a conference in Quebec. I don't speak French, and couldn't find anyone to translate the presentation materials.
Oh, well. Next year is Denver.
... Jamie and Bennet needed a publicity fix so it's time for the regularly-scheduled MAPS-bash.
... Macromedia has been sending mail to every address that they could scrape for years.
... Macromedia had all of this explained to them very, very clearly. They could have separated their http and mail servers but chose to play Chicken with MAPS.
And by the way I also think that moving peacefire.org into an already-RBL'd netblock with a bunch of spamware peddlers was a shoddy publicity stund that anybody with half a clue has seen through.
The basic rule is W=CF(V**2) -- the capacitance of the switching nodes times the switching frequency times the square of the supply voltage. Capacitance has been going up as oxide thicknesses have come down, along with more layer of metal. Frequencies have also gone up; you might have noticed. Voltages have come down, but not nearly as fast as the other two have gone up.
My 500 MHz K6-2 ran on 2.2 volts; my 1200 MHz Thunderbird runs on 1.8 -- even if the capacitance had stayed constant (and it hasn't, by a long shot) the power would have gone up 60%.
Please keep in mind that the RIAA and MPAA have already argued in court that their license terms are binding on consumers. Therefore, the "agree not to hack" constraints will be applied to anyone doing postmarket research on these watermarks.
What? The Court would throw the suit out on the grounds that there is no contract? That might be, if you can afford several million up front for the defense. Let's have a show of hands:
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I've been in the electronics industry for more than 25 years, am (as they say) "not unknown in my field" and consulted by senior management in one of the largest electronics corporations in the world.
My business card reads, "Mad Scientist."
I may not be Bob Pease, but I'm trying!
Once again, because this bears repeating, Microsoft licensed Roxio's Easy CD Creator for Windows XP. Roxio is NOT going to go out of business because people aren't buying Easy CD Creator.
Microsoft also licensed Lattice C.
... despite the massive advertising, you're not required to go with MSN. I'm in Phoenix, have Qworst DSL, and use CyberTrails, who are quite reasonable and actually Linux-knowledgable. There's quite a list of other ISPs who can take care of you, too.
Keep in mind that the Qworst/MSN deal actually requires that you use Windows -- even Mac users are No Longer Welcome.
I chair a JEDEC committee. JEDEC's legal office reserves the right to define "reasonable" in our RAND clause.
Since all of our standards apply to hardware with well-understood costs of manufacture, the royalty structure most often adopted is "fixed percent of OEM price." This is a necessity in a market where semiconductor prices drop with Moore's Law, and a trivial royalty one day dominates the price the next.
In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.
The alternatives, as we've already seen, can be as extreme as one-time charges in the millions of dollars. For Microsoft, able to amortize a flat-fee across hundreds of millions of units, the royalty would indeed be "reasonable." For Joe Startup, it would be prohibitive.
So, my question: what prospects do we have that RAND will be clarified, preferably with guidelines such as "percent of ASP," but at least with exclusion of abominations such as flat-fee?
Valen Faerlwynd responded:
That's what I was going to say!
You like their green chile too?
I'm rather disappointed that nobody remembers some of the original lightning/rocket work done at New Mexico Tech's Langmuir Research Center. They've been "drawing down lightning" there for fifty years.
Besides, Tech has some of the best green chile con carne around. Especially for a University cafeteria!
That's Philips with one L -- the two-L version sells petroleum products. The Company is quite touchy on the subject.
As soon as he started reading the minds of the users who switched. It would be bad enough as pure speculation, but if he'd done his homework he would have found out if someone had already accounted for the change. As it happens, someone has.
Apparently, a major client (IIRC including NSI) switched hosting companies from an Apache shop to an IIS shop. Host enough domains and that will do it, but it only reflects a business decision on the part of one company almost totally divorced from technical issues.
Not because the first wasn't good, but because frankly the sequels will ruin the story for people. They not only don't live up to the measure of the first book but actually drag it down. (Watch the down-mods pile up.)
For what it's worth, I read Dune when it first appeared in Analog as two serialized short novels, Dune World and Prophet of Dune. I read, and still have, all three in their original serializations.
I have to agree with the review that Dune Messiah received in Analog all those years ago: Dune is about a world, while Dune Messiah is about a man. A great man, perhaps, but still a man; and no man, however great, can compete with a planet.
The sequels, in turning the focus of the story from planet to man, necessarily reduce the scope of the drama. Worst of all, they redefine the original story in a way that to me diminishes it as well. I've read a lot of science fiction in over forty years, and a lot of it wasn't worth reading. Dune Messiah is one of the very few books that was worse than a waste of time, and I sincerely wish I had never read it.
Translation: we want that legendary legion of eyeballs to do their magic contributing freely to lowering our costs and speeding up our schedule. Of course, it would be Un-American to give up our absolute rights to the results.
It also looks like bullsh*t to me.
So, exactly, what part set off your BS detectors? (Not that you have any reason to believe this, but I do transistor-level CMOS design for fast reasonably fast circuits -- about 3 Gb/s I/O -- and it's all pretty standard stuff.)
Seriously, I know we are a bunch of nerds around here, but I think the only people who understand this are the engineers. Did anybody try running this through BabelFish :)
Oooooohh!
Somebody, PLEASE?
So how many f-sub-tau Ghz do curent 1Ghz clock speed processors have? It's difficult to see how much of an improvement this is if you're not an engineer.
That depends a good bit on how much power you're willing to burn. The transistors in current-generation processors (~1.5 GHz clocks) run with Ft in the 10-20 GHz range. The harder you push the limits, the more stages you need to get the same result so the power goes up from architecture, and you also get some second-order effects from having both P- and N-channel devices on at the same time. IOW, process improvements alone won't help the power all that much except by reducing capacitance and supply levels.
Keep in mind that the IBM devices are bipolar, not CMOS. They operate with a continuous current draw of 1 mA per device. A current-generation processor has tens of millions of devices, which would add up to thousands of amps. You had better have one HEROIC thermal design to deal with that little problem. That, or only use thise suckers very judiciouly.
At the speeds these little sweeties work, there is no such thing as digital. (Actually, there's no such thing as digital, period, but at low speeds you can squint and pretend.) The 210 GHz number is what's called the Ft (that's f-sub-tau) or unity-gain crossover frequency. At 210, the device takes as much power in as out, so an amplifier chain loses everything above that.
In practice, you need quite a bit more than unity gain. So you operate the thing down in the 50 GHz region as a front-end amplifier and demultiplexer for OC-768 fiber interfaces, which are currently ruled by indium-phosphide devices. IBM is the only outfit with a SiGe process that plays in this game. The advantage isn't in running the whole bag at outrageous frequencies, it's in running the front-end and back-end at the high rate and being able to put low-power, low-speed CMOS (low-speed=3.125 GHz or so) on the same chip.
HTH.
The question isn't what ROXI is doing to make me pay extra for each cut on the mix CDs I'm making for a trip this weekend. The question is what is going into CD-RW drives to make me use Roxio or forget about burning anything at all.
For instance, a court recently held (and the issue was not appealed) that CSS is a technological measure that effectively controls access to movies.
I infer that the court in question is the Southern District of New York, and the case is Universal v. Corley. If not, oops.
The case itself is under appeal, and although there were no arguments heard on the "effective TPM" issue that was at least in part because the lower Court refused to allow arguments on that point. The matter is, if I read the appeals briefs correctly, being challenged by way of objection to the lower Court's ruling on the matter without testimony or argument.
Incomplete.
Seriously.
Stop laughing, I mean it. Orgasm has to be about the most effective treatment for lower back pain there is, the procedure isn't objectionable (which isn't the same as "it doesn't suck") and several of the better methods do some pretty good muscle stretches as well.
Now what we need is a Company benefit that covers it.
I turned down an invitation to speak at a conference in Quebec. I don't speak French, and couldn't find anyone to translate the presentation materials.
Oh, well. Next year is Denver.
The basic rule is W=CF(V**2) -- the capacitance of the switching nodes times the switching frequency times the square of the supply voltage. Capacitance has been going up as oxide thicknesses have come down, along with more layer of metal. Frequencies have also gone up; you might have noticed. Voltages have come down, but not nearly as fast as the other two have gone up.
My 500 MHz K6-2 ran on 2.2 volts; my 1200 MHz Thunderbird runs on 1.8 -- even if the capacitance had stayed constant (and it hasn't, by a long shot) the power would have gone up 60%.
Expect a US-backed coup any day now.
Please keep in mind that the RIAA and MPAA have already argued in court that their license terms are binding on consumers. Therefore, the "agree not to hack" constraints will be applied to anyone doing postmarket research on these watermarks.
What? The Court would throw the suit out on the grounds that there is no contract? That might be, if you can afford several million up front for the defense. Let's have a show of hands:
Of course, the fact that NASA had just installed a bunch of critical hotfixes from Microsoft's FunLove-infected update site is purely coincidental.