I completely agree. I've been using similar removable hard-drive carriages for years.
They're relatively cheap and simple. Once you install the chassis, you can slip any number of hard-drive carriages into your system. This is a GREAT way to reuse old small hard-drives, to try out new OS's and such forth.
At my house, and my father's house, we both have a few stacks of various drives lying around for different things. It beats keeping a few dozen computers around the house (which, of course, we do have anyway...)
One note - be careful about using different brands. While they MOSTLY look similar and mostly use the same Centronics-like connector between chassis and carriage, not all brands are physically mateable. Find a brand that works well, and stick to it.
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greenhouse-effect causing gasses that we release by Fossile fuels, if such gasses do in fact cause
global warming (of which I'm not fully convinced.)
Well, here's a little calculation that might help convince you about the greenhouse effect. I'm too lazy to look up the numbers and everything right now, but if you look in any basic astronomy book and this calculation should be there.
Take the luminosity of the sun and using the cross-sectional area of Earth and knowing Earth's distance from the sun, and accounting for it rotating for a more-even heat distribution, you can find the average solar power striking Earth.
Now assuming the Earth is in thermal equilibrium with it's surroundings, it will thermally radiate at this same power rate. Assuming Earth is a simple blackbody, what is the temperature that it radiates at? In other words, what is the temperature of the surface of Earth, as determined by the power of the sun and the distance from that sun?
The answer comes out to roughly (it's either a few degrees above or below this value) 0 degrees celcius. That is, around the freezing point of water. Granted some parts of Earth are frozen, but most parts are able to easily maintain liquid water, often at substantially higher temperatures than 0-degrees C. What accounts for Earth to be this warm? It's the greenhouse effect!
Most scientists will readily argue that the greenhouse effect is real, and in fact necessary, for life on the planet. So I hope that answers your question about the effects of greenhouse gases and global warming.
The real question, though, comes about when we consider how would the surface temperature change as we adjust the CO2 levels from what they were a hundred years ago. That's the harder question to answer.
I do believe that as a species, through engine emissions and other means, we are starting to significantly alter the planet's ecosystem. Probably through increased population alone will the effects start to manifest themselves.
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You must not be aware of the tremendous list of technological achievements NASA made towards getting us to the moon, which have drastically improved our lives. Everything from integrated circuits to ketchup packets, from satellite communications technology to Tang.
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But the difference (and IANAL) is that Miata is not a commonly-used word officially in the English language (at least according to Merriam-Webster .
Of course, these silly trademark rules will probably allow Adobe to pressure the Koffice people to change the name.
Someone above suggested that Kword might soon be pressured by MSFT to change, and maybe even the Koffice name will have to be changed. This leads to an interesting point. Many word processors existed prior to MSWord with the name 'word' in them. Could MSFT claim KWord is in violation or not? And similarly, has anyone encountered other software with the name 'illustrator' in it?
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You might want to can the multi-line signature thing. It looks pretty dumb.
I screwed up in the first message and put an extra <p> at the end by accident, so it's taking up more space than usual.
does the text at least line up right on your browser? i've only checked out the sig on netscape, what browser are you using?
btw, i kind of like the sig (taken from figlet, of course, with some periods thrown in to keep the spacers). that was like the smallest font i could find that looked decent.
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The thing that's really too bad is Judge Jackson did this to himself-- if he'd kept his mouth shut, not appeared on TV
and in the media making public remarks about the case, there's a decent chance he'd have atleast been able to
continue presiding as Judge over the case.
Jackson's problems stemmed, at least in part, from his inability to trust MSFT after they were caught lying in court (eg, the faked video tape). Is there any word of trials of perjury against those responsible for lying in court (such as those that filmed the faked videotape)?
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Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.
In a way, a small part of me is somewhat glad that they won't be broken up anytime soon. Now, if/when Linux succeeds, people won't be able to say it was ONLY due to the breakup of the giant. At least the court trial gave us a few years where MSFT had to behave, so we could help spread the good word in a fairer playing field.
Besides, I think the breakup was the wrong punishment for MSFT's actions. I don't think it was painful enough.
Ugghh, not this complaint again. Okay, here comes my rant again.
You're committing the age-old fallacy of assuming that all of us slashdotters are of one and the same ideology.
Have you found any of the same posters that criticized IIS and ALSO praised TUX? If so, then you have a valid response. If not (which I'm assuming), then SHUT the HELL UP!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Slashdot readers are not of one common philosophy. We're a community of various people with various beliefs, who live in various countries, who use various software, etc. STOP assuming that we're all one and the same!
If Joe Linux complains about IIS, fine. If Mary Linux praises TUX, that's fine. It's NOT hypocrisy when different people give their opinions on different subjects!
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Do the average Corp, the ability to modify software means precisly dick!
Yup, and for me personally, the chance I'll modify the linux kernel, or mozilla, or gimp, is (almost) nearly zip because I don't have the time or expertise to screw with the code. But I know I can recompile it if necessary, and because it's in the open, I also know it's (hopefully) relatively free of potential back doors. The merits of having something in the open can be worth more than the chance of modifying it directly.
In other words, don't lose sight of the other benefits of free software by concluding that it's a rare chance you'll actually modify the source directly.
It's often hard to get good support of OSS. Good in this case means timely. If one of our HP servers goes down, we
can be on the phone with a HP tech in less than 5 minutes. Trying getting a tech that quick with OSS, without
paying through the nose in advance. Lost time == Lost Revenue
Why should this be any different with an OSS support service provider? Someone above mentioned Cygnus. Can someone that uses them as support provide how long it takes to get ahold of them?
And in my own experience with HP (for their lab equipment, not computers) it usually takes damn long to get a competent engineer on the phone. Sometimes they call back an hour or more later. Of course, this is an entirely different line of product, where 24-hour uptime isn't mandatory.
Retraining isn't free. If you're using Software XYZ, it's going to cost quite a bit to train your staff to use Software
ABC
Once again, how is this different from commercial software? No firm will stick with the same software for the next 20 years. And new employees will need to be trained as well.
Maybe the original author writing the whitepaper is talking about a new firm opening shop, or a new department forming. With two paths before them, with training costs at either end, OSS could prove quite cost beneficial.
And on my own little rant, many people love pointing out that OSS has a higher TCO due to retraining. For instance, it might be cheaper to upgrade an office to winxp instead of migrating to linux. But these people forget that it's a One-Time jump. Once the office is running linux, there's no more jumps to linux to be made, and upgrading to newer kernels is now essentially free (sysadmin paid time only).
If it ain't broke don't fix it. When our commericial software does what we need it to do, why SHOULD we switch,
and risk failure? This ain't somebodys home Linux firewall box we're talking about here.
If that's true, we'd all be still running DOS, or earlier. There's always software that does what you need to do, but to keep up with current technological capabilities is usually important too. (Ie, would you want to keep using a non-WYSIWYG word processor if you didn't have to?) (And no dis to the LaTeX crowd, I love LaTeX, but whipping up a quick report for me is usually quicker with staroffice or equivalent).
You're right in that just jumping the linux bandwagon without looking isn't necessarily a wise move. But to carefully plan out a strategy to get the most out of available software with the potential to also minimize the cost, can prove to be an attractive option to some companies. Especially the ones either early in development or without much funding.
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First we get mad when MS calls us a 'cancer'. Then we call MS an evil, unkillable menace.
Yeah, the level of emotional tenderness around here always surprises me. There's the neverending stream of rage and
hatred directed at Microsoft. They're evil! We hate them! We're going to destroy them! I mean, look at the freaking icon
for Microsoft articles!
Well, there is a large difference between the president or CEO or whatever his title is nowadays, Steve Ballmer, representing MSFT, calling an entire movement a cancer, in a very public announcement. Joe Schmoe, on slashdot, venting his rage against some company doesn't even compare.
One expects some measure of courtesy or honesty of one at the helm of a large entity, which Ballmer has clearly not shown by referring to linux as a cancer, and by fudding his way to create confusion between gpl/free-software/open-source.
And finally, STOP! associating everybody on slashdot as having only one mentality! We're all different people. Anti-linux articles bring out the linux defenders, anti-windows articles bring out the windows defenders, and so on such forth for everything from emacs/vi to gnome/kde to democrat/republican to tastes-great/less-filling. There is NO one slashdot ideology here, so stop assuming it!
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Don't forget MSFT includes PERL with the software distributed with each version of winNT Resource Kit. (Maybe even later versions of NT, but luckily i don't use windows anymore). PERL is joint-licensed under GPL and Artistic License.
Funnier is that the GPL is printed in full in the printed book that comes witb the Resource Kit.
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A Linux server takes some time and effort to learn to use and administer. It's designed for developers and
people who value control and power over ease of use. RPM and apt-get have made installations a little
easier, but still difficult when you compare them to...
This argument is often used to compare linux to windows migrations and that it might not be worth it. But I haven't seen anyone yet bring up the point that the upgrade to linux, or bsd, is primarily a one-time burden. After this, the systems can be upgraded to better versions of linux or bsd relatively easily. THere is no additional price charge, and also not much additional cost in terms of time or training.
In winXX, however, each newer version will cost more and more $$$ anyway, which will eventually overshadow the linux/bsd switch.
Each version of windows/linux/bsd will have some differences which will have to be explained. but once businesses make that initial jump into the unix/bsd world and live, then they're in for much smoother sailing.
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Transistors and the interconnection between them are three dimensional constructs. All of the dimensions have
scaled downwards thought not all at the same rate. There are a number of things that impact real world circuit
performance as a result of this. Wire for instance has a smaller cross section, the resistance of a wire is inversely
proportional to this cross section (think of how water flows through a straw v.s how water flows through a garden
hose). The capacitance is inversely proportional to its distance from ground, and this distance has shrunk.
One of the largest factors inhibiting speed of microelectronics is parasitic reactances (inductive and capacative), which you've casually mentioned, but not fully.
Every length of wire has some finite inductance, and the longer the wire, the more inductance it has. This is one of the hardest parasitic effects to kill. To see how this limits speed, picture how an inductor works. It basically stores energy in a magnetic field around itself, dependent on the current through the device. Magnetic fields don't like to change instantly, and when the current does change too quickly, it takes time for hte magnetic field to collapse (or create). This causes these parasitic inductances to act as virtual low-pass filters all over the circuit. Thus large inductances prevent one from quickly-changing currents, which limits quickly-changing voltages, which ultimately limits quickly-changing logic states of the device.
This is only talked about self-inductance, this inductance really depends on the location of all components in the circuit, as their magnetic fields all interact and they'll exhibit mutual inductances too.
The other reactive effect is parasitic capacitance, in which an electric field is created between varying components, usually between circuit-board traces and ground-planes, or between layers within the lithographed silicon devices.
You mention capacitance, but the largest effect comes from the surface-area in common, not just the distance between traces.
These parasitic capacitances don't like it when the electric field between them changes too quickly, so they also act as virtual low-pass filters all over the place, and also limit quickly-changing voltages. Ie, with a single-pole low-pass filter, it takes time for the voltage to ramp up, which means to ramp up to the threshold for a high/low transition will be limited.
Sometimes, the parasitic inductances and capacitances work together in nasty ways that they cause oscillations (or ringing), which is a real pain in the butt to try to kill off.
This is probably the primary reason the engineers want to shrink circuits - to kill the parasitics. That's why lead lengths are as short as possible and as narrow as possible on boards.
I always hear of overclocker enthusiasts talk about cooling their CPU's to lower and lower temperatures as if they can find no limit to their clock speeds. But they don't seem to acknowledge these inherent low-pass filters all over the place in terms of the parasitics.
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One manufacturer's 74LS00 quad NAND package has a "time to pull low" worst-case of 15 ns, and a "time to pull high"
worst-case of 22 ns. This is per input bit to be processed.
Don't forget that these are just the transition times for TTL. You also have to hold the signal high or low for a specified time in order to trigger the next logic gate this one is connected to.
You mention the 74LS00 quad-NAND as an example. Don't forget that this chip exists in a number of different logic families. The 74 prefactor means TTL, and the LS means Low-Power Schottkey. There's also 74F and 74HC and others I can't remember right now that might be faster and/or lower power (albeit with somewhat-varying voltage levels).
We don't use TTL in today's computers of course, it's too slow
TTL is a 'slower' logic family because it runs the BJT's (Bipolar Junction Transistors) in saturation. This is good for power requirements (although not as good as CMOS), but it when a transistor is saturated, it takes some time to come out of saturation for the next cycle. THat's the inherent limitation of TTL.
and chips requiring 5V signals produce too much heat for
small circuit paths in the chip.
It isn't just the voltage that causes the waste heat, it's the current too. Remember that TTL signals have low current at 5V, and high current at low signal. Look at the datasheet yourself. (This is for 74ALS00, and a 8-pint SOIC surface-mount device, but functionally equivalent to the DIP 74LS00 you most-likely used in your class).
Typical values in the low state are 0.1mA at 0.35 V, for a power of 35 uW. The high state is 3V at 20uA, for a power of 60 uW. So you see it's not just the voltage that causes the heat.
Because the low states use more power, control signals for gates (for instance, hi-Z output control in tri-state chips) use inverse-logic to activate them. Ie, a signal that will be used only occasionaly will typically have a logic-low activate it's function. Saves power in the long run, and seems kind of weird when you design TTL circuits at first.
Now if you want high speed, look at ECL (Emitter-Coupled Logic). This logic family is really fast. unlike TTL, the BJT's are not run in saturation, so they can switch faster. A side effect of this is that the transistors use more power, and hence run hotter. Like most things, it's a tradeoff. The fastest commercially-available logic family I've seen (and used) is ECLinPS (pronounced Eclipse), for ECL-in-PicoSeconds. These chips can run at several GHz! Pretty sweet. Look here for a datasheet for the ECLinPS NAND gate.
Unfortunately, one of the fastest logic companies has gone out of business about 10 years ago, and I've only been able to glimpse some of their datasheets. It was GigaBit Logic, who in the late 80's and early 90's had logic devices that beat the pants off of what we have now, implemented in GaAs (Gallium Arsenide). However, it cost way too much to develop profitably, and sadly the company is gone. Datasheets had devices listed at 10GHz (although I haven't tested any so I can't guarantee how accurate the datasheets are).
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Okay, any marketing people here on slashdot? (oh no, i've invoked the demons). There's something about this I don't understand. My main confusion with this whole issue is how do they know that internet ads aren't working, but TV/radio/magazine/billboard/skywriting ads are?
It seems that internet ads are probably the only ads they can actually keep track of how many people have followed the link. In terms of other ads, how will said companies know if they work?
Ie, if I buy a bar of Ivory soap, or a Dell computer, how the hell do they know whether I bought it based on the TV commercial during the Simpsons, a billboard on I-95, a magazine ad in Knitting Today? In fact, how do they know how many people even look at ads in magazines, radio, TV, billboards, etc.
People get numb to web ads after awhile, but so too with billboards on the highway. Yet billboards seem to be prospering. Radio and TV ads somewhat too.
What has led these companies to determine that all other ad sources are a success, but internet ads are a failure?
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NASA, in the USia, spends literally millions of dollars designing the space shuttle's computing system
from the ground up. Their in-house coders pour over each microchip and line of code hundereds of
times looking for even the smallest bug. This superior attention to detail is not possible using the limited
resources of the open-source method.
But in the last few years, especially with the emphasis on Cheaper/Faster/Little/Yellow/Different/Better, NASA, as well as most other government-sponsored research projects, has put more emphasis on COTS, or Commercial Off-The-Shelf components.
It's far easier to purchase an op-amp from a company than design+fab your own. That's why so many components have two ratings - commercial and military. The military ratings are designed to meet stricter environmental and performance conditions.
This is probably true in the realm of processors too. The only processor I know of specifically that NASA has used is the 8085 in the Mars Pathfinder. I think this was chosen mostly for its low power consumption. Of course it's ancient now, but when the program began this was a decent well-known reliable processor.
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Frankly, I'm interested in how they built such a big bunker 2 km underground.
About 3 years ago I worked on some of the front-end SNO detector electronics (these were called SNOD and SNOINT, for SNO discriminator and SNO integrator) with the High Energy Physics group at University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately I never went to the SNO site, but alot of other physicists/engineers I worked with that went there every other weekend installing/building/debugging the electronic detector systems. (CHUJE-tek is in the house!!!)
As someone points out above, the SNO detector was put inside an existing mine. But one of the interesting facets is that the only way into the mine is through a freight elevator. And it's not an incredibly big one either. So EVERY little piece of anything brought down there had to go through this elevator, which is an approx. 15 minute journey from surface to mine level.
It's rather impressive when you see the size of the whole detector, including that huge sphere of heavy water. Luckily the steel beams used for support didn't have to be sawed in pieces and rewelded, they just lifted the elevator higher than normal, and hung the beams beneath it, to bring them down that way. All other stuff had to fit into the elevator.
Pretty interesting project. I hope it provides useful info on intermingling between the quarks.
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Don't forget that the 12AX7's are triodes, and hence don't have the grounded shields of tetrodes and pentodes. Thus, their parasitic capacitance is wicked high, and prevents them from being used for high-frequency (ie, microwave and up) amplification.
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Microsoft didn't. The standard scripting language for NT is either.bat/.cmd or VBScript via the Windows
Scripting Host. PERL, along with PS, Kill, etc are just included in the Windows NT Resource Kit for all those
crazy people out there who hate using the official Microsoft sanctioned GUI interface tools.
Hmmmm, you're probably right. When I was dealing with NT a few years back, I was interested in learning PERL to implement a bunch of script-like things. It was either the Resource Kit, or one of the O'Reilly PERL on Win32 titles, that mentioned how PERL would become (or they wanted it to become) the standard winNT scripting language. I guess it may have just been market speak.
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In other words, it doesn't destroy Intellectual Property, but Intellectual Profiteering.
Hey, that's a really good way of putting it. I like that. What companies really mean when they say they're defending their IP - They're defending they're right to Intellectual Profiteering.
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Don't forget that every copy sold of the Windows NT Resource Kit comes with a version of PERL, which is jointly licensed (IIRC) under the GPL and Artistic License. The funny part is that the GPL is either printed at the end of the Resource Kit manual, or included as a text file on the CD-ROM (sorry, it's been a few years, I don't remember).
I did get a nice chuckle when read the first few sentences of the GPL preamble on a book published by MSFT Press.
"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General
Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all
its users."
Why did MSFT choose to make such an Un-American licensed piece of software the standard scripting language for NT?
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Where is freedom of
choice ? I don't like being told what to do. Not by Bill Gates, RMS, or anybody else that wants to tell me how to
practise my craft.
Yes, that's the beauty of freedom! You can write code, and release it under any of a plethora of different licenses. While I can choose any other license that suits my taste.. We're both happy, and have no reason to be miffed at each other for using a license for our OWN software that the other might not agree with.
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MS is right that the GPL "destroys" intellectual property.
Not true. The GPL depends on copyright, and the original source code is the IP of the creator. I believe, the creator can, at his or her option, even release the original code under a proprietary license to sell to others, if desired (but sans modifications made by others under the GPL). But an important part of the GPL is that the source (at least originally) IS copyrighted by the original author. It's subsequent public distribution is what's governed by the GPL.
It's not IP that the GPL destroys, but instead the ability for others use that IP to exploit customers and competitors.
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Slashdot Mirror
They're relatively cheap and simple. Once you install the chassis, you can slip any number of hard-drive carriages into your system. This is a GREAT way to reuse old small hard-drives, to try out new OS's and such forth.
At my house, and my father's house, we both have a few stacks of various drives lying around for different things. It beats keeping a few dozen computers around the house (which, of course, we do have anyway...)
One note - be careful about using different brands. While they MOSTLY look similar and mostly use the same Centronics-like connector between chassis and carriage, not all brands are physically mateable. Find a brand that works well, and stick to it. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Well, here's a little calculation that might help convince you about the greenhouse effect. I'm too lazy to look up the numbers and everything right now, but if you look in any basic astronomy book and this calculation should be there.
Take the luminosity of the sun and using the cross-sectional area of Earth and knowing Earth's distance from the sun, and accounting for it rotating for a more-even heat distribution, you can find the average solar power striking Earth.
Now assuming the Earth is in thermal equilibrium with it's surroundings, it will thermally radiate at this same power rate. Assuming Earth is a simple blackbody, what is the temperature that it radiates at? In other words, what is the temperature of the surface of Earth, as determined by the power of the sun and the distance from that sun?
The answer comes out to roughly (it's either a few degrees above or below this value) 0 degrees celcius. That is, around the freezing point of water. Granted some parts of Earth are frozen, but most parts are able to easily maintain liquid water, often at substantially higher temperatures than 0-degrees C. What accounts for Earth to be this warm? It's the greenhouse effect!
Most scientists will readily argue that the greenhouse effect is real, and in fact necessary, for life on the planet. So I hope that answers your question about the effects of greenhouse gases and global warming.
The real question, though, comes about when we consider how would the surface temperature change as we adjust the CO2 levels from what they were a hundred years ago. That's the harder question to answer.
I do believe that as a species, through engine emissions and other means, we are starting to significantly alter the planet's ecosystem. Probably through increased population alone will the effects start to manifest themselves. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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You must not be aware of the tremendous list of technological achievements NASA made towards getting us to the moon, which have drastically improved our lives. Everything from integrated circuits to ketchup packets, from satellite communications technology to Tang. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Of course, these silly trademark rules will probably allow Adobe to pressure the Koffice people to change the name.
Someone above suggested that Kword might soon be pressured by MSFT to change, and maybe even the Koffice name will have to be changed. This leads to an interesting point. Many word processors existed prior to MSWord with the name 'word' in them. Could MSFT claim KWord is in violation or not? And similarly, has anyone encountered other software with the name 'illustrator' in it? .V / _` (_-<_-<
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I screwed up in the first message and put an extra <p> at the end by accident, so it's taking up more space than usual.
does the text at least line up right on your browser? i've only checked out the sig on netscape, what browser are you using?
btw, i kind of like the sig (taken from figlet, of course, with some periods thrown in to keep the spacers). that was like the smallest font i could find that looked decent. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Jackson's problems stemmed, at least in part, from his inability to trust MSFT after they were caught lying in court (eg, the faked video tape). Is there any word of trials of perjury against those responsible for lying in court (such as those that filmed the faked videotape)? .V / _` (_-<_-<
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In a way, a small part of me is somewhat glad that they won't be broken up anytime soon. Now, if/when Linux succeeds, people won't be able to say it was ONLY due to the breakup of the giant. At least the court trial gave us a few years where MSFT had to behave, so we could help spread the good word in a fairer playing field.
Besides, I think the breakup was the wrong punishment for MSFT's actions. I don't think it was painful enough.
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You're committing the age-old fallacy of assuming that all of us slashdotters are of one and the same ideology.
Have you found any of the same posters that criticized IIS and ALSO praised TUX? If so, then you have a valid response. If not (which I'm assuming), then SHUT the HELL UP!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Slashdot readers are not of one common philosophy. We're a community of various people with various beliefs, who live in various countries, who use various software, etc. STOP assuming that we're all one and the same!
If Joe Linux complains about IIS, fine. If Mary Linux praises TUX, that's fine. It's NOT hypocrisy when different people give their opinions on different subjects! .V / _` (_-<_-<
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I think you accidentally replied to my post, but meant to reply to post #70 below. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Yup, and for me personally, the chance I'll modify the linux kernel, or mozilla, or gimp, is (almost) nearly zip because I don't have the time or expertise to screw with the code. But I know I can recompile it if necessary, and because it's in the open, I also know it's (hopefully) relatively free of potential back doors. The merits of having something in the open can be worth more than the chance of modifying it directly.
In other words, don't lose sight of the other benefits of free software by concluding that it's a rare chance you'll actually modify the source directly.
It's often hard to get good support of OSS. Good in this case means timely. If one of our HP servers goes down, we can be on the phone with a HP tech in less than 5 minutes. Trying getting a tech that quick with OSS, without paying through the nose in advance. Lost time == Lost Revenue
Why should this be any different with an OSS support service provider? Someone above mentioned Cygnus. Can someone that uses them as support provide how long it takes to get ahold of them?
And in my own experience with HP (for their lab equipment, not computers) it usually takes damn long to get a competent engineer on the phone. Sometimes they call back an hour or more later. Of course, this is an entirely different line of product, where 24-hour uptime isn't mandatory.
Retraining isn't free. If you're using Software XYZ, it's going to cost quite a bit to train your staff to use Software ABC
Once again, how is this different from commercial software? No firm will stick with the same software for the next 20 years. And new employees will need to be trained as well.
Maybe the original author writing the whitepaper is talking about a new firm opening shop, or a new department forming. With two paths before them, with training costs at either end, OSS could prove quite cost beneficial.
And on my own little rant, many people love pointing out that OSS has a higher TCO due to retraining. For instance, it might be cheaper to upgrade an office to winxp instead of migrating to linux. But these people forget that it's a One-Time jump. Once the office is running linux, there's no more jumps to linux to be made, and upgrading to newer kernels is now essentially free (sysadmin paid time only).
If it ain't broke don't fix it. When our commericial software does what we need it to do, why SHOULD we switch, and risk failure? This ain't somebodys home Linux firewall box we're talking about here.
If that's true, we'd all be still running DOS, or earlier. There's always software that does what you need to do, but to keep up with current technological capabilities is usually important too. (Ie, would you want to keep using a non-WYSIWYG word processor if you didn't have to?) (And no dis to the LaTeX crowd, I love LaTeX, but whipping up a quick report for me is usually quicker with staroffice or equivalent).
You're right in that just jumping the linux bandwagon without looking isn't necessarily a wise move. But to carefully plan out a strategy to get the most out of available software with the potential to also minimize the cost, can prove to be an attractive option to some companies. Especially the ones either early in development or without much funding. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Well, there is a large difference between the president or CEO or whatever his title is nowadays, Steve Ballmer, representing MSFT, calling an entire movement a cancer, in a very public announcement. Joe Schmoe, on slashdot, venting his rage against some company doesn't even compare.
One expects some measure of courtesy or honesty of one at the helm of a large entity, which Ballmer has clearly not shown by referring to linux as a cancer, and by fudding his way to create confusion between gpl/free-software/open-source.
And finally, STOP! associating everybody on slashdot as having only one mentality! We're all different people. Anti-linux articles bring out the linux defenders, anti-windows articles bring out the windows defenders, and so on such forth for everything from emacs/vi to gnome/kde to democrat/republican to tastes-great/less-filling. There is NO one slashdot ideology here, so stop assuming it! .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Don't forget MSFT includes PERL with the software distributed with each version of winNT Resource Kit. (Maybe even later versions of NT, but luckily i don't use windows anymore). PERL is joint-licensed under GPL and Artistic License. Funnier is that the GPL is printed in full in the printed book that comes witb the Resource Kit. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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This argument is often used to compare linux to windows migrations and that it might not be worth it. But I haven't seen anyone yet bring up the point that the upgrade to linux, or bsd, is primarily a one-time burden. After this, the systems can be upgraded to better versions of linux or bsd relatively easily. THere is no additional price charge, and also not much additional cost in terms of time or training. In winXX, however, each newer version will cost more and more $$$ anyway, which will eventually overshadow the linux/bsd switch.
Each version of windows/linux/bsd will have some differences which will have to be explained. but once businesses make that initial jump into the unix/bsd world and live, then they're in for much smoother sailing. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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One of the largest factors inhibiting speed of microelectronics is parasitic reactances (inductive and capacative), which you've casually mentioned, but not fully.
Every length of wire has some finite inductance, and the longer the wire, the more inductance it has. This is one of the hardest parasitic effects to kill. To see how this limits speed, picture how an inductor works. It basically stores energy in a magnetic field around itself, dependent on the current through the device. Magnetic fields don't like to change instantly, and when the current does change too quickly, it takes time for hte magnetic field to collapse (or create). This causes these parasitic inductances to act as virtual low-pass filters all over the circuit. Thus large inductances prevent one from quickly-changing currents, which limits quickly-changing voltages, which ultimately limits quickly-changing logic states of the device.
This is only talked about self-inductance, this inductance really depends on the location of all components in the circuit, as their magnetic fields all interact and they'll exhibit mutual inductances too.
The other reactive effect is parasitic capacitance, in which an electric field is created between varying components, usually between circuit-board traces and ground-planes, or between layers within the lithographed silicon devices. You mention capacitance, but the largest effect comes from the surface-area in common, not just the distance between traces. These parasitic capacitances don't like it when the electric field between them changes too quickly, so they also act as virtual low-pass filters all over the place, and also limit quickly-changing voltages. Ie, with a single-pole low-pass filter, it takes time for the voltage to ramp up, which means to ramp up to the threshold for a high/low transition will be limited.
Sometimes, the parasitic inductances and capacitances work together in nasty ways that they cause oscillations (or ringing), which is a real pain in the butt to try to kill off.
This is probably the primary reason the engineers want to shrink circuits - to kill the parasitics. That's why lead lengths are as short as possible and as narrow as possible on boards.
I always hear of overclocker enthusiasts talk about cooling their CPU's to lower and lower temperatures as if they can find no limit to their clock speeds. But they don't seem to acknowledge these inherent low-pass filters all over the place in terms of the parasitics. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Don't forget that these are just the transition times for TTL. You also have to hold the signal high or low for a specified time in order to trigger the next logic gate this one is connected to.
You mention the 74LS00 quad-NAND as an example. Don't forget that this chip exists in a number of different logic families. The 74 prefactor means TTL, and the LS means Low-Power Schottkey. There's also 74F and 74HC and others I can't remember right now that might be faster and/or lower power (albeit with somewhat-varying voltage levels).
We don't use TTL in today's computers of course, it's too slow
TTL is a 'slower' logic family because it runs the BJT's (Bipolar Junction Transistors) in saturation. This is good for power requirements (although not as good as CMOS), but it when a transistor is saturated, it takes some time to come out of saturation for the next cycle. THat's the inherent limitation of TTL.
and chips requiring 5V signals produce too much heat for small circuit paths in the chip.
It isn't just the voltage that causes the waste heat, it's the current too. Remember that TTL signals have low current at 5V, and high current at low signal. Look at the datasheet yourself. (This is for 74ALS00, and a 8-pint SOIC surface-mount device, but functionally equivalent to the DIP 74LS00 you most-likely used in your class).
Typical values in the low state are 0.1mA at 0.35 V, for a power of 35 uW. The high state is 3V at 20uA, for a power of 60 uW. So you see it's not just the voltage that causes the heat.
Because the low states use more power, control signals for gates (for instance, hi-Z output control in tri-state chips) use inverse-logic to activate them. Ie, a signal that will be used only occasionaly will typically have a logic-low activate it's function. Saves power in the long run, and seems kind of weird when you design TTL circuits at first.
Now if you want high speed, look at ECL (Emitter-Coupled Logic). This logic family is really fast. unlike TTL, the BJT's are not run in saturation, so they can switch faster. A side effect of this is that the transistors use more power, and hence run hotter. Like most things, it's a tradeoff. The fastest commercially-available logic family I've seen (and used) is ECLinPS (pronounced Eclipse), for ECL-in-PicoSeconds. These chips can run at several GHz! Pretty sweet. Look here for a datasheet for the ECLinPS NAND gate.
Unfortunately, one of the fastest logic companies has gone out of business about 10 years ago, and I've only been able to glimpse some of their datasheets. It was GigaBit Logic, who in the late 80's and early 90's had logic devices that beat the pants off of what we have now, implemented in GaAs (Gallium Arsenide). However, it cost way too much to develop profitably, and sadly the company is gone. Datasheets had devices listed at 10GHz (although I haven't tested any so I can't guarantee how accurate the datasheets are). .V / _` (_-<_-<
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It seems that internet ads are probably the only ads they can actually keep track of how many people have followed the link. In terms of other ads, how will said companies know if they work? Ie, if I buy a bar of Ivory soap, or a Dell computer, how the hell do they know whether I bought it based on the TV commercial during the Simpsons, a billboard on I-95, a magazine ad in Knitting Today? In fact, how do they know how many people even look at ads in magazines, radio, TV, billboards, etc.
People get numb to web ads after awhile, but so too with billboards on the highway. Yet billboards seem to be prospering. Radio and TV ads somewhat too.
What has led these companies to determine that all other ad sources are a success, but internet ads are a failure? .V / _` (_-<_-<
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But in the last few years, especially with the emphasis on Cheaper/Faster/Little/Yellow/Different/Better, NASA, as well as most other government-sponsored research projects, has put more emphasis on COTS, or Commercial Off-The-Shelf components.
It's far easier to purchase an op-amp from a company than design+fab your own. That's why so many components have two ratings - commercial and military. The military ratings are designed to meet stricter environmental and performance conditions.
This is probably true in the realm of processors too. The only processor I know of specifically that NASA has used is the 8085 in the Mars Pathfinder. I think this was chosen mostly for its low power consumption. Of course it's ancient now, but when the program began this was a decent well-known reliable processor. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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About 3 years ago I worked on some of the front-end SNO detector electronics (these were called SNOD and SNOINT, for SNO discriminator and SNO integrator) with the High Energy Physics group at University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately I never went to the SNO site, but alot of other physicists/engineers I worked with that went there every other weekend installing/building/debugging the electronic detector systems. (CHUJE-tek is in the house!!!)
As someone points out above, the SNO detector was put inside an existing mine. But one of the interesting facets is that the only way into the mine is through a freight elevator. And it's not an incredibly big one either. So EVERY little piece of anything brought down there had to go through this elevator, which is an approx. 15 minute journey from surface to mine level.
It's rather impressive when you see the size of the whole detector, including that huge sphere of heavy water. Luckily the steel beams used for support didn't have to be sawed in pieces and rewelded, they just lifted the elevator higher than normal, and hung the beams beneath it, to bring them down that way. All other stuff had to fit into the elevator.
Pretty interesting project. I hope it provides useful info on intermingling between the quarks. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Don't forget that the 12AX7's are triodes, and hence don't have the grounded shields of tetrodes and pentodes. Thus, their parasitic capacitance is wicked high, and prevents them from being used for high-frequency (ie, microwave and up) amplification. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Hmmmm, you're probably right. When I was dealing with NT a few years back, I was interested in learning PERL to implement a bunch of script-like things. It was either the Resource Kit, or one of the O'Reilly PERL on Win32 titles, that mentioned how PERL would become (or they wanted it to become) the standard winNT scripting language. I guess it may have just been market speak. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Hey, that's a really good way of putting it. I like that. What companies really mean when they say they're defending their IP - They're defending they're right to Intellectual Profiteering. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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I did get a nice chuckle when read the first few sentences of the GPL preamble on a book published by MSFT Press. "The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users."
Why did MSFT choose to make such an Un-American licensed piece of software the standard scripting language for NT? .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Yes, that's the beauty of freedom! You can write code, and release it under any of a plethora of different licenses. While I can choose any other license that suits my taste.. We're both happy, and have no reason to be miffed at each other for using a license for our OWN software that the other might not agree with. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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Not true. The GPL depends on copyright, and the original source code is the IP of the creator. I believe, the creator can, at his or her option, even release the original code under a proprietary license to sell to others, if desired (but sans modifications made by others under the GPL). But an important part of the GPL is that the source (at least originally) IS copyrighted by the original author. It's subsequent public distribution is what's governed by the GPL.
It's not IP that the GPL destroys, but instead the ability for others use that IP to exploit customers and competitors. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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I use linux and BSD, and I agree, use the best tool for the job. .V / _` (_-<_-<
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