TRUTH!
I've used both AVR's and 555's extensively. 100's of circuits with each over the years.
Micros have their place, but they are too picky about too many things.
The 555 is bulletproof and listing it as #1 is very appropriate.
All hail the lm555.
I went with the LeCroy. Touch screen. A TON of features I still have never used, but I know they are there if I ever need to use 'infinite strip-chart' mode.
USB and cd burner for output. Ethernet if you are brave enough to put something like that on the web. I do not since I don't want to deal with patches on my scope. Sort of hard to explain a warez or pron sever on your test equipment to the IT security goons.
Nice math features. UNLIKE stupid techtronix scopes, the trigger ACTUALLY TRIGGERS like a sane person expects it to. The only good thing I can say about techtronix is that I can get schematics and they use less exotic parts than others. Also, I've seen them knocked off work benches by undergrads and still work.
The big bonus on the Lecroy was the all-so-handy magic blue "auto" button for easy setup that does a decent job of setting the timebase and voltages to catch your signal most of the time.
I was stuck between the HP and LeCroy for a while but HP's customer dis-service made up my mind for me in a hurry. (HP, Agilient, Avantgoober, what the-hell-ever they are calling it now--it's all the same. Another company leaving skidmarks as it circles the bowl on it's way to China. By the way: THANKS Carly Fiorina for destroying a decent company for short-term profits. Nice job asshole. Not surprised John McCluless had you as a campaign advisor... Your kind sucks for what it has done to our country and I hope you loose every cent in this economic meltdown you helped cause.) I miss the old HP. I want the old HP back.
There, I feel a little better.
Anyway, Lecroy let me try their unit out for a week and it had all the features I wanted. Had it for three years and just love it. In fact, I had to chain it to my bench in the electronics area to keep it there since grad students were sneaking in while I was on lunch and borrowing it. That's probably the best testimonial that can be said for it, since they have Agilent and Tec scopes in the lab my scope keeps vanishing into.
I set this up on an older machine as a "free" alternative to $600 Adobe video suite. This was for someone at work who needed to do simple editing and converting. It works pretty well for him to scan in videos from a $28 firewire card and convert to a dv stream. It's a nice package, and the audio syths that come with it are a fun way to waste an hour or more.
The theme is nice if you are into that look. Me, not so much, but the guy at work seems to enjoy bagging about how slick this looks. He also likes to tell everyone how easy it was for him to "setup". (By setup, he means change the default screen display font.)
Whatever--the install was probably just about as easy as changing the font--Ubuntu found all the hardware on the stock dell machine. That's more than I can say for Windows on the same hardware. (Broadcom network.)
I'm thrilled he has ditched Outlook and Internet Exploder for default browsing and is using Thunderbird to check his email on that computer. The Windows Vista machine officially issued to him is sitting there untouched for about three months in sleep mode. The clincher for him was after I installed the killer combination of: Automatix/Wine/Office 2003/IE6.0 (via IEs4Linux.)
I've since burned a few copies of standard 7.10 desktop.ISO for people in the office. At least 2 of the DVD's I burned are confirmed to be installed by coworkers (or their kids) into "old" machines they had laying around their house. Keeping in mind that these "old junk" computers are nicer than my "new" one.
On my setup at home, I did grab some of the video editing tools included in ubuntu studio (cinepaint and the nonlinear video editor that I'm too lazy to click on Applications right now to get the name of.) Along with the above mentioned killer combo, these are installed into Ubuntu 7.10 and work very well.
So...This is how we hear that Ron Popeil has been hired to run NBC?
Prime time infomercials. Yummy.
This just might work if it's staffed like Baywatch was... Too bad I don't even actually *care* as long as the internets keep working.
I worked in a 90% automated factory about a decade ago. We made automotive assemblies. There were maybe 25 fully automated robots on six lines that all served the function of creating this one product. In essence you could say that this was a 100,000 sq foot machine with maybe 50 humans feeding it.
The initial cool factor of being payed well to load and babysit the robots never quite wears off, although you do acclimate to the situation. After a while and you could actually feel the pulse of the factory as each part was produced. It was sort of semi organic--maybe like being inside a Borg Cube ship or something. Two hours into the shift it was hypnotizing. If there was a breakdown of one of the robots everything just went to hell for a few minutes and it would take you a bit to pick up on it if you were involved. The result was like those stupid visa commercials where the guy pays cash and causes everything to explode around him. It was often hilarious to watch another production line self-destruct with shit flying everywhere and people freaking out over red lights and alarms.
It was industrial and I hated every second of it and was bored. So was almost everyone else. However the people and management in that work environment were decent. In spite of feeding parts and sub-assemblies into robots all day long we were treated like people. Absolutely the best HR of anywhere I have ever worked in 20 years of working. You knew where you stood and it was 10 hours of work for 10 hours of decent pay. The floor bosses were competent and fair which I suppose made this possible.
Overall that fact that you could have a decent discussion on something interesting on lunch break was the best part. With the exception of a couple of religious zealots, very few outright sociopaths were hired. That upper 20% mentioned in previous comments is what HR was after to staff the place. 200 of the 8,000 that applied were hired and sent to three months of focused College level training. Since it was Ann Arbor they probably would have 500 useful candidates a month if they were not excluding the chronic weed heads as a matter of course. The fact that this is 4% of the people who applied says that the top 20% don't often go after these jobs.
At the time I just needed a job to get through college (and that was the story of many who made it in to the shop floor.) For the Midwest the selection of the people I was working with in a blue collar environment was amazing: Lots of momma-cries-every-night-over-junior-who-could-have-been-something type slackers or college dropouts (these were usually the SMART pot heads who knew how to get through the drug tests...) A Russian scientist and his wife (chemists, both of them, I think) who came here for a job. A completely and totally bat-shit bonkers former wife of a University professor. A recently fired accountant who was a (Mostly) job functional Alcoholic. A recent graduate of the masters program of the local Nuclear Engineering department who could not find a job in the market at the time. Many, many nurses or soon to be nurses. A few ex-armed forces skilled people trying to get their heads screwed on right after the first Golf war. A bunch of married folk trying to finish college.
So, the thing is you can hire that upper 20% but these are the people who would probably get good jobs somewhere ANYWAY. It's also not going to be a very satisfying job or sustainable in that they know this is a waste of what they can do with their lives. At three years of the constant, mind numbing, droning of the machines I lasted longer than some. However I was clearly a BURNT OUT shell of a person by the time I left there. Scary, since I knew this was only a JOB to me and it still had that effect--others had decided to make this a career and were in for a long, long haul.
The company had a '20 year and out' policy with full benefits and pension at the end. Considering what 3 years did to me and most of my co-workers, I think a person would end up like Tolkiens Gollum before they made it to that point. (Grasping at their gold retirement ring and whispering 'my...precious...' in their dark basement until they meet a truly horrible end due to their psychosis.)
Student at (unmentioned) college I work for took silver sharpie and re branded several monitors in one lab. I caught him in the act and he sort of freaked out and said he would clean it off, but I told him "No, it's pretty much an improvement anyway."
This was a few years ago and they remain as a small point of joy in my daily routine.
Props to anyone who comes up with official looking rebranded logo for a Dell laptop that says "HELL" and underneath "FIRE"
Link article has ad at top for 'Great deals on refurbished Dell laptops'...
Of course I reloaded and clicked it a few times to show my approval of this brilliant advertising strategy.
Could this be the start of something great? Man, OH MAN, do I hope so.
House fire caused by deranged child -> link to Zippo lighters and Diamond brand matches.
Concrete tunnel collapses -> link to 'get your engineering degree online in two weeks'
Massive computer project over budget and fails -> link to 'Microsoft enterprise systems'
etc...
Slashdot Mirror
TRUTH! I've used both AVR's and 555's extensively. 100's of circuits with each over the years. Micros have their place, but they are too picky about too many things. The 555 is bulletproof and listing it as #1 is very appropriate. All hail the lm555.
USB and cd burner for output. Ethernet if you are brave enough to put something like that on the web. I do not since I don't want to deal with patches on my scope. Sort of hard to explain a warez or pron sever on your test equipment to the IT security goons.
Nice math features. UNLIKE stupid techtronix scopes, the trigger ACTUALLY TRIGGERS like a sane person expects it to. The only good thing I can say about techtronix is that I can get schematics and they use less exotic parts than others. Also, I've seen them knocked off work benches by undergrads and still work.
The big bonus on the Lecroy was the all-so-handy magic blue "auto" button for easy setup that does a decent job of setting the timebase and voltages to catch your signal most of the time.
I was stuck between the HP and LeCroy for a while but HP's customer dis-service made up my mind for me in a hurry. (HP, Agilient, Avantgoober, what the-hell-ever they are calling it now--it's all the same. Another company leaving skidmarks as it circles the bowl on it's way to China. By the way: THANKS Carly Fiorina for destroying a decent company for short-term profits. Nice job asshole. Not surprised John McCluless had you as a campaign advisor... Your kind sucks for what it has done to our country and I hope you loose every cent in this economic meltdown you helped cause.) I miss the old HP. I want the old HP back.
There, I feel a little better.
Anyway, Lecroy let me try their unit out for a week and it had all the features I wanted. Had it for three years and just love it. In fact, I had to chain it to my bench in the electronics area to keep it there since grad students were sneaking in while I was on lunch and borrowing it. That's probably the best testimonial that can be said for it, since they have Agilent and Tec scopes in the lab my scope keeps vanishing into.
I set this up on an older machine as a "free" alternative to $600 Adobe video suite. This was for someone at work who needed to do simple editing and converting. It works pretty well for him to scan in videos from a $28 firewire card and convert to a dv stream. It's a nice package, and the audio syths that come with it are a fun way to waste an hour or more.
.ISO for people in the office. At least 2 of the DVD's I burned are confirmed to be installed by coworkers (or their kids) into "old" machines they had laying around their house. Keeping in mind that these "old junk" computers are nicer than my "new" one.
The theme is nice if you are into that look. Me, not so much, but the guy at work seems to enjoy bagging about how slick this looks. He also likes to tell everyone how easy it was for him to "setup". (By setup, he means change the default screen display font.)
Whatever--the install was probably just about as easy as changing the font--Ubuntu found all the hardware on the stock dell machine. That's more than I can say for Windows on the same hardware. (Broadcom network.)
I'm thrilled he has ditched Outlook and Internet Exploder for default browsing and is using Thunderbird to check his email on that computer. The Windows Vista machine officially issued to him is sitting there untouched for about three months in sleep mode. The clincher for him was after I installed the killer combination of: Automatix/Wine/Office 2003/IE6.0 (via IEs4Linux.)
I've since burned a few copies of standard 7.10 desktop
On my setup at home, I did grab some of the video editing tools included in ubuntu studio (cinepaint and the nonlinear video editor that I'm too lazy to click on Applications right now to get the name of.) Along with the above mentioned killer combo, these are installed into Ubuntu 7.10 and work very well.
Oh dear God--when did I become a Linux fanboy?
So...This is how we hear that Ron Popeil has been hired to run NBC? Prime time infomercials. Yummy. This just might work if it's staffed like Baywatch was... Too bad I don't even actually *care* as long as the internets keep working.
However, I have lost perhaps 20 USB flash memory sticks.
I worked in a 90% automated factory about a decade ago. We made automotive assemblies. There were maybe 25 fully automated robots on six lines that all served the function of creating this one product. In essence you could say that this was a 100,000 sq foot machine with maybe 50 humans feeding it.
The initial cool factor of being payed well to load and babysit the robots never quite wears off, although you do acclimate to the situation. After a while and you could actually feel the pulse of the factory as each part was produced. It was sort of semi organic--maybe like being inside a Borg Cube ship or something. Two hours into the shift it was hypnotizing. If there was a breakdown of one of the robots everything just went to hell for a few minutes and it would take you a bit to pick up on it if you were involved. The result was like those stupid visa commercials where the guy pays cash and causes everything to explode around him. It was often hilarious to watch another production line self-destruct with shit flying everywhere and people freaking out over red lights and alarms.
It was industrial and I hated every second of it and was bored. So was almost everyone else. However the people and management in that work environment were decent. In spite of feeding parts and sub-assemblies into robots all day long we were treated like people. Absolutely the best HR of anywhere I have ever worked in 20 years of working. You knew where you stood and it was 10 hours of work for 10 hours of decent pay. The floor bosses were competent and fair which I suppose made this possible.
Overall that fact that you could have a decent discussion on something interesting on lunch break was the best part. With the exception of a couple of religious zealots, very few outright sociopaths were hired. That upper 20% mentioned in previous comments is what HR was after to staff the place. 200 of the 8,000 that applied were hired and sent to three months of focused College level training. Since it was Ann Arbor they probably would have 500 useful candidates a month if they were not excluding the chronic weed heads as a matter of course. The fact that this is 4% of the people who applied says that the top 20% don't often go after these jobs.
At the time I just needed a job to get through college (and that was the story of many who made it in to the shop floor.) For the Midwest the selection of the people I was working with in a blue collar environment was amazing: Lots of momma-cries-every-night-over-junior-who-could-have-been-something type slackers or college dropouts (these were usually the SMART pot heads who knew how to get through the drug tests...) A Russian scientist and his wife (chemists, both of them, I think) who came here for a job. A completely and totally bat-shit bonkers former wife of a University professor. A recently fired accountant who was a (Mostly) job functional Alcoholic. A recent graduate of the masters program of the local Nuclear Engineering department who could not find a job in the market at the time. Many, many nurses or soon to be nurses. A few ex-armed forces skilled people trying to get their heads screwed on right after the first Golf war. A bunch of married folk trying to finish college.
So, the thing is you can hire that upper 20% but these are the people who would probably get good jobs somewhere ANYWAY. It's also not going to be a very satisfying job or sustainable in that they know this is a waste of what they can do with their lives. At three years of the constant, mind numbing, droning of the machines I lasted longer than some. However I was clearly a BURNT OUT shell of a person by the time I left there. Scary, since I knew this was only a JOB to me and it still had that effect--others had decided to make this a career and were in for a long, long haul.
The company had a '20 year and out' policy with full benefits and pension at the end. Considering what 3 years did to me and most of my co-workers, I think a person would end up like Tolkiens Gollum before they made it to that point. (Grasping at their gold retirement ring and whispering 'my...precious...' in their dark basement until they meet a truly horrible end due to their psychosis.)
You have crossed a cultural moray heretofore unbroken (and this is slashdot!)
Official Proclamation of persecution:
Ye, sir, shall be cursed to be eternally hunted by: robots, monkeys, ninjas and especially pirates.
There now be a common foe--and that be you mate...
At last my brothers: The eternal war shall end as we join forces to bring #187785 to justice.
In closing, I'd just like to say
Yaaaarrrrr.
Student at (unmentioned) college I work for took silver sharpie and re branded several monitors in one lab. I caught him in the act and he sort of freaked out and said he would clean it off, but I told him "No, it's pretty much an improvement anyway."
This was a few years ago and they remain as a small point of joy in my daily routine.
Props to anyone who comes up with official looking rebranded logo for a Dell laptop that says "HELL" and underneath "FIRE"
Link article has ad at top for 'Great deals on refurbished Dell laptops'... Of course I reloaded and clicked it a few times to show my approval of this brilliant advertising strategy. Could this be the start of something great? Man, OH MAN, do I hope so. House fire caused by deranged child -> link to Zippo lighters and Diamond brand matches. Concrete tunnel collapses -> link to 'get your engineering degree online in two weeks' Massive computer project over budget and fails -> link to 'Microsoft enterprise systems' etc...