Analog will always be around. Why? Because the world is analog.
Digital is popular because much of the design process is automated. This is why you can have 200 million transistors on a chip. It's cheaper and easier to create digital circuits. Naturally, it would be nice to put as much into digital as possible. But there's a limit.
You have to create the digital infrastructure. You need to create the voltage levels from a power supply. Sometimes different digital blocks use different voltage levels. Also, you need to be able to control these levels to go into low power mode, or sleep mode. And finaly, digital circuits are delicate, so they need protected from power spikes.
The environment is analog. So to bring in data, you need to measure it. Sensor applications (temperature, weight, impact, etc.) use analog circuitry. Also, these signals need converted to digital, so A2D converts are important. And if the chip wants to output back to analog (play some sound on those speakers), you need a D2A converter.
Wireless transceivers need to get their signals up to and down from the carrier frequency. This is done with amplifiers, filters and mixers.
That last bullet is actually in the RF realm, but these blocks use analog circuit theory.
Just last week a friend from work was setting preferences in this programs and told it to grab files out of $HOME. The program didn't know how to do variables substitution, so it created a local directory called $HOME. So my friend saw it there and ran 'rm -rf $HOME'. Afterwards I explained a couple of points to him:
1) don't be too hasty using rm -rf
2) you must escape special characters like $
He actually killed the rm early on, so he didn't lose too much.
He felt kind of silly doing this, but then I explained what I once did. I was testing a kickstart script so I kept reformatting this machine. I decided to do a rm -rf / just to see what would happen. I did that Friday night and came back Monday morning. When I got in, everyone in our group was complaining that their home directories were missing. Then I relized my own lesson to be learned:
3) Always unmount the NFS directories before reformatting a computer.
Actually now that you mention this, I've seen this analogy before. But that is how you measure the polarization of light. How do you measure the spin of a particle? Is there an equivelent polarized lense for spin? If I want to go to a lab and actually measure the spin of a photon, how do I do that? What tools do I use?
I know this is slightly off topic, but what physically is spin, and how do you measure it? These experiments always talk about how this property called spin can be entangled with other particles.
IANAP, and in the high level articles I've read, I've never seen spin discussed to anymore depth beyond just that it's a property of fundamental particles. I know that force particles have integer spin (and thus ignore the exclusion principal), and matter particles have half integer spin (and have to obey the exclusion principal), but I don't know what that means physically, or how you measure it. Does it have to do with angular momentum? From a macro world of physics, to measure the angular momentum of something, you can apply a torque and see how quickly it accelerates. I also know that you can measure the charge and mass of a particle by seeing what sort of spiral it makes in a cloud chamber. Is measuring spin related to either of these techniques at all? Thanks for the help!
You were right, in that my original post was intended as a joke. But really my complaint is about the movie industries, not that new technology is available. I'm all for new technologies, and actually I don't even own any VHS tapes.
But I'd wager a lot that the movie industry is going to re-release special editions of every movie once the new standard comes out. Releasing the movies in the new format isn't a big deal, and in fact, it's expected and even desired. But I'm sure it will be a super-special edition with new footage.
Take for example The Lord of the Rings. They already released a normal edition of each movie, then a 4-disc special edition. Once the Return of the King special edition is out, who doesn't think they will release a boxed set of the entire trilogy? I bet it won't have all the material from all three special editions. But it probably will have an extra disc of never-before-seen stuff. So to get everything, you would have to get the trilogy and each individual special edition. Then with HD-DVD, they will release a new boxed set trilogy that has even more never-before-seen stuff. I'm sure the movie execs are salivating that consumers might end up buying four versions of the same movie.
So at the chance to sell multiple copies of the same movie, I bet this will happen with most movies. That's was my original complaint. And, by the way, I am excercising my right not to partake in this. I'm not buying anymore DVD movies, and am waiting on the HD-DVD versions.
Great, first my VHS collection, now my DVD collection will become obsolete. At least know we know why George Lucas finally decided to release the original Star Wars DVDs this year. He had to make sure everyone had the chance to buy it before HD-DVD becomes standard. Then he'll release the ultra-super-special edition on HD-DVD later.
It seemed so odd that there was Frame for Sun/Windows/Mac but not for Linux. We always used Frame on Sun to document our products, but now we're switching to Linux and there's no Frame there. So we've switched to an OpenOffice template.
Has anyone else heard Coast to Coast AM (the show which gives Richard Hoagland air time)? It's actually pretty entertaining. It's a talk show that pretty much believes everything that happened on X-Files. You listen to these people call in about soul vampires, shadow people, galactic societies, cities under the Denver airport, etc. and it's fun trying to figure out if these people are just flat out lying or actually believe this stuff. They sound pretty convincing. Not only do they believe in aliens, but they have names for the different sides in this glactic war going on out there.
If I'm driving around at night, I try to listen. Actually, they're not all crazy. Once I heard the physicist Micio Kaku on there, and that was a pretty cool interview.
Acording to this other article it seems like TFT benefitted from OLED techniques, rather than the reverse. OLED semiconductors are popular they can be disolved into a liquid. In that form, it's very easy and cheap to build the circuit. It's much more expensive to work with TFT semiconductors. Well now they've figured out how to disolve TFT semiconductors into a liquid. TFT semiconductors have much better electrical properties. So you get the performance of TFT at the cost of OLED.
I'm no expert on this, so go read online for more info.
I've read throught the tcsh man pages and stole from other people and probably the least-known most useful trick I've found is pushd and popd (which I realias to pd and po), and of course directory stack substitution. Here's a snippet of code that's really useful:
alias pd pushd alias po popd cd/incredi/bly/long/path/name pd/some/other/incredi/bly/long/path/name cp *.mp3 =1 # =1 is the first entry on the dirstack po # returns you back to first place
The other major time saver I use are sed and awk. I used each for a specific purpose. Sed works great for substitution, and awk I use to grab columns of data. Here's a sample of how I'd use both together. This will list the home directories of the users on a machine. It's simple, but there's a ton you can do with this technique.
who | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq | sed 's@^@/home/@g'
Here's other stuff I have grouped by sections in my.cshrc
First, I have my shell variables. The comments say what they do. The most important one is autolist.
set autolist # automatically lists possibilities after ambiguous completion set dunique # removes duplicate entries in the dirstack set fignore=(\~) # files ending in ~ will be ignored by completion set histdup=prev # do not allow consecutive duplicate history entries set noclobber # output redirection will not overwrite an existing file set notify # notifies when a job completes set symlinks=ignore # treats symbolic directories like real directories set time=5 # processes that run longer than $time seconds will be timed.
Second, bindkeys are pretty neat. I rebind the up and down arrow keys. By default they scroll up and down one at a time through the history. You can bind them to search the history based on what you've typed so far.
bindkey -k up history-search-backward # up arrow key bindkey -k down history-search-forward # down arrow key
Third, completes allow for customizing tab completion. When I change directories, tab only completes directory names. This also works for aliases, sets, setenvs, etc.
complete cd 'p/1/d/' complete alias 'p/1/a/' complete setenv 'p/1/e/' complete set 'p/1/s/'
Fourth, I have all my aliases. I had to cut a bunch because of the lameness filter.
alias cwdcmd 'ls' alias precmd 'echo -n "\033]0;$USER@`hostname` : $PWD\007"' alias pd 'pushd' alias po 'popd' alias dirs 'dirs -v' alias path 'printf "${PATH:as/:/\n/}\n"' alias ff 'find . -name '\''\!:1'\'' -print \!:2*' alias aw 'awk '\''{print $'\!:1'}'\''' alias sub 'sed "s@"\!:1"@"\!:2"@g"'
For my company at least, any more money spend on Sun workstations is a waste of money. I work in the CAD department of a big semiconductor company, and my group has been pushing hard to get things to switch over to Linux. At first we had the chicken/egg scenario, but we threatened to the CAD companies that either they support Linux or we switch to a different brand that will. Now almost everything we use is supported on Linux.
The problem with Sun is that it's three times more expensive and three times slower. We would spend $60k and get a whopping two new Sun servers. Then all the engineers would start throwing jobs at it and it would be dog slow again. Do you know how many Linux machines we could have bought for that much?
Primarily we need computers for raw number-crunching (big simulations) and large memory (big circuits). Linux can handle these just fine, and it's frustrating when other groups blow a load of cash on more Sun equipment.
SCO repsonded fully to the demand for evidence, but they've also got more when IBM answers their questions. If there's more to show later, then how could they have responded fully?
...they will ignore Outlook/Script exploits and focus on the OS itself...
But MS did a very good job of showing that Internet Explorer (which includes Outlook Express) is a part of the OS. I suppose now they'll overlook that detail.
Actually this is not a complete 4D rubik's cube. A hypercube had 8 sides, each of which are cubes, you can only see seven at any time in this program. The eigth one is there though; when you rotate a side, you will see cubies being rotated in from off-screen, they just don't show it. But since they don't show it, you cannot actually rotate that face. That would be like having regular 3D rubik's cube and not be able to turn the white face.
Still I love this program. I'm a big fan of rubik's cubes and of geometry of higher dimensions.
This is not a troll. The issue is money. We can't afford to hire anyone, or to buy hardware. But we have a source of free loaner equipment. Our deal was to prove that their machines work, that way when design groups start getting money again, they will buy it from a proven source. So they asked us what we need, and I have to compile a list. This is a proof of concept on zero budget (except my salary I suppose). And it has to be all linux, because that's the deal.
Sysadmins will be hired for this once money gets freed up and we can prove to groups that linux works. A later post was correct that there are really two issues. a) Getting everyone to switch to linux, and b) getting designers to put linux on their desktop. We really only care about b), but by the nature of the deal, we have to prove a) and b). Also we don't care about the cost of switching a design group over to linux either. That's someone else's job. We just show that the end result works.
And finally, we do need 64-bit machines. Some of the programs we run use huge ammounts of data that need 64-bit to address them. So if we're getting free loaner equipment, then why not play with an Itainium?:)
They're also working on a GBA wireless device, much like what they have for the consoles. Actually, I'm surprised they didn't mention that in the article. But it would only be head-to-head play, so no MMORPG yet. I actually work in the group that's making this, but I'm working on the sound amplifier that powers the headphones and speakers, not the wireless stuff. So unfortunately I don't get to be a tester (being stuck in a meeting room playing mario cart, that'd be a tough job;).
A friend of mine works for a company that makes bill readers, and he was telling me that not only are they adding color to the bills, but they will change them every five years or so. American money is just too easy to counterfeit, and this is the governments plan to fix that.
Slashdot Mirror
5 to 10 years! 1 Terabyte won't mean diddlypoo by then. Remember Moore's Law?
Digital is popular because much of the design process is automated. This is why you can have 200 million transistors on a chip. It's cheaper and easier to create digital circuits. Naturally, it would be nice to put as much into digital as possible. But there's a limit.
- You have to create the digital infrastructure. You need to create the voltage levels from a power supply. Sometimes different digital blocks use different voltage levels. Also, you need to be able to control these levels to go into low power mode, or sleep mode. And finaly, digital circuits are delicate, so they need protected from power spikes.
- The environment is analog. So to bring in data, you need to measure it. Sensor applications (temperature, weight, impact, etc.) use analog circuitry. Also, these signals need converted to digital, so A2D converts are important. And if the chip wants to output back to analog (play some sound on those speakers), you need a D2A converter.
- Wireless transceivers need to get their signals up to and down from the carrier frequency. This is done with amplifiers, filters and mixers.
That last bullet is actually in the RF realm, but these blocks use analog circuit theory.So, analog is definitely here to stay.
Komi
1) don't be too hasty using rm -rf
2) you must escape special characters like $
He actually killed the rm early on, so he didn't lose too much.
He felt kind of silly doing this, but then I explained what I once did. I was testing a kickstart script so I kept reformatting this machine. I decided to do a rm -rf / just to see what would happen. I did that Friday night and came back Monday morning. When I got in, everyone in our group was complaining that their home directories were missing. Then I relized my own lesson to be learned:
3) Always unmount the NFS directories before reformatting a computer.
we've all got one!
Actually now that you mention this, I've seen this analogy before. But that is how you measure the polarization of light. How do you measure the spin of a particle? Is there an equivelent polarized lense for spin? If I want to go to a lab and actually measure the spin of a photon, how do I do that? What tools do I use?
IANAP, and in the high level articles I've read, I've never seen spin discussed to anymore depth beyond just that it's a property of fundamental particles. I know that force particles have integer spin (and thus ignore the exclusion principal), and matter particles have half integer spin (and have to obey the exclusion principal), but I don't know what that means physically, or how you measure it. Does it have to do with angular momentum? From a macro world of physics, to measure the angular momentum of something, you can apply a torque and see how quickly it accelerates. I also know that you can measure the charge and mass of a particle by seeing what sort of spiral it makes in a cloud chamber. Is measuring spin related to either of these techniques at all? Thanks for the help!
Komi
But I'd wager a lot that the movie industry is going to re-release special editions of every movie once the new standard comes out. Releasing the movies in the new format isn't a big deal, and in fact, it's expected and even desired. But I'm sure it will be a super-special edition with new footage.
Take for example The Lord of the Rings. They already released a normal edition of each movie, then a 4-disc special edition. Once the Return of the King special edition is out, who doesn't think they will release a boxed set of the entire trilogy? I bet it won't have all the material from all three special editions. But it probably will have an extra disc of never-before-seen stuff. So to get everything, you would have to get the trilogy and each individual special edition. Then with HD-DVD, they will release a new boxed set trilogy that has even more never-before-seen stuff. I'm sure the movie execs are salivating that consumers might end up buying four versions of the same movie.
So at the chance to sell multiple copies of the same movie, I bet this will happen with most movies. That's was my original complaint. And, by the way, I am excercising my right not to partake in this. I'm not buying anymore DVD movies, and am waiting on the HD-DVD versions.
Great, first my VHS collection, now my DVD collection will become obsolete. At least know we know why George Lucas finally decided to release the original Star Wars DVDs this year. He had to make sure everyone had the chance to buy it before HD-DVD becomes standard. Then he'll release the ultra-super-special edition on HD-DVD later.
Drink coffee - do stupid things faster!
I'm not disappointed, I hate using Frame.
Komi
If I'm driving around at night, I try to listen. Actually, they're not all crazy. Once I heard the physicist Micio Kaku on there, and that was a pretty cool interview.
Komi
I'm no expert on this, so go read online for more info.
Komi
Here's other stuff I have grouped by sections in my .cshrc
First, I have my shell variables. The comments say what they do. The most important one is autolist.
Second, bindkeys are pretty neat. I rebind the up and down arrow keys. By default they scroll up and down one at a time through the history. You can bind them to search the history based on what you've typed so far.
Third, completes allow for customizing tab completion. When I change directories, tab only completes directory names. This also works for aliases, sets, setenvs, etc.
Fourth, I have all my aliases. I had to cut a bunch because of the lameness filter.
The problem with Sun is that it's three times more expensive and three times slower. We would spend $60k and get a whopping two new Sun servers. Then all the engineers would start throwing jobs at it and it would be dog slow again. Do you know how many Linux machines we could have bought for that much?
Primarily we need computers for raw number-crunching (big simulations) and large memory (big circuits). Linux can handle these just fine, and it's frustrating when other groups blow a load of cash on more Sun equipment.
Komi
komi
Q: What do you call a Polak in a F15?
A: A simple pole in a complex plane.
<ba dum ching>
But MS did a very good job of showing that Internet Explorer (which includes Outlook Express) is a part of the OS. I suppose now they'll overlook that detail.
Microsoft'S Hell
Still I love this program. I'm a big fan of rubik's cubes and of geometry of higher dimensions.
Komi
Sysadmins will be hired for this once money gets freed up and we can prove to groups that linux works. A later post was correct that there are really two issues. a) Getting everyone to switch to linux, and b) getting designers to put linux on their desktop. We really only care about b), but by the nature of the deal, we have to prove a) and b). Also we don't care about the cost of switching a design group over to linux either. That's someone else's job. We just show that the end result works.
And finally, we do need 64-bit machines. Some of the programs we run use huge ammounts of data that need 64-bit to address them. So if we're getting free loaner equipment, then why not play with an Itainium? :)
I appreciate the advice from everyone.
Thanks,
Komi
komi
komi
komi
P.S. Note- you need MS Word to read the attachment.
P.P.S. Next I'll have to email everyone on how to fight the spam problem.
komi
Keeps your desktop streak free.
komi