Hooking up transistors in LTSpice

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message

Sounds like a good argument to spend some money trying to educate them and otherwise make them more productive -- far better than just ignoring them and then finding someday they have enough power to try to soak the hard-working guys like you due to their, let's say, *misguided* impression that you just "lucked out" in ending up with the the wealth you have? :-)

---Joel

Democrats banned DDT... that's helping ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Don't take offense. It's how English says that I know these things are happening and you don't know they are. I suppose I could have taken the long way around the barn and dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's, but it was shorter.

I wouldn't have taken offense, had you said agreed with someone who felt the way you do and said that you knew and I didn't. It's symmetrical, that way.

Been there. It's probably the one place I know pretty well other than Oregon.

Like I said, it is rare to give up power when it's been taken in the first place... but it does happen. Very sadly, not enough. We need to fix that problem together.

Well, I don't remember it. But I know I'm still paying some kind of weird set of federal phone taxes.

Oh, I know they often do. I've seen those late night modifications quite intentionally snuck in at the very last second (with cooperation from those who publicly said they didn't support such things, but in truth really wound up helping make it happen late at night.) So it's not that they are always due to ignorance. Some of it is due to disingenuous and crafty intent. It's quite evil, frankly. And there is plenty of misdirection beforehand, as well, with faux public tensions faked for the news cameras on what amounts to a red herring bill, all the while the real, implementation bill is snuck through with overwhelming support late some other night after everyone in the public has heard that the other bill failed and didn't even know about the other one that does the deed.

I never trust the public statements by politicians or even the actual bills that get enough oxygen to make it into the news. It's like magic tricks, where the magician is keeping your attention over here while the real action to watch is elsewhere. Misdirection all the time, every day.

You must have completely missed my point. This dwells on words, again, which I may or may not have written as well as you'd like and not the issues I intended you to think about.

My point isn't to disagree with you about dimishing returns at some point. The sweep of my point to Martin was that there are underlying exponential forces that will overwhelm any linear attempts to mitigate. Insulation is essentially a linear function. We can bicker over the tail ends of things where it's even worse. But it only works to make my point. The point is that we've got exponential fundamentals that will overwhelm linear mitigation. It's minutia to ignore that big picture while dwelling on some detail that doesn't injur the point. You saw some detail that appeared to modify some unimportant aspect of what I was saying and failed to see the main point and how your constribution didn't change the conclusion in any way. That is why I wrote 'minutia.'

My 1979 diesel Rabbit, nothing special, gets 42MPG average. My 1979 Yamaha XS400D motorcycle, much smaller and gasoline, gets 52MPG no matter how I drive it.

But my point was addressed to the idea that I cannot comfortably sit on my high and mighty horse and look down on others. I can't. Yes, I do a lot more than many to carry my own weight. I grow most of the food we eat. I grow most of the energy I use for the easily identifiable things using energy. I choose to do labor rather than used powered equipment where feasible, too.

I sit on a high horse all the same and was put there by pure luck of being born in a wealthy country at this time. Even the poor have access to good libraries, for example, and public education. I benefitted from both.

Yes, some folks can find a 1979 diesel rabbit to drive -- but only a few. Many don't have that option. I just don't like forgetting what shoulders I stand on when trying to speak about how "good" I may be. It's far too easy to fool one's self into a sense of false and damaging superiority.

Yes. In spades! To that last sentence. Regarding prayer, I consider that worth exactly US$0 in terms of what it achieves in the world around us. As the saying goes, "that plus $2 will buy you a cup of coffee." What good that happens in the world, happens because of actions we take in the here and now. We should get out there and change something for the better, personally. I know this isn't you, but there are some Christians who honestly imagine that when they pray for others it is enough and all they should do for the world. Those folks are seriously deluded.

Well, I don't travel much in those circles. Just once in a while. But image counts. It's hard to judge this, not being in the cat bird's seat.

I drive a car with only me driving because it saves me time instead of using mass transportation. I could arrange with neighbors to share their car with them to get to the mass transportation, too. But that would be even more inconvenience. But I squander energy because it saves MY TIME and right now I value that very highly. I have only a little left. Just something else to think on. He has options and a finite amount of time that perhaps you aren't taking into account in a fair way.

Voters create politicans. But they don't create reality. In any case, I don't know why you bring them up regarding the topic of some folks squandering a jet here and there except perhaps because you say that the elite can use it as propaganda to manipulate the public's mind and make them angry and therefore serve their purposes.

yeah. But they are looking towards _their_ profit and they have the advantage of being very powerful.

hehe. Yes. And it is the very worst way to use such energy. More CO2 created than would have been had it simply been burned in the car, directly.

The electric utilities are into this because it's what they are already selling and they want to reduce their costs.

Well, no one is arguing that better planning and implementation would have improved the choices available at the time.

Jon

Ok, no offense taken then :-)

Ok, then I don't understand what you'd mean by "non-minutia". What would be the measures you'd like us to take? We have to begin somewhere.

A 1979 Diesel rabbit is certainly not a high horse. There are plenty of other cars. For example, people have managed to squeeze more gas mileage out of a Suzuki Alto than your motorcycle. Those are cheap cars, they and similar model are quite ubiquitous. A lot is also in how we drive and everyone can learn that. I got well over 20mpg out of cars such as a fully loaded GMC Suburban or Ford Crown Victoria where my passengers couldn't believe it until we filled up again. But I regularly see folks who are likely in lower incomes blow by me and then apply full brakes because the signal is red.

There we disagree 100%.

Good Christians put their talent and their money where their mouth is. When we pray "Lord, show us where we can help" and God does, then we ought to do it and walk the talk. My next assignment in that direction is in a couple hours (Alzheimer's care unit).

Sorry, I do not agree that business jets are needed here. If they think they "deserve" pampering let them buy a $6k ticket international 1st class.

As a leader (or a perceived one) they must lead by example. And they clearly haven't.

I realize that you aren't religious but just imagine if a pastor would preach about proper behavior in marriage and then a few people would see him enter a juice bar. What would you think about him and his sermons?

The public has made up their mind about this. That's all I wanted to say. And that it influences their choices at the ballot box. It's a fact.

With proper peak-avoider rates plus realtime consumption reporting they could have profited. Big time. But they blew it.

The elevator stopped below the 1000' level if either TV transmitter was on.

Let me guess which continent where you want to wipe out all life.

Bareable? We don't want a bunch of 'butt ugly morons' running around naked!

Swamp coolers aren't much use in the places where all the people live, though. They'd be completely useless on the East Coast or along the Gulf, for instance. In the Southwest, sure--I'm really happy with the ones in the places I stay in New Mexico, but they wouldn't be much use in New York, where ugly summer days can be 100 degrees and 85% humidity, and "90 and 90" is quite common.

I don't know if they work well in LA, but I sort of doubt it--and it's the very humid hot days that kill people.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Education and access to the generosity of good mentors and healthy relationships helps a great deal in avoiding religious propaganda about breeding "souls for god," recognizing and understanding facts, and making better decisions in life.

But it's a complex issue without any simplistic conclusions to be had. For example, it is also all too easy to feel bitter and spiteful about one's situation and to let that turn to sour actions and a sense of hopelessness, instead of a drive to productive action.

I was lucky enough to not go that way. I suppose it would have been possible, had I been able to see myself as a victim of others. But I didn't have the ability to worry about all that, I suppose. I knew only what was in front of me, for the next step to move forward, and didn't raise my eyes high enough to worry about others or their attitudes or any of the larger questions in life. Just looked at my feet and made them move one step after another. My inability to look at the big picture has served me okay. Others are better able to get angry over inequality at a young age. I was too stupid to percieve that much, back then. I see it fine, now. But I also see all that was ALSO done for me by many others

-- the public libraries literally saved my life, as did access to a few good teachers and caring adults along the way.

Children that grow up in poor situations, not always of course but sometimes, don't have much support. Single parents have to work, often live in apartments, aren't home for their children when they get back from school, etc. And when they are back, the parent(s) are so mired in their own problems they don't realize that to a child some "small" problem is really just as big to them as the adults' problems are to themselves and they brush them off and ignore them, rather than spending the time that is really needed by any and all children growing up. (That, and consistency in parenting, which can be a little harder to provide when there are so many outside as well as inside pressures operating.)

Anyway, it's complex and we all have an interest in improving the growing-up situations for ALL of our children in our society. They will inherit and control the future and we need to prepare them well to understand that it is in all our interests to work together and with open hands towards each other. Whether or not the children are our own, what they become as adults affects us all.

The base impulse of selfishness is easily had and easily made. It takes almost nothing to cause someone to succumb to it. It takes lots of work to build away from that sense and towards open-handed generosity, without expectation. In a way, this is very much like the concept of trust. No one can "give" trust -- it is only earned through time and lots of effort. But it takes almost nothing at all, just a moment's lapse, to destroy decades of hard-won trust. Just lie to someone and get caught. So selfish behavior is like the base of a mountain, towards where the rocks easily roll downhill, and generosity is built up over time, like pushing rocks slowly uphill, again. We need to fight the gravity that tends to want to pull our attitudes to the more base and animalistic behaviors and instead work hard towards achieving the higher, mutual goals. Sadly, all that takes trust and that is so easy to destroy and so hard to create.

Sometimes, I think our society should allow anyone to _have_ children, but only allow qualified and certified parents to actually raise them. We might all be a lot better off in the end with a parenting industry that is well-monitored to provide excellent service.

Jon

planet

Thanks for that.

Oh, don't ask me. I already have concluded that its hopeless. Education is far too expensive, the science of propaganda and advertizing far too nuanced and sophisticated now, the public far too readily manipulated by opulence and wealth using those tools, the complexity of the problems too great, and the ability to trust each other long enough far too fragile and easily broken. Let alone that we honestly don't know how, in my opinion, yet and cannot even engage the questions without crankpots suddenly finding hooks on which to hang their sick-minded hats.

We need to face the overwhelming weight of evidence and allow science to inform engineers who will analyze options and costs and provide what practical alternatives may be reasonable to achieve, so that politicians and voters have something to work with in forming and implementing policies that will make a useful difference.

I have NO hope for that, though. So I help create vision for what I can on a local scale. The big picture is out of my hands.

However, that doesn't stop me from easily seeing the problems. It's always easier to realize what doesn't work than to discover and implement what does actually work. You should know that!!!

I learned how to drive carefully enough to get better mileage, as well. And I know what you mean there. But again, without walking a mile in the shoes of others it is hard for me to sit ignorantly by looking at them and judging them. You may certainly be right on some scale, but reality isn't so simple and pithy statements are as likely to be wrong as right without more information about each situation.

I prefer to focus on judging myself and changing where I'm able and leading rather than judging, when I'm able to find the energy to sustain that attitude.

Of course. But simply put, physics does not include a "god equation" of any kind and as Einstein writes (and I fully agree), "To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress."

He's entirely right on this point. And prayer does not modify the natural, observable world if you are honest with yourself about the weight of shared evidence (as opposed to internal states of mind which cannot be shown.)

I have so much respect for that perspective among Christians where I find it. It's just not nearly as frequent as it should be considering how many there supposedly are. Deep down, I don't believe there really are that many Christians in the world -- as the Sermon on the Mount is the core out of which all else flows and I don't see the Sermon playing much of a role in the objective world around me. Certainly not considering there are a billion "Christians" in it. I don't believe they really are. Only a few left who show evidence of it, sadly.

Time. Keep that in mind.

But okay. I don't get all jazzed up about this, you do. I can see your point of view and not entirely disagree with it but it just doesn't seem fatal to me. It does to you. That's that.

I think that would be good. Ralph Nader is a public figure who achieves that, so I know it can be done.

That he's got flaws like most humans do.

The public never makes up its mind. It's always evolving over time. And none of it means a whit to nature, which is immune to human opinion.

things

prevents

Well, there is still that possibility.

Jon

I have a slightly different philosphy. We can start right here, right now, on a small scale instead of waiting for some big scientific committees to come up with visions. I know you are against it, and so am I, but incentives in some tangible form are the only things that work to entice Joe Q. Public. So that might be the #1 measure.

You might counter that it's just drops in the bucket but I'd rather see drops in the bucket than nothing at all.

Hey, engineers are s'posed to be able to make anything work :-)

Here again, we as technical people with an engineer's mind can educate. Example: I was driving through Colorado with a marketing executive. He asked me why I sometimes take the car into neutral when stopped. "Because the engine controller wants to keep the rpm at 700 minimum and when in D you can hear it make the engine work harder against the oil in the transmission, and that wastes gas at longer stops" ... "I'll be darn. Interesting!". From then on he also did that. And probably told his wife, and his kids, and ... then a colleague of his might notice and ask why he does that ... "Well, some EE dude told me ..."

Yeah, another drop in the bucket. But many drops together can eventually make a big difference.

You don't know he is right. But we will never see eye to eye on the power of prayer.

There you have a good point. None of us is perfect but many don't even seem to make an effort. Going to worship on Sunday is not something where you can just check off the calendar and assume the Christian duties thereby fulfilled until next Sunday.

Every one of us has to ask themself questions like, when you see a person weeping do you pretend not to have seen that, or do you go to that person? Full confession, my wife is a whole lot better in that respect than I am.

Takes about the same time to get there.

It doesn't get me jazzed up, I just can't take them serious anymore. Same goes for almost the whole neighborhood here. People need to think about consequences of their actions.

Sure he does. But he must make an effort to shake those vices, else he'll lose credibility and eventually his whole congregation.

If they wake up, that is.

Yeah, but then someone calls CarTalk and Tom and Ray will tell them, "nah, it's not really worth it" --

Apparently *coasting down a hill* in neutral (on a car with an automatic transmission) is actually worse than keeping the car in drive -- if you shift into neutral, you're now forcing the engine to idle, whereas the ECU is smart enough to not feed the engine any fuel at all if you're going >5mph but aren't pressing the accelerator.

Good thing you're not running for public office?

Recall all the heckling Obama received when he suggested people keep their tires properly inflated -- people don't want a little savings here, a little there, they want some magical panacea that keeps their car running for less than a dime per mile...

Annoying.

(To be non-partisan here, I should mention that Bush made some real efforts in trying to get people to conserve oil as well.)

Not that it's an excuse, but being raised in a culture where males are largely expected to be more "macho" and less empathetic certainly doesn't help here.

---Joel

The clutches in there work on every acceleration phase so I can't believe that argument. What else is there to wear? In the old days the contacts but that was because companies didn't know how to design those correctly. Our Toyota never makes any klunk noises when shifting from N into D. Of course I won't do that for just a few seconds.

Because it does, except on old cars without idle rpm control (where the rpm goes uop ans stays up after switching to N).

But, to be safe, each car shuold be checked as to whetehr that is beneficial.

It can even be dangerous if the engine decides to stall and brake-assist suddenly goes away.

:-)

True. But it's sometimes very obvious if a person shows the first signs of depression. That's when they shouldn't be alone.

Since right below my comments (as shown below here, too) quoted above I immediately say the same thing as you, here, I'd just have to agree. We can have an impact locally and should.

(There's my earlier comment above I just mentioned.)

Well, like I said, it takes imagination and experimental effort to come up with successful solutions. And on this scale, it takes more than my tiny, limited viewpoint can manage with everything else I have to do.

Speaking of which, I just finished final tests of a product that I started from scratch on May 13th. You may remember the discussion I started in the MSP430 group. It's done and tested. It involved thorough hardware design, board layout and construction, some rework (forgot to add the reset RC to the /RST:NMI pin and had to lower the series resistance to that point because I'm using it as the NMI input, instead, now.) Timing diagrams and state machines for both, with setup and hold margins, two software programs designed, coded and documented. And final testing completed yesterday.

There is an odd kind of product idea buried inside it, which is so clean that I wonder if there is a separate market for it. It possesses an accurate 32kHz crystal and allows an arbitrary multiplier and an arbitrary divisor (with settable setup and hold times) and turns an uncalibrated series stream of bits into a correlatable (external pin can be used for a periodic synch, if desired) and accurately timed output stream. Supports asynch (start and stop) if desired or else synchronous. Pretty clean, I think. Needed it for the project. (By the way, total cost for all the parts shipped to my door is about $6 including cables and both cpus, but not including a case which is the only remaining part I need to add to it.)

I'm happy about getting it done, with many hours of enjoyable teaching and project partnership included for Lee, in just over two weeks from concept to final test and doc, while doing all of the other usual things like regular paying work, taking care of the farm animals and garden work, house work, not infrequent all-day visitors, and various bookkeeping stuff. I think Lee should be proud of his efforts as well.

I do that, as well. Never think much about it, except when I am in a car with others who don't, I suppose.

I think of that as part of downloading knowledge, kind of. Every baby comes into the world knowing nothing. Every one of us then dies and leaves the world with large amounts of acquired, valuable knowledge. For a society to merely stay even and not lose ground, the amount that leaves from death must be no more than what is downloaded into our youth as they arrive and live in the world. Pass it along, so to speak. It's a living database that transcends books and writing by quite a wide margin. Like a brain that replaces its cells, yet still is able to think and remember things even as it ages. Rolling (or juggling in the air) knowledge, if you like. Kept alive and viable through such conversations.

Of course I don't _know_ he's right. Everything I think I know is held tentatively, anyway. Even the most solid parts of it. No one knows what the future brings. The very idea that anything we could know would be "true no matter what" scares the hell out of me, frankly.

But I think the lack of affirming evidence is pretty telling.

I only wish there were more Christians like you. I would so gladly work hand in hand with them. I do find a few. But no more than I do with non-Christians. Being Christian doesn't really seem to change the shape of the human distribution from what I can see so far.

If you ever figure out how to better convey to Christians a closer look at the Sermon and a way to deepen it into their hearts, let me know. In the near future, we shall be setting up another organization that will make the Sermon its center, yet in a way that will offend neither Christian nor atheist. I want it to be comfortable to Christians bring them a fuller sense of their own beliefs without intruding my own, yet of course not being dishonest either should I be asked about it. What I believe really is irrelevant, anyway, to the mission ahead. And I want to speak to all on their own terms.

Hmm. I'm not so sure. But we've beaten this to death.

No one who doesn't want to should take him seriously. He is irrelevant to the science, anyway. Makes no difference at all.

I wish you'd tell that to the supercenter Christian leadership. They are about as flawed as people get. I've lamented the fact that there is no built-in negative feedback within Christian hierarchies, as their in fact is in Buddhists'. You cannot elevate yourself within a Buddhist monastery by fastening wealth to your life. Christian leaders get to fly jets, live in millionaire lifestyles, all the while still garnering still more respect for all that wealth and high living style. So crooks gravitate towards it like fish to water. A crook would have to be downright insane to become a Buddhist.

Hmm. Yes.

Jon

I apologise for the hyperbole. But you insist on denying AGW and call into question the integrity of all scientists - I fight fire with fire. I did step over the line and for that I apologise.

There is a real problem that Americans do think they have a God given right to dirt cheap gas and keep oil despots around the world in power. No surprise that Al Qaeda is mostly funded by Saudi fundamentalists.

Regards, Martin Brown

It's not a "God given right", it's a deeply embedded working assumption. WalMart could actually measure a decline in direct consumption that was correlated with the recent upward spike in pump prices.

If I may, Martin - there is a rather large tome that has a single thesis - we can blame *YOU* guys :) "for Al Queda" :) :) titled "A Peace to End All Peace". It's really a long series of pseudo-historical vignettes that illustrate how small decisions by Europeans in the region had massive later impacts.

We didn't start goofing up the world until well after this period of time. And we didn't have nearly the level of instabilities in the region to deal with.

It allows itself to indulgence of second-guessing the Man in the Arena, has a breezy, toungue-in-cheek gallows humor about it, but the decline of the Ottoman Empire has been painful. And right now, there is some question whether the House of Saud will continue to fulfill it's role as both oil source and arbitrageur of oil.

-- Les Cargill

I tend not to trust POR/BOR on chips. Although TI did a rather good job on it.

Hey, do you know what the expert advisory panel is? I got an invitation from the to join that. Very little info on the web about it, other than surveys.

$6 is good. Probably assembled offshore?

Congratulations. That was a rather tight schedule.

I prefer and drive a stick shift so I must do it :-)

Stick shift typically buys you 5-10% better gas mileage.

And start early. I know a top notch scientist, very likeable guys. Saw him again yesterday. His knowledge base is almost completely gone on account of Alzheimer's :-(

But you wrote "He's entirely right on this point" :-)

That's what you believe. I don't. There have been countless events where the bible was proven correct. Ask an archaelogists you trust about it.

I think it does. The main reason is not that they are better people. We are not. The reason is that we are reminded to love our neighbor (meaning anyone around you) almost every Sunday in great detail. For those of us who do devotions at home the reminders are almost daily. This has about the same motivator effect as being on a sports team with coaches and all, versus training alone. The team will generally produce more and better results. When I look through our neighborhood the percentage of people actively volunteering is definitely lower than the percentage of our congregation that does.

However, this does carry the risk of burn-out. Some people can never say no and might push themselves past the limits of their ability, to the point where they actually stress out and leave a congregation. It's a very real risk and I've seen it happen.

Maybe you should expose this on the Internet a bit some day? Write about it?

It's not just one person, it was a whole lot of them. Heck, it was so bad that they had to ferry jets to Sweden just for parking because they ran out of space. That is what cost credibility, it was hypocrisy to the hilt. If it were just one guy it'd be ignored. Just as a reminder:

This is one reason why I am a Lutheran, meaning bible-based. Don't pay attention to what some megachurches do, or some televangelists. Or rapture predictors. You just stated the very reason why Martin Luther revolted against the "established church". Because it had become corrupt. People were pressed into buying indulgences (sort of a hell-avoidance voucher) and such nonsense. All it takes is one short look in the bible to see that this was fundamentally wrong.

A Lutheran pastor typically lives a life of modesty. The bible very clearly says that wealth will not elevate you but can actually make your path to heaven next to impossible.

Is there feedback in our church? You bet. I could give you plenty of examples where I was part of that feedback. It was heard, discussed and acted upon. If this weren't the case I wouldn't be a member.

Apology accepted.

I never claimed that as a right. On the contrary, I keep saying that we all (not just Americans) must be more mindful about energy usage.

It would be good to avoid blanket statements that lump whole nations into the same thought category. Because there are lots of energy-minded folks in America. For example Jon.

I trust the ones I design ;-)

I'm pretty sure that is no longer true.