Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query

I read in sci.electronics.design that Mike Page wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu, 23 Dec 2004:

The phrase 'just a theory' should be banned. A scientific theory is something that is proven beyond reasonable doubt - until something comes along that conflicts with it. All genuine scientific theories are accepted as proven, because they HAVE been, by repeated experiments designed to try to falsify them. But there is always the possibility that a later experiment will conflict, so theories are not engraved in stone for all time, unlike dogmas and tenets.

However, axioms are statements that are ASSUMED to be true, sometimes because they are considered self-evident. But the concept of 'axiom' belongs to mathematics and philosophy, not to science, IMHO.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate
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And when is that next edition?

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Dirk

The Consensus:-
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Reply to
Dirk Bruere at Neopax

Well, STR relies on the *axiom* that physics is the same for all inertial frames.

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Dirk

The Consensus:-
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Dirk Bruere at Neopax

People seem to be chucking that book at 9.99 used- that's not a good sign.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

Darwinian evolution is neither random nor accidental. It's driven by random variations and accidental events, and the result is accidental that there is no determinable outcome of any evolutionary path, butthe process is a demonstration of the power of self- organisation in complex systems. It is the way natural organisms design themselves and each other.

Electronic design is of course a science- you sign up to the laws of physics on day 1, and if you break them you get smoke. It's also an art, in that in any given system there will be many ways of achieving the objective, and like a chess player in a game or a poet trying to express an idea, the engineer has to choose the best strategy out of many options available.

In fact, the Darwinian strategy- of testing many possible solutions in competition, and selecting those that perform best- is probably the route to automation in seriously complex designs, and people are working on it.

Paul Burke

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Paul Burke
[...]

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If you want to accept email from unknown individuals, encode a new spammotel address as described and put it on a web page somewhere.

Put the url in your sig and add "http://" in front so news clients can make it into a clickable link. Whitelist the new address.

Everything else is spam.

Best,

Mike Monett

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Mike Monett

We're talking about a shift register set up for a pseudo-random output? The concept was out there before this. As someone pointed out, it was in that National Semiconductor white noise generator IC. But Don Lancaster also wrote about it. I can remember an article in Radio Electronics in mid-1975 (I think he gave a reference in that one). And he covers it in his TTL Cookbook with 1974 copyright. Even better, he used the concept in his Psych-Tone in the February 1971 issue of Popular Electronics, page 25, to generate random musical tones. (But I see nothing in his RTL Cookbookb from 1969)

I just started buying hobby magazines in January of 1971, so that concept has always been there for me, but I always assumed it was a fairly well travelled concept.

I thought maybe the original poster was speaking of a some advancement on the concept, that what's in your book can be traceable to the EDN circuit rather than to a relatively generic concept that had been around for some time.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

Silly old me. I thought it was engineering.

Proven theory == natural law. It stands until proven wrong. Hypothesis == unproven idea.

It certainly is. The worthwhile part is: the 2% inspiration is

98% of the value; The remaining 98% is monkey motion, 2% at commodity rates.

To take advantage of the accidental one must be well prepared with education, experience and a quick mind.

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer:  Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
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Nicholas O. Lindan

I have just ordered one at 9.99$ which is of course doubled for shipping. Nevertheless seems to be a good advise and with the low Dollar quite a bargain. THX win. BTW I looked in vain for my original mail, must have been last year September, I do not remember exactly the words, but it was certainly *not* along the line of suggestions.

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ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy
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Ban

This seem to be a minor slip on your part John. Axioms *may* be assumed to be true, but this is not nessesary. They may simple be *taken* as the basis irrespective of whether they are true or not.

Only if you consider the word "axiom" as a truth rather then simple a statement of which all else is explained in terms of.

Axiom, by my book, is simply a reference point. Its irrelevant if the axiom is absolutely true or not.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

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SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Reply to
Kevin Aylward

You dont know diddlly squat about Darwinism then. Darwinism 101:

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Dawiniam axioms:

1 Traits of Replicators are randomly generated. 2 Traits of Replicators are inherited by "children" from "parents". 3 Traits of Replicators are selected by the environment.

Simply clueless. Its not "just a theory". Darwinian Evolution is one of the most well tested and verifiable descriptions of the physical world that we know off. It has been confirmed extensively, over many years. Nothing makes sense in Biology without Darwinian evolution. And we mean

*nothing*. There is no viable alternatives.

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*********************** Simple Darwinian Model

The following forms the core, simplified argument that underpins evolution of memes and genes.

Consider insects being born with random colours, e.g. brown, pink, green, red...Now suppose that there are birds in the region that feed on these insects. Further suppose that this particular region (environment) is a grass field. If the reasonable assumption is made that any green insects are harder to find and therefore be eaten, it can be rationalized that the green insects might have a better probability of survival, and therefore to pass on that green trait to offspring, then the other colored insects would. Application of the theory, to be described, mandates, that in this particular idealized situation, after sufficient generations, mostly green insects will be observed.

***************

"Design" is non random selection of random generation of traits. Oh, and its not just me saying it, it is 100,000s of biologists and zoologists.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

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Reply to
Kevin Aylward

Three comments:

Please make sure that the binding is as good as the last edition. I have seen other technical books cheapen up the binding, and AoE is a reference that I use a *lot*.

Give extra care to the list of commonly-used "jellybean" components. At least one major electronics manufacturer uses it as a checklist item for design reviews; you can use other parts but you have to have a reason why. You might even want to think about posting it in sci.electronics.design and asking for comments.

I think it should be Horowitz and Hill on even numbered editions and Hill and Horowitz on odd numbered editions. :)

Reply to
Guy Macon

I read in sci.electronics.design that Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu, 23 Dec 2004:

But is the axiom itself science or philosophy? It can be considered self-evident, on the grounds that different inertial frames aren't distinguishable by, say, colour or odour.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

I remember working at Beckman Systems Division in 1967 and using a 22 bit pseudo random noise generator with exclusive ors in the feedback to provide digital noise for testing sections of logic. The system was implemented with Sylvania SOUL-!! 5V TTL devices. The complete set of code was printed out on a stack of sheets at least 1 inch thick IIRC. Regards, Harry

Reply to
Harry Dellamano

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kevin Aylward wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu,

23 Dec 2004:

You are using a different definition of 'true'. That *proves* that axioms are philosophy! (;-)

What I say is that once assumed, an axiom is 'true'. So I could (if I knew as much physics as you) calculate what the Universe would be like if Planck's constant were 10 times larger. For that 'Universe', the assumed value would be 'true' according to my definition.

You are referring to an absolute 'true', and using your definition, you are correct. But absolute 'true' is a philosophical minefield.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

I read in sci.electronics.design that Nicholas O. Lindan wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu, 23 Dec 2004:

There is a continuum between 'blue sky' research and engineering design. It is not fruitful to try to draw demarcation lines across it.

There are many examples where you simply can't say whether the work done was science or engineering; the development of the cavity magnetron is an example, and I suspect that Bill Sloman knows of others.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

This is not quite true. There is substantial work predating 1967. The practical use of shift register sequence generators, naturally, requires the use of shift registers. It was the invention of the transistor that made possible the construction of shift registers of reasonable size and power consumption. The theory matured rapidly thereafter. As Golomb says in the Preface to his book, "Shift Register Sequences" (1967), "...the theory of shift register sequences is very well worked out and fully ready for use."

A good early exposition is "Introduction to Linear Shift-Register Generated Sequences", University of Michigan Research Institute, Technical Report No. 90, October

1958, Birdsall and Ristenbatt.

Also, "Several Binary-Sequence Generators", MIT Lincoln Labs Technical Report No. 95, Sept 1955, Neal Zierler.

And, "Sequences with Randomness Properties", Glenn Martin Co. Technical Report, Solomon W. Golomb, June 1955.

See the book "Shift Register Sequences", Holden-Day, 1967, Solomon W. Golomb for many more references, including:

"Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems", BSTJ, October 1949, Claude Shannon.

Reply to
The Phantom

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kevin Aylward wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu,

23 Dec 2004:

Later, the few purple ones with yellow stripes that are left have to feed on a toxic weed, because the green ones eat everything else. Now the birds find the purple/yellow ones inedible and thus they proliferate. Naturalists then come along and call the purple/yellow colour scheme 'protective coloration'.

However, although Darwinian evolution is very prevalent, it isn't now thought to be the ONLY possible evolution mechanism. It seems to be early days, but some rare signs of Lamarckian evolution (inheritance of acquired characteristics) appear to have been observed. Not that Lamarck was right in claiming that his was the ONLY mechanism, either, but it is now thought to be, at least, not ruled out.

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John Woodgate

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu, 23 Dec

2004:

I bought mine from Cambridge University Press in UK, since I didn't find anywhere to buy it in New York. ISBN 0-521-37709-9-9.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

I read in sci.electronics.design that Phil Hobbs wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Thu, 23 Dec 2004:

That's much too deep for me. And I can see two problems:

  1. You can't solder to concrete;

  1. For one transistor, it should be 'discrete' anyway.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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John Woodgate

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