ecting them, and makes it easier to explain these things to others. And he 's always sure to reply. And crawfish.
nd annoying.
George Bernard Shaw said : "The power of accurate observation is commonly c alled cynicism by those who don't have it".
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I'd say it was more the capacity to keep in mind that what people profess m ay be a poor predictor of what they actually do. You can trust most people, most of the time, but there are always a few exceptions.
nility. PCB-level electronic design seems ideal to me. It involves learning new applications, often involving physics, architectural brainstorming, re ading byzantine data sheets, breadboarding, detailed electronic/packaging/ thermal design, checking multilayer PCB layouts, and intense reviews looki ng for errors.
Think how much more exercise your brain would get if your printed circuit b oards were so complicated that it you took longer than two weeks to get thr ough the process of designing a new one and releasing it to production.
If you've got couple of people working on a project you can get a certain a mount of exercise walking from bench to bench, finding out how far they've got.
Back when I was doing it, before mobile phones became ubiquitous, it also m eant that my bosses had to get off their behinds to find me if they wanted to talk to you, which added neurones to their brain. Many of them needed al l the neurones they could get.
Your bosses are your customers, so your rules will be different.
boards were so complicated that it you took longer than two weeks to get t hrough the process of designing a new one and releasing it to production.
And think of how much more exercise your brain would get if your printed ci rcuit design were so complicated that it took longer than two weeks to get through the process of designing a new one and releasing it to production. But instead of taking more time you did the job in two weeks anyway.
Designing to new challenges is good, but not guaranteed best.
The best thing is learning something completely new, something frustrating that you've got no aptitude for. Learning to handle those new things literally grows brain--connections and neurons.
ISTM we grow brain to address new computational problems.
Example: we can all read schematics on sight, remember and duplicate lots of the critical functions, make judgments of the designer, etc. The same glimpse to a layman is an impossible meaningless mess. And try having them draw what they saw--they won't remember any of it. They don't have the structures to plug it into. We've grown brain that processes schematics, they haven't.
Initially, the problem's difficult, frustrating, but once you've slept on it and grown brain to handle it, it gets fairly easy. "Aha!"
Growing new brain is annoying, frustrating; painful, so some people avoid it. Try playing ping-pong with the other hand. ISTM cynics and hard-heads are resisting that frustration, avoiding the pain of learning. Easier to nay-say. (Having to re-arrange neurons to unlearn something you assumed is especially tough.) But once done, the joy of discovery. Or, as Feynman put it, the pleasure of finding things out.
That's the cool part about sed. A couple years ago I was learning about houses, and dcaster mentioned several cool energy-saving construction tricks, like staggering the studs to prevent thermal bridging. Elegant. And six months earlier, I wouldn't have gotten any of it.
ng that you've got no aptitude for. Learning to handle those new things li terally grows brain--connections and neurons.
Probably more per unit effort if you do have some kind of aptitude for the area.
of the critical functions, make judgments of the designer, etc. The same g limpse to a layman is an impossible meaningless mess. And try having them draw what they saw--they won't remember any of it. They don't have the st ructures to plug it into. We've grown brain that processes schematics, they haven't.
Chess-masters have remarkably good memories for the positions of chess-piec es on a chess board. But it turns out that this only works if the chess pie ces got where they ended up in the course of a game.
Chess-masters don't do any better at remembering where chess pieces are on a board if the pieces were place there at random.
It all about seeing the structure in your environment.
James probably needs to learn a bit more about non-right-wing politics. At the moment he doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between a communist an d a socialist, which is roughly the equivalent to not recognising the diffe rence between a knight and a queen, or a 555 and single-chip processor.
in fact - our only hope, we would be doomed. It isn't and we aren't, unless half-wits like you are more influential than you deserve to be.
real (and numerous) possibilities on offer that don't happen to fit your pr eferred view of the world. People with a rather better grasp of physics tha n you have (or John Larkin has) have made similar kinds of mistakes.
sea level. He has admitted that he won't change his personal behavior to reduce his CO2 production.
I might if it were in any way significant. Complicating my life to delay th e climate apocalypse by 5msec strikes me as excessively Quixotic.
insults. Having nothing to say about electronics, he picks AGW.
I do have stuff to say about electronics, but John Larkin rarely wants to h ear it - what I have to say rarely feeds his vanity, which is what is impor tant to him.
Jim Thompson kill-filed me years ago, but Jim Thompson is even more ignoran t than John Larkin, even if no more willing to recognise the fact.
John Larkin really doesn't want to know that his ideas about global warming have all been planted in his head by the denialist propaganda machine, wor king through the Murdoch media. His vanity makes it impossible for him to a dmit that he's one of the people who can be fooled all of the time.
it boards were so complicated that it you took longer than two weeks to get through the process of designing a new one and releasing it to production.
circuit design were so complicated that it took longer than two weeks to ge t through the process of designing a new one and releasing it to production . But instead of taking more time you did the job in two weeks anyway.
You've got to be a manager. I got stuck like that once, and we skipped a fe w design reviews to get the stuff onto printed circuit board faster. The bo ards took a lot of debugging, and the time that took got the manager promot ed sideways. In fact it had been a very ill-judged choice - not the first i n the project - and when we finally got the hardware working it was still r evolutionary but other ways of solving the problem had shrunk our potential market below what was viable.
I was trying to be a bit subtle while pointing out that your post had no units of difficulty. So what might be too much for one person to do in two weeks might be easy for another person. Next time I will not try for subtle.
ting that you've got no aptitude for. Learning to handle those new things literally grows brain--connections and neurons.
e area.
I don't think so for this purpose. Once you have some aptitude you've already stimulated and grown a number of basic building blocks, from scratch. Getting *there* is the hardest, and what's most beneficial neuron-wise.
ts of the critical functions, make judgments of the designer, etc. The same glimpse to a layman is an impossible meaningless mess. And try having th em draw what they saw--they won't remember any of it. They don't have the structures to plug it into. We've grown brain that processes schematics, th ey haven't.
eces on a chess board. But it turns out that this only works if the chess p ieces got where they ended up in the course of a game.
Interesting.
n a board if the pieces were place there at random.
That makes sense--I wouldn't be able to remember a randomly-generated schematic, either.
Right. We grow neural primitives, then build models / frameworks out of those.
t the moment he doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between a communist and a socialist, which is roughly the equivalent to not recognising the dif ference between a knight and a queen, or a 555 and single-chip processor.
I think differently. I started in your camp, a sort-of first-order "let's help everyone," before realizing it doesn't work--it actually leaves people worse off, stratifies society, and produces strife, division, and instability. You don't see that.
It's not just speculation or theory; we've tried it your way numerous times from 1620s' Plimoth Plantation right up to the failed hippie communes (and current policies) of the leftists currently in power, with consistently disastrous results.
You call "freedom" and letting people live free lives "right-wing," but that was my country's escape from the same suffocating Euro-paternalism you're always pushing to solve everything. Ours was revolutionary, and yours, reactionary.
So we wind up with 315 million people solving all of society's problems; while you'd throw back to central authoritarianism, at bottom a naive, discredited, supposedly benevolent despotism. You'd make the people pawns, assuming them incapable, and relegate them to being implementors of a few masterminds' master plans.
Your impulse is to force and obedience--e.g. Obamacare--because you can't see the power or the inherent virtue of distributed, self-organizing cooperative systems. Freedom.
You don't have the neural framework for it. You haven't grown up with our heritage. And steadfastly refuse to consider it. To you, free people minding their own business are "tax-evaders," rebels to be jailed. I see that way as brutish, primitive, de-humanizing in its many later effects; you think it's compassion.
So who's really right-wing?
Your organizing principles are unstable in the long term, and suboptimal in the short. They inherently concentrate power, organize money in the hands of the few, promote impure collaborations between the governors and governed, then abuse, and then worse.
And all this was worked out hundreds of years ago, by diligent study, of and by brilliant men.
units of difficulty. So what might be too much for one person to do in two weeks might be easy for another person. Next time I will not try for subt le.
Wise. Your idea of "subtle" looks very like a bull in a china-shop. I've go t a tolerably exact idea of the kind of stuff that John Larkin does - respe ctable but not amazing. My history involves working on stuff that was a lit tle closer to the state of the art. Some of it was roughly what John Larkin sells now, but I was doing it some twenty years ago.
People who have been hanging around here longer than you could be expected to take that as read, but clueless newbies do step in where angels fear to tread.
Sloman was whining about my previous comment that I spend a week or two designing a typical PCB. I admit that other people do the PCB layout, the FPGA code, and the ARM code if any. It doesn't take long to define an architecture and draw a schamatic.
It apparently took him a lot longer to design things that never worked well enough to sell.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
esigning a typical PCB. I admit that other people do the PCB layout, the F PGA code, and the ARM code if any. It doesn't take long to define an archit ecture and draw a schematic.
If you aren't doing much. Despite John Larkin's occasional claims to do "in sanely good" work, a board in two weeks looks more like insanely trivial.
ll enough to sell.
It didn't take me all that long to specify the stroboscopic electron beam t ester that recorded multiple points per cycle. I had to specify five triple extended Eurocards and the back-plane they plugged into plus a VME interfa ce card to talk to them. The detailed design of the cards got farmed out, t hough I was able to hang onto the detailed design of couple of the simpler cards. I did had a supervisory brief on the 27 cards we inherited - a coupl e of which we had to redesign to some extent.
It did take a long time to get it all working, in part because the boss had imposed a fairly insane (for that time) granularity - 10psec - on the time registration. There were other problems, some of them fairly entertaining.
By the time we got it working, electron beam testers had been largely repla ced by computer simulation - the market was still there, but it was no long er big enough to justify putting our machine into production. Schlumberger' s single sample per cycle machine was left with 98% of the market that rema ined. Ours ran a lot quicker - it was really very nice to use - but we nee ded to sell 18 in eighteen months to get the cash-flow right, and marketing couldn't see us selling more than twelve.
I forget when I started reading usegroups. It was before usegroups were on the internet, but they were available on Bulletin Boards. I think it must have been in the late seventies, as it was before IBM came out with the PC. So it is more like you are the clueless newbie.
ted to take that as read, but clueless newbies do step in where angels fear to tread.
on the internet, but they were available on Bulletin Boards. I think it mus t have been in the late seventies, as it was before IBM came out with the PC. So it is more like you are the clueless newbie.
I started in 1996, so I'm not a newbie either. But you do seem to be cluele ss, while I do know when I started reading usegroups, and do seem to have r etained some of the information I picked up back then.
In order to be able to evaluate what you read, you do have to have some grasp of what is being said. That's not been all that obvious in your postings.
Most of my posts are in response to a post of yours where you make some mistake. I do not expect you to see my grasp of what is being said as your mind is usually firmly made up and you do not recognize that you made a mistake.
Probably because I haven't. I'm not infallible, but while I recall you disagreeing with my opinions from time to time, I can't recall you catching me in an error (which people have done, though it doesn't happen very often).
If you think that you have caught me making a demonstrable error, do cite it - with date and time so I can use Google Groups to check what was actually posted.
expected to take that as read, but clueless newbies do step in where angels fear to tread.
on the internet, but they were available on Bulletin Boards. I think it must have been
is more like you are the clueless newbie.
Usenet always part of apranet/nfsnet/internet. Well established by 1983. the usenet newsgroup comp.risks is one of the oldest as is s.e.d. BBSs were lame imitations in that era, as the various BBS usually did not connect like fidonet or bitnet.
I did a little checking and it must have been 1980 when I started reading usenet as my first computer was a color computer.
Actually Usenet started independent of the internet. There was at least one BBS that carried Usenet groups in Seattle and the groups were updated every night. If I recall correctly the updates were done using Fidonet.
Fidonet is/was a competing technology, with diffrerent standards to usenet there is softwre to copy messages between the networks (eg: ufgate, ifcico) but it was never the usenet backbone,
As I understand it, before the internet/arpanet UUCP was used to move newsgroups.
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