Art of Electronics Rave - NON Politix! :-)

john jardine · Jan 14, 2005

"Rick" <rik_nntp@dsl.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:zMLFd.34869$g4.646464@news2.nokia.com...

john jardine <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

Don't know about your neck of the woods but the one I saw this afternoon
browsing the shelves of a new bookshop, was on sale at ?50.00. Unless an
individual is very well financed then it is simply not affordable. What
price knowledge?.

Hmmph - I was recently quoted 170 UKP (about $300) for a copy of
an out-of-print technical book.

--
Rick

The dealers have got us by the balls!.
In UK it's ludicrous. Copyright on written material lasts something like 75
years after an authors death. The author may have written their classic when
20, so the only books guaranteed to be out of copyright and freely copyable
are those that were written before about 1840.
Meanwhile, all the interesting technical books have come and gone. Maybe
available for 3 years, never reprinted, subsequently lost from view.
The system is geared such that there's no copies in the shops and it's
illegal to make a copy. The bookdealers though are allowed to rip us off,
yet the author never sees a penny.
Only way out is to borrow the book via the library system and piously sign
the form saying it won't be copied.
Hence, all the out of print technical books ordered from a UK library have
broken spines and insist on offering their pages up in a pre-flattened form,
almost quivering to make the copier glass journey.
regards
john

Clarence_A · Jan 14, 2005

"JeffM" <jeffm_@email.com> wrote in message
news:1105738380.888560.314120@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

"Floating Paraphase Amplifier" ?
Clarence_A

What I see is
phase
splitter 77, 101

77 Rc == Re
101 Diff amp

TNX, I didn't think it was in there. Been a long time so I wasn't
sure.

The FPA is a very specific type!

Jim Thompson · Jan 14, 2005

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:25:45 GMT, Tom MacIntyre
<tom__macintyre@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 15:58:24 -0700, Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:52:07 -0800, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:18:01 -0700, Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

[snip]

If you buy PB3.5, I'll send you some of my programs as examples.

John

Is there a difference between Power Basic and Visual Basic?

...Jim Thompson

Well Microslop makes VB, and PowerBasic makes PB. PB is actually
evolved from Borland TurboBasic. It compiles anything in about 0.1
seconds and executes something like 20x as fast as VB. It uses the old
INPUT..PRINT paradigm, like all the classic DOS and other Basics.

[snip]

Well that settles it... in my Pascal days I was a Borland fan. And
their spreadsheet program... can't remember the name now :-(

Quattro?

Tom

...Jim Thompson

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Kryten · Jan 14, 2005

"john jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:cs9hda$vd4$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...

Only way out is to borrow the book via the library system and piously sign
the form saying it won't be copied.

Good luck. Most libraries I know have very few worthwhile electronics books.
I found stuff on valves (interesting, but hardly contemporary).
If I get the 3rd edition of the AoE, I'll donate my 2nd edition to my local
library reference section.

Hence, all the out of print technical books ordered from a UK library have
broken spines and insist on offering their pages up in a pre-flattened
form,
almost quivering to make the copier glass journey.

I'm amazed students don't get together at the start of term, club together
to buy one of each text book, scan them and put them all on CD. If 30
students bought one set of textbooks they could each scan a 30th of each
book. I expect some people would do a better job than others. But even if
they each chipped in a few bucks each for the person scanning a book (or
books), they would save a lot of beer money.

I've scanned a few books I legitimately own the right to read. The labour
cost is arguably more than the books cost. However, some are no longer
printed and existing copies are tatty. Some are rarely used by me but you
can bet I'd need them a week after I discarded them.

Mainly I just find it a burden transporting a library that fills four metres
or shelf and weighs tens of kilos. Especially as I have to move home again
soon...

Guy Macon · Jan 15, 2005

Jim Thompson wrote:

Well Microslop makes VB, and PowerBasic makes PB. PB is actually
evolved from Borland TurboBasic. It compiles anything in about 0.1
seconds and executes something like 20x as fast as VB. It uses the old
INPUT..PRINT paradigm, like all the classic DOS and other Basics.

Well that settles it... in my Pascal days I was a Borland fan.

When Borland stopped selling TurboBasic and decided to concentrate
on Pascal, the original author (Bob Zale) bought the rights to it,
renamed it PowerBASIC, and has been improving it ever since.
Before it was TurboBasic, it was BASIC/Z for MDOS, and begfore that
it was BASIC/Z for CP/M - all written by Bob Zale.

Kryten · Jan 15, 2005

"Charles Edmondson" <edmondson@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:41e86c76$1@news.cadence.com...

I've gotten not too bad at scanning books, but I have a legitimate reason!

My wife is blind.

Hmm, if I were an author I would consider that a fair use.

Modern books with all the fancy schmancy graphics behind the text (You
think they do that just because it looks nice!) and all the little side
paragraphs and insets are a bugger-bear to OCR reliably.

I've found magazines often put text in shaded boxes.
This is a nuisance, one has to adjust the black/white threshold.

Often I scan a chapter in 2 minutes,

Wow, it takes me about 40 seconds to scan a page, turn it and reposition it
for the next scan.

Kryten · Jan 15, 2005

"john jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:cs9uoq$9g2$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...

My local library is full of bodice rippers and crime novels

Seems most people are more interested in reading about sex and murder.

but if I call
with a library card and fill a slip in, they'll get me *any* book,
magazine,
article or technical reference that I ask for. May take a few weeks but
the
Boston Spa repository seems to have a copy of everything ever printed.

I'll have to give it a try, and see if things have improved.

Same here. I've seen a few scanned 'technical' books out there but they
seem
few and far between. Maybe 30 university DSP and RF design books, a number
of US military technical training manuals and that's about it (also
fleetingly seen a 70MB AoE pdf!).

I've seen it in 15 MB 300 dpi text

I'll leave it to a classfull of students to OCR it, I don't have the time!

I find it's a ballache reading a book off screen and am still about
1000:1
in favour of paper

Oh yes but eventually some will make the electronic equivalent of a
paperback.

Paper is lovely for stuff read in bed or on the train etc but most of my
library is reference that is rarely used but always has mass and volume...

have a nasty habit of scribbling on the few books
I use a lot, so like you I'm starting to scan 'em in, a pain but modern
books are so poor quality I'll not be buying 'em a second time!.

A lot of stuff isn't worth buying the first time

25 years of
collecting military radios leaves me with piles of ephemeral
documentation.

I'm scanning that lot although copyright says I'm not supposed to.

The point of copyright is to encourage innovation by granting innovators an
exclusive legal right to the financial rewards of their creations.

Sometimes this revenue arrives over decades, but for technical material the
material is only worth money for a shorter period. After a while the cost of
enforcement/collection would be more than the revenue, at which point the
author has all the revenue that can be economically extracted.

I've had positive mail from authors who are chuffed to see their old works
immortalised on the web in pristine pixels.

Other people must be doing lots and lots of the same, probably just a
question of time before much more of it surfaces.

Yes, I'm concerned that much effort is wasted by duplication.

eMule seems a way for people to make their scans/OCR available.

If publishers weren't so obviously grasping and inefficient, then a
constant
revenue stream could be sourced by having all their back catalogues
opened
up for 'publish on demand' at affordable pricing. Google are moving in
this direction but I know for sure that UK Plc wise, publishers and
others
will be looking for ridiculous access charges.

I know, we're just waiting for someone to invent a DRM scheme that is
acceptable to publisher and user...

Richard H. · Jan 15, 2005

Jim Thompson wrote:

Thanks, Spehro! I'll check them out. I'm also going dual monitors.
I plan to have a schematic on one monitor and the simulation output on
another, makes node probing a lot simpler.

Check out the widescreen Samsung 243T - a gorgeous 24" 1920x1200, does
portrait and landscape, with razor-sharp clarity using the DVI video
input. Best Christmas present I've ever bought myself!

Fry's has them locally as cheap as anyplace online.

Richard H. · Jan 15, 2005

Jim Thompson wrote:

My last experience at programming was years ago... Pascal. My son,

Look into Delphi from Borland - a Pascal VB-style platform. GUI
controls are drag & drop, enter/exit of event routines are automatically
generated - you only have to write the "meat" of your code, using Pascal.

Nico Coesel · Jan 15, 2005

Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

Thanks, Spehro! I'll check them out. I'm also going dual monitors.
I plan to have a schematic on one monitor and the simulation output on
another, makes node probing a lot simpler.

Dual monitor makes live a lot easier indeed.
Be sure to check the Eizo flatpanels too! Eizo is Rolls Royce when it
comes to monitors. They design their monitors to give an optimal
image.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

Ken Smith · Jan 16, 2005

In article <b44lu0ltddl1j8gi8pakpr3pggergif5oc@4ax.com>,
Spehro Pefhany <speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:
[...]

I've got it somewhere. 39k or something insanely small like that! It
was fast on a 4.77 MHz 8088, let alone a 3GHz P4. But I don't use
Pascal enough these days to find it really fast to use.

I've got Borland Pascal 7 and fear the day that Microsoft finally makes a
version of Windows it won't run under. I have a huge collection of
routines that I've written in it. One nice thing is that most of them
will compile to run natively on Linux.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

Jim Thompson · Jan 16, 2005

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:52:07 -0800, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:18:01 -0700, Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:18:02 -0800, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

[snip]

Is there a difference between Power Basic and Visual Basic?

...Jim Thompson

Well Microslop makes VB, and PowerBasic makes PB. PB is actually
evolved from Borland TurboBasic. It compiles anything in about 0.1
seconds and executes something like 20x as fast as VB. It uses the old
INPUT..PRINT paradigm, like all the classic DOS and other Basics.

[snip]

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Guy Macon · Jan 16, 2005

Jim Thompson wrote:

IIRC, VB requires "libraries" to be available to run executables.
Does PowerBasic, or can it create "stand-alone" executables?

PowerBASIC requires no run-time libraries. I would need to check
the docs, but I think that there is a way to make it do things that
way if you really want it to, but that certainly isn't the normal
way of using it. Normally you generate insanely small and blazingly
fast stanalone *.exe files.

Pig Bladder · Jan 16, 2005

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:27:07 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

The question is: Does PowerBasic require "libraries", or can it create
"stand-alone" executables?

Once again, a victim of your own plonk-happiness - you missed a perfectly

valid answer from Guy Macon.

Cheers!
--
The Pig Bladder From Uranus, Still Waiting for
Some Hot Babe to Ask What My Favorite Planet Is.

Nico Coesel · Jan 16, 2005

"Richard H." <rh86@no.spam> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
My last experience at programming was years ago... Pascal. My son,

Look into Delphi from Borland - a Pascal VB-style platform. GUI
controls are drag & drop, enter/exit of event routines are automatically
generated - you only have to write the "meat" of your code, using Pascal.

Whatever you do, don't use Delphi (Pascal). You're walking into a dead
end street with Delhpi. Pascal and C are quite similar when it comes
to the structure of the language, but C is more complete and elegant
as a language. Borland / Inprise turned Delphi in some sort of a C
clone anyway so why settle for less if you can use the real thing: C

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

Nico Coesel · Jan 16, 2005

"john jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

"Rick" <rik_nntp@dsl.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:zMLFd.34869$g4.646464@news2.nokia.com...
john jardine <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

Don't know about your neck of the woods but the one I saw this afternoon
browsing the shelves of a new bookshop, was on sale at ?50.00. Unless an
individual is very well financed then it is simply not affordable. What
price knowledge?.

Hmmph - I was recently quoted 170 UKP (about $300) for a copy of
an out-of-print technical book.

--
Rick

Only way out is to borrow the book via the library system and piously sign
the form saying it won't be copied.
Hence, all the out of print technical books ordered from a UK library have
broken spines and insist on offering their pages up in a pre-flattened form,
almost quivering to make the copier glass journey.

Hmm, those copyright laws are very strict. Over here everyone is
allowed to make copies of anything which was published for personal
use (FYI: this includes music and films). Every library has at least
one copying machine.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

keith · Jan 17, 2005

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:48:53 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:38:18 -0800, John Larkin
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:

[snip]

Really, try it. It's fabulous for engineering math. I'd never consider
using a programmable calculator again.

John

That's what I'm after. Also I'd like to develop a "smart" automatic
text editor that opens a file and changes syntax from HSpice to PSpice
;-)

If there is an obvious difference in the files, there are a ton of editors
that are configurable for the source language. I sorta like MED, for
which I've done some fairly nice VHDL macros. For $30 (IIRC) it's a very
nice editor.

--
Keith

Richard H. · Jan 17, 2005

Nico Coesel wrote:

Whatever you do, don't use Delphi (Pascal).
You're walking into a dead end street with Delhpi.
[...]
Borland / Inprise turned Delphi in some sort of
a C clone anyway so why settle for less if you
can use the real thing: C

Interesting. I'm no Pascal buff, but used Delphi for some time before
they finally released the C++Builder platform derivative. What about it
is negative? Has it warped in newer versions (or have they stopped
updating it)? Or do you just dislike the VB-style objects?

Borland always seemed to be a huge supporter of Pascal, placing it ahead
of even C/C++ (as seen with Delphi's release well before C++Builder), so
it seems unlikely that they would abandon this product, or Pascal.

Richard

Rich Grise · Jan 17, 2005

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:57:19 +0000, Nico Coesel wrote:

"john jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
Only way out is to borrow the book via the library system and piously sign
the form saying it won't be copied.
Hence, all the out of print technical books ordered from a UK library have
broken spines and insist on offering their pages up in a pre-flattened form,
almost quivering to make the copier glass journey.

Hmm, those copyright laws are very strict. Over here everyone is
allowed to make copies of anything which was published for personal
use (FYI: this includes music and films). Every library has at least
one copying machine.

I've seen copying machines in at least one library, where the glass goes
literally to the edge, plus about an inch or two of glass down the side.
So you only have to open the book 90 degrees to copy all the way to the
spine.

So, I'd say they know that there's some copying going on! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Charles Edmondson · Jan 17, 2005

Ok, do any of the PowerBasic gurus know if there is anything in PB that
would let it be accessible to a screen reader? I would love to be able
to write simple apps that would work for my wife!

--
Charlie
--
Edmondson Engineering
Unique Solutions to Unusual Problems

Art of Electronics Rave - NON Politix! :-)

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Clarence_A

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Jim Thompson

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Guy Macon

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