EE rant...

[Flyguy]

On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 8:26:01 PM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Monday, January 9, 2023 at 5:55:48 AM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 12:54:32 AM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 3:39:07 PM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-model-y-out-of-control-at-full-speed-the-footage-is-terrifying/vi-AA15NorJ?cvid=b116ea5578194130e42652ef882f3777&category=foryou

A Tesla car crashes in China. The company that makes that range of electric cars hasn\'t done anything worth commenting on.

Sewage Sweeper reminds us - again - that he hasn\'t got much grasp of reality.

So says the IDIOT who advocates FIREBOMBING and NUKING his own damn country!
Yet another one of Sewage Sweeper\'s fatuous delusions.

No, Bozo, they are YOUR fatuous delusions.

--
Bozo Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bozo\'s Sewage Sweeper

 

[Flyguy]

On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 8:26:01 PM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Monday, January 9, 2023 at 5:55:48 AM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 12:54:32 AM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 3:39:07 PM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-model-y-out-of-control-at-full-speed-the-footage-is-terrifying/vi-AA15NorJ?cvid=b116ea5578194130e42652ef882f3777&category=foryou

A Tesla car crashes in China. The company that makes that range of electric cars hasn\'t done anything worth commenting on.

Sewage Sweeper reminds us - again - that he hasn\'t got much grasp of reality.

So says the IDIOT who advocates FIREBOMBING and NUKING his own damn country!
Yet another one of Sewage Sweeper\'s fatuous delusions.

No, Bozo, they are YOUR fatuous delusions.

--
Bozo Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bozo\'s Sewage Sweeper

 

[Flyguy]

On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 8:26:01 PM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Monday, January 9, 2023 at 5:55:48 AM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 12:54:32 AM UTC-8, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
On Friday, December 30, 2022 at 3:39:07 PM UTC+11, Flyguy wrote:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-model-y-out-of-control-at-full-speed-the-footage-is-terrifying/vi-AA15NorJ?cvid=b116ea5578194130e42652ef882f3777&category=foryou

A Tesla car crashes in China. The company that makes that range of electric cars hasn\'t done anything worth commenting on.

Sewage Sweeper reminds us - again - that he hasn\'t got much grasp of reality.

So says the IDIOT who advocates FIREBOMBING and NUKING his own damn country!
Yet another one of Sewage Sweeper\'s fatuous delusions.

No, Bozo, they are YOUR fatuous delusions.

--
Bozo Bill Sloman, Sydney

Bozo\'s Sewage Sweeper

 

[Joerg]

On 1/6/23 12:02 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 5 Jan 2023 13:41:11 -0800) it happened Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote in <k1oufnFg8mmU1@mid.individual.net>:

On 1/4/23 11:03 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

[...]

I did this project to get my digital hands on up to date, for hardware and software:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/

Now we have DVB-S2 via satellite and DVB-T2 terrestrial here..
New standard every few years, everybody had to buy a new DVB-T2 box... few years back..

Wonder what\'s next
DVB-S2 is close to the Shannon limit, but I did get surprised again today:
https://www.asus.com/content/asus-spatial-vision-technology/


What\'s next for TV? Nothing, IMHO. It had it\'s day and the world is
moving on. Other than the evening news the last time I really watched TV
was ... well ... heck, it\'s so many years ago that I can\'t even remember.

Oh no!
I have a steerable satellite dish and get a thousand or so free to air channels
So many satellites I can point to (see top page) here:
https://kingofsat.net/
News and opinions from all over the world, movies in HD... science (NASA TV for example)
many great info channels in German (ZDF-info, Kabeleins-info, N24docu etc
It is good to see the viewpoints from other countries to get a grip on the truth
pity EU killed the Russian channels on Astra satellite
US brainwash not missing: CNN, financial...

As long as there are John Wayne movies

Although you can get most of those on the Internet and then also in
libraries.

There is also internet via satellite...

And of course as ham we have QO100 here... DVB-S2, SSB, clear as glass all over Europe and middle east etc
https://amsat-dl.org/en/international-qo-100-emergency-frequency/

I wish we had a geostationary satellite in the US but I don\'t think
there is any chance in the near future.

I still have a PC with an old DVB-S card, wrote the positioner software too:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/satellite/

Not very active as ham these days, dish high up against the wall here, bad weather..
but maybe when its summer again could climb the ladder..

A decent sat receiver box that can also drive a dish positioner costs about 30 $.
You can build your own transmitter stuff ..

Not here. It\'s all payola. Well, not for our family. If our TV ever
croaks I don\'t think we are going to replace it.

The switch to digital pretty much killed it for where I live because it
became unreliable. The topper was when some stations gave up precious
VHF channels for UHF. That was not smart at all.

Digital terrestrial seems to work here OK now even with a simple indoor antenna.

You have a better system. Less resolution but better multipath
tolerance. Ours seems to not have been tested well in suburbian
settings. Yet that is where people with disposable income live. Plus
they voluntarily gave up VHF frequencies which was a big mistake. I told
a station manager here that all this would result in diminished ad
volume and later \"personnel adjustments\" (code for layoffs). He didn\'t
believe me. Then it happened.

If I ever want to watch something interesting it is on the Internet or a
DVD from the library. However, now that I re-started ham radio I haven\'t
seen any movie in months. No time.

I just check these in the morning:
https://www.tvdirekt.de/tv-programm-auf-einen-blick/tv-programm-online.html?hours=4&typeID=-1&typeName=free
https://www.tvguide.co.uk/?catcolor=&systemid=79&gridspan=09:00
If anything seems interesting then I program a timer (good movies for example)
Box records to a 64 GB USB stick in HD....

I\'ve been in Europe a few years ago and the relative I stayed with has
satellite TV. A bazillion channels. What I saw there only elicited the
same reaction as the 200 channels in hotels here, a big yawn.

Analog? You mean wallwart noise on RF shortwave? brrrrrrrrr
I do have a HF transceiver, and a Baofeng of course....
Maybe when WW3 is in progress to say bye bye world?
Or listen where there is still life?

Yup, analog. Although CW is technically a \"digital mode\". That\'s >95% of
what I am doing, using squeeze paddles and the computer between my ears.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 1/6/23 12:02 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 5 Jan 2023 13:41:11 -0800) it happened Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote in <k1oufnFg8mmU1@mid.individual.net>:

On 1/4/23 11:03 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

[...]

I did this project to get my digital hands on up to date, for hardware and software:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/

Now we have DVB-S2 via satellite and DVB-T2 terrestrial here..
New standard every few years, everybody had to buy a new DVB-T2 box... few years back..

Wonder what\'s next
DVB-S2 is close to the Shannon limit, but I did get surprised again today:
https://www.asus.com/content/asus-spatial-vision-technology/


What\'s next for TV? Nothing, IMHO. It had it\'s day and the world is
moving on. Other than the evening news the last time I really watched TV
was ... well ... heck, it\'s so many years ago that I can\'t even remember.

Oh no!
I have a steerable satellite dish and get a thousand or so free to air channels
So many satellites I can point to (see top page) here:
https://kingofsat.net/
News and opinions from all over the world, movies in HD... science (NASA TV for example)
many great info channels in German (ZDF-info, Kabeleins-info, N24docu etc
It is good to see the viewpoints from other countries to get a grip on the truth
pity EU killed the Russian channels on Astra satellite
US brainwash not missing: CNN, financial...

As long as there are John Wayne movies

Although you can get most of those on the Internet and then also in
libraries.

There is also internet via satellite...

And of course as ham we have QO100 here... DVB-S2, SSB, clear as glass all over Europe and middle east etc
https://amsat-dl.org/en/international-qo-100-emergency-frequency/

I wish we had a geostationary satellite in the US but I don\'t think
there is any chance in the near future.

I still have a PC with an old DVB-S card, wrote the positioner software too:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/satellite/

Not very active as ham these days, dish high up against the wall here, bad weather..
but maybe when its summer again could climb the ladder..

A decent sat receiver box that can also drive a dish positioner costs about 30 $.
You can build your own transmitter stuff ..

Not here. It\'s all payola. Well, not for our family. If our TV ever
croaks I don\'t think we are going to replace it.

The switch to digital pretty much killed it for where I live because it
became unreliable. The topper was when some stations gave up precious
VHF channels for UHF. That was not smart at all.

Digital terrestrial seems to work here OK now even with a simple indoor antenna.

You have a better system. Less resolution but better multipath
tolerance. Ours seems to not have been tested well in suburbian
settings. Yet that is where people with disposable income live. Plus
they voluntarily gave up VHF frequencies which was a big mistake. I told
a station manager here that all this would result in diminished ad
volume and later \"personnel adjustments\" (code for layoffs). He didn\'t
believe me. Then it happened.

If I ever want to watch something interesting it is on the Internet or a
DVD from the library. However, now that I re-started ham radio I haven\'t
seen any movie in months. No time.

I just check these in the morning:
https://www.tvdirekt.de/tv-programm-auf-einen-blick/tv-programm-online.html?hours=4&typeID=-1&typeName=free
https://www.tvguide.co.uk/?catcolor=&systemid=79&gridspan=09:00
If anything seems interesting then I program a timer (good movies for example)
Box records to a 64 GB USB stick in HD....

I\'ve been in Europe a few years ago and the relative I stayed with has
satellite TV. A bazillion channels. What I saw there only elicited the
same reaction as the 200 channels in hotels here, a big yawn.

Analog? You mean wallwart noise on RF shortwave? brrrrrrrrr
I do have a HF transceiver, and a Baofeng of course....
Maybe when WW3 is in progress to say bye bye world?
Or listen where there is still life?

Yup, analog. Although CW is technically a \"digital mode\". That\'s >95% of
what I am doing, using squeeze paddles and the computer between my ears.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 1/6/23 12:02 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 5 Jan 2023 13:41:11 -0800) it happened Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote in <k1oufnFg8mmU1@mid.individual.net>:

On 1/4/23 11:03 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

[...]

I did this project to get my digital hands on up to date, for hardware and software:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/

Now we have DVB-S2 via satellite and DVB-T2 terrestrial here..
New standard every few years, everybody had to buy a new DVB-T2 box... few years back..

Wonder what\'s next
DVB-S2 is close to the Shannon limit, but I did get surprised again today:
https://www.asus.com/content/asus-spatial-vision-technology/


What\'s next for TV? Nothing, IMHO. It had it\'s day and the world is
moving on. Other than the evening news the last time I really watched TV
was ... well ... heck, it\'s so many years ago that I can\'t even remember.

Oh no!
I have a steerable satellite dish and get a thousand or so free to air channels
So many satellites I can point to (see top page) here:
https://kingofsat.net/
News and opinions from all over the world, movies in HD... science (NASA TV for example)
many great info channels in German (ZDF-info, Kabeleins-info, N24docu etc
It is good to see the viewpoints from other countries to get a grip on the truth
pity EU killed the Russian channels on Astra satellite
US brainwash not missing: CNN, financial...

As long as there are John Wayne movies

Although you can get most of those on the Internet and then also in
libraries.

There is also internet via satellite...

And of course as ham we have QO100 here... DVB-S2, SSB, clear as glass all over Europe and middle east etc
https://amsat-dl.org/en/international-qo-100-emergency-frequency/

I wish we had a geostationary satellite in the US but I don\'t think
there is any chance in the near future.

I still have a PC with an old DVB-S card, wrote the positioner software too:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/satellite/

Not very active as ham these days, dish high up against the wall here, bad weather..
but maybe when its summer again could climb the ladder..

A decent sat receiver box that can also drive a dish positioner costs about 30 $.
You can build your own transmitter stuff ..

Not here. It\'s all payola. Well, not for our family. If our TV ever
croaks I don\'t think we are going to replace it.

The switch to digital pretty much killed it for where I live because it
became unreliable. The topper was when some stations gave up precious
VHF channels for UHF. That was not smart at all.

Digital terrestrial seems to work here OK now even with a simple indoor antenna.

You have a better system. Less resolution but better multipath
tolerance. Ours seems to not have been tested well in suburbian
settings. Yet that is where people with disposable income live. Plus
they voluntarily gave up VHF frequencies which was a big mistake. I told
a station manager here that all this would result in diminished ad
volume and later \"personnel adjustments\" (code for layoffs). He didn\'t
believe me. Then it happened.

If I ever want to watch something interesting it is on the Internet or a
DVD from the library. However, now that I re-started ham radio I haven\'t
seen any movie in months. No time.

I just check these in the morning:
https://www.tvdirekt.de/tv-programm-auf-einen-blick/tv-programm-online.html?hours=4&typeID=-1&typeName=free
https://www.tvguide.co.uk/?catcolor=&systemid=79&gridspan=09:00
If anything seems interesting then I program a timer (good movies for example)
Box records to a 64 GB USB stick in HD....

I\'ve been in Europe a few years ago and the relative I stayed with has
satellite TV. A bazillion channels. What I saw there only elicited the
same reaction as the 200 channels in hotels here, a big yawn.

Analog? You mean wallwart noise on RF shortwave? brrrrrrrrr
I do have a HF transceiver, and a Baofeng of course....
Maybe when WW3 is in progress to say bye bye world?
Or listen where there is still life?

Yup, analog. Although CW is technically a \"digital mode\". That\'s >95% of
what I am doing, using squeeze paddles and the computer between my ears.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 10:26:07 PM UTC-5, a a wrote:

The suspect in the New Year\'s Eve attack on police officers had a diary that expressed his desire to join the Taliban and die as a martyr, sources say.
cnn.com
Suspect in New Year\'s Eve machete attack on New York police officers expressed desire in diary to...
The 19-year-old being held by New York City police as the suspect in a machete attack against three police officers New Year\'s Eve carried a handwritten diary, which expressed his desire to join the...

He\'s mentally disturbed, his so-called diary means nothing since he can\'t rationally form a motive.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 10:26:07 PM UTC-5, a a wrote:

The suspect in the New Year\'s Eve attack on police officers had a diary that expressed his desire to join the Taliban and die as a martyr, sources say.
cnn.com
Suspect in New Year\'s Eve machete attack on New York police officers expressed desire in diary to...
The 19-year-old being held by New York City police as the suspect in a machete attack against three police officers New Year\'s Eve carried a handwritten diary, which expressed his desire to join the...

He\'s mentally disturbed, his so-called diary means nothing since he can\'t rationally form a motive.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 10:26:07 PM UTC-5, a a wrote:

The suspect in the New Year\'s Eve attack on police officers had a diary that expressed his desire to join the Taliban and die as a martyr, sources say.
cnn.com
Suspect in New Year\'s Eve machete attack on New York police officers expressed desire in diary to...
The 19-year-old being held by New York City police as the suspect in a machete attack against three police officers New Year\'s Eve carried a handwritten diary, which expressed his desire to join the...

He\'s mentally disturbed, his so-called diary means nothing since he can\'t rationally form a motive.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 10:34, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:20:44 +0000) it happened Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote in <tp3gdi$1ra1$1@gioia.aioe.org>:

On 02/01/2023 19:21, Jan Panteltje wrote:
My website hosting company \"Godaddy.com\" moved to Microsoft for my
email.
What a lot of crap that is!! The old pop-email no longer works,
pop-email took a second here for incoming to add to my email system
that goes back to 1998.

Are you sure about that?
Is it a very recent thing (as in failed 27/12/22 by any chance?)


POP worked fine on MS Office 365/Outlook with the server settings here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/pop-imap-and-smtp-settings-8361e398-8af4-4e97-b147-6c6c4ac95353


interesting
but godddy has done more things wrong, this was the limit
1) they would re-encode my JPG pictures so it would take less space on
their server
    but then people could not read my circuit diagrams..
    Was fixed after me complaining..

You are better off using PNG files with a restricted palette for circuit
diagrams. Smaller and if done right you can get away with at most 4
shades and if you want to be really brutal just 2. I have a greedy
algorithm based colour reduction method that works really well.

I\'m astonished at how bad the ones in PSPro and Photoshop can be when
faced with line art on a slow gradient uneven background. Preserving all
the wrong things at the expense of the important details!

2) they randomly move servers and last time changed all time marks to
the same date.
    (cp -p would have preserved those)
         I have backup locally here... for the next site.

Slightly silly of them but it shouldn\'t affect updating since the new
file date will be more recent than any older file.

3) They forced me into outlook and \'root\' as a catch-all address no
longer works
    Looks like they want to charge me extra for that microsore too..
What a bunch of creeps and idiots.

Increasingly you can\'t have a catch-all with any of the modern email
systems - too much spam goes to non-existent addresses. On any decent
configuration you can set up a whole bunch of aliasses - Demon on
Namesco now running on Microsoft Office365 server allows ISTR 250
(which was more than enough for my needs)

I use Rackspace for email. Catch-alls are allowed, no problems.

It did I grant you require a complete rewrite of my sorting rules on the
email clients at my end but that was a one off PITA.

I take the website away from them, never mind the domain name,
panteltje.com, panteltje.net panteltje.org panteltje,eu etc etc what
difference does it make to me?
It is all open source stuff and some things I showed here.

I have now set an other free pop email account I have as primary and
everybody that matters has that now.
I vote with my purse (is the expression); godaddy lost a customer.
I cannot tell them as their phone helpdesk does not even work,
so setting auto-renewal to zero was my vote.

Fair enough. I have found not paying for service not provided does
eventually get bad ISP\'s attention but you can get demands for payment
if you don\'t notify them >30 days before renewal.

And I do not like microsore reading my email, might as well sent those
to the seeeyeaa!
Imagine they find out I have that old USSR submarine and am testing
those air-mail tubes..



It is all about FREEDOM, microsore is just like a kraken with
tentacles pulling you in.
There is NOTHING they give that does not exists for free AND better!!!!

Whilst I am no great fan of Mickeysoft their 2022 C++ compiler can run
rings around both Intel DPC++ and GCC for highly optimisable code.

I haven\'t been keeping up, but for my clusterized EM simulator, circa
2007 Intel C++ was significantly better than MS, and both outperformed
GCC by a wide margin because GCC couldn\'t vectorize to save its life.

GCC has got better at that, but you have to write inner loops in a
particular, very simple style to get any benefit.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 10:34, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:20:44 +0000) it happened Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote in <tp3gdi$1ra1$1@gioia.aioe.org>:

On 02/01/2023 19:21, Jan Panteltje wrote:
My website hosting company \"Godaddy.com\" moved to Microsoft for my
email.
What a lot of crap that is!! The old pop-email no longer works,
pop-email took a second here for incoming to add to my email system
that goes back to 1998.

Are you sure about that?
Is it a very recent thing (as in failed 27/12/22 by any chance?)


POP worked fine on MS Office 365/Outlook with the server settings here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/pop-imap-and-smtp-settings-8361e398-8af4-4e97-b147-6c6c4ac95353


interesting
but godddy has done more things wrong, this was the limit
1) they would re-encode my JPG pictures so it would take less space on
their server
    but then people could not read my circuit diagrams..
    Was fixed after me complaining..

You are better off using PNG files with a restricted palette for circuit
diagrams. Smaller and if done right you can get away with at most 4
shades and if you want to be really brutal just 2. I have a greedy
algorithm based colour reduction method that works really well.

I\'m astonished at how bad the ones in PSPro and Photoshop can be when
faced with line art on a slow gradient uneven background. Preserving all
the wrong things at the expense of the important details!

2) they randomly move servers and last time changed all time marks to
the same date.
    (cp -p would have preserved those)
         I have backup locally here... for the next site.

Slightly silly of them but it shouldn\'t affect updating since the new
file date will be more recent than any older file.

3) They forced me into outlook and \'root\' as a catch-all address no
longer works
    Looks like they want to charge me extra for that microsore too..
What a bunch of creeps and idiots.

Increasingly you can\'t have a catch-all with any of the modern email
systems - too much spam goes to non-existent addresses. On any decent
configuration you can set up a whole bunch of aliasses - Demon on
Namesco now running on Microsoft Office365 server allows ISTR 250
(which was more than enough for my needs)

I use Rackspace for email. Catch-alls are allowed, no problems.

It did I grant you require a complete rewrite of my sorting rules on the
email clients at my end but that was a one off PITA.

I take the website away from them, never mind the domain name,
panteltje.com, panteltje.net panteltje.org panteltje,eu etc etc what
difference does it make to me?
It is all open source stuff and some things I showed here.

I have now set an other free pop email account I have as primary and
everybody that matters has that now.
I vote with my purse (is the expression); godaddy lost a customer.
I cannot tell them as their phone helpdesk does not even work,
so setting auto-renewal to zero was my vote.

Fair enough. I have found not paying for service not provided does
eventually get bad ISP\'s attention but you can get demands for payment
if you don\'t notify them >30 days before renewal.

And I do not like microsore reading my email, might as well sent those
to the seeeyeaa!
Imagine they find out I have that old USSR submarine and am testing
those air-mail tubes..



It is all about FREEDOM, microsore is just like a kraken with
tentacles pulling you in.
There is NOTHING they give that does not exists for free AND better!!!!

Whilst I am no great fan of Mickeysoft their 2022 C++ compiler can run
rings around both Intel DPC++ and GCC for highly optimisable code.

I haven\'t been keeping up, but for my clusterized EM simulator, circa
2007 Intel C++ was significantly better than MS, and both outperformed
GCC by a wide margin because GCC couldn\'t vectorize to save its life.

GCC has got better at that, but you have to write inner loops in a
particular, very simple style to get any benefit.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/01/2023 10:34, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:20:44 +0000) it happened Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote in <tp3gdi$1ra1$1@gioia.aioe.org>:

On 02/01/2023 19:21, Jan Panteltje wrote:
My website hosting company \"Godaddy.com\" moved to Microsoft for my
email.
What a lot of crap that is!! The old pop-email no longer works,
pop-email took a second here for incoming to add to my email system
that goes back to 1998.

Are you sure about that?
Is it a very recent thing (as in failed 27/12/22 by any chance?)


POP worked fine on MS Office 365/Outlook with the server settings here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/pop-imap-and-smtp-settings-8361e398-8af4-4e97-b147-6c6c4ac95353


interesting
but godddy has done more things wrong, this was the limit
1) they would re-encode my JPG pictures so it would take less space on
their server
    but then people could not read my circuit diagrams..
    Was fixed after me complaining..

You are better off using PNG files with a restricted palette for circuit
diagrams. Smaller and if done right you can get away with at most 4
shades and if you want to be really brutal just 2. I have a greedy
algorithm based colour reduction method that works really well.

I\'m astonished at how bad the ones in PSPro and Photoshop can be when
faced with line art on a slow gradient uneven background. Preserving all
the wrong things at the expense of the important details!

2) they randomly move servers and last time changed all time marks to
the same date.
    (cp -p would have preserved those)
         I have backup locally here... for the next site.

Slightly silly of them but it shouldn\'t affect updating since the new
file date will be more recent than any older file.

3) They forced me into outlook and \'root\' as a catch-all address no
longer works
    Looks like they want to charge me extra for that microsore too..
What a bunch of creeps and idiots.

Increasingly you can\'t have a catch-all with any of the modern email
systems - too much spam goes to non-existent addresses. On any decent
configuration you can set up a whole bunch of aliasses - Demon on
Namesco now running on Microsoft Office365 server allows ISTR 250
(which was more than enough for my needs)

I use Rackspace for email. Catch-alls are allowed, no problems.

It did I grant you require a complete rewrite of my sorting rules on the
email clients at my end but that was a one off PITA.

I take the website away from them, never mind the domain name,
panteltje.com, panteltje.net panteltje.org panteltje,eu etc etc what
difference does it make to me?
It is all open source stuff and some things I showed here.

I have now set an other free pop email account I have as primary and
everybody that matters has that now.
I vote with my purse (is the expression); godaddy lost a customer.
I cannot tell them as their phone helpdesk does not even work,
so setting auto-renewal to zero was my vote.

Fair enough. I have found not paying for service not provided does
eventually get bad ISP\'s attention but you can get demands for payment
if you don\'t notify them >30 days before renewal.

And I do not like microsore reading my email, might as well sent those
to the seeeyeaa!
Imagine they find out I have that old USSR submarine and am testing
those air-mail tubes..



It is all about FREEDOM, microsore is just like a kraken with
tentacles pulling you in.
There is NOTHING they give that does not exists for free AND better!!!!

Whilst I am no great fan of Mickeysoft their 2022 C++ compiler can run
rings around both Intel DPC++ and GCC for highly optimisable code.

I haven\'t been keeping up, but for my clusterized EM simulator, circa
2007 Intel C++ was significantly better than MS, and both outperformed
GCC by a wide margin because GCC couldn\'t vectorize to save its life.

GCC has got better at that, but you have to write inner loops in a
particular, very simple style to get any benefit.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 12:59:00 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 12:20 PM, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:25:28 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

\"QUESTION: which upper level math courses did you find most applicable
to your major or masters courses. Are there any other free/cheap
courses that can set me up for success in Power Electronics and/or
Embedded systems?\"

I don\'t think that higher-level math courses set people up for success
in any EE field except academics.

Sensing, measuring, and filtering get a lot of utility from Fourier transform
techniques; it\'s hard to imagine success in phase-shift measurement without
using a F-transform. Absence of high-level math courses sets people
up for failure, but they won\'t ever know that.


Actually during one of my consulting projects in the mid-90\'s I reversed
that trend at a client. They had a big DSP do lots of Fourier transforms
and the auto-calibration routine for that board took forever. Tens of
seconds. I reverted all that to time-domain and it was finished after a
few hundred msec, every single time.

In the 80\'s we often did it with zero-crossers. Less math but blazingly
fast.

What was this big DSP doing? This story rings a bell.

In radar, the initial calibration involves multiple alternating
conversions between time and frequency domains, because the desired
result is a clean pulse in the time domain, achieved by adjusting
phase and amplitude settings as a function of frequency.


I am not at liberty to go into great detail but in a nutshell the DSP
was there to calibrate a multi-channel RF system via FFT with respect to
amplitude and phase. High precision was required. Theoretically it
could, of course, be done with the FFT but it took way too long and it
didn\'t always converge to the precision they needed. The sofwtare also
was, let\'s say, a bit temperamental.


Once the correct settings have been found iteratively, subsequent
calibration is by adjusting the various settings back to those golden
numbers - the file containing those golden numbers is of course called
a golden database.

Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.


My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and converged
every single time within less than half a second. We let the uC handle
that because the computational load dropped to peanuts. The big DSP
became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the name
of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it didn\'t work in
time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at night. If it did,
everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can fix
a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

\"Doctor, Doctor! It hurts when I go like this!\"

\"So don\'t go like that.\"



It\'s quite possible to do deconvolution badly as you say, but it\'s
generally not hard to do it well, and it\'s often very profitable.

Of course, how much that gets you depends on the situation. You just
have to keep an eye on the noise gain. In my long-ago thesis work, I
got a factor of two in resolution in an interferometric laser microscope
by deconvolving the analytically-known transfer function to something
more nearly rectangular.

The limitations had more to do with ringing than with noise gain or
singularities.

On the other hand, trying deconvolution to undo the effect of a Gaussian
lowpass is going to run out of gas very soon, because the noise gain
grows faster than exponentially with bandwidth.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 12:59:00 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 12:20 PM, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:25:28 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

\"QUESTION: which upper level math courses did you find most applicable
to your major or masters courses. Are there any other free/cheap
courses that can set me up for success in Power Electronics and/or
Embedded systems?\"

I don\'t think that higher-level math courses set people up for success
in any EE field except academics.

Sensing, measuring, and filtering get a lot of utility from Fourier transform
techniques; it\'s hard to imagine success in phase-shift measurement without
using a F-transform. Absence of high-level math courses sets people
up for failure, but they won\'t ever know that.


Actually during one of my consulting projects in the mid-90\'s I reversed
that trend at a client. They had a big DSP do lots of Fourier transforms
and the auto-calibration routine for that board took forever. Tens of
seconds. I reverted all that to time-domain and it was finished after a
few hundred msec, every single time.

In the 80\'s we often did it with zero-crossers. Less math but blazingly
fast.

What was this big DSP doing? This story rings a bell.

In radar, the initial calibration involves multiple alternating
conversions between time and frequency domains, because the desired
result is a clean pulse in the time domain, achieved by adjusting
phase and amplitude settings as a function of frequency.


I am not at liberty to go into great detail but in a nutshell the DSP
was there to calibrate a multi-channel RF system via FFT with respect to
amplitude and phase. High precision was required. Theoretically it
could, of course, be done with the FFT but it took way too long and it
didn\'t always converge to the precision they needed. The sofwtare also
was, let\'s say, a bit temperamental.


Once the correct settings have been found iteratively, subsequent
calibration is by adjusting the various settings back to those golden
numbers - the file containing those golden numbers is of course called
a golden database.

Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.


My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and converged
every single time within less than half a second. We let the uC handle
that because the computational load dropped to peanuts. The big DSP
became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the name
of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it didn\'t work in
time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at night. If it did,
everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can fix
a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

\"Doctor, Doctor! It hurts when I go like this!\"

\"So don\'t go like that.\"



It\'s quite possible to do deconvolution badly as you say, but it\'s
generally not hard to do it well, and it\'s often very profitable.

Of course, how much that gets you depends on the situation. You just
have to keep an eye on the noise gain. In my long-ago thesis work, I
got a factor of two in resolution in an interferometric laser microscope
by deconvolving the analytically-known transfer function to something
more nearly rectangular.

The limitations had more to do with ringing than with noise gain or
singularities.

On the other hand, trying deconvolution to undo the effect of a Gaussian
lowpass is going to run out of gas very soon, because the noise gain
grows faster than exponentially with bandwidth.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 10:30:35 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 2:34 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 12:59:00 -0800, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 1/2/23 12:20 PM, whit3rd wrote:
On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 10:25:28 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

\"QUESTION: which upper level math courses did you find most applicable
to your major or masters courses. Are there any other free/cheap
courses that can set me up for success in Power Electronics and/or
Embedded systems?\"

I don\'t think that higher-level math courses set people up for success
in any EE field except academics.

Sensing, measuring, and filtering get a lot of utility from Fourier transform
techniques; it\'s hard to imagine success in phase-shift measurement without
using a F-transform. Absence of high-level math courses sets people
up for failure, but they won\'t ever know that.


Actually during one of my consulting projects in the mid-90\'s I reversed
that trend at a client. They had a big DSP do lots of Fourier transforms
and the auto-calibration routine for that board took forever. Tens of
seconds. I reverted all that to time-domain and it was finished after a
few hundred msec, every single time.

In the 80\'s we often did it with zero-crossers. Less math but blazingly
fast.

What was this big DSP doing? This story rings a bell.

In radar, the initial calibration involves multiple alternating
conversions between time and frequency domains, because the desired
result is a clean pulse in the time domain, achieved by adjusting
phase and amplitude settings as a function of frequency.


I am not at liberty to go into great detail but in a nutshell the DSP
was there to calibrate a multi-channel RF system via FFT with respect to
amplitude and phase. High precision was required. Theoretically it
could, of course, be done with the FFT but it took way too long and it
didn\'t always converge to the precision they needed. The sofwtare also
was, let\'s say, a bit temperamental.


Once the correct settings have been found iteratively, subsequent
calibration is by adjusting the various settings back to those golden
numbers - the file containing those golden numbers is of course called
a golden database.

Antenna pattern is first calibrated by a like process.


My time-domain routine didn\'t need any golden numbers and converged
every single time within less than half a second. We let the uC handle
that because the computational load dropped to peanuts. The big DSP
became unemployed.

The project start was the usual, everyone saying that FFT was the name
of the game and there wasn\'t any other decent way. If it didn\'t work in
time domain I\'d have to buy everyone a beer at night. If it did,
everyone had to buy me a beer. I needed a designated driver that night ...

Given an actual waveform a(t) and a desired waveform d(t), we can fix
a to make d with an equalizer having impulse response e(t)

d(t) = a(t) ** e(t) ** is convolution

Finding e is the reverse convolution problem.

The classic way to find e(t) is to do complex FFTs on a and d and
complex divide to get the FFT of e, then reverse FFT. That usually
makes a bunch of divide-by-0 or divide-by-almost-0 points, which sort
of blows up.

\"Doctor, Doctor! It hurts when I go like this!\"

\"So don\'t go like that.\"



It\'s quite possible to do deconvolution badly as you say, but it\'s
generally not hard to do it well, and it\'s often very profitable.

Of course, how much that gets you depends on the situation. You just
have to keep an eye on the noise gain. In my long-ago thesis work, I
got a factor of two in resolution in an interferometric laser microscope
by deconvolving the analytically-known transfer function to something
more nearly rectangular.

The limitations had more to do with ringing than with noise gain or
singularities.

On the other hand, trying deconvolution to undo the effect of a Gaussian
lowpass is going to run out of gas very soon, because the noise gain
grows faster than exponentially with bandwidth.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 5:09 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

Don Y wrote:
On 1/3/2023 9:42 AM, bitrex wrote:
And then people complain the US doesn\'t make electronics anymore.
Challenging programs with a high washout rate AND it doesn\'t pay too good?
Wow hard to believe everyone isn\'t jumping on that one, lol

Nowadays, even \"makers\" don\'t *make* electronics.  They just buy
modules and write some code.  Modern packages are just too tedious
for hobbyists; you want successes to encourage your efforts, not
failures.

Most of the work I see at our maker house is wood or metal or
3D printing/laser cutting.  The electronics bench sits idle
despite Mantis, lots of test equipment and components.
(you can buy a $5 rPi and do everything you want with it at
home, without paying $2/day for a place to do it!)

OTOH, that is increasingly the way designs are moving.
MCUs are small and cheap enough that you can code in a
4G language and never need to actually *build* anything,
especially when you can glue together software modules and
get something that *does* something impressive (like convert
your spoken words into printed text).


Welcome to the future. Er, present:

https://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/articles/the-joy-of-generating-c-code-from-matlab.html

Oh, the joy....

I\'m of two minds on that. On the one hand, anything that lets you focus on
ideas instead of implementation is usually a win (for minimizing development
time, the chance of errors, enabling others to understand what you were
trying to do, etc.). And, processors are so damn fast and inexpensive that
it\'s becoming sill NOT to use \"application processors\" where specialty
microcontrollers used to reign supreme. I\'m contemplating moving to A75
(from A55) just because the price/performance ratio keeps improving so much!

OTOH, so much detail is being swept under the carpet that it enables
folks to be ignorant of the true costs of their algorithms. Like
programming in BASIC. Not really important *if* you can ALWAYS get
cheap silicon AND never have to worry about scaling up.

I have a few *billion* records in the DB that I use to track my
archive\'s contents. HOW you design the schema has a noticeable
impact on how practical, e.g., search operations can be! (what
other value if not to search??)

\"Oh, you built a power supply!  How impressive!  Does it
*do* anything?\"


Well, let\'s see. Put your left hand in your pocket. Now put
your finger there....

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 5:09 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

Don Y wrote:
On 1/3/2023 9:42 AM, bitrex wrote:
And then people complain the US doesn\'t make electronics anymore.
Challenging programs with a high washout rate AND it doesn\'t pay too good?
Wow hard to believe everyone isn\'t jumping on that one, lol

Nowadays, even \"makers\" don\'t *make* electronics.  They just buy
modules and write some code.  Modern packages are just too tedious
for hobbyists; you want successes to encourage your efforts, not
failures.

Most of the work I see at our maker house is wood or metal or
3D printing/laser cutting.  The electronics bench sits idle
despite Mantis, lots of test equipment and components.
(you can buy a $5 rPi and do everything you want with it at
home, without paying $2/day for a place to do it!)

OTOH, that is increasingly the way designs are moving.
MCUs are small and cheap enough that you can code in a
4G language and never need to actually *build* anything,
especially when you can glue together software modules and
get something that *does* something impressive (like convert
your spoken words into printed text).


Welcome to the future. Er, present:

https://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/articles/the-joy-of-generating-c-code-from-matlab.html

Oh, the joy....

I\'m of two minds on that. On the one hand, anything that lets you focus on
ideas instead of implementation is usually a win (for minimizing development
time, the chance of errors, enabling others to understand what you were
trying to do, etc.). And, processors are so damn fast and inexpensive that
it\'s becoming sill NOT to use \"application processors\" where specialty
microcontrollers used to reign supreme. I\'m contemplating moving to A75
(from A55) just because the price/performance ratio keeps improving so much!

OTOH, so much detail is being swept under the carpet that it enables
folks to be ignorant of the true costs of their algorithms. Like
programming in BASIC. Not really important *if* you can ALWAYS get
cheap silicon AND never have to worry about scaling up.

I have a few *billion* records in the DB that I use to track my
archive\'s contents. HOW you design the schema has a noticeable
impact on how practical, e.g., search operations can be! (what
other value if not to search??)

\"Oh, you built a power supply!  How impressive!  Does it
*do* anything?\"


Well, let\'s see. Put your left hand in your pocket. Now put
your finger there....

 

[Don Y]

On 1/5/2023 5:09 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

Don Y wrote:
On 1/3/2023 9:42 AM, bitrex wrote:
And then people complain the US doesn\'t make electronics anymore.
Challenging programs with a high washout rate AND it doesn\'t pay too good?
Wow hard to believe everyone isn\'t jumping on that one, lol

Nowadays, even \"makers\" don\'t *make* electronics.  They just buy
modules and write some code.  Modern packages are just too tedious
for hobbyists; you want successes to encourage your efforts, not
failures.

Most of the work I see at our maker house is wood or metal or
3D printing/laser cutting.  The electronics bench sits idle
despite Mantis, lots of test equipment and components.
(you can buy a $5 rPi and do everything you want with it at
home, without paying $2/day for a place to do it!)

OTOH, that is increasingly the way designs are moving.
MCUs are small and cheap enough that you can code in a
4G language and never need to actually *build* anything,
especially when you can glue together software modules and
get something that *does* something impressive (like convert
your spoken words into printed text).


Welcome to the future. Er, present:

https://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/articles/the-joy-of-generating-c-code-from-matlab.html

Oh, the joy....

I\'m of two minds on that. On the one hand, anything that lets you focus on
ideas instead of implementation is usually a win (for minimizing development
time, the chance of errors, enabling others to understand what you were
trying to do, etc.). And, processors are so damn fast and inexpensive that
it\'s becoming sill NOT to use \"application processors\" where specialty
microcontrollers used to reign supreme. I\'m contemplating moving to A75
(from A55) just because the price/performance ratio keeps improving so much!

OTOH, so much detail is being swept under the carpet that it enables
folks to be ignorant of the true costs of their algorithms. Like
programming in BASIC. Not really important *if* you can ALWAYS get
cheap silicon AND never have to worry about scaling up.

I have a few *billion* records in the DB that I use to track my
archive\'s contents. HOW you design the schema has a noticeable
impact on how practical, e.g., search operations can be! (what
other value if not to search??)

\"Oh, you built a power supply!  How impressive!  Does it
*do* anything?\"


Well, let\'s see. Put your left hand in your pocket. Now put
your finger there....

 

[Don Y]

On 1/10/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Board revisions and chip mask revisions are visibly high cost.

I find it ironic that you rail against software developers and yet trust making
your hardware designs based on the output of software simulators.

And communicating via email/USENET/telephony software, bank
relying on the software to keep track of your REAL account
balance, car to get you from A to B, furnace/thermostat to
heat your home, etc.

You don\'t notice the software that \"just works\". And, even
the \"buggy software\" apparently still has value (why are you
using Windows? It\'s got bugs in it!!!)

We also tend not to notice the bugs in hardware designs *as* bugs.
They are \"excused\" -- perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that you can\'t
design GOOD/reliable hardware?

I\'ve got a charger for an electric wheelchair that dramatically
overheats when connected to a fully charged battery! (how hard
can it be to design a battery charger?)

When a power supply dies, we don\'t attribute it to a shitty design.
Shouldn\'t power supplies last forever? Even if the user abuses it??

You can open many padlocks without keys/combinations; doesn\'t that
sort of defeat the purpose of being a LOCK?

When I was in school, I played a lot of pinball. Damn near every
machine had bugs that could be exploited.

*Sit* on the glass as the ball was draining and you could prevent
\"flags\" from reseting (the glass would deflect just enough that the
flags would strike the glass as they were trying to flip... and fall
back into their \"activated\" states -- before you\'ve even started to
play the next ball you\'re halfway to some reward!).

The \"random\" match feature (awards a free game if the last two digits
of your score \"match\" the internal random number generator) was
completely predictable -- because there were no real sources of
entropy in the machine so observable events would advance the random
number generator in predictable fashion (tilt the game, on your last
ball, when your score happens to coincide with the known \"hidden\"
random number\'s value).

Drop a nickel into the coin mechanism, carefully, so it gets caught
in the cradle. Then, carefully feed two pennies (one at a time)
in to queue up behind the nickel. Now, every penny deposited
rolls over and past the caught coins and trips the \"coin accepted\"
sensor. When you\'ve bought enough penny-per-quarter, hit the coin
eject and get your initial 7 cents back.

I don\'t recall folks complaining about all these *mechanical*
bugs... (\"Why are there a bunch of pennies in the cashbox?\")

Some software is actually pretty reliable (and unlike hardware it tends to
become more reliable the longer that it is used for and bugs get found and
eliminated). We tend to notice the stuff that *doesn\'t* work.

To be fair, many folks have never worked in a disciplined development
environment -- let alone a *regulated* one! Design a gaming device and
have to reassure the client and regulators that: it is \"fair\" and
there are no exploits. Is your RNG truly random? Folks tend to get
antsy when the machine you\'re designing HANDS OUT MONEY -- *their* money!

And, many firms don\'t even *control* their software products robustly.
Can you rebuild an identical binary image for a product N years old?
Do you still have the tools that you used to build it? And, the
commands used to make it? Do they still run on whatever version
of OS you have available, now?

[I\'ve got innumerable VMDKs with all of the build environments
I\'ve used, over the years, for every project.]

*Who* can make changes to your sources? And binaries? Can the same
sort of people mark up schematics or ALTER subassemblies committed
to stock without oversight?

Is your codebase portable? What will you do if the processor on which
you rely goes out of production (or, to 52 week lead times)? Will
your code build correctly for another target? Have you tried?
Will it actually *run* as expected?? Will you *know* that, with
any degree of certainty (or, do you just see if it LOOKS like it
is working properly)?

Do you treat software modules as *components* -- with individual
specifications and validation procedures? Or, do you keep reinventing
the wheel? Do you only deal with the final assembly (and hope its
constituent parts are what they should be)? Any firm doing any amount
of real software development likely has more part numbers assigned to
software modules than \"discretes\" and \"acceptance criteria\" for each.

If The Powers That Be don\'t have their shit together, you can
bet they don\'t have any procedures in place for their employees!

 

[Don Y]

On 1/10/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Board revisions and chip mask revisions are visibly high cost.

I find it ironic that you rail against software developers and yet trust making
your hardware designs based on the output of software simulators.

And communicating via email/USENET/telephony software, bank
relying on the software to keep track of your REAL account
balance, car to get you from A to B, furnace/thermostat to
heat your home, etc.

You don\'t notice the software that \"just works\". And, even
the \"buggy software\" apparently still has value (why are you
using Windows? It\'s got bugs in it!!!)

We also tend not to notice the bugs in hardware designs *as* bugs.
They are \"excused\" -- perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that you can\'t
design GOOD/reliable hardware?

I\'ve got a charger for an electric wheelchair that dramatically
overheats when connected to a fully charged battery! (how hard
can it be to design a battery charger?)

When a power supply dies, we don\'t attribute it to a shitty design.
Shouldn\'t power supplies last forever? Even if the user abuses it??

You can open many padlocks without keys/combinations; doesn\'t that
sort of defeat the purpose of being a LOCK?

When I was in school, I played a lot of pinball. Damn near every
machine had bugs that could be exploited.

*Sit* on the glass as the ball was draining and you could prevent
\"flags\" from reseting (the glass would deflect just enough that the
flags would strike the glass as they were trying to flip... and fall
back into their \"activated\" states -- before you\'ve even started to
play the next ball you\'re halfway to some reward!).

The \"random\" match feature (awards a free game if the last two digits
of your score \"match\" the internal random number generator) was
completely predictable -- because there were no real sources of
entropy in the machine so observable events would advance the random
number generator in predictable fashion (tilt the game, on your last
ball, when your score happens to coincide with the known \"hidden\"
random number\'s value).

Drop a nickel into the coin mechanism, carefully, so it gets caught
in the cradle. Then, carefully feed two pennies (one at a time)
in to queue up behind the nickel. Now, every penny deposited
rolls over and past the caught coins and trips the \"coin accepted\"
sensor. When you\'ve bought enough penny-per-quarter, hit the coin
eject and get your initial 7 cents back.

I don\'t recall folks complaining about all these *mechanical*
bugs... (\"Why are there a bunch of pennies in the cashbox?\")

Some software is actually pretty reliable (and unlike hardware it tends to
become more reliable the longer that it is used for and bugs get found and
eliminated). We tend to notice the stuff that *doesn\'t* work.

To be fair, many folks have never worked in a disciplined development
environment -- let alone a *regulated* one! Design a gaming device and
have to reassure the client and regulators that: it is \"fair\" and
there are no exploits. Is your RNG truly random? Folks tend to get
antsy when the machine you\'re designing HANDS OUT MONEY -- *their* money!

And, many firms don\'t even *control* their software products robustly.
Can you rebuild an identical binary image for a product N years old?
Do you still have the tools that you used to build it? And, the
commands used to make it? Do they still run on whatever version
of OS you have available, now?

[I\'ve got innumerable VMDKs with all of the build environments
I\'ve used, over the years, for every project.]

*Who* can make changes to your sources? And binaries? Can the same
sort of people mark up schematics or ALTER subassemblies committed
to stock without oversight?

Is your codebase portable? What will you do if the processor on which
you rely goes out of production (or, to 52 week lead times)? Will
your code build correctly for another target? Have you tried?
Will it actually *run* as expected?? Will you *know* that, with
any degree of certainty (or, do you just see if it LOOKS like it
is working properly)?

Do you treat software modules as *components* -- with individual
specifications and validation procedures? Or, do you keep reinventing
the wheel? Do you only deal with the final assembly (and hope its
constituent parts are what they should be)? Any firm doing any amount
of real software development likely has more part numbers assigned to
software modules than \"discretes\" and \"acceptance criteria\" for each.

If The Powers That Be don\'t have their shit together, you can
bet they don\'t have any procedures in place for their employees!