Software vs. Hardware. The Harsh Truth
Radium
Radium
I don't use gluc...@excite.com
Bevan Weiss
something meaningful to the group...
These postings of yours surely do not.
A quick quote from the link you posted:
Sure brains make mistakes, but the things that they do are so complex,
especially the myriads of little things that we are oblivious to, that
the mistakes pale in comparison to the successes. And when they do make
mistakes, it is usually due to physical reasons (e.g., sickness,
intoxication, injuries, genetic defects, etc...) or to external
circumstances beyond their control (e.g., they did not know). Mistakes
are rarely the result of defects in the brain's existing software.
Now that's just stupid...
Is a programming error not a 'genetic defect' of some sorts, surely the
softwares creator ('father' or 'mother') did not mean for it to happen,
but in producing the software they introduced some kind of inherent
fault, exactly the same as a genetic defect is in a human.
Suggesting that the way forward is to stop using algorithmic approaches
is also just plain dumb. Algorithms exist whether in hardware or
software, it's just so much easier to make changes in software that
people often don't put as much thought into them. No one would just
throw in an inverter or a multiplier to try and solve some hardware
problem they were having, instead they'd spend many hours working out
the best way, simply because implementing any change is much harder.
Software is just typing three or four characters.
Please Radium, go to university, or high school, learn some stuff about
engineering concepts (software, and hardware) and some reasoning skills,
then come back to post. You're just being annoying otherwise.
Radium
Randy Yates
> Algorithms are okay. Software is bad.
What a crock.
--
% Randy Yates % "My Shangri-la has gone away, fading like
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % the Beatles on 'Hey Jude'"
%%% 919-577-9882 %
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % 'Shangri-La', *A New World Record*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr
Real_McCoy
"Radium" <gluc...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1130017709.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Find out why
>
> 1. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#WhyBad
>
> 2. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#Good
>
This is no longer a black and white topic. In the near future all hardware
will be derived from software. eg algorithms will be simulated in software
and go straight to hardware via FPGA compilers and such like. They already
exist in a limited capacity for LabVIEW. Yuu draw your virtual instrument
block diagram, press a button and its hardware!
The days of fiddling with transistors are over.
McC
Jerry Avins
Over for whom? Who will design the FPGAs? Progress centralizes and
categorizes. The days when every family rendered tallow to made its own
candles are long gone, but prudent households still keep candles handy.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Real_McCoy
"Jerry Avins" <j...@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:GpmdnZd0qJS...@rcn.net...
> Real_McCoy wrote:
> > "Radium" <gluc...@excite.com> wrote in message
> > news:1130017709.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> >
> >>Find out why
> >>
> >>1. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#WhyBad
> >>
> >>2. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#Good
> >>
> >
> >
> > This is no longer a black and white topic. In the near future all
hardware
> > will be derived from software. eg algorithms will be simulated in
software
> > and go straight to hardware via FPGA compilers and such like. They
already
> > exist in a limited capacity for LabVIEW. Yuu draw your virtual
instrument
> > block diagram, press a button and its hardware!
> > The days of fiddling with transistors are over.
>
> Over for whom? Who will design the FPGAs? Progress centralizes and
> categorizes. The days when every family rendered tallow to made its own
> candles are long gone, but prudent households still keep candles handy.
>
>
engineers to design the lower level stuff in the first place. I look at it
this way though - look at the history of tools (ordinary tools). Most
joiners use automatic screwdrivers nowadays and power saws and drills. 30
years ago or more it was all done by hand for the most part.
Once you design the basic tools, they in turn are used to design more
sophisticated ones and the systems bootsraps itself. Its still good to have
an ordinary screwdriver at hand though! Do you still sue your slide-rule?
McC
fred
> Do you still sue your slide-rule?
>
No it went completely bankrupt the last time I sued it and now just
mopes in the back of the drawer.
fred.
Carlos Moreno
> [...] Algorithms exist whether in hardware or
> software, it's just so much easier to make changes in software that
> people often don't put as much thought into them. No one would just
> throw in an inverter or a multiplier to try and solve some hardware
> problem they were having, instead they'd spend many hours working out
> the best way, simply because implementing any change is much harder.
> Software is just typing three or four characters.
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised)
are called Hardware; those program instructions that you can only
curse at are called Software.
- Unknown
:-)
Carlos
--
Randy Yates
> Real_McCoy wrote:
>> "Radium" <gluc...@excite.com> wrote in message
>> news:1130017709.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>Find out why
>>>
>>>1. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#WhyBad
>>>
>>>2. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm#Good
>>>
>> This is no longer a black and white topic. In the near future all
>> hardware
>> will be derived from software. eg algorithms will be simulated in software
>> and go straight to hardware via FPGA compilers and such like. They already
>> exist in a limited capacity for LabVIEW. Yuu draw your virtual instrument
>> block diagram, press a button and its hardware!
>> The days of fiddling with transistors are over.
>
> Over for whom? Who will design the FPGAs?
Excellent point, Jerry. Kinda like stating we no longer need to learn
arithmetic since we've got calculators.
--
% Randy Yates % "So now it's getting late,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % and those who hesitate
%%% 919-577-9882 % got no one..."
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % 'Waterfall', *Face The Music*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr
Jerry Avins
There was a time when a machinist had to use hand tools well enough to
build a passable lathe (demonstrated by proficiency with a few
sub-tasks) from castings in order to graduate from apprenticeship. It
may once have made sense, but that time was long past when the
requirement was dropped. Knowing how things are done by hand may help
the tool user, just as familiarity with assembly language may help a HLL
programmer.
I don't dispute your claim, but yes: one of my slide rules is on my desk
as I write.
Real_McCoy
"Randy Yates" <ya...@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:irvnn0...@ieee.org...
That's all true but I thought the whole point in rapid prototyping was just
that - that it's supposed to be rapid! Some guy sitting down programming in
assembler is going to take 10 times longer though the end result maybe far
more efficient.I have often pondered the evolution of ordinary tools - from
stone-age man onwards and how if you had the knowledge you would re-build
our technological society from nothing! Suppose all technology was lost for
some reason and you had to do everything from scratch - what would be the
sequence to get to modern machine tools (assuming the knowledge was still
there).You would start from stone and work your way up!
McC
McC
glen herrmannsfeldt
(snip regarding hardware, software, and FPGAs)
> That's all true but I thought the whole point in rapid prototyping was just
> that - that it's supposed to be rapid! Some guy sitting down programming in
> assembler is going to take 10 times longer though the end result maybe far
> more efficient.I have often pondered the evolution of ordinary tools - from
> stone-age man onwards and how if you had the knowledge you would re-build
> our technological society from nothing! Suppose all technology was lost for
> some reason and you had to do everything from scratch - what would be the
> sequence to get to modern machine tools (assuming the knowledge was still
> there).You would start from stone and work your way up!
As I understand it, there is now a strong drive toward using FPGAs
over what would have been ASICs in the past. The mask costs are now
so high, often over a million dollars, that it doesn't make sense.
FPGAs, like DRAM, are a very regular array which makes them relatively
easy to design. The required optimization makes it somewhat harder,
though. (Especially if they need to be big and fast.)
-- glen
Jerry Avins
...
> ... I have often pondered the evolution of ordinary tools - from
> stone-age man onwards and how if you had the knowledge you would re-build
> our technological society from nothing! Suppose all technology was lost for
> some reason and you had to do everything from scratch - what would be the
> sequence to get to modern machine tools (assuming the knowledge was still
> there).You would start from stone and work your way up!
Technology _is_ knowledge. The day I read about the invention of the
point contact transistor (front page N.Y.Times with description inside)
I went home and made one using germanium from a WW II surplus diode.
Suppose you were in say, England in 1700 and given all the resources you
needed to build workable ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore radio. How long
would it take you? I suspect that among the hardest part would be
finding literate sailors and training them to be Morse code operators.
naebad
the doing! (as a Taiwanese engineer once told me).There are lots of
academics out there than know teh theory backwards but could not build
anything.Knowing the theory of how a rocket balances is relatively easy
- getting it to work is quite another matter!
Naebad
Jerry Avins
Why can technicians implement things those academics can't? Knowledge.
I know where to mine wolframite and how to smelt it, and 16th-century
miners knew how to get it (I don't). Together, we could have gotten
tungsten (and thorium likewise). Contemporary glassblowers were easily
up to the task of assembling and evacuating vacuum tubes, and even
ancient Babylonians made batteries. I know how to draw and insulate wire
with the tools they had. Capacitors and inductors are simple, resistors
only a little harder.
Actually, that's frightening. What do we already have the tools to do
that we don't know yet?
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
Andrew Reilly
> Actually, that's frightening. What do we already have the tools to do
> that we don't know yet?
Don't worry. The singularity is coming from one direction, but we can
hear the Butlerian Jihad'ists rattling their sabres in at least two other
directions. Think I'll get ready to take up painting or long-distance
sailing...
--
Andrew
Tim Wescott
Well, that's 'cause they don't know the theory _frontwards_!
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com