Art of Electronics - 3rd Ed.

[Vivek.M]

Hello,
Hope i'm not going to get flamed for this: I was about to order
the Art of Electronics - 2nd Edition; just wanted to know if the 3rd
edition will be out this year? I've been bumming the library copy so
far, but i'd like a copy for myself.

[Winfield Hill]

Vivek.M wrote...

It's at least 18 months off, more likely much more.

--
Thanks,
- Win

[Vivek.M]

Thank you! Just bought my copy.

[Winfield Hill]

Vivek.M wrote...

>
> Thank you! Just bought my copy.

I hope you enjoy it.

--
Thanks,
- Win

[oscarenriq...@gmail.com]

Hello I'm an electrical engineering student at the University of Technology Sydney. I've been reading The Art of Electronics - 2nd Edition since high school and it was the main reason I choose engineering as my career. I've decided to buy the 3rd edition as soon as it comes out, May I ask if the bookwill be released any time soon?
-Oscar

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 19:15:10 -0700 (PDT), oscarenriq...@gmail.com wrote:

>Hello I'm an electrical engineering student at the University of Technology Sydney. I've been reading The Art of Electronics - 2nd Edition since high school and it was the main reason I choose engineering as my career. I've decided to buy the 3rd edition as soon as it comes out, May I ask if the bookwill be released any time soon?
>-Oscar

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition-finished-writing-and-copy-editing/

Meantime, have a look at Jim Williams' two collections of essays on the art and
science of analog electronics design.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, 28 June 2014 12:27:21 UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 19:15:10 -0700 (PDT), oscarenriq...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >Hello I'm an electrical engineering student at the University of Technology Sydney. I've been reading The Art of Electronics - 2nd Edition since high school and it was the main reason I choose engineering as my career. I've decided to buy the 3rd edition as soon as it comes out, May I ask if the bookwill be released any time soon?
>

> http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition-finished-writing-and-copy-editing/
>
> Meantime, have a look at Jim Williams' two collections of essays on the art and science of analog electronics design.

Not exactly the same kind of book - AOE is a university text book, originally written for an electronics-for-physicists class at Harvard (and since used as an undergraduate text at Cambridge UK where undergraduate entry is similarly selective).

Jim William's collection of essays are essentially application notes.

When I complained that his application note on using the LT1923 High Efficiency Thermoelectric Cooler Controller - AN-89 - didn't include the equation for getting relating heat transfer per unit current as a function of the temperature difference across the Peltier junction, he gave me the Stephen Hawking defense, that each equation in the application note halved the readership. The problem is mentioned on page 11 of AN-89, but the relatively simple equation that spells out what's going on isn't.

http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/application-note/an89.pdf

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[haitic...@gmail.com]

Dear Dr. Hill,
I realize you may not reply to this, so no matter about that.

How is the fundamental proliferation of technology working against your effort?
As you write, a galloping horde of developers comes up with new technology.
The internet was not there like today when you wrote the 2nd edition, and I can
imagine you could now structure your effort, which generically is to encompass
electronics understanding (pardon my words), with a web software "container"
for the thousands of technology developers out there today. This would be a
kind of intelligent wikipedia of electronics with teaching tracks going through
it, like expeditions in the jungle. This has wiki inclusivity combined with
articulate context establishment. (editing.)

It was possible to be a "Renaissance man" years ago, but I wonder if the
exclusive book format is right still. Recall that the Stanford Professor
decided to put his AI course notes on the web for his class, a few years ago.
He was surprised to find 100,000 subscribers shortly later.

The internet has brought changes of a "formal" nature to traditional
institutions. In classic business theory, most institutions cannot adapt. (HBR
paper "Marketing Myopia.") The writer of that seminal strategy paper counseled
to identify the real business that you are in. He said buggy whip companies
were in the transportation business. That's the form which contains their
content, their particularity.

In the case of AoE, what "business" are you really in? I wonder if that
business is really clear expository writing about abstruse technology. And then
I ask myself, "What is the disruptive technology which will replace your
current form, the book? I see a kind of teaching wikipedia, where technology
proponents can write things which you edit and place within a scientific
framework. (I imagine that framework, besides classical physics, would have to
include ideas of software, practical AI, cybernetics (feedback), etc.)

There is disruption of the outward form of what you do (the book) and there is
disruption of the deep structure of what you do. The issues today seem much
less "physical" and much more architectural and "systems" oriented. I don't
know what the current context should be, but I think its got initials like SNR,
DSP, AI, in it.

A MOOC as I'm describing it must have software technology along with it. For example, a transparent language translation between 10 languages: Chinese and English, etc.

I'm going to suggest a way to do all this. Go to a VC and get 25 million to
create a giant wiki-MOOC to teach electronics technology to the world. The
income is from tuition: A course with $20 tuition and 100,000 students every 6
months - you do the math. As well, electronics companies will want in to teach
their particular brand of technology.

Finally, how do you prevent business hot-shots from taking it over and ruining
it? (They are like hired tigers who will eat you.) Simple: create a business
structure where you are on the board and the CEO is subservient to you. You
will have ultimate control, but make damn sure you know your limits. You just
need a CEO with technical training, management skills, who is honest. Focus on
the honest factor. Hire "at will." The idea is your articulate technology vision guides everything.

Thanks for listening. I certainly have AoE on my shelf, and I am realistic
about the difficulty of changing form for most people. I just think there is a MOOC tsunami out there. I suppose changing form is just to study it in its own right.

jb

"There is change and those who resist it." - Buddha.

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, 29 June 2014 00:46:58 UTC+10, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, June 26, 2006 9:04:15 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
> > Vivek.M wrote...
> > >
> > > Thank you! Just bought my copy.
> >
> > I hope you enjoy it.

<snip>

> How is the fundamental proliferation of technology working against your effort?
>
> As you write, a galloping horde of developers comes up with new technology.
>
> The internet was not there like today when you wrote the 2nd edition, and I can imagine you could now structure your effort, which generically is to encompass electronics understanding (pardon my words), with a web software "container" for the thousands of technology developers out there today. This would be a kind of intelligent wikipedia of electronics with teaching tracks going through it, like expeditions in the jungle. This has wiki inclusivity combined with articulate context establishment. (editing.)

The internet wasn't there when Win and Paul Horowitz wrote the 2nd edition of AOE, but even back then there were thousands of developers inventing new integrated circuits and new ways of using them.

The new gear got publicised in the trade journals, the IEEE journal and places like Review of SCientific Instruments and the Journal of Scientific Instruments now Measurement Science and Technology).

Win and Paul coped with this pretty well by concentrating on the fundamentals.

The trade journals have moved to the internet, where their "teaching tracks" are as uninspired as ever.

<snipped Haitic being as dim as ever>

> There is disruption of the outward form of what you do (the book) and there is disruption of the deep structure of what you do.

No more than when it was first written. The internet moves information around faster, but it doesn't create new information, though it does propagate a lot of half-baked rubbish that no editor - no matter how incompetent - would waste printing press time on disseminating.

>The issues today seem much less "physical" and much more architectural and "systems" oriented. I don't know what the current context should be, but I think its got initials like SNR, DSP, AI, in it.

That's all been around for quite a while. It takes quite a while to get any project properly sorted out, and while one can now publish the sorted-out details more rapidly than before, this doesn't really speed up the development cycle which still includes a lot of thinking, a lot of detailing, and a lot of debugging before there's anything worth publishing - and even now people hold off so that they can publish in peer-reviewed journals where the editorial process blocks total rubbish (though it less through a lot of reasonably sound but uninspired stuff - along with the occasional drop-off).

<snipped Haitic inventing the on-line university course>

> Thanks for listening. I certainly have AoE on my shelf, and I am realistic
> about the difficulty of changing form for most people.

In fact he isn't, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

> I just think there is a MOOC tsunami out there. I suppose changing form is just to study it in its own right.

There do seem to be Massive Open Online Courses out there. I see less evidence that anybody much is getting anything out of them. There are some auto-didacts around, who can learn stuff without having to have it structure into easily absorbed sequences, and there are rather more "good" students who can soak up structured courses without needing teaching invention to keep them paying attention to every last bit of the course, but most students seem to take the John Larkin approach to education and try to ignore anything which doesn't strike them as having an obvious practical application.

This makes thermodynamics really difficult to teach - on top of the fact that it's not an easy subject to get your head around.

When I was a graduate student I once demonstrated (taught) a practical chemistry class for medical students - they couldn't see how the work was going to help them do the work that they thought doctors did, and had to be reminded - often - that if they didn't pass the course (along with all the others they were doing) they weren't going to get to be doctors.

If they'd been doing a MOOC they'd have faked all their results.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[John Miles, KE5FX]

On Friday, June 27, 2014 10:08:01 PM UTC-7, Bill Sloman wrote:
>
> > Meantime, have a look at Jim Williams' two collections of essays on the art and science of analog electronics design.
>
>
>
> Not exactly the same kind of book - AOE is a university text book, originally written for an electronics-for-physicists class at Harvard (and since used as an undergraduate text at Cambridge UK where undergraduate entry is similarly selective).
>
>
>
> Jim William's collection of essays are essentially application notes.

John L. was probably talking about the two "Art, Science and Personalities" books, not the newer hardbound Williams/Dobkin anthologies. The ASP books are wonderful essay collections, but they aren't usable as textbooks, and they certainly aren't for novices or for people in other fields trying to get something done with parts from Radio Shack. The anthology volumes are full of the greatest app notes of all time, but you don't have to buy them unless you just want printed copies for posterity, and they are also not useful as electronics texts.

I actually think PhilH's book ( http://books.google.com/books/about/Building_Electro_Optical_Systems.html?id=CQ5uKN_MN2gC ) is a decent spiritual successor to AoE 2 in some ways. As with AoE, it would be great for physics types looking for more EE background. Its biggest problem is its title. It'll be overlooked by a lot of people who would find it useful, because most of the text isn't specific to optics or EO stuff.

-- john, KE5FX

[Phil Hobbs]

Thanks for the kind words. I started writing in the summer of 1994,
when AoE II was only 5 years old or thereabouts, and tried pretty hard
to avoid duplicating material that Paul and Win included. By the time
my second edition came around, I was space-limited pretty badly--Wiley
reduced the font size and got rid of a lot of white space, which
disguised the fact that the second edition was 100 pages longer than the
first. (The third edition will be a bit longer yet. I haven't stopped
writing since 1994, and probably won't until I quit learning stuff.)

My basic aim was to help prevent folks working in electro-optical and
other mixed-technology systems from falling into the same old potholes
the rest of us fell into on the way up. The enthusiasm and confidence
of young people is way to precious to waste.

So the ethos is pretty similar, by intention, but there's not a lot of
overlapping material.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs






--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 14:29:44 -0700 (PDT), "John Miles, KE5FX" <jmi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Friday, June 27, 2014 10:08:01 PM UTC-7, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>
>> > Meantime, have a look at Jim Williams' two collections of essays on the art and science of analog electronics design.
>>
>>
>>
>> Not exactly the same kind of book - AOE is a university text book, originally written for an electronics-for-physicists class at Harvard (and since used as an undergraduate text at Cambridge UK where undergraduate entry is similarly selective).
>>
>>
>>
>> Jim William's collection of essays are essentially application notes.
>
>John L. was probably talking about the two "Art, Science and Personalities" books, not the newer hardbound Williams/Dobkin anthologies. The ASP books are wonderful essay collections, but they aren't usable as textbooks, and they certainly aren't for novices or for people in other fields trying to get something done with parts from Radio Shack. The anthology volumes are full of the greatest app notes of all time, but you don't have to buy them unless you just want printed copies for posterity, and they are also not useful as electronics texts.

Yes, I meant the two "art and science" books that he edited, with each chapter
by a different author. I think they are great, because they talk a lot about the
design process, not just the technology.

The Williams/Dobkin books aren't nearly as good.

>
>I actually think PhilH's book ( http://books.google.com/books/about/Building_Electro_Optical_Systems.html?id=CQ5uKN_MN2gC ) is a decent spiritual successor to AoE 2 in some ways. As with AoE, it would be great for physics types looking for more EE background. Its biggest problem is its title. It'll be overlooked by a lot of people who would find it useful, because most of the text isn't specific to optics or EO stuff.

Right. Even of you don't care too much about the optics, the electronics bits
are worth having Phil's book around. I sent a copy to the co-founder of a
gigabuck laser company, and he complained that he spent so much time reading it
that he wasn't getting anything else done. Some people are never happy.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

@@@@
Whatever, my point was that the reach of MOOCs will disrupt the reach of books,
no matter what you or I say about it. Someone will, at some point, take Hill's
and Hobb's books, and re-package their content into a MOOC, IF the MOOC thing
takes off, which it gives signs of doing. Just to be funny, no one will know
who Hobbs is, just some goof-ball who popularizes him. I've seen it happen in
many fields. (your comments about human intelligence as copying pertinent here.)

Your touting of journals misses the point - 99.9% of the world can't access
your journals, as they are mostly paid access. To be blunt, they are ethically
corrupt and practically corrupt. Recently, regarding the medical journals
like JAMA and NEJM, it came out that a large percentage were ghost-written by
pharmaceutical companies, including faking of data. This made the NYT, and the
editors promised to fix it.

As far as your teaching med students TDX or chemistry, why hadn't they learned
that stuff in college? Maybe you had to use a cattle prod because you were boring and obtuse from the start. :)

jb

"What do you call a medical student who graduates last in his class?"

ans:
a doctor.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

I just wonder how many people read your book. I see 8 comments on Amazon, and
the book is $140. I suppose Wiley sells it to libraries, but 8 reviews?

For an amusing cartoon on the difference between the self-absorbed creator and
the marketing-man, see this series in the left column of the page:

http://www.crumbproducts.com/pages/prints.html

jb

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, 29 June 2014 21:41:38 UTC+10, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, June 28, 2014 12:03:08 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
> > On Sunday, 29 June 2014 00:46:58 UTC+10, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, June 26, 2006 9:04:15 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
> > > > Vivek.M wrote...
> > > > >
> > > > > Thank you! Just bought my copy.
> > > >
> > > > I hope you enjoy it.
> >
> > <snip>
>
> > > How is the fundamental proliferation of technology working against your effort?
> > >
> > > As you write, a galloping horde of developers comes up with new technology.
> > >
> > > The internet was not there like today when you wrote the 2nd edition, and I can imagine you could now structure your effort, which generically is to encompass electronics understanding (pardon my words), with a web software "container" for the thousands of technology developers out there today. This would be a kind of intelligent wikipedia of electronics with teaching tracks going through it, like expeditions in the jungle. This has wiki inclusivity combined with articulate context establishment. (editing.)
> >
> > The internet wasn't there when Win and Paul Horowitz wrote the 2nd edition of AOE, but even back then there were thousands of developers inventing new integrated circuits and new ways of using them.
> >

> > The new gear got publicised in the trade journals, the IEEE journal and places like Review of SCientific Instruments and the Journal of Scientific Instruments (now Measurement Science and Technology).

> >
> > Win and Paul coped with this pretty well by concentrating on the fundamentals.
> >
> > The trade journals have moved to the internet, where their "teaching tracks" are as uninspired as ever.
> >
> > <snipped Haitic being as dim as ever>
> >
> > > There is disruption of the outward form of what you do (the book) and there is disruption of the deep structure of what you do.
> >
> > No more than when it was first written. The internet moves information around faster, but it doesn't create new information, though it does propagate a lot of half-baked rubbish that no editor - no matter how incompetent - would waste printing press time on disseminating.>
> >
> > >The issues today seem much less "physical" and much more architectural and "systems" oriented. I don't know what the current context should be, but I think its got initials like SNR, DSP, AI, in it.
> >

> > That's all been around for quite a while. It takes quite a while to get any project properly sorted out, and while one can now publish the sorted-out details more rapidly than before, this doesn't really speed up the development cycle which still includes a lot of thinking, a lot of detailing, and a lot of debugging before there's anything worth publishing - and even now people hold off so that they can publish in peer-reviewed journals where the editorial process blocks total rubbish (though it lets through a lot of reasonably sound but uninspired stuff - along with the occasional drop-off).

> >
> > <snipped Haitic inventing the on-line university course>
> >
> > > Thanks for listening. I certainly have AoE on my shelf, and I am realistic about the difficulty of changing form for most people.
> >
> > In fact he isn't, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
> >
> > > I just think there is a MOOC tsunami out there. I suppose changing form is just to study it in its own right.
> >
> > There do seem to be Massive Open Online Courses out there. I see less evidence that anybody much is getting anything out of them. There are some auto-didacts around, who can learn stuff without having to have it structure into easily absorbed sequences, and there are rather more "good" students who can soak up structured courses without needing teaching invention to keep them paying attention to every last bit of the course, but most students seem to take the John Larkin approach to education and try to ignore anything which doesn't strike them as having an obvious practical application.
> >
> > This makes thermodynamics really difficult to teach - on top of the fact that it's not an easy subject to get your head around.
> >
> > When I was a graduate student I once demonstrated (taught) a practical chemistry class for medical students - they couldn't see how the work was going to help them do the work that they thought doctors did, and had to be reminded - often - that if they didn't pass the course (along with all the others they were doing) they weren't going to get to be doctors.
> >
> > If they'd been doing a MOOC they'd have faked all their results.
> >

> @@@@
>
> Whatever, my point was that the reach of MOOCs will disrupt the reach of books, no matter what you or I say about it.

They've been around for a while, and if there's any disruption going on, it's very slow and gradual. A book is designed to be read, and MOOC is designed to be followed. They aren't doing the same job/

>Someone will, at some point, take Hill's and Hobb's books, and re-package their content into a MOOC, IF the MOOC thing takes off, which it gives signs of doing.

If you were paying attention, you'd be aware that AOE started off as course at Harvard - electronics for physicists - and you can buy the "student's manual"
version

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Student-Manual/dp/0521377099/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

> Just to be funny, no one will know who Hobbs is, just some goof-ball who popularizes him. I've seen it happen in many fields. (your comments about human intelligence as copying pertinent here.)

> Your touting of journals misses the point - 99.9% of the world can't access your journals, as they are mostly paid access. To be blunt, they are ethically corrupt and practically corrupt.

They are all available at at university library near you. And there's a process underway to stop the publishers charging for access. The Public Library of Science (PLOS) project is having an effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS

> Recently, regarding the medical journals like JAMA and NEJM, it came out that a large percentage were ghost-written by pharmaceutical companies, including faking of data. This made the NYT, and the editors promised to fix it.

Big Pharma has big money. It may take a while.

> As far as your teaching med students TDX or chemistry, why hadn't they learned that stuff in college?

Because this was in Australia, where the medical course takes six years, with the first three devoted to teaching them the stuff Americans have to learn before they can be admitted to medical schools, as well as stuff like human anatomy (with dissection). The American habit of making medicine a post-graduate course has been described as "professional birth control" and isn't usually seen as making a lot of sense

> Maybe you had to use a cattle prod because you were boring and obtuse from the start. :)

I didn't have any opportunity to be either boring or obtuse - these were laboratory practical classes, and my job was just to answer questions, demonstrate how to do things, collect the students written reports, and give them a mark. And make sure that they didn't kill themselves or the other students.

Any formal instruction was given by the senior demonstrator. None of them were either boring or obtuse.

For the medical students the senior demonstrator was Valda Macrea, who was both smart and funny. She died a year so ago and was widely missed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Phil Hobbs]

Total sales were somewhere around 8k copies last time I checked (a
couple of years ago). Like other technical books, it's also widely
pirated. I think it has hit the target, overall. When I go to visit
universities doing advanced optics stuff, virtually all the grad
students have used it, and most of them have a copy (legit or pirated, I
don't know the proportion). It's pretty funny for an old bald guy who
doesn't get out much, having a bunch of twentysomething folks clustered
round with smiles on their faces.

[Phil Hobbs]

On 06/29/2014 07:41 AM, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, June 28, 2014 12:03:08 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
>> On Sunday, 29 June 2014 00:46:58 UTC+10, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> On Monday, June 26, 2006 9:04:15 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
>>
>>>> Vivek.M wrote...
>>
>>>>>
>>
>>>>> Thank you! Just bought my copy.
>>
>>>>
>>
>>>> I hope you enjoy it.
>>
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>> How is the fundamental proliferation of technology working against your effort?
>>
>>>
>>
>>> As you write, a galloping horde of developers comes up with new technology.
>>
>>>
>>
>>> The internet was not there like today when you wrote the 2nd edition, and I can imagine you could now structure your effort, which generically is to encompass electronics understanding (pardon my words), with a web software "container" for the thousands of technology developers out there today. This would be a kind of intelligent wikipedia of electronics with teaching tracks going through it, like expeditions in the jungle. This has wiki inclusivity combined with articulate context establishment. (editing.)
>>
>>
>>
>> The internet wasn't there when Win and Paul Horowitz wrote the 2nd edition of AOE, but even back then there were thousands of developers inventing new integrated circuits and new ways of using them.
>>
>>
>>
>> The new gear got publicised in the trade journals, the IEEE journal and places like Review of SCientific Instruments and the Journal of Scientific Instruments now Measurement Science and Technology).
>>
>>
>>
>> Win and Paul coped with this pretty well by concentrating on the fundamentals.
>>
>>
>>
>> The trade journals have moved to the internet, where their "teaching tracks" are as uninspired as ever.
>>
>>
>>
>> <snipped Haitic being as dim as ever>
>>
>>
>>
>>> There is disruption of the outward form of what you do (the book) and there is disruption of the deep structure of what you do.
>>
>>
>>
>> No more than when it was first written. The internet moves information around faster, but it doesn't create new information, though it does propagate a lot of half-baked rubbish that no editor - no matter how incompetent - would waste printing press time on disseminating.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The issues today seem much less "physical" and much more architectural and "systems" oriented. I don't know what the current context should be, but I think its got initials like SNR, DSP, AI, in it.
>>
>>
>>

>> That's all been around for quite a while. It takes quite a while to get any project properly sorted out, and while one can now publish the sorted-out details more rapidly than before, this doesn't really speed up the development cycle which still includes a lot of thinking, a lot of detailing, and a lot of debugging before there's anything worth publishing - and even now people hold off so that they can publish in peer-reviewed journals where the editorial process blocks total rubbish (though it less through a lot of reasonably sound but uninspired stuff - along with the occasional drop-off)..

>>
>>
>>
>> <snipped Haitic inventing the on-line university course>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Thanks for listening. I certainly have AoE on my shelf, and I am realistic
>>
>>> about the difficulty of changing form for most people.
>>
>>
>>
>> In fact he isn't, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
>>
>>
>>
>>> I just think there is a MOOC tsunami out there. I suppose changing form is just to study it in its own right.
>>
>>
>>
>> There do seem to be Massive Open Online Courses out there. I see less evidence that anybody much is getting anything out of them. There are some auto-didacts around, who can learn stuff without having to have it structure into easily absorbed sequences, and there are rather more "good" students who can soak up structured courses without needing teaching invention to keep them paying attention to every last bit of the course, but most students seem to take the John Larkin approach to education and try to ignore anything which doesn't strike them as having an obvious practical application.
>>
>>
>>
>> This makes thermodynamics really difficult to teach - on top of the fact that it's not an easy subject to get your head around.
>>
>>
>>
>> When I was a graduate student I once demonstrated (taught) a practical chemistry class for medical students - they couldn't see how the work was going to help them do the work that they thought doctors did, and had to be reminded - often - that if they didn't pass the course (along with all the others they were doing) they weren't going to get to be doctors.
>>
>>
>>
>> If they'd been doing a MOOC they'd have faked all their results.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Bill Sloman, Sydney
>
> @@@@
> Whatever, my point was that the reach of MOOCs will disrupt the reach of books

Don't think so. The number of people who have the discipline to
successfully audit a difficult technical course even in person is pretty
small. I don't think I've ever known one, in fact.

Plus online courses are useless for reference, whereas books are very
handy. (Having both hard and soft copies is even better.)

[bloggs.fred...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 28, 2014 10:46:58 AM UTC-4, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>

WTF is a fking "MOOC"- godammed bullshit artist. IF you can't define the acronym, don't use it.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

HA HA Fred - MOOC is Massive Online Open Classroom.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:59:14 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Fair enough. You may find the motivation in India or China, I don't know. Is
the book available in Chinese?

[John Larkin]

I just hired a couple of talented youngsters, and it's fun to call a pop
all-hands BS session and whiteboard a real problem and interact with them.

I think it's programmed into humans that, as we get older, we want to teach.
It's clearly a tribal survival thing.

I think that, as we get older, we also want to give things away. Well, some of
us.

[John Larkin]

I have 100 year old technical books that I can still read. Will ebooks be usable
even 20 years from now?

[John Larkin]

And "google" is what we technologists call a "search engine."

[Phil Hobbs]

Well, I was 34 when I started writing it, which fits some but not all
definitions of "older". :)

[Jim Thompson]

So you're about the same age as my oldest child ?>:-}

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

[Phil Hobbs]

55 this coming September.

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 16:25:31 -0400, Phil Hobbs

My oldest will be 53 in January.

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, 30 June 2014 04:34:54 UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 10:00:40 -0700 (PDT), haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> >On Sunday, June 29, 2014 12:44:45 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Saturday, June 28, 2014 10:46:58 AM UTC-4, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> WTF is a fking "MOOC"- godammed bullshit artist. IF you can't define the acronym, don't use it.
> >
> >HA HA Fred - MOOC is Massive Online Open Classroom.
>
> And "google" is what we technologists call a "search engine."

Fred has rather better search skills than John can claim. I think he was objecting to Haitic's introducting of the acronym without going to the trouble of spelling it out.

One of my responses to Haitic does spell it out - if as a Massive Online Open Course which is what Google found for me (25 million hits as opposed to Haitics, which only scores 17 million hits).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Jasen Betts]

I have somewhere a copy of the "sci.electronics.repair FAQ" and "the
jargon file" from the early 90's, copied onto modern media, as ASCII
text both are still readable.

DRM, bit-rot and media obsoleteion, are AFAICT the main hazrds.




--
umop apisdn


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---

[Jan Panteltje]

>
>I have somewhere a copy of the "sci.electronics.repair FAQ" and "the
>jargon file" from the early 90's, copied onto modern media, as ASCII
>text both are still readable.
>
>DRM, bit-rot and media obsoleteion, are AFAICT the main hazrds.

I still have color audio video material from 1976 or so, now on M-Disc.
The text is also still readble (copyright etc).
OTOH I printed out some pdfs last week,
is sometimes easier to quickly look up something.

[Tim Williams]

"Jasen Betts" <ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:lor2ck$o3m$2...@gonzo.reversiblemaps.ath.cx...

> I have somewhere a copy of the "sci.electronics.repair FAQ" and "the
> jargon file" from the early 90's, copied onto modern media, as ASCII
> text both are still readable.
>
> DRM, bit-rot and media obsoleteion, are AFAICT the main hazrds.

Funny: proprietary but very popular formats, like MS Word, will be around
at least as long as MS is around, which has already been quite a while.
Obscure but open formats, like LaTeX, have been around for even longer,
and are still readable (I expect some original TeX from 1982 or whenever
would look quite strange, but without much work using standard tools,
still compile alright; in contrast, a modern ConTeXT or whatever variant
might have serious problems if the tools become lost).

Funny thought: would simple, plain text, procedural scripting languages
*ever* be considered obscure? Many (e.g. Python) are simple enough to
resemble generic procedural formats that should be relatively easily
mapped from/to any other similar language. In contrast, bytecode formats
are probably more susceptible.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs
Electrical Engineering Consultation
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

[George Herold]

On Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:59:14 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

> On 06/29/2014 07:41 AM, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

> > Whatever, my point was that the reach of MOOCs will disrupt the reach of books
>
> Don't think so. The number of people who have the discipline to
> successfully audit a difficult technical course even in person is pretty
> small. I don't think I've ever known one, in fact.

I went through ~80% of an online SMPS course.
(I watched all the video's but got bogged down with other stuff and
didn't do the last few HW assignments.)
I think that makes me typical as I read that only ~5% finish the courses.

>
>
> Plus online courses are useless for reference, whereas books are very
> handy. (Having both hard and soft copies is even better.)

Oh, I still have the book which is decent, and the course notes.

George H.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:59:14 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

> On 06/29/2014 07:41 AM, haiticwef...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> > @@@@
>
> > Whatever, my point was that the reach of MOOCs will disrupt the reach of books
>
>
>
> Don't think so. The number of people who have the discipline to
>
> successfully audit a difficult technical course even in person is pretty
>
> small. I don't think I've ever known one, in fact.
>
>
>
> Plus online courses are useless for reference, whereas books are very
>
> handy. (Having both hard and soft copies is even better.)

@@@@@ The point here is interesting - which I will summarize - The point is
that a "MOOC" (massive online open classroom) will never disrupt a book like
"Building EO Systems," because the people who would study it in a systematic
way are too scarce, lack the focus to do so, and cannot encompass the whole
thing in a practical effort to be an expert. Putting words in your mouth, this
is because there isn't enough economic advantage to be a master of your field,
it being too narrow and specialized, too "researchy." ?

If so, this is an interesting data point on MOOCs. IOW, the large enrollment in
MOOCs is just the phenom that people like to get something for free. Some
numbers certainly support that view.

Now, you use the word "audit," and that prompted me to think, "He is implying a
degree-aspirant is getting a grade, and is more than auditor." OK - if this
MOOC thing is really disrupting the university, and if electro-optics is
something generally useful in technology, (I don't honestly know it is - I
would imagine so.), then you would logically formalize your MOOC and issue a
degree. A masters and a PhD, maybe. Follow me on this.

"Wait," you cry! "This is not accredited by the university accreditation
association!" I reply, "Who give a FF?" If you can institute a training program
which induces a higher skill level, and it gets recognized, then an employer
will go for it. There still are people out there who must get actual things
done. (I think.:)

So the "disruption" of the university happens on several levels, and conferring
an actual degree based on online study is a necessary step to disrupting the
corrupt and expensive 'higher education' system.

When PC's (Personal Computers) first came on the market around 1973, there was
a pervasive feeling they were not serious tools. IBM made what could be termed
the biggest blunder of "market myopia" of all time. They gave away the OS to a
skinny kid in Seattle. It's easy to see this in retro, but the myopia is still
operative in human awareness today. People cling to the specifics of what they
are used to. What makes them comfortable.

And of course, in every case, there is a group of "rent seekers" who say, "You
can't do that." "It's unworkable, immoral, dangerous, ineffective, etc."

None of my cogitations say that a MOOC will succeed in the arcane fields such
as EO. But I think I am corrct in saying that the disruption of universities
will happen when e Hobbs Degree in EO becomes legitimate currency for hirers.

The PC took off when tax accountants could fire up a spreadsheet like Visicalc
and, by gosh, get work done. Employes did not allow PC's in some cases, but
they were brought in on personal expense.

jb

"What do you call a donkey with a burden of learned books on it's back?"

[Phil Hobbs]

You're talking to yourself again.

[haitic...@gmail.com]

On Monday, June 30, 2014 10:07:28 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Yes, I've often carried a load of knowledge and continued to eat hay. Guilty as
charged. :) I can't think of the dumbet thing I have done, recently. (I did so
many dumb things when I was young, that it would be a long list.)

Well, recently, I lost the keys to my car. I searched everywhere I was visiting
a friend. So eventually I had to join AAA and get the car towed to my house.
Then, after 4-5 hours of this, we discovered the keys were in my pocket! I had
put on a pair of cargo pants with weird pockets, and the keys were in a corner
of the pocket.

Whenever I get the idea I'm clever, I refer to that incident. :)

[Chris Jones]

On 30/06/2014 21:22, Tim Williams wrote:
> "Jasen Betts" <ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:lor2ck$o3m$2...@gonzo.reversiblemaps.ath.cx...
>> I have somewhere a copy of the "sci.electronics.repair FAQ" and "the
>> jargon file" from the early 90's, copied onto modern media, as ASCII
>> text both are still readable.
>>
>> DRM, bit-rot and media obsoleteion, are AFAICT the main hazrds.
>
> Funny: proprietary but very popular formats, like MS Word, will be around
> at least as long as MS is around, which has already been quite a while.

I have some files from DOS Microsoft Word, and I think modern word won't
open those, though it has been a while since I last tried.

> Obscure but open formats, like LaTeX, have been around for even longer,
> and are still readable (I expect some original TeX from 1982 or whenever
> would look quite strange, but without much work using standard tools,
> still compile alright; in contrast, a modern ConTeXT or whatever variant
> might have serious problems if the tools become lost).
>
> Funny thought: would simple, plain text, procedural scripting languages
> *ever* be considered obscure? Many (e.g. Python) are simple enough to
> resemble generic procedural formats that should be relatively easily
> mapped from/to any other similar language. In contrast, bytecode formats
> are probably more susceptible.
>
> Tim
>

In some fields like chip design, you might go back to something and want
to edit it after 20 years, when all the cad tools have changed and even
hard drives have different plugs on them. It seems like it would not be
totally stupid to (in addition to archiving all the files) put a laptop
with the cad tools set up just right and all of the libraries and the
design, and just stick that in the safe as insurance against the tools
and libraries being hard to resurrect. I guess a VM might also do,
provided the VM format doesn't go and change.

I wonder if anyone has thought of making a line of laptops that would
(apart from the battery) be specifically designed to be likely to work
if you turned them on in 20+ years.

Chris

[k...@attt.bizz]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:19:48 -0700 (PDT), haitic...@gmail.com
wrote:

Universities have been awarding advanced degrees in "extension" campi
for decades. GT is now awarding a MSEE for online study (for $7000).

>When PC's (Personal Computers) first came on the market around 1973, there was
>a pervasive feeling they were not serious tools. IBM made what could be termed
>the biggest blunder of "market myopia" of all time. They gave away the OS to a
>skinny kid in Seattle. It's easy to see this in retro, but the myopia is still
>operative in human awareness today. People cling to the specifics of what they
>are used to. What makes them comfortable.

Hindsight is 20/20. The real blunder was giving away the BIOS, so
easily. OTOH, one can't assume that we'd be where we are without
those two "blunders".
<...>

[Phil Hobbs]

That wasn't what I meant--I wasn't intending to be insulting, just to
agree with you that you're putting words in my mouth, and therefore
talking with yourself and not with me.

[John Larkin]

Computing might have evolved more along the DEC/PDP11/VAX/UNIX model,
rather than the Microsoft/Intel path. We'd probably be a lot better
off.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

[amdx]

Ya but, have you ever searched for your cellphone while you are talking
on it!

Mikek

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 07:20:34 -0700 (PDT), haitic...@gmail.com
wrote:

>
>Yes, I've often carried a load of knowledge and continued to eat hay. Guilty as
>charged. :) I can't think of the dumbet thing I have done, recently. (I did so
>many dumb things when I was young, that it would be a long list.)

I'm kind of surprised to still be alive. And married.

>
>Well, recently, I lost the keys to my car. I searched everywhere I was visiting
> a friend. So eventually I had to join AAA and get the car towed to my house.
>Then, after 4-5 hours of this, we discovered the keys were in my pocket! I had
>put on a pair of cargo pants with weird pockets, and the keys were in a corner
>of the pocket.

I put my keys on the top of my car, then searched for half an hour
looking for them.

I knew a guy who reported his car stolen, then found it three days
later, where he'd parked it.

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 15:45:44 -0500, amdx <noj...@knology.net> wrote:

>On 6/30/2014 9:20 AM, haitic...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Monday, June 30, 2014 10:07:28 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>>> On 06/30/2014 09:19 AM, haiti333...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:59:14 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>>>
>>>>> On 06/29/2014 07:41 AM, haiticwef...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>> Well, recently, I lost the keys to my car. I searched everywhere I was visiting
>> a friend. So eventually I had to join AAA and get the car towed to my house.
>> Then, after 4-5 hours of this, we discovered the keys were in my pocket! I had
>> put on a pair of cargo pants with weird pockets, and the keys were in a corner
>> of the pocket.
>
>Ya but, have you ever searched for your cellphone while you are talking
>on it!
>

OK, OK, you win.

[John G]

k...@attt.bizz presented the following explanation :

IBM never gave away the BIOS. In fact in the late 80s they paid good
wages to some of us to protect their rights. :-Z
Yes they did giveaway the OS.

[k...@attt.bizz]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2014 09:09:30 +1000, John G <joh...@greentest.com>
wrote:

OK, they sold it for $50.

[josephkk]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:25:43 +1000, Chris Jones <lugn...@spam.yahoo.com>
wrote:

>On 30/06/2014 21:22, Tim Williams wrote:
>> "Jasen Betts" <ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote in message
>> news:lor2ck$o3m$2...@gonzo.reversiblemaps.ath.cx...
>>> I have somewhere a copy of the "sci.electronics.repair FAQ" and "the
>>> jargon file" from the early 90's, copied onto modern media, as ASCII
>>> text both are still readable.
>>>
>>> DRM, bit-rot and media obsoleteion, are AFAICT the main hazrds.
>>
>> Funny: proprietary but very popular formats, like MS Word, will be around
>> at least as long as MS is around, which has already been quite a while.

>I have some files from DOS Microsoft Word, and I think modern word won't
>open those, though it has been a while since I last tried.
>

OpenOffice may be able to open them, you may have to use an older version
though.
>
<snip>

>In some fields like chip design, you might go back to something and want
>to edit it after 20 years, when all the cad tools have changed and even
>hard drives have different plugs on them. It seems like it would not be
>totally stupid to (in addition to archiving all the files) put a laptop
>with the cad tools set up just right and all of the libraries and the
>design, and just stick that in the safe as insurance against the tools
>and libraries being hard to resurrect. I guess a VM might also do,
>provided the VM format doesn't go and change.

Guess what, John Larkin does just that on desktop machines.

>
>I wonder if anyone has thought of making a line of laptops that would
>(apart from the battery) be specifically designed to be likely to work
>if you turned them on in 20+ years.

No one does for laptops, damn few do it for desktops. But industrial
computing platforms do this all the time. ISA machines are still
available, just expensive.
>
>Chris

[josephkk]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2014 09:09:30 +1000, John G <joh...@greentest.com> wrote:

Poxy hell, neither one of you has your history right. That skinny kid
from Seattle wrote a version of tinyBasic that ran on an OS he purchased
from a couple of guys from Portland Oregon. IBM published the bios code,
complete, with the earliest models reference manuals.

For that matter look up the history of Gary Kildall and IBM.

?-)