[time-nuts] Help - Hope?

Tim Shoppa shoppa at trailing-edge.com
Mon Jan 2 21:14:22 UTC 2006


"John Miles" <jmiles at pop.net> wrote:
> To the chip designer, a "component" is probably a subcircuit model that
> exists only in software.  To me, a "component" is the resulting chip, with
> pins you can solder stuff to.  To the kid, the "component" is the monolithic
> WiFi card.  There is little to be gained by assigning relative levels of
> merit to different abstraction levels, or assuming that society is doomed
> because people rarely work their way down the abstraction hierarchy without
> a compelling need.

When I was a kid, all the oldest hams looked down on us young'uns who
built transmitters etc. To them, making a radio was to make a spark gap
transmitter involving wood and metal lathes, varnish, copper wire 
and installing your own cloth insulation.  We didn't know how lucky 
we were, buying resistors and capacitors off the shelf instead of making 
them from scratch :-).

Tim.




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