Plimer and Silicon Chip

[terryc]

The world bitched about the US involvement in WWI, which lead to a
short isolationist period. Then they bitched about that.

Nope, we just point out they were part of the solution and not THE
solutions. Whereas USAians think we should be eternally kissing their
arse because they showed up.

 

[Phil Allison]

"Michael A. Terrell Retarded Looney "

The Russians, using American built planes and supplies.

** The Yanks supplied Russia with inferior fighter planes ( P39s) that no
American wanted to fly against the Japanese or Germans. Gave a few of them
to black US pilots to fly too.

England couldn't
get their Merlins off the ground without the special high octane
gasoline available from a Texas refinery.

** Utter bullshit.


...... Phil

 

[qmod]

"Michael A. Terrell Retarded Looney "



** The Yanks supplied Russia with inferior fighter planes ( P39s) that no
American wanted to fly against the Japanese or Germans. Gave a few of them
to black US pilots to fly too.

And also the only country to use WMD's against another country (ie Atom
Bomb)

 

[Phil Allison]

"qmod"

And also the only country to use WMD's against another country (ie Atom
Bomb)

** Depends how you define a "WMD ".

The USAAF was a weapon of mass destruction.

In one raid on Tokyo, 335 B29s destroyed 16 square miles of the city in a
fire storm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids

Killed more folk and destroyed more property than the Hiroshima bomb.

Then there was Dresden, of course:

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



...... Phil

 

[Davo]

Nope, we just point out they were part of the solution and not THE
solutions. Whereas USAians think we should be eternally kissing their
arse because they showed up.

It's only the deterrent effect of having America standing behind us that
Australia hasn't been invaded by other countries. Australia wouldn't
stand a chance on its own. It's cool to be anti-establishment but
totally unrealistic to think we don't depend on America for our
security. China would be here in a flash otherwise.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

It's only the deterrent effect of having America standing behind us that
Australia hasn't been invaded by other countries. Australia wouldn't stand
a chance on its own. It's cool to be anti-establishment but totally
unrealistic to think we don't depend on America for our security. China
would be here in a flash otherwise.

**Bollocks. Until recently, China lacked the firepower, though it does have
the personel. Indonesia doesn't have it. Like it or lump it, Australia has
the most firepower in the immediate region (China excepted). For now.

 

[Davo]

**Bollocks. Until recently, China lacked the firepower, though it does have
the personel. Indonesia doesn't have it. Like it or lump it, Australia has
the most firepower in the immediate region (China excepted). For now.

So could China beat us or not?

 

[Davo]

The Russians, using American built planes and supplies. Read up on
the 'Lend - Lease' program where America supplied ammunition, weapons,
fuel, food and medicine to the Allies during WWII. England couldn't
get their Merlins off the ground without the special high octane
gasoline available from a Texas refinery. Then read about the amount of
Penicillin, Magnetrons, and other items that no one else could build in
the needed quantities. America supplied over half of the ammunition
used by the Allies during WWII

Finally, read the MIT 'RadLabs' series of books to see how much of
modern electronics was developed by the US during WWII. it is over 750
MB of scanned material.

<http://cer.ucsd.edu/~james/notes/MIT OpenCourseWare/MIT Radiation Lab/>

Not to mention THE bomb.

 

[keithr]

They're only a threat to themselves so long as they pull stunts like
trying to overload their enrichment plants by pouring extra material in
with buckets and wondering why it suddenly goes critical.

The Japanese have even designed apartment block "Basement Reactors"
that the building supervisor will "maintain" and refuel by emptying
balls of fuel into the reactor vessel. A similar prototype sucked a ball
into the cooling water pipe and blocked the cooling.

Pebble bed reactors are *supposed* to be immune to overheating. If they
get too hot the reaction shuts down. I'm not sure that you'd let one be
maintained by the janitor though, and I'm not sure that they scale down
to basement size.

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

 

[terryc]

It's only the deterrent effect of having America standing behind us that
Australia hasn't been invaded by other countries.

What deterent? The treaty is worth less as paper than toilet paper.

Australia wouldn't stand a chance on its own.

Unfortunately, probably true. Our population is unarmed, our military
handicapped by crap USAian military goods and the general population is a
dependent bunch of idiots.

totally unrealistic to think we don't depend on America for our
security.

We don't.

China would be here in a flash otherwise.

Economically, China is already here and has been since gold was
discovered (majority chinese population then). Now, they are slowly
becoming the dominant overseas shareholder and slowly replacin the USA.

Militarily, China hasn't demonstrated the capacity to translocate a
significant force a few thousand miles across the sea. Big difference
from pretty boys goose stepping in the square to fighting OS.

 

[terryc]

So could China beat us or not?

At home, probably not.
The big question is how well can city bred people take to guerilla
warfare?

 

[keithr]

A lot of their projects simply wouldn't be able to exist, or be too
expensive / complex/ time consuming to build / have fewer features /
draw more power without the use of a micro.
Projects now have to be more exciting and feature packed to get people
interested in building or even reading about them. People are too used
to that with consumer products and expect as much as possible in the
way of features etc.

I'm not complaining about the use of micros, just that without the
source code, you only have a fraction of the design. The circuit diagram
shows very little of how the thing works and if you want to modify the
functionality, you are pretty well stuffed.

They did do a beginners series on PIC programming a while back, though
not in assembly language.
showed how to interface LEDs Temperature/light sensors, I think even a
RS232 link between 2 PICS - all laid out on a breadboard with plenty
of diagrams, drawings and instructions so that even an inexperienced
person couldn't really get it wrong.

On some of the more basic microprocessor projects source code is
available from their website.

It might possibly even have had an I2 sqared bus on that IIRC and
details on the protocol for talking to the serial Flash Rams etc. (I
cant remember if that was a PIC or something else, it was on a small
PCB board that included a lithium coin cell. They also did a
detailed article on how the I2 squared bus works in detail, including
the protocols involved in all the data transfer modes.

These days it seems to be mostly PIC and AVR in common use by SC.
There are many websites out there with a wealth of info on these.

If it was within the last 5 years, I must have missed it, prior to that
I was out of the country for a bit over 5 years so I wouldn't have seen it.

It would probably be way too big an article to put in SC, remembering
also that 99% of people would probably not have a clue exactly what
goes on in a microprocessor, and this may be hard to explain to a lot
of the target audience, let alone following up on teaching them how to
code something useful out of it without enormous frustration at the
bugs that will inevitibly occur.

Some of the projects in that mag would be major tasks to code for even
reasonably experienced people - especially if the micro involved isn't
one they have experience in already.

The thing about tinkering with the microcode is that in the ordinary way
of things you can't break anything and if you stuff it up you can always
flash the original code back in.

 

[keithr]

"keithr"


** Bob Parker's most famous " ESR Meter " article did not include the
source code.

Cos no-one alive could make head nor tale of it if he did include it.

Speak for yourself Phil

But Bob WAS able exercise some control over kit suppliers because of
that.

Cept for that *appalling* Rod Irving character.

RIP.




** Pathway straight into to hell and bankruptcy is that idea.

Why would that be?

 

[keithr]

Must be a decade ago(?) that they did an intro to something (smaller than
PC micro).

Aha, that why I didn't see it, I was living in the US at that time.

 

[terryc]

Aha, that why I didn't see it, I was living in the US at that time.

Someone has twigged my memory. I think it was a PIC controller project
for opening a chook shed door on sunrise and closing it at sunset.
Probably other stuff since as I stopped buying it soon after.

The problem with microprocessor stuff is that there are too many flavours
of the small stuff and build your own gets very complicated, messy and
expensive very fast. At some point, it shifts into "programming" rather
than electronics. Then it becomes a question of how deep your pockets are
unless you are a skilled machinist to make actuators, etc.

 

[keithr]

Not to mention THE bomb.

Largely developed by dissident german scientists.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

So could China beat us or not?

**Depends on their aims. Three or four well placed nukes and we're pretty
much screwed. A full on invasion, occupation and subjugation would be very
difficult for any military force. But, to answer your question: Yes, China
could pretty much beat us now. 10 years ago would have been a very different
situation. It's all academic. When they're wealthy enough (10 years),
they'll just buy the infrastructure they want. Successive Australian
governments are too stupid to notice that dictatorships cannot be dealt with
like regular companies (witness: Optus). The present government is no
different. They'll allow precious, irreplacable infrastructure to be sold
off to anyone.

 

[Davo]

Largely developed by dissident german scientists.

So was it used by the Germans or the Americans?

 

[Davo]

What deterent? The treaty is worth less as paper than toilet paper.


Unfortunately, probably true. Our population is unarmed, our military
handicapped by crap USAian military goods and the general population is a
dependent bunch of idiots.


We don't.


Economically, China is already here and has been since gold was
discovered (majority chinese population then). Now, they are slowly
becoming the dominant overseas shareholder and slowly replacin the USA.

Militarily, China hasn't demonstrated the capacity to translocate a
significant force a few thousand miles across the sea. Big difference
from pretty boys goose stepping in the square to fighting OS.

So could China beat Australia or not?

 

[Davo]

At home, probably not.
The big question is how well can city bred people take to guerilla
warfare?

So I take it that's a no.