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Author | Topic: Tribute Thread for the Recently Passed Greats | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4597 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 9.6
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Gordon Lightfoot (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023)
Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned! What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq |
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2620 From: massachusetts US Joined:
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Another true giant!
Gordon Lightfoot - Wikipedia One of the very first songs i learned to fingerpick was "In the Early Mornin' Rain". and now we witness the green dark forest too silent to be real... Edited by xongsmith, : too has 2 o's "I'm the Grim Reaper now, Mitch. Step aside." Death to #TzarVladimirtheCondemned! Enjoy every sandwich! - xongsmith, 5.7dawkins scale
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2620 From: massachusetts US Joined:
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Around the open-mike circuits I used to nickname him
====> Gordon Nanosecond because it takes roughly 1 nanosecond for light to travel about 1 foot. Edited by xongsmith, : what's it all about "I'm the Grim Reaper now, Mitch. Step aside." Death to #TzarVladimirtheCondemned! Enjoy every sandwich! - xongsmith, 5.7dawkins scale
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.0
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because it takes roughly 1 nanosecond for light to travel about 1 foot. RADM Grace Hopper (AKA "Queen of Code") used to hand out "nanoseconds of wire" at her lectures, wires cut to about a foot in length, the distance that a signal could travel in one nanosecond (she brought a handful of them to her interview on 60 Minutes back when she was still a CAPT -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LR6NPpFxw4 , 06 Mar 1983). Just for fun, a proof:
Speed of Light, c = 299,792,458 meters per second (nearly 300 thousand km per second) 1 nanosecond = 10-9 seconds c = 299,792,458 × 10-9 meters per nanosecond= 0.2998 meters per nanosecond = 29.98 centimeters per nanosecond ≈ 1 foot per nanosecond Before integrated circuit technology, computers were incredibly expensive and slow. The speeds that we depend on now would have been impossible to achieve. And the complexity was limited by the size of the army of girls you could hire to assemble all the parts. In a late-70's interview about the new microprocessor, the "computer on a chip", the interviewer asked the engineer how they would repair a microprocessor. The interviewer couldn't understand the answer, "simply replace it and throw it away", since all computers the public knew about cost millions of dollars. The Cray S-1 supercomputer (circa 1980) was in the shape of a C with circuit boards interconnected by wires inside that C. None of those wires were longer than two feet (ie, 2 nanoseconds). Edited by dwise1, : Added YouTube URL to that 60 Minutes video, 06 March 1983
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Phat Member Posts: 18637 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.2 |
Open Mike Circuit? What is the connection between the late beloved songwriter
The only song that I knew from him (though he wrote many)was The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald which had a history all its own. Why would you call him Gordon Nanosecond?
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee The lake it is said never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4597 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 9.6
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xongsmith in Message 1204 writes: because it takes roughly 1 nanosecond for light to travel about 1 foot. Phat writes: Why would you call him Gordon Nanosecond? Really? You don't get it...Gordon Light foot?Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned! What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.0
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What is the connection between the late beloved songwriter ... and Cray Supercomputers? It was a pun. You need for us to explain a pun?
quote: Read Message 1204 and Message 1205 and think. BTW, I'm the one who mentioned the Cray-1S (our class from the UND Computer Science Dept toured their manufacturing facility in Chippewa Falls around 1980). xongsmith was citing a pun, which I developed further. Think about it:
Per the last, since a "light-foot" refers to one nanosecond of time, then through algebraic substitution Gordon Lightfoot's name becomes "Gordon Nanosecond". QED / QEF The Power of the Pun! Circa 1977 in the USAF Electronic Computer Systems Repairman Course (305x4), we kept encountering delay lines without fully understanding their importance. The basic explanation is that they were needed to synchronize the arrival at signals to a gate. A logic gate (eg, AND gate, OR gate, inverter AKA "NOT gate") uses input signals to generate an output signal, but all those input signals had to be present at the same time (and be held there to compensate for propagation delays within the gate circuitry). An example we were given was an AND gate requiring 5 inputs, four of which were generated nearby but the fifth came from a circuit at the other end of this six-foot cabinet, so while four signals were present almost instantaneously, that last signal too at least six nanoseconds to show up. Hence those other signals needed to be delayed by six nanoseconds in order for all five input signals to arrive at that gate at the same time (actually, input levels were not a problem outside of having to be held, but it was the pulses that needed to be delayed). As a result, the switching speed of large computers were constrained by the length of the longest conductor (plus other factors, of course). We also studied signal waveforms, especially the rise and fall times which were surprisingly slow (remember, this was 60's/70's discrete component tech). The designers of those circuits had to take all those delays into account by waiting a little extra longer in order to ensure that the signal had time to arrive. The technical term for those extra delays was "sloppage factor". And of course having to include those sloppage factors every time you turned around further contributed to slowing down the entire computer system. Another problem with long conductors was the rapid degradation of the square-wave signals -- digital signals are all square-wave signals since you're switching between two discrete voltage levels. If you use Fourier analysis to look at a square wave's power spectrum (the amplitudes of the waveform's harmonics; eg, for frequency f they're 2f, 3f, 4f, 5f, 6f, etc), you will find that a square wave has very strong harmonics. Since conductors and all electronic devices have inherent "stray" capacitance and inductance, just running a conductor creates an unintended filter circuit (as well as inductive coupling between wires creating "cross-talk" -- the longer the conductors the greater the effect). Those unintended filters would filter out whole sections of a square wave's higher harmonics, the ones that give the rise and fall edges their sharpness, thus reducing those signals to crap. That means that if a digital signal has to travel any appreciable distance then it will degrade into meaningless mush -- rule-of-thumb for RS-232 data cables was to keep them shorter than 25 feet. And of course, that would increase the need for greater sloppage factors. A large part of my father's enjoyment of being a general contractor was meeting clients from other professions and learning about their work experience. When he did a home remodel for a data processing supervisor, he was given a tour of the data center (circa 1972). For every piece of equipment, he was told which mental hospital the designer had ended up in. The story he was given was that because of the mental exertion needed to get all those signals synchronized exactly right, the designers ended up having a nervous breakdown. What I learned in tech school confirmed Dad's story. Shortening those distances, which is taken almost to its extreme by integrated circuits, has contributed enormously to switching speed and signal quality. Ever since tech school as I would watch computer tech become ever faster, disk density ever more compact, and systems ever more reliable, knowing the inherent problems I am still amazed that any of it can even work at all, let alone moving such immense amounts of data so reliably. Now back to the Cray-1S. Around 1981 at the University of North Dakota, I went on a Computer Science Dept field trip. In Minneapolis we first visited Sperry Univac and the offices of Cray Research, then we traveled to Cray's manufacturing facility in Chippewa Falls where they were had just completed a Cray-1S for delivery to Japan. As I already described, viewed from above the computer looks like a "C". Our guide asked us why that was and one student offered, "Because 'C' for 'Cray'?" The guide chuckled, saying that he hadn't thought of that. Rather, it was because they needed to keep all interconnecting wires as short as possible in order to increase the speed of the computer (along with other measures, such as their choice of very fast IC chips). He told us that there was not a single wire in that computer longer than two feet, which is to say with a delay longer than two nanoseconds. And when they still needed a delay line for a signal, they would simply lay a little extra trace on the circuit board, like a zig-zag. Edited by dwise1, : Minor grammatical errors Edited by dwise1, : fixed typos using angle brackets
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2620 From: massachusetts US Joined: |
Phat asks:
Open Mike Circuit? What is the connection between the late beloved songwriter and Cray Supercomputers? WTF is the connection between Open Mikes and computers, Phat?I've performed at zillions of Open Mikes and have never run into a Cray Supercomputer. "I'm the Grim Reaper now, Mitch. Step aside." Death to #TzarVladimirtheCondemned! Enjoy every sandwich! - xongsmith, 5.7dawkins scale
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2620 From: massachusetts US Joined: |
BTW here is my reverbnation link:
Nate Smith | ReverbNation - nate"I'm the Grim Reaper now, Mitch. Step aside." Death to #TzarVladimirtheCondemned! Enjoy every sandwich! - xongsmith, 5.7dawkins scale
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 6.0
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Nope not going to say anything.
Yup. I am. Really? Really?And you think we should treat your arguments as intelligent? What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 6.0
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I live about 15 miles outside of Superior, WI where the Edmund Fitzgerald left from on its final trip. In 1975 my wife's grandparents would have been able to see it on its way on Lake Superior from their farmhouse a 1/4 mile up the road. I know people that saw it many times on it's visits to the Twin Ports. I even have met people that were passengers as guests of the company.
Gordon was a well-known and well thought of around here. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4597 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 9.6
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Turner
Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned! What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq |
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6
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Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine. "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. |
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 6.0
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No tribute. He was great because of his hate.
Good riddance to a preacher of hate. Pat Robertson - Lawyers, Guns & Money Edited by Theodoric, . What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 6.0 |
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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