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The DINI Group Newsletter
May 3, 2006
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-EDA Software sold in Walmart (News?)
-Anatomy of a Blogswarm – Charlie gets SLAMMED …
-Product Review – Garmin iQue 3600 Portable GP
-Sidewalk Art
-Mother Hummingbird
-DN8000k10PSX -- Three Virtex-4 SX55’s
-DN700k10PCI – Three Altera StratixII 2S180’s
-DNMEG_S2GX - StratixII GX Daughter Card
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EDA Software sold in Walmart (News?)
ElectronicNews seems to think that an EDA package being sold
at Walmart is news.
EDA SW at Walmart. This is a restricted
Aldec simulator for VHDL/verilog. OK, I’m excited. Why is
this news? Who cares? Walmart sells rulers also. Tell
me
when I can get a fab at 7-11. That would be news.
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Anatomy of a Blogswarm – Charlie gets SLAMMED …
This appears to have started October 2, 2005 and it is an interesting
study of the power of the Internet and an entertaining read.
Charlie
tries to welsh on a deal by changing the agreed upon price. After a
few immature posts, he gets HAMMERED – from all corners of the
planet.
His address gets posted, his phone number, his high school photograph,
his parents’ names, phone numbers, tax payments, et al. People
chime
in with insults from China, Australia, even Mongolia. The thread is in
the bulletin board pirate4x4.com,
in the section titled “Classifieds,
Bad Sellers, Disputes, etc…” The thread has been closed after a
mind-blowing
1805 posts and 1.9 million views. The thread is here:
Charlie
gets FLAMED
if you missed it.
My company car has a built-in GPS unit and I have gotten to
like it,
sort-of. I have gotten lost in a rental car trolling around Silicon
Valley
enough to get a portable GPS unit. After some research, the Gamin
iQue
3600 is what I ended up with and I paid about $700. The unique
feature of
this portable GPS unit is that a PalmPilot comes integrated into the
package.
I use a PalmPilot, so this GPS unit replaces my PalmV.
Installation was
quite awkward, and getting it up and running was a chore. I
got the thing
sync’ed up and some maps loaded and have been using it for several months
now.
It does do the job, fitfully, and has several glaring
issues. Most irritating,
the Palm function and the GPS function are not seamlessly
integrated. If an
address is entered in the Palm part and then ‘route’ to this address is
selected,
the iQue 3600 makes you ‘find’ the location. But the address from
the Palm section
doesn't transfer cleanly into the ‘find’ section and you must retype the
address.
I’m left-handed and graffiti has NEVER worked for me – all my letters are
drawn backward.
The GPS can be engaged as soon as it recognizes where you want to go, but
my unit
takes a good 5-10 minutes to find the satellites when first exposed to
sky. This
means that I must have a good idea what to do for the first 5-10
minutes. Sometimes
I just drive randomly until the GPS locks in and starts to issue
navigation orders.
Also, the antenna must be deployed to get any GPS reception and must be
forward
enough in the windshield to see sky. This is OK, except that the
iQue 3600 doesn’t
tell you that the antenna has not been deployed.
The iQue 3600 does not work propped up on the passenger seat
so a 5 pound holder
is necessary to hold the unit on the dashboard. If the antenna is
not deployed,
the iQue 3600 simply doesn’t navigate and doesn’t tell you why.
Worse, it acts
stupid by going into a dangerous and unhelpful ‘simulate’ mode. If
I ever figure
out what that means, I’ll tell you in a future post. I figured out
the antenna
problem the hard way in an ice storm outside of Ottawa.
I’m a fan of GUI design, and I must say that the UI here is
very, very bad. Not
the worse I have ever seen, but very bad: non-intuitive,
inconsistent, and arbitrary.
The ‘FIND’ function/button has an entirely different function in the GPS
section from
the Palm section. Of course, the same icon is used. I cannot
imagine grandma using
this thing to navigate. What little there is of the very pretty
documentation is
atrocious. About 10 times more information is needed here.
It shuts down randomly on occasion for no apparent purpose
(Battery savings maybe?).
The secure digital card is too small (max of 256MB), so you
can’t put more than a few
California counties in the memory. Maps storage is managed with a
rather hostile GUI.
This is not fatal, but is irritating. I would rather put a 1GB SD
card in the iQue 3600
and be done with it.
The iQue 3600 burns too much power to be used as a portable,
so it must always be tethered
to the car or resting in the cradle. I don’t find the power issue
to be a problem. I
understand that to get clear, bright screens it is necessary to use
power. I agree with
the tradeoff here.
Conclusion: Gets the job done once you figure it out.
4 out of 10 stars? Maybe less.
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Sidewalk Art
This is really cool, although there appears to be some controversy as to
whether the effect
is as good when viewed live. Go here:
3d Sidewalk Art. Here:
Julian Beever. And
here for
a different artist:
More 3d Sidewalk
Art. This stuff requires serious talent and skill.
Maggie finds a Hummingbird nest and Verle33 photographs the action over
the next 5 weeks with
mother hummingbird and the two babies. The final picture showing
the size of the nest with
the penny and toothpick is astonishing.
Hummingbird
Mother. More from a previous year
here:
Hummingbird Mother '03
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DN8000k10PSX -- Three Virtex-4 SX55’s
PCI hosted board with 1, 2, or 3 SX55’s. Can be stuffed with
LX160’s also. Three DDR2
SODIMM sockets.
DN8000k10PSX
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DN7000k10PCI – Three 2S180’s
PCI hosted board with 1, 2, or 3 Altera StratixII 2S180’s. Three
DDR2 SODIMM
sockets.
DN7000k10PCI
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DNMEG_S2GX – Stratix II GX Daughter Card
StratixII GX daughter card with 4 SFP modules. Up to 6.5GB/s per
channel. SMA’s
and SATA connectors. One DDR2 SODIMM socket.
DNMEG_S2GX
Mike
Dini
President
The DINI Group
1010 Pearl Street, Suite #6
La Jolla, CA 92037-5165
Phone: (858) 454-3419 ext. 11
FAX: (858) 454-1728
cellular: (619) 888-9173
home: (858) 454-1026
mailto:mdini@dinigroup.com
http://www.dinigroup.com