I'll leave out the other unmentionable legislation as it could be against the forum rules. This post does not reference any "the most recent upheaval in the legislature of man"
From time to time, I get out of bounds and have a post deleted. I just take a bit of time to reflect on what I am trying to contribute and why it is not really appropriate to this community.
I can recognize that you may be deeply concerned about this monetary issue, but the simple fact is well all have to have a bit of courage to live out our destiny in this ever changing world. And it is changing more rapidly.
I have my bad days where fear rules my thinking, and my good days when I work on being part of the solution to the world's problems. But crisis mode rallying cries are NEVER going to be accepted as an appropriate topic here. We will all endup in Chicken Little / Crying Wolf debates.
Somehow the world will likely survive the 2014 Ides of March.
@CGracy
Rather than call another forum "The Looney Bin", call it the "Loopy Bin" and I would fit right in. I feel rather guilty about not rigorously following guidelines for all Forum postings. You might even draft me as Moderator as punishment for getting out of bounds so much.
But most importantly, I am happy to see that your key points are that you do feel that people should be able to speak freely if they can do so in a reasonable fashion. Offering kindness is never a mistake.
I just wish the world didn't offer up so many opportunities for panic attacks. Is it the Starbuck lattes, or am I getting high blood pressure, or are there subsonic tremors of a tsunami that is about to tip over a nuclear reactor.
I guess as long as the dog is still sleeping soundly, I should not panic and try to be proactively supporting user projects.
From time to time, I get out of bounds and have a post deleted. I just take a bit of time to reflect on what I am trying to contribute and why it is not really appropriate to this community.
I can recognize that you may be deeply concerned about this monetary issue, but the simple fact is well all have to have a bit of courage to live out our destiny in this ever changing world. And it is changing more rapidly.
I have my bad days where fear rules my thinking, and my good days when I work on being part of the solution to the world's problems. But crisis mode rallying cries are NEVER going to be accepted as an appropriate topic here. We will all endup in Chicken Little / Crying Wolf debates.
Somehow the world will likely survive the 2014 Ides of March.
Excellent points, Loopy Byteloose.
It is so that we've just got to live through these circumstances, come what may, and make the most of it.
As for the political talk, it doesn't belong on this forum. Forum moderators will delete it. ... It's a personal matter, not related to electronics/coding/P2 or anything else that we do...
Religious discussions are also not allowed on the forums.
If anyone is wondering why, Paul Graham has a fantastic essay on the theory of political/religious discussions, and why they're so volatile.
No. It's just an observation of human interaction that kids learn shortly after they learn to speak.
Of course in the school yard or, later in life down the pub, we soon learn how to behave else we get a punch in the face or worse.
On the net we say what we like with little fear of feed back.
More seriously, given that technology and computers especially invade our lives so much today does it make any sense that engineers censor themselves from discussing the impact of their creations on society, i.e politics?
Maybe when the P2 is done you need to take a break before starting on another and write a book: "The Tao of Chip"
C.W.
Excellent idea. As I was reading through the posts I kept thinking that the creation of the P1 and P2 deserves a book even more than the DG Eclipse MV/8000.
Re: Why politics and religion end up toxic in many technical settings
The bully gets his way unless there is policing
This is true, however there is more to that. When we are talking technical things, there are generally boundaries where conclusions can be made rationally. When we step outside that, we are into the humanities at that point. Things become more arbitrary and there are real differences in how people value things and what weight they give to character and emotional arguments.
Most importantly, there aren't the same kinds of boundaries meaning the same kinds of conclusions cannot be made. Really, the shift is all about common ground, building movements, reaching consensus and a lot of that gets personal.
A great many people reserve the personal for close relationships where it's not under attack, or subject to changes that one may find valid after having those kinds of discussions.
Both of those discussions (politics religion) are advocacy discussions, not debates as so many people frame them. We can have debates about them, and we do, but that just doesn't happen in an unstructured form, unless the vast majority of the participants have the discipline and tolerance to do so. Advocacy works on the reason, emotion and character to realize it's goal of successful advocacy, which generally includes a call to action of some sort. That call to action takes away from say, doing technical things, and on that basis many people feel it's a total bother. Life is short, and they want the robot to work kind of thing.
It is also possible to have those discussions in terms of better understanding others. Knowing what other people see as good politics and what they believe in religion is actually very worth doing. Just understanding others is a great thing and when people take the time to do that, without the advocacy, they can bond in ways that are strong, trusting and close. Family does this kind of thing inherently. Groups of people gathering for a topic interest very often cannot / will not for lack of motivation toward that end.
It's sometimes hard to separate those things from people's general intent. In most cases, we've got good people with good intent. That should make the discussion center on the right kinds of things, but it just so often doesn't.
Just some thoughts I've observed over the years that support the moderation trend here. It's the right thing to do.
Excellent idea. As I was reading through the posts I kept thinking that the creation of the P1 and P2 deserves a book even more than the DG Eclipse MV/8000.
The entire history of Parallax would make a fascinating book project. How the Basic Stamp(s) arose, leading to the radical decision to develop the Propeller, leading in turn through more twists to the radically different open-participation development of P2 -- the only problem is at this point we don't have a proper closing chapter.
I just got done reading an excellent history of the Apple 2. computer: "Sophistication and Simplicity" and there are a lot of parallels between that history and how we got to the P1 chip.
No need for a closing chapter. Apple computer is still doing its thing, just as Parallax will.
If I were to do this, I would center it on the P1 with all the early Parallax products, Basic Stamp, PIC and those adventures as one era. It has a great ending place where people can jump in and explore the P1, which is beautiful.
The story continues with the P2, FPGA open development, on chip development, C, the many capabilities of the new device, small computers, etc...
I believe an effort of this kind has a lot of value. The current state of things is best understood in context and a history would provide that and enhance it all.
I don't read a lot of books for various reasons (mainly time), but I would FIND time for
a book such as this. It would certainly be a interesting read and maybe a "best seller".
If it sold well it also kick starts the P3 development budget!
Yeah, me too. I bought an Apple and Atari history and they have been intoxicatingly good reads. One is just the great innovation story, the other element is the various ingights and how they played out.
I have read a book about Seymour Cray, the early history of ERA, CDC and Cray supercomputers. The author spend a lot of time doing interviews to former employees and related people. Highly recommended ("The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer" by Charles J. Murray). Please, take a look to amazon reviews. I wish some day we have something similary from Ken and Chip.
There has also been a book under development on the history of Datapoint where the 8008 and 8080 instruction sets were originally created along with one of the first commercial desktop computers. They developed one of the protocols for computer networking (Arcnet) that lost out in the competition with Ethernet. They also pioneered wireless networking using infrared transceivers with large Fresnel lenses. These were used internally between portions of their campus in San Antonio separated by municipal roads and were sold to customers as well for bridging between buildings in cities like New York. Their OS, called RMS (Resource Management System), treated all I/O devices as networkable, so you could run a program on one machine with its keyboard and display on another machine, a printer on a third machine, and disk files scattered all over the network on disk drives attached to other machines.
RMS was done by a small team (3-4 programmers and 1-2 support staff (secretary/receptionist) physically and administratively isolated from other projects and management with a guaranteed budget for the length of the development phase (I think it was 6-12 months). This was modeled on Lockheed's skunkworks idea.
The entire history of Parallax would make a fascinating book project. How the Basic Stamp(s) arose, leading to the radical decision to develop the Propeller, leading in turn through more twists to the radically different open-participation development of P2 -- the only problem is at this point we don't have a proper closing chapter.
An even better idea, and as potatohead points out, no need for a closing chapter. The P2 may even be in use before the book is completed, so the book could end with a bit of speculation/prognostication about where it will lead us.
There is an good book about Atari 2600 game development called "Racing the Beam".
So named because the 2600 did not have a frame buffer, the image was drawn by the program "on the fly".
I have read it and I recommend it.
There is an good book about Atari 2600 game development called "Racing the Beam".
So named because the 2600 did not have a frame buffer, the image was drawn by the program "on the fly".
I have read it and I recommend it.
I read that as well and found it very interesting. Nick Montfort also wrote a book called "Twisty Little Passages" about text adventure games. I know most people here are video game enthusiasts but I used to enjoy Colossal Cave (Adventure) and the Infocom games.
These sound like interesting books. I was never good at the video games requiring reflexes or hand eye coordination but I loved the Infocom games. Spent way too many hours puzzling through those!
You paint a very bleak picture. As far as I understand the P2 cannot move forward until the next shuttle run which is scheduled for April or so.
So all the changes that have been going on recently do not impinge on that critical path. I'm sure Chip and co. are aware of the need to get the P2 out the door ASAP but that seems to be the reality for whatever reason.
We've watched the expo attendance numbers fall over the years as folks seem to have become discouraged with the long wait in getting the new product. We were extremely hopeful that last year's expo would provide some final good news, but sadly we're still in a holding pattern. The numbers from last expo were "just enough" to pay expenses and provide a little monitary gift to our primary helper.
Worse still, last year I started a Propeller based business with hopes that we could start designing boards based on the new chip sometime in August-December 2013. We even had plans of a semi-local use for the product for the Amish here in NE Ohio. I've watched a down turn in general Propeller sales over the last 3 years, (Gadget Gangster included) and quite honestly, I've got no choice but to consider other options to make sure I can pay bills here. I've had to turn to the Raspberry Pi for our semi-local product, and get up to speed quickly. As for the Propeller business, I've closed the LLC, minimizing the inventory down to what will soon be a single product for 2014. I've got a few other products which I've agreed to list and ship, but outside of that I won't be selling other electronics or kits. An increase in Quickstart price, has forced us to quit selling the Pocket Mini Computer add-on product, but there is still enough interest in the project to build a single board alternative for this year.
I wish I could say things were different, but I don't have the deep pockets to wait and starve while Chip seems to be still working on the design-side of this new product. I'm discouraged that the best we've been able to obtain is software to run on another product. Chip, please put your primary focus here. I can't sell from an empty wagon.
I've invested countless hours, days, and months into the promotion of the Parallax Propeller. I'm disheartened that it has come to this.
Parallax: Some advice from observing you the last few years... Please get behind your community. Really get behind their products. Really get behind their projects. Not that long ago we had a wonderful community based Propeller board which everyone loved. You took a product that was slated to be an evaluation board and make it direct competition with your own community. You aligned yourself with a big company over the community and in the end they showed you no real committment. Be a chip manufacture like you planned. Continue to be great in the areas of education. Every time someone does something interesting with your product, make a big deal of it. Post it on your homepage. Expand your learning site to include those projects.
We still really love the Propeller product, but 7 years development of a new product is too long in the technology business to stay viable. It's a lifetime.
The next chip can be great. The community potential to push it forward can be amazing. Please don't make the same mistakes you've made with Propeller 1.
We're watching, hoping and waiting... In the meantime, I've got to push forward in other avenues to make sure I can feed my family.
Jeff / Oldbitcollector
Jeff, I'm sorry this whole thing has taken so long. I understand your need to support your family. We really appreciate all your involvement in the Propeller. I'm hoping we get this chip done soon and people like you have reason to come back.
Sorry to hear the news, and even sorrier to hear it in this way. It sounds like you have been tormented by the situation. I am sorry about that too.
Ideally, unfulfilled expectations shouldn't sadden us… they should wake us up to the fact that there was some mistake in our expectations.
If a price change in a board from Parallax makes a big difference to your business plan, I'd have to say that your business plan is probably the problem.
That sounds colder than I want it to sound, but I don't know any other way to say it.
For everybody else, a bit of background is in order and I don't have enough to time to provide all of it.
Suffice it to say that I attended Jeff's first meeting and helped to host one of his other meetings in my home town.
The level of support for these meetings by Parallax was absolutely fantastic.
I was at one of Jeff's meetings when Nick first announced his plans for Gadget Gangster.
As far as I could tell, Nick had a viable idea for a business, which depended only upon
the cooperation of others, his own creativity, and the time that he could devote to his business. I don't know if Nick
had any need for profit or income. He didn't say and he didn't share his expectations for profit.
Obviously, something didn't add up, and Gadget Gangster went away.
I don't know if Nick actually had a business plan, but I would guess that he didn't. I am more inclined to
believe that he took a flier at Gadget Gangster, learned a lot that he didn't already know and moved on.
Since these forums are read widely, I would like to suggest to anyone thinking about starting a business… think it
through completely… do your expectations match reality? If they do… you should be fine.
Here's what I would expect… It will probably not make a profit for at least 3 years.
If you don't have a business plan that other's would invest in (given the opportunity)… don't waste your time.
The price increase in the Quickstart has only forced us to widthdraw the project for redesign. The PMC project will return as a single board computer based on the Propeller 1.
The price increase in the Quickstart has only forced us to widthdraw the project for redesign. The PMC project will return as a single board computer based on the Propeller 1.
Jeff
That sounds better to me anyway. I never liked stacked boards. :-)
Will your new PMC have *two* Propeller chips on it?
Seriously, I think you should start a thread looking for suggestions. You will get 1000 of them, and you'll have to pick the right ones, but you might find a gem:)
Comments
From time to time, I get out of bounds and have a post deleted. I just take a bit of time to reflect on what I am trying to contribute and why it is not really appropriate to this community.
I can recognize that you may be deeply concerned about this monetary issue, but the simple fact is well all have to have a bit of courage to live out our destiny in this ever changing world. And it is changing more rapidly.
I have my bad days where fear rules my thinking, and my good days when I work on being part of the solution to the world's problems. But crisis mode rallying cries are NEVER going to be accepted as an appropriate topic here. We will all endup in Chicken Little / Crying Wolf debates.
Somehow the world will likely survive the 2014 Ides of March.
Rather than call another forum "The Looney Bin", call it the "Loopy Bin" and I would fit right in. I feel rather guilty about not rigorously following guidelines for all Forum postings. You might even draft me as Moderator as punishment for getting out of bounds so much.
But most importantly, I am happy to see that your key points are that you do feel that people should be able to speak freely if they can do so in a reasonable fashion. Offering kindness is never a mistake.
I just wish the world didn't offer up so many opportunities for panic attacks. Is it the Starbuck lattes, or am I getting high blood pressure, or are there subsonic tremors of a tsunami that is about to tip over a nuclear reactor.
I guess as long as the dog is still sleeping soundly, I should not panic and try to be proactively supporting user projects.
Excellent points, Loopy Byteloose.
It is so that we've just got to live through these circumstances, come what may, and make the most of it.
If anyone is wondering why, Paul Graham has a fantastic essay on the theory of political/religious discussions, and why they're so volatile.
No. It's just an observation of human interaction that kids learn shortly after they learn to speak.
Of course in the school yard or, later in life down the pub, we soon learn how to behave else we get a punch in the face or worse.
On the net we say what we like with little fear of feed back.
More seriously, given that technology and computers especially invade our lives so much today does it make any sense that engineers censor themselves from discussing the impact of their creations on society, i.e politics?
Excellent idea. As I was reading through the posts I kept thinking that the creation of the P1 and P2 deserves a book even more than the DG Eclipse MV/8000.
This is true, however there is more to that. When we are talking technical things, there are generally boundaries where conclusions can be made rationally. When we step outside that, we are into the humanities at that point. Things become more arbitrary and there are real differences in how people value things and what weight they give to character and emotional arguments.
Most importantly, there aren't the same kinds of boundaries meaning the same kinds of conclusions cannot be made. Really, the shift is all about common ground, building movements, reaching consensus and a lot of that gets personal.
A great many people reserve the personal for close relationships where it's not under attack, or subject to changes that one may find valid after having those kinds of discussions.
Both of those discussions (politics religion) are advocacy discussions, not debates as so many people frame them. We can have debates about them, and we do, but that just doesn't happen in an unstructured form, unless the vast majority of the participants have the discipline and tolerance to do so. Advocacy works on the reason, emotion and character to realize it's goal of successful advocacy, which generally includes a call to action of some sort. That call to action takes away from say, doing technical things, and on that basis many people feel it's a total bother. Life is short, and they want the robot to work kind of thing.
It is also possible to have those discussions in terms of better understanding others. Knowing what other people see as good politics and what they believe in religion is actually very worth doing. Just understanding others is a great thing and when people take the time to do that, without the advocacy, they can bond in ways that are strong, trusting and close. Family does this kind of thing inherently. Groups of people gathering for a topic interest very often cannot / will not for lack of motivation toward that end.
It's sometimes hard to separate those things from people's general intent. In most cases, we've got good people with good intent. That should make the discussion center on the right kinds of things, but it just so often doesn't.
Just some thoughts I've observed over the years that support the moderation trend here. It's the right thing to do.
The entire history of Parallax would make a fascinating book project. How the Basic Stamp(s) arose, leading to the radical decision to develop the Propeller, leading in turn through more twists to the radically different open-participation development of P2 -- the only problem is at this point we don't have a proper closing chapter.
No need for a closing chapter. Apple computer is still doing its thing, just as Parallax will.
If I were to do this, I would center it on the P1 with all the early Parallax products, Basic Stamp, PIC and those adventures as one era. It has a great ending place where people can jump in and explore the P1, which is beautiful.
The story continues with the P2, FPGA open development, on chip development, C, the many capabilities of the new device, small computers, etc...
I believe an effort of this kind has a lot of value. The current state of things is best understood in context and a history would provide that and enhance it all.
a book such as this. It would certainly be a interesting read and maybe a "best seller".
If it sold well it also kick starts the P3 development budget!
An even better idea, and as potatohead points out, no need for a closing chapter. The P2 may even be in use before the book is completed, so the book could end with a bit of speculation/prognostication about where it will lead us.
I have noticed that there is a nice new board, matching Ken's description of Daniel's FPGA project, mentioned in post#165 above.
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-e.html
Rich
So named because the 2600 did not have a frame buffer, the image was drawn by the program "on the fly".
I have read it and I recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform-Studies/dp/026201257X/ref=sr_1_1
Bean
You paint a very bleak picture. As far as I understand the P2 cannot move forward until the next shuttle run which is scheduled for April or so.
So all the changes that have been going on recently do not impinge on that critical path. I'm sure Chip and co. are aware of the need to get the P2 out the door ASAP but that seems to be the reality for whatever reason.
You have to remember, we talked about what might be the P2 at the first Unofficial Propeller Expo in the upstairs room in Norwalk, OH.
Jeff
Jeff, I'm sorry this whole thing has taken so long. I understand your need to support your family. We really appreciate all your involvement in the Propeller. I'm hoping we get this chip done soon and people like you have reason to come back.
Sorry to hear the news, and even sorrier to hear it in this way. It sounds like you have been tormented by the situation. I am sorry about that too.
Ideally, unfulfilled expectations shouldn't sadden us… they should wake us up to the fact that there was some mistake in our expectations.
If a price change in a board from Parallax makes a big difference to your business plan, I'd have to say that your business plan is probably the problem.
That sounds colder than I want it to sound, but I don't know any other way to say it.
For everybody else, a bit of background is in order and I don't have enough to time to provide all of it.
Suffice it to say that I attended Jeff's first meeting and helped to host one of his other meetings in my home town.
The level of support for these meetings by Parallax was absolutely fantastic.
I was at one of Jeff's meetings when Nick first announced his plans for Gadget Gangster.
As far as I could tell, Nick had a viable idea for a business, which depended only upon
the cooperation of others, his own creativity, and the time that he could devote to his business. I don't know if Nick
had any need for profit or income. He didn't say and he didn't share his expectations for profit.
Obviously, something didn't add up, and Gadget Gangster went away.
I don't know if Nick actually had a business plan, but I would guess that he didn't. I am more inclined to
believe that he took a flier at Gadget Gangster, learned a lot that he didn't already know and moved on.
Since these forums are read widely, I would like to suggest to anyone thinking about starting a business… think it
through completely… do your expectations match reality? If they do… you should be fine.
Here's what I would expect… It will probably not make a profit for at least 3 years.
If you don't have a business plan that other's would invest in (given the opportunity)… don't waste your time.
Rich
The price increase in the Quickstart has only forced us to widthdraw the project for redesign. The PMC project will return as a single board computer based on the Propeller 1.
Jeff
Will your new PMC have *two* Propeller chips on it?
Seriously, I think you should start a thread looking for suggestions. You will get 1000 of them, and you'll have to pick the right ones, but you might find a gem:)
Rich