Military Electronics and The Free Eagle (Freagle) Campaign

[display_podcast]

• Our first WOTWs!
  • Mike, who works at Ascot TV in Christchurch New Zealand! More info about Mike's is here.
    • Dave likes the Bob Parker ESR meter.
  • David work at Delta-Q Technologies in Vancouver, Canada. More info about David is here (as are many more pictures!).
    • David plans on doing something similar to the Electric Delorean project
• Follow-up
  • Mario, a reader/listener on Linked In, wrote to let us know about the existence of cross reference sheets for transistors that are still readily available (the sheets, not the transistors).
  • Frank wrote in the comments of Episode 19 about a different user interface device called "I-love-sketch" from the University of Toronto. Looks like a cool stylus based way of interacting with your designs.
  • Dave mentioned the video of Scott Adams drawing Dilbert using a similar type of vector based system.
  • Chris's additional argument for making your own chips...no more obsolescence unless YOU decide you don't want to make it anymore, inspired by companies playing on our emotions i.e. Zilog canceling popular parts back in the day and now IXYS bringing them back. Dave recons it's a straw man argument!
  • RS DesignSpark contacted us and told us they will be fixing their FAQ section. Hopefully it's soon!
    • On a separate note, since RS and Element14 seem to trade blows, perhaps E14 should think about making Eagle completely free? (Freagle? - Free Eagle). Dave & Chris start the Free Eagle campaign!
• Discussion Points
  • Engineers in the military-industrial complex. How do you decide whether or not to participate? What about developing weapons with algorithms designed to remove any places left to hide?
    • There's no right or wrong answers, just personal choices. Do you work for one? Please let us know below, we're very curious.
  • Badass (military?) hackers are an army unto themselves, they took down the Iranian centrifuges for months!
  • Is Jones' Diminishing Blog Law already named? Or does Dave need to just update that wiki page?
  • Right in time for all our WOTW stuff, @UptownGreen posted a list of essentials for the lab you might not have thought of.
  • And while a crowbar is not on the list, Chris keeps one around his lab for a heatsink...
  • Hi-Res stuff is expensive difficult! We're impressed by Jeri's new TSA hack but Chris realized how much he expects Hi-res for images. Same for a new project using an Arduino for an IR camera.
• Rant
  • Rambus is going after big chip makers for patents. And worse, now they're sinking their teeth into LED patents! Chris is still pissed at them for closing off RDRAM in his Dell Dimension 8100...

That's all for now. Please submit your (audio or text) questions/suggestions at the suggestions page and your pictures at the WOTW tab if you're interested in being featured!