"I don't mind being screwed now and then, but management seems to think I'm a nymphomaniac!"

ARE YOU LONELY???

Don't like working on your own?
Hate making decisions?

THEN CALL A MEETING!
You can...

• SEE people
• DRAW flowcharts
• FEEL important
• IMPRESS your colleagues

All on COMPANY TIME!!!

MEETINGS: The practical alternative to work.

Read more at homepage.ntlworld.com/e...

Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases

Another Reason why not to Yahoo!Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace.

Yahoo admits it let White House access its databasesBy Jenny Booth and agencies http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2002169,00.html

Thanks for google who has rejected a demand from the US government to provide information on what millions of people have been looking up using its internet search engine website

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/20/ugoogle.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/20/ixportaltop.html

Historically Yahoo has helping Chinese security officials to finger a journalist sentenced to 10 years for e-mailing "state secrets".

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/09/tech/main829504.shtml

Government wants to know what you Google

So you thought you were safe when you googled for porn ;-)

The government wants a list all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified single week — a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases.

Read more at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_hi_te/google_records

Update: Google resists US government demand for search data

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/20/ugoogle.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/20/ixportaltop.html

Fortune 100 List of "Best Companys to work for"

Highlights for Local Bay Area Companies

• Cisco Systems
• Most common job (salaried) Software Engineer $131,580
• Network Appliances
• Most common job (salaried) Software Engineer $128,317
• Yahoo
  
• Most common job (salaried) Technical Yahoo, Senior $117,245

The complete california list is at

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/state/C.html

USB Scopes and Logic Analyzers

Jack Gansale reviews USB oscilloscope and logic analyzer.

http://www.ganssle.com/microscopes.pdf

Create Syllable Dictonary

We should structure our projects with
a file named Abbrev.c. This is simple a single comment that contains the
syllable dictionary. This ensures that future maintenance programmers both
understand and can use the naming structure. For example:

Abbrev Meaning
------ -----------------------------
-- A --
Accl Acceleration, signed (ref: Dcel)
Acq Acquiring (ref: L.O.W)
Act Actual
Ad A/D (ref: Alog)
Adc Analog / Digital Converter
Addr Address
Adj Adjust
Ai Analog Input(s)
Aio Analog I/O
Alog Analog
Amp Amps (ref: volt)
Ana Analog (ref: Aio, Dig)
Ang Angle
Ao Analog Output(s)
Arg Argument(s)
Auto Automatic (ref: Manual)
Aux Auxillary mast, Auxillary pump (ref: Mast)
Avg Average (ref Typ)

-- B --
Bad Bad (ref: Ok)
Batt Battery (ref: Bsoc, Pwr)
Beg Begin (ref: End, Head, Start)
Bld Build
Bot Bottom (ref: Top)
Bsoc Battery State Of Charge
Buf Buffer (ref: Tbl)
But Button (ref: Sw)


Note the references on some items above, to point to related or
opposites. I have found that it is well worth spending several hours
crafting a good dictionary that supports the application domain of the
embedded system being produced.

Another convention that we have is that acronyms become camel-cased
syllables. Only the first letter is capitalized. Eg, PWM is used as
PwmOld. Among other things, this capitalization helps delineate the
syllables. Again, it is only an English convention that we write
abbreviations in all caps.

Structures

On a related note, in C, structs are very under-utilized. Most C compilers
carry no overhead for referring to a member of a structure structs are just
as efficient to access as simple variables. But structs provide two
important benefits over simple variables:
1. They provide an indication of grouping and association.
2. They automatically provide a sort of constricting syllables way of
naming things. In fact, member names can actually be simpler to invent,
because they can depend on the parent for some of the description.

For instance, consider motor.velocity.change and motor.velocity.old. The
final member name is not particularly descriptive, but the name as a whole
works very well because of the structure of parents. It is obvious that
these are related things, because they are part of the same structure

Volatile

Needed For:

• Prevent optimization when reading from a memory mapped device registers
• Delay Loops
  

Usage :

volatile int xyz;

or

int volatile xyz;

Note :
volatile may cause inefficient code. e.g the following code

hwReg &= ~FUNCTION_MASK;
hwReg |= FUNCTION_BIT;

instead use the following code

hwReg = (hwReg & ~FUNCTION_MASK) | FUNCTION_BIT;

Fortune 100 List of "Best Companys to work for"

Highlights for Local Bay Area Companies

• Cisco Systems
• Most common job (salaried) Software Engineer $131,580
• Network Appliances
• Most common job (salaried) Software Engineer $128,317
• Yahoo
  
• Most common job (salaried) Technical Yahoo, Senior $117,245

The complete california list is at

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/state/C.html