He also has no clue about ASICs, lets take a look at this line: "Nor do they offer the ability to split processing duties into parallel tasks,"
If there is one thing you can do on an ASIC, it's parallelisation. Application specific cores are small, very small, standard multi-project wafer run technologies have a good number of metal layers so routing isn't too problematic, etc. So you can actually fit a whole lot of cores on a small silicon area in a modern technology. The main issue is the cost of the hardware designer, EEs sufficiently skilled in HDL to take on such a large project are an expensive commodity.

Depends on your definition of cheap, they're down to 3600 USD for the slow "table-top" lab models.

We had a tektronix in our lab that actually broke. Somebody dropped it from a table, mind you it was a 500 MHz 4-channel scope. Not actually a field unit eh. But in its half fixed state it was still more reliable and easier to use than a Hameg. And they'll find my old thinkpad 760el with that tek scope. 15 years old, works like a charm, rare case where the copper traces are holding the pcb together (there's a crack down the motherboard). Also the battery still lasts half an hour. But to get back to the point. Scopes are very versatile. A good 4 channel scope often doubles as logic analyser. Plus a scope can often be made to trigger on very exotic events if you're a bit handy. Not to mention eye diagrams to study clock jitter. But I can't live without my spectrum analyser and network analyser either. A network analyser is potentially one of the most powerful tools in a designer's arsenal IF he knows how to use it. Coupling between lines, impedances, modulators, delays (tdr, which the high end units are very very good at), etc. Another must have is a good signal generator, even for digital design. Replacing your onboard clock with a reliable one is very useful, and for analog design it might be even more important than a scope. Another great tool is a can of freeze spray!

Clockless isn't a very good idea, designing such a large asynchronous system with current CMOS technology is going to end in a big disaster.

It's even worse considering we're trying to use the reflections to create multiple communication channels, so absorbing all the energy that doesn't go directly to your target might actually impede your communications!

Hey, the life of a fully funded Ph.D. student/researcher/teaching assistant is hard!!! Reminds me I should probably ask when I'm supposed to show up at the office :P

Bit difficult to have worked in more than one timezone, signed my contract 3.5 hours ago :P

Those I write down as well and add them to the document afterwards.

But that's multiple tools, and I just write the report of the meeting as we go generally. I find it difficult to do so when using different tools. Tried once in LaTeX and that sort of flies until they switch between subjects quickly. OpenOffice is semi-useless as a text editor, it just doesn't work as smooth as MS Word. MS OneNote isn't bad either though!

Actually, if you're meeting about the structure of something (a small part of a project, program, ...) it's foolish to not put it in a diagram. I'm not sure how your reports generally are, but mine are very short and I do have a tendency to visualize data as to make it easy to quickly go through it. I'd like to see you draw a process flow in plain HTML in the same time I do it in M$ Word ;)

Yeah, looks the same everywhere until you try to print it ;) And plain HTML is a large step for most people to start editing/writing, plus it has no support for diagrams, charts, ...

The problem is that people use Word for things it wasn't designed to do. Word is fine for typing short letters, summaries of a meeting, etc. In fact I don't think there's any better tool out there for that particular job. It's easy to use, quick, intuitive compared to the competition and you have a good editor for it on every platform that matters. For typesetting though you should use a typesetting system.

This poll means nothing unless you use 24 hour clock notation!

A victory for the British Empire!

Don't forget the good ol' serial terminal commands to overwrite the handshake established config!