Second this! - When I started in academia, 1980, there were exactly 2 journals in our/my field worth reading. And, yes, they were worth reading; because the articles contained would often summarize the work of complete teams, mostly achieved over years of work. And nobody would be admonished for 'insufficient' publications. On the other hand, had someone at the age of 35 in those days told us, that she'd been 'doing some 135 peer-reviewed journal articles', we would have her failed the job interview. We would have said "that's the least we're interested in".
Few years ago, someone popping up in the interview and saying exactly that was set on a tenure-track professorship.
And today, there are around 70 journals in our/my field. And most articles are lousy enough to wipe one's dirty shoes. But i don't blame the authors. I blame the science community overall not to rebuke the bean counters, the MBAs, the admin people, when those became jealous, and insecure, having to somehow evaluate the 'return' of our work. We ought to have offered them a cold shower instead by pointing out that our work usually does not come in tangible returns. But in intellectual returns; something in the realms that those people were lacking in.

I agree mostly, by the way, to what you say.

Alas, how to distinguish? Wasn't - and isn't still? - Quantum Theory esoteric? I guess, for the general public, for the layperson, it is usually considered as such. Is it for science? I'm sure you'll agree that it is not. Archaeology? Sumerian clay pots? No, I'm no archaeologist. Though I would always raise my hand for the usefulness of continuing unearthing the relics of former, ancient, civilizations. Einstein, anyone?
Or, maybe closer to /., von Neumann. What has he contributed? Years of teaching quantum science in the golden days of Berlin, before the Nazis came in, doing some math, doing some work in cryptography, in computer science. He wouldn't have made it, probably, in the pale copy that science has become in our days. Wittgenstein, he's even worse. In so-called modern terms, at least. One basic book, few articles. He'd be on the dole!

Though we might agree here, I am afraid, we might not on its interpretation. What is 'return'? Something with an equivalent value in US$? Regular publications? Books? In a post-materialist society one tends to overlook non-tangible returns. In my current position, I have no teaching allocation, any yet I volunteer and enjoy it some hours per week, since it is possible within my duties for the relatively generous salary that the tax payer affords for me. Which is, by the way, surely more valuable in my case than forcing me to publish yet another article of no scientific relevance based on currently meager results.
Meaning, that I'm doing the best that I can, returning the most that I can, without necessarily tangible returns. And when I have material to publish, I'll do so. Which brings us back to trust. The public is entitled to 'something in return', but in order to get results that are beyond staple diet, the public must trust us, that we don't pilfer away their money in jewelry, furniture, nor in efforts to prove creationism.
I am afraid, there is more money available for the latter than for the analysis of dying spoken languages, by the way.

Dear-o-dear-o-dear ...
Billions. Billions.
Not millions, no, not millions. And 4000-6000 years are right out of question.

This may sound strange, but it is a lack of trust.
In the old days, which were not always good, a brilliant scientist/academician/professor would be granted tax payers' monies to pursue her dreams in science, at least as far as basic funding was concerned; that is not including expensive apparatuses.
But then we, in the academic world, allowed the bean counters to take over. And they started to ask for ROI, at least in the number of patents, marketability, etc. Additionally, short funding terms made it into our world. 2 years, 3 years. Where I work, the latter is already the exemption. Therefore, as written by Lefkowitz, yes, we have to have results before we can ask for funding. Not only because the sponsors want to be on the safe side (of getting a return), but also not to embarrass ourselves by not being able to come up with what was envisaged. In the place were I used to be, the latter would give you a blacklisting.

Or, the other way round, if the public is not willing to trust us, but wants us to produce off-the-shelf academic results (numbers of publications included; publications that might take away from our genuine research time), that's what the public gets.

I only wished that the public was cognizant of this interdependence.
 

No astroturfing, please! ;-)

For me the free wine is doing just fine. sudo apt-get install wine; that is. For MS Office 2007, at least. And who needs newer?

Yep, 'they' do. Where 'they' includes me. I was afraid that's what you'd thought; and that's fundamentally wrong. Propagation delay and processing time doesn't render a circuit asynchronous.
Following your logic, any circuit would be asynchronous, if only on the propagation delay induced by any non-infinitely short wire. Then we'd say that the whole world is asynchronous; and that'd be it. When we use these terms, however, it is common understanding that a synchronous circuit is 'guided', clocked, by a central clocking device. And all sub-circuits are controlled by that same device. Likewise, an asynchronous circuit is controlled by the actual occurrence of the signal, without a predefined time frame. Respectively by a pre-cursor (header) in the signal path.
One could as well focus on the number of signals: a synchronous circuit has a clock signal and payload signal(s), while the asynchronous circuit has only one signal: the payload. Eventually with a header.
 

Not for forget, Amdahl's law is purely calculation; not speculation; like what Moore's law is. And you are right, certain items simply remain serial.

The best you AC know about is proverbs. An electrical engineer you are not, and neither a physicist. Your ideas on crosstalk and interference are basically vague.

Having no mod points, I can only nod points.

How's that then? Would you care to explain, please, what you mean?
My D-FFs here are totally synchronous: The D-input pops up at the output exactly with the rising clock edge + processing delay. And the latter is unavoidably indefinably.
.

Wow. To me it is like P~U^2. So proportional, but not linear.
And where would that 200 mV level come from? In my understanding it depends very much on the semiconductor used.

Seconded!

I've been running a Soekris Net48-something for the last 10 years. Porfect, with m0n0wall. In 2014, however, 100 Mbps and a Geode 486 *are* getting long in the tooth.

All those cheapo single-NIC versions cannot convince me; like the original WRT54.

Also, I can't make out why a dual- oder quad-ARM should cost a couple of hundred bucks? They come with design, casing, 3G, touchscreen, batteries, and stuff at below 100 as mobile phones.

Hey, this is not news! Of course, if you want to absorb waves with dampening material, you'd have to have a depth of the material of around a quarter of the wave length. This is know in acoustics as well as RF engineering.
So the news would be that some parties are developing radar systems with combined low- and high frequency excitation.

4?? Insightful?? Who's the mods who are doing stuff like that; stuff that irritates?
Megol could be an employee (of SWA); a lawyer he probably isn't. Don't know about US law, but where I reside, this is not the case. Once the airline takes the booking, it also takes an obligation to transport you. (I really can't believe that the law in the land of the free would be that free!)
Megol has an ID that could be set up for astroturfing. But the 3+ mods who mod this 'Insightful'? Which allowances helped them to cast common sense aside?

I *think* you got the message: I am worried about the future bug-free, perfect, software.
The one that gets via Internet -of-things the number, age, gender, medical record of the passengers in another car/bus, to minimize casualties. What a brave new world, when we start to steer vehicles in problematic situations into a state of minimal loss to society.