Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (1135)	9/28/2000 6:48:32 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

You know what you WANT your reality to be.... that is all

To: Solon who wrote (1135)	9/28/2000 8:27:09 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 28931

"Listen, you ugly sawbones. You know how to use that God Damn thing! I meant the knife, you dirty bastard..." !! I'd say attitude adjustment!! "Listen my friend, my life depends upon you. You are a kind, talented and empathetic being and please, I implore you, use all that you and God can muster; cut as little and as quickly as possible." Isn't that quote from Robert Crumb, of Zap! Comix??? I think I see the image in my mind! Too much Zap! is dangerous to your mental health. THAT and National Lampoon.

To: Solon who wrote (1135)	9/28/2000 9:46:23 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 28931

I hope you were standing inside the pentagram! The pentagram is in my mind! As I was riding my bike today, I was pondering this stuff, I think I agree, mostly <g>. It isn't very practical in "real" life. But, as we miniaturize everything relatively unlikely stuff starts to invade. I had a power transistor fail once but, the failure was from the inside out. A hole the diameter of a small finishing nail was in the stainless steel case, clearly burned from the inside and creating a hole in the case. It was odd enough that I decided to open the can, expecting one of the wire-bond leads to have broken free and to have hit the case. That isn't what happened. Under 100x mag there was a hole resembling a crater in the wafer. The semiconductor material had vaporized in the hole. I told this to my boss, an experienced electrical engineer, who told me that there was a known failure mechanism in semiconductors in which, under rare conditions, a plasma jet could erupt from a sudden, instantaneous and catastrophic failure of the junction. In this failure mode, all at once there was a dump of charge from one side of the junction to the other at very high current densities, but in very narrow dimensions. The resulting jet of highly energetic plasma was more than 1/8" long to have penetrated the case. It is the only time I've ever seen one. And to date, it had been the only on he'd seen, but he had heard of them. I can't even count the number of transistor failures I've seen and this was by far the oddest failure of many hundreds. You can be real unlucky or lucky in life. I've seen improbably things happen and probable things not happen. This inversion is always unexpected if you expect things to go "as they should".