I agree that it is imortant to be accurate in communications. I have always said that if humans could and would just communicate that there would then be little or no need for political parties and wars!

Your comments in this thread seem to have been motivated by the thread from yesterday regarding running components outside of their specified range. This is so much of an issue that I would like to refer readers back to this totally true story that I related a while back. It should be pretty clear to most that specifications are important and an understanding of specifications is equally important. A simple assumption that one can push a parameter beyond a limit just a small bit can lead to disaster as the the byproduct of this push cascades into an avalanche of product failure.

I was just in a design review of a product design that uses an P87C52 and a whole collection of analog circuitry. One of the opamps in the design was specified to operate at a single ended supply of 5.5 volts. The absolute max spec for the part was 8 volts. The designer had used a bipolar supply of +/- 3.3 volts thus placing the operational range of the part in the no mans land between spec'ed operation and the abs max levels allowed. The designer had selected the op-amp for the particular circuit because it had all the other specs he wanted regarding noise, offset, gain-bandwidth etc. Was it right to use the part or not? Clearly NO!

Michael Karas