Publisher’s
Notebook H
ave you ever had a month where dozens of relatively “small” events kept you from achieving most of what you had planned? That’s been my last month. So rather than preaching about one subject this month, I’ll hit several “small” topics that need some airing. Let’s start with RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances): a noble concept with the health of humanity as its goal. Europe has grabbed the bull by the horns and forced the issue with a July 2006 deadline. But there’s one major problem: all the technical problems, such as tin whiskering, haven’t been resolved and won’t be by the deadline. I was at a conference last May where the Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) provided a series of presentations covering the problems facing the military and space hardware designers if they use RoHS components and systems. I’m sure that there are readers that will disagree and say these potential problems are over exaggerated and remind me that RoHS has an exemption for the military. Remember, however, that the military market is minuscule with respect to the overall electronics market. No major manufacturer will run parallel production lines, one for leaded and one for unleaded. If your cell phone dies because of an RoHS problem, you go buy a newer, better model and it’s an excuse for the upgrade. If your life support system fails in the hospital or your FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) system fails while doing a combat run, it’s completely different. If the U.S. can stand its ground against the rest of the world for things like putting carbon dioxide in the air, why can’t Congress just pass a law that says that any product sold in the U.S. that fails because of implementing RoHS, the manufacturer is fully liable for any direct and consequential damages? I bet every manufacturer would put two production lines in place, from Beijing to Paris to New York. There would also be a monumental effort to find a technical solution that would satisfy both Europe and the U.S. as quickly as possible. Is it just me or are we being inundated by useless information overload? When we have a hurricane we have a couple dozen television/cable channels doing 24/7 coverage from every village within the projected cone of impact. Remember when the cable weather channel just told you what the weather was, not stories about the weather? If there’s a Supreme Court nominee the news hounds are interviewing the nominee’s third grade teacher and fifth cousins. How about what they do with every new movie? And I use the word movie very loosely—anything that doesn’t look like a cobbled-together feature-length TV show is shear accident. It’s not just morning and late night talk shows, it’s every
show. You tune one in and every actor for each movie released will do the rounds, giving the sales pitch for their movie. And another thing…can’t any of the reporters—again using a word very loosely—ask an intelligent question? What do they expect for an answer when asking the question: “and how did you feel when your child was killed?” I can assure you that no matter what the subject, that’s the type of question they’ll ask. I never heard Walter Cronkite ask such a question, but then he never went for the current news hounds “money shot”: “let’s see if we can get the interviewee to cry.” Moving on to the Internet. I almost miss getting all those daily dozens of emails I used to get about how my body could be enhanced, or how I qualified for re-mortgaging my house. Now I get email letters about every product under the sun. I’ve gotten so desensitized to these things that I normally don’t notice what’s on them as I delete them. But yesterday while trying to fix a dial-up problem—yeah, yeah, I’m getting a high-speed connection soon—I noticed that I got three email letters from three different sources promoting the same manufacturer’s product. How much of this can people take before it just becomes white noise? This situation can’t be unique to just me. I need to stay aware of what is going on in our industry and people developing systems need to do the same. So we can’t use a SPAM filter because it would keep us from getting what we need. OK, I’ll stop whining. As we exit 2005 and move on to the next year we have some great news. Last year we increased our print circulation of COTS Journal from 20,000 to 30,000. And we will now provide a digital edition—not just online articles— of COTS Journal that will be a “complete” downloadable PDF version of each issue. That will enable readers in the most remote areas of our planet to get this magazine and enjoy it just as our print readers do. This is only one of several things we are doing to enhance COTS Journal.
Potpourri
Pete Yeatman, Publisher COTS Journal November 2005 COTS Journal [ ]