Personally, I never mind when anybody comments :) I lived most of my early life with advertising, my mother was a production chief for a furniture ad agency, my step-father was a copywriter (with a different agency). That said, I don't like the way advertising is creeping into everything we see, hear, and do; but I understand that it becomes necessary for a number of reasons (including greed, and sometimes it's not the execs.) I don't think this situation is the same as product placement in a movie or TV program. Nobody forces you to watch a program or movie. Although some may buy a product because they are devoted to the actors or stories, they are not doing it because their favorite actor says "I want you to use this product." The IPC isn't just a trade organization. It's an organization that is a source of standards that, although not mandatory, are used widely and have become _required_ by many companies. This means some of us are being forced to "watch" the IPC "program." Although I understand that the IPC wants to find other income streams, I find it disturbing when ANY quasi-regulatory organization begins to stifle competition by supporting a particular third-party tool that utilizes data from their standards, to the point of including a product of that company with their standard. I have no problem with them pointing to a product and saying "this product supports our standard," I DO have a problem with including the product IN the standard, in effect endorsing that product over any other existing _or future_ products. To continue the theme, the IPC "actor" is telling us to use the product. I find it particularly disturbing when a person or company has the appearance of steering a standard in a particular direction to possibly further stifle competition or enhance their position. No, Nick, I don't know if that is the case with PCBL, and I don't expect you to see that it appears possible since you are the paid employee of the company that was involved and your loyalty understandably is with them. I don't blame PCBL for taking advantage of the situation: they are in business to make money, and getting a leg-up on the competition (if it exists) is part of any company's operating plan. And I have no problem with further advertising your product :) But I see a not-for-profit organization allowing these situations to arise because of questionable support of a single commercial enterprise. This is the age of the Internet, they need to link to all the available products they know of on their website, or just be a standards body and let people use Google, Downloads.com, CNET, or something else to find products that support their standards since they may not know of _all_ products, and because they are a _standards_ organization, not a _marketing_ organization. I don't think it's "conspiritorial" (Outlook doesn't like it, but Pete used it, and he's a writer after all), it's just allowing some companies to take advantage of a situation. Since I am not a member of the IPC (just of their Designers Council, which has no voice in ANYTHING), I have no way to influence the direction they take other than make my opinions known this forum. <;^) -- George Patrick Tektronix, Inc. Central Engineering, PCB Design Group P.O. Box 500, M/S 39-512 Beaverton, OR 97077-0001 Phone: 503-627-5272 Fax: 503-627-5587 http://www.tektronix.com http://www.pcb-designer.com It's my opinion, not Tektronix' -----Original Message----- From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pete Waddell Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 10:01 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [DC] Propaganda Rant Hope you don't mind if I comment - I am a bit biased when it comes to talking about advertising and freely admit it. Recently I watched a "Frontline " program called "The Persuaders" that talked about advertising similar to the NPR program. Very interesting what the big ad agencies are working on these days. Not sinister or conspiratorial (maybe that's a word), but for instance an episode of Sex in the City that featured a new cocktail (invented by a brand of liquor) as a plot line. The liquor company sponsored that entire episode because it was getting more than product placement, it was getting sole branding in the episode. I'd like to think that in most instances we are not paying for advertising, we are paying for content - after all I don't pay for the ads in Natl Geographic, I pay for the content and the advertisers help make that content more affordable. Being in the business I'm in it might sound strange, but I do prefer commercial free TV (welll even Public stations do have commercials - just not during the program.) Think about this - how many of you would pay for our magazines if it was the only way you could get them? Some would see the value of the content and pay a reasonable subscription price. Others would say "I got it for free before, it should be free now" . So we should all thank the advertisers - me because they help me pay my mortgage, you because it means you can get meaningful content for free*. p. Pete Waddell President UP Media Group 678-589-8813 [log in to unmask] >>> [log in to unmask] 05/11/05 10:27AM >>> OK, I'll bite; for what it's worth, this is what I think: All standards organizations sell their specifications; IPC at least makes the test methods manual free for download. You can't even get the test/sample requirements from UL without paying .. and you need those to submit for mandatory flame testing. You can get a lot of free but somewhat lame calculators and tools that will provide a rough view to whatever it is you are trying to do ... but if you really want to be accurate enough to design a high speed board, then you need to *buy* a field solver... Same with other SI tools and other thermal tools. There isn't enough money floating around in the "industry" anymore; fewer memberships; less conferences being attended; fewer books and abstracts being bought - there isn't enough money to provide for some slush-bucket of funds to do neat things and provide the membership with the outputs ... If someone puts time into developing a tool with real useful functionality, it is because the tool was needed and there weren't enough people with the right skill sets to do something about it willing to donate their time to developing it; so an individual picked up the torch and ran with it; and if the tool falls under the marketing auspices of the IPC and they agree to link to it, then the tool should (one assumes) embody the standards and guidelines of the entity setting the specifications... I don't know enough about the workings of the IPC to know if they could be more accommodating; but I suspect that like most organizations they are in a fight for their existence and they don't have any extra money to design test vehicles, run test vehicles, get the data and correlate it back to the development model; hire programmers to write the code etc and so forth (whatever effort needs to be undertaken to develop the tool and validate the algorithms). If they were to do that, they would probably have to charge for the tool too; then the cost is borne by those who use it, not by the general membership who will not pay more dues to enable something they don't use. The membership of the IPC is board fabricators; assemblers; designers; equipment manufacturers; raw material suppliers; vendors of assorted accessories and consumables ... so it's hard to develop a particular tool for one segment and have the cost spread amongst all ... those are my thoughts; everything today costs something ... back to the kids with their cell phones: they pay real money to download ring tones and screen shots with a 90 day or so license then pouf! I choose to pay to drink good water ... it's just the way it is. You can settle for free and second best, or pay someone something to acquire advanced intellectual capital. Valerie Chris Ball <[log in to unmask]> Sent by: DesignerCouncil <[log in to unmask]> 05/11/2005 09:43 AM Please respond to "(Designers Council Forum)"; Please respond to chris.ball To: [log in to unmask] cc: Subject: Re: [DC] Propaganda Rant Nick- I've learned whole new ECAD systems quicker than the time it took to type that original rant. It's been my spare time-filler for a while (and I still used some bad grammar). My intention was not to imply that PCB Libraries is selling a poor-quality tool disguised as an IPC standard. Sorry if that's how you took it. I've only used the portion of the PCBLibraries tool purchased with IPC-7351. Regarding the pending IPC-2152 spec. and Thermalman software, I've got their freeware calculator. But for now, the calculator results don't match any formally released specification or standard. So far no one has supplied an example of another standards org. doing what IPC is doing with these companies. I really don't know one way the other and would like to hear if it's happening elsewhere. Is this a general trend or an IPC thing? -Chris ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. 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