Internet commentary
There's a silver lining in the sky-ee! Bonsoir, old thing! cheerio! chin-chin! Nahpoo! Toodle-oo! Good-bye-ee! [1]
This will be the last time you will read an Internet Commentary in this Journal, written by myself. I retired from this industry a number of years ago and, as I approach my 75th birthday, I feel it is time for a younger person to take over the keyboard. In reality, I am only 25, but my joints creak something like half-a-century later. Not only am I out of touch with what is going on in the industry, other than what I read, but I feel that my commentaries are becoming stale and repetitious. For this reason, I have asked the publishers to relieve me of my duties, before the arthritis in my finger joints forces it on me.
I do not know how many times I have written columns for the three sister journals, Circuit World, Microelectronics International and, of course, this one, Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, but I suspect that it counts in the hundreds. I have had a great deal of pleasure writing these and receiving the odd correspondence from readers. I know I have been acerbic on many occasions and I make no apologies for this. I believe that it is the duty of a critic to be honest and declare the bad along with the good. I have been surprised how few times (only once, if I remember correctly) that web site owners have complained about bad criticisms. On a few rare occasions, I have received e-mails from some of them stating that my remarks have been justified and that measures will be taken to correct my complaints; to my gratification, this has usually been done.
I am taking a bold step to write this last Commentary. I am writing it in Word 2007 beta version, mostly under Windows Vista Release Candidate 1! You may wonder at my temerity, but I do like to know what the future reserves for us. You will no doubt imagine that I have not burnt my boats, because this installation is a dual-boot, thus keeping my Windows XP installation intact.
Vista is bloatware par excellence; it requires nearly 15 GB to install with 10GB for the completed installation. The size of the registry alone takes on gigantic proportions, over 100,000 lines for a basic set-up. The installation itself passed without incident in a bit over 30min. Any user of Windows XP will have little difficulty navigating round Vista. Appearance-wise, it is a vast improvement, having lost a great deal of that “Fisher-Price” look. One of the first things anyone will notice is the User Account Control, which is an irritating dialogue that comes up for little or no reason, such as taking a deep breath. Happily, it can be disabled. Another semi-annoyance is Windows Defender. It appears to be a good malware shield; what annoys me is that if you have an application that you want to start at boot-up time and it has not been approved by Microsoft, the way to get it to start is far from intuitive. This is possibly even obstructive.
From the internet point of view, what is now Windows Internet Explorer is improved and has somewhat caught up with some of its rivals, such as Firefox and Opera, although it has some way to go yet. For example, it now has a feature,tabs, that has been popular with the others for years. It may appear much lighter than Firefox with only a bit over 2MB, as against about 16MB for the latter but do not be fooled, because most of WIE is embedded in the Vista OS. I suspect the change of name is to prove to the European Union that it really is part of the operating system and not an add-on. Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail, with a few more bells and whistles to catch up, at least half-way, with the competition.
Happily, both Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird install beautifully under Vista and I am delighted to be able to continue using them. I also have POPFile working well, to sort out my mail automatically into various mailboxes. What is less joyful is that the Windows Firewall is still protecting only incoming connections; there is still no protection for outgoing data. Worse still, my AVG anti-virus and ZoneAlarm firewall are prevented by Microsoft from installing. A check found that a new download from AVG resolved the situation and I do now have anti-virus protection, but there is no way I could get the two-way firewall to install.
This brings me directly to my other bone of contention regarding Vista; many softwares will either not install or they will not run: not just one or two but about half of those I tried. What is the use of an operating system that will not run an application? Worse still – wait for it – some of my hardware lacks drivers for it. For example, my 18-month-old scanner cannot be made to work nor even my programmable keyboard (it works as a non- programmable one). Furthermore, on the desktop, there is a very visible Program Compatibility Wizard icon. This is supposed to guide you to “downgrading” Vista to an earlier Windows version for a specific application. This does work with some,but not with most applications. Microsoft is going to have to do some serious work here before the definitive version is released.
Some of the software that does work on my machine includes OpenOffice,Microsoft Office 2007, Audacity (an open source audio editor), Vutrax (my favourite ECAD suite), Registrar Lite, some but not all of my Ulead video products, etc.
Vista does, of course, come with an enhanced number of accessories and gadgets, some more useful than others. An optional sidebar will display any number of them, such as your local weather, time (with a visible clock), date,CPU usage and so on. There are more games than ever, including chess, but the XP internet games have been dropped; the card games are much uglier than in XP,despite a choice of card styles. The Run feature is now well hidden under Accessories unless you select the Classic Start Menu, which I find more intuitive than the new one, but that is probably just a question of habit (I use the Classic configuration under XP, as well!).
One of the features of Vista is that it incorporates Voice Recognition (in an operating system???). Initially, I could not get my microphone to work under Vista. It seems there was some driver incompatibility with the sound card. This was cured by downloading a new driver. The application permits both navigation and dictation. I have used VR, initially with IBM and later with Dragon Naturally Speaking, for 15 years, so I consider I know a little of what it is about. Its accuracy and “speed of learning” is not as good as DNS or even IBM Simply Speaking Gold and its interface is downright poor. However,correcting an error when dictating text is counter-intuitive. In the first place, the correction dialogue box puts itself over what you are trying to correct, so you cannot see what you are doing and then it offers every single iteration of the word you are trying to correct; as short words, such as of, in or be, have the fewest phones, they are the most likely to be misinterpreted and to have to choose between 20 or 30 examples of the same word in an article is rather ridiculous. As Microsoft is a relative newcomer to VR, it will obviously take them some time before they catch up with others with 15 or more years experience in the technology.
My conclusion on Vista: it appears interesting but it is not ready for the average user to rush in and install it. If you keep your status quo for at least a year, it should have most of the bugs ironed out and drivers should be available. Many people wait for at least one service pack to be issued before they take the plunge and this might not be a bad policy.
I will confine my remarks about the Office 2007 suite essentially to Word,although I have tried some of the other applications: Excel, PowerPoint,Publisher and Access. I have been using it for some time under XP, before migrating it to Vista, comparing it to earlier versions. You may think there would be little or no difference between the OSs. Visually, there is nothing much but I have found a few functional differences. For example, the Thesaurus works fine under XP but it is awful under Vista; it defaults from Thesaurus to Research in French, with automatic translation, at least chez moi, and I do not have anything French installed. However, do remember that this is a beta version, not even a Release Candidate, so there is plenty of time for it to be corrected.
Unlike Vista, the Office suite has a totally new look (Figure 1). At first,this is a shocker; you can forget where you found such-and-such an item before,because it is no longer there. As a guess, I would say the best part of 90 per cent of the old version remains almost unchanged, once you have found it. The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by a series of seven “Ribbons”each with a specific context. The one shown in the figure is the “Home Ribbon” and is the easiest to understand because many of the icons are already familiar, with the possible exception of the Styles box to the right of centre. Even these do not require an Einstein to understand. Note that some of the boxes have little arrows to the bottom right for expansion.
Figure 1 Microsoft Word 2007 running under Windows Vista. Note the “Ribbon” which has replaced the menus and toolbars in Word. The right hand optional side bar in Vista can be configured to display many kinds of information
Possibly, the “Insert Ribbon” will be the most surprising one because it replaces a whole host of purely menu items, with a simple drag and drop, with all sorts of shapes, such as flowchart symbols, arrows, balloons or customisable shapes. References and, above all, review have been much enhanced,which will be a great help to those doing committee editing of documents. Mailings are greatly simplified.
Has Word caught up with other word processing packages? I think the answer must be “partially” and it has even overtaken them in some respects. It still lacks some of the refinements that may be found in WordPerfect, such as the Reveal Codes function, although it has made a step or two in the right direction as it is currently possible to find and replace a few of the tags. It is now all bells and whistles with such items as document translation, provided the computer has internet access. The free translation is of poor quality, as is often the case when you let a computer do it. Notwithstanding, if you want better quality with human intervention, it offers the possibility – at a price. The following example will show how useful the automatic translation is not:
Now is the time to come to the aid of the party, translated into French,becomes: Est maintenant l'heure de venir à l'aide de la partie. Translated back into English, it becomes: Is now the hour to come using the part.
Not exactly the same, is it?
There is one feature that I think most users will like; there is a Quick Access Toolbar above the Ribbons, by default. It contains a File button but also Save, Undo, Redo and Quick Print. It is very easily customised with any command you like. For example, I detest the Quick Print, as I use multiple printers and settings, so I replaced it with the standard Print... command, quicker clicking that than Ctrl-P! Right- clicking any Ribbon icon or command will add it to the Quick Access Toolbar, and it may be removed similarly. This makes it very easy to adjust it to any specific job in hand.
An important point to consider is compatibility. Its native file extension is no longer.doc but is now.docx; this means there is a change in formatting. It will read.doc documents and convert them into.docx, so there is no need to worry on this score. Simple.docx documents are also readable in earlier versions of Word, on condition that they contain nothing specific to the new version. There is a “translator” which will convert the new format into.doc, with dire warnings, but it is also possible to set it to work in the old format. Word 2007 users therefore can be sure that they can remain compatible with other users who are still exploiting anything between Word 97 and Word 2003 or even WordPerfect.
Unlike the previous versions, Word 2007 plays internet web page generation in a much lower key. This is not a bad thing because word processor-based web pages are usually horrendously clumsy in the way they generate HTML code. In contrast,a very welcome addition is that it can natively generate PDF files and XPS documents. Unfortunately, this is one- way because it will not import them.
Having used Office 2007 for several weeks, I have become used to it and,believe it or not, I actually like it! I shall probably continue to use it,under Windows XP, in preference to any of the other four word processors I have available. The $64,000 question, bearing in mind that, by the time you read this, Windows Vista may well be available, is whether I would advise anyone to install it along with Office 2007. The answer must be that I believe the combination will be great by the end of 2008. If you do not mind the odd glitch,then go for it, by all means; the system is already not bad. On the other hand,if you must have a rock stable system, with drivers available for everything,then wait and you will not be disappointed.
As this is my last attempt at being informative, please allow me to introduce some humour into my review section. Of course, I will try to make it as relevant as possible to the subject matter of this Journal but, if I drift off at a tangent or a cosine, er, do not shoot the, er, writer!
Let us start with the ridiculous, before tackling the sublime. This is a simple series of simple jokes about simple engineers, including some for those working in electronics. You will probably have heard some of them already, but there will almost certainly be some new ones (that is, unless you have already had the time to waste looking for a simple series of simple jokes about simple engineers). Actually, a couple of them made me laugh out loud, especially the one that starts, “Three freshman engineering students were sitting around talking between classes ...”
This is similar in style to the previous one, but longer. It may be the cause of serious hunger symptoms if read from start to finish in one session, because there are more engineering jokes than there are poodles in Kensington (if my other reader is Scottish and does not know Kensington, please substitute Morningside). In reality, it is less simple, so may be described as semi-simple. The other half may be described as semi-complex. In truth, I think that the authors of some of the contributions must have a complex. I wonder whether,in the cases where a contribution has been written jointly by two authors, do they form a twisted pair?
DHMO is a chemical much used in various stages of the manufacture of components and assemblies within the electronics industry. Unfortunately, we tend to use it indiscriminately and without thought for the fact that it is responsible, each year, for causing thousands of deaths worldwide. Have a good look at the many pages of this famous web site, which blows the whistle on its toxicity, amongst other things. This is compulsory reading for everyone whose occupation means they come into contact with it, not forgetting that it can also be found in many homes.
Another commonly found, but dangerous, chemical is MSC. I think this is the first – and last – time I have reviewed a page that I wrote myself many years ago, even last century, but I am sure you will excuse me. It is not vanity which inspires me to do so but the desire to protect the electronics industry from the effects of a chemical that is positively known to cause multitudes of equipment failures. The fact that it is toxic, into the bargain,should not be ignored (see the attached MSDS or Mad, Silly, Disinformation Sheet). I would like to point out that MSC and DHMO, combined together, is perhaps the most dangerous mixture possible, as anyone without a lifejacket in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean may testify. I say the Atlantic, rather than the larger Pacific, because the latter has more islands with silver beaches to be washed ashore on, under the coconut trees, with beautiful girls dancing in grass skirts. Also, the cod has been fished out (I nearly said `fished dry' but how can the Atlantic be dry?). Besides which, the Pacific is more, er, pacific,so his agony would be shorter.
The Uncyclopedia, as the URL indicates, is rather like Wikipedia, even though it is not. In fact, if you think Wikipedia is the greatest source of useless knowledge, it must be because you have never browsed through Uncyclopedia. In the course of this article, I may refer to more than one page from this opus magnum internetii. This page covers a number of related subjects other than conductors pure and simple, such as semiconductors and superconductors. It even extends its research into the role of solder to join conductors together,although I am informed from a reliable source that the entry is still in a state of flux.
Of course, we, in the electronics industry, are the mainstay of modern creativeness, as we provide artists in many media the means to express themselves in ways denied to such people as Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Rodin or even van Gogh with one ear. This has taken on truly international dimensions,illustrated by this video clip of two Chinese boys singing and dancing in such a way as to make Caruso and Nureyev jealous of their extreme talent, that is, if they were still alive. The fact that it has been filmed in monochrome proves that colour is a distraction when it comes to fine art.
Now here is something extremely serious, despite the page being blog-like. It answers questions that must have been in the minds of everyone who has spent longer than a nanosecond in the electronics industry. Wars have been fought over trivia, such as weapons that exist only in the minds of a few national leaders,yet battle has – surprisingly – never been joined over this matter,even though this matter has been used for joining. However, one can have articulation and joints in the same breath, so why not here?
As any 6-year-old boy can tell you, but very few adults, the CPU is the heart- component of a computer, the house where the little men live. This page is very interesting, as it is illustrated by a photograph of a very early CPU. The way it works is obvious from the image, because its RAM is small: actually,only 94 bits. Unfortunately, the low-level programming language has all but been lost in the West, although there are adepts in the Far East who can use it for calculations faster than the Cray supercomputer that is installed in the Livingston Laboratory. The GUI is self- explanatory, but was spoilt when someone tried to connect it to a flat monochrome screen with a bright red surround and two rotary knobs at the bottom, one for the X- axis and the other for the Y-axis.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWeAOemTY_E
Should not really laugh at this one, but the guy trying to solder an 0805 capacitor was not what one would call, er, um, competent, even though he was probably doing his best. His competence, or lack thereof, was, however, crowned by his camera and video editing skills which were outstandingly bad!
Along similar lines, but with better photography, I found that those $100,000 reflow ovens with carefully adjusted profiles and eight oxygen-free zones are a waste of money. You can do the same thing with a $30 household appliance. Maybe these guys will think again when their semiconductors fall off the boards,having forgotten to put them in the dishwasher. More seriously, I must admire how amateurs get round a lot of problems using what the French call `système D', even if they sometimes create others by not thinking through all the ramifications.
Not very subtle, but do you suffer from the problems caused by solder ants?Apparently, they favour equipment connected to phone lines but think of the damage they could do if they got loose in your factory or laboratory. One should anticipate them by having an antidote handy – is not that spelt wrongly?Should not it be an ant idiot?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwLjxKNqOo0
Ever wonder what happens when you mount an electrolytic capacitor the wrong way round? This leaves one in little doubt. Pity he had not used a big one,though; it would have been much more spectacular! Many years ago, I was on the other side of a lab when a rather accident-prone engineer connected a 68,000mF 25V one the wrong way round. I am glad I was on the other side, as the poor chap was a nervous wreck for the following two weeks. It was diagnosed then as shell-shock but, in today's politically correct world, it would be known as post-traumatic stress disorder. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose (actually,I concur with Madame Stein, it is a rose!)
www.elekit.co.jp/material/english_product_html/AW-860.php?page=1&ssi=4,5,17,8,7,18
Wow! Ever wanted a grand piano in your living room? Well, you can have one,now, in an Ikea-style flatpack. I hope that the instructions are better than Ikea ones, though. This great instrument can also double as a trumpet and some other instruments, as well as sound like a frog (is this why the French call a baby grand a piano crapaud?). It has a built in repertoire of some of the world's best- loved melodies. Actually, this would make a great birthday present for a 12 year-old boy who knows which end of a soldering iron to hold – it comes with a how-to-solder guide. However, as engineering is a poorly remunerated profession, on second thoughts it may be better not to encourage him along technical lines. How about a book, such as An Introduction to the Criminal Defence of Celebrities, if you want him to be able to look after you in your retirement?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3144939546&category=11737
If you really insist that your kid follows in your footsteps, then he can learn how to solder with this kit and a modicum of parental guidance, no doubt. It comes with a practice project of a printed circuit that, if it works, will produce a siren sound. No doubt you will suggest soldering an extra 47V resistor across the battery terminals, so that the battery and sound die before you are driven totally round the bend. I think this is a great 18 bucks worth, complete with a 30W soldering iron, diagonal cutters, solder, soldering iron stand,printed circuit board and all the components. Warning! The soldering iron is for 110V.
This page brought back memories of my first employment as an engineer,although my job was a lot earlier than the time stated, in fact over half-a-century ago. The lab where I worked also had a Little Gem Fuse Tester, but it was more sophisticated than the one described. It had an assortment of fuse holders and you could put in any fuse, press the button and a panel would light up saying “The fuse you tested was good”! As far as I remember, the original Little Gem Fuse Tester was the subject of a spoof article published in Wireless World, possibly for the April issue, somewhere between 1949 and 1951.
I now know why most electronic equipment is manufactured in Asia. I always believed that it was a matter of cost, but it is not – it is something to do with the little men inside your computer smoking, wasting time with latent cycles, but the cycles are so hard to pedal that they bust their guts and the smoke comes out. I am not sure I got that story right; it would perhaps be better to have a look for yourself and see where I may have gone wrong.
Well, that is it! I hope you enjoyed the little light relief (LED relief in modern language) that I have brought into this all-too-serious Soldering & Surface Mount Technology; I think we should all unbend from time to time (even if bending and unbending are sore points, at the moment). If, on the other hand, you really believe that humour is irreverent and misplaced here, no matter how poor my attempts may be, my response is a rude noise and a ruder gesture in your direction.
Fare thee well, dear reader!
Brian EllisCyprusbne@bnellis.com
Note
Good-bye-ee! Good-bye-ee!Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee.Tho' it's hard to part, I know,I'll be tickled to death to go.Don't cry-ee, don't sigh-ee!There's a silver lining in the sky-ee!Bonsoir,old thing! cheerio! chin-chin!Nahpoo! Toodle-oo! Good-bye-ee!R.P Weston, a popular song, Good- bye-ee, 1915.
