Tech Magazines going electronic.

A very poor choice, unless you have the exact browser software type and revision it was written for. How many people want to keep every version of every browser at hand when you only need a couple revs of PDF?

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell
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Any decent firewall will stop it from "calling home".

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Couple of revs eh? Use standard, well defined, HTML. Strangely, I manage to write HTML that runs on all known browsers. But then, it's not loaded with Flash, movies or sound. Just pics and text.

Reply to
Dirk Bruere at Neopax

A couple of revs of PDF ?

Yeah it's gone downhill ! Adobe should be shot.

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

Oh wow !

Wtf does it need to do that for anyway ? Just more dumb cutesy features.

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

Agree,

And the number, quality and diversity in topics have declined dramatically over the years in magazines such as Machine Design and Design News. Long time ago, the magazine Editors concentrated more on useful design content, new technologies (detailed) than on advertisements. I started saving interesting and informative magazine articles back in the late 70's and onward. It is very obvious to those of us who have been around awhile that the majority of these magazines have transformed into nothing more than advertisement journals. I don't know how others use these magazines, but I barely notice the advertisements and go straight to articles of interest if you can find one.

Kman

Reply to
Kman

I read in sci.electronics.design that Pooh Bear wrote (in ) about 'Tech Magazines going electronic.', on Sun, 25 Sep 2005:

Acrobat 6 calls home, too, for updates. Updating doesn't seem to work all that well, but on balance I'd rather have the updates than the security holes or the crashes.

Reply to
John Woodgate

I have a hypothesis about this decline in content. Last week I came into possesion of a large stack of engineering papers from the 60's. Within the stack were a number of engineering reports written by a then well known engineering consultancy. They worked out a very complex problem on paper in a very few pages using geometry and calculus. This was a 3D problem that would be very difficult to solve in FEA. I rather doubt that many Machine Design or Design News readers would even want to tackle one of these reports. Yet this was how things were done and many engineers and designers in the 60's would have little trouble understanding them. 3D graphics and user friendly FEA have isolated practitioners from needing to understand how they are getting the answers they are getting. Magazine writers cater to this new crowd of engineering wanabes with articles on features and user interfaces rather than looking at the meatier issues of CAD, FEA or engineering in general.

I ran across a prime example the other day in a question posted on Eng-Tips. Somebody wanted to know how their canned FEA package really knew a cylinder was going to buckle. Good question, but should this guy really be using the software to design things till he understands the answer? Red is bad and blue is good, right?

The long and short is that the engineering rags have to be careful not to overwhelm their readers with technical content just like the CAD and FEA software vendors are careful to isolate their users from the reality of what they are doing. We are all becoming like soccer moms driving 3 ton SUVs while completely oblivious to the implications of controlling such a large vehicle and smug in the assurance that whatever they do with it they will survive unhurt.

Kman wrote:

Reply to
TOP

Well, the solution to that is simple. Burn at the stake anyone who designs for only a couple of browsers, rather than using simple standards compliant HTML.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

The HTML "Standards" keep creeping, so you have to keep modifying the HTML page to keep them current.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

That's fine, if you are only going to look at your own work.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

That's interesting, Ken. We re polar opposites. I barely notice the articles in many of my engineering magazines and focus on the ads!

On the other hand, I really do enjoy a good article. When I can find one, that is.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

I wouldn't understand some of these in depth reports myself. But it is always interesting and challenging to study such articles to understand out how the other half sees the world. I miss some of the more practical articles on subjects like how to determine friction force of pneumatic-hydraulic seals, sizing servo drives, sizing electric motors for variable power demands, coupler torsional stiffness verses servo resolution, best practices for applying fasteners in different design applications, sizing clutches and brakes, sizing cooling systems for electrical cabinets, sizing pneumatic systems to achieve desired response time of actuators, sizing and principles of designing with U-Joints, payback and net present value, how to determine and derive the correct geometry for locating pins, etc....

All of this information can be found in some obscure engineering reference or manufacturer's engineering information section. However, the trade magazines always brought these interesting topics to the reader on a regular basis. Of course, engineers also used to have more time to kick back and learn about these topics on the companies dime. Also, pretty much gone

Yet this was how things were done and

The underlying principles and mathematics necessary to derive the solutions are buried in user friendly software and overly simplified for the masses.

However, I do like spell check ;>)

Someone in our organization was recently broadcasting how they could instantly save the company barrels of money by replacing all the company desktop systems with laptops. He authoritively pronounced the return on investment would be less than one year based upon energy savings alone. When asked if he took into account corporate tax rate, depreciation value, salvage value, he looked puzzled and asked how this information was relevant. Going back to your hypothesis, simple is dangerous or even fatal in the hands of wannabes who don't understand the underlying principles.

All shades of blue means not to worry, right :-)

Sometimes it seems like too many companies prefer soccer mom's driving SUV's

Kman

Reply to
Kman

So do I, but the same principles hold there as well. Don't you love seeing the misspelled words where the writer didn't know that the spell checker gave him the write spelling for the wrong word?

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

Or in my case, leave in an extra word left over from the previous rewrite. Microsoft would really help me out if they would add a "gray cell" (i.e. old fart) spell checker.

Kman

Reply to
Kman

Guess so When they mail out those annoying little packets of advertisement cards you might guess where I archive them.

Kman

Reply to
Kman

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