[hank alrich]

Richard Crowley wrote:

"William Sommerwerck" wrote ...
What is happening in Detroit is a bunch of different things.
We have car companies that have been on the verge of collapse
for the past 20 years, due to financial mismanagement and the
inability to make product designs that people really want.

It seems to me it's the other way around -- Detroit has been pandering to
the American taste for big vehicles far too long.

The high labor cost (due to the UAW contracts) precludes making a
profit on smaller,more fuel-efficient vehicles. Note that none of the
competitors making smaller cars pay as much for the total, burdened
cost of labor. The "bailout" is for the UAW, not for the carmakers.
They (UAW) are the traditional, loyal Democrat voters who have
priced the US auto business out of the global market.

Long ago in negotiations the automakers fought for and won the right to
manage pensions instead of letting the UAW manage those funds.

Meanwhile the Cerberus dude from Chrysler takes out a bonus of a couple
hundred million while you whine about the UAW.

--
ha
shut up and play your guitar

[Eeyore]

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

and remember even if production come back to the united stated it will still
be a cheap piece of crap, only it will cost more
there is nothing after the design that will improve the performance of a
unit
if it is designed as a disposable product, it will be a disposable product,
regardless of where it is built or how much labor and environment concerns
inflate it's final cost

You know **** ALL about design. Shut your stupid mouth and stick to twiddling
knobs, the only thing you're good at (and I have my doubts about even that).

Graham

[Mike Rivers]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

If it weren't disposable, it would have modules that could be swapped on
the fly, PC board masks that indicated busses and signal flow, and test
points on the board. It might even (like Radio Systems boards) have a
meter built inside with test probes for easier field diagnosis. But very
few folks do that kind of thing today, because the economics have made
it expensive to repair and cheap to replace most of this stuff.

We've talked around this before. The people who buy cheap mixers buy
them because they couldn't get into recording if it weren't for cheap
mixers. But they don't have the knowledge or patience to repair them
even if they were repairable. So they become disposable products. If one
of my Mackie mixers fails, I can and will fix it because I know how and
I'm not desperate to get it working before the gig Friday night. But if
Joe Songwriter's mixer second hand Mackie fails after giving him six
years of reliable service, when he complains about cheap manufacturing
or not-for-maintenance design (because his local shop quoted him $100 to
repair it) all I can say to him was Yashouldaboughta API.

The difference is that if it costs $100 to repair, but it costs $200
to replace it, it is no longer cost effective to repair. This is
the definition of disposibility.

Exactly. But users don't all seem to realize that at some point in its
lifetime, they'll have to make that decision. Then it happens.



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Eeyore]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that
outlasts its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the
last six years and they've all died.

It's probably an environmental problem. You need to seal all the seams,
including the area around the display. Plastic LCD protector sheets should
work for the latter.

Are kitchens a particularly hazardous environment ? Can't say I've ever needed
a calculator there, mental arithmetic does me.

Graham

[Eeyore]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Mike Rivers wrote:

George, I know you've had bad luck with Mackie products in your
business, so your prejudice is justified. But there are a whole lot of
people who are using Mackie mixers in their home studios and on stage
with their bands with great success and long time performance. Just
because something is built with automated manufacturing techniques
doesn't mean it's a disposable product.

But it _is_ a disposable product, just like almost all electronics sold
today. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the way the market
works out these days.

It's just a question of how long it takes before disposal. No names mentioned
but I know UK contractors who DO NOT use lead-free solder because they don't
want their clients whining in 2 years.

Of course the ones who DO specifiy lead-free are a cash cow.

Graham

[Eeyore]

Laurence Payne wrote:

(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

This is true, but I don't think the American taste is really going to
change. Americans will still want big cars.

WANT maybe.

AFFORD - NO WAY !

Why do you want big everything anyway like 400 pound people ? Is it a
perversion ?

Try driving a MK 2 Golf GTi btw and then tell me BIG is good. You'll need
to wipe the grin off your face first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VW...t_20080206.jpg

I nearly had one myself as it happens. I'm a Saab man now though. God do
they FLY !

Graham

[Les Cargill]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
What is happening in Detroit is a bunch of different things.
We have car companies that have been on the verge of collapse
for the past 20 years, due to financial mismanagement and the
inability to make product designs that people really want.

It seems to me it's the other way around -- Detroit has been pandering to
the American taste for big vehicles far too long.



But isn't it just that end customers reacted to CAFE standards
by wanting big cars? The Ford Mustang allegedly gets 25 MPG
with a V8, but that took a while after the CAFE standards were
passed. "You want a station wagon? Don't have those; but we can
show you this SUV..."

Nothing makes people want something like telling them they can't
have it.

Oddly enough, "pandering" to what customers want is what lots
of people confuse for "running a business."

By the way, I own a used Ford Focus, and it is a very nice car. (The
visibility from the driver's seat is remarkable.) Detroit can make good
cars, if it wants to.



My daughters have two of them. Fine cars.

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"William Sommerwerck" wrote ...
What is happening in Detroit is a bunch of different things.
We have car companies that have been on the verge of collapse
for the past 20 years, due to financial mismanagement and the
inability to make product designs that people really want.
It seems to me it's the other way around -- Detroit has been pandering to
the American taste for big vehicles far too long.

The high labor cost (due to the UAW contracts) precludes making a
profit on smaller,more fuel-efficient vehicles. Note that none of the
competitors making smaller cars pay as much for the total, burdened
cost of labor. The "bailout" is for the UAW, not for the carmakers.
They (UAW) are the traditional, loyal Democrat voters who have
priced the US auto business out of the global market.



The dealership network is much more a drain than even labor costs. If
we built computers like we build cars, they'd be $25,000 too.

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Richard Crowley wrote:
The high labor cost (due to the UAW contracts) precludes making a
profit on smaller,more fuel-efficient vehicles. Note that none of the
competitors making smaller cars pay as much for the total, burdened
cost of labor. The "bailout" is for the UAW, not for the carmakers.
They (UAW) are the traditional, loyal Democrat voters who have
priced the US auto business out of the global market.

Actually if you look, most of that "labour" cost is actually the cost
of handling retirement of former UAW members. Turns out that the cost
of medical insurance is a lot higher than anyone thought it would get.

Interesting too that if you look at GM, a remarkable amount of their
debt is actually from GMAC and not the manufacturing divisions.

Paying workers well is a good thing. The bad thing is when you're having
to compete against workers who are vastly underpaid. But in the case of
auto manufacture, the labour costs are actually a very small part of the
whole thing, and they get lower every year. You can thank the Japanese
for that.... they came up with the automated assembly systems that reduce
the number of workers needed.
--scott

They got the idea from Peter Drucker. "Labor is a declining fraction of
the cost of production." - Peter Drucker.

That should be a good thing.

--
Les Cargill

[Sean Conolly]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:
What is happening in Detroit is a bunch of different things.
We have car companies that have been on the verge of collapse
for the past 20 years, due to financial mismanagement and the
inability to make product designs that people really want.

It seems to me it's the other way around -- Detroit has been pandering to
the American taste for big vehicles far too long.


"Sales" is selling people stuff that they want - "Marketing" is convincing
people they want to buy the stuff you have to sell. I think a lot of this
was driven by marketing to convince Americans that they needed big cars to
be safe and for status, when the real reason is "it's the only market where
we have a competitive advantage".

This last summer when gas was over $4 a gallon, SUV sales tanked but the
dealers couldn't keep the eco-cars on the lots. When given enough financial
pain, people will change their preferences in a hurry.

To me this is just the chickens coming home to roost. Detroit has been
facing this problem for over 30 years and for the most part has failed
miserably to produce smaller, gas-efficient cars that are reliable. Adapt or
die.

Sean

[Les Cargill]

Laurence Payne wrote:
On 20 Dec 2008 10:16:57 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

This is true, but I don't think the American taste is really going to
change. Americans will still want big cars.

This illustrates perfectly the basic problem. Whether it's economic
meltdown or climate change, no-one wants to consider measures that
actually affect THEIR personal lifestyle. No matter if OTHER people
fall off the bottom rung, so long as resources are pumped into
propping up THEIR status quo.


Yeah, but five minutes' thought should destroy that immediately. As
a person who has worked in his share of companies which were
self destructing as fast as they could, the bell always
tolls for thee. The beginning of the end is when you see
exactly that pathology - the "I got mine".

One guy I know claims what killed Rome was the behavior of people
like Marcus Linnaeus Crassus, who was immensely wealthy by
rigging contracts on public goods in his favor. I can't argue
with that. You need to be *very well connected* in a very
intrusive government to make that happen.

But nobody asks that question when they design policy.

Maybe provoking a full-scale war is the only way of forcing a decadent
system to shake down. Bush may not have been as stupid as he looked.

Bush is highly aware of how decadent the system is. That's the
fundamental "thing" of Neoconservatism... (Power of Nightmares...)

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill]

Eeyore wrote:

Laurence Payne wrote:

(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

This is true, but I don't think the American taste is really going to
change. Americans will still want big cars.

WANT maybe.

AFFORD - NO WAY !

Why do you want big everything anyway like 400 pound people ? Is it a
perversion ?

Try driving a MK 2 Golf GTi btw and then tell me BIG is good. You'll need
to wipe the grin off your face first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VW...t_20080206.jpg

I nearly had one myself as it happens. I'm a Saab man now though. God do
they FLY !

Graham



They want them because CAFE standards have told them they cannot have
them. The Big Three were given lemons and made lemonade....

insert diatribe about Robert A. Pease and the tailpipe
tester on his '67 Volks here

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill]

yrret wrote:
"GregS" wrote in message
...
In article , (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:
George's Pro Sound Company wrote:
Business moves all the time
when I was growing up it was japan that was the evil empire
I postulate bangladesh/afganistan will be next
Yup, and the same problems happened when folks were outsourcing
manufacture
to Japan as well. And they will happen in the future when they contract
them out to Bangladesh or whoever is next.

wonder how long it will take to come full circle where the USA is hungry
enough tobecome a serious world player in manufactureing again?
These days you don't have to be hungry, because manufacturing of most of
this stuff is no longer labour-intensive. You can thank the Japanese for
that. But you DO have to have a substantial investment up front in
facilities,
you need to be located near other manufacturing plants that will make your
components and subassemblies, and you need to either not care about
environmental effects or be willing to pay the money to prevent them.

When I was a kid, Pittsburgh was as polluted as Beijing is today. I don't
want to see that again, no matter what it may bring.
--scott

OK now you did it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxmAh1cyoA

I would like to understand how things can exist, and what real jobs there
are.
When real jobs are lost, at what point does everything fall into a black
hole.
Manufacturing is a real job, selling hamburgers, working at Walmart, being
a dentist,
are not real jobs. They are service jobs for people with real jobs. I
guess making
recordings for peoples pleasure is also not a real job.

greg


Maybe I'm crazy but in the next 100 years its possible/likely that robotics
will be advanced enough to take over most routine tasks that a person does
today. So eventually even China/Mexico will be losing these very same jobs
to technology. Maybe the U.S. is still ahead of the game?



Probably. But "what are people *for*" - Kurt Vonnegut, "Player Piano."

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill]

Eeyore wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:

Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that
outlasts its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the
last six years and they've all died.
It's probably an environmental problem. You need to seal all the seams,
including the area around the display. Plastic LCD protector sheets should
work for the latter.

Are kitchens a particularly hazardous environment ? Can't say I've ever needed
a calculator there, mental arithmetic does me.

Graham



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8n43kQPwbY

--
Les Cargill

[John O[_2_]]

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


William Sommerwerck wrote:

Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that
outlasts its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the
last six years and they've all died.

It's probably an environmental problem. You need to seal all the seams,
including the area around the display. Plastic LCD protector sheets
should
work for the latter.

Are kitchens a particularly hazardous environment ? Can't say I've ever
needed
a calculator there, mental arithmetic does me.

Graham


http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

:-)

-John O

[Ron Capik]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

...snip...

Paying workers well is a good thing. The bad thing is when you're having
to compete against workers who are vastly underpaid. But in the case of
auto manufacture, the labour costs are actually a very small part of the
whole thing, and they get lower every year. You can thank the Japanese
for that.... they came up with the automated assembly systems that reduce
the number of workers needed.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Hmmmm, competing against workers who are vastly underpaid.
Reminds me of home studios or weekend warrior bar bands
with the sound guy (if there is one) working for beer. ;-}
[YMMV]


Later...

Ron Capik cynic-in-training
--

[Richard Crowley]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
Paying workers well is a good thing. The bad thing is when you're having
to compete against workers who are vastly underpaid. But in the case of
auto manufacture, the labour costs are actually a very small part of the
whole thing, and they get lower every year. You can thank the Japanese
for that.... they came up with the automated assembly systems that reduce
the number of workers needed.

They don't have "job banks" in Japan where they pay workers
to sit there doing nothing. UAW management acts like the spoiled
pre-teen children of rich parents who refuse to accept reality when
daddy falls on hard times.

[Richard Crowley]

"hank alrich" wrote ...
Meanwhile the Cerberus dude from Chrysler takes out a bonus of a couple
hundred million while you whine about the UAW.

If you reduced the pay of all the CEOs to $1 per year it would
make no significant difference to their financial situation. At least
the CEOs of big companies are doing something productive
(employing millions of people, for example). How do you justify
paying similar amounts to people who throw a ball around (or
who sing or play, for that matter)?

[Jenn[_3_]]

In article ,
"Richard Crowley" wrote:

"hank alrich" wrote ...
Meanwhile the Cerberus dude from Chrysler takes out a bonus of a couple
hundred million while you whine about the UAW.

If you reduced the pay of all the CEOs to $1 per year it would
make no significant difference to their financial situation. At least
the CEOs of big companies are doing something productive
(employing millions of people, for example). How do you justify
paying similar amounts to people who throw a ball around (or
who sing or play, for that matter)?

They perform a service for which people are willing to pay?

[Richard Crowley]

"Les Cargill" wrote ...
The dealership network is much more a drain than even labor costs. If
we built computers like we build cars, they'd be $25,000 too.

But the Detroitt3 aren't *paying* the dealers, are they?
Don't the dealers make their money from buying cars
from Detroit and then selling them at a profit? The
dealers are in trouble because people aren't buying
cars.

[Richard Crowley]

"Les Cargill" wrote ...
Probably. But "what are people *for*" - Kurt Vonnegut, "Player Piano."

To invent, build, task, and maintain the robots.

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:15:20 -0800, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Les Cargill" wrote ...
Probably. But "what are people *for*" - Kurt Vonnegut, "Player Piano."

To invent, build, task, and maintain the robots.

And only until the robots can do it themselves. Maybe
about the middle of next week.

It'll likely take a while longer before they can make
music. But, who knows?

Much thanks, as always,
Chris Hornbeck

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

If it weren't disposable, it would have modules that could be swapped on
the fly, PC board masks that indicated busses and signal flow, and test
points on the board. It might even (like Radio Systems boards) have a
meter built inside with test probes for easier field diagnosis. But very
few folks do that kind of thing today, because the economics have made
it expensive to repair and cheap to replace most of this stuff.

We've talked around this before. The people who buy cheap mixers buy
them because they couldn't get into recording if it weren't for cheap
mixers. But they don't have the knowledge or patience to repair them
even if they were repairable. So they become disposable products.

Right, and this is fine. And so engineers who design them will design
them as disposable products. That's fine too... by not putting in all
that stuff to make diagnostics easier, it makes the console cheaper to
make. And if nobody is going to do diagnostic work on it, it's not worth
adding manufacturing costs for stuff that will never be used.

If one
of my Mackie mixers fails, I can and will fix it because I know how and
I'm not desperate to get it working before the gig Friday night.

I dare you to try it with an eight-buss. You can do it... but it's not
fun.... and after you have the case open and the board out you'll wonder
why you didn't just pitch it and buy a new one.

But if
Joe Songwriter's mixer second hand Mackie fails after giving him six
years of reliable service, when he complains about cheap manufacturing
or not-for-maintenance design (because his local shop quoted him $100 to
repair it) all I can say to him was Yashouldaboughta API.

Yes, and I say that all the time. The small API eight-buss is about $50k.
That's a whole lot more than the Mackie. You pay for the reliability and
maintainability, and it costs a lot. For a lot of people it's not worth it,
and they buy disposable boards. That's fine too.

The difference is that if it costs $100 to repair, but it costs $200
to replace it, it is no longer cost effective to repair. This is
the definition of disposibility.

Exactly. But users don't all seem to realize that at some point in its
lifetime, they'll have to make that decision. Then it happens.

And this, in short, is why that gear is disposable. Even replacing it
every year, though, you can keep buying Mackies for a long time before
it costs you as much as the API did. On the other hand, if you ever get to
that point... you'll really wish you'd bought the API.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Eeyore wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that
outlasts its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the
last six years and they've all died.

It's probably an environmental problem. You need to seal all the seams,
including the area around the display. Plastic LCD protector sheets should
work for the latter.

Are kitchens a particularly hazardous environment ? Can't say I've ever needed
a calculator there, mental arithmetic does me.

Kitchens are a very hazardous environment for electronics. Water gets in,
oil gets in, flour and stuff gets in. Things get left on top of a hot
stove. Things fall on the floor when your hands are covered with flour
and the cat runs off with them.

Mental arithmetic is probably a lot easier when you are using the metric
system and don't have to worry about how many teaspoons are in a pint.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Eeyore wrote:

It's just a question of how long it takes before disposal. No names mentioned
but I know UK contractors who DO NOT use lead-free solder because they don't
want their clients whining in 2 years.

Speaker manufacturers, or microphone? I know some of the speaker guys are
going to the EU and asking for specific exemptions. The microphone guys
with 200V polarization voltages must be tearing their hair out too.

Of course the ones who DO specifiy lead-free are a cash cow.

The lead free solder makes perfect sense for products that are going to be
replaced and upgraded in a year or two anyway, like cellphones and a lot
of computer stuff. It does not make sense for test equipment that should be
expected to run for a century or more.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Ron Capik wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

Paying workers well is a good thing. The bad thing is when you're having
to compete against workers who are vastly underpaid. But in the case of
auto manufacture, the labour costs are actually a very small part of the
whole thing, and they get lower every year. You can thank the Japanese
for that.... they came up with the automated assembly systems that reduce
the number of workers needed.

Hmmmm, competing against workers who are vastly underpaid.
Reminds me of home studios or weekend warrior bar bands
with the sound guy (if there is one) working for beer. ;-}
[YMMV]

Yup, precisely, and you get what you pay for in both cases.

Automation, though, helps a whole lot when you are doing repetitive tasks
like making cars. Most sound gigs are different every time, and automation
doesn't really save much no matter what Sabine and Yamaha tell you....

The thing about Chinese production (and that was true about early Japanese
production too) is that although the factories usually don't really know
what they are doing, many of them are trying very hard to learn. Others
don't really care as long as the money keeps rolling in. Come to think
of it, that's true of those bar band sound guys too...
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Don Pearce[_2_]]

On 20 Dec 2008 13:41:22 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Eeyore wrote:

It's just a question of how long it takes before disposal. No names mentioned
but I know UK contractors who DO NOT use lead-free solder because they don't
want their clients whining in 2 years.

Speaker manufacturers, or microphone? I know some of the speaker guys are
going to the EU and asking for specific exemptions. The microphone guys
with 200V polarization voltages must be tearing their hair out too.

Of course the ones who DO specifiy lead-free are a cash cow.

The lead free solder makes perfect sense for products that are going to be
replaced and upgraded in a year or two anyway, like cellphones and a lot
of computer stuff. It does not make sense for test equipment that should be
expected to run for a century or more.
--scott

I don't see how lead-free solder makes sense in any kind of product.
It is an inferior bonding agent that will inevitably lead to premature
failure in many items and their replacement will have a far greater
environmental impact than any amount of tiny lead droplets on a board.
Just stop and think about how much solder actually goes onto an SM
board using 0603 or 0402 components.

d

[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"hank alrich" wrote ...
Meanwhile the Cerberus dude from Chrysler takes out a bonus of a couple
hundred million while you whine about the UAW.

If you reduced the pay of all the CEOs to $1 per year it would
make no significant difference to their financial situation.

This is true. The same goes for the union labour as well, though. Neither
one is really much of a fraction of the total cost of the product, but
people are grabbing on both of them as symbols.

At least
the CEOs of big companies are doing something productive
(employing millions of people, for example). How do you justify
paying similar amounts to people who throw a ball around (or
who sing or play, for that matter)?

Some of them are doing something productive. Others have been running
their company into the ground for years (and the Chrysler management is
certainly in that latter category, as was the GM management for a long
time). The thing is, they all get paid whether or not they do a good
job, and for the most part people resent that.

I have nothing against executives being paid big money for making big
money for their company. But I have a lot against them being paid big
money to ruin companies. It's true that sometimes it's hard for outsiders
to tell what is going on until it's too late, but that certainly has not
been the case for GM or Chrysler.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
The lead free solder makes perfect sense for products that are going to be
replaced and upgraded in a year or two anyway, like cellphones and a lot
of computer stuff. It does not make sense for test equipment that should
be
expected to run for a century or more.

But the people who make those laws wouldn't understand any 3 of
those words together in a phrase.

[hank alrich]

Eeyore wrote:

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

and remember even if production come back to the united stated it will still
be a cheap piece of crap, only it will cost more
there is nothing after the design that will improve the performance of a
unit
if it is designed as a disposable product, it will be a disposable product,
regardless of where it is built or how much labor and environment concerns
inflate it's final cost

You know **** ALL about design. Shut your stupid mouth and stick to twiddling
knobs, the only thing you're good at (and I have my doubts about even that).

Graham

Let's see here... George runs his own successful SR company...

And you?

--
ha
shut up and play your guitar

[Scott Dorsey]

In article 494d3dd9.210886609@localhost, Don Pearce wrote:
I don't see how lead-free solder makes sense in any kind of product.
It is an inferior bonding agent that will inevitably lead to premature
failure in many items and their replacement will have a far greater
environmental impact than any amount of tiny lead droplets on a board.

This is true, IF the product is expected to have a reasonably long
lifetime in the first place. In the case of products that get replaced
every year anyway, nobody much cares about the premature failures and
the environmental impact is possibly reduced. And the honest truth is
that a LOT of consumer electronics today are not expected to last long.

Just stop and think about how much solder actually goes onto an SM
board using 0603 or 0402 components.

True enough.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
The lead free solder makes perfect sense for products that are going to be
replaced and upgraded in a year or two anyway, like cellphones and a lot
of computer stuff. It does not make sense for test equipment that should
be
expected to run for a century or more.

But the people who make those laws wouldn't understand any 3 of
those words together in a phrase.

That's why the electronics industry has lobbyists.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Paul Stamler[_2_]]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
George's Pro Sound Company wrote:
Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that outlasts
its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the last six years
and they've all died. But I haven't gone to the rec.calculators.pro
newsgroup asking "does anyone know how to replace the display?"

Sharp scientific calculator. My first one lasted 15 years, the second is
going strong after ten. It's solar-powered, so there are no batteries to
outlast...regardless, it just keeps on crunchin'. (Oh, I got it at
Walgreen's.)

Peace,
Paul

[Scott Dorsey]

Charlie Olsen wrote:

Chrysler actually went out on the limb, design wise, with their PT Crusier,
Charger and Challenger cars.
Some people love them and others think they are ugly, but they are
different.

They ride like pigs, though. The PT Cruiser is a good example of everything
wrong here... the handling is awful, the suspension is soft, and they seem
to think adding big centering springs to the steering will compensate and
make people think the car is responsive.

GM is a joke.
With the exception of the Camaro, Cobalt (SS trim only) and Vette the rest
of the cars look like a trip through the budget section of a Hertz lot.
Uninspiring.

Try the Cadillac CTS.... it actually feels like a real car. After years
of making cars with so little roadfeel that you could drive over the curb
without noticing it, Cadillac finally made a car that actually feels like
you're driving. I don't really know what it looks like, and in fact when
I had a rental I couldn't find it in the parking lot, but it feels like a
real car and not a toy.

Also, why do we have to have Dodge and Chrysler making essentially the same
cars.
Buick, Chevy and Cadillac doing the same.

Okay, THIS is where the diversity thing comes in. The idea is that the
various product lines are supposed to make very different cars with
different customer bases, but with a lot of common parts so that there
are economies of scale in production while still providing a diverse
product line.

Yeah, the Big Three have kind of lost sight of that, but that's how it
used to work, and it could work that way again someday if management
wised up.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[George's Pro Sound Company]

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
Eeyore wrote:

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

and remember even if production come back to the united stated it will
still
be a cheap piece of crap, only it will cost more
there is nothing after the design that will improve the performance of
a
unit
if it is designed as a disposable product, it will be a disposable
product,
regardless of where it is built or how much labor and environment
concerns
inflate it's final cost

You know **** ALL about design. Shut your stupid mouth and stick to
twiddling
knobs, the only thing you're good at (and I have my doubts about even
that).

Graham

Let's see here... George runs his own successful SR company...

And you?

and I buy, with my own money everything from aa battries to trucks to 64
channel digital desks
been doing so for over 20 years, I do have a bit of a clue when it comes to
product design, and one does not have to know the picofarrads of the
components to reconize decent design or disposable design
I buy both
george

[Richard Crowley]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote ...
Me, I'm looking for a calculator I can keep in the kitchen that
outlasts its batteries. I've had three $3 calculators there in the
last six years and they've all died.

It's probably an environmental problem. You need to seal all the seams,
including the area around the display. Plastic LCD protector sheets should
work for the latter.

Ziploc bag. It even works in a pinch when shooting (or recording)
down at the beach or around water.

[Mike Rivers]

Eeyore wrote:

Are kitchens a particularly hazardous environment ? Can't say I've ever needed
a calculator there, mental arithmetic does me.

You got it easy over there, metric system and all. It's a little harder
when you want to know how to make 1/3 of a recipe that calls for 2-1/4
cups of something. My kitchen scale reads out in both pounds and grams,
so when I want to divide something by weight, I switch it to grams.

The kitchen is somewhat hazardous. I don't always wash my hands before
picking up the calculator. However, these cheap giveaway calculators
would probalby fail just as quickly in a school room. It's not the
buttons that fail - I'd have thought they'd be first to go with the oil
that floats around in the air after a stir-fry, but it's the displays. I
also have a digital meat thermometer that has a fulty display.
Fortunately the remote display for it still works. I took that
thermometer all apart, cleaned the contacts on the display connector,
and it still didn't fix it. There are just some segments that don't work
any more, which makes it hard to guess some readings.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Eeyore]

hank alrich wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

and remember even if production come back to the united stated it will still
be a cheap piece of crap, only it will cost more
there is nothing after the design that will improve the performance of a
unit
if it is designed as a disposable product, it will be a disposable product,
regardless of where it is built or how much labor and environment concerns
inflate it's final cost

You know **** ALL about design. Shut your stupid mouth and stick to twiddling
knobs, the only thing you're good at (and I have my doubts about even that).

Let's see here... George runs his own successful SR company...

And you?

Yes I did too using partly my own 'home built equipment' that would make Greg Mackie
look green until I decied to concentrate mainly on design

I can still ****ing outmix the average Philtho.

Graham

[Eeyore]

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

and I buy, with my own money everything from aa battries to trucks to 64
channel digital desks
been doing so for over 20 years, I do have a bit of a clue when it comes to
product design, and one does not have to know the picofarrads of the
components to reconize decent design or disposable design
I buy both

Full od CRAP as ever.

You just BUY stuff, you have NO IDEA how it works.

[Mickey]

On 2008-12-20, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Charlie Olsen wrote:

Chrysler actually went out on the limb, design wise, with their PT Crusier,
Charger and Challenger cars.
Some people love them and others think they are ugly, but they are
different.

They ride like pigs, though. The PT Cruiser is a good example of everything
wrong here... the handling is awful, the suspension is soft, and they seem
to think adding big centering springs to the steering will compensate and
make people think the car is responsive.

Hear, hear. Had a rental company do a bait-and-switch and land me with
a PT cruiser for a two-week trip. The ride was great except for the vibration,
the high seat great except for the poor visibility, the large body fine except
for the lack of storage space. And the economy fine except for the lack of
good gas mileage.

Terrible car. But some people, including a good friend of mine, love them.

--
Mickey
There's nothing sweeter than life nor more precious than time.
-- Barney