Decline of E+WW

There are computer game reviews and gadget advertorials in the Feb 2005 Electronics & Wireless World. Is this finally the end?

If you gave me a choice between the Internet, as it is now; and the electronics magazines we had in the '70s: I'd have to choose the Internet; but I do miss those magazines ...

I didn't renew my sub this year as I don't have a lot of confidence that it will be around for another year - in the last year or two there were some pretty dire issues - one had about 4 pages of hex listing in a pretty thin issue... I'm also getting pretty bored with people arguing about the nuances of high-end audio and the endless wibblings of Ivor Catt et al. An increasing part of the article content seems to be coming from component manufacturers. I Too was somewhat surprised to see game reviews in the latest issue.... It's not available in many newsagents nowadays, which will probably be the nail in the coffin...

Couldn't agree more - picked one up in W H Smiths and couldn't believe how pathetic it was. Cancelled my subscription a couple of years ago. Considering what a wonderful journal it was, it is very sad end.

Mike Meakin

I read in sci.electronics.design that Andrew Holme wrote (in ) about 'Decline of E+WW', on Tue, 4 Jan 2005:

Well, Cyril Bateman and occasionally others are struggling to keep it alive. The problem is undoubtedly that very few people have the time and/or inclination these days to write articles for publication. Even though the mechanics of production are absurdly easy these days; word- processing, graphics programs, maths programs, simulators etc.. You don't even have to snail-mail the MS.

If the new editor hasn't changed the policy, the payment for articles is not inconsiderable. You might enquire.

I don't think so, so get cracking! BTW, one of the PhD graduates of my lab is going into that area; he think it's the cat's pajamas.

This happened to the popular electronics magazines in the US 20 or more years ago. I continued to subscribe to EWW since 1973 because the British publishers weren't afraid of math. I once saw an article in one of the American magazines, Poptronics or Electronics Now, or some such, where the author actually *apologized* for including E=IR in his article.

Given the state of popular culture, are we surprised by this?

Apparently Gresham's law doesn't apply only to currency.

Can anybody remember the good old days when QST and other USA amateur radio magazines could be bought on the newstands at British main-line railway stations? Nice reading material between Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverly on the Flying Scotsman in the dining car.

"Andrew Holme" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:creld6$5pj$1$ snipped-for-privacy@news.demon.co.uk...

Hello Andrew, I have bought it a few times in the past. It had costed me a leg and an arm here in Germany. I recommend to try Elektor. They have interesting articles and projects and a big amount of readers at least in Germany and the Netherlands. I don't know how popular Elektor is in the UK. I guess Elektor is the only independent electronics magazine which will survive in the long term.

Best Regards, Helmut

PS: I am not an employee of Elektor.

Atmel is onto that with their $20 "Butterfly," which is a CPU, support circuitry, and LCD display, programmable with their $20 ISP module (as I understand it). It has lots of logic-level inputs and outputs and you can easily add a keypad of additional buttons.

I find Elektor easier to find in the UK than Electronics World. I find Elektor a bit more 'hobbyist' than Electronics World. But then again I haven't read Electronics World for quite a while now for the same reasons as everyone else!

Rich

Internet;

Sorry, Reg; a bit before this G4's time.

The stuff from Cyril Bateman is priceless. How he gets the time I just do not know. regards john

Have they done a transcranial magnetic stimulator?

I agree.

For far too long it has been padded out by people like Ivor Catt (or Imor Twatt IMHO) waffling about stuff so esoteric that only a few like-minded gasbags are bothered to argue with. And as for the obsession with high-end audio, it is hardly going to make a difference unless you work for a hi-fi company. HiFi is so Hi that remaining % is in the placebo domain...

I have a glance at E&WW when I visit my local library / newsagent, but I haven't seen anything I would part with hard cash for.

When I was a kid (1980s!) I bought mags to get ideas for neat things I could make and do.

Elektor is better at this but I reckon most of each serious project is a microcontroller system. Heck, who can't design that bit? Or it is a trivial circuit from a chip-maker's app note.

I reckon they ought to just make one microcontroller foundation (CPU, LCD, KBD) and just publish the add-on bits for particular projects.

Trouble is, the standard for something cool to make has long exceeded what amateurs can make at home.

At one time for example, Byte mag might have published an article for a frame grabber that was way cheaper than commercial ones. Nowadays, you can buy USB TV dongles for less than an hour or two of most engineer's time.

Circa 1980, you could design a significant commercial product in your garage with COTS parts, and become a major player if you had a few hundred bucks (e.g. Steve Jobs and Apple). I can design better products than that today, but commercial standards have improved a thousand fold. Magazine projects can't really compete!

Winfield Hill wrote

To which I reply "we are!"

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen megabytes". (or whatever the typical limit is at the time)

I have filled my own 15 MByte of web space with stuff personally polished by me. I have now got another site with a 50 MByte quota!

The other problem is that not many engineers are good writers. Winfield Hill and Paul Horowitz an exception of course. I was a technical author for four years, so I hope I can write fairly well. But most engineers I meet are not good communicators. Often they have the attitude that if they have to explain something you are too stupid to be worth the effort of explanation.

It is true magazines have declined, but then again you can google for what you want and discard a lot of the crap...

Links, please.

years ago. I

weren't afraid of

Electronics

in his

The public fear of simple algebra that can be used to help explain simple concepts is very very disappointing. I remember many years ago in high school, where so many kids were unbelievably 'dense' on the most simple math concepts. There is obviously a kind of thinking that not all people are endowed with... Not bringing the issue of political disagreement into this discussion, but on a higher level, the mass misunderstanding of many political issues and being overwrought(sp) with hate is kind of similar to the hate/fear/loathing against simple high school level math.

I know that the other students weren't 'stupid', but I cannot understand the fear of simple (trivial) math AT ALL.

John

This article about it was strangely interesting...

Jon

You have to remember that it is often taught badly - the emphasis is on calculating speed rather than on understanding. Mathematics and physical education are the 2 subjects that can be made arbitrarily hard by an inept teacher. Most other subjects come out too easy if the teacher is inept; not those two.

I'm starting to look into it seriously. However, most of my posts to date have been on religious NGs. Anyway, I'm going to start a thread here and see what comes up. "Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)"

My interests are mainly with respect to altered states of consciousness and religious experience.