more EE Times nonsense

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More MIT nonsense:

I guess it takes a MIT degree to figure out you can make wifi antennas out of household items. I think the MIT boys need to get out a bit more. There is this thing called the google that can surf the internets.

NPR never had a clue about technology reporting, but this has to be a new low. Besides the cantenna, just how many world records did they set at the wifi shootout before giving up the contest? The first shootout used a horn antenna made out of chicken wire.

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..i am still waiting for that flying car shown on a cover of Popular Mechanics.

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In this instance you are being unfair to them. What they have achieved in the lab is clever and a very significant step forward in the art. Even their rivals admit that. But it is still a long way to go before we will see any products that can use synthetic photosynthesis long term.

It is EE Times that has bastardised the original article.

I just wish they would include links or a bibliography to the original papers so that it was made easier to find the original scientific journal articles before MITs press office has mangled them.

Actually published in J Am Chem Soc 2010 Feb 10; 132(5) 1462-3

Using M13 viruses as a scaffold to keep the various molecules in the right places is a cunning ploy in these self assembling nano materials.

Just because *you* don't understand it does not make it dumb.

If you had complained about the AkzoNobel nano paint press release on Invisulux invented by Prof Olaf Proli you might have had a point:

Youtube interview with him is online at:

Regards, Martin Brown

Any more "silly" than John's alma mater's "contribution to science...

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
      The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

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I don't need to understand it, and neither, apparently, does the editorial staff of EE Times. MIT takes every paper produced by a few grad students/postdocs, adds the mandatory "may lead to (new batteries) (new solar cells) (super-strong materials) (cure for cancer)", makes a popular press release version, and EE Times dutifully publishes it. Of course the efficiency and cost of these miracle solar cells/batteries/cancer cures is never mentioned, and their delivery date is always 10 years in the future.

Beats actually getting out of their swivel chairs and reporting about electronics, I guess. These press release miracles make cheap filler between the ads, so that the print version meets Post Office regs for the low "magazine" rate.

Most of our "professional" journals are pitiful embarassments: Electronic Design, EDN, EE Times.

I really miss Electronics News, which was full of insider industry dirt. It was published by the same people who did Womens' Wear Daily and was equally catty.

Interestingly, the microwave mags (Microwave Journal, Microwaves and RF) and the optics stuff (Photonics Spectra, Laser Focus World) are still good and correspondingly thick, full of serious articles *and* lots of ads. EET, ED, EDN are getting thinner and thinner. They just don't get it.

Don't get me started on their "ideas for design" crap.

John

..

R. Colin Johnson. Neural networks, cold fusion, etc. He's been an EET fixture since forever.

Hey, just what we needed--a virus to get loose and bust all Earth's water to oxygen and hydrogen.

:-)

Of course! They aren't an "impartial third party". They are promoting themselves -- by promoting the works of their students/alumni/professors/etc.

It's ADVERTISING.

Do you really thinkn any of the "new and improved" products you see advertised on TV/magazines/etc. are *really* "new" *or* "improved"? Instead, the hawkers are trying to redirect attention on their products -- to boost sales and secure their own futures.

Personally, I've been most impressed with the work out of CMU (when it comes to software). Aside from X, MIT has been a pretty big yawn (though X was quite an accomplishment!).

EETimes has decided that this is an inexpensive way to generate "fill" (aka FLUFF) for their publication. It costs next to nothing to "report". The original "author" which they are "plagiarizing" (in a sense) is all to happy to be comply (do you think Coke would complain if someone else started rebroadcasting their ads??)

Actually, my Materials Science professor was quite cynical in debunking these miracle technologies. Highlighting the byproducts produced during their manufacture, the energy required, etc. Maybe just sour grapes at not having any of *his* work published? (pure speculation; I can't even recall his name)

Exactly. Look at your "local news". Do they *really* report on anything? We need a new term for "reporter who does nothing more than report what someone ELSE is reporting!

E.g., we have news here from 4P - 6P weeknights. An hour of local "magazine style" news. Followed by 30 min of The Local News (in which half of the time is spent reporting on national issues) followed by 30 minutes of national news.

Is there really *that* much material to cover? And, why do I always feel like they spent JUST 15 seconds on a "story"? :-/

(obviously, I don't watch much news!)

Ever seen ESP? I think it ties with The National Enquirer in terms of pertinence (to its professed field)

Remember, their goal is to sell ads. I am sure they

*conciously* decide "how much pertinent material do we have to include here in order to keep readers from simply tossing the entire thing in the trash"

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Methinks John was spanked too much as a child...

(Larkin's "silly" alma mater.)

Publication at a low enough common denominator that they'd _even_ publish John's crap ?:-)

John is so cranky today I'd guess his mommy over-tightened his spats when she dressed him this morning :-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
      The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

E...

e

Do read the article. The virus just provides the scaffold for the active nanoscale components, and MIT was merely boasting about having developed the bit that would split off oxygen; the part that would split off hydrogen is still under development.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So what's it doing in EE Times? There's nothing going on in real electronics that's worth space?

John

Humor. It's a higher function.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

"The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel." --Horace Walpole, (1717-1797)

It's now been about a generation or two since people would replace broken TV antennas with coat hangers?

It does seem odd to me that they could come up with WiFi access points/routers/cards/etc. but not antennas anyway -- it's a very unusual piece of kit that doesn't come with the antennas, after all. For narrow beam antennas, I suppose cantennas and chicken wire-horns do work OK if you get the dimensions right, and they probably do have plenty of time on their hands over there? (But then you still need some good low-loss coax like LMR400 if you're going to separate the antenna and the access point by very much and decent connectors and...)

"High Frequency Electronics" is also decent (it's also microwave-oriented)

I think they're no longer sure who their audience is. They never really targeted, e.g., IC designers and the number of discrete circuit designers is very low these days, so they're stuck often being little more than a photocopier for datasheet "application" circuits, which puts them only a notch or so above the hobbyist magazines like Nuts & Volts (which is actually quite useful if you're trying to do things *on the cheap!*).

---Joel

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That just says that the EET editor is bone idle and will publish anything that crosses his desk however tenuously related to electronics it might be as a space filler. It has always been the case that a well crafted press release will often find its way into a magazine on a slack news day/week/month. What is unusual is to have a slack news *decade*.

Sadly I agree. The computer press is not much better :(

Regards, Martin Brown

Yes, I like that one.

These mags (ED, EET, EDN) seem to be in a content death spiral. Contrast that with Aviation Week: it costs $250 a year. When they review, say, a new helicopter, they don't cut and paste press releases, they go fly one. They know what the specs are, where the money is, what the problems are, where the bones are buried.

Electronics is a trillion-dollar business. We deserve better mags.

John

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I suppose nothing much is happening in electronics any more.

John

Looks more like inept plagarism to me - science-fiction writers have been putting together duff end-of-the-world nanotechnology stories for at least a decade now, and you've just copied the neglect-of- conservation-of-energy aspect to try and make a feeble, unoriginal and irrelevant joke.

As humour, it certainly high - dead and decaying - but scarcely functional.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Not just editorial content, but ad pages too.

When they descended from perfect binding to saddle-stitching...

Humor is fundamentally associated with design ability. Both require welcoming ambiguity and seeing things from numerous different perspectives. You wouldn't understand.

A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the wisest men.

-- Willy Wonka

John