Digi-Key

They look at you funny if you buy a hundred apples and ten packs of double-edge razor blades on October 31st too.

"Fernando" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@gorgo.centroin.com.br...

been

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Digi-key are a bunch of bastards worse than the Spanish Enquisition.

Try Mouser. A lot more friendly.

Just in case you ordered from the US into an non-US country : The goverment requires them to ask these silly questions. Everyone, including digikey, knows that you get the same parts from non-US distributors without having to answer these silly questions. And also the US goverment knows that those intended to be caught will never answer truely that they are followers of OBL and intend to blow something up. IMO, it is just plain espionage to uncover business relationships. But since my customers are known, I have no hesitations to answer.

Rene

Does anyone remember the fuss many years ago when a shipment of *capacitors* bound for Iraq was intercepted - thereby 'proving' they were making an atom bomb ?

The OP appears to be posting from Brazil btw. I though you had free trade in the Americas now ?

Graham

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Yes, but Digi-key has turned that into an art. To hell with Digi-key.

I think they were Flux Capacitors, 1.21 GWatts needed, IIRC

martin

"Wales is a big welsh-shaped rain collection device"

"RST Engineering (jw)" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Of course there are hundreds+ of ways to get the parts. Which proves it is all silly behaviour. But most Americans have no brains and joyfully dance to whatever their government serves them. And it only takes half a brain to realize that.

in the

where no

It reduces the paperwork somewhat but some remains. Some of the barriers make a lot of sense. For instance the US has restrictions on the import of citrus in order to protect it's crops. Canada doesn't have such restrictions since it has no citrus crops to protect.

Some people have suggested moves towards a European style trade area but almost no-one is ready for that.

were

Nope. There are a whole set of agreements and I won't pretend I know them all, or even more than a small subset.

The biggest is probably NAFTA which is Canada, US and Mexico. There is a Canada/Chile agreement and a US/Carribean agreement. There are almost certainly others.

Also of course the US has an embargo on Cuba.

Robert

We have, sort of. Less regulated and less paperwork. Individuals may import up to $50 free, over that it's a 50% surtax, except for books. Dunno about the rules for businesses.

AIUI the Fernando's problem is at the Digikey side. Bureaucrats are unlikely to know the difference between Brazil and Albania anyway, so anyone wanting a pack of resistors will probably be suspected of being an international terrorist and have his life history thoroughly checked over before recieving a single ohm of it.

- YD.

bomb

Wasn't that the order for 'Krytons' or somesuch? Those would be fast and small gas trigger tubes, perfect for precision timing/triggering.

John

the

I assumed the business about the duty. If it doesn't really reduce paperwork otherwise, then it's of only half the potential value - as opposed to the EU where no country to country paperwork is now ever required.

I was under the impression that most N and S American countries ( if not all ) were involved.

Graham

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What's a 'flux capacitor' ?

I have a recollection of some State Deptmentment guy holding something up and it didn't look like it could be much more than 100uF !

Graham

You mean De Lorean ( made in Northern Ireland by *both* protestants and catholics ! ) don't you ? I guess something had to let it do that time travel thing !

Hey Hollywood - we love your inventions - esp the cars that catch fire as soon as they go off-road !

Graham

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I imagine you mean Klystrons - which are just UHF signal devices.

Can't you do precision timing with just about any device ? Thermionics come to mind !

You may be right. But the State Dept guys called them capacitors. Maybe glass dielectric - but that kind of info never reached the public.

Graham

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mind !

A 'Krytons' is a gas triode designed for dast triggering of relatively high currents. Can be used with other items to set off explosives...

Not so far fetched. In some areas of the far east, cats and dogs are thought of like we think of pigs and cows: as food rather than pets.

Once while serving in South Korea, I was served something called 'Yakamandu' - good thing I was most of the way thru a bottle of Johny Walker Red when they told me what I had just eaten!

I don't think they're edible. A few years ago, I was living in a trailer park, and the super/manager/handyman had a couple of pet snakes. Really beautiful snakes, like pythons and anacondas and so on. He'd let the neighbor kids play with his snakes. He kept a cage of rats for snake food. This trailer park was also infested with cats. I had borrowed a live-trap, and almost every night I'd trap a cat, and I'd take it to the pound, and the next day some idiot from the trailer park would go bail the damned cat out from the pound, and turn it loose to piss on people's cars and shit in their front yard and caterwaul and make more cats and what-not.

So, one day while just chatting with the snake guy, I remarked, "Y'know what I'd like to do? I'd like to take a video of some kitten playing with a ball of string or whatever, and have a snake come up and eat the kitten. Bwahahaha!"

Mr. Snake Guy said, "A snake won't eat a cat."

Now that you mention it, I have a similar story. I had designed a little piece of logic for a product some guy had come up with the brainstorm for, an "SOS light". It was quite simple, really - just a flasher, like on those warning signs, except instead of just on-off, it flashed "S O S" in Morse code: _ _ _ ___ ___ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ ___ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ________ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ____ etc.

The point was, if your car is disabled, you just pull over and turn on your flashers. But! If a person in the car needs mecical attention _STAT_, you put the SOS Light in your back window, so they know to bring paramedics.

I had built the guy a prototype, which had 4 "C" cells, my little circuit board, the light bulb, and a switch lash-up.

They stopped him at the airport X-ray machine, because it looked like a bomb. Luckily, this was only in about 1992 or so, so they didn't lock down the whole friggin' airport. And when they looked at my lash-up, which was, I swear, literally held together with rubber bands, it turned into an amusing anecdote for all. :-)

Cheers! Rich

So, naturally, ... Oh, never mind.