Qualcomm in talks to acquire NXP

Bummer. Qualcomm is nothing but an overstaffed law firm that occasionally sells semiconductors when they have nothing better to do.

This is what happens if you post an online copy of a 15-year old, publicly available data sheet for a widely used part:

Oops, it looks like they missed one:

Bunch of asshats.

-- john, KE5FX

I've long been unhappy about public projects that chose to use a Qualcomm chip, because even basic information is kept unavailable.

Lately NXP has been getting asshat inclinations, and locking datasheet pdf files, including many that have previously been released unlocked. These files are locked with almost no permissions, so that you can't add a 'sticky-note' comment, extract a page for a report, or to help document a design, or do anything useful. It's a snub in the face of the customer, and especially a slap to the face of an engineer who's trying to become a customer, dammit-all!

Why in the world does NXP want to punch me in the face as I'm looking at a datasheet for a stupid little Schottky diode, for Pete's sake?

If NXP becomes a Qualcomm company, I fear things will rapidly go further downhill.

They already make new or unfamiliar parts hard to find by hiding them behind arbitrarily-chosen market groupings, like automotive, lighting, wireless charging, etc., rather than by function, such as diode, MOSFET, etc.

On 30/09/2016 22:50, Winfield Hill wrote: ...

NXP are completely stupid in doing that, but as a pragmatic work-around, have you tried a different PDF viewer? A lot of the restrictions that can be placed on the use of pdf files are as far as I can see not technically enforceable, it is just that when the wishes of the pdf creator (as expressed in the permission settings) are in comflict with the wishes of the person running the pdf viewer program, Adobe chooses to side with the person who created the pdf. If open source programs do anything sufficiently infuriating on purpose, then someone will usually fork it and make a better one. It is likely that things still won't work, but it will just as a result of of poor programming rather than malice, which I find a lot easier to live with.

there also programs that completely remove those blocks so you can continue to use Adobe Reader to make notes, print, save, etc. Just google: unprotect pdf

Bye Jack

Yeah, I hate parts clustered by "application."

And why do I have to choose between "high speed dacs" and "precision dacs" ?

This is true for some subset of PDF files, yes. Other files are simply unusable on other readers than Adobe Reader. The Adobe PDF generation software even inserts script code into the documents (the fact that PDF documents can contain scripts already is very worrying...) that makes the competing PDF viewers display popups that Adobe Reader is required to view the document.

Den fredag den 30. september 2016 kl. 16.20.31 UTC+2 skrev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.co m:

critto:

ue to use Adobe Reader to make notes, print, save, etc.

which is of course a violation of DMCA no matter how silly it is

Why would anyone want to keep people from seeing their data sheets? But lots of people do.

That chip looks klunky by modern standards anyhow.

Several people make things like this:

which is astonishing, especially for $5 or so.

We are all criminals now. Get used to it.

I was just telling Jim that I use PDF Password Remover 3.5, $35, as suggested to me by, ahem, a lawbreaker here on s.e.d.

It's probably illegal to email a PDF data sheet to someone else. Or to yourself.

I just installed the Lympha addon to Firefox. It deletes all cookies of the current web site. So some paid content becomes free. So shoot me.

Totally. The Q3236 was already 15 years old in 2008, and you could buy much better parts by then. The page where I posted the data sheet was only meant to help me keep track of the programming info for an obsolete 26 GHz PLL brick

PSA: if anyone does need a Q3236 for anything, you can get a better version of it from Peregrine:

I like Peregrine. They haven't sent me any bullshit DMCA notices lately, and they make neat stuff.

-- john, KE5FX

They have some cool digital capacitors, SPI programmable.

Maxim had one, but of course they EOL'd it.

But dammit, they lock their datasheets. I couldn't copy and paste their PE3236 part number to get more info. Nor could I paste to modify the an09.pdf file name to better identify what it was in my computer. The sooner these idiot blokes get the message that locking datasheets is counterproductive, the better off everybody will be. If that ever happens.

Sheesh!!!!

Maybe that is a comment you and Paul can put in your next edition.

Fortunately they seem to have stopped doing that in their newer data sheets. The one for the PE42020 from

I agree with Tom, though -- way too many companies still do this crap, and some flames in print from you guys might help. Safe to say the lawyers don't read Usenet...

-- john, KE5FX

I just strip the password protection with an Elcom app and save it.

A couple of my banks have been pulling that stuff too sending CC statements that are 'secured' so I can't add annotations.

The lack of openly available datasheets (without pleading and giving them an NDA) is a real issue. A lot of Asian companies seem to think that way. Something related to only giving a tinker's cuss about a very few, very large customers, I think.

--sp

Ummmm.... $50, $100, or $400 versions. Made in Russia.

The $50 version is rather basic and can take several days to crack a basic 40 bit RC4 encrypted file. 256 bit AES encryption can take forever. The $100 version is better but lacks rainbow tables, which really speeds things up. For rainbow tables, you'll need the $400 version.