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JosephKK

flipper posted to alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:19:52 GMT, JosephKK
wrote:

John B posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On 26/08/2007 ian field wrote:

Apparently the September issue of Elektor is supposed to have a
free LED driver PCB - mine didn't and the newsagent vigorously
denies any part in its disappearance.

Its not the first time Elektor has arrived sans freebie and I'm
beginning to suspect foul play! Can any other reader tell me how
it was packaged, glued to the front cover/plastic envelope
........etc etc?

TIA.

Mine was attached to the top left corner with double sided tape.
Unfortunately the SM inductor had snapped in half in the post.
They made a great fuss in the magazine about developing and
distributing 150,000 units of this freebie, unfortunately they
don't seem to have even considered how to package it so that it
would arrive safely at its intended destination.

Sounds kind of typical in so many ways.

Maybe, or maybe not, but in either case I disagree with your
analysis.

The authors being hack
engineers presume that the publishers understand the reason that
such distribution takes place.

Well, that would be not just a mistake but a whole raft of them.
What on earth would lead 'hack engineers' to presume the publisher's
understand their engineering, motivation, or unique expectations?
That isn't the publisher's job and it would be irrational to imagine
you could throw just whatever the heck you feel like at them and it
just 'magically' work out, and 'for free' no less.

The publishers not only do not, they are
seriously anathema against anything that requires any kind of
special handling, and they are ****ed about such inclusions and the
impact on the "bottom line".

Everybody works on a 'bottom line' and it's irrational to expect
someone else to not only read your mind and do your job for you but
eat the cost of it as well.

The authors only hope is to offset the added
costs with a payment from advertisers.

Part of that added cost is ensuring that their 'clever idea' works
and that appropriate publishing arrangements are made.

....

I rather suspect that neither were as 'unaware' as you suggest and
that they thought whatever the agreed upon means was would do the
job well enough but that, somewhere, somehow, someone missed or
underestimated a problem.

I had asserted that there was a mismatch between the engineers'
expectations and the publishers' constraints. Perhaps i conveyed it
poorly.