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To: Ironyman who wrote (329)	8/15/2003 12:51:12 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 1417

Thanks, Now that I have pondered on it a while, it would probably be best if the semiconductor industry went back to 1 inch wafers, perhaps even half inch wafers depending on the die size you want to put on them. Put a single round chip design on each wafer. Chip manufacturing could then be designed almost as a continuous process instead of a batch process. Many of the engineering problems would be greatly simplified. The semiconductor business is in the same stage of development as WW2 battleships imho. Bigger guns were always better. They topped out at 16 inches (18 inches for some Japanese ships) then some one developed aircraft carriers, ariel bombs and guided missiles. The inertia behind developing multi billion dollar fabs, trying to keep everything clean down to 0.1 microns or below is staggering. /edit. Opps. Forgot the real reason for this post. Dumped half my GG calls as they had more then doubled up. I can now go and do some real work for the rest of the month -g-

To: Ironyman who wrote (329)	8/19/2003 3:20:38 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1417

Free online journal gives sneak preview newscientist.com 18:18 19 August 03 NewScientist.com news service The non-profit, on-line publisher, the Public Library of Science, has released a sneak preview of the research papers it will be giving away for free from October. Its first journal, PLoS Biology, is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal intended to compete head-to-head with the most prestigious paid-for journals. "I'm delighted with the quality of the papers we're publishing," says Vivian Siegel, the PLoS executive director, who quit as editor of another highly-rated journal Cell to head the new venture. "I think Nature and Science will look at some of these papers and wish they had them." PLoS released two of those papers on Monday as part of the sneak preview. One paper shows Borneo elephants are genetically distinct from other Asian elephants and argues they should be protected. Another reveals details about the parasite that causes malaria. A list of authors with papers in upcoming issues includes a number who have previously published work in top journals. The PLoS started in 2000 with a petition demanding that publishers upload their research to a public on-line database within six months of publication. The petition argued that publishers were selling access to research that in most cases had been funded with public money and should therefore be freely available. When most top journals failed to comply, PLoS announced it would publish its own journals making first-rate research available for free, on line. PLoS will publish another title, PLoS Medicine, in 2004, and is considering others. Valuable kudos Some journals already make their contents available for free on the web. But scientists often compete to publish in the most prestigious journals - the kudos gained is valuable in advancing careers and winning grants. So PLoS wants to convince scientists its journals belong in the top league. With a $9 million, five-year grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a team of editors who previously worked on Cell and Nature, PLoS may have the initial resources to do it. But competitors are not sure the journal will be sustainable after the grant money is gone. PLoS acknowledges that organising reviews, editing and online publishing all cost money. It will charge authors $1500 per paper, if they can pay, and also run advertising. But competitors say they may also have to charge for online subscriptions if they want to maintain quality. "All non-profit scientific publishers have the same goal. We want to have the broadest access you can get. The question is, how do you get that done in a reliable way?" says Alan Leshner, CEO of Science, which is run by the non-profit American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Jayne Marks, publishing director of the Nature Publishing Group, says PLoS might find its strategy merely shifts the burden of paying for its journal from university library budgets to university research budgets. She also defends the profit motive in scientific publishing. "So long as you're providing a good service at a fair price, I don't think there's anything wrong," she says. Kurt Kleiner