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PUBLISHER’S LETTER www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Production Manager Greg Swain, B.Sc.(Hons.) Technical Staff John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Peter Smith Ross Tester Rick Walters Reader Services Ann Jenkinson Advertising Enquiries Rick Winkler Phone (02) 9979 5644 Fax (02) 9979 6503 Mobile: 0408 34 6669 Regular Contributors Brendan Akhurst Louis Challis Rodney Champness Garry Cratt, VK2YBX Julian Edgar, Dip.T.(Sec.), B.Ed Mike Sheriff, B.Sc, VK2YFK Philip Watson, MIREE, VK2ZPW Bob Young SILICON CHIP is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 003 205 490. ABN 49 003 205 490 All material copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Printing: Hannanprint, Dubbo, NSW. Distribution: Network Distribution Company. Subscription rates: $69.50 per year in Australia. For overseas rates, see the subscription page in this issue. Editorial & advertising offices: Unit 8, 101 Darley St, Mona Vale, NSW 2103. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9979 5644. Fax (02) 9979 6503. E-mail: silchip<at>siliconchip.com.au ISSN 1030-2662 * Recommended and maximum price only. 2  Silicon Chip Technology has its benefits – and its drawbacks OK, how many of you noticed the obvious mistake in the December issue? There were no prizes for spotting it and it caused a great deal of chagrin, if you can use such a mild term, in the SILICON CHIP offices. If you didn’t spot the error, I’ll put it down to having flitted over those two pages (twice) and not being particularly interested in the affected article on digital reverberation. For those who spotted it and wondered just how such a pain­ful mistake could occur, the answer is, all too easily. Nor can we fall back on the standard excuse, used countless times by publishers in years past, that it “was a printer’s error”. These days any mistakes you see are entirely ours, apart from the occasional page having poor colour because of registration prob­lems. No, since our magazine is produced CTP – computer to plate – the printer has very little input into the final product. The entire editorial contents of SILICON CHIP and the advertising content is all compiled as computer files and sent to the printer on a CD-ROM. Any corrections to the proofs are either emailed or sent to our FTP (file transfer protocol) site and they are then zotted into the computer at Dubbo in the blink of an eye. And that’s how the error occurred. Some small changes needed to be made to the proofs on pages 84 & 85 and these were quickly made to the original file and zapped up to the printer. Trouble was, the pages were laid out using the previous month’s pages as a template. That’s a pretty standard procedure but the previous month’s equivalent pages were 42 & 43. This was not noted, the changes were made and sent and no-one realised that pages 42 & 43 had just been changed – for the worse. This story has been a little simplified but that is the gist of it. Could it happen again? I sincerely hope not but you never know. That is one of the drawbacks of computer technology. You can make changes so easily and without careful checking (which did not happen) things can go awry. As soon as we discovered the error we placed the missing pages on our website and they are reproduced this month, starting on page 72. We apologise to all those readers who were inconven­ienced. Having said all the above, we don’t shrink from continuing to adopt the new technology. It has given us considerable produc­tion benefits, better print quality and helped to control costs. We could not and would not wish to go back to the old days when everything was in the hands of the printers. But it would have been nice to use the excuse “because of a printer’s error”. Since most of you will be reading this at the end of Decem­ber, I wish all of you a very prosperous New Year. We are very much looking forward to the new millennium. Leo Simpson