The big story out of IPC Apex Expo last month – about the only story, really – was the introduction of an open communications standard by Mentor Graphics’ Valor division, followed by the rapid response by more than two dozen assembly equipment providers and software developers over shared concern that the solution to machine-to-machine communication might end up residing in the hands of a single company.
Were you as shocked as I was last month when Sparton announced CEO Cary Wood had resigned?
There’s only so much a company can give away without extracting payment of some kind. Perhaps the world’s biggest provider of free stuff, Google, “gives away” its search tools, but in exchange users are offered less than democratic responses whereby the highest ranked terms are paid for. And in fact, the cost of “free” search is underwritten by copious amounts of advertising.
How many stories can a picture tell?