Fond Farwell

Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag.

Enjoy,

Earl Moon

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon |

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| | Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | | | Enjoy, | | | | Earl Moon | | | | I thought we only had to register if we where posting? Although it may seem restrictive every one can still view at any time? Or so I thought. I do believe we will miss you Earl and the great threads you have left us with. I am bummed that you are leaving have a good one. Oh, you are always welcome to come out to Ca. and have a beer in my new shop, as well as stay in the hotel if you get to drunk, lol.........Jeff

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon | Earl: I'll miss your comradrie, knowledge, generosity, and at most times kindness. Best to you. VTY Dave F

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon |

Earl:

sounds like a 60's thing.....understand your feelings, but will miss your entries. TTYL Wayne

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon | What a drag! You've got some very good input. I hope thing go well for you in the future, Maybe you�ll reconsider later on?

B.K.

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| After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Earl Moon |

Dear Earl,

We at SMTnet are sorry to hear your decision. You have been a big help to the SMTnet community and will be missed. If your decision has to do with specific issues in our registration process, we would like to hear your comments and address these issues. If you are objecting to the concept of registering, perhaps we have not explained our rational sufficiently. We believe if we had, then you would have agreed with us. Therefore, we would like to take this opportunity to start an open dialog on our rational behind this registration requirement. You are welcome to come back to the Forum any time, and we know it is up to us to convince you.

SMTnet was created with the notion that anyone in the electronics manufacturing community should be able to find the products, services, information, and solutions he or she needs instantly through SMTnet. At the same time, any supplier of products, services, information, and solutions should be able to reach potential customers instantly through SMTnet. Technology and the market change so rapidly that no one in our community can afford the time traditionally taken to find vendors or customers.

In keeping with this objective of creating an effective channel of communication, we feel it is important that users, like you, receive the right information. As a business, we are hoping to pay for our services with advertising income from vendors. However, you do not want to receive product and service information that does not apply to you. Nor do vendors want to deliver information to unqualified recipients. Therefore SMTnet is only interested in delivering viewers information that they have a specific need for, as expressed by their registration and subsequent updates. Although vendors will know the profile of users they are reaching, your name and e-mail address will be withheld from them. Any information you receive will be delivered to you by SMTnet, via the web site (banners, directory listings, etc.) or our SMT Express newsletter that is under development.

We believe the registration is not an invasion of user privacy. Instead, it is a protection of user privacy. We have provided the SMTnet Email service so that you do not have to give your personal email address. Some SMTneters have expressed concern that their e-mail address was mis-used as a result of showing it on SMTnet. Indeed, last month someone used a robot to strip email addresses off the SMT Forum. Our system caught the action immediately, before any of these email addresses were used. Further, we were assured they would not engage in such actions in the future. If a user is registered with SMTnet and uses the SMTnet.com mail address, then we have added protection: we will not allow third party mass emailing into your SMTnet.com mailbox.

The registration will serve two other purposes: to make posting to the SMTnet site easy and to maintain the professional quality of the site. For frequent posters like yourself, it saves time not having to type your address, name, phone number, etc., which is all stored in your profile page. Most of our participants are like you, donating valuable time posting quality questions and answers. However, overtime, there have been postings that did not live up to the professional standards that we have established. We�ve had to occasionally delete substandard postings with fictitious names and emails. If these people had to register, they would not have posted these messages. The quality of postings are important not only to our viewers, but also to our advertisers. A major advertiser was not willing to put a banner on the Forum page only because the messages are not monitored. We hope we can convince advertisers that with registration, our high quality content is further enhanced without the need of monitoring.

We have just automated the SMT News and SMT Library, allowing them to accept user postings instantly, just like the SMT Forum, the PCBCE Mart, and the Directory Database have been. All these are just ways to achieve the single SMTnet objective: to provide a fast and direct link between users and providers of products, services, information, and solutions.

We hope you find this helpful and agreeable. Please feel free to email me with your thoughts. Again, if you think the registration process can be improved, let me know too. We take every user�s comments seriously.

Thank you.

Cunli Jia Director, Product Development SMTnet

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon

Earl,

Your knowledge and wit will be dearly missed. Please reconsider as I myself find you to be an invaluable asset to the group. Either way, I wish you the best. Good luck

Chris Lampron

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon

Earl,

Although I don't have the time to spend surfing this site that I once did, I always regarded your inputs as valuable. I'm confident that many a younger or less seasoned engineer has gained from your inputs to the forum. You have always provided factual info in a great venue for those who wish to learn. You will be sorely missed.

Won't you reconsider?

-Best Regards- Scott Cook |

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I too was dismayed when I saw the new requirement to register. I have been a daily viewer of SMTNet for well over a year (although not a great participant as I am fairly junior in the SMT world) and have seen it grow unfortunately from a simple but user friendly forum into an forum based advertising site.

I understand the need to generate income to maintain a certain level of service but demanding that your users provide you with their details for you to sell to allow us to be targeted commercially has gone too far and to suggest that this is not an invasion of privacy is ludicrous.

Please don't keep adding bells and whistles, increasing costs and taking the site further from the users.

Can you not reconsider and make registration optional.

Without Earl and the other major contributors, your site is worthless.

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| | | Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | | | | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | | | | | Enjoy, | | | | | | Earl Moon | | | | | | | I thought we only had to register if we where posting? Although it may seem restrictive every one can still view at any time? Or so I thought. I do believe we will miss you Earl and the great threads you have left us with. I am bummed that you are leaving have a good one. Oh, you are always welcome to come out to Ca. and have a beer in my new shop, as well as stay in the hotel if you get to drunk, lol.........Jeff | | Earl, I hope you'll reconsider. This is just another ploy by THE MAN to get us all tied into the same infrastructure. It's all part of their master plan to unearth the nuclear waste buried by the aliens under the pyramids. Seriously, use my e-mail address and let me know where you're at. I'd like to get together sometime if we're in the same part of the country. You've helped a ton with my development as an engineer and I'm truly grateful. I, at least, owe you 2 or 14 beers for that.

Miss ya Moon Man, J

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon

Earl,

I am sorry to see you go. As a newcomer, I had already figured out that you would have a helpful response to people. It won't be the same without you.

Nancy |

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| | | | Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | | | | | | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | | | | | | | Enjoy, | | | | | | | | Earl Moon | | | | | | | | | | I thought we only had to register if we where posting? Although it may seem restrictive every one can still view at any time? Or so I thought. I do believe we will miss you Earl and the great threads you have left us with. I am bummed that you are leaving have a good one. Oh, you are always welcome to come out to Ca. and have a beer in my new shop, as well as stay in the hotel if you get to drunk, lol.........Jeff | | | | | Earl, | I hope you'll reconsider. This is just another ploy by THE MAN to get us all tied into the same infrastructure. It's all part of their master plan to unearth the nuclear waste buried by the aliens under the pyramids. Seriously, use my e-mail address and let me know where you're at. I'd like to get together sometime if we're in the same part of the country. You've helped a ton with my development as an engineer and I'm truly grateful. I, at least, owe you 2 or 14 beers for that. | | Miss ya Moon Man, | J |

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Justin:

Earl hasn't only helped the young engineers, he has been a major help to old farts like me. I for one will protest if Earl doesn't continue helping all of us.

Gee Earl, maybe we can do something with SMTNET to make this more pleasing to all of us.

Please hang in there Moon Man

Wayne MSDJW@aol.com

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon | When I first started viewing, about a year or so ago, about a half dozen names posted answers continuously, Earl being one of them. Since then I look for those names specifically - doesn't matter what the question was. I know I will learn something by reading the responses. I also, will miss Earl's great knowledge and wry sense of humor. Thanks Earl! Best of luck and I hope I stumble across you again somewhere out there!! LeeAnne

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| Thanks all you kind and knowledgeable folks. I no longer will be participating in this forum. | | After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion registration, in the manner required to participate in what was an open forum, is not my bag. | | Enjoy, | | Earl Moon | Earl, my esteemed and highly regarded SMT Guru, One of the greatest pleasures and most respected professions is that of a teacher. AS most often is the case, teachers routinely forgo personal (and financial) gratification to educate the next generation. Earl, I humbly ask of you to reconsider and recognize your personal sacrifice (to register) as a great contribution in and of itself. (let the brown-nosing begin). I will miss your humor and professionalism which will be difficult to replace. Best ot luck to you! If you ever make it up to Portland OR, drop me a line! Regards, Dean

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