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posted by Cactus on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-a-list-and-checking-it-twice dept.

c0lo writes:

An Australian blogger shares his personal experience with orders put on hold by the Australian subsidiary of Element 14 (the former Farnell shop), reportedly based on a watch list maintained by US govt.

From the blog:

The counter person wasn't sure, so checked with someone else who came and wasn't 100% sure, but knew that the system does automatically flag orders based on various identifiers. It could have possibly been one of those stupid US government trade restriction things, because, you know capacitors and opamps can be used by evil terrorists and the like... (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won't use the parts in nuclear weapons - seriously)

But they enquired further with someone else and the word came back that it wasn't the parts that had been flagged, it was my NAME that was flagged. And they said it was a US government watch list of some description. I was stunned, and it seemed like they didn't quite understand why I was so shocked at this. Because, you know, the whole world has to just sit by and let the US government dictate everything at will.

...

  So lets see if I have this straight - An Australian subsidiary, owned by a UK parent company, listed on the UK stock exchange, has an ordering system that automatically matches generic names against some secret US Government watch list, and flags those orders and puts them on hold, for parts that are already stocked in Australia, are likely not made in the US, and likely have come from the main UK warehouse. Call me stupid, but something doesn't seem right with that...

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by useless on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:07PM

    by useless (426) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:07PM (#7359)

    It would be nice if the summery said what element 14 is.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by chebucto on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:09PM

    by chebucto (36) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:09PM (#7362) Journal

    Obviously, it is the former Farnell shop.

    Now, if I only knew what the former Farnell shop was...

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:42PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:42PM (#7598) Journal

      Now, if I only knew what the former Farnell shop was...

      What???!

      Trivia question for nerds: what were the two distributors the Raspberry Pi used at launch?

      BTW: does anyone recall the birthdate of the Raspberry Pi retail version?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by unitron on Thursday February 27 2014, @07:18AM

      by unitron (70) on Thursday February 27 2014, @07:18AM (#7834) Journal

      "Obviously, it is the former Farnell shop.

      Now, if I only knew what the former Farnell shop was..."

      It was the place we had to go to get all our Farnells worked on, of course.

      --
      something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by DrMag on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:12PM

    by DrMag (1860) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:12PM (#7367)

    Element 14 is a well-known electronics (as in components, not consumer items) distributor, akin to Digi-Key or Mouser.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:37PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:37PM (#7491) Homepage Journal

      Well known in Australia, but not anywhere else, and Google is useless for finding the store. I never heard of Digi-Key or Mouser, either, and it looks like Digi-Key is based in North America.

      If you're submitting a story, don't assume everyone knows about the stores in your area, because they may not be in mine. Kind of like "spell out acronyms".

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by weilawei on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:07PM

        by weilawei (109) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:07PM (#7520)
        Well-known in the US too, since they were one of the suppliers of the Raspberry Pi.
      • (Score: 1) by captain normal on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:26PM

        by captain normal (2205) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:26PM (#7572)

        Comes up on top of results in DDG.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 1) by berrance on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:02PM

      by berrance (1229) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:02PM (#7518)

      I believe http://cpc.farnell.com/ [farnell.com] is also part of Farnell. http://uk.farnell.com/ [farnell.com] is the UK website for element14 which is the same as the CPC one except for colours.

      They are both Farnell but CPC has free shipping so I use them for my cap's and what not.

      --
      Just my two lentils worth...
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:15PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:15PM (#7373)

    Silicon?

    Actually I was confused too. I thought "What, do they sell microchips or something?"

    Clicked on link... yes... yes they do. Though I am kind of confused if it is a store that has community pages, or a forum that is supported by a store. Is it an American company or an Australian one? (if it's American this would explain why it was using an American watch list... even if it is a stupid one that blocks by name with no overrides)

    au.element14.com [element14.com] is a store.
    Where www.element14.com [element14.com] redirects to http://www.element14.com/community/welcome [element14.com] and does not appear to be a store.

    Some info would be helpful.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:29PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:29PM (#7386)

      "Though I am kind of confused if it is a store that has community pages, or a forum that is supported by a store."

      So is everyone else, including people who've been involved for a couple decades. Over the past ten years or so, as a value add to encourage sales, distributors have been adding more forums / wikis / download sites every year, while communities have been adding stores to generate revenue. Both from the bottom up with startups expanding, and from the top down with giant multinational distributors trying to generate PR community buzz. Widely varying levels of success, of course.

      There really aren't any pure electronic hardware distributors left. Even Digikey and Mouser have vast download archives of datasheets and CAD drawings to convince you to shop there. And on the other side there are still plenty of communities without stores, but cafepress and amazon affiliate links make it less and less likely.

      There seems to be a stereotype that mfgr websites still offer datasheets but want to hide them behind various ways to develop a "sales relationship" with big customers. Like mandatory creation of logins, weird organization behind industry categorizations, stuff like that. On the other hand the distributors will give away free datasheets to anyone who looks up the product, of course they may or may not be entirely up to date and often if there's 9 manuals you'll only get one datasheet. Meanwhile SEO spammers are trying to adword or driveby install or spam you to death if you try to search for various product datasheets. Sometimes its almost impossible to find the actual mfgr because they're so buried under SEO spammers.

      So yeah its a weird and quickly changing market.

    • (Score: 1) by tomp on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:15PM

      by tomp (996) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:15PM (#7441)

      I've always known them as Newark as in http://www.newark.com/ [newark.com]

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:13PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:13PM (#7478) Homepage Journal

    It would be nice if the summery said what element 14 is.

    Yeah, not being Australian I thought it had something to do with silicon (the element, i.e., sand). I was going to bash your spelling (actually your relying on a spell checker) but it is rather summery in Australia right now, good pun there!

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 1) by weilawei on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:10PM

      by weilawei (109) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:10PM (#7522)
      It's in quotes. It's clearly not referring to silicon. Also, you claim to never have heard of Mouser or Digi-Key. So, you haven't heard of most of the largest electronics stores online--you might as well as them to provide an explanation of what WalMart is.
      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:38PM

        by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:38PM (#7550)

        I'm familiar with Mouser, Digi-Key, and Newark, but never before heard of this Element 14.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:50PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:50PM (#7555) Homepage Journal

        If I were submitting a story that WalMart was central to I would certainly tell the reader what WalMart was.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:28AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:28AM (#7850) Journal

        Strange as it may seem - I've never heard of Mouser or Digi-Key either. Where in Europe do they trade from?

  • (Score: 1) by captain normal on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:24PM

    by captain normal (2205) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:24PM (#7570)

    RTFA Or are mixed up and think you're still on /(that other place which should be on some government watch list).

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.